Mod: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians

[Renojustin]

Forgot one:

Waking Dreamers. Oh my god. 2 gemsummons per turn, and the 3 most powerful magic paths. 21 base research... they are what powers this nation. If they were priced fairly, they'd be over 1000gp.

[Avarchillion]

Thank you for your healthy critic. :-)

1) The Elder cannot summon Big, Dumb, and Ugly. The blood slaves are used but no War Ghoul appears.

puh, did you download the newest version of the mod? i never had a problem with the war ghoul summoning. just tried it and it worked. could be a compatibillity issue. i do not think that this mod is compatible with any other mods.

2) Waking Dreamers are UBER POWERFUL for their cost and /gemsummon, not to mention their research value, even with 30 Shattered Soul.

i tried a lot of differend configurations with these commanders and i thought that their high unpredictabillity would make up for their powers. it normaly turns out like this: you have 10 waking dreamers and all should be researching BUT 3 of them destroy your temple (so you can not hire other commanders), 2 are muttering, 1 is attending a funeral and anotherone is happily pillaging your hometown.
maybe i could increase their shattered soul stat?

3) Maiandros is probably the most powerful being I have ever seen. I was lucky to get him and set him on the Koopa Kingdom early; he assassinated their Titan god several times while bringing their capitol to 100+ unrest. Then I used him as a raider, didn't even need any spells or items, or Immortality, he would frequently annihilate entire provinces of 150-250+ armies.

well, sry for that. i have tought about tweaking him, but i liked the idea of some kind of insane god, that is nearly uncontolable and is a menace as much to you as to anyone else. if you read the malkavian book you start seeing him as a kind of superpower in himself.

3) Mad Prophets are likewise overpowered with +4 Blood Vengeance. You can send them against most armies of enormous size and be confident they have a great chance of winning. Also, they cannot Preach, was that intended?

you are right there. this is something i was about to lower. i wanted them to be more like insane conspiray guys (there are real conspirays out there, but also a lot of insane guys) that preach some dribble and never work together. so i wanted them to be more of a heretic then a preacher.

4) I find myself not recruiting anything but Waking Dreamers, Freaks, and Mad Prophets... they are so very powerful that nothing else much matters. Freaks though are much better balanced: their lack of head armor is a real equalizer.

again, i will try to tweak them a bit so it´s more balanced.

The sprites are very well done, the descriptions are SUPERB (there are some few typos in the nation description and elsewhere), just the prices for immortal vampire commanders (which are thematically recruitable everywhere) are quite a bit low and two or three are extremely overpowerful in every scenario.

thank you again! the commanders and heroes description come more or less from the malkavian book. anything else i made up on my own. :-) It was rather fun doing it. :-)
i am good at that kind of thing.

I did not find the crossbowmen at 15g/10r and 1 attack per round to be THAT gamebreaking. In fact, they were far more imminently killable than the vampires and I found to be eventually rather a waste of your extremely limited gold.

you don´t recruit them for a real battle. you recruit them for guard duty. they are very good at patrolling your vampire ravaged provinces and are rather cheap. ;-)

also the riders have weapons, i checked that. they have a "riders lance".

so, thanks for the critisism and try version 1.2.3.

i hope i will have a new and more balanced version uploaded soon.

by the way, i am german, so please show me where my spelling errors are.

avarchillion

[Avarchillion]

Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen.

well, the assassins have a nice little poison crossbow that shoots bolts that erupt into a poison cloud on impact. this cloud hits up to two enemies and is rather tough to deal with. i thought that they were somewhat imbalanced.

The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold.

hm, good point. i do not want to make them stronger, so should i lower their price?

I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger.

well, as a futurama fan i just could not resist the finglonger. :-D

Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP.

well, sry that´s because i always hate it if my provinces get overrun because i am fighting somewhere else. i just looooove good defence. that´s why i balanced the ghoul guardians to do exactly that: guard.
i tried a lot of differend armor and weapon classes with this unit but settled on this configuration. i could tweak the weapon though.

The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities.

well again, he should be more of a legend than a real unit. if you keep him in your lands he will destroy those too.

I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame.

thats the way i wanted the balance to be. on one hand the vampires are very powerful, on the other hand they truly are a twoedged sword. i once had rasputin at 70 shattered soul wich was ab bit too much. ;-)

One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3.

ok thanks, i will try that.

The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging.

that is exactly why i balanced them as i did. ;-)

The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here.

yes "the awakend" is the name out of the malkavian book. he has a rather modest shattered soul and is a great commander for all kinds of troops. the crazed monster is a very good assassin even though he is unpredictable.
the crazed monster has a incredibly powerful shapechange abillity that transforms him into a true killing machine, but again he is unpredictable.

Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those?

the swallow whole abillity was more for show. a thing like the vohzd should be able to swallow a small unit, shouldn´t he? ;-)

Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere.

well, i can tweak them a bit. the malkavians might deal with the cappadocians but still they aren´t them and might have to study a bit to summon the wraiths.

Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous.

the lupins are a problem no doubt. its just difficult to intergrate them without them loosing some of their advantage over the average vampire. in the vampire the masquerade world a lupin can take out a lot of vampires on his own. i once put their regeneration abillity down and they stared to die like flies.

Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves.

yes i know, i still have no real clue how to remedy that without making them completly useless.

This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting.

absolutly and i thank you for your review of my mod.

i will work on the balancing. ;-)

Perhaps at 9 Blood you could Ritual Summon one of three or four Antediluvians, a 3rd Generation vampire, the direct descendant of Malkav. Maybe they could eat other vampires, even commanders as fuel?

i do not dare to put real antediluvians into the mod. the waking of even one of them would mean the start of gehenna if you remember. ;-)

and yes i have been thinking about putting some other vampire clans into mods, but i haven´t found the time.

avarchillion

[Avarchillion]

Waking Dreamers. Oh my god. 2 gemsummons per turn, and the 3 most powerful magic paths. 21 base research... they are what powers this nation. If they were priced fairly, they'd be over 1000gp.

yea i have to admit, they are way too strong. the thing is, i put the gemsum in for testing and have already tweaked that. try version 1.2.3 there they ware more expansive 400 g and have "only" 18 research. ;-)

again, try the 1.2.3 version, some of the balancing issues are resolved, i hope.

though thanks to your well written review i will go through my mod again and try to rebalance things.

also again: i am german, live in germany and english is not my native language, so please send me all the spelling errors you find.

avarchillion

[Avarchillion]

here the newest version of my mod. version 1.3.1 makes these changes from 1.3:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

-- deformed plate mail
now 21 port

-- Ghoulsword
now len 3
now dmg 15

-- Faeriedust
now dmg 0
now #magic
now #nostr

-- Shivering Touch
now #magic not armornegating

----Familiar Crossbowman
now ap 13

----Ghoul Guardian
no reinvigoration any more

----Ghoul Assasin
no reinvigoration any more

----Fledgeling Malkavian
now 60 g price

----Neonate Malkavian
now berserk 2

----Wereform
now berserk 4
now coldres -25
now darkpower 2

----Tzimisce Broodmother
now berserk 2
now darkpower 1

----Tzimisce Vozhd
now berserk 1
now darkpower 1

----Tzimisce Szlachta
now berserk 1
now darkpower 1

----Lupin
now regeneration 20
now not ambidextrous
now berserk 2
now darkpower 1

----Faerie Sprite
now no illusion

----Zombu
now not ambidextrous

----Wraith
now not ambidextrous
now not immortal

----War Ghoul
now berserk 3

---- Crazed Monster
now not ambidextrous

----The Mad Prophet
now hp 17
now not ambidextrous
now darkpower 2
now bloodvengeance 1

----Mesmeric Manipulator
now darkpower 4
now berserk 1

----The Freak
now def 15
now bloodmagic 2
now darkpower 4
now berserk 4

----Waking Dreamer
now hp 15
now astralmagic 4
now nobadevents 10
now darkpower 1
now no illusion
now not ambidextrous

----The Awakend
now shatteredsoul 25

---- Ghoul Sheriff
now okundeadleader

---- Malkavian Elder
now darkpower 4
now berserk 4

---- Big Bad Lupin
now hp 40
now prec 10
now regeneration 30
now noleader
now darkpower 3
now fireres -100
no longer summon lupin (even though i might regret this) ;-)

---- Being from Faerieland
now astralmagic 4

-- The Dionysian
now darkpower 5
now awe 5
now astralmagic 6
now bloodmagic 4
now deathmagic 4

-- Rasputin
no longer "touch of madness"
now ambidextrous 2
now deathmagic 5
now berserk 4

-- Vasantasena
now hp 25
now prot 3
now bloodmagic 5
now astralmagic 2
now priestmagic 1
now berserk 3
now darkpower 5

---- Crazy Jane
now att 10
now no illusion

---- Malk Content
now no illusion
now darkpower 4
now berserk 2
now ambidextrous 2
now no bloodvengeance

----The Elder
now regeneration 25
now berserk 2
now darkpower 2
now fireres -75
now shockers -75

----The Ninja-Wannabe
now berserk 2
now darkpower 2

changed some spell descriptions
and the number of bloodslaves required for some of the commander summoning spells

also changed some spelling errors
---------------------------------------------------------------------

i hope that this one is a bit more balanced. ;-)

avarchillion

[Soyweiser]

Wow, this mod is indeed a bit overpowered. 6 gems + 10 slaves and 10% blood magic bonus. And that is ignoring all the rest. Loads of AN or AP attacks, a crossbow shooter that shoots once each turn etc.

[Avarchillion]

Wow, this mod is indeed a bit overpowered. 6 gems + 10 slaves and 10% blood magic bonus. And that is ignoring all the rest. Loads of AN or AP attacks, a crossbow shooter that shoots once each turn etc.

well, the balancing is the shattered soul stat. your vampires are always ready to turn on you, destroy your temple, pillage your province and all that.

if you still find this mod too easy to play, try playing against abysia or a nation with strong priests. all the vampires are undead and have a -100% resistance to fire (so they easily go up in flames).

avarchillion

[Avarchillion]

ok, another update:

-------------------------
----Familiar Lancerider
has become cheaper :-)

----Familiar Swordsman
has also become cheaper

----Malkavian Thrall
also a bit cheaper
now mindless
now att 8
now def 7
now str 8

----The Mad Prophet
now def 5
now fireres -100
now shockers -100
now no fear
now no darkpower
now regeneration 20
now awe 1

----Mesmeric Manipulator
now regeneration 20
now awe 2
now holy again
now hp 15

----The Freak
now def 13
now no incurunrest
now regeneration 20

----Waking Dreamer
now no death gems

---- Big Bad Lupin
can summon lupins again
now regeneration 25
now fear 3

----The Awakened
now regeneration 20
changed the name….
now priestskill 1
now def 15

---- Malkavian Elder
now regeneration 25
now awe 1

---- Being from Faerieland
now awe 2

-- The Dionysian
now awe 3
now hp 20

-- Rasputin
now fear 5

-- Vasantasena
now fear 1
now awe 1
now fireres -100
now shockers -100
now not ambidextrous

---- Crazy Jane
now shockers -100

---- Malk Content
now stealthy 20

-- Trick Lupines
now 20 gems

-- Trick Lupin Mama
now 60 gems

-- Something out of Faerieland
now 30 gems

-------------------------------------------------

avarchillion

[Soyweiser]

One small thing, I personally dislike summons that have a hidden gold cost.

Apart from that, I think you can win with only 2 provinces, one cap, and the other to dump all the unrest creating temple burning commanders in another province. Fort that one up. Get gold from events, and gather all the gems and slaves produced by the commanders .

The freaks expand perfectly fine. Immortal, and berserk. Ideal to destroy anything that comes into your lands.

[Soyweiser]

Bug: the wereform of the lunatic has only 100 years of max age. And isn't immortal, and is suddenly mindless. Might want to exualize all the different abilities it has.