Nation mod: Harabatia: Rise of the Raptors

[whiplashomega]

So, this is a nation mod I've been working on for some time as my first real concerted effort to mod Dominions. As such, it has some noticeable weaknesses:

1) most art is from existing units or edited from existing units with a few exceptions
exception a) a few units borrowed from Sombre's excellent Warhammer: Ogre Kingdoms mod, thank you Sombre! anyone who hasn't tried Sombre's Warhammer nations should do so.
exception b) one lonely unit that I designed from scratch, in which my total lack of artistic talent is evident, said unit does not even have an attack picture yet...

2) I'm not sure how well balanced it is, it may be slightly overpowered, though I have tried to balance it as possible. Anyway on to the nation itself.

Harabatia is the nation of the Raptors after they have left Caelum and before they have returned, and is thus a MA nation. The story goes, that after the schism, the last remaining Harab Elder, Menala, led a dedicated group of Raptors out of Caelum to find a new home. Abandoned by the pantokrator, they took heavily to ancestor worship, worshiping the Yazatas and their own ancient dead (including Menala). As they traveled, they encountered other nations, first Arcoscophale, from whom they stole elephants to replace the Mammoths they left behind in Caelum, and Pangaea, where they learned to use the magic of nature. Having left Caelum and abandoned their old worship, the Harab Seraphs lost the knowledge of water magic. Finally, after generations of traveling they discovered a new home, a great mountain surrounded by a forest, and inhabited by a tribe of Ogres. The current leader of the Seraphs, the grandson of Menala, challenged the Ogre chief to single combat, and through the use of many enchantments and the summoning of the dead, killed the Ogre chief and cowed the remaining Ogres into submission. Blessed by their ancestors, the Raptor blood began to vary in form, and while some were born wingless like in Caelum, others were born with true Yazata blood, and are sacred to their people. Now, with the demise of the Pantokrator, the ancestors have chosen a new God for the Raptors to worship in their stead, and their road to dominance and triumph over Caelum is at hand.

Magic: Death, Air, Earth, Nature
Priests: Poor
Strengths: Flying, Ogres make fast and powerful heavy infantry, sacred Yazata flyers, elite wingless corps, and elephants

Weaknesses: flyers are weak in combat, especially against densely packed units and cavalry, many expensive, specialized elite units that suck up resources. Only level 1 priests outside of capitol(highest level 2) and heroes(can get a level 3 multihero priest)

National Units
Wingless Archers: a standard archer unit, graphic stolen from Bogarus, because Raptors do not deign to wield bows, that role is left for the wingless.

Wingless Raven: elite corps of wingless trained from birth for combat. Equipped with long spears, javalins, and ring mail.

Raptor: flying flak, they die, easily, and get in the way, cause they swarm from all sides. Most, useless, unit, ever.

Raptor Home Guard: take a basic raptor, add javelins and a shield, now give them the command "fire closest" and you actually have a fairly disciplined, if weak, spear wall of Raptors.

Raptor Warrior: much like the basic Raptor but with better armor and a sword, still only useful as a harrying unit that takes a lot of casualties.

Iron Crow: Take a Raptor Warrior, give him black wings, better morale still, better armor and a bigger sword, and you get a unit that is twice as expensive and just as useless.

Raven Guard: Take the Iron Crow, remove the shield, add a second sword. Still useless, but now highly susceptible to arrows.

Ogre Bull: My first borrowed unit from Sombre, I find the best comparison for the Ogre units is the minotaurs of Pangaea, but not quite as awesome, lacking trample, berserk, and armor. Still, a good unit that can do a good amount of damage, for a price.

Ogre Irongut: An armored version of the Ogre Bull, these guys cost a bit, but it's definitely worthwhile to get some almost cavalry like heavy infantry.

Raptor Elephant Riders: Similar to other elephants, but there are dudes with wings sitting on top instead of humans. Expensive trampling war machines. Capitol only.

Risen Yasad: A young Yazata born of Raptor parents, this is your sacred unit, and your best flyer. It lacks the resistances of the summoned Yazatas, but has more modern equipment. Capitol only.

Commanders:
Raptor Scout: A copy paste act from the original Raptor unit, but given stealthy. A flying scout is always useful.

Crow Lord: Your basic military commander, good leadership, based on the Iron Crow unit with slightly improved stats.

Young Seraphine: The most basic priests in Harabatia, one priest skill, no magic skill, flying, but unlike the Seraphines of Caelum, not stealthy and cannot lead armies.

Harab Seraph: 1A1D +1AWED needs to be changed to +1AEDN, basic mage unit. ok leader.

Iron Crafter: 2E +forging bonus, useful specialist mage. poor leader.

Caretaker: 1A1D1H +1AEDN like the Harab Seraph, but is also a priest. poor leader.

Harab Naturalist: 2N +.5N +25 supply bonus, specialist unit for accompanying armies through supply poor areas, searching for magic sites, and casting those useful nature summons. ok leader.

Harab Sage: 1D, research bonus, fairly equivalent of the sages you can recruit through a magic site, but will always use death magic, at a measly one point. The 4 point research bonus makes up for it though, to make these great units to recruit as cheap magic researchers.

Harab Elder: You'll probably be recruiting a lot of these, even though they are expensive 2A1E2D1N +1.5 AEDN

Harab Seraphine: You're best recruitable priest, still not great. 1D1N2H, ok leader. Capitol only.

Heroes:
Great Seraphine (Multihero): 3D3N3H, You'll be hoping to get more than a few of these, as they are incredibly useful for leading all those Risen Yasatas, plus summoning of Living Trees.(can summon 5 at once with an extra death magic point) good leader.

Master Harab (Hero): 3A3E4D3N3H, The ultimate leader of the Harab Seraphs, leader of the Ancestor Cult, and all around boss in Harabatia, this guy can kick *** and take names, assuming you can decide how to use him. Though he's rather weak physically, so don't commit him to combat frivolously. Expert Leader

Urvine Deathwielder (Hero): 2N +0.2 The model for this guy is taken from Sombre's Ogre Kingdom's mod, where he is an Ogre Hunter. In this he is the only magic wielding Ogre, he is a physically strong magic wielder, possibly thugable?

The Archer (Hero): He's a mounted archer sneaky spy assassin with great equipment, but no leadership. Great unit for sneaking behind enemy lines and slaughtering unsuspecting mages. Graphic is the Black Hood unit from Bogarus.

Hero of the Yazad (Hero): 1H, Basically an improved version of the recruitable Risen Yazatas, with standard, some basic priest skill, and expert leadership, great army commander or potential prophet thug. Graphic is the same as the Risen Yazatas, may change in the future.

Betrayer of Caelum (Hero): For those who miss the iceclads from standard Caelum, heres one as a hero unit, and guess what, he can summon his buddies! Graphic is that of an ice clad, if you can imagine it.

Summons:
Eagle Kings: Excellent air mages, see vanilla Caelum

Living Tree: Undead war machines. These guys are flying trampling things, pretty cool, but balance still untested. The graphic for them is aweful, as I created it myself.

***** UPDATE 0.7 *****

Balance fixes, descriptions fixed, etc
Also added Harab Sage unit

Future plans: more heroes primarily, maybe a couple more summons. Ideas for heroes would be great, as of now I'm thinking of a non-magic using, weak priest skill Risen Yasad hero, with good physical stats, some sort of wingless archer hero with an awesome bow, and a dark horse Raven Guard of some kind. We shall see.

***** UPDATE 0.8 *****

I know, I posted 0.7 like an hour and a half ago, but I felt compelled to continue working. Anyway, three new heroes added.

***** UPDATE 0.9 *****

Found DrPraetorious Magic balancing guide while browsing about and decided to go apply it to Harabatia, they came out as an 85, rather high, rather too high for balance, as Pythium and Arcoscophale, arguably two of the heaviest magic using nations of MA both come out to 74, as such I've made some changes to eliminate this discrepancy, getting Harabatia at least on an even footing with these nations (also equivalent to Sombre's Skavenblight, which I tested for cross mod relevance, it being one of my favorite mods to play with). Changes made: Increased cost of Harab Sage to 150 from 100, removed 50% chance of getting Nature 3 with Harab Naturalists, thus restricting access to Nature 3 to heroes and very very rarely (less than 3% of the time) Harab Elders. Also reduced the cost of Harab Naturalists to 120 from 140, putting them on par with the iron crafters.

[whiplashomega]

A few changes already:

increased gold cost of wingless archers to 13

increased gold cost of wingless ravens to 15

increased gold cost of risen yasad to 30

fixed Harab Seraph, no longer can get water magic, but can get nature through custom magic, replaced ice cap with half helmet, as Harabatia isn't supposed to have any ice weapons.

Upcoming changes: I plan to make an Eagle King god, which would fit into the ancestor worship religious theme. Otherwise awaiting comments for balancing and further unit creation, particularly summoned units, and maybe more heroes.

[whiplashomega]

Changed the flag, as I realized it was borrowed from someone elses mod, but I forgot which one, anyway new flag included.

[whiplashomega]

It's my birthday, and how am I spending it? modding Dom 3. Anyway, new version released. Adds a banner a new mage commander(Harab Naturalist), and makes a God version of the Eagle King. Also I reorganized the .dm file, upgraded the PD, and altered the starting units(now is 15 Raptor Home Guards and 5 Ogre Bulls instead of 10 Raptor Warriors and 10 Raptor Home Guards). In play testing I've noticed that the custommagic mask never seems to give my mages any additional nature magic, even though it is listed. If anyone else notices this, or knows why, let me know.

[Tifone]

Happy b-day whiplashomega!!

[llamabeast]

I just spent about two minutes looking at this, and sadly won't have more time until next week, but I shall look forward to looking at it properly then. But this looks like a nice and interesting mod to me - good work.

One thing I noticed is that a couple of mages had descriptions of their magic which didn't match up to what they had. Perhaps earth and nature were mixed up? I'm not quite sure now.

[whiplashomega]

I'll take a look at the descriptions, I wrote them pretty early in development, and changed some of the magic skills since then. Also, some other new mage units and further fixes are already done (though not yet uploaded, finishing up some stuff before I upload a new version). It's kind of the way I work to create some sort of initial product, and then just keep playing with until it's perfect, so there will probably be many more versions upcoming.

[whiplashomega]

new version posted 0.7, with a bunch of fixes, such as:

fixed mage descriptions
fixed summon living tree and summon copse of living tree spells
replaced Herald Lance with Golden Spear(slightly weaker with no undead damage bonus)

[whiplashomega]

Another new version 0.8, with three new heroes. This will be it until I have some play testing results (mine or others) to go off of.

[whiplashomega]

Been a while since my last update, but I decided to put a little work in today and rebalanced the magic capabilities, making Harabatia less overpowered, though still perhaps overpowered. Many thanks to DrPraetorious magic skill balancing guide, which I used for the purpose. Details of exact changes below.