Nation without recruitables

[Micah]

Ghost King is probably the best chassis for soloing indies along with rainbowing out a bit...he needs an air pick or two for air shield to do alright naked, but he can solo average morale melee units fairly well even without buffs and gear.

[thejeff]

For another interesting challenge along similar lines, try Ashen Empire with an imprisoned pretender.

There you get the freespawn troops, but without mages or priests.

[Aezeal]

for 2D2E2S2N you'd need a rainbow chassis or bad scales, then you'd have to start a few turns researching alteration. But an immortal pretender could maybe have that and then just attack and if he died.. who cares

You could mod in some appropriate starting troops though

VQ pretender with a few immortal vampires... but that would probably make it a bit too easy again

[thejeff]

Prince of Death can do 4D2E2S2N Dom9 with 2 negative scales.
And attack without research if you pick your targets.

Lizards killed him though. You're right about the curse.

Wiped them a couple of turns later with indy archers, though. When you're not buying mages or expensive national troops, you can buy alot of indies fast.

[Aezeal]

yeah lol who will die fast against mages and expensive national troop from AI opponents

did you try this with my "mod"?

I still think immortality is the key here

which immortal chassis are there..

I think opening up some extra pretender chassis and giving them a bonus heat/cold scale for extra points would not be unbalancing all things considered

I know VQ, phoenix

[thejeff]

I didn't bother with the mod, just didn't recruit any nationals. Only played a few turns to see how indies went.
If I'd been a bit more cautious, I would have been recruiting lizard shamen from turn 6 or so and taking 2 provinces a turn. (Less if I stopped to search with the pretender)
But, yes the AI armies would be challenging. And the micromanagement of recruiting a couple troops from every province every turn was already annoying.

VQ maybe, but phoenix is useless without research. So are the lichs. I think that's it for the non-nation specific immortals.
I'm not sure what to do with the VQ. 23 hp 0 prot, no fear. Life drain is nice, but a couple of hits would finish her. You'd have to add paths to get any useful buffs, then research 6-7 turns before attacking.

[Aezeal]

but we could mod other immortals in .. but which ones

[HoneyBadger]

I could see doing a Nation without any recruitables *or* summons. And in such a way that you could only select one Pretender. The whole entire Nation rests on the ability of that one nation-specific Pretender, so you can't screw with the balance by picking a rainbow-mage, instead of what the designer had in mind

You create a Pretender-I'd do immobile, but teleportable-who spawns off a particularly nasty SC-ready sacred unit, who then *also* spawns off a different, but still thuggable nasty sacred unit, who then spawns off a good commander, who spawns a heavy infantry trooper, who spawns an artillery unit, who spawns off...you get the idea. Some of the "spawn" could shapechange into other units, for the sake of versatility, but you'd really have to be careful to pace yourself with the Nation-especially with making sure you had enough units balancing out your army.

The strengths of the Nation would be getting your toughest units at the beginning, instead of the end game, and your exponential growth. The main weakness, besides the necessity of pacing and timing, is that, if you lose your Pretender, it's all over-and losing one of the SCs should be a major blow, atleast until the end-game.

An interesting twist would be if the Pretender, itself, could shapechange into a couple of different forms, allowing you to pick which "SC type" got made when, leading to vastly different forces, at different times in the game. If each change was permanent, you can imagine the strategic possibilities, and headaches.

There'd be no Nation-specific summonables, no recruitables, and no starting gem income. You could hire independents, but I'd make your "spawn" troops cost so much gold that you'd never have a decent income, other than Luck. You could still use generic summons, ofcourse, but without a starting gem income, it would be harder. The "spawn" themselves, with these limitations in place, could then be quite meaty, without as much fear of unbalancing the nation as a whole. And each loss-except for the very bottom rungs ofcourse, which itself might be filled with various versatile troops you might not want to casually throw away-would be an unrecoverable setback to your overall endgame position.

[Aezeal]

I think something like that has been done honeybadger, but I don't think that was what the OP had in mind. He wanted to play with just independent units against AI nations.

(I think it was some mod with insects I read about that had something like you said, never played it myself)

I do think that once the nation is on a roll it goes exponentially so I doubt it's as weak as you think.. might even be VERY overpowered.

I mean in 3 turns 3 SC and 2 thugs.. that is quick expansion right there...

[thejeff]

Of course, if you really just want to play with independents against the AI, mod a nation to have regular shortbows, militia, heavy and light infantry and maybe heavy cavalry.
Standard Commander, scout and priest.

You've got starting recruitables, so your castle is useful, but they don't give you anything you wont get from your average indy.