Warhammer Greenskin hype/brainstorming thread....

[BandarLover]

Taking a page from Burnsaber, Sombre and Honeybadger, I thought I would start a hype thread for me and Fantomen's latest attempt at making a warhammer greenskins mod. I can't promise regular updates just yet, but I anticipate having more free time in the coming months so who knows what may happen.

My ideas thus far:

Unit recruitment will be 4 tiered: Gobbos with spear/shield combo and archer variety tier 1; Regular orcs with 1 hand choppas or bashas/shield and Arrer (archer) boys 2nd tier; mounted units, gobbo wolf riders (most likely armed with spears and short bows) and Orc Boar Boys and Boar Chariot 3rd tier; Black Orcs with 2 hand choppas or bashas as elite 4th tier units.

I want some of the rest of the greenskin units to be summonable I think: Savage orcs, squigs with squig herders, squig riders, and 3 troll types (reg trolls, stone trolls and river trolls).

That is the bare bones structure so far. Now comes the brain storming and I would like community feedback please.

I wish we could mod whole new schools of magic since Waugh! magic is so unique but since that can't be done what would be the optimum schools of magic for Greenskins? Death? Blood? Do we really need more nations with those as main picks? What other schools might be thematic?

Also, Greenskins play significantly different from the other Warhammer nations. There is always the possibility that greenskin units will squabble with each other, leading to a stalled turn of combat. As far as I know, this is also not possible to mod so perhaps lower morale for reg troops could signify this? It would make them quite difficult to play I think.
Players can also choose to embed a night goblin fanatic within a regular goblin unit, essentially turning that unit into a landmine since the opposing player doesn't know where these nasty lil' buggers are. Is it possible to mod a unit coming out of an already existing unit on a battlefield? as a secondshape command perhaps?

Thoughts, ideas and suggestions are very, VERY welcome. I want to know what you all think should go into this mod and I'll do my best to make it happen. I will be using this thread to post any new info and hopefully Fantomen can post some previews of his very pretty sprites that he has made in here as well.

Thank you all for your time in advance.

[Lurker_at_Threshold]

Though it pains me to say it, I think astral, weak fire, extremely weak death, and nature would probably be the best fits for waagh magic. I mean what better approximation of a brain busta can you get than a nether bolt. Berzerkers and a touch of madness can be a substitute for Waagh!. Starfires for the gazes, and mass luck for Gork'll Fix Us. Likewise anti-magic could fill the role of Mork Save Us!

A way to work around poor morale could be through a creation of a boss unit. A boss would be an expensive recruit everywhere elite with a weak standard ability, rather than serving as your generic commander. (Big Bosses and Warbosses should fill those rolls)

Goblin fanatics could be one battle only purchases with high berserk, built in fatigue, and an aoe two handed weapon.

[Burnsaber]

I had an idea about WAAGH! magic a while back. How about making all your shamans #onebattlespell "Power of the Spheres" but give them low picks otherwise. This would make them:

1)poor researchers (thematic!)
2)poor forgers/ritual casters (thematic!)
3)strong battlemages (thematic!)

As for paths, I think WAAGH could be major nature combined with fire, astral and very minor death.

[BandarLover]

Those sound like good picks for magic then. Thank you for the idea of the #onebattlespell as well. I was thinking the boss type commanders should have some sort of standard effect. Black orcs as well, since they are able to stop squabbling in Warhammer games.

Also, question for Burn and Sombre, how do you guys generally translate Warhammer stats into Dominions stats?

[lch]

Ooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk!

[HoneyBadger]

You can do a Deathshape for the night goblin, BandarLover, and also make it a Shapechange option, so that the night goblin doesn't *have* to be hidden in the weaker unit (some tactics might work better with the night goblin having an immediate presence on the battlefield.).

The concept could be quite an exciting one, if developed fully enough. Surprises on the battlefield were common enough, historically. Multiple units with various applications might be spawned from a single, lookalike, "seed" unit, via Deathform. (One might possibly even be able to juice an entire Nation's basic theme from the concept...). It would be fun to witness how the game's AI handles it, and how players might plan for such, through the direction of that AI.

For the squabbling: Berserk might have some application there. Isn't there a form of Berserk in the game that, when triggered, causes units to lash out at the closest enemy, including their own side? There are Neutral units, too.

Also, possibly very low Morale in general, with the addition of lots of cheap, low Banner units, so that the accidental/incidental elimination of those Banners could cause the Greenskin army to cave in upon itself.

[Sombre]

Hmm. I've got a lot of this nation mapped out (into two nations in fact). No code or graphics, just thought about how I'd do it if I ever did.

Okin has done several of the graphics and presumably chunks of code too, if you want to use any of that it might be a good idea to contact him.

Regarding animosity: Ignore it. I don't think it should equate to a + or - to morale, because animosity doesn't map well to how morale works in dom3. Basically animosity means your guys will sit around doing nothing every now and then. If you wanted to represent that, I'd say give them lower AP - personally I wouldn't represent it at all.

Regarding fanatics: I found a pretty simply solution that worked well when I tested it. You have night goblins in single units with 4 guys in the graphic (as with gnoblars in ogre kingdoms). Ordinarily they just shapechange down, down, until they reach 1 gob, then they vanish. With the fanatic embedded variant (which you choose to build) - the last gob (so the fourth form) is a fanatic with a powerful aoe 3 attack, who is mindless. He'll blow himself and his friends up now and then, but mostly hit the enemy. He'll only appear and fight pretty damn randomly, since getting to 1 gob without the unit routing or him getting killed instantly isn't that common.

Greenskins have a huge variety of units, they truly do. That's why I proposed splitting them into two groups. One more badlandsy with the black orcs, night goblins from the mountains etc. One more feral with savage orcs, forest goblins etc. That way you can do stuff like assign river trolls to the feral ones, stone trolls to the mountains/badlands ones. You get enough space to do justice to the huge roster of units and avoid being overwhelmed trying to do it all in one mod.

Regarding magic: I thought roughly the same paths as witch doctors and machakan style shamans made sense personally. I wouldn't go with astral, even if the spells do map to some stuff in the army books, because you will presumably make new spells for those anyway. I figured lots of randoms for the NFD with generally somewhat poor research and weak magic overall. They certainly aren't known as a magical powerhouse. I would agree with burn's suggestion about making them always stronger in combat. I'd also give them all reinvig as standard.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by BandarLover

Also, question for Burn and Sombre, how do you guys generally translate Warhammer stats into Dominions stats?

Well, it's quite relative as there really isn't any formula for it. In my opinion, it's best to use the WH stats just as guidelines. You also could use the excisting WH mods as guidelines. Orcs would likely be a bit stronger than dwarfs (str>11), but not as strong as Ogres(str<14), for example.

[Sombre]

Regular orcs should be max str of 12. It's hard to justify a strength 3 unit in warhammer being above that in dominions, in my opinion. As size becomes a factor, as it does with ogres, I'd say you can do a +1 per level or size or so, on top of what you reckon based on the actual strength stat. So ogres got 14/15.

But essentially you want to go with what works, rather than stick with hard and fast rules. It should match up sensibly with comparable dom3 units if possible, but more important is to match up with existing warhammer mod units.

I believe stats for an ordinary orc should be something along the lines of:

prot: 5
str: 11
att: 10
def: 9
hp: 14
mor: 10
ap: 10/12
mr: 9
gcost: 9

The 'choppa' could either be a regular falchion, which is high damage without stat bonus, or it could be something like dmg: 8 att: 0 def: -1

[BandarLover]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

You can do a Deathshape for the night goblin, BandarLover, and also make it a Shapechange option, so that the night goblin doesn't *have* to be hidden in the weaker unit (some tactics might work better with the night goblin having an immediate presence on the battlefield.)

Originally Posted by Sombre

Regarding fanatics: I found a pretty simply solution that worked well when I tested it. You have night goblins in single units with 4 guys in the graphic (as with gnoblars in ogre kingdoms). Ordinarily they just shapechange down, down, until they reach 1 gob, then they vanish. With the fanatic embedded variant (which you choose to build) - the last gob (so the fourth form) is a fanatic with a powerful aoe 3 attack, who is mindless. He'll blow himself and his friends up now and then, but mostly hit the enemy. He'll only appear and fight pretty damn randomly, since getting to 1 gob without the unit routing or him getting killed instantly isn't that common.

I had a feeling this would be the way to go, thanks you 2 for suggesting it. I suggested to Fantomen using the Ogre kingdom gnoblars as a model for the goblins. That way, they kind of encompass the snotlings too, which brings me to...

Originally Posted by Sombre

Greenskins have a huge variety of units, they truly do. That's why I proposed splitting them into two groups. One more badlandsy with the black orcs, night goblins from the mountains etc. One more feral with savage orcs, forest goblins etc. That way you can do stuff like assign river trolls to the feral ones, stone trolls to the mountains/badlands ones. You get enough space to do justice to the huge roster of units and avoid being overwhelmed trying to do it all in one mod.

I'm kinda sorta, judiciously trimming some of the greenskin roster. There will be night goblins for sure! But possibly just the 'special' night goblin units, i.e. fanatics and maybe shaman multi hero types(?), just no spear/shield or archer varieties of them. Same with the wood gobbos, I was thinking of just having the spider riders representing them, possibly as a spell summons. The savage orcs will be summonable as well, methinks. I feel this will help keep the flavor of the greenskin armies without cluttering the recruitment screen with essentially identical units but with different eye candy.

Thanks for the replies so far!! Except for this guy....

Originally Posted by lch

Ooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk!

lol j/k Ich....troller.