Putting together a megamod for a megagame (long)

[DrPraetorious]

Okay, so I want to put together a mod to extend the number of nations in play to the maximum limit - I believe that there will be 11 free nation slots after the next patch.

The 11 mod nations will have to be:
1) Chosen.

2) I'll need to get permission from the authors of the mod to abuse their work in every orifice.

3) I have to re-encode the mods so that they will all work at once and in conjunction with a streamers mod and a single age mod.

4) The national banners will have to adjusted up in size to match the streamers mod.

5) I'll probably have to trim down the extra black space on at least some of the custom graphics to prevent a crash.

6) After a period of testing and compliance enforcement on my own, I'll run a few MP games and get feedback. Since the megagames are not CBM, these new nations will be balanced in the absence of CBM, but I may use the CBM-ified versions as a starting point.

Anyway, name Mods that you'd like to see included in the package, respond and include more feedback below. If you are a mod author, give feedback on what you'd like to see done with the mod (i.e. can I include it, do you have reservations about my including it, etc.)

So, which nations do people want included? Here are my comments on the existing mod nations. Since I've got a limited number of slots, some of these mod nations might be combined together, especially if they are thematically very similar.

My prejudices:
* I prefer nations to be slightly overpowered than for them to be slightly underpowered. This is more of an issue for the changes I make then for the nations I pick.
* I prefer folkloric sources over more modern sources. I generally dislike stuff that is "generic", new nations should have a very specific schtick if possible.
* I prefer nations that play differently from the existing nations.
You'll see these prejudices reflected throughout.

... Preliminary Choices to Include ...
Urdheim - Nearly usable as-is.
Gaea - Needs to be strengthened, but I don't want to destroy the unique flavor of the nation.
Haida Gwaii - Is non-compliant in several respects, but . Probably needs to be strengthened.
Padmassa - Needs a lot of artwork. Will be dropped if I can't finish the art in a timely fashion. Heavily non-compliant but I don't need permission to fix it.
Insectoids - May be hard to balance.
Theran Empire, Horror Scourge - The horrors themselves are non-compliant (aren't horrors, don't see horror marking.) I think it'd be strategically fascinating to have a nation that was dependent on more compliant horrors (summons them as indies, sends them in remotely, etc.), so maybe I'll ***** at Amos until he lets me fix it. I love the artwork.
Carthacia - I might steal some units from the other hoburg mods if the author(s) don't mind. The trebuchet is non-compliant. Needs some balance fixes.
Kharamdzu - Resource and money bonuses in capital are maybe non-compliant?
Skaven - I haven't looked at balance/compliance on this one yet.
some vampires (Sanguinia or Therans, possibly a combination of the two mods if the authors agree to let me combine them).
some elves (Sylvania or Blood Elves, possibly combination of the two mods if the authors agree to let me combine them).

Other interesting possibilities:
* I also like Avernum, Arga Dis and Tharoon but that's too many slots . Arga Dis has a lot of schtick overlap with Arco and Tharoon with Patala, but they are certainly valid choices, especially if I decide that one of the nations above is unworkable.
* The trade confederation and magoserium mods have a similar schtick but are a bit thin. I could combine those. Tarent and the Commonwealth might also be worked in somehow.
* Sar Elad could get the various angelic crusade mod units as national summons (and possibly some as recruitables).

I have mysterious compliance rules that exist in my own mind and cannot be written down .
A mod nation is non-compliant if it doesn't hew to the general standards of existing nations in each era - UNLESS it deliberately doesn't as part of that nation's unique flavor. This mainly means I'll be standardizing prices, but I might remove recruitable siege engines (for example), or adjust the statlines on certain units, among many other things to make the mods "fit". This is distinct from game balance - a nation could be awesomely overpowered and still be compliant, or could be non-compliant in various ways but perfectly balanced.
A mod should also, from a backstory perspective, not directly contradict anything in the canonical nation descriptions, including (for example) redefining what a giant or a troll is.

[Cor2]

Urdheim is a good choice. Skaven is good.

Sylvania is overpowered IMHO. May I am just bias because they crushed me like a bug in the Mods over Europe.

[Sombre]

From what I've seen, Urdheim is considerably more overpowered than the CBM Sylvania you faced in mods over europe.

If you have that many nations, be prepared for huge quantities of descriptive text to be lost. The game can only handle so many extra descriptions.

[Amos]

so maybe I'll ***** at Amos until he lets me fix it.

I have no problem with you changing the mod as you wish and releasing it as a separate version.

[Sombre]

And,...

You have permission to use my work as long as there isn't confusion between your version of it and my version of it. So any nation you use you'll have to rename or in some other way make clear that it's not the same as my one.

I don't use much in the way of folkloric sources for my nations though.

[Amos]

I missed this part:

some vampires (Sanguinia or Therans, possibly a combination of the two mods if the authors agree to let me combine them).

I dont think that the combination is possible. We have a totally different vision of a vampire. Thats why my mod changes even the vanilla units.

[Juzza]

you knoooow if your looking to play this mega game with all these nations who wants to play the standard nations in this? you could edit current nations and put in some more custom nations.

[Foodstamp]

You have my permission to use Gaea and Haida Gwaii. I only ask that you use the same guideline that Sombre suggested; distinguishing between the two versions of the mod with a banner edit and a note in the mod file.

I filled up my "Free" nation slots fairly quickly with my personal projects. If you want to add more modded nations, you can eliminate certain nations and replace them with the modded ones. That was my solution. I eventually plan on consolidating the units from nations that exist in multiple eras in order to free up even more slots without losing the replaced nation's units from the game.

[Sombre]

You can't possibly have run out of unit slots. That's insane.

[DrPraetorious]

I believe that Foodstamp ran out of *nation* slots.

There are possibly some nations that could be replaced, because few people want them - but the purpose of the megagame is to see every nation played, so I think it misses the point to do that. Descriptions show up in declaration-based order, I think - so I might just permute the order of declarations in the mod allowing everyone to see descriptions for their own stuff.

Also, the description overflow bug might be fixed in the next patch.

Reconciling the two vampire nations will require some work - especially as I will not be changing any of the existing vanilla stuff (although in the case of the over-nerfed dom3 vampires I think it would be a good idea, that isn't the point of this exercise.) Nonetheless, I could port some units and description from one nation to another fairly easily. The more material I have to work with, the easier it is to construct a balanced nation. If the result seems a little schizophrenic, there are several schizophrenic nations in vanilla (LA Marignon, LA Ulm) so that's fine.

Distinctive naming is also not a problem. The entire kabootle will appear only as a single unified mod file, so it should be fairly easy to avoid confusion.