Mod: Nation - Tomb Kings - v1.03 released (March 2009)!

[llamabeast]

Comments welcome, of course.

[rdonj]

Well, most of those changes don't bother me really. For example, the change to the buried. They're still only 8 gold more than your recruitable elites. The high priest change and the ushabti sound painful though. That was a pretty heavy nerf to the ushabti, they're not nearly as good now. I'm not sure it's a good idea to use them without a bless in this iteration. They already are large, expensive magic beings who if I recall can only regenerate health in a lab. It seems it's getting to be hard to use them efficiently. I don't suppose they are immune to petrification?

The high priest change will slow yor expansion down a bit and make an already expensive nation even more expensive. I'm not sure how much this particular change will hurt you. Maybe you'll actually want to create some of the lower level priests every once in a while.

[llamabeast]

Right! Ridiculously I'm just about to upload yet another little update, v1.02. This is planned to be the last change again for a while, so Jazzepi and anyone else using them in MP can settle to these final settings. Apologies for the multiple versions. Balancing can be tricky, and it makes your brain go funny.

Changes:
- Ushabti regained 20 natural prot and 16 MR. Their Ritual Blade also gained a couple of points to attack. However, they still cost 14 gems and still only have one attack. After I compared them to the crusher I realised that just being very tough was not a major feature, and there had to be some good reason to summon them rather than a crusher. They're meant to be a national perk after all.
- Ushabti Avatars gained *much* more interesting paths. When you summon one now you'll have no idea what you're going to get, but you can be fairly certain it'll be useful. Also they're not restricted to the national paths - the old gods they served had all manner of powers - so they can be used for diversification at a (very expensive) pinch. They're also much less likely to have weak astral, so they can't be trivially nailed by Magic Duel. They're not very good at water though. The river gods were among the first to be destroyed.
- Ushabti avatars had broken morale, fixed.
- Ushabti are now poor amphibians.
- Ushabti and Anubites gained #stonebeing, so needn't fear petrification.
- The Asp Bow had no resource cost, fixed.

Comments welcome as always.

[llamabeast]

Never let it be said that I'm not easily swayed by comments rdonj. The Ushabti should be worthwhile again now. They are super nasty against the AI, but I guess a player should still be able to bring them down fairly easily. I hope so anyway. Well, they are much less tough than Crushers, and I've never heard anyone say that they're overpowered.

I think I'm pleased with the gold cost increases though. It should be an expensive nation I think. And if you end up sometimes recruiting the cheaper priests, that's very good news for variety!

[Jazzepi]

I hope you're updating the mod on llamaserver each time you make these changes

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

Bah! The priests and mages still have 3 resources instead of 1

Jazzepi

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Never let it be said that I'm not easily swayed by comments rdonj. The Ushabti should be worthwhile again now. They are super nasty against the AI, but I guess a player should still be able to bring them down fairly easily. I hope so anyway. Well, they are much less tough than Crushers, and I've never heard anyone say that they're overpowered.

I think I'm pleased with the gold cost increases though. It should be an expensive nation I think. And if you end up sometimes recruiting the cheaper priests, that's very good news for variety!

You have eased my panicked state of mind now as to the use of ushabti. I'm going to download the new, new, new! version and see about playing around with ushabti and ushabti avatars a bit if I get the chance. I especially enjoy the #stonebeing tag being placed on them, as it makes much sense. I still don't know how pleased I am with the gold changes, but I do understand why they're there. I suppose it's also very warhammery of them, with the small, commander-heavy armies the game tends to sprout.

[llamabeast]

Yep, updated on the LlamaServer.

The resource cost is because of the difficulty of awakening them. See the flavour text for the ordinary spearmen - expensive incenses and balms are required, explaining both the gold and resource cost. Because few of the troops have much armour, I found that without this it was just too easy to suddenly mass armies, which didn't fit with my picture of the nation at all (the priests tirelessly working to reawaken the ancient armies over many months).

I hope the gold cost won't cause commander-heavy armies! The intention was to generally slightly nerf the nation without discouraging the recruitment of the national troops. I'm always wary of creating a super-nation (it's easy to do without realising), and Nehekhara has a number of national strengths. I think it has a number of weaknesses too though, so I'm content with the balance now, although if people think it's strong or weak I'd be glad to hear (I won't change it in the short term though, as stated, to provide some stability).

[rdonj]

Well, not commander-heavy for dominions really. But with the high upkeep you have to pay on most of your commanders, it will limit how many units you can buy, leading to smaller armies as people will almost always choose mages over armies when their cash is running low. They'll be more or less like any other dominions nation in that regard, just faster than most with the heavy reliance on tomb kings.

[llamabeast]

Well, most of the commanders are sacred, so the upkeep shouldn't be too bad. The change was an extra 1 gold/turn for the High Priest. So I think they'll be okay.