Mod: Cinggis Qayan, Wrath of the Khans 3 eras -- Update 6

[kennydicke]

rdonj, another familiar name?

Yeah, the great bow is definitely too much. Longbows at 13 damage are considered quite powerful in dominions, and crossbows at 10 ap every 2 rounds even more so against armored targets. 15 ap every round for just one more resource than a longbow is not just good, it's ridiculously good. 10 ap is enough to consistently damage 20 prot, but not much higher. 15 ap is enough to consistently damage 30. Against more normal units with protection values ranging from 8-16, each shot fired from these great bows has a VERY good chance of killing your average human. Compare this to a crossbow, a crossbow will do the same amount of damage on average to a guy with 6 protection (militia) as a great bow will to a guy with 16(tough heavy infantry). They are really, really powerful in dominions with those stats.

Thank you for mathematical analysis. I've got an update coming soon (depends on when I need sleep!) that will hopefully address some concerns. I wanted powerful, not uber. I suspected before I even posted the mod that they would be too strong, and have only gotten MASSIVE confirmation.

Hopefully I haven't come across as being too harsh, I'm just trying to show you the math behind why everyone is saying they're too powerful . Personally, I would replace the horsebow with longbows and the great bows with the hinnom bows as others have suggested. This will enable you to use them with flaming arrows and make the great bows much less unreasonable. I think they would be better at +1 damage over longbows than +2, but I think it's a reasonable compromise.

I'm probably the one who is too harsh, replying to everyone's slightest comment with longwinded ramblings and unsubstantiated claims. I will try a couple more times at a usable version of my #newweapons, before going vanilla. But it's growing ever closet to the point that I will have to.

The Tengri pretender - Expensive little chassis, but still ridiculously overpowered . At current price, you can take it awake while still having pretty good scales and decent dominion (or balanced scales and dominion NINE).

True dat, every time I used him I raised the cost. So, logically, I just quit using him so that I wouldn't have to raise the cost! My brother won't try any other pretender, and I used him alone to conquer a 50+ prov map before year two ended. He did die once, but all the priests I had made in the meantime called him back in two turns! It's either raise his cost so that he has to be sleeping (kinda silly, though I do like the Pantokrator, so feasable) or scale him down (probably best). I used the sky spirits I made first to scale up to the elder spirit multihero, and then scaled him up to get Tengri. Again, I overcompensated. Suggestions? I'm thinking less hp ~25-30, possibly no hardpaths (this would be unthematic though), about 5-6 stormpower, startdom reduced to 1-2, maybe half precision, reduce awe to 2-3, and only 1-2 misc slots. A nerf-nuke, if I might say so! Opinions?

C

ouple this with high awe, higher than 100% lightning resist (why?), 100% poison resist, immortality, ethereality, 0 enc trample, bunches of AN attacks, and an insanely high storm power value... if you can get this things #onebattlespells working, it will truly be an undefeatable monster. I am not kidding. And on top of that it has good buffing+mobility magic paths built in. He needs serious work to be fair.

I hadn't noticed the AN on his attacks. Really does make him a true beast! I was going for the raw power of a tornado, and a god, rolled into one. I succeeded far too well. My bro told me that there is something that can reduce shockres, I increased it to 150 to drive home that this guy can't be affected by lightning, is it annoying, unbalanced or unnecessary? If so, it's gone!

As an aside, for some reason in the pretender screen he is listed as having s3 and a3, but when I look at his magic paths to increase them, he only has them at 1. Not sure what's going on there.

I gave him the '#magicboost 53 2' tag, so that any magic skill taken would be boosted by two. My brother hates this tag and it was partly to annoy him. I think removing this would be for the best, depending on the other changes. (I suppose I could just limit it to a boost of one to air and astral, as a midway point.)

Ulgen - Well, he's certainly no Tengri, so he's much more reasonable. Largely he seems a bit of a niche pretender... sort of like a sphinx on steroids, that can create mages (if GoRed, which is still cheaper and much less research than normal)

I had the same thoughts, and I wouldn't want to meet a sphinx on steroids! I didn't really think about GoR on the domsummon ivy kings!

I'm a bit concerned about his domsummon ability,

As was I already, I wanted to make him an ivylord or whatever, where he summons extra vinemen, but couldn't. I didn't even think of trying to give him the ivy crown, can this be done?

and the amount of misc slots he has seems a bit much (same with the last guy too). It would be pretty easy to stack this guy with boosters and cast several great globals and spells, and you can get the magic to do so while taking him awake without sacrificing your scales.

Sorta what I wanted, a pretender custom made for casting varied globals. (He is the source of knowledge!) But definitely too much. I'm thinking about half the hp, removing all domsummons but possibly leaving/enhancing the makemonster, reducing awe by to 2-3, reducing misc slots to 2-3 and upping his cost to 175-180. Thoughts?

Gazar Eej - Much more reasonable chassis. Possibly still better than its cost, and yet again the extremely high level of awe, but otherwise I don't see anything glaringly wrong with it. As a suggestion, consider bumping its cost to 100 points and lowering the awe to +1 or +2.

She was supposed to cost 175 points, my bad! Is this an unreasonable change? Your suggestion of 100pts and much lower awe sound just right, though. Will be implemented. Should she have one less misc slot as well?

Genghis - Too many misc slots. Three maybe, but 4 just seems like too much. The level of fear could also drop a bit. Perhaps to +2? Other than that he is not too bad. I might actually lower his price though. Not all the way down to 0, but say somewhere around 20. Simultaneously, consider bumping his new path cost to 60-80.

I scaled Khan to multihero, then up to various khan heroes, from best of these (gesar/subutai) up to genghis. If you could offer scaling suggestions for them as well, I would appreciate it! I will lower his misc slots to two, for now. His fear will be +3, for now. His gcost reduced to 25, for now. And his path cost raised to 75, for now. This guy is actually my favorite, as he is a non-mage, human pretender who could potentially work! I say 'for now' pending further input. Not because I dislike the changes!

Erlik - Why does he #onebattlespell undead mastery? This is an insanely good ability, way too good to be a #onebattlespell.

I only play SP and have never seen the spell be cast; I didn't think it would be very powerful against anyone other than MA/LA Ermor. I'm sorry to assume, because that... you know the rest.

Why not darkness? That seems reasonably thematic and not so overpowering.

Very good suggestion, I was under the impression that darkness was overpowered/overused (plus I didn't want to hurt the national archers!); but if you like darkness better, and I do too in most regards, then so it shall be! I was originally going to see if I could do 'Ermorian Legion,' but this was unthematic troop-wise; my bro suggested undead mastery over the legions.

Either way he I think he is too cheap. He should probably be at least 150 points, and also, have fewer misc slots It seems also that he has a lot of magic paths. A pretender with three seperate magic paths probably should not be so skilled in a particular one. Especially not if he has such a high dominion score.

Well, I don't mind removing the blood pick, and the astral if I have too; I really think he should have at least two hardpaths in death. I agree his dominion should be lower.

I notice all of your pretenders have very high dominion scores. You might want to consider toning some of them down. For example, in vanilla there are only something like 2 pretenders with a dominion of 4, and those are the fountains, which have fairly low utility as far as pretenders go. Whereas all of yours are powerful mages, SCs, army enhancers, etc Consider bumping most of them down to 1 or 2 dominion, leaving Genghis with high dominion to represent his authority and ability to command.

It has been so long since I played without a slew of mods, I never even considered people who don't. I'm sure there are more high dom pretenders in the mods I use, but they aren't as strong as mine, perhaps (read: certainly). Will change for update.

I'm not going to talk much about the troops. Cavalry look more or less okay except for the ones with light lances, who suffer from a lack of dexterity and have lower attack values than intended.

Although unthematic, this was an attempt at balance. I plan on making both sabres #bonus, but I would give troops #ambidextrous 1-3 if anyone felt that #bonus wasn't enough.

The basic infantry are slightly good for troops that are supposed to be a bit meh, but are probably fine.

Meh, for a Mongol was elite for most at the time. I raised their price, however.

Qayan vessels having spy and assassinate is weird, but since they can't use those abilities it doesn't matter that much.

I gave them certain abilities so that if my bro GoRed one, they would be like a lesser priestess. I wouldn't mind removing them!

The archers are just too good, even at 35 gold per. Even if they were cap only and 50 gold per archer, they would be too good :P

Others agree with you rdonj, I have scaled down the bows. And will probably do so again. Will raise their price too. And may make cap only.

Why do the javelin launchers have 0 encumbrance and all those resists?

It was my way of simulating that they are a *construct.* They may be pulled by a horse, but are not alive. I thought that trample still increases fatigue at 0-enc, but I am probably wrong. Suggestions?

One last thing... death worms. Their stats aren't too ridiculous, but their price is too low, and their attacks are way too good. They shouldn't be more than aoe1, and no, the worms really don't need fear :P

Three primary aspects of the old legends of the death worms: they can kill at range with an electric discharge, they spew acid at range that dissolves armor and is poisonous, and, to this day, a large number of Mongolian people are deathly afraid of the worms and won't venture near their abode in the mountainous areas of the Gobi desert. To be thematic, Fear has to stay. I will lower (and thought I already did!) the aoe of worm attacks. Make any other suggestions that would make keeping fear plausible!

That was way longer than I'd intended... again, I hope I don't come off to harshly, everything I said above is just my personal opinion and entirely capable of being wrong!

No worries, I would bet at least a dozen people ignored my mod because of my needlessly long posts. I will try to downplay this in the future.

Every time I read one of these posts, it makes me rethink everything I've done! (It's a good thing!) When I post replies with lots of historical data, it is not to prove anyone wrong or display some sort of superior knowledge; it is merely to show where I was coming from, what I had in mind and what is *historical.* It may change things for your own thoughts if you understand the *supposed* nuances I was going for. Then again, it may reinforce them! Don't hesitate to wax philosophical further on the subject of dominions!

Thanks!

[kennydicke]

Gregstrom

My assumption was sort of based on their being right next door to Persia, and it seemed likely that they'd use similar bow technology.

You are probably right, they are *right next door*, as it were.

Interesting. I would have said that Man's placement in the Dom3verse (successors of the Sidhe, questing grail knights) placed them solidly as England, making their (vanilla) longbow the English longbow.

I'm not too familiar with MA nations, and almost never play as *human* nation's. Although, I also associate Man with Arthurian England. I didn't know they had longbow recruits. (sheepish grin)

Something needs to be done - as it stands the lighter cavalry types are only useful as archers (att 6 with their sword?).

I gave them standard lances and #bonus sabres. Will this be enough? Only time (and playtesting) will tell.

It probably does, but I can't personally confirm it. Try it and see, I guess.

I might try it if I feel it's necessary. I'm not even sure *how* I would be able to tell!

Heretics in the Dominions sense just means they divert worship away from the Pretender. For Pythium the heretic cults are tolerated as a part of society, and Arco's heretic unit is presumably an influential part of mainstream society. I guess there could be an argument that to earn the #heretic tag you need to be a credible part of your society or no-one will listen to you. That's not to say you should necessarily use the #heretic tag, of course - it's one of a bunch of viable options, and what to do is up to the mod's creator.

Yeah, I do get your point. And was an option I considered in the beginning, and then again later. And could be a nice counterpoint to their strength. But, aside, from the servant of erlik, I would definitely wait to find balance in other ways than going against a tenet I had from the outset. That being said, I will try to gauge what my goals are more closely.

If Qayan dominion is a sort of generalised Mongol-ness, any priest can spread it. If dominion is worship of the Pretender Tengri, then priests of Ulgen probably aren't going to be much help.

Well, I was going with the Mongols as the primary source, while incorporating other influences (Hunnic, Buryat, Xiongnu, Turkic, Rus and other Altaic tribes.) I only added *cults* that were widely popular in the true *Mongol* regions. For instance, Ulgen was actually part of the Buryat theology. When the Mongols assimilated their close Buryat cousins, they didn't forbid their theology, or regard their holymen as heretics. They simply said, "Well, Ulgen is obviously either the same guy as Tengri, or his son, or his father, or some other relation. We'll worship whoever we want, you'll worship whoever you want, because we are all *Mongols* now, and that's what *Mongols* do." To which the Buryat replied, "Ok, we can go with the flow. Just one thing though, Ulgen doesn't like this Erlik guy." And the Mongols answered back, "That's fine, as long as you don't discriminate (kill/heckle) against anyone who prefers Erlik, then we're all good. Because we're all *Mongols* and that's what *Mongols* do." Obviously, this conversation didn't really happen; but a literary interpretation of cultural assimilation could never be truly accurate. This example, and the many like it when they assimilated other cultures (but, curiously, not their pantheons), weighed heavily on my decisions. I would certainly have made a *cult* of another family of pantheons a heretic. The only reason I'm not completely sold on servants of erlik is because they were more like doomsayers (alas, the end is nigh) then true heretics (their gods are false, kill the infidels). If they had been more active in trying to sway the people from their own faith (poisoning sacred horses, preaching against the established pantheon, leading revolts against the *government*) then I would certainly make them heretics. That being said, if anyone else feels that the servants of erlik, or any of the other priests should be heretics instead... BLAMMO, change done. Until then, know that I am seriously considering your argument anyway, and this may be a final push for balance in the future!

One suggestion would be to increase the resource cost, I guess.

The last few hours I've been seriously considering all of created equipment resource cost by 2-6. This would somewhat mitigate the quality concerns. Although unthematic (besides being superior, their weapons/armor were also cheaper to make, maintain and repair, due to less use of metals and more use of leather/design) I feel the increased resource cost would be a good balance factor.

Thanks! Everyone has such good contributions. I would hate to have to rate them! Gregstrom, please do a little more brainstorming and expound some more on your own thoughts. It may be foolish/impossible to please everyone, but I would rather one poster like my mod than two non-posters not like it. Not because I don't like people who don't post (I trolled this site for over a year!), but because the people who post are generally the most committed and most likely to provide real substance to a mod!

[rdonj]

Not sure where you'd know my name from. I do post a bit on this forum, but otherwise I can't think of anyplace online where I actually use this name, other than the dom3 IRC channel. Glad to know I wasn't coming on too hard, I did try to keep a sense of levity in there. You haven't either, for the record. In order not to create a gigantic quote string, I won't quote you too much .

Tengri definitely needs to be nerf-nuked. There is just no way around it, unless you want to do something crazy like make him a 600 point pretender :P The 150 lightning resistance is just... an aberration. There is no unit in dominions, no matter how immune to something, that has more than 100 resistance. And while there are a small number of effects (ironskin, army of lead/gold, maybe an artifact but I can't think of any) that will decrease shock resistance, everyone else has to cast a spell or use a misc slot to counter this. So it's very undominionsy. If you're going to nerf-nuke him, I would suggest something like: 20-30 less hp, 18 mr instead of 20 (ALL pretenders have 18 mr), reduce att/def values to 14 or 16, remove the magic boost, awe no greater than 2, lose the extra shock resist (again, no unit in dominions has more than 100 even if it's completely immune to it), smaller siege bonus, no more than 4 storm power, 2 misc slots only (very typical for this sort of pretender), and consider giving it 1 encumbrance, but this part may not be necessary. I would also strongly consider removing the immortal tag. The dominion definitely needs to drop, to 1 or 2, whether the immortal tag stays or not. Having done all this he'll be something like a 150-200 point chassis.

Bay-urgen - If you want him to have the ivy king ability, you should try #copystat-ing an ivy king. That should give him ivy lord 3, which is quite respectable. However I'm 99% sure this won't help him summon them without actually using one of the spells . Having actually played him shortly in a test game, the domsummoning wasn't as bad as I thought. However, I got all ivy kings and no vine ogres. I would remove the ivy king summoning, since it's potentially exploitable, but leave the vine ogres. And make sure that you're using the proper unit number to summon them. Suggested changes: hp reduced by 50%, fire susceptibility, awe reduced to no more than 2 (you will hear this a lot ), give him recuperation, increase attack skill to 8, reduce misc slots by 1 and call it a day.

Gazar Eej - I didn't put a whole lot of thought into my price suggestion. Yeah, lose a misc slot, awe reduction, increase price. But increase the price to at least 125, not 100. That's too low. What I did is basically compare her to the titan sitting right next to her. The titan is likely a better expansion pretender, but she has lots of useful abilities and is a better SC later on, and is probably worth closer to 150 points (and lower her dom to 2).

Genghis - One thing you have to remember, is that as a pretender the unit automatically scales with your dominion level. So it's not 100% necessary to have him actually be any stronger than them. Misc slots to two is a good change, and fear +3 is probably okay. Other changes sound fine for now.

Elrik - The thing with #onebattlespell-ing undead mastery, is that it completely shuts down entire strategies just by having one unit. Most undead has pretty bad mr, i.e. less than 10. Undead commonly used as thugs tend to have around 14 mr, which basically means that undead thugs used against you have to have an mr pendant, or they'll have an excessively high chance to be turned. And if your opponent is really unlucky, they could send a tartarian SC at you and have you capture that first turn, before they get any buffs or anything. Having darkness instead is quite annoying also, but is easier to deal with and would make him more interesting as a combatant while still justifying his insane pricetag. Further, getting a really good strategy together to utilize the darkness seems like it would require a lot more work. You only have guaranteed d1 mages, a decent number of 2s, and a few 3s (under the current system, but I recall reading that you were considering changes to the magic to lessen it, which is a good idea). You would have to recruit mainly these guys as mages, and they have quite possibly the worst research-gold ratio of all your mages. And as you said, it would hurt your own troops, which is another reason it's a better idea As for Elrik's magic, try removing the blood pick and lower death to 2, keeping the astral. This would be reasonably in line with standard dom paths.

I only really use CBM consistently, and I've never tried mythology pretenders, so I don't know what those are like. Mainly I play nation mods

Although unthematic, this was an attempt at balance. I plan on making both sabres #bonus, but I would give troops #ambidextrous 1-3 if anyone felt that #bonus wasn't enough.

I would make the lance #bonus instead, as it is longer.

Qayan vessels having spy and assassinate is weird, but since they can't use those abilities it doesn't matter that much.
I gave them certain abilities so that if my bro GoRed one, they would be like a lesser priestess. I wouldn't mind removing them!

Maybe thematic, but if you are GoRing those, you're seriously wasting gems. Just remove it, it looks odd and doesn't really add anything.

Others agree with you rdonj, I have scaled down the bows. And will probably do so again. Will raise their price too. And may make cap only.

Well, depending on what the new bows look like they may not need to be cap only. If the bows they had weren't capable of killing even the mightiest of SCs, they could actually go down to a reasonable gold price, too.

It was my way of simulating that they are a *construct.* They may be pulled by a horse, but are not alive. I thought that trample still increases fatigue at 0-enc, but I am probably wrong. Suggestions?

0 encumbrance trample is just too good for a recruitable. The horse is fatigueable even if the cart isn't, and without the horse the cart is pretty useless. My suggestion would be to give it 3-5 encumbrance to represent the horse, and remove the resistances because they're really weird and abnormal for a unit like that. Then reduce the price of the cart by 60 or so gold because they're no longer ridiculously abusable


As for the death worms, I don't know, from your description it sounds like they could get away without having any aoe at all (with a precision and range boost to make them not useless. Range increased to 10 is probably warranted anyway). Also, they have fear 15, which is a completely nuts value. For a unit summonable so early, that is just too much. Suggestions for this unit: Again, maximum aoe of 1 on both weapons, fear no greater than 5, cost at least 5 per worm, and no more than 1 or 2 at a time for a level 3 summon. You could possibly make a higher level version of this spell that summons more at once. Another thing that might be a good idea would be raising the level of conjuration required to summon them.


One last bit of advice: Weigh sombre's comments more heavily than mine. He is actually a modder, and there are plenty of things I have no good idea of pricing for. I've also been known to make snap judgements and be way off the mark in some cases of balance.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by kennydicke

As was I already, I wanted to make him an ivylord or whatever, where he summons extra vinemen, but couldn't.

You can. Just #copystats something that has ivylord and overwrite everything else about the unit that you don't need. IIRC, there is a indy mage called "Animist" that has ivy lord 2, he could be a good starting point.


As for trying out your mod, I think that I'll wait for the new version. It seems that this version has gotten a lot of feedback already.

Although, I have read this thread and some things caught my eye that I'd like to rise up. You mentioned something about wanting the nation to have "really poor late game", to sort of balance its early game power. I'm sorry to inform that won't really make it as a MP nation (if we are aiming for MP balance here). There is all sorts of rage going about boosting Tir'na'Og that has sort of similiar power curve. If the nation works too much by "+early power -late power" principle, it will eat up 1/2 nations by turn 40 and then get simply obliterated by something that can do something in the late game. That really won't be fun for the nations that get overwhelmed by the nation's early power nor will it be fun to watch your empire crumble to dust.

You also seem to have a lot of national pretenders. IMHO, it's a bit of a waste to have more than 1 or 2 national pretenders. Players are only going to use one (most likely the most powerful one), even if that, so the rest of them are sort of "wasted". I think that the four gods could be unique summons to give something to aim for in the late game.

Also the randoms on the mages seem really unnecessarily chaotic to me. It would be absolute infuriating, for example, to recruit ~5 Priestess of Gengri and not get single A3. It would be just as unbalanced to get 5 A4's in the row. Sure, the odds for those are unlikely, but are they really so necessary as to justify for those games simply spoiled because you just couldn't hit those randoms you needed. You could easily combine 70% X/Y + 30% X + 30% Y into one 100% X/Y random.

Also, you have a lot of commanders. To tell you the truth, opening the recruitment screen was sort of overwhelming. The thing with having many commanders is that (sort of like with national pretenders) is that the players are only going to use the ~3 most powerful ones, because commander slots are really tight. Especially true for mages as diverse as in this nation. My suggestion would be the same as for the pretender. Make the excess into summons. I'm not sure if it fits with your idea for the nation, but perhaps the servants could summon the priests/priestess's of their relative faiths?

Do not take offence by any of this, the idea and the theme are really cool. And this focus on Horse Archers is really unexplored territory for Dom3. All the pieces are there, it just needs some polishing. (I've been itching for a mongol nation to dom3 ever since I got my *** handed to my by them in Medieval: Total War)

[Globu]

My own feedback on a few issues:

Encumbrance of lighter armors: With games that go by small dice rolls (this is essentially a 2D6 mechanic game, right?), there is always a problem with granularity. I always personally loved the broad possibility curve of D100 pen-n-paper RPGs like Rolemaster. That said, sometimes you have to lose a bit of thematicity to the lack of granularity. I think, unless the armor is extremely light, keeping the encumbrance of it above 0 (i.e., 1) is a must; 0 is "perfection," at least in a sense.

My own approach is to respect the difference in small numbers, whether in a low-granularity game or a high-granularity one. A simple increase of 1 in protection (or damage, or precision, or what have you) for a category or item above its equivalents/commensurates is a respectable advantage; 2 is incredible and rare, and 3 is legendary/fantastic. As long as flavor text/thematic element is reflected in some numerical manifestation, I think the it maintains both feel and real advantage. The special nature of the Mongols is going to come through and shine even with more modest numbers.

General Power Curve: I agree on balancing it more and not making it an early power/late ragdoll nation. If you want to go with MR hit, I would make it no less than 9.

Commanders and Randoms: Aw, I love the selection of commanders. Perhaps in the intense economizing of MP games the top three might be the only ones chosen, but, at least in an SP game, I see myself loving the variety.

And on randoms, perhaps a slight bit more predictability may or may not be in order, but I like the theme and random element keeps it fresh and interesting.

Regular units with spy and assassin tags: Seconded on removing the tags. While it makes for more fun with GoR, I find that excessive.

Bows: What rdonj said seems pretty persuasive to me as well. The Semitic giants here are the mechanical representation of actual giants, not just large men with well-constructed/designed bows. And those giants with well-constructed/designed bows! It seems that the limitations of the game in its current state force you to choose between (1) trying to find some way of making them distinctive and special with vanilla Long Bows; (2) making them definitively special with custom bows, at the cost of making your nation (or at least those heavily-used archers) egregiously miss out on the most important spell to an archer-heavy nation; or (3) use bows meant to represent what 1,200-pound giant archers with well-designed/constructed bows use. At least to me, (2) seems fairly unacceptable (from a designer standpoint -- if you did it anyway, I'd still play it ); flaming arrow compatibility is essential, and (3) cheapens giants and is just too broad.

I dunno -- very hard choice. But also remember that the devs represented inhumanly-strong size-3 Japanese dai bakemono archers using Japan's bows as Long Bows as well. In the end, if you went with Long Bows and gave them a nice precision bonus, I think they'd still be very special. Horse archers with bucklers and long bows sound very scary indeed.

Sprites: Oh, by the way, do you have an overall color scheme in mind? Tans and reds, for example, or something as a guide?

And, if you have specific requests and ideas, let me know, and I'll try to put something together.

[kennydicke]

rdonj, again!

Hmm, iirc priests of sotek have the heretic tag in Itza.

Yeah, I was trying to point out in my own way a heretic unit that I like; because, fluffwise, they are heretics and because they had such a different path from the other mages. I thought this could apply to servants of erlik; although, historically, not heretics, they have a vastly different philosophical outlook and in my mod a vastly different magic path. I can go either way on them at this point.


sombre, again! thanks for the warhammer mods, should've said so earlier!

Not that this is possible outside of onebattlespell, but no no no. Having a silk vest on does not equate to airshield. Airshield can stop massive boulders, flaming arrows (without getting hit by the fire), seeking arrows etc. Airshield is a magical force batting away projectiles. A silk vest is just something to add to custom armours, or you could give the unit a natural #prot level of 4 or something.

Actually, it was more like a full thermal top and bottom than a vest. But I strongly agree that airshield would be inappropriate. My reasons for further inquiry were more for personal knowledge than for something I planned too implement. I don't know if I want to give any of them natural protection, although a very interesting method of accounting for the silk underclothes (and one I disregarded early).

No. It can't be added to magical items either. Nor is it a monster command. It would require a onebattlespell, unless I'm forgetting some monster you could copystats. Regardless I think putting air shield in to represent a silk vest is insane.

Yeah, I couldn't find it in modding.pdf at all. I don't know any monster has airshield naturally (but I'm not familiar with half or more of the summons, and few of the MA vanilla nations. Using an airshield as it is would be insane to represent silk underclothing. However, I was trying to elicit ideas, and it worked. Was it a bad idea? No. Was it a feasible idea? Yes. Was it an idea appropriate to the goal? Probably not, considering I only wanted it to work against arrows/bolts. The whole concept of silk stopping these missles only works because of the spinning/twisting action that flights create. Silk offers no protection versus knives, swords, spears, clubs, maces, javelins, boulders, fire (well, a little, but not enough to matter) or any other type of attack that is not spinning on a particular axis. You are right, though.

I would. From your descriptions, I would give all their archer units the longbow weapon. It still gives them the best human bows in the dom3 world, works with flaming arrows etc - only issue is it says 'longbow' instead of 'recurve compound horsebow' or whatever you want it to say. Which I don't think is an issue, much in the same way I wouldn't make a 'cutlass' weapon to replace 'falcion' or a 'gladius' to replace 'shortsword'.

And this may probably be the final fix. I wanted as a unique feel to their equipment as to their nationals. Being a thorough (read: anal) person, in a world of 'close-enoughs' (our own, not dominions) I prefer accuracy. It was more than the name. Firing a recurve bow is as different from firing a longbow as firing a light crossbow is from firing heavy crossbow, or as different as throwing a knife is from an axe; not to mention the difference in capabilities. If equivalency is equal to happiness, then I can live with the change. (And it appears to be a popular choice!)

As far as the sabre is concerned, it is an even more unique weapon when compared to a short sword or falchion; longer and easier to wield (slashes, instead of stabs) than a short sword (which you rightly compare to a gladius, other that the fact that a gladius was broader, they were functionally the same weapon); lighter and faster than a 'traditional' falchion (this is more subjective, some would consider a falchion the same as a sabre, many would not; some would say a cutlass is a scimitar, some would call it a sabre; some would say a scimitar is a sabre, others would say it's a falchion; others still would say it's semantics and that they are all the same weapon because they all have medium to long length, variably curved, blades, thin to thick in width wielded primarily from horseback in a slashing motion, in this sense a shamshir and a dao are also the same weapon as the rest. I could easily have used either to represent a sabre; and if people prefer, I will replace the sabres with short swords or falchions. This was not brought up by anyone yet, but why not nip a potential problem in the bud?

Gems have nothing to do with it imo. If you point out the specific units its going wrong for I can take a look. onebattlespell has always acted a little weird though.

I'm not sure at all, first time I messed with that tag. I believe all of my pretenders were having the issue, but I was honestly just checking out the function, and the only one I really wanted was for Tengri to autocast Storm, although now that I've given Erlik Darkness, that is one I'd like to keep.

The method for getting round the vanilla restriction is to first make an exact copy of the vanilla spell using #copyspell - then you edit the original vanilla spell to be whatever you want it to be, then you #onebattlespell call it by ID number.

This wouldn't affect that spell for everyone? I thought that was how it worked! (#copyxxxx, I mean) Interesting, are their other uses for #copyspell? I've never been able to find the ID number of a spell, unless, of course, the name is the ID number.

If you do want units to fight with both sword and lance at the same time, you have to give the unit an appropriate level of ambi. Regardless of what historians say, there's no way I'm going to believe warriors would use a technique like that unless it was /useful/, therefore there should be a point to it in dom3. Two attacks at att8 is the lowest you could really go before it becomes too crappy to imagine a warrior using it. Even that is pretty abysmal. Remember ambidexterity can essentially be whatever value you like, because it /only/ matters for these weapons. So you can make it 10 if you want and realistically it won't cause any problems.

It would be useful to hold one opponent at bay from feet away with your lance while simultaneously attacking another with your sword. And if it was a literal translation from the real world, every Mongol warrior would have an Att of 14 or more. Using a weapon in each hand, sometimes called Florentine, is a very attack oriented style that many people have died trying to use, and, if you ask any SCA member, suicidal unless heavily trained to do it (like say, from a young age). All that aside, I agree, it must have a point. I thought that light lances broke after the charge like the normal ones; so, what I had intended, a charge followed by sword attacks, was not what I had rendered. Also, I thought that at a certain point ambidexterity would equate to an Att bonus, if not then I have no qualms with adding it to the troops.

If you want a lance with charge bonus which beaks after one round and doesn't screw up the attack from the sword on the first round it needs #charge, #ammo 1 and #bonus. The #ammo 1 is the breaking part.

That's sweet, did you come across that by yourself, or did I just miss it?

I see no reason not to make a new lance for the mongols.

I could make a tweener lance, using your awesome idea. My favorite part is making weapons and armor (hence, what I consider to be an overabundance in my mod). I could do it all day for every weapon conceivable and not really get bored. I had wanted to make equipment that other people would use for their own mods. Like hey, I want a Persian nation, and I can use this guys bows, sabres and lamellar armor; or, I want a Byzantine nation and I could use the very same items; or Korean, or Cossack, or Turkic, or a slew of other peoples that would make for a great mod IMO.

Unlike with missile weapons it isn't going to cause any flaming arrows style interaction problems.

Right after I created the bows and assigned them to my first units, I fired up dom3, enabled the mod, started a game with a fire9 great sage, researched to ench5, attacked a neighbor, cast flaming arrows with my pretender, checked the archers to see that they had flaming arrows ability, hit 'q', quit out and checked a mental box in my head that said, 'yup, it works;' this was not just bad programming, it was bad testing. It wasn't until right before I was ready to post that I had actually watched a battle with flaming arrows and realized it didn't work! I could have then made substitutions, but had grown accustomed to and started to like the bows I made. I figured if anybody thought they were worth sacrificing flaming arrows for, I would keep them. I'll just remove them. Saves spaces for better implemented weapons at least! Oh, well, too bad there isn't a #bow or #flamen tag to add flame arrow compatibility.

Regarding encumbrance free armour or having low enc. Think very carefully about this. If you're saying all your guys, racially/culturally have high levels of endurance which set them apart from the other dom3 species/nations (like machaka) then give them enc 2. No lower. <---> Besides which, most of your stuff is mounted (which should mean base enc 5 or 4 with the racial bonus) and ignores the armour enc.

I gave all the human units 3 enc, AFAICR. The modding.pdf didn't point out that mounted units have a higher enc value. I noticed most if not all had 4, so I gave some 3 and some 4 to account for riding horses since early childhood (which makes a *huge* difference in how fast you tire out from riding one). Easy enough to correct. I gave 0-enc to the javelin launcher, because I saw it as a machine, with a horse just their to pull it into position. I gave the spirits 0-enc because they're supposed to be essentially just air (even the humanoid one!).

As concerns the armour, the fact that they're used to wearing it around as clothing doesn't mean it causes no enc. You might say it reduces the enc by 1 or something, but being used to something and it being magically weightless are different things. Knights used to do exercise in armour, but dom3 has its own system of armour and enc and it's best to stick to that if possible.

I agree, and I attempted to account, almost exactly as you say. I reasoned if they all wore the base armor everyday from a young age, hunted, played, slept in it, treated it like a second skin (or third when you count that silk) in combination with the fact that it was already lighter and more flexible than chain mail hauberks (enc-2 vanilla), and only slightly more cumbersome than leather hauberks (enc-0 vanilla) that these factors would all combine to make the base armor enc-1. I postulated then that when donning the *lighter* version, they would feel significantly unburdened (hence, enc-0), like wearing heavy winter clothes all year round (Wyoming!) and then going south and changing into summer clothes (BOOM! you feel light as a feather); and that when donning the *heavier* version they would feel slightly more burdened (hence, enc-2). I should reiterate the fact they only had two forms of armor, lacquered leather scale and lacquered leather scale with a lamellar drape. I created more for variation, I thought it might be boring if all the troops had the same armor. More to the point: I can either increase the three scale #newarmors enc tag by 1 each; or I can remove the light and heavy versions of the scale and simply alter the normal scale and lamellar #newarmors to be more different.

Yep. In my version they worship Sotek, who is either not an old one, or is an old one on a different path from the others.

Games Workshop have actually retconned that difference and now Sotek is simply the most popular and powerful old one, in fact they seem to suggest he's the king of the old ones or something. Which is just less interesting, so I went with the old version. I also made slann unable to be empowered in blood.

Wow, I must really need to catch up on my fluff! That's not at all how I remember it. I thought your lizardmen fit how I remembered them to an absolute T!

Thanks for the valuable insights, and to anyone who actually read this.


rdonj

I've already made most of your pretender suggestions. Thanks!

I would make the lance #bonus instead, as it is longer.

Will undo change to sabres and make a new tweener lance with #bonus.

Maybe thematic, but if you are GoRing those, you're seriously wasting gems. Just remove it, it looks odd and doesn't really add anything.

It's just something me and my bro do. Will save it for the house version!

Well, depending on what the new bows look like they may not need to be cap only. If the bows they had weren't capable of killing even the mightiest of SCs, they could actually go down to a reasonable gold price, too.

We'll see. Probably gonna end up being longbows/composite bows.

0 encumbrance trample is just too good for a recruitable. The horse is fatigueable even if the cart isn't, and without the horse the cart is pretty useless. My suggestion would be to give it 3-5 encumbrance to represent the horse, and remove the resistances because they're really weird and abnormal for a unit like that. Then reduce the price of the cart by 60 or so gold because they're no longer ridiculously abusable

I honestly thought that trample would ignore enc-0, my bad. Agree enc-4 sounds pretty good right now, 5 is probably better for a single horse lugging that thing around (even though few animals compare in raw strength to a horse... or a human!). Note: it's supposed to have two wheels, something look off?

As for the death worms, I don't know, from your description it sounds like they could get away without having any aoe at all (with a precision and range boost to make them not useless. Range increased to 10 is probably warranted anyway). Also, they have fear 15, which is a completely nuts value. For a unit summonable so early, that is just too much. Suggestions for this unit: Again, maximum aoe of 1 on both weapons, fear no greater than 5, cost at least 5 per worm, and no more than 1 or 2 at a time for a level 3 summon. You could possibly make a higher level version of this spell that summons more at once. Another thing that might be a good idea would be raising the level of conjuration required to summon them.

Range 10 and aoe gone. Check and double-check! Um, my bro was justing raving about a fear 15 pretender yesterday. The worms are supposed to have fear 0... Apparently #fear tag by itself defaults to 15? That .pdf said it was 0! Fixed.

One last bit of advice: Weigh sombre's comments more heavily than mine. He is actually a modder, and there are plenty of things I have no good idea of pricing for. I've also been known to make snap judgements and be way off the mark in some cases of balance.

I will not disregard anyone's advice, but I will take the harshest criticism as the best calls for change. I never really paid attention to who made what before, just what I liked and didn't. I will take everyone's advice with a grain of sand, a tablet of aspirin and a pair of blinders.

[kennydicke]

Burnsaber, hello! I like Dwarfs. A lot!

You can. Just #copystats something that has ivylord and overwrite everything else about the unit that you don't need. IIRC, there is a indy mage called "Animist" that has ivy lord 2, he could be a good starting point.

That would work great, but I gotta tone everything down some more to be happy. Although, that will work for any commander, right? I have some ideas.

As for trying out your mod, I think that I'll wait for the new version. It seems that this version has gotten a lot of feedback already.

I would prefer to wait for a more polished version myself. More feedback than I was ready for I'm afraid. I'm on the downswing of a manic cycle, so...

Although, I have read this thread and some things caught my eye that I'd like to rise up. You mentioned something about wanting the nation to have "really poor late game", to sort of balance its early game power. I'm sorry to inform that won't really make it as a MP nation (if we are aiming for MP balance here). There is all sorts of rage going about boosting Tir'na'Og that has sort of similiar power curve. If the nation works too much by "+early power -late power" principle, it will eat up 1/2 nations by turn 40 and then get simply obliterated by something that can do something in the late game. That really won't be fun for the nations that get overwhelmed by the nation's early power nor will it be fun to watch your empire crumble to dust.

I just thought it would fit in with their strong early theme. If possible, I would truly prefer a balance. That's why you guys post, and I read. I didn't know that about Tir na nog. I guess that would be boring. I like to retain a theme once I've got one. I was mostly worried about being really strong in early and in late, which I want to avoid. My bro and I wouldn't be able to tell by ourselves.

You also seem to have a lot of national pretenders. IMHO, it's a bit of a waste to have more than 1 or 2 national pretenders. Players are only going to use one (most likely the most powerful one), even if that, so the rest of them are sort of "wasted". I think that the four gods could be unique summons to give something to aim for in the late game.

I agree. I had hoped if I bad a bunch, one or two would catch people's eyes. Then I could just leave out the rest. I didn't even consider making them summons, but I left myself summon slots if I wanted to make more. Was this bad etiquette?

Also the randoms on the mages seem really unnecessarily chaotic to me. It would be absolute infuriating, for example, to recruit ~5 Priestess of Gengri and not get single A3. It would be just as unbalanced to get 5 A4's in the row. Sure, the odds for those are unlikely, but are they really so necessary as to justify for those games simply spoiled because you just couldn't hit those randoms you needed. You could easily combine 70% X/Y + 30% X + 30% Y into one 100% X/Y random.

Well, I am trying to refine them more. I really though they could be something different and unique. I was getting frustrated myself trying to get an A4, then I got two. Having such a setup could easily spoil your gameplan. I hoped that a strong military and good pretender could offset this. I also thought that the random nature could emphasize their different aspects, the fact they are not a true mage nation, but have a high potential. If this really means they are destined for doom, then I will change them by combining the custommagics.

Also, you have a lot of commanders. To tell you the truth, opening the recruitment screen was sort of overwhelming. The thing with having many commanders is that (sort of like with national pretenders) is that the players are only going to use the ~3 most powerful ones, because commander slots are really tight. Especially true for mages as diverse as in this nation. My suggestion would be the same as for the pretender. Make the excess into summons. I'm not sure if it fits with your idea for the nation, but perhaps the servants could summon the priests/priestess's of their relative faiths?

Once again, I actually agree. They have way too many (for my bro's sake) and I had a blast making them; I figured if most people liked the number, they would stay, or, if not, people might pick some favorites, or point out ones that shouldn't be there. I could then dump some, someone earlier mentioned making other ages, this could work too. But I would really prefer getting this guy into shape before delving into another haphazard attempt.

Do not take offence by any of this, the idea and the theme are really cool. And this focus on Horse Archers is really unexplored territory for Dom3. All the pieces are there, it just needs some polishing. (I've been itching for a mongol nation to dom3 ever since I got my *** handed to my by them in Medieval: Total War)

None taken, healthy criticism is the best! I'm glad that one theme that I chose seems to be in high regard. The whole reason I chose them. I guess I'll go through and really take a harder look at these guys. I was hoping for something that might be interesting, and it mostly worked. Never played edieval: Total War, fun?


globu, sorry bud, trying to make this quick.

I think I got it worked out; think I'll go to two armors. KISS, never my strong suit, and not my favorite band. One at enc-1 the other at enc-2, two prot difference.

MR 9 it stays.

Commanders: I'll need to sleep on that. And talk to my bro. A lot of this is what he or I wanted, or thought was neat. I may have been pretty far off from what is appropriate though. But I play by myself, and my bro plays by himself. I rush, he turtles. While combining what we both like to do into one nation seemed tough, we both thought I came up up with a unique way to do it. You guys know better what would work in the 'real world.' i.e. MP Btw, my bro is real cool and nicer than me, he won't care at all what gets changed, as long as he gets to turtle.

The randoms will have to be more predictable.

Regular units with spy and assassin tags: Seconded on removing the tags. While it makes for more fun with GoR, I find that excessive.

Fixed!

Bows: What rdonj said seems pretty persuasive to me as well. The Semitic giants here are the mechanical representation of actual giants, not just large men with well-constructed/designed bows. And those giants with well-constructed/designed bows! It seems that the limitations of the game in its current state force you to choose between (1) trying to find some way of making them distinctive and special with vanilla Long Bows; (2) making them definitively special with custom bows, at the cost of making your nation (or at least those heavily-used archers) egregiously miss out on the most important spell to an archer-heavy nation; or (3) use bows meant to represent what 1,200-pound giant archers with well-designed/constructed bows use. At least to me, (2) seems fairly unacceptable (from a designer standpoint -- if you did it anyway, I'd still play it ); flaming arrow compatibility is essential, and (3) cheapens giants and is just too broad.

They will be vanilla.

I dunno -- very hard choice. But also remember that the devs represented inhumanly-strong size-3 Japanese dai bakemono archers using Japan's bows as Long Bows as well. In the end, if you went with Long Bows and gave them a nice precision bonus, I think they'd still be very special. Horse archers with bucklers and long bows sound very scary indeed.

This guy, he's Shinuyama? or a summon?

Sprites: Oh, by the way, do you have an overall color scheme in mind? Tans and reds, for example, or something as a guide?

Trying to locate my Mongol warrior pic. May have to find it online. Will have something... tonight?

And, if you have specific requests and ideas, let me know, and I'll try to put something together.

Nah, probably too much work involved. Just make them how *you* like them. They'll probably turn out fine. It was overambitious on my part to ask for all the trappings.


Anyway, thanks all! I will try to get something done for you guys!

[Burnsaber]

[quote=kennydicke;731880]Burnsaber, hello! I like Dwarfs. A lot!
[quote]

Yeah, I noticed that you mentioned it in your first post. Thanks for the compliment. If your brother likes to turtle, I assume that he likes it too .

Originally Posted by kennydicke

That would work great, but I gotta tone everything down some more to be happy. Although, that will work for any commander, right? I have some ideas.

Well, Ivylord is one of the weakest abilities around. I think that you could keep it. And yeah, the trick works for any commander.

Some other cool things you can only copystat:
-> Construct lord
-> Research without being a mage (used for dwarf Clan Kings)
-> Lose paths when leaving home province (although you will get "#magicbeing" and "#ethereal" that you can't get rid of)

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I just thought it would fit in with their strong early theme. If possible, I would truly prefer a balance. That's why you guys post, and I read. I didn't know that about Tir na nog. I guess that would be boring. I like to retain a theme once I've got one. I was mostly worried about being really strong in early and in late, which I want to avoid. My bro and I wouldn't be able to tell by ourselves.

You can have a nation that is its best in the early game, but you should let the nation have at least a shot in having decent late game. Although the nation as it now stands will likely have terrific endgame. Solid shot at S4 and being able to get S/N for Crystal Coins makes this nation a astral power.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I agree. I had hoped if I bad a bunch, one or two would catch people's eyes. Then I could just leave out the rest. I didn't even consider making them summons, but I left myself summon slots if I wanted to make more. Was this bad etiquette?

There is not much of a "modding etiquette", but reserving a bunch of spell slots really serves no purpose (they are tight as they are!). But yeah, I think that the four gods would work better as unique summons. You have several paths you could take them;
1) Copy-over the Hinnom "Summon Lord of Civilization" spell and replace the Grigori with your own units. Then it would work like "Summon Spenta" for Caelum or like Arch devils.
Pros: No used spell slots
Cons: It would reduce compactibility in single-age games
2) Have each god have it's own summon spell
Pros: You could make each god it's own summon spell, like reguire air mage for Tengi, death for the death god and so forth.
Cons: 4 spell slots, players will likely focus on the most powerful one.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Well, I am trying to refine them more. I really though they could be something different and unique. I was getting frustrated myself trying to get an A4, then I got two. Having such a setup could easily spoil your gameplan. I hoped that a strong military and good pretender could offset this. I also thought that the random nature could emphasize their different aspects, the fact they are not a true mage nation, but have a high potential. If this really means they are destined for doom, then I will change them by combining the custommagics.

Well, some people really like randoms, so you should not totally scrap them. There just is no need for them to be so.. extreme. I'd consider something like 100% + 100-X% + 100-Y% random to be still manageable (you know that you are getting *some* random and the other are just bonus -> no biggie if you don't hit them. If you have over three <100% randoms, it gets kind of hard to actually process what kind of mage you are actually buying). Also, having like 1-2 mages with absolutely crazy randoms would be fun, but it's a bit too much if all mages are like it.
IMHO, you could have really erratic randoms on one mage (it's not bad when you decidedly take the risk, but it IMHO is if you are forced to take the risk). If everyone has crazy randoms, it also makes it hard to plan in advance to what you will have access to and even more crucially, *when* you will have the magic available.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Once again, I actually agree. They have way too many (for my bro's sake) and I had a blast making them; I figured if most people liked the number, they would stay, or, if not, people might pick some favorites, or point out ones that shouldn't be there. I could then dump some, someone earlier mentioned making other ages, this could work too. But I would really prefer getting this guy into shape before delving into another haphazard attempt.

Well, the negative about having a lot national commanders is that most of them won't be used and if there are way too many of them, they clutter the recruitment screen. Also, each commander is one more unit to draw. But it really seems that you are familiar with the source familiar and have a lot of stuff to tell us through the unit descriptions, so losing commanders means also losing text space.

But remember that not all summons have to be magical in nature. You could have a remote summon, for example, that summons a strike force lead by the "Qayan Warrior Woman", if you were to knock that out of the recruitment screen, but wanted to keep in for thematic reasons.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

None taken, healthy criticism is the best! I'm glad that one theme that I chose seems to be in high regard. The whole reason I chose them. I guess I'll go through and really take a harder look at these guys. I was hoping for something that might be interesting, and it mostly worked.

I must say, you are really taking all of this like a champ. It really takes courage to bring something homebrewed for own use into light like this and take very heavy suggestion changes with so good attitude. Rock on, dude!

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Never played edieval: Total War, fun?

Yeah, it's fun until you learn the tricks to humiliate the AI in combat.

[Globu]

Well, I can't promise fast work, but here is Mongol archer 1 for preliminary review. Feel free to make demands -- how does it match the concept? More armor? Change the whole shirt to metallic color? Hat too big? Want me to find a way to put a more prominent spike on top? I know you mentioned axe and buckler before, and I can tack those on, but here is a base unit. Again, most work done, but not yet finalized (i.e., I haven't looked at it in game and gotten rid of the inevitable dark edges and artifacts).

[kennydicke]

OK, so, I got *some* sleep; bear with me people.
And soon I'll have to reread everything posted; I may have a large memory but, when I'm winding down from a manic episode, I tend not to retain a lot. And as far as my strange sense of humor, I'll try to refrain from being specific, ok guys?

As far as the I do things, I've always been more of whittler than a bricklayer. What I mean is I start with a large unformed mass (read: too much stuff, uber stats) and carve it down into art; as opposed to a person to likes to set a solid foundation, and then build up until they have a monument.

I can't swim, but I've always been able to jump into the water and find my way out; when I try wading in slowly, that's when I drown.


Burnsaber

Yeah, I noticed that you mentioned it in your first post. Thanks for the compliment. If your brother likes to turtle, I assume that he likes it too .

I wish I could say that, but he's such a turtle that he's been playing the same SP game as Lanka for almost a month... and it's only 100+ provs. That being said, he WILL love all the warhammer mods. Funny, I never tried a turtle approach with them (or anyone else), I learned to be aggressive from my HOMM days, and it's served me well in other strategy games (especially dom3, galciv and ROTK).

Well, Ivylord is one of the weakest abilities around. I think that you could keep it. And yeah, the trick works for any commander.

And I still plan on using it, what I really meant was that I wanted to get him to a point where he's playable/balanced; a point where *I* can feel comfortable adding something like that... Would I be able to #copystats right below #newmonster, and leave the rest the same?

Some other cool things you can only copystat:
-> Construct lord
-> Research without being a mage (used for dwarf Clan Kings)
-> Lose paths when leaving home province (although you will get "#magicbeing" and "#ethereal" that you can't get rid of)

->I'm not sure what Construct lord is?
->That probably explains why just giving a #researchbonus never worked for me!
-> That could be interesting for Tengri as he already has those tags, and still seems strong.

You can have a nation that is its best in the early game, but you should let the nation have at least a shot in having decent late game. Although the nation as it now stands will likely have terrific endgame. Solid shot at S4 and being able to get S/N for Crystal Coins makes this nation a astral power.

Well, my idea of an endgame is probably different from yours as a whole. I meant having a *little* to *moderate* difficulty bootstrapping into two or more of S, D or B, I always feel weaker if I'm not strong into one of these; I didn't mean a nation that crumbles at the end, I'm honestly ignorant of a nation like that - I do reasonably well with all of them, no matter the national paths. Also, I'm not sure that the game ever transitions into a true *late* game against the AI. So, what I mean is, I've always had trouble with not being clear enough; and with expecting people to understand me and my intentions.

There is not much of a "modding etiquette", but reserving a bunch of spell slots really serves no purpose (they are tight as they are!).
Well, I didn't really plan on using them for *summons*, I just had extra space from where I started (3950?) and called it that.

But yeah, I think that the four gods would work better as unique summons. You have several paths you could take them;

Do others agree? My first pretender is the one *I* care about, Genghis. I just thought it would be fun to have a fair slice of different ones for different uses/strategies. By having them be summons, you get to have your cake and eat it too. Query: How would you propose I reconcile making these spells viable, while at the same time reducing the number of commanders?

1) Copy-over the Hinnom "Summon Lord of Civilization" spell and replace the Grigori with your own units. Then it would work like "Summon Spenta" for Caelum or like Arch devils.
Pros: No used spell slots
Cons: It would reduce compactibility in single-age games
2) Have each god have it's own summon spell
Pros: You could make each god it's own summon spell, like reguire air mage for Tengi, death for the death god and so forth.

This is an approach I never could get to work. My first attempt at modding was overwriting EA national spells with the Chaos Mods spells, because I was having trouble having it *and* all the other warhammer mods at once.

Cons: 4 spell slots, players will likely focus on the most powerful one.

I would have hoped that they would strong and different enough that the choice would be more situational/strategy-based.

But remember that not all summons have to be magical in nature. You could have a remote summon, for example, that summons a strike force lead by the "Qayan Warrior Woman", if you were to knock that out of the recruitment screen, but wanted to keep in for thematic reasons.

Yeah, but I figured eight spell slots was enough for now. Not that I'm at a loss for spells. I could probably think of eight more real fast. Plus, I wanted to start with the more magical-type summons and go from there.
Call of the Mastodon was a spell I made to check out what 'border summon' is; that could easily be a ritual, independent or otherwise. Although, something really gets me about the mage making the elefant sound, and then a bunch of mastodons show up.

I must say, you are really taking all of this like a champ. It really takes courage to bring something homebrewed for own use into light like this and take very heavy suggestion changes with so good attitude. Rock on, dude!

That's because I am a champ! But seriously, thanks, I saw a theme that wasn't explored fully by any nation, thought it would be fun, and went for it. Thanks.

Never played edieval: Total War, fun?
Yeah, it's fun until you learn the tricks to humiliate the AI in combat.

Many games are like that. Is it real-time or turn-based? Or possibly not a strategy at all? I'm always on the look out for new games to buy.


globu

Well, I can't promise fast work, but here is Mongol archer 1 for preliminary review. Feel free to make demands -- how does it match the concept? More armor? Change the whole shirt to metallic color? Hat too big? Want me to find a way to put a more prominent spike on top? I know you mentioned axe and buckler before, and I can tack those on, but here is a base unit. Again, most work done, but not yet finalized (i.e., I haven't looked at it in game and gotten rid of the inevitable dark edges and artifacts).

Looks good, probably for PD-only militia archer I will make soon. Fine for concept. They used very little metal in their armors, because they needed it for weapons and horse-related materials; metals in armor was more predominant in their helmet tops and binding areas of the body suit, although iron scale leggings was common on the heavier mounted troops. The spikes were actually more of a fear tactic used by their heaviest cavalry, and not by the lighter troops; but if you like spikes, go for it.

Thanks guys. Hopefully I will be done soon.