Mod: Caelis Immolatum ON HOLD

[VedalkenBear]

Apparently, balance is not appreciated here. Therefore, I will be putting this and any other mod I am working on on hold until this is rectified.

Good day.

[llamabeast]

Would this be an additional nation rather than a replacement? I think that would be cool - a splinter faction of Caelum perhaps, that got caught up in the struggles with Ermor (while the rest of Caelum were off somewhere else). I think that would be good, it'd allow for a Fire-Caelum vs Ice-Caelum game.

Sounds like a good idea anyway, I like the concept.

[Sombre]

Yes the AI is smart enough to have flying units walk/hop/slither along until they are in range to fire their weapons. It can be observed with Caelian shortbows in the CB mod quite regularly. So javs would work fine.

I like the idea of Caelum adopting ermorian style tactics. Roman troops were copied by several nations in the time of the empire, right?

It's slightly harder to manipulate the vanilla graphics than you might think though, due to a lack of 'perfect' vanilla sprites - there are methods but I'm not a fan of them and they are quite time consuming. Something like sticking an ermorian style tower shield on a spire horn troop should be easy, but it really isn't.

[VedalkenBear]

As far as the art involved, Sombre, I'm referring to more a straight palette-shift; e.g., turning a Seraphine's robes red.

Okay, the initial responses are solid, so I'll 'get to work' on it. If I wanted to do a new nation, which slots are open for it?

[llamabeast]

Where could I find out about methods for extracting sprites for the game? Why are they so hard?

[llamabeast]

PS VedalkenBear, I look forward to see what you produce with this, make sure to keep us up to date/bounce ideas off us.

[VedalkenBear]

I don't know if it's hard or not; I just don't know how to do it.

So far, the only unit I've made is the High Seraphine. Typical Caelian stats, No leadership, Stealty-2 Preacher... question, though. Can you even mod the inquisitor ability onto a commander? I don't see it in the modding manual...

I plan on giving the Raptor 'sacred summon' the Howling Bow, or (if I can get it to come out right) a javelin-equivalent.

And, in true dualistic fashion, I plan on giving a new Pretender God that has two forms; in one, very much a classical Virute or some such; in the other, something very close to a Moloch or Prince of Death, but has an attack or some such that generally takes control of undead (or something along those lines).

I _really_ wish there was an attribute called #undeadawe, or fear that _only_ worked against undead. As it is, the Raptors are probably going to be used against non-undead, as opposed to be anti-undead researchers.

[VedalkenBear]

Mages for Caelis Immolatum:

Spire Horn Seraph: FFAA (FA 100%)
Spire Horn Seraphine: HH(FA 100%)
Caelian Seraph: FAWW (FAW 100%)
Caelian Seraphine: H (FAW 100%), +2 Research
Harab Seraph: FADD (FAD 100%)
Harab Seraphine: H (FAD 100%), Stealthy (+0), Spy

There's basically a direct clan-by-clan shift here, with a slight deviation for the Spire Horn Clan (they are traditionally weaker in magic, I wanted to keep the Caelian HH Seraphine in PD, and I didn't want a sacred Communion Slave). Current prices look like it's going to be 200g for the Seraphs, and 100g for the Seraphines (this is not including the High Seraphine).

Is this magic too weak or strong for ME? It seems comparable to others (particularly Machaka).

With this path, it looks like I'll be making two national summons for each tribe, one that is (AACC, where C is the tribe's magic type) and missile-oriented, and the other that is (FFCC) which is melee-oriented.

Oh, and this mod probably won't have any temperature preference (or it prefers 0).

Edit: After more thought, I have decided that all of the Seraphines will be reduced in magic to (FA 100%) random. In exchange, the Caelian Seraphine will receive a +2 Research bonus, and the Raptor Seraphine will gain Stealthy(+0) and Spy. (The Raptors were the ones that found out the dangers of Ermor's path.) The Spire Seraphines will not really need an adjustment. All costs (for the Seraphines) will stay at 100g.

Very likely the High Seraphines will also gain the +2 Research bonus plus the Spy trait, to represent all three tribes.

Edit: I sort of noticed that there was not enough Fire/Air going around (it was all second fiddle). Also, the only real reason I was including Astral magic was because of Caelum's current summons (The Spentas and the Yazatas). As I plan to create my own Yazatas (clan-specific) and I can always just change the path/cost on the Spentas, I'm dropping Astral magic from the nation. This is going to make the Spire Seraph FFAA (FA 100%), to give the nation the ability to have some overall good magic.

As a small aside, I put the 'clan specific' path back into the Seraphines' random.

[Shovah32]

Sounds interesting(aswell as a great nation for the phoenix), i'll be sure to playtest when you release it.

[VedalkenBear]

For the units, I'm going to do a somewhat basic approach. Two (maybe 3) units per Clan. To wit:

Spire Horn:

These are the 'anti-undead' troops. They will have magic weapons (dunno if I'm going to keep the ice weapons or go with something fire- or shock-related). I might go dual-wielding with them as well, to make them the 'offense-minded' meleers.

Caelians:

The bowmen. Probably will give the 'better' unit a Composite Bow, but also try not to obviate the choice between the two.

Raptors:

As alluded to earlier, the Raptors are going to be _roughly_ flying Legionnaires. Definitely are going to have a higher resource cost than 'normal' ones.

I'm also toying with the idea of giving the Raptors, Spires, or both an armor that would give them an Air Shield value (probably ~30-50%). If any of you have ever seen Caelum 'in action', it can be pretty depressing the amount of friendly fire you get.

Anyway, still not doing a lot of coding; just looking at ideas for now.