Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Yeah, they really are better than Principes. They have a lower defense, to be sure, but also a higher attack and repel--and poison, both from their spears and from the coral armor. They for the record wipe the floor with equal numbers of Principes in an equal fight--even when you let the Principes start with a full javelin volley. On top of anything else is the high magic resist(13!) and high hitpoints(14!). Also you tend to have better buffing paths than Ermor, and even if they manage to pop a surprise Fog Warriors on you they'll still die to the poison.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

I'll give the Coral tribe warriors some nerfs in the next version, (-1 hp, att, def, mr, mor) should do the trick. I likely underestimated the effect of the poison armor when costing them.

As for the shamans, it seems that they are just underpriced. I'll beef up their gold cost.

As for your assestment on "Ride the Currents", I've got highly different opinions about it (mostly from Squirrel), but if it is too useful for defense, it could get some fine-tuning (higher cost?).

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Nah, Ride the Currents is fine. It's just more useful for EA Atlantis than for everyone else because they're more capital-centric.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Okay, time to update this thing. I recently sacrificed one MP game of mine to test how easy it really is to attack UW with a land nation under the new magic item settings. The results proved to be very disencouraging.

I was Shinuyama and had access to Kappas, most of the water breathing items, undead summons and all sorts of stuff to get UW access. Basically, my UW access was a lot better that of a average land nation.

And I had no shots. Total of 0% chance of winning against the organized defense of the UW nation. Many things contributed to this fact:

1) The Poor Ambhibian pelaties from magic items are absolutely crippling. Note that the penalties from water breathing items are NOT the same penalties received from being natural poor ambhibian. For reference:

Poor Ambihibian: Att -3, Def -3, enc +1, AP -4

a troop under water breathing item: Att -3, Def -3, enc +3, AP -6

That's right *****es. Encumberance +3. I mean WOW. Sure, if you have access to niefel giants of something, it just *might* be worthwhile to bring them UW. Under those penalties, anything else just dies against the basic Triton. You might be able to take your first province by suprise, but once the UW nation just beefs up his PD, your casualties will be devastating. And you actually have to forge items with gems for the priviledge of getting your units killed.

So, I'm going to make a new special combat spell that gives units underwater with breathing items get +4 attack, +5 def, +4 AP. So with that buff they would get total variables of: +1 Att, +2 Def, +3 Enc, -2 AP . You can live with that. I think that this buff could like W2 to cast and be in alteration or enchantment on level 3 or 4.

2) The combat casting in UW is a total mess. On land your options for good combat paths are mostly in evocation or thaum (only if you have S, though). In UW, your options are alt or thaum (again only if you have S). So, if you are moving from land to water or from water to land, you sometimes have to completely switch research gears to a completely new school of magic.

So to be blunt, you have to forge gems to assault UW *and* also possibly switch research to schools that you don't want go through just for the priviledge of suffering horrible casualties UW. Gah. No wonder that people usually just leave UW nations alone.

So, I'm going to go through all of the spells and make more of them castable UW. I'll leave the things that make absolutely no sense in UW alone, but the rest will be fair game. Rust Mist, Slime, Bane Fire, Sleep Cloud are examples of spells I'll make castable UW.


3) Not enough ambhibians to summon. This is where your options really start to diminish. You basically have Naiad Warriors + Sea Dogs + "some" Undead to summon if you want to get UW. That's about it. What if you don't have access to W+N? Well, you're fuc*ed basically. So what can I do to help?

I'll make the UW breathing stuff make some goddamn sense. Your normal longdead is able to get UW and that makes sense because it does not breathe, but a Bane Lord can't get to underwater altought it clearly does not breathe either. You can't believe how stupid it felt to forge Water Breathing Rings to my Ghost Generals, who obviously don't breathe in the first place. It's just pure WTF, from the start to finish. So I'll go through most of the summons and give ambhibian tags with the following principles:

Unit does not breathe: Poor Ambhibian (includes stuff like Bane Lords, Mound Fiends, Unfrozen, Manikins .. etc)


Unit does not breathe + incorporeal: Ambhibian (includes stuff like Spectres, Fall Bears, Winter Wolves, Ghosts)

All spells whose summoned units got UW tags will also made castable UW.


Creatures that have ties to fire & air elements are an exception, since they have an actual *reason* to have restricted UW access.

I'll also give all Vine Men a new water shape called "Kelp Men", making them basically ambhibious. Same thing will also happen Vine Ogres and Ivy Kings. This is to give both land nations and UW nations access to cheap chaff that is able to cross the water barrier and would be a competetive option in both.

4) No PD underwater
Oh boy, this is probably the most crippling of all. No PD means no way to effectively hold captured territory, and because UW indies suck, your defenses will be piss poor anyway. Hence, all the terrain you manage to capture will most likely be easily counter-raided away soon. The only option against this is to divide your forces to defend the territory, which will make you lose the major confrontations with the UW nation. There is not much I can do about this due to lack of modding tools, but I have an idea to alleviate the problem.

I'll make a special remote summon spell that summons a immobile kelp monster to a UW province province. The kelp monster will onebattlespell some kelp men (like 2 or 3) and have all normal + magic + undead leadership. Basically it will allow you to skip the recruitment of a expensive commander and let you recruit the troops that you need to defend the province while the commander itself will give some units too. The summon will only need N1 to cast and will be cheap in gems.

I'll be sure to give UW nations some love too, see the "fix-list" below for more details. I'm also going to stop pushing the alternate "coastal recruit" versions of the nations and push more for a "global" UWGIM mod. The future options will be: UWGIM global (like the old one, no national changes) and UWGIM nations (global + global UW nation changes)

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

This all sounds excellent. Let me know if there's any way I can help. I especially like the idea of 'fixing' stuff which in vanilla doesn't really make sense.

I think it would be wise to avoid making death too strong against UW though. It's already a very powerful path and if it's actually giving you better options to go underwater than nature, air and water, that feels very wrong (which it might with stuff like fully amphibious ghosts). I believe the way to counter this is just to make sure that the N summons, W summons etc that are going to go underwater are comparably good.

I also think more sites should be added, coded to appear on coastal provinces, that give decent indy troops for invading the seas. This is especially helpful on NI maps, but also on regular maps it would be awesome to be able to take the coasts and get amphibious troops of good quality (better than mermen and naked shamblers) and inversely, it would be more incentive for the water nations to actually try and hold the coasts.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Yeah, I started working on the mod and immediately noticed some stupid stuff. Apparently you can make Gargoyles and Living Statues underwater, but not Crushers/Wooden Constructs/Clockwork Horrors. Which makes absolutely perfect sense!


True. But the thing is that UW nations have very good priests (Oceania and Atlantis especially) and you can't really compose the bulk of your forces from Ghosts (they are too expensive) and the basic linebackers of Soulless and Longdead will still suffer from the poor ambhibian penalties (especially the reduced AP hurts as the enemies will get a lot of banishments in before the guys are in melee). But it is a valid concern and I'll keep an eye on the issue.

Out the top of my head, nature will get increased access in the form of Kelp Men and Manikins. I'll probably also make Sea dogs a pure nature summon. Water will get the new "ease UW item penalties" spell and amphibious Winter Wolves. Air is a bit problematic. Wyverns, Draconians and the like don't really make sense UW. We could perhaps mod something in for air, but I really don't have many ideas. Giving air magic a copy of the "negate UW item penalties" spell is an option thought.

Good idea. Basing on my experiences with the Holy War mod, I'd say that something like ~3-4 unique common sites (to prevent duplicates) and a couple of uncommon sites for variety would be good and likely enough. I could use ideas for them thought. One that allowed recruitment of ichtyids (and a resource bonus to boot) would be good, but what else?

But since I'm probably going to let go of most of the national stuff, I'll have a lot of excess graphics that I could use for modded good amphibian units for these sites. The "Merman Knight", "Son of Selkie" and the "Coral Tribe" unit graphics could be used for new units. I'll probably also scrap the "Troll Ambassador" unit, so her graphic could also be used for this purpose.

Well, I could use ideas (and code) for the coastal sites. Also the Air summon problem. I'm also a bit unsure if I can make a decent "Kelp Man" sprite (no good base sprites for kelp creature), but I'd like to try myself first.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

I see no reason why air has to be a good magic path for UW summons. Air Queens are specifically prohibited from going UW, after all. Air can let you breath UW, but let you do awesome stuff down there? Uh... huh?

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Excellent changes. Gone are the days where you have to go abovewater to cast Streams from Hades(ugh).

And yeah, I see why Air wouldn't have any good underwater summons. However, the Phantasmal Warrior/Wolf/False Horror series as well as every Lightning spell except Thunderstrike works underwater, so I'm not worried about Air's straight power there. In general Air is really light on the summons, anyways.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

It doesn't have to have a good summon, but it should be better for UW access than death.

I think a W/A combo summon that can fly into the water, dive in and get a water shape would be cool. Squall elemental? Dire cormorant? ;]

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Okay, yeah, we really do need a W/A combo summon--"Flying Fish"?