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

[Humakty]

Amhazair, I played with this nation big SP games, and, for the moment, they don't seem balanced for MP. It's true the AI almost never uses battle magic in a systematic way, and it is almost impossible to stop them without (tramplers are quite efficient, like always against small elite troops).

[Sombre]

Humakt: What about the nation isn't balanced? Can you go into a bit more detail? People have been telling me the nation is underpowered for the most part, so if you think they are overpowered then I'd like to hear your reasoning.

Their infantry are very good, but expensive. Their sacreds are ok, but not exactly great. Their fear causing cavalry is powerful, but is expensive and isn't heavily armoured.



Amhazair: Thankyou for your detailed feedback, it's much appreciated and exactly the sort of thing I'm after.

The speed of the hoplites is set to 7 across the board pretty much because despite having only light armour (that's why they have mapmove 2 not 1) when they're in battle they advance carefully and protect each other. It's supposed to represent that they're fighting in a phalanx-esque formation.

The PD seems pretty poor to me to. It hasn't changed a huge amount, but I did weaken it. It isn't supposed to be very good, just a way to get more bodies onto the field really.

About the Haimgrot, as I said in my earlier post, they have a douse bonus of one, so hunt at a level of B2. You still might be able to build solely misborn and use random B1 and B2 ones for hunting though, so maybe they need to be a touch cheaper.

I agree with making the Misborn 120 gold or so. Not a huge change but maybe they're a touch too good right now. Arga Dis is supposed to have relatively weak magic, but obviously be strong in blood and have a superior military.

Gilgans can have higher MR - I'll make it the same as an quivalent MA big mage/thug. It's not supposed to be a weakness. Being cap only I don't want to make them more expensive though and they are a major feature of the race. I might change my mind later.

And yes, I prefer to have a below average power mod than an above average one. People have the general impression that mod nations are hugely overpowered and they're happier when you boost rather than nerf stuff, so I prefer to try and shoot just under the bar and then slowly raise it according to feedback.

Glad you enjoyed them - as others will probably tell you, I keep updating and supporting my mods whenever feedback is available. I'm striving for good quality across the board here.

[Sombre]

New version is up.

Adds a couple new summons, tweaks some stuff. Arga Dis is very near completion now, as the 0.9 status suggests.

Please give it a go and let me know what you think!

(Attached is just a preview pic that is displayed in the first post, where you can find the mod)

[TheMenacer]

Two comments about the new version. The first being that the harpies don't cost anything, which is obviously a bug and all that. When they do cost something I wouldn't make them more than a 1:1 ratio in terms of cost to amount of units recieved, they're a cool unit and that curse ability is nice, but they're too fragile for anything other than focused strikes against an enemy's main army. I'd also consider lowering their path costs to BD rather than BBD because devoting the resources to forging a booster for the occasional BD misborn or a gilgan to summoning 7 fragile harpies seems like a bit of an over-investment. Second, the augurs are pretty much useless as far as I've seen. They are too expensive for a mage who's picks are way too random to be useful. I've actually gotten one with one magic before, and a unit that starts old, comes with an affliction, and costs 33 blood slaves is way, way too much of an investment to even have a chance of coming with one pick on it. If the cost was lowered, or their paths altered to have a better chance of offering something really different from what you get from the misborn I'd consider ever using them, but as it stands they don't really bring anything new to the table.

[Sombre]

The Harpy problem is just a silly error.

I entered #fatiguecost 7 for the spell instead of #fatiguecost 700. Easy to fix for you guys. I'll fix the upload later, bit busy now.

They're ok at killing random archers etc, but the real ability there is the curse. It can't be resisted by MR (so long as they actually hit with the attack). Can be useful against elite units, thugs etc. I might change them a bit though. I'm ok with putting their cost to 1B1D.

As for Augurs, I'm not very confident about their balance, but I don't believe they are useless. Firstly it's 33 blood slaves, not gems, so in terms of gem costs it would be something like 15 or so,.. it isn't like blood isn't going to be something you're doing with Arga Dis either; it's their main magic. It's true that you can get one with only a single point of magic, or even one with no magic, but it's quite rare. The average amount is 3-4. True these are in some pretty random paths and some of them are covered by the Misborn, but you get access to astral and nature, as well as a chance (thoug not a very good one) of getting better fire and death magic than offered by the misborn.

Compare them with "Summon Spectre" for a spectral mage, a spell which is still used by plenty of people. In terms of magical diversity the Augurs are better and they are slightly cheaper in terms of cost. The area where they fall down is that the Spectral Mage is almost thuggy in terms of stats, while the Augurs are physically very weak.

I'd love to hear more input on them before I go reducing their cost. I'll also test them more myself and see if I come to similar conclusions as you TheMenacer.

[Sombre]

UPDATE TO 1.0

Fixed price error for Harpy.
Reduced cost of Augurs.
Some other tweaks (primarily resource cost corrections. Now Arga is more of a sloth nation, befitting their lack of armour.)


I think Arga Dis is largely finished now, joining Ulm Reborn and Vaettiheim in that regard.

[Sombre]

Very quick update to 1.1

I messed up the mr on some units, so now I've sorted that out. I also added a bit of gold cost to the augurs, so you have to pay them upkeep. Not much though.

Go to first page to download. This isn't anything that will break ongoing games using Arga Dis.

[Carioz]

My first post to say I love this nation. A few ideas:
- Sparta had two kings, one warring, one staying home: another (immobile) hero -the sovereign king- would be nice.
- Hesiod in theogony writes about three Hekatoncheires being appointed by Zeus as guardians for Tartarus. Having a multi handed, horrid blood titan could be cool

[TheMenacer]

If we're saying ideas now, I've got one that I thought would be sort of cool, cerberuses (or however you pluralize that). Since Cerberus doesn't show up in any other capacity, it'd be pretty sweet and in my opinion super thematic to have three headed war dogs for this nation. They can work as either a low level blood summon if you just want straight up dogs, higher level if you want them to kick tons of *** or breathe fire or some crazy crap, or recruitables because hey, there's nothing magic about them, they're just some jacked up dogs that hung out near the gilgans for too long just like the mares.

War dogs are awesome even before they're terrifying and mutated, and Arga Dis feels like the sort of nation that'd use something like that, in my opinion. Also definately +1 to Hekatoncheires.

This has been my session of yelling "Ooh ooh do this" at someone else's project.

[Morkilus]

Dang, I missed this update. I've always been meaning to check this nation out again after my sorry attempt long ago. It really has a unique feel to it, and the graphics are superb.