Mod: Avernum, Crystal Souls v1.5 UPDATE

[Shovah32]

Very nice mod. However i think that the two types of slith and the nephilim warrior cost a bit too much gold.

I think the mages are pretty nice but giving a random to the vahnatai mage could use a 100%(maybe 75%?) F/A random to make them viable battle mages without boosts being needed (fire random=falling fires, air random=thunder strike)

[Sombre]

Yeah the gold costs on some of the units are a bit steep and I've already reduced them from what I originally had them at. I didn't want people building entire armies of slith because in the exile games they aren't that common as a race. Plus they do have some fairly impressive stats for basic troops. Exile armies (apart from the avernites) tend to have a lot of high skill (att and def) but low protection troops.

I can drop the prices of those three somewhat, but Exile is going to remain a gold powered nation,... actually a gold and astral powered nation since the Crystal Souls can end up giving you quite a lot of pearls. I'm actually tempted to make them produce 2 APs per turn, since they cost 400 and can only move via teleport. That encourages you to build a 'chamber' of them in your home province doing research and cranking out the gems.

As for the mages - I'm going to give them basic f/a/s 1 and then 2 f/a randoms at 100%. That way you still get solid 2/2s but you also get some 3/1s who have specialised in fire or air and can get the key level 3 spells. I initially figured boosting magic might be viable for some mages (like shapers and hero archmages) because of the gem spawning souls, but maybe 1 AP per turn is too little to encourage empowerment and/or skill item forging.

Any other thoughts?

Edit: I've reduced some gold costs across the board. Slith and nephilim are now more useful as you can afford to take some casualties before getting in close. The changes to the vahnatai mages have made them more interesting and I like to grab as many as I can now to back up the troops with heavy artillery - mist can be useful if you decide to go with the elite melee troops, as can body ethereal and the buffs offered by the shaper. Crystal Souls with teleport are surprisingly handy at securing provinces under threat, though I prefer to keep them at home researching and cranking out pearls. The Slith troops go well with the pyromancers and vahnatai mages because stray sulphur or fire damage is reduced.

I'm still working on 0.5 (all 5 unique national heroes, hopefully ages fixed, maybe new flag etc) - but attached is the 0.42 .dm file with reduced gold costs. The fixed prices will work with saved games.

[Shovah32]

I dont think giving them 2 pearls per turns a good idea, they are already fairly strong as-is. My basic plan was taking an imprisoned S9 Dom10 crystal soul with good scales. I prophetised my starting commander and recruited as many soulguard first turn as possible. Then i continue to ferry soulguard up to the frontline while recruiting many crystal souls who research evo6, thaum5 and then construction 8(then whatever i feel is needed). The soulguards(along with some shapers and mages i recruit if i run into tough opposition from another nation) are all i need to expand as they are very survivable(good defence, 100% regen and twist fate. With the bless they have 18mr which is great vrs illithids ) and tend to kill 1 unit each per turn (the sword brings them up to 16 attack with 20ap damage) so not much can stand against them. By the time i reach const7 i will usually have 15-20 crystal souls(that is if i have needed to recruit quite a few shapers and mages at my capitol) and have a huge astral gem stockpile at which point i will mass produce and equip golems.

Even before golems i have a powerful battle-tactic. I attack the enemy army with a scout to see if there are any astral mages, if there arent then thats fine and if there are i send squads of rangers to try and remove them. Once the enemy army has no astral mages my crystal souls are free to mind hunt all the commanders in it, generally making it rout as soon as its attacked.

[Sombre]

So do you think the Soulguard are somewhat overpowered? I mean they're restricted to the home province,.... playtesting them I had a lot of problems against missile fire - the regen wasn't really cutting it against a rain of arrows, javs etc... but since that point I've changed them around a bit and now maybe they're a bit too good (depending on the bless).

I came to the same conclusion about crystal souls - they stay at one AP per turn, though the pretender gets 2 per turn.

One thing I really didn't want to do with this mod is make an overpowered unit or an overpowered nation, because that really punishes people who enjoy variety. If you like to use pretty much exclusively Vahnatai by choice, that's fine, but if it's because certain units are so much better than the others that there's no point in using them,.. well obviously some tweaks are needed. Anyway, glad you enjoyed giving the mod a whirl ;]

Did any of the national heroes turn up? It seems like I hardly ever get them when I playtest.

[Shovah32]

I was using misfortune2 so no heroes turned up. I dont think the soulguard are overpowered, i think they are just about right. I had them shielded from missile fire by a small screen of shielded troops and their twist fate also helped. Once they reached combat their high defence, regen, twist fate and offensive power kept them going. I think the crystal soul pretender might be a little over-powered as its basically a super oracle(imprisoned i took him with S9 Dom10 order3 prod3 growth3 misfortune2 magic1) if you going to take advantage of any of his strengths(high dom and astral magic)

[Sombre]

Hmm. Good point. I'm bumping the pretender point cost up a bit. The high astral is simply to force people to go astral with the nation, after all it's the main magic of the vahnatai.

0.5 is going to be delayed a little while,.. but I'm pretty confident I'll get this nation to a final version this month.

Next national hero is a slith berserker. He's going to be interesting but not that powerful. I'm debating whether to add a crappy avernite mage (1 random element, 1 true random at 50%) and priest (basic h1).

[Aeshi]

I personally find 20 nephil braves (or even better,nephil warriors) and 20 nephil archers lead by a nephil chief to be a very good stealth team.Very handy for sneak attacks

[Sombre]

With the cost reduced to 10 the braves make good screen or flank troops as well - they can really chew up light infantry and archers in close. Oh and all nephilim are useful for patrols. In 0.5 they'll have forest survival too.

[Sombre]

New version attached to first post. Go read for details of update.

This thing's getting damn near to being finished. I really just need to sort out that crappy flag and start messing around with spell modding for some vahn magic.

[Sombre]

Ok the first post has been changed a bit to better convey what the mod is about. I have obtained email permission re: the graphics from Spiderweb (with minor conditions).

The next version of this mod will hopefully be compatible with a couple of other mid era mod nations and possibly with the worthy heroes mod. It will include national summons introducing the fearsome trog race - compact little giant killers who were sealed away in times past and can be 'gated in' to assisst Avernum against surface enemies.