Mod: Mod thread- WH hordes of chaos

[Sombre]

Eh,.. I think if you take the attitude that those placeholders will do fine indefinately you might not get a lot of people playing the mod.

I mean eyecandy isn't everything, but it's pretty important from a Warhammer perspective - half that hobby is just collecting, customising and painting miniatures.

[Panpiper]

You are right Sombre, I just looked at the sprites again in a thumbnail viewer. What I wrote wrote is clearly inaccurate. I should have said, 'some' of the place holders will do 'for quite a while', while other much less appropriate placeholders get replaced with proper sprites.

Sombre said:I mean eyecandy isn't everything, but it's pretty important from a Warhammer perspective - half that hobby is just collecting, customising and painting miniatures.

I hear you. And if I can get a better grip on graphics editing myself (as I've already freaked out Valandil with the sheer number of units) I would actually add several more varieties of differently armed chaos warriors, so a player could 'collect' then into nicely mixed squads.

By the way Sombre, you might have noticed that I used one of your mods, Arga Dis, as a template of sorts to guide me in getting everything filled in properly. Nothing of your mod survives now in Chaos Undivided other than the structure of the DM file, but I thought I aught to acknowledge the debt.

Humakty, thank you. The mod is at the point right now that unless I get feedback or stuff from Valandil, there is not much left for me to do other than graphics (which I have little experience with) or the Tzeentch magics, of which I have little knowledge.

On that note, does anyone want to take a shot at writing the essential Tzeentch combat spells (astral)?

Only Valandil, the thread's starter, can put a diskette icon on the thread I believe.

[Sombre]

This is just how I'd initially approach Tzeentch magic, so it's a bit rough.

Red Fire - An accurate (prec 10) midrange fire ball type spell that does aoe 1 18 damage, but can be resisted by mr.

Yellow Fire - Either a small aoe fire shield buff, or some sort of protection buff. It gives a 5+ ward save in warhammer to mage and his unit, which basically translates into a defensive buff of your choice.

Green Fire - Just a Tzeentch version of confusion, really.

Blue Fire - An upgraded version of red fire. Prec 20, better range, more damage, more AOE. Again, can be resisted by mr.

Indigo fire - In warhammer this spell kills enemies and produces horrors from their ashes. It's nasty as all hell. I guess there are a few options here, but what I'd go for is actually a combat summon of a handful of a special kind of horror which has flying (representing them being cast forward by the caster) and does weak but aoe red fire esque damage as its melee attack, coupled with a nice explosion sprite which will cause them to look 'staggered', going off one by one. Trust me that'd look roughly right, they'd burn a few guys and then probably die. It'd be cool.

Violet Fire - Pretty much a straight copy of the banish to inferno spell

So all 6 Tzeentch spells are actually doable, which is nice.

[Panpiper]

Thank you Sombre, I will work with that. Right now though my brain is so full of Gimp that I don't seem to be able to think in terms of coding at all right now. I'm a bit burnt right now having done nothing but this mod for the last three days. I might yet continue working on more sprites this evening. I think your spells will probably spell the 0.30 version of the mod.

[Humakty]

I've been trying to playtest your mod,but the rapid progression of your work has not made it easy.( I tested with a 4F/4W/4S/4D/4B pretender, with prod 3 and growth 1)

Has they are now they're maybe the most powerfull army around, because an elite army with 2/3/4 F mages,before phoenix power,is absolutely deadly.As it is, their only weakness is the low MR of these guys.

I would suggest lowering the ressource cost of the marauders, or to give them some 30/40 admin forts, so that I don't end up with chaos warriors only (they cost twice as much in resource, but they make up their cost every day). I also had some minor recruitment pbm.(very minor)

As for the gold cost, abysian heavy infantry is 20 gold, and wouldn't hold the line for ten seconds against these brutes. I suggest putting the base cost of chaos warriors to 30, and see how it fits.(and raise the cost of latter units accordingly, all of them are gorgeously powerfull)

The basic mage is worthless, the exalted one is a pure machine of destruction.(upkeep :150 basic/125 exalted : I wouldn't see a superior chaos mage costing less than his apprentice)

As for the test, I've made an early war with arcos and burned them to cinders. I lost several chaos warriors to my own artillery. As I've some mages with F4, I'll recruit some indep archers, so as to flame arrow them...

As for the summons, I ve only had time for two of them : portepeste : 5D gems for 20 of them : really nice with a nurgle army, so you can poison them before they get burned (great combo possibility with bog beasts).To the opposite I found the discs of tzeentch : 10 gems for 10 : useless, even caelian archers would fit better in a melee, but they don't cost gems!

Great and speedy work on this mod ! Keep going, and you'll have the undisputed honor to finish the 13 other nation mods (with their UPP).

[Panpiper]

Humakty said:
I've been trying to playtest your mod,but the rapid progression of your work has not made it easy.

Heh. Sorry about that. ;-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you Hamakty. As I've said several times before, I am really bad at playbalancing myself, much preferring to work within a point build system. Your feedback (and hopefully that of others) is what will really get this mod properly aligned with other races.

Has they are now they're maybe the most powerful army around, because an elite army with 2/3/4 F mages, before phoenix power,is absolutely deadly.As it is, their only weakness is the low MR of these guys.

That and their lack of their own ranged troops. They are meant to be powerful. What is supposed to balance this out is their difficulty in massing any sort of large numbers. To that end their forts are kept very low admin. Also to that end, your feedback is a great boon. All your suggestions have been implemented.

Great and speedy work on this mod ! Keep going, and you'll have the undisputed honor to finish the 13 other nation mods (with their UPP).

I have gotten little real work done in days. I am going to have to stop modding at some point today for at least a little while to attend to a few things. ;-)

[Panpiper]

I want to add a 'musician' summonable unit similar to the banner bearer summonable unit. This is thematic with the way the miniatures game works and will make Chaos armies even more colorful. The banner bearer currently confers a 10 standard and a +5 fear. This is appropriate for the banner. However I really am not sure what effect to give the musicians to make them different and worth including in a unit. Does anyone have any ideas?

I am thinking of perhaps replicating somewhat the effect of the banner bearer, giving the musician a 5 standard and +0 fear and instead of the near useless 'kick' attack of the banner bearer, give them instead a reasonable area effect attack. For a melee unit however that could well be more of a handicap than a boon, given that they are likely to be hitting their own guys half the time they attack.

[llamabeast]

You should be very careful putting fear on any but the strongest units. It's extremely powerful.

Also with the standard bearer, even AOE1 is powerful. I assume you must be talking about larger areas, since AOE1 would never hit your own men. But anything larger than AOE1 is almost certainly overpowered.

[Panpiper]

Banners are an integral part of warhammer armies, something that is seen with virtually every showcased unit. The game mechanics have these banners as powerful magical devices that indeed, project power causing fear in the enemy and strengthening the morale of their own men. I really feel that including such a banner is vital to preserving the spirit of warhammer. However there is nothing to say that such banners come cheap. It may well be that I have them too cheap, perhaps far too cheap.

Currently in the Chaos Undivided mod, such a banner is carried by a 'relatively' crunchy troop, not much tougher than the standard, recruit anywhere chaos warrior (other than being blessable). He has a rather ineffectual attack. Currently it costs 5 blood to summon (create the banner effectively) and is a level two blood spell for research. Assuming it is kept in the game, what level and blood cost would you recommend llamabeast in order for it to be balanced?

[Burnsaber]

If you make the standard bearer a commander, you can make him more powerful without making him cost bajillion gold.