Mod: the Shining Host [Read: High Elves] (Work in early progress)

[Caradryan]

Author's note: Hopefully this will be completed soon - this mod will be based on a certain fantasy author whose name starts with a T and ends with kien, as well as the High Elves of the Warhammer universe. Since this is Dominion 3, after all, I will be transplanting as much of the Warhammer HE as possible - wherever lore fails, imagination will fill in the rest.

~~~

"Give no thought to failure, nor defeat. For we are the children of Ulthuan and we shall prevail!"

-Aenarion the Defender, first Phoenix King of the Asur.

Positive Traits:
1. Powerful elite infantry form the backbone of Ulthuan's armies
2. Mages the likes of which the known world have never seen before - High Magic, the purest form of magic can bring some very devastating results when applied in war.
3. High morale, discipline and an impressive provincial defense - literally, centuries of training have turned even their civilian-militia into warriors to be feared.
4. Whatever you can do, they can do better. Be it melee, magic, research, you name it. They are elves, after all. It is only fitting.
5. Something like 10-15 special characters with unique graphics (painstakingly built by yours truly), in addition to many, many heroes.

Negative Traits:
1. Not exactly the most durable army - consider it a beautiful but fragile blade.
2. Costly and smaller in number than a few of the other armies here.
3. Don't have much in terms of summons.
4. Blood Magic is technically outlawed.
5. EDITNG. WILL FIX ELITE SYSTEM. Also lack oversized units.
6. Prone to rushes.

Proposed list:

Core: High Elven Spearelf, Archer, Silver Helms (Cavalry), Repeater Bolt Thrower (Powerful single target ranged unit)

Elite:
Phoenix Guard,White Lions, Swordmasters of Hoeth, Maiden Guard, Ellyrian Reavers, Shadow Warriors, Dragon Princes of Caledor

Commanders:
Shadow Walker, Noble, Prince, Adept, Loremaster

(More info and hopefully a beta coming soon. Been working on this on a daily basis)

[Aezeal]

TO start with the good: sounds great and your sprites where great too, I'm a fan already. Having restated that:

4. Whatever you can do, they can do better. Be it melee, magic, research, you name it. They are elves, after all. It is only fitting. --> ehm this is nice as an add but you should be aiming to produce a balance nation so if you mean on a mage to mage, researcher to researcher warrior on warrior business the elf will be better.. that can be fine if he's more expensive. But remember the nation should be balanced so don't aim to low with your prices --> and don't over do point 3 the impressive PD

5. Requires a lot of random site-searching in order to gain access to most of the Elites. --> what exactly do you mean by this, there are several ways I could envision this and most wouldn't be my choice (dependant on luck) could you tell us more

[Sombre]

I would guess he means they are summons requiring different kinds of gems.

If this mod turns out well I'll do dark elves next. It's only logical.

[Tifone]

I'm with Aezeal, your mod is very interesting Just, yes, don't overdo with the "elves do it better" because it's very tempting to create a nation of uber-units but then nobody will be allowed to play them MP and that would be a pity... Keep an eye on balance a bit

The Elites I suppose are national summons. So yeah it's just normal that it's luck dependant Aezeal, like for every other ritual

[Caradryan]

Originally, I had intended for most of those troops to be normal, recruitable units - the catch was you had to search for a specific High Elven site dedicated to them, with no more than ~3-5 for the capitol. Everything else would be through (somewhat expensive) summons. I'm not sure if I could code that, so I may turn all of them into nation summons instead and leave a portion as the normal recruitable troosp

Don't worry. I'll try my best to balance them out - it's just, comparatively speaking, the Elves will have higher stats than their human counterparts, be more expensive, and have a lower HP to balance things out. Higher upkeep, resource, and production costs will hopefully balance things out.

Again, the PD is due to the higher average quality of the elven troops.

Also, your range is not really that impressive, come to think of it.

[Aezeal]

Well to me it's not quite clear if the idea of needing to find sites to get national troops is abandoned yet (as Tifone assumes). Anyway in your last messages you still mention what the original plan was but not if gthat is still the plan. If it's still the plan I would stop that since the troops would not be high elf specific I think they would be recruitable by everyone (as far as I know). I'd just make it all recruitable, the weaker ones everywhere, the strongest sacreds cap only and the real powerhouses as summons (like most nations)

Maybe I'm just not getting the plan despite your post cus I'm missing something but even though I might be missing something my advice should be clear

Good luck with the nation of haughty nose in the air skinnies. And be carefull about overpowering them else I might be forced to tweak my dragons nation (now painstakingly balanced and given a story and background to fit this balance) a bit to show elves CERTAINLY are NOT the most powerfull race

[Caradryan]

Ah, so there's no way of limiting magic sites so they're findable by your nation only?

I'll have to tweak the planning then.

[Aezeal]

no and if they are found you can't make it so only you could recruit there.. even if you could it wouldn't be a good idea IMHO since it would be too much luck based anyway

[Panpiper]

If you want the acquisition of certain unit types to be somewhat dependent on comprehensive site searching, might I suggest making those unit types summonable, 'but' for gem costs require an equal number of 'all' gems. Given a race with three or four paths of magic normally available to it's mages, it is quite difficult to wind up with anything close to a balanced number of gem production sites. It's quite common to be generating 15 or 20 of one's nations path types and one or two of the gem types not in one's nation's paths. Even if the elves have mages that when combined to search in all paths, simple chance is going to make some gem types less common for that player's game than other types. If the 'wished to be rare' summonables require a bit of 'all' gems, they will be limited to the rarest of the gems that have been found thus far.

Edit: Ok, I guess I was talking out of my hat. I cannot see any way now that I've actually looked at it to implement what I said. It would appear it is not possible to create ritual spells that use more than one gem type.

[Aezeal]

I don't think possible to have a summon cost more than 2 different types of magic and only the one set as first will decide which gems will be required. If you mean divide the summons between certain gems that would be best.

Similar to what Sombre advice on magic I'd say you should have one summon be S (probably your main "high magic" magic path) and fire, another S and W, another S and E etc etc.. (and then the non
that way it will depend on your site searching which sort of summon you can get. You'll probably not want to much of the other paths on all your mages so you could let the primary path (fire/earth/water etc) be just 1 or 2 but for the higher summon just mostly vary in the level of aStral magic needed. (dragon riding phoenix prince like A2S6 or whatever, costing 50 airgems)(Lions of Chrace regiment F1S3 costing 15 firegems)

well I'm sure you have your own idea's but this is what would come to mind to me.