Mod: Warhammer Nation: Lizardmen - v0.75 minor update

[Sombre]

Yep they definitely change your upkeep. It just doesn't change on the fly on the top right income display. You have to wait a turn.

[llamabeast]

Okay! Having played with the Lizardmen a bit I have some comments.

Firstly, this an awesome mod. Definitely up there with my very favourites.

My biggest suggestion regards with the Skink priests. They are lovely units, easy to recruit and great for research. But, they're almost unusable in battle. They all have low paths, which seems reasonable, and it seems they are perfect for using in a communion. However, because of the quirks of the way communion behaves in Dom3 you can only effectively have one communion master. Once the first master has cast, all following slaves won't do anything.

So basically, you can use the Skink priests uncommunioned, which is fairly useless, or with a Slann or two. Slann are great but they're scarce, and you don't want to have to use them all the time. Further, because the Slann are automatic communion masters, having even a single Slann present stops all the priests casting (or rather, all those with higher unit number than him). So this is a bit sad really. I was even considering recruiting Priests of Sotek just so I could set them as sabbath masters and have them rain fiery and viney death down on the opposition, but I don't want to recruit heretics just for that, and besides sabbath master is rubbish.

Here's my suggestion: Add a new Skink priest unit, of a slightly higher rank. Have him cost more, 100-120 gold, and have a fixed astral pick as well as 50% nature and the same other picks as the ordinary priest. So on average he'd only have half a pick more than the ordinary priest. This higher ranked priest wouldn't be an automatic communion slave, and so could be used as a communion master for packs of skink priests. It wouldn't be an overly powerful option, but would add a nice alternative to using Slann.

Right, on to my other unit-by-unit comments:

Skink skirmishers: Great, although I'm unclear on when javelins would be better then blowpipes. Probably they do a bit more damage.

Skink archers: Don't think I'd ever recruit these, as they seem inferior to the javelins and blowpipes. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Skink (blowpipes): These are nice. But from a thematic point of view, it really makes no sense to me that they ignore shields. They can't be that accurate. And indeed, they aren't even very accurate (prec 10).

Red crested skinks: Awesome, I like these little guys.

Chameleon skinks: Haven't used them yet, but they look fine. Bit expensive maybe. Their blowpipes aren't amazing in the same way as poison bows, given that they only have range 10.

Skink cavalry: These seem very expensive to me. I can't really justify recruiting them. I'd suggest 20 gold or slightly over.

Terradon rider: These seem extremely expensive to me. I definitely wouldn't buy them. You'd spend a fortune getting 10 and they'd get mashed up and rout straight away. They have a great deal less staying power than the skink cavalry because they have bad defense as well as bad protection. I'd suggest maybe 30-35 gold.

Saurus warriors: All awesome. I like these guys, but they're not too powerful. Quite vulnerable to missile fire, it seems.

Temple Guard: I've not found these guys excessive, but then I haven't tried a really strong bless. I think their price may well be okay though - presumably they are a strength of the nation.

Saurus Cavalry: Expensive but worth it.

Kroxigor: I'm a bit unsure about these guys. I don't think they can really be your main fighters, simply because they're big and expensive. I've tried using them just to absorb punishment, but they're not actually that tough. I'd definitely rather have 4 saurus for any situation I can think of. Maybe they should have a little higher protection, or else be a little cheaper?

Salamander: Looks good with the newly increased price. Was a bit too good before.

---
Commanders
---

Apart from the above comments about the skink priests, I think these are all excellent. I've not tried using the Priests of Sotek, but it seems they could lead to a good blood economy. The commanders and the Slann all seem to work very well. The Slann sprites are coming along nicely.

[rdonj]

Skink archers aren't bad if you just need massed bowfire on low prot units. They aren't going to be that great against heavy or even light infantry, but I think they'd be fairly useful on most undead and vine men/carrion.

Kroxigors seem more like a back up unit for the most part, but they'd be really useful if you were fighting, for example, abysia playing with a bless strategy.

[Amos]

Thank you for the praise HoneyBadger. But "Stygian Desert" is definitely not a Warhammer nation.

[HoneyBadger]

If I should ever get another chance, I'll happily verify that, Amos.

[Sombre]

Thanks for your very positive feedback llama. Let me address some of the points you raised.

Skink Priests: As you said, they are largely there to act as noncasting slaves for the Slann. They also perform minor duties that are beneath the slann, such as raising temples/labs, astral site searching, magic dueling, blessing sacred raiders, researching etc. As such they are absolutely essential to the every day running of the nation. So there's part of me that's tempted to just say "Tough, Skink Priests aren't there to cast battle spells, especially if there's a Slann present." But it isn't entirely true. They actually can be used relatively easily in a reverse communion - just make sure you don't use one of those Slann you recruited at the start of the game - recruit one specifically for the purpose of the reverse communion with the priests (I believe this is a sure fire way of getting them to come before him in the order of battle, correct me if I'm wrong). They will then be able to spam mind burn, paralyze, lightning bolt or whatever.

I'd actually say the reverse communion is the quirk rather than the master and noncasting slave one, which is what I intended. But I'm happy with both working for the Slann. I would consider the fact that the Slann are scarce and are essentially your only battle-mages to be a key weakness of the nation. I didn't intend skinks to commune with each other (though they can be used by Sotek, you're right),... I wonder what would happen if you just scripted a skink to cast communion master? Perhaps he would cease being a slave and become master of the other skinks.

"it would add a nice alternative to using Slann" - you aren't supposed to have an alternative ;P



Skirmisher: Javs do more damage and are boosted by something like strength of giants. But most importantly the skink skirmishers have shields - for an army like lizards this makes them a prime choice against crossbows, composite bows, javs, stuff that is going to hurt saurus pretty bad.

Skink archers: Basically they just have much longer range. I'm thinking of giving them more ammo too. Also,.. though I'm not sure, I think they benefit from flaming arrows while blowpipes do not.

Skink (blowpipes): You're right. I'll up the precision and decrease damage. They are already quite accurate though, as prec 10 at the ranges they can fire at means they rarely miss. My reasoning to have them ignore shields is more of a gameplay thing - it gives them a role as the killers of the shielded skirmish troops. They can't do jack against anything with armour though, which makes sense to me.

Chameleon Skinks: I may make them cheaper. They are expensive because they are a special unit with absurd stealth (40) and because I consider poison missile weapons to be buggy (and overpowered). I'll have to give the chameleon scout leader 10 if I haven't so their stealth means something. I'm also tempted to give them glamour, representing their extreme stealth, or some sort of dodge based 'shield', because of their ability to see threats coming from any angle.

Skink cavalry: They aren't cheap, but they can actually do a lot of damage on the flank charge - light lance + horned one attacks are no joke. Though they are fragile in the sense that the skink is easily killed, the horned one will fight on, so they can be a one shot weapon sometimes. I might drop them to 25 tonight.

Terradon rider: I'm changing them to size 3 and tweaking them a bit. They are supposed to be like more expensive but even faster versions of the skink cavalry. Like the cavalry though I think their low morale might stop them from attacking rear properly,.. so,.. they'll be improved but I don't know by how much.

Kroxigor: They aren't frontline troops at all and if used as such, will perform much worse than saurus for the cost. The combination of poor skills, no shield and only medium prot with size 3 just leaves them in a world of hurt. They're also far more expensive than say, ogre bulls. The role they are /amazing/ at is killing high prot units. They hit for an /absurd/ amount of damage with their clubs, the only trouble is getting them to land. They were designed to be used mixed in with skinks (who travel at about the same speed) so the skinks reduce the defence with multiple attacks, allowing the krox's land their clubs. Against knights, ulm/agartha/Empire/Dwarf troops and the like they should work better than saurus, who struggle against high prot units. They also represent, like the salamander, an even crazier gold to resource ration. However I will consider tweaking them based on some tests. You get them in PD over 20 by the way. Few of them though.

[llamabeast]

Thanks for all that Sombre, all sounds great.

Apart from these pesky priests...

So, you can set a load of the priests to be communion masters. However, they also remain as slaves. What this means is that as soon as one of them casts a spell, the remaining ones are unable to take an action. So you can only effectively have one master.

Recruiting a Slann to come last is very unreliable. Units can have lower unit numbers to fill in gaps as earlier units die I think. Just doing test, I had a lot of difficulty in getting a Slann with a higher unit number than 4 priests. What bothers me more about this, though, is the real metagaming nature of it. The fact that some Slann should be significantly superior to others just by virtue of having a higher unit number bugs me.

Finally, I'm not quite sure I understand how you'd plan on using the reverse communion. Those slaves that get to cast before the master do not have boosted levels. The only possibly advantage to them is if the master casts Power of the Spheres or another booster spell. Otherwise they are stuck casting their level one spells.

So really, I don't think there is any very satisfactory way to get any useful spells out of those lovely priests, apart from the one communion master you can have per battle. This makes me sad. Go on, stick in a non-slave priest, please? (This is not genuine begging of course, obviously do whatever you think best.) The only difference he really needs to have is not to be an automatic slave, although having automatic astral would make a lot of sense. I guess what frustrates me is that the usefulness of the priests is greatly hampered by the fact that they are automatically slaves, which is meant to be a benefit. It's a shame you can't just somehow turn it off.

[Sombre]

Another point I forgot to mention about kroxigor is that they have mapmove 2 with forest and swamp survival and are considerably faster than Saurus Warriors in battle, while being cheaper than Saurus Cavalry (quite a bit cheaper really). Try using them with Skinks and see if they fare better.


Regarding Priests:

I was thinking more having one priest as a communion master, rather than many. I guess you want to construct a battery of slaves and masters - in that case the only way you can do it is with Slann as masters and priests as slaves. Something they are awesome at btw :P

It's a shame you can't just recruit a Slann to come last, but I don't think that the higher unit ID makes them that much better. A lot of the time you don't want your slaves casting stupid stuff, because they'll only get fatigued to death when the master casts powerful spells. The metagaming nature of it is something that's out of my control - I personally feel communions rely way too heavily on invisible unit IDs and I'd rather that element was removed, replaced with Communion Master, Communion Slave and Communion Member (slave that casts) spells.

I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that in a reverse communion, the slaves that can cast spells get boosted paths from being in the communion. Is it just that they get boosts from the buffs then? If that's the case, then you can still benefit in the case of having one skink master (easier to make sure he casts after the slaves) or finding a slann with a high hidden ID.

I put in automatic slave and master not entirely as a benefit, but as a feature. It's clearly a double edged sword, which pleases me. The fact is Skinks should always be slaves if a Slann is around - they live only to support them after all. Slann should never be slaves and if I could have my way, skinks wouldn't be able to commune with each other.

That said,.. there is a solution I can offer, in the form of a Skink Shaman from the Southlands. There they have very few Slann and are much more feral, so it makes sense that some spawnings of priests are not part of the temple cities. These could be non sacred, get the possibility of fire magic in their elemental pick (currently restricted to Slann and naughty Sotek cultists) and not be automatic slaves. I'm thinking around 70 gold with a research malus. That way you'd have 50% of them able to master up and 25% of those able to use fire magic, possibly leading to some destructive communions, yet overall the priest would be a better investment.

[llamabeast]

Nice, that sounds like a good solution, I like it. I think I agree with everything you say, actually.

I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that in a reverse communion, the slaves that can cast spells get boosted paths from being in the communion. Is it just that they get boosts from the buffs then?

Yep, that's right.

Sounds like I have been trying to use the kroxigor in a naïve way then. I'll give them a try with some skinks, but from what you say it sounds like the price is about right.

[Sombre]

-- version 0.3

-- Changed salamander breath to avoid conflict with cbm

-- Added Skink Shamans

-- Reduced cost of skink cav and terradons, made terradons size 3

-- blowpipes more accurate, less damaging