Mod: Caelis Immolatum ON HOLD

[Endoperez]

I had this mod in mind when I made my simple sprite-editing tutorial. You can find a red-robed Caelian Seraph from there, if you happen to need one.

[VedalkenBear]

Thanks mainly to the efforts of others, I am done with the graphics for the Seraphs and Seraphines. Considering I can't exactly see the scale of what I'm doing, I'm not sure how much difference can be seen between the Seraphs and Seraphines in each tribe. Through some cut/paste, I _was_ able to get a rather different attack animation by way of distinguishment (go go word creation).

I need to code up/dress up the units now. The first release will probably be without national spell (or modification of Yazatas/Spentas), just to see how the overall flavor goes.

How do you do the filepath for custom sprites?

Edit: Another question. Can you make something do _only_ damage to undead/demons? I see the triple damage effect, but is that it? ><

[Endoperez]

Good luck with your sprites.

Filepath of custom sprites, if they are in CaelisImmolatum folder under \mods\, would be:
#icon .\caelisimmolatum\immolatumbanner.tga

And yes you can. There's the new Water spell "Cleansing Water": 5 points of AN damage to demons/undead only, on AoE 4+.

[VedalkenBear]

Endo: Should be up in a few minutes. As far as Cleansing Water goes, is there a way to tie that onto a weapon?

[Sombre]

Use #secondaryeffect and enter cleansing water as the weapon,... possibly? I don't know if CW exists as a weapon with a number. It might.

[VedalkenBear]

I'll look into it when I can. Right now, I'm intensely interested in what people think so far.

I realize the Spire Elite is probably quite a bit over the top, but he isn't meant to stay sacred _or_ Glamoured. I thought there was an #airshield command for a unit, but if there is careful scrutiny did not reveal it.

[Endoperez]

It's Caelian, not Caeline. See LA Caelum and Caelian Seraph.

While your sprites are pretty good, I find the white and yellow wings way too bright on my computer's screen. I can't tell the wings' details. Attached is a version of your CIspireseraphine.tga that I edited to be more pleasing to my eye. I used Gimp's HLS function, chose yellow, and decreased both L and S. I also increased contrast a bit, to bring the details out a bit better. Raptors are good, and Raptor Legionnaire looks VERY, very good!
You could easily make all attack sprites look much better by moving them forward, and/or up, by a pixel or two. Then the Caelians would seem to move out towards the enemy.
It's also a bit distracting to see the all-new wing colors for Caelians, but at least this way we can tell the two non-raptor tribes from each other.

Also, CIspireinfantryaction.tga and CIcaelinearcheraction.tga are bad. You can see the top of the base sprite's wing to the right of their heads, and those don't belong there.

I like the three different Seraphines, but the poison resistance on the Raptor is quite odd. High Seraphine is also strange. The fire shield, mountain survival and stealth are useless on her (they're supposed to be too rare to go stealthing around), and Spire Seraphine's 50% fire/25% shock res is better than her 25%/25%/25% elemental resistances. Poison resistance is again just odd. I think you meant her to have Holy 3, because currently she's just a Spire Seraphine with low stealth and fire shield.

The three different Seraphs work VERY well. Nothing bad to say about them.

You shouldn't try to replace the base troops if you don't have to. The same goes for sprites. There's no need to create new archer graphics if you don't want to, because the old Caelian Archer and Blizzard Warrior graphics are unused.
Blood Armor's poison is useless against undead, and I don't see any connection to Caelum. Don't use a fancy modding command just because you can. In fact, dual-weapon fighting is useless against undead. The troops should have staying power against a horde of undead and let the priestesses banish them. Normal troops should have shields, perhaps kite or tower shields. Raptors should have shortswords instead of spears if they are legionnaires. In general, everyone could use a bit better armor if you intend the melee troops to be used at all. Plate Cuirass (14, -1, 2) is one possibility, and would be very close to Plate Hauberks the heavier legionnaires use. Also, PLEASE give all the melee troops Javelins! Finally we have a way to keep the Caelians in a formation, so that the whole group attacks the enemy at once! Even better, if they are on Hold&Attack and enemy reaches them before they're out of volleys, they back row will move to surround the enemy!
There's no command for airshield, but you could make a custom shield with very high parry value and a rather low protection value. Shields' protection doesn't affect their ability to block arrows. It's only affected by parry. "Amulet of missile protection", prot 1, parry 7, def 0, enc 0... You would have to give a custom #bonus weapon if you wanted them to be able to use two other items, be it two weapons or a weapon and another shield.

[VedalkenBear]

Endo: Before anything else, thank you for the highly detailed feedback. Now, on to the chase!

I deliberately used Caeline as opposed to Caelian. Really, there's nothing to differentiate the 'High Caelians' from the other Caelians, and so I tried to make it a bit 'clearer'. If you think it's too jarring I can always change it back.

As far as the sprites go, I was trying for a definite 'difference by tribe' wing color scheme. As long as they're sufficiently different from each other (with the Spires golden and the High Caelians rather brilliantly white), I'm fine.

Sorry about the legacy on the two action .tgas. To make those, I basically took half of the left-hand side of the wing and pasted it on the right side. I thought I had erased the remnants but apparently not. I'm really not that comfortable with layers so I brute-forced each one.

The Poison Resistance on the Raptor units is supposed to show one of the fruits of their research into the undead; they are becoming resistant to the toxins they all too often have.

The High Seraphine is supposed to be an Inquisitor. I've been told that the only way to do that at the moment is to take an extant Inquisitor unit and #copy his entire block to the new unit, and then modify accordingly. I can definitely see their random including Holy (which looks quite possible but I may be misremembering), but if I can get them to be an Inquisitor, a Stealthy (spy, incidentally) Holy-3 Inquisitor sounds a bit overpowering.

I meant to give all the Caelian units #mountainsurvival, but that went away after a bit.

Re: the Seraphs, do you think they're _too_ good? I don't want them to be capital-only in the final version of the mod, but I'm not sure of the appropriate cost. It would seem something like 225 or 240 might be appropriate.

Re: the base troops, since all Caelians presumably belong to one of the three tribes, I would at the least have to put each unit in the correct 'feather color'. Also, the Caelians in this mod don't use the ice weapons and armor that the normal nation does, so I found it simpler to just make my own troops rather than use the stock ones.

Re: Poison, it's again the best way I could find to show the Raptor Clan's interest. I'd _like_ to give them 'Undead Awe', but that's not really an option. So I made them the ultimate pragmatists who guard Caelum against everyone _else_ so that the High Caelians and Spire Horns can rid the world of the undead.

Well, I'm not sure if dual-weapon fighting is useless against undead/demons. Against certain undead (i.e., the chaff), the banishment strategy would be better. However, when going up against the more thug-oriented undead (and demons), the upgraded Spire Horn troop gets two attacks at 13, with a Magic weapon, that does IIRC _45 damage_ (All depends if the x3 multiplier is before or after Str is added. Even if before, it's a 25 dmg strike.)

In the somewhat limited tests I've done so far, the protection on the troops seems fine. The 'normal Raptor infantry' gets spears, while the Legionnaire indeed gets a Short Sword.

Idea about Javelins for everyone is an intriguing idea, though I shied away from something like that to try to give each Clan a distinct 'feel'. If you like, though, I can sort of 'switch' the Raptors and the Spire Horns. Keep the Raptors with the Javelins but give them dual-weapons while the Spire Horns get the shields and the 'staying power' of melee.

Hold&Attack would seem to waste their Javelins, I think. But that's a tactical issue, not a 'design issue'.

Thanks for the idea about the 'custom shield'. I'll _definitely_ look into that.

Thanks again. I'll take it all into consideration and get back to you.

[llamabeast]

This looks good. I have to agree with Endo that the wing colours look a bit psychedelic though. They're not the same style of colours as the dominions art in general. For example, normal Caelians are meant to have white wings, but because of the shading the pixels aren't actually very close to white. Similarly look at a priest's robes - you know they're white, but the colours used are darker, which gives a more realistic look and allows for more contrast.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance yet to think about more than just the graphics, I'll try to take a look soon if I get a chance.

[VedalkenBear]

I find this odd, since it's not that far off from what Caelum already has. It's probably an issue of shading, which I am pretty bad with already.

If someone wants to do a little project, take the High Seraphine and give her wings aspects of all three Clans. Think of making her wings look like they're 'dyed', but with roots showing (going through all three clans).

People think the Raptors looks okay; any suggestions there?