MP: Legends - EA, no diplo, CBM 1.92, limited magic - Samhain/Fomoria wins!

[Valerius]

Do you love SCs and late game magic? Then this isn't the game for you. But if you like moving your national armies around without fear of master enslave or rain of stones, if you like calling down thunderstrikes and gifts from heaven, if you like gearing out thugs and summoning monsters - in short if your favorite part of the game is the midgame then this might be just what you're looking for.

This is the latest in a series of games in which the central theme is to limit magic to midgame levels. The most recent, Faded Magic, is still running. Faded Magic was the first of these games to run under CBM 1.92 instead of 1.6. This game will be the first time one takes place in the EA instead of MA.


Game summary

* CBM 1.92 with magic limited to level 6 (with a few exceptions - see change log). Blood magic also nerfed (but still quite usable IMO).

* One exception to the level 6 max magic rule is that monsters (defined as creatures without full slots) also make the cut. Dragons have also been added as a summon.

* Limited changes made to nations/summons to reflect unusual settings (see change log).


Settings

Age: EA
Players: Approx. 8
Diplomacy: None
Banned nations: all water nations
Hosting: llamaserver
Hosting interval: 24 hours up to turn 20, 48 hours up to turn 40, 72 hours from then on
Mods: modified version of CBM 1.92 (attached to post)
Map: Plane of Rusty Nails with 9 fixed starts
HoF: 15
Research: Easy (this is an important one - while the hosting schedule is relaxed, we will be getting to the action very quickly)
All other settings default
Exploits: Don't use them.

Also: Please do not go AI! Lost all your forts and having nothing left but an indie commander and some militia? Please still play it to the end. Thanks!


Player Roster

ghoul31 - Hinnom
HoleyDooley - Ermor
KeithZ - Sauromatia
Ossa - Ulm
Samhain - Fomoria
shard - Lanka
shonuf/Larz (as of turn 24) - Caelum
tratorix - Abysia
Valerius - TNN


Change log

Nation changes
--------------

Hinnom:
Summon Se'irim - 42 slaves
Summon Shedim - 32 slaves
Acha do not have healing

Jotun:
skratti - +1 enc in werewolf form

Pan:
No maenad spawning; summon maenad spell (10/1 N gem)
No carrion centaur/lady/lord; national version of construct manikin (10/3 N gems)
Gorgon - removed
One of the free spawn nations, was initially banned and later allowed in with the changes above. I played them two games ago and chose a gorgon pretender who IMO is OP for these settings (I stopped using her midgame because of this) so she's out as well.

Lanka:
Summon Dakini - 100 slaves

Agartha:
No darkness on PD
Paths of the Deep 5 --> 7 gems

Eriu:
Sidhe Lord - no autoentangle

Van:
Vanjarl 240 --> 280 gold



Summons
-------

Zmey
Prot decreased by 4 points to 18 and misc slots from 3 to 2 (I know usually all three slots aren't used but the increased cost of the lychantropos' amulet may change this). Importantly, the zmey now has map move 2, not 3.

Ettin
Cost increased to 20 gems and level to 6.

Wendigo
Wendigo has fixed magic at W2D2 and autocasts soul vortex. Development speed is greatly increased: size 2 the first turn, size 3 (with 50 HP) the second turn, and final size of 4 (and 71 HP) the following turn.

Tartarian Monstrum
Two level two randoms and two misc slots (as well as a head slot) mean they provide the best magic diversity around. High HP and flight and the chance of A/S magic also means they can fulfill a raiding role. Don't have shattered soul or come with afflictions.

Dragons
Combat spellcasters and raiders. They have level 3 F/W/N magic, base MR of 20, and head + 2 misc slots. The fire dragon is the best offensively: with a reinvig item, skull of fire and phoenix power he's a falling fires machine. The frost dragon is amphibious and the forest dragon has recuperation.

Iron Dragon
Is now a commander summon (with 2 misc slots) and receives an additional claw attack. Many resistances out-of-the-box but still has horrible MR and limited (without buffs/gear) damage potential.



Spell changes
-------------

No globals
No reason to hoard gems. Provinces = power so use your gems to summon and forge so you can get more provinces.

Restore Soul - 10 gems
Normally this is for tarts - here it's basically to avoid umbral thugs being too cheap.

Darkness - D5 / 5 gems
Hard to cast normally, even harder to cast here.

Iron Bane - E5 / 5 gems
More difficult to cast and much more expensive

Leprosy - 8 --> 15 gems, MRN easily
Afflictions are serious business here without GoH, chalice or even faery queens.

Horror Mark - costs 1 gem
Don't like this spell and don't want people who go with SC pretenders to have them sidelined that easily.

Communion Master/Slave - increase fatigue 20-->30
No rain of stones makes life a lot safer for communions. Bit of an increase in fatigue to offset this.

Transformation - level 7 spell but stays in
A level 7 spell that I'm just keeping in for the fun of it.

Weapons Sharpness - level 7 spell but stays in with aoe 2
A powerful level 7 spell that I'm deliberately leaving in since I think it has an important role to play against thugs and monsters. AOE much smaller, though.

Everything below here is blood nerfs because I think it's a good idea (something to keep in mind is that given the limited research you won't have much of an opportunity cost for blood hunting - combine that with growth scales and blood will be a powerhouse even with some of these cost increases and spell eliminations).

Sabbath Master/Slave - fat 100, costs 1 slave

Rain of Toads - 20 slaves / level 6

Send Lesser Horror - 15 slaves

Bind Succubus - 66 --> 55 slaves (ok, this price is actually decreased as I don't know why this unit is that expensive)

Ritual of the Five Gates - 24 --> 30 slaves

Blood rite, blood rain, bloodletting, hellbind heart, bind ice devil, infernal disease - removed



Magic item changes
------------------

No unique items

Bane venom charm - 15 gems
Afflictions are serious business here without GoH, chalice or even faery queens.

Lychantropos' amulet - 10 gems
5N is too cheap when you consider the aggravation this causes with commanders picking it up. Also, this makes it less of a no-brainer for zmeys.

Soul contract and lifelong protection removed.



Misc changes
------------

Removed bugged ettin site


Note to anyone downloading the no indie Fivelands maps: the 5lands3.zip file has the same .map that is on the llamaserver. The earlier two zip files had an error in that province 65 was not marked as being NI.

[Austen]

I'm intrigued... and I've been wantnig to play with Valerius again... put me down for Helheim...

[Valerius]

Nice to play with you again! And I'm glad you stuck in there after feeling kind of down with how things went in Game of Dorian. Obviously things have started clicking since I see you're now winning games. Best of all, it appears you're a convert to the glamour nation fan club. Fun nations, aren't they (and strong as well in 1.92 - especially the bloodthirsty ones of Van/Hel)?

[Austen]

trying to play this mod as Niefel crashes when I go to recruitment saying it can't find worth heroes..

[Valerius]

Hold on, I'll take a look now. I think somehow I messed up some paths when building test mods and it looks like that carried over into this mod.

[Austen]

think I'm going to go to bed actually...will check it out tomorrow... thinking about switching off Helheim.. these changes make it feel more like a weaker TNN... need to dink around some more.. not sure my normal approach works as well anyway..

[Valerius]

Mod has been updated and should fix the missing graphic problem. Same filename but in the mod list it will have v2 at the end of the name rather than v1.

Does Helheim feel weaker because of the overall changes or just from the Vanjarl price increase? In any case, I'll keep you with Helheim for now (though I think Niefel will be a terror, skratti encumbrance increase or not).

[HoleyDooley]

I'm in..nation TBA.

HD

[Valerius]

Welcome!

[Valerius]

For anyone reading this and wondering WTF to make of these rules I thought I'd mention a few things.

First, evo. magic has done quite well in these games. Massed magma eruption is ... very good. Even with the bump in fatigue, communions still have huge potential - and without the risk of rain of stones you'd face in a normal game. Having said that, this is the first game to be played in the thug/SC rich EA and I expect those units will play a significant role here.

Second, keep in mind the unique attributes of your nation and how the limited magic affects their utility.

For instance, in Faded Magic I'm playing Caelum. Flight is, of course, a great advantage. And with these rules it synergizes really nicely with the large number of flying monster summons (zmey, rocs, monstrums, dragons). Slap some flying boots on a full slot thug or two and perhaps some particularly good indie mages and you've got an incredibly mobile army. And - this is the best part - you can't be nuked by flames from the sky or spammed with remote assassinations (they can hit you with some low level remote attacks but these are manageable).

Or let's take Pan. Their trademark is recuperation. And this is a game without GoH, the chalice or even faerie queens. Want to know one of the reasons I bumped up the price of bane venom charms? Because a couple of games ago I holed up in my forts, spamming maenads, while bane venom charms afflicted the besiegers. Call it C'tis lite. As an aside, while many would consider the removal of maenad free spawn a nerf, one upside is that it means you can sneak your Pans around without having them risk broadcasting their location.

Talking about blood for a moment, I obviously have some nerfs to blood magic in here but I think blood nations are still quite playable. And while the limited magic removes many endgame strategies blood sac nations still have the possibility of going for dom kills.

So think along those lines in terms of choosing a nation/strategy.