Mod: MA Skavenblight 1.15 hotfix

[Sombre]

Updated to v0.3 See first post for attachment.

[Kristoffer O]

Just a general consideration about autosummons and why I said they are powerful:

1 castle building 1 autosummoning commander each months gives:
15 critters in 5 months of active summoning.
55 critters in 10 months.
120 critters in 15 months.
210 critters in 20 months.

Make these critters warpfire throwers
High upkeep is probably a neccessity.

Imagine having two castles As skaven it will be instrumental to get a second castle ASAP. The second one can make moulders with giant rats to complement the warpfirethrowers.

And you need to get a whole bunch of indie commanders, as you can't afford moving your troops with your skaven commanders. They have summoning work to do

---

I'll do some more testing. I know enough now to decide on a strategy and not just recruiting one of every kind

Interesting to test some warp lightning as well.

---

To anyone familiar with Warhammer. I recommend this mod. It is a lot of fun and you get quite nostalgic .

Now I want my darkelves . I had a miniature chimeara in my dark elf army that I was quite fond of. Never got me a war hydra, but that should be easy to fix in a mod

[Sombre]

Dark Elves, eh? They have some potentially very interesting and powerful units like Witch Elves, Cold One Knights and if I remember correctly a WS-8 assassin.

They're on my list. Next Warhammer nation I do will probably be Dwarfs or Ogres. Very different and interesting races, though without the crazy variety of the Skaven.

[Saulot]

So I played through about 35 turns against Vanheim & Agartha on a no-indep Silent Seas using a POD pretender. I rolled Agartha over like nobody's business. Vanheim took a bit longer, but I decided to change tactics to mix things up a bit, build temples everywhere, and spit out plague chantors/priests. I then stealthpreached, and won by dom kill. Keep in mind this is concerning v0.2.

First thoughts: Graphically, I think everything looks quite nice. I like the variety and flavor of the troops.
Like KO, I found it difficult to pick what to recruit. I eventually tried 10-20 of everything. Though I didn't bother with the blood school of spells at all. Research also proved rather unnecessary, I didn't bother with much of anything past level 3. Shadow bolt, terror, and globadiers were the sought after spells here.

May be helpful: Commanders that I mostly used, were Packmasters, and Master Moulders. Units that I eventually stuck by, were the globadiers, rat ogres, giant rats, and most of all gutter runners.

More specific thoughts:
1. Rat Ogres and Giant rats are great flankers, with 17 ap. I imagine archer based armies would have a lot to contend with.

2. Skavenslaves are manacled, at least they appear to have both hands and feet, bound together. (They're also weak and malnourished). Yet they move at ap 15, like most every other skaven. Perhaps they should be a bit slower? (ap 12?)

3. Rat Ogres are great (Possibly too great). With plenty of health, multiple highly damaging attacks, and the berserker quality, your Skaven morale problems (along with a host of other problems) are solved in one unit. Is there a reason they have a special bite/claw weapon that does more damage than the standard bite and claw weapons?

Downtweak commentary:
Your v0.3 downtweak of one rat ogre per summon allies instead of two, seems like it will do the trick. Though perhaps getting rid of their special bite/claw weapons might be a good idea too.

4. Eshin Gutter Runners aren't just great (They seem incredibly overpowered). They start off with high attack/defense and high stealth as is to be expected of an elite stealth troop. Their powerful dual melee attacks are overshadowed by their shuriken. It seems somewhat strange that the shuriken are a strength based ranged weapon? So their 9 strength adds to the damage. That seems most odd? So it's quite deadly in itself (it can kill a lightly armoured man in one hit), then the strong (15!) points of poison tacked on is pretty incredible too. The fact that they get 2 attacks, and then another 2 exacerbates the issue. With giant rat chaff, and rat ogres for arrow absorbtion/dealing with high prot units, no enemy army stood a chance. On top of all that, they have siegebonus 3! So hiding from them in a fort does you no good. 15 gold seems a real pittance for what you get.

Suggested nerf:
Increase gold cost, and change the shuriken to dt_cap damage (so it only does 1 damage at most), this will make it realistic, a shuriken may strike you in the face/neck if you're unprotected, or may just bounce off a shield. Either way it won't do too much damage (1 hp) unless you lose an eye. The strong poison can then be left to do the real damage. As for the gutter blade, strong poison seems a bit much on a multiple use weapon. Unless it's a magical weapon (I'm not much up to date on warhammer lore), any weapon that hits creature after creature shouldn't deliver significant amounts of strong poison time after time, swing after swing.

5. Like KO mentioned, the plague ability. I noticed it quickly and was terrified of using the commander in combat. I imagined it would wipe out my own sizeable army. You seem to have fixed that in v0.3

6. I like the Assassin, though the spy ability seems almost extraneous for a 150 gold unit. It seems quite balanced and useful nonetheless.

7. It seems like after the first 3/4 turns I stopped using skaven slaves completely. Giants rats took over the chaff role effectively (despite their morale problems). This may not be what you want, though I think it's good that there are multiple chaff options.

Overall, it was a fun nation to try, possessing graphical and descriptive consistency. Though as is to be expected, it will need some balancing. I look forward to future versions.

Also, can't wait for dwarves and chaos.

[CelestialGoblyn]

I just downloaded and don't even have time to test it fully, but...
Wow. Great work on graphics, perhaps better than the original Dominions 3.
Awesome mages, there's going to be a lot of fun with this.
I'll let you know when I take this nation for a full test drive

[Valandil]

The Dark Elf assassin is WS 9 I10!

[Kristoffer O]

Now I've tried 0.3 some.

I still got caught up in the summoning swamp Only researched thau 1 and evo 3. My prince of death just walked around with his armies and couldn't cast a single spell.

I found that I didn't recruit any troops at all, so no gutter runners for me. I spent all my money on Warlords, moulders and castles and then new warlords (some occasional other commanders). I got myself indie commandes to move troops with (feels a bit silly, but it bugged me when I had to stop summoning units). I only used my warlords to move troops when i accidentally had too much chaff.

I thought I was invincible, but with 4 mighty AI's it became hard when Machaka attacked me with even more chaff. Fortunately I spawned troops faster then he got them to the front. But, then an unforseen problem emerged. Maintenance. With Machakas advance my own expansion stopped and my army still grew. I found myself unable to recruit commanders unless I alchemized. And my maintenance continued to grow (as did my army). I find myself unable to start a research, as I can't generate money, and I can't stop getting chaff that costs maintainance. I should get some plague censers and put my warlords in their midst.

The other balancing factor I discovered were the cave fortresses. In most provinces skaven build 1200 castles. Thats good. I still managed to get 5 new ones rather early, but it made my expansion somewhat slower. I built mainly in forests, as they got 800 hillforts there.

I entirely avoided censer bearers after I played a short game where my armies and commanders got annihilated by my own poison . I got the doom-bell-hero in that game. Hoped he would become unequally obese, but no such luck

I got a most amazing assassin prophet, fat as Butterbean (he got himself the heroic obesity), Inberke by name. Eshin assassins are good, very good. They have higher att and def skills than most heroes and more than any recruitable unit I know of. Vanadrotdts got 14-16 right ? What will you do when you make dark elf assassins with WS9 ? Eshin only has 6 IIRC.

I also find it a bit strange that the assassins can instill uprisnings.

At first I was ipressed with the skavenslaves and thought that they were the way to go, but I soon realized they they were chaff. The chieftains summoning is probably not an issue. Warlords might be (each warlord generates 32 gold each turn) as clanrats with falchions are quite useful. Since they have high AP they do not suffer that bad from routs (and they do rout).

Turn 36 or something (spring year 3):
6 forts (and one lost to machaka)
27 warlords - 108 clanrats generated
4 chieftains - ? skaven slaves
6 master moulder - 6 rat ogres
1 moulder - 4 giant rats
1 plague priest - 3 pestilence clan
1 Warlock
5 assassins
a handful of other commanders to move troops

Income 1169
Maintainance 876 and growing

Machakas Manticore with Blade Wind is my main concern atm.

BTW - skavenslaves are quite resistant to area attacks . Only one of the three slaves get hit by each area attack.

[Sombre]

Saulot - Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure why you wouldn't bother with research, since the Skaven are actually quite good at it and can cast an array of excellent spells. Perhaps the allure of summon allies was too much for you, as it was for K O. Certainly I don't want people feeling research is pointless for the Skaven - when I played with them I didn't feel this way at all, but I wasn't trying to crank out a summoning system.

Were you using 0.2 or 0.3? In 0.3 the summoning of allies was nerfed quite a bit - only one rat ogre instead of two, increased upkeep costs, nor globadier or warpfire thrower allies etc.

Anyway, let me address the points you raised numerically.

1. Indeed they are. The Skaven army as a whole is fast and likes to lap around, which makes up for the fact that they tend to get torn to pieces by massed archers and nations like tienchi. Gian Rats, however, aren't the best fighters in the world. In fact they tend to take a few casualties then run away - as one might expect. Rat Ogres have much more staying power and like to berserk, but aren't supposed to be available in numbers unless you're going for a dedicated Moulder strat (which would work best with lots of blood, I reckon).

2. A fair point, but if I made them slower they would lose some utility as frontline/flank chaff. I'll think about it.

3. Originally they used the standard bite/claw, but in order to actually do damage to heavier infantry and properly represent their power in the Warhammer world (where 5 or so can tear up a unit) I wanted them to be better. I could have increased their strength and attack stats, but this would put them well out of line with my methods of stat conversion from WH to Dom3. Basically in WH they aren't penalised at all for not having weapons - their claws are as long and hard as shortswords after all. I felt the dom3 standard bite and claw attacks didn't really make sense as compared with random weapons, at least in the case of the Rat Ogres, so I upgraded them. In my tests Rat Ogres still get hacked to pieces by massed infantry, killing maybe 2 each before they go down. I might make them a bit weaker, but they are supposed to be a real handful for the enemy, so maybe changing their cost and availability makes more sense.

4. Gutter Runners are a unit I haven't changed since I stuck them in, so I'm not surprised they have balance issues. I agree with you in regards to the gutter blades, those will get weak poison instead of strong. Regarding the shuriken, the standard dom3 shuriken has these stats:

Damage - 1 (plus strength)
No. of attacks - 2
Range - strength
Prec - 0
Ammo - 4
Strong Poison

Pretty similar to the Eshin ones. More ammo, but no prec bonus. However this weapon is, as far as I know, only used by Jomonese Ninja, not something you'd be able to mass and not something that comes cheap. Because there's no 'medium poison' I'm going to give the Eshin shuriken 'weak poison' and I'm going to reduce the damage to -1, so they won't be too hot versus armoured troops. I could also push up the goldcost of the gutter runners, who as Eshin troops are supposed to cost a pretty penny, but this will already have made the significantly weaker (the strong poison was the real problem I think).

5. Plague Priest has no plague attack in 0.3. However you can now summon plague rats with a little blood magic, who look exactly like Moulder rats and can really ruin someone's day.

6. I dropped him to 130 gold in 0.3 (mostly by accident), but it's going back up in 0.4 and his

[Theonlystd]

Question


Pestilen Censor Bearers not having 100Poison Resistance .. I understand y the Monks dont have it.. But the Sacred units blessed from the god arent immune to the there own poison clouds?


Way of design?



Edit-Summoned the Plague Rats.. I got 10 regular giant rats.

[Sombre]

Oops, you're right. I'd fixed that on my version, but not the one I uploaded. May bad. It'll be fixed in 0.4 and plague rats do indeed kick ***.

Yes, they are supposed to take some poison damage - it sends them berserk more often than not and it's thematic - plague censer bearers are quite capable of killing themselves by breathing in too much incense. I'm not entirely happy with the way poison clouds and poison globes still kill off units with like 80 poison res - I think it's a flaw in the game,.. thus in the next version there will be a nifty spell available to plague priests and chantors (and grey seers, but they generally have better things to do) which for the cost of 1 death gem will grant poison immunity/greatly increased res to your army.

I might release 0.35 tonight, which will have no new graphical content, but will implement the bugfixes and balance changes mentioned in this thread.