Mod: Mod thread- WH hordes of chaos

[Autochthon]

Hmmm,

Frankly, if I were to do a WHFB Chaos game, i'd create factions by ethnicity rather than patron Power.

So, instead of the Khornate, Slaaneshi, Nurgling and Tzeenchian nations, i'd choose Norse, Kurgan, Beastman and Hung (I'm sure there are more).

But that idea starts to break down due to the fact that you can't mod your nation's mages to only have Paths and National Spells based off your Pretender

Ah well...

[Valandil]

I am just doing a single mod for all the powers/tribes, since there is a hardlimit on active mods AFAIK, and It would be nice to run several warhammer mods together. I have done a .dm, and finished another marauder sprite, but it will take a while yet before, eg, all the daemon summons are done and with graphics. I also need a chaos lord, champion, chosen, another warrior, possibly a chariot, knights, and about seventeen daemons. Gurgle.

[Panpiper]

Valandil, with the release of Zepath's beautiful Warhammer map there is more call than ever for appropriate Warhammer nations. There is no Warhammer nation I am looking forward to more than that of Chaos. I would dearly love to see what you've got done with the mod to this point.

The graphics, while utterly crucial to a finished mod, are less important to me at this juncture than the mod stats and such itself. Is there any chance you could perhaps send me whatever mod nation *.dm file you might have prepared to this point? I would be most interested in perhaps finding placeholder graphics from the released sprite pack so as to tide things over while proper graphics are being prepared. This would give some of us the opportunity to playtest what might be ready in terms of stats and perhaps help flesh out the details. While I am not quite ready to handle building a full mod nation myself, I've gotten pretty handy at hacking and tweaking other people's mods (for my own SP amusement). I would love to be of some assistance.

[Valandil]

I lost a bundle in a computer mishap, but I have a really rudimentary dm and most graphics intact. I suppose I could send the .dm to you; or even finish it myself.

[Panpiper]

Valandil said:
I suppose I could send the .dm to you; or even finish it myself.

Either way works for me. Likely the best thing would be for you to spend just a bit more time with the DM to tweak it to your satisfaction, then send what you've got to me. I then would see if there was any more tweaking that I might be able to do to add yet more flavor. That done I would send it back to you for your approval (this is your mod). At that point, we might well have something people could play with, even though many graphics might be graphics from other units already in the native game.

My Email address is in my profile.

[Valandil]

Umm... sadly, tweaking will take a couple weeks, probably. I mean, there are about twenty different daemons to go through.

BTW, what about summoning khorne daemons? BLood seems apropriate, but then there would have to be a khorne sorc, which is totally illegal?

Also, I was thinking about just giving lords a chance for S3, to represent mark of tzeentch? After all, there are no Tzeentch sorcs either...

[Shovah32]

You could have a khornate champion with blood magic, but auto-berserk in battle so he couldn't cast.

[Panpiper]

Valandil said:
Umm... sadly, tweaking will take a couple weeks, probably. I mean, there are about twenty different daemons to go through.

Here we witness the difference between a hacker and an artist. You are an artist. A mod you create will be both beautiful and rich in variety. However we may have to wait, perhaps a long while. ;-) I am a hacker. I see the problem of twenty daemons and think, copy, paste * 20, hack * 20, tweak * 20, print. It wouldn't be pretty, there wouldn't be a whole lot of originality, but... ;-)

BTW, what about summoning khorne daemons? BLood seems apropriate, but then there would have to be a khorne sorc, which is totally illegal?

If you were doing a Khorne race mod, you would be absolutely correct. However you are not. You are doing a 'Chaos Undivided' race mod. It makes perfect sense to me to have but two or three generic Sorcerers of Chaos and make them potentially representative of all the four chaos powers.

Also, I was thinking about just giving lords a chance for S3, to represent mark of tzeentch? After all, there are no Tzeentch sorcs either...

If it were me doing the mod from scratch, I would have quite a selection of different commanders, given that there are four different powers in the same mod. For each of the four powers, there would be both a lord and a champion. Each would be representative of their respective powers, Nurgle having area effect disease 'weapons', Tzeentch having perhaps as you suggest S3, Khorne having awesome combat stats, and Slaanesh having "Enslavement" and "Enslave Mind" as bonus weapons. The difference between lords and champions would simply be that lords have superior leadership and champions have superior combat stats and poor leadership.

I would consider giving the lords H2 or 3 and making the champions merely sacred. However for racial point balance, I would also consider not giving Chaos any holy or sacred at all. I mean technically they are all fanatically 'holy' towards chaos, but rather than actually making them all holy, it would seem reasonable to me to simply assume their holiness attributes are already figured into their stats, appropriate for whichever of the four powers the unit is aligned.

The problem with balancing Chaos is that I see the individual chaos unit as being obscenely powerful relative to a corresponding native unit. If they can field sacred versions of those units, there could well be nothing that could stop them short of an army of SCs. Once can balance things only so far with gold and resource costs. Rather than make a chaos warrior cost something like 200 gold and 80 resources, I would rather keep the 'price' down to something a player could actually afford in at least small quantities and balance things by giving them no sacreds, but that's just my take.

By the way, for heroes I would create four individual Daemon Princes, each in turn representing each of the four powers, plus a single 'chaos undivided' daemon prince combining the best of all four. They would be immortal, have combat stats slightly superior to their respective champions, leadership stats the same as the lords AND, heroes would be the only sacreds I would give Chaos, each having H2. Perhaps also throw in a multihero Chaos Sorcerer with superior magic range and scope and a multihero daemon spawn (no leadership combat monster). (As an aside, the Slaanesh daemon prince I would create would have stealth and a good seduction (around 20). That would be one truly feared assassin.)

The handicap of zero holy (other than the heroes) might be too great a handicap as dominion kill would be a very serious problem. It might be necessary in multiplayer to allow for a marauder shaman to possess at least H1, just to at least have some minimal preaching ability. But the way I see the balance working is that Chaos has to exploit it's 'conventional' troop superiority to gain territory quickly, so the dominion effect of other gods is kept at bay. They should expect to almost always be fighting inside someone else's dominion.

[Valandil]

Actually, balancing chaos infantry isn't that impossible, really. Sure, they're lethal, but only about 40% more so than an empire swordswinger. Saurus warriors can mash them. The problem is that chaos has everything: elite infantry, REALLY elite commanders, fodder, monsters, summons (Although the fury is pretty weak, actually,) powerfull magic, apocalyptic cannons of doom, no old age problems, and even some free points from cold pref. Their dominon should actually be pretty fierce, from the number of cults tht tend to spring up- id expect stealthy preachers, honestly.

The trick to balancing them, I believe, is in speed. Make them really very slow to get armies together, research done, and such. I considered giving unreast causing effect to several troops, just to see how that effects the dynamic.

Now, supposing the great chaos incursion is defeated, it will take a long time for them to strike again- this is exactly appropriate. The problem is, the strike mustn't be unstoppable, or this would be irrelevant.

Bst way to kill them, I think, should be encirlcing the main army that they do have with fast flyers or somesuch, and then hitting it with serious battlemages until it routs. SCs wouldn't work too well, since, eg. A Lord of Change will eat any SC with violet fire.

[Panpiper]

It looks like you have your thinking well in hand. It's interesting just how different the take can be on chaos. Appropriate for chaos I suppose, eh? I am very much looking forward to this.