Crusader MoD

[Norfleet]

I would strongly suspect that Cohen's units are all so grossly overpowered because of Cohen's endless griping about SCs. Thus, he wanted to make these guys capable of competing with them....and has created the monsters he loathes so much.

He who fights monsters should be careful that he does not become a monster.

[PvK]

Not sure what the explanation is but yes many of the national units are SC pretender-class.

For the heck and novelty of it, I'm trying out the first several turns of the Poke in the Eye test game I started with it. Using hardly any tactics, no research, no magic items, no missile units. Just buying one of each of the commanders, and throwing them at the enemy. So far I've lost 3 shedu, the Velite commander, and one or two of the ordinary troops, but none of the good crusader units even have an afflcition. Two of the three remaining shedu have afflictions, but hey, I've got a crusader who can heal troops, so afflictions are no problemo. I don't really expect the six moloch province to be much problem, either.

Admittedly, the six shedu aren't part of the mod. I guess I'll retire them and just use the crusader units.

I've slain indy seven pretender units/commanders, and four armies.

PvK

[PvK]

Graphics quibbles:

The spearman looks like he is carrying a pike and shield (spear too long).

The bowman looks like he has a shortbow, not a longbow (maybe just give him a shortbow).

PvK

[Cohen]

I could tone down them, the problem is that they haven't any magic at all ... and Ulmish troops are pretty weak considered that xbows or flagellants with F9 blessing can slaughter them (yes I got about 30 black knights of Ulm slaughtered by the same amount of flagellants, with about 4-5 loses of them).

Another thing I've to wait for is capitol only units, that will cut off massive production of certain commanders/units.

[PvK]

You write that as if 30 Fire-9 blessed flagellants would not be formidable! They are one of the most destructive units in the game with that blessing! One of Flagellants' main weaknesses is that they can be slaughtered by ranged attacks, such as simple arrows. Practically anything will get smashed if they try to fight 30 blessed flaming flails!

Heavy Cavalry are not just to throw directly into attack against anything. They should be more of a flank force on hold/attack, while a main body of infantry occupy the center, supported by whatever support you have. They can be a decisive shock strike force when they engage the right foe at the right time, but they aren't invulnerable.

The Iron Faith Black Templars are a good baseline for comparison. I think the variety and wide range of abilities will make your Crusaders quite strong, without exaggerating their skill levels or making them cost far less than they should. It may require skill to use them, and they will have some vulnerabilities, but that's a good thing.

Testing them out in some hard battles, I see that the Awe is a massive effect - most units won't even be brave enough to attack them. I think probably none of the units really deserve Awe, and probably not Fear either, comparing to other units in the game - those are really for visibly divine units like angels, dragons, and powerful undead monstrosities.

PvK

[Cohen]

I've raised some cost of the troops, gold and res.
I've reduced the fear caused by knights, and awe too.

Infantry should have already round shield, not kite.

I'm not so sure however about this balance, since they're quite exposed to magic, even with their high magic res, many spells negates or ignore armor.

Most of the best commanders should be capitol only.
And probably templars and hospitaliers knight troops too.

To have an high bless pretenders should take high magic, penalizing scales. And I believe gold and resources are vital for this nation.

[PvK]

Comparing to Iron Faith, which I consider a reasonably-balanced nation with a similar style, I see this comparison (assuming the skills, abilities, costs, resources, and weapons of Crusader are brought into balance as I suggested before):

Iron Faith advantages:
* Better mage/priests with higher magic levels and random picks, and inquisition bonus.
* Better-equipped and cheaper heavy infantry.
* Units with seige bonuses.
* Spy.
* Units with construction bonus.
* Arbalests.
* Has better initial gem income.
* Can use undead pretenders (I assume Crusaders shouldn't have any).

Crusader advantages:
* Huge variety of elite troops and leaders.
* Almost all special troops and leaders are sacred.
* Has a unit which can heal other units.
* Has elite sacred fighter commanders for SC use.
* Has a Holy-5 priest (I think this is unique in Dom 2 - he can Smite without an artifact or being a prophet - this makes up for a lack of magic).
* Units have great morale (probably should also be weakened a bit) and standard-bearers.
* Has fire-immune units.
* Has units with built-in magic weapons and armor.
* Has strong fighting units with recuperation.

So again, I think Crusaders have plenty of good advantages, and may still be over-strong, even if you reduce everything back to normal ability levels. The main weakness is lack of magic flexibility, but they are strong enough that they should be able to conquer themselves some mages and other things they don't have to begin with.

PvK

[Cohen]

For pretenders, I have changed the Jotun unique ones, since if I change other pretender, also other nations have them.

Their National Heroes (only 2 however) are very good and skilled in magic ...

[Daynarr]

There is no need to change existing pretenders, you can make new ones and make them unique for your nation. It's quite simple really. There is avatar mod on Illwinter site that has lots of special pretenders, so you can use it to see how it's done.

Btw. nice effort! Just solve some balance issues (mentioned already) and you are all set.

[PDF]

Just looked at the mod, some changes/corrections needed :
Bugs
- All tgas are duplicated in the zip, once with path from mods only (ie /Crusader), another with full path ("Program Files/etc but in Finnish ? )
- Ambidextrous is incorrectly spelled "ambidextrUOs" and should'nt work

Balance
- Footmen shouldn't be given Kite shields
- Getting Long bows and crossbowmen seems overdone IMHO. Anyway the armored LBs are too resource intensive to be useful as archers ...
- The nation looks quite close to Ulm, but with much better priests . Maybe they should also get Resources bonuses...
- Magic is very poor, I'm not sure they should fare better than basic Ulm after the few first turns... But well this is only intuition, I have to play them and test !