Mod: MA P'ktal - Neogi Dominion v1.11

[Strabo]

This is my second attempt at modding - this time I made a MA nation of aberrant bloodthirsty slavers. Neogi is a race from D&D (first appeared in Spelljammer).
Minor playtesting has been done - infantry is weak, but tolerable (at least for me).
I have absolutely no sense of balance (no victories in MP yet), so I hope someone will give me advice to balancing and perhaps adding more content.



P.S. Sorry for my bad English (it's my third language).
P.P.S. It is compatible with CBM.

Changelog:
v1.0
- Added 6 national pretenders.
- Replaced marksmen with spitters (even more useless, but flavorful, I think).
- Added Dark Umber Hulk and Psi-Hulk (mind blasters) units.
- Added Truly Horrid Umber Hulk and Shadow Hulk summons.
- Gave Undead Old Master an Undead Hulk spawn.
- Tweaked many numbers.
v1.1
- Tweaked some more numbers, fixed some bugs.
v1.11
- Tweaked some numbers again.
- Lowered starting dominion for national pretenders.
- Made umber hulks cap-only back.
- Fixed darkpower for Shadow Hulks and Dark Umber Hulks.
- Added Enslaved Pale Ones.

[Juzza]

Alright, first off you should make the archers archers wearing leather or something, their resource cost makes then next to useless imo.

Secondly you need to shade the Neogi, look at other models to see how they do it, there's also a drawing guide somewhere on this forum that you should look at. It looks like you have the potential to make better sprites then you have there. They should also look more spidery, they're legs look like jelly at the moment.

The sword and shield and the crossbow Neogi also look a bit silly, the attack animations arn't bad though they could move a bit more. I'd remove them from your nation to be honest and make the crossbowmen into something that uses Mind Blast or something a little weaker. And the armored Neogi have more strength and large chitinous growths that act as armor rather then the dumb looking armor. I also read they have a slowing bite, you could impalement that in their attacks.

I'd also recommend given that these are mind controlling aberrations I'd put a bigger emphasis on slavery and less on having them as warriors themselves add more enslaved humans or aberrations. They are also very adapt at enslaving Umber Hulks you could easily base a unit around that having them spawn an Umber Hulk at the start of each battle which then disappears at the end. Or a Commander that gathers them.

Old Great Masters should be about the size of an elephant too since they are the D&D size Huge, they should also have a Swallow whole attack. Umber hulks should have some sort of 1 use confuse attack too. You may also want to include Mind Flayers as recruit able units and commanders as Neogi supposedly have a good relationship with them, this would be good for you as then you don't need the dumb looking crossbowmen because your nation will have ranged attackers. Also the sprites already exist in R'yleh.

I hope this has been constructive for you and best of luck with the mod.

[Strabo]

Thanks for responding and criticizing, this sure will help me a lot. I'll try to modify this nation, and, if results will be satisfying enough, I'll post an update here. Thanks again.

[Strabo]

Updated this mod a bit. Added a stun attack to umber hulks, and now this nation seems overpowered to me (but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong).
- Added 6 national pretenders.
- Replaced marksmen with spitters (even more useless, but flavorful, I think).
- Added Dark Umber Hulk and Psi-Hulk (mind blasters) units.
- Added Truly Horrid Umber Hulk and Shadow Hulk summons.
- Gave Undead Old Master an Undead Hulk spawn.
- Tweaked many numbers.

[Strabo]

Bugfix update.
- Tweaked some more numbers, fixed some bugs.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

I like your mod! Looks like a fun nation to play!

A few thoughts:
-As Juzza said, more slaves would be good! After all, these guys are supposed to be like R'leyh on land. If they live in caves, maybe have something like enslaved agarthans? That could be cool... I also agree with Juzza that the slaves should be chaffier- drop the armor.
-Old Masters are supposed to be deteriorating mentally and physically as they succumb to the poison, so I think they should have old age.
-Some of your nation-specific pretenders have base dominion 5. That's unprecedented among pretenders of all other nations, so I think it's too high. Most of them should have 3 or 4.
-Is Dark Power 20 on the shadow hulks a mistake? That's a crazy number! Even shadows, which are made of darkness, and Mandehas, which excrete darkness, have darkpower 2-3. If you want to give shadow hulks more it's ok, but it should stay in the single-digits. Otherwise they are much too good as SC killers.

I wish you good luck, and I look forward to seeing where this mod goes!

[Strabo]

Thanks!
1. Yeah, I'll add more slaves in the next release. Neogi spawns can be chaff too.
2. I thought I gave them old age. I gave them, actually, but I put some wrong numbers.
3. Will lower, thanks.
4. Wow! What a typo I made!

[Strabo]

Actually, I just did all of that. Now planning on making a zerg nation mod.