Mod Kaleva, Songs of Sorcery - 0.87 released - Page 4

Endoperez · #31 September 28th, 2008, 05:57 AM

I just tried to play a testgame against Kaleva, with Conceptual Balance. Turn 3, Kaleva made a Tomb Lord its prophet. "What Tomb Lord", I thought, and tried wishing for it in my test game. Nope, no such unit. Eh? Then I created a test game with Kaleva and Conceptual Balance, and the sight was... strange. A nation of heroes. Visitor instead of scout, Yakshas and Members of the Shadow League as recruitable units, etc.

I haven't made any further progress, but I'll update the original post with a version in which the unit nrs are in the 3800-range, to avoid complications.

Lingchih · #32 March 8th, 2009, 11:28 PM

Any more progress Endo? It was a nice mod.

Endoperez · #33 March 9th, 2009, 02:34 AM

Nope, but I have been meaning to "update it very soon" for a long while. I will probably update it, but don't know when.

I will have related schoolwork (Finnish/Baltian/Scandinavian mythology project) this summer, though. I might be able to get extra credit for this mod.

VedalkenBear · #34 March 12th, 2009, 09:31 AM

Endo: I'm currently playing this mod with an angle for giving feedback.

Be forewarned. I tend to be pretty blunt.

First, the pros.

Magically speaking, this feels a _lot_ like Shinuyama with Nature magic, and not as good Earth magic. This is good, because there are all kinds of combat spells that the Spellsingers can throw that's pretty funny. The Acid ones stand out in particular.

Militarily, um, I'm not impressed. I haven't tried the Moose Brothers yet, as those are apparently being changed? The Hekka troop is okay, I guess, but not the kind of troop I like to mass. Note this is a statement of preference. The PD is, what, Militia? It's incredibly awful, worse than monkey PD. I wish I had known this before I bought any. I hope this is on the slate for improvement.

The Bear summon, though, is great. These things are like Kithaironic Lions... which are sacred. About the best 'strategy' I can come up with right now is to lay the magical smack-down on my opponents behind a wall of these bears.

Also, the starting fort is... a simple hillfort? I don't understand the balance consideration here. Why do they have such a bad starting fort? This is a rather severe penalty to income at the time in the game that it's hard to offset it with other abilities. Compounded with the fact that most of their mages are non-sacred, and there's a recipe for some really high upkeep here.

I'm off to test the Moose Brothers now.

Update: Moose Brothers are okay, but they'd be better if you kept the Moose. It's rather interesting that Bogarus's flag is used for them, as they feel very similar to Bogarus.

VedalkenBear · #35 March 12th, 2009, 10:14 AM

Hrm. Apparently, I'm not able to edit a message more than once. That's... a bit irritating.

Ah well. Just so you know, I checked MA Ermor's gold production at the start of the game with the same scales as I had for Kaleva. There was a 100g difference. That's the biggest difference possible (Ermor has a Great City), but still, that's quite a handicap Kaleva has.

llamabeast · #36 March 12th, 2009, 11:27 AM

There's a half-hour limit on editing unfortunately (except for the first post in each thread which can be edited forever).

VedalkenBear · #37 March 12th, 2009, 11:27 AM

The Bears, BTW, are an incredible unit. I may have lost one (of 16) in a castle siege, with them backed by 3 Spellsingers. I have no real bless (+1 MR this game), and most of the time they're not blessed anyway, but they just don't die. They wander through all kinds of clouds and shrug it off.

They probably should cost more. An Earth-4 Nature-4 Bless probably would make them invulnerable to everything but Astral death spells.

Edit: Thanks for the tip, Llama.

BTW, Endo, it may seem that I'm not very pleased with the mod. That would be very untrue. First, I'm playing it at all. Second, if the graphic were more unique, I don't think I would be able to tell it's a mod. It's just that since I'm trying to give feedback on enhancing the balance of the mod, a lot of what I say may come off as negative.

Endoperez · #38 March 12th, 2009, 01:11 PM

No problem, all interest makes me feel a little guilty about not having updated this. I think the guilt level is finally starting to overcome my natural lazyness.

I had forgotten the bears, and never really tested them. I thought of Kithaironic Lions, but I didn't intend the bears to become unkillable, just tough frontliners. I think I'll tone down their protection, because the mages can buff them any way.

I don't think I've given them any castles yet, and the PD is just the two first units from the unit roster IIRC.

VedalkenBear · #39 March 12th, 2009, 01:30 PM

Well, if you take away the bears, they don't have much left. Also, they have incredibly bad upkeep problems.

The PD is absolutely awful (Militia and more Militia, AFAICT). Castles have already been covered. (Well, so has the PD, but it's bad enough to be mentioned again.)

So far, with an Earth-4 Nature-6 bless, 4 bears with a commander in support destroys any Independent (on Strength 7). I think a 12 or 13 Prot would probably be fine. Any less and they die too quickly, I think. Where they are at... well, yeah.

VedalkenBear · #40 March 12th, 2009, 01:59 PM

Endo: For the PD, should they be the Hiisi units, or the first two non-Hiisi units (being the Bear Tribe warriors)?

I'll look into the starting castle being something better.

Edit: Endo, I just changed PD (which didn't show up in the .mod file I had) to 1x Bear Tribe Warrior + 1 Hiisi for < 20, and 1 (other) Bear Tribe Warrior + 1 Moose Brother for >= 20. Also, made the starting fort a Fortified City. I'll check to see what happens.