Mod: Souls of Shiar, Shards of a dead world - a nation for dominions and dominions 3K

[Aezeal]

The Nation:

Brief: "Remnants of a destroyed world have landed in a province the undead souls of the dead, blessed by a god and cursed by another, want to take over the galaxy creating an undead leadership over all life."

Description: "The people of Shiar had a long culture of ancestor worship next to the worship of their benign pretender, they had researched ways of easy communication with the souls of the dead, leaving the bodies resting. This benign death magic was widely practiced on Shiar and supervised by the clergy of their pretender to avoid evil use of necromancy. The world of Shiar was recently destroyed by demon invaders and their terrible pretender god. In the moment of destruction the pretender god of the Shiar, not strong enough to battle the demon pretender, tried to save his people by blessing them with eternal life using all his powers including his lifeforce. The demon pretender warped his spell and now the souls of the inhabitants of Shiar live on, undead. The spells also affected the dying pretender and he too was changed, now undead, and less benevolent. Shards of Shiar have fallen in a distant province and are now the centre of a new nation and religion. The new Shiar nation does not want to extriminate all life but want leadership of selected suitable undead souls over the unbalanced and often unthinking forms of life in the galaxy. They use their still powerfull death magic abilities in their old, but also in new ways."

Summary: "Restless undead souls of inhabitants of Shiar are going to conquer the universe. An undead religious nation."

The God

name: "The Lord of Souls"
description : "The Shiar pretender used to be weak, but was willing to give everything including his own live for his followers. When he died giving his live with his greatest casting untill that moment, securing immortality for all Shiar souls he was still twarted by his demonic opponents spells. The backlash of those combined powerfull spells changed the pretender god of Shiar. He is now also an undead immortal and still wishes the best for the souls of his people. More powerfull now he intends to maximize the use of his immortality by helping his followers with magic and in battle. In his new religion souls unbound by mortal bodies are meant to be the ruling class above those confined by earthly bodies, with himself ruling all. "

- LA
- undead
- focus on dead magic and holy magic
- a few usefull holy spells (nation specific)
-- more powerfull demon killers
-- holy buffs
- all troops and commanders are souls of the dead, ethereal, blind, darkvision 100, cold res 100, siegebonus 1 (if you can move through walls you should have that), AN ghostly touch attacks of different calibers.
- no ranged weapons
- no protection
- immortal capital only troops (3 types, one sacred) and commanders (all priest/mages)
- high magic variety (all except blood) in non capitol mages (since those are souls of random mages) but low in power.
- FESD randoms on the capital only immortal mages (next to death and holy magic)

- added 3 heroes
-- The High Preacher
-- The Consort
-- The Master of the Hunt
- added a multi hero
-- Exarch

- new battlefield wide versions of the holy spells (air/holy and death/holy so they can cost gems, needed because they are very powerfull)

- some summons
-- Shiar dragon
-- Shiar hounds of the collossi
-- a remote convert souls spell

I consider the nation pretty fleshed out now with appropriate summons, heroes and spells. Their story feels good to me and though their units are limited in number I think it covers all flavor and theme I came up with. Unless I get good idea's adding units can't really be defended flavor wise.
SO for now the nation is ready...

EXCEPT for final balancing for which I need it play tested. So I'll call this version 0.9, going to 1.00 once it's been through some playtesting and balancing.

now v .91 some changes

[Aezeal]

I've created this nation primarily for dominions 3000 but since it uses no spaceforms it can be used perfectly for dominions vanilla.

I've just created the nation so more balancing might be needed.

I hope some people try the nation and I'd love to get feedback on balance for vanilla and for dom 3K.

A little hint: USE the new holy spells I made.

For balance suggestions: the idea is that all units stay ethereal and that all cap only units stay immortal. The attacks need to remain an.

If the nation needs to be stronger ( but I doubt it) things I've got in the back of my mind are:
- chill aura's
- BF wide versions of my new holy spells
- higher HP and damage

If the nation needs to be weaker:
- I'm primarily thinking about lowering HP or damage then

PS I'm pretty proud about the new spells I created, needed to look up a lot in the spell DB etc, finding the code for "works only on undead" etc, finding out how to use the different buffspells. So plz do take a good look at those 2-3 spells

[Darkwind]

Did you not include the flag graphic? I'm getting crashes because Dominions can't find the Shiar flag.

[rdonj]

Hmm, personally I think it might be better to have it in a different age. You already have LA ermor, having two nations of undead might be a bit much.

[Aezeal]

hmm I thought I disabled the flag.
As for age.. dom3 K is age 3.. and it's nice against armoured units... and you don't have to include both nations in the same game
I think the nation would do pretty well against ermor

[Aezeal]

ok new file uploaded, flag now included

[Aezeal]

you can expect:
- some summons
- probably some other new spells involving holy magic

Other idea's I had was using lifedrain 2nd effect on the attacks but I'll leave that for now unless I hear the nation is too weak.

[Aezeal]

- added 3 heroes
-- The High Preacher
-- The Consort
-- The Master of the Hunt
- added a multi hero
-- Exarch

- new battlefield wide versions of the holy spells (air/holy and death/holy so they can cost gems, needed because they are very powerfull)

- some summons
-- Shiar dragon
-- Shiar hounds of the collossi
-- a remote convert souls spell

I consider the nation pretty fleshed out now with appropriate summons, heroes and spells. Their story feels good to me and though their units are limited in number I think it covers all flavor and theme I came up with. Unless I get good idea's adding units can't really be defended flavor wise.
SO for now the nation is ready...

EXCEPT for final balancing for which I need it play tested. So I'll call this version 0.9, going to 1.00 once it's been through some playtesting and balancing.

[Darkwind]

'Convert Souls' requires holy gems.

What would a holy gem be, anyways? A tear of an angel?

A few thoughts from my current playthrough:
-Sneaky priests? Shiar has H3 sneaky priests, H2 sneaky priests, and H1 sneaky priests. Not to mention an H4 sneaky priest if you make an H3 your prophet. That is, by all accounts, a lot of sneaky priests.
-High Necromancers can get every path except Blood. That means that, with one unit(that has no extra downsides to anything), you have easy access to nearly every path in the game. They're like Spectres (if I remember, Spectres can get nearly every path too) that don't cost gems. And are sneaky.
-I'm getting ESD on the capital-only magi.
-The Shiar pretender encourages getting Dom9-10 for the Awe. With the added synergy of getting an unstoppable horde of immortal units who never have to fight in enemy dominion, a powerful also-immortal SC seems a bit much.

[Aezeal]

- is having sneaky priests that much of a problem?
- The mages do get all paths.. but not neccesarily any usefull combo's, only 150%.. are they overpowered? I'd rather not mess to much with the stats though.. I can probably balance him by increasing price.
- I'll look into the paths on the cap only mages (fixed it was 7269 instead of 7296)
- The pretender needs to be immortal, I guess I could give him less HP though. --> gone to 40 now. his start price goes to 125 and I'll make his path cost 50. and to make him even more expensive I'll start with dom 1 now.. that should give less points to play around if you want dom 10. He is supposed to be about as strong as the PoD though.
- balancing immortal troops isn't easy I agree (have said so myself in the vampire thread where someone wanted a completely immortal army).. I hoped that by making them cap only I could make a good start. Maybe I'll lower their hp a bit more. Or I could make them all sacred that would make them more powerfull per troop but severely limit the number you could get. But then one would probably only use the Collossi. I think this needs to be balanced by resources. It already gives a good choice between going for high res for cap troops or not (since the rest of the castles would not need anything higher than sloth 3) I think I'll give them a negative resources or something, it's hard for ghosts to manipulate resources etc.
- I've fixed the convert spell (I had path 0 5 and then path 0 8.. so it replaced the death magic instead of being a sec req. it's now 0 5, 1 8 (death prim, holy sec)


Ow and the shiar high priest isn't supposed to have that dark dragon sprite obviously just see it now.
Also the enslave quadraped and monster should have another attack but for some strange reason it's not showing.