Mod: Urdheim, The Infinite Horde

[Saulot]

Well, that definitely takes precedent. I'd love to hear what you think if/when you do try it again.

As for everyone else who has given feedback, thank you.

[Edratman2]

I think the mod is wonderful. I took the liberty of moving them to MA (because that's my preferred era) and always set them as an opponent, mainly because I don't like to play blood.

The AI plays them great. They are always one of the top 2 or 3 strongest foes (including LA Ermor) which I also moved to MA. That probably means that they are over powered, but I don't care. The AI could use a dozen more nations like them.

At impossible/aggressive settings the Kobalds always give me a run for my money. What more could you ask?

And the sprites are outstanding. Much better than anything I have ever done. I have to admit that I also changed the colors of a few to use for my modded monsters because they are so good.

[Saulot]

I'm glad you like the mod.

I'm a bit confused about the blood, as Urdheim has no blood.
Fire, Earth, Death are the paths.

Urdheim was originally made to give me a challenging opponent to play in SP, but I did eventually work hard to try to achieve vanilla balance (so people could also enjoy playing Urdheim against other AI... or even another player *gasp*).

I'm sad to hear that it's still not properly balanced. What are the settings you play on, and is anything else modded?
By settings I mean, # of provinces on the map, # of nations on such a map, gold/resource/supply settings, magic sites, research setting.

Thanks, I spent a lot of time on the sprites.

I suspect that while not any individual unit is overpowered, just the nation as a whole due to the very large variety of units, which are set up synergistically, so the AI who purchases a few of everything (or in the case of Impos. AI a lot of everything, as it doesn't deal with a gold bottleneck), gets an effective army it can use like it uses all armies (as a big club).

I'll be revisiting this issue of balance at some point. I'm strongly opposed to just hitting everything with a nerf stick, so more balance commentary from the community would help. Settings you play on would be a key piece of info.

[Edratman2]

My mistake about the blood. I only played them once and am working on my own mod (to be Builders or Engineers if I am ever figure out how to balance them. If not, I am happy playing a strong nation).

I am playing a heavily modded game. The map I am using is one of the game maps, "Glory". It has approx 250 provinces.
It is a MA game with my mod nation (under development), mod nations Urdheim, Skaven, Desdares, Avernium along with moved era nations LA Ermor, Bogarius (LA), EA Helheim and 10 to 15 standard MA random foes (always the 3 water nations selected).

All AI's are set on impossible-aggressive. Gold and resources vary between 150 and 300. (Urd success seems faily immune to variation, most everyone else responds well to higher gold/resources.) Magic sites are set at 100. Research is normal. Indy's at 9.

I see a lot of the creatures with sprites scion2 and some of the sprite scion1 (very nice sprites, by the way. I've recolored scion2 for myself. Hope you don't mind.). I suspect this is the primary source of the strength, but do not really know. They are vulnerable to an attack with a strong bless, but what isn't?

I really like that single kobald (the miner??)that keeps popping up all over the place. I've lost provinces to the little bugger when I forgot to PD them.

The castles may be a bit expensive. Kobalds do not seem to have as high a castle ratio/province as the water nations or some of the other AI's. Next game that I start I'll probably do something about that. The thread on the main page about castles has gotten me thinking about them and I'm planning to change all the mod nations to Wizards tower in all locations as an experiment to see how the AI deals with it.

I do not know if they are not balanced. All I can say is that the AI really plays them well.

[Kristoffer O]

Hi, I tried it a bit the other day.

THe fire breathing guys are quite devastating. At least vs the AI. I'm not sure, but I would probably pay the double and not feel ripped of. Compare them with salamanders. They have approximately the same dmg, but also range. Also more ammo and can hide behind troops and still attack. A bit vulnerable to missiles, but that is possible to alleviate.

Poisoned missiles are currently a bit bugged, and poisons regardless of dmg, which makes the darts quite good. But with 1 ammo it is no big deal.

I liked the traps

Commanders that summons troops for free are very powerful. If an ash wyvern is worth about 50 gold, each summoner has a break even point of 6 turns. I didn't bother to recruit other commanders, unless I was hard pressed to get a fire mage or wanted to try a summon.

Kobold summons are very cheap. 30 for 5 gems is even cheaper than longdead and other banishable chaff.

The medium inf are quite elite (and cost as such). Their skill levels are comparable with Wardens and other elite units. Might be intentional, but I would suggest renaming them so it is obvious that they are the elites of the nation.

The light inf is also well drilled by human standards. But you might have intended for the kobolds to have 11 as base skill level, being a warlike people.

The miners seems quite cheap and easy to recruit. For a few bucks and one month of recruiting you have a force able to take down most walls. I don't remember what similar units do cost in the vanilla game.

Didn't play long enough to test the summons.

[Saulot]

Thanks for the criticism and consideration, I'll be including some of your thoughts the next time I update Urdheim.

Well, the Firebrands are quite good offensively for their cost, but they are far more fragile (with about 1/4 of the hitpoints of salamanders and 1/3 of the prot), not only in dying to archers or spells, but also able to miss with their attacks and kill each other and your other troops off. However, you're not the first person to mention raising their cost, and I'll likely be doing that in the next version.

I liked the traps too, I think it was the most fun/creative part of Urdheim.

So you didn't find the 300 non-sacred gold cost of the summoners prohibitive at all? So with the upkeep and the basecost, you've spent 540 gold to get 11 wyverns after one year. Obviously as time move forward, they become a better and better deal, but to get the most out of it you need to buy a bunch of them, and that means you're not getting mages, which means you fall behind the research curve. Though I'm hesitant to raise their price, I'll give it some more thought and consider some other tweaks, especially since you're not the first to mention this.

Base kobolds are
_5 hp
_6 str
11 att
11 def
_4 prot
_9 mor
12 mr
The med infantry essentially have +1 to stats over that, and are double the cost. Kobolds tend to have higher att and def to their speed, quick reflexes, and very skittish nature.
I think I'll be raising the resourcecost of the Med. Inf. by one and consider changing their name or at least expanding their description.

I think I'll lower the siegebonus by 2, and lower their cost by 2, (a drop in effectiveness by 37% and a drop in cost by 17%) which means you'll need a lot more of them to get things done.

I'll be examining and playing through Urdheim more thoroughly again, and revising some costs / stats. Even a modest 10-15 changes, can have a more significant impact on how the whole nation plays and how effective it is.