Mod: Arga Dis, Blood and Bronze - NEW VERSION 1.4

[Sombre]

Heheh, the banners for all my mods suck. I spend roughly 2-5 minutes doing each of them.

[BandarLover]

WE ARE SPAR- uh, I mean ARGA DIS!!!

I know this is still a rough beta version, so I won't be overly critical. Past experience has shown me that you will fix this up quite nicely, like all your other mods. That being said, this nation is still a blast to play.

Love the graphics! Super sweet they are! At first I thought the sworn brothers may have been broken, but the first slain brother I saw in battle put that to rest. I've not played deeply into the game I'm trying with them, so I've not tried all the units. I find myself sticking with hoplites and Sworn for my armies. The only nit-pick I can think of is perhaps different graphics for heroes. Like I said, I'm sure you will tidy this mod up given time, it's just that my Gilgan hero looked like any other Gilgan unit to me.

Great start Sombre! Looking forward to your efforts finishing this mod. It will be awesome I'm sure.

[Sombre]

That is a regular Gilgan. Since they're pretty expensive / powerful I thought it would make sense for the nation to get them as multiheroes, at least until I add uniques, maybe summons.

It would be helpful if you could give me some specific critical feedback if you agree the mod's a bit rough. I'll definitely change things, but the more feedback I get, the more the mod improves. See Avernum or Ulm Reborn as examples.

[Foodstamp]

My first game with Arga Dis was a disaster. I created my pretender without looking over the units and went with a fire/water bless. That being said, I really liked the Achillians on the map I played. I did not find the Gilgans with maces that overpowered at all. With fire/water bless, they had difficulty taking some provinces solo.

It is too early for me to form an opinion on this mod as far as balance goes because of my poor pretender design, but I found a few typos and made note of them:

are are in orphan description

taste in sworn companion (I believe this is supposed to be task). A few other units seemed to share this description, so they have taste instead of task as well.

[Juzza]

I'd like to suggest one more thing, the sworn brothers, their very cool and all, but when they die and become slain brothers they usaly end up with only 4 hp and not enraged, I'd suggest a slight hike in hp, or simply give the slain brothers the berserker attributes, because they usely will not even get a chance o become enraged in most cases I've seen.

[Sombre]

Taste and task - strange. I must have been hungry when I wrote that. A lot of the typo goodness comes from writing this late at night.

I think I might hike the hp of the sworn slain a bit. It's actually pretty hard to make them go berserk when they're 'killed', from a modding perspective. I wish there was some way to make units start off berserk. I don't want to berserk the asic sworn brother, because they aren't berserker units, they just sometimes (rarely) lose it.

Arga Dis is getting a sacred unit soon enough. It won't be that good though - just a sacred version of the regular hoplite basically. So a bless strat is never going to be a must have for them.

Interesting that fire/water is so good that people take it without even checking the national units ;]

[Foodstamp]

haha, I should have looked them over first. The prospect of sacred hoplites chainsawing through the enemies was just too good to pass up for my first game

[llamabeast]

Wow Sombre, this is really exceptional. The graphics in this mod are by far the best I've seen, they really are brilliant. Really thematic too, there's a really strong feeling of 'blood and bronze'. Good stuff.

So, I haven't managed to play much with these so far (so much to look at, plus the llamaserver to work on). But I'll give you my thoughts so far.

You've definitely succeeded in giving really elite infantry, and they feel really pleasing to use. All the units have a unique role as well, so it feels interesting to play even though almost all the units are infantry.

I notice you've given the Hoplite Shield a Parry value of 8. This seems a bit high really - the shields the Arcoscephalian hoplites have are Parry 4, and even Ermor's huge tower shields only have parry 7. The effect is to make the Argan hoplites/Sworn etc almost completely immune to arrows. So although they actually have quite low protection, effectively it's really high. This actually feels really nice - no-one can kill my elite infantry! - but also seems a bit odd.

I think the orphans might be a little overpriced. They're vicious, but they die very easily. Feels like I'd be safer with a Sworn than two orphans. I might be wrong though, I haven't playtested enough. Maybe they're good to add some offensive shock to a force. I like the berserk +4.

The Red Achillans seem rock hard. My feeling is that they're the best troops you can get at the start of the game, and if you're playing against anyone without astral/death magic (so the MR doesn't count). Perhaps they should have some other curse/side effect as a result of their dunking? Maybe their near immortality results in cowardice in the face of true danger (lower morale), or a side effect of the blood magic is short lives and failing health (HP 8, and lower maxage while you're at it)? Or perhaps they're not so good and I'm off the mark. I just feel like it'd be good if the Sworn Brothers were the most solid choice most of the time, with other units being more specialised - as it is, I think I'd rather buy Achillans. Also, should it be 'Achilleans'? I don't know, just thinking aloud.

The Sworn Companions are nice. I like having a bit of elite cavalry. Could they really carry Parry 8 shields on a horse though? Tower shields aren't allowed on cavalry. Also, just out of interest on the flavour text - where do the Mares of Dis come from? Do the Gilgans summon them from Dis? (Am I right in thinking Dis is the afterlife?).

I think that's it for now - I have some thoughts on the commanders too, but don't want to bombard you!

[Sombre]

Good points.

When I decided on the hoplite shield parry value I factored in that it was being used by very, very well trained units who are experts at using their shields to survive arrow bombardment. I'll drop the parry to 7 I think, but I intended it to be that much better than the vanilla hoplites, who carry very, very small weedy shields (as far as I know, very unlike those of actual hoplites). The parry value reflects the guys carrying it as well as the actual size of the shield.

The orphans are supposed to be there to use if you don't have many resources, but right now I guess it might be a bit hard to justify using them. I could make them either tougher or cheaper.

Red Achilleans (you're right it reads better) are supposed to be very, very good,... but another drawback could specialise them even further. I might just give them high gluttony, since they are the guards of the Gilgans, making them a bad choice if you're going through low supply areas or want a huge army. I could also tone down the prot a touch.

As for the Companions - you're right about the shield. I left them with it because of the graphic. I'll reduce it to a normal shield, maybe redo the graphic. Dis is the afterlife, but the Mares of Dis aren't really from there. They're just wild horses tainted by proximity to the Gilgans over hundreds of years which have been collected into the stables.

The more thoughts the better, so go ahead. I want to next version to sort as many issues out as possible, since it might be introducing some more via a sacred hoplite unit.

[Sombre]

New version is up, provided attachments are actually working.

Enjoy.