Mod: Avernum, Crystal Souls v1.5 UPDATE

[BandarLover]

Great mod Sombre, and I loves the Trog summons. I like that they look diffrent from Dom 3 normal trogs as well. Five out of five stars for graphics!

I think Wauthan gives you much better feedback than I ever could. I do agree with him on the Avernite mage. Really don't use them that much personally.

I'm still playing around with them but this is one of my favorite mods out there.

Keep up the good work.

[Shovah32]

Maybe the crystal souls old age could be them starting to go a bit crazy after being rocks for so long?

[Wauthan]

Edit: Endgame progress report. The AI didn't last long with only this mod running.

1. I've recieved my first and only hero and it turned out to be a 3 nature mage. That's not a good thing balancewise. This means that I can eventually cast most nature spells even without empowering. As I said earlier the Soulguard have a tremendous synergy with Gift of Health since they got 100% regeneration. Not a gamebreaker of course but I would recommend that this hero gets 1 nature, 1 death, 1 air and 1 fire instead.

2. The Nephil Shamans are simply to good right now. Research is through the roof even without the easily available Owl Quills. Might perhaps be solved with a 20% random magic and an increase cost to 110 gold?

3. The trogs are barely balanced for their cost. Trouble is that they are fairly "meh!". Astral gems are more valuable then other gems and I find little reason to invest them in these guys. They need somekind of special ability to make them worth the cost. The Troglodyte Defenders are supposed to have "equipment second to none" yet they only have a basic battleaxe and platemail. I rather have fewer but tougher units with each summoning.

4. The Trog leaders are simply a waste of gems. Blood mages are not all that good this late in the game. They are too few and too weak to start any meaningful blood economy. My suggestion is that you rethink the concept of these guys. Avernums strength is it's tremendous versatility, and the nation doesn't really have any apparent weakness. The Trogs should thus be focused on a very specific use but I've no idea what that would be.

5. The Slith Warrior and Slith Warborn are a bit too expensive for their abilities. I think they could use a +1 on both attack and defence. Also the Warborn oughto be recruitable from all forts. They're not so good that this disrupts the game, and their slow mapmove makes it difficult to reinforce the fallen.

6. For the same reason the Slith Lord sees very little use. Perhaps you could drop the priest magic on this unit, decrease to cost to 65 gold and allow it to be recruited from all forts?

7. The Vahnatai Ranger is a very competent assassin for it's cost and upkeep. The sacred ability is a bit odd since it can't be blessed during assassinations. My humble suggestion is that this unit can only be recruited from the home province.

8. The Crystal Soul could use a few elemental immunities considering the cost. Are you sure that these chaps (shards?) wouldn't be more appropriate as high level summoned units? Their description seems to indicate that they are created rather then recruited.

That's all the critisism I can think of. Hope some of it have been atleast a little constructive. Many thanks for sharing this mod Sombre.

[Sombre]

Ok I'll respond to the ealier post first.

1a. That's a bug. Forgot to give them maxage. Fixed.

3a. Letting Avernum go for 3 death 3 nature from recruits doesn't sound good to me. You mention later on that Greenpaws having 3 nature is unbalancing. They are a versatile nation but avernite mages don't need to be that good. Maybe 90 gold is a bit too cheap, looking at other minor mages of the era. Ok, cost increased to 115, percentage to 60 40. Picks remain the same. I still think they're a pretty usable unit if you've decided to pour gold into armies or you're saving up for a CS. They can give you access to more nature and death magic, after all. I have to put a cost on that. If they're not useful, then they can't be too expensive - they are supposed to be balanced against other mages /and/ within the nation. With the changes I'll make to the nephil shaman, they should be gold.

6a. Well now it's 7 guard, 7 archers per 10 points. I'm sticking with braves and nephil archers after 20 points - the braves just get wiped out usually, but hey that's what they're all about. Discourages people from pumping high PD (which kills SP games for the AI).

7a. I went with astral in order to restrict the player. You can spend more on other paths, but astral is strongly encouraged, because pretender or not, that's a crystal soul. I'm certainly not going to make bless an easier choice for people - I don't especially like bless strategy (it's pretty boring) and I made it something people /can/ go with, but not something I /want/ them to go with.

Re: Crystal Soul Age - it's purely aesthetic, right? I mean you can't be running these things into old age. They're effectively ageless as long as you don't click on the fatigue button.

As for the next post,...

1. Greenpaws is a thematic thing. I don't think she breaks balance (heroes generally don't) and none of the other heroes have 3 in a normally hard to get path. You were just lucky (you could have gotten slitherhooks).

2. Yes, I checked into the balance of these guys and they're too good. I've hurt their research with a -1 'bonus' in the next version, dropped the percentage to 50 instead of 70 and upped gcost to 110. Pretty solid nerf. They should still be useful though.

3. Trog balance is hard. They kept me alive in a game where I had very little territory and the AI had most of the continent simply because I could spam hordes of them using all the free astral pearls from the CS. In my experience trog warriors make a mess out of just about anything. I really, really don't want overpowered national summons, especially as the AI sucks at using them. As for the defenders - that equipment /is/ second to none if you're a trog. It beats fists and leather, that's for sure.

4. I admit I find the commanders even harder to balance. The trog lord and shaman I wanted to put at the head of any summoned trog forces, but the problem is you can't mod summoning units with leaders. I'm just going to drop their cost, make them very cheap. Trog commanders are effectively just there for people who want to play with more trogs and I'm unwilling to diverge too far from the standards set by the Exile series. Basically the trog spells are supposed to be more like teleporting in a heavy infantry force than nationl summons which net you crazy or special magical units. That's why you get numbers as well as stats. I've dropped gemcosts considerably for leaders and defenders, given defenders a little stat boost and dropped costs somewhat for regular trogs and warriors.

Khazi from 20 to 14
Lord from 8 to 5
Shaman from 10 to 6
Defenders from 25 to 20, now 8 summons not 10.
Warriors 20 to 18
Trogs 7 to 6

That's in the next version. I personally think it might be too good a deal considering how many astral pearls you get, but we'll see.

5. Well, they do get a lot of abilities and the warborn are very tough for recruitables. The nation is also supposed to be rather costly (especially slith, who are somewhat rare in the Exile series). Still, I'll drop costs to 15 and 20. Warborn are staying cap only to reflect rarity, with a tiny stat boost. This should encourage their use, without making the nephil warrior, brave or avernite guard redundant.

6. I'm not happy with him being a priest either, so I'll drop that and change the cost. I'm not making him available everywhere due to slith rarity (theme from Exile). He stays sacred. Minor stat boost to make him more thuggy.

7. Sacred simply because all Vahn are sacred to Avernum. The cost is going up to 140 - I'd forgotten it was still at 100. I don't want this to be an assassin based nation. Unlike the other Vahns they aren't cap only because they wander around the surface looking for trouble. Heh.

8. No way I'm boosting the CS in any way shape or form. They are still incredibly useful at almost any cost due to the gemspawning. They're staying recruitable because A) They are already around (lots of them in the chamber), you just need to get them to join your cause. And B) They are integral to the astral economy unique to Avernum, which starts from the very first few turns.

I appreciate the comments, as always. Hopefully these changes will improve the balance for the next version. I'm still very wary that the nation is overpowered though. Particularly with improved summons and cheaper slith.

[Wauthan]

[Sombre]

Hahahah, nice! And thanks! I've put a fair bit of work into making it and it's always nice to get positive feedback.

I think responding to people's suggestions about balance changes is a big part of making a good mod too. It's very hard to see problems with your own nation while you're making it. You really need the perspective offered by players.

Other minor changes - Avernite mage gets ldr40. One less astral gem income from startsites. Startfort changed. Oh and no more spy or basic priest recruitables. They can manage without.

[Aeshi]

*cheers*

[Sombre]

Ok, v0.9 with balance changes and a few other bits is attached at the front (or will be, in 5 mins).

[mivayan]

I just downloaded it from the first post in the thread and tried it. Awsome... almost makes me want to play exile or avernum again.

Bug: The first two national summons doesn't work. They summon the wrong unit number. Haven't looked at the others.

#newmonster 2891
#name "Troglodyte"

#newspell
#name "Gate Troglodytes"
(...)
#damage 2810

[Sombre]

Doh, thank's for spotting that. When I changed the numbers to make the game compatible with a couple of other mods I forgot to update the spells.

Ok that'll be fixed in 1.0 as well as any other bugs people post in the next couple of days. For now I suggest you reassign the spell damage values manually if you know how. I noticed the trog graphics have a couple of transparent bits too, which I'll fix.

V1.00 which will be the final pretty much, will be up within a week then.