Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Version 0.23

-Some people complained about inability to bless Undead soldiers, so I included Dr. Praetorious' hot fixes for blessing type spells (Dr. if you are against this send me a message);
-Red Monks weapon changed to Magic Staff.

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Added another spell "Blood Frenzy".

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Version 0.24

Vampires got new armor that costs alot of resources (now some of them cost more than cavalry resource wise) to prevent massing in the early game.

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Armored Vampires. Sounds scary.

Ahhm, but doesn't sit to well with the image of Dracula in a suit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Didnt you see the movie "Dracula"? He was armored at the beginning http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

The idea of a vampire dressing up in heavy chainmail in order to feed on some unsuspecting victims sounds a bit... unusual. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: New Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Ever played Vampire: Dark Ages?(RPG from White Wolf) fits right in.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

There's also Late Ulm's Blood Marshall hero, who is rather awesome in his plate armor, especially if you forge him a helmet...

Might want to compare these guys to his stats for balance considerations, and realize that he's a unique Ulmish hero.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I like Vampire: Dark Ages! Well, I've never actually played it, but I've read the book cover to cover.

As chance would have it it's out on my desk right now in fact. White Wolf books are awesome.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Game balance is a difficult, thorny question - I talked about this some in another thread (and suggested the higher resource costs).

However, I'm not sure that LA Ulm (not generally regarded as a powerhouse of deadly kung fu) is the right standard to judge national power levels.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

This mod changes Marshall's stats as well as those of basic vampire, vampire count and vampire lord. I added higher regen and def while removing immortality from basic vampire. I also adjusted resists.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Small changes to sprites for "Tetsu Militia" and "Thrall Berserker".

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Version 0.25

- All vampires got darkvision and darkpower;
- Vampires cost more;
- Humans cost less.

Re: Mod: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Gave pikes in all my mods animalawe 3.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Version 0.26

Added domkill 1 to the nation (no need to set Death scales).

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Seems on the powerful side.

Glory of the Gods, about a dozen normal AI's. I have always been #1 (but tied for a few turns) in provinces. There are now no more indies I can get to (Last I saw there were a few left but not where I can go.) and I have about 2 1/2 times as much as anyone else although some of this is luck: I found an AI pinned by bad luck and got all his territory. It would probably be more balanced in MP as the AI doesn't know how to react to the undead.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

The vampires are very effective against indies. Did you use "Blood Trap" spell?

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

No. I'll be trying again pretty soon, I'll try the vampires.

The world got pretty badly ravaged until I finally empowered enough to take down Ry'leh's Burden of Time spell twice. It was crazy--I was marching over enemy empires and my income was actually falling slightly. They were hurt far worse than I was, though, I was facing almost no opposition and simply marching across his lands. Blood hunting is not very productive anymore.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

By "vampires" I meant recruit-ables like knights and guard. With powerful soldiers like that, how powerful do I need to make the summoning of the Vampire Master/Bat for it to be worth it? I'm also considering raising the number of summoned thralls to 50.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Something that doesn't make sense with this race.

It's got a pop-killing dominion and yet it's a blood nation.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

The vampires have to eat. The pop-killing dominion isnt that bad if you use Growth scale. And besides, this nation is so powerful that without a few handicaps you would be invincible.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I'm just saying that it feels inconsistent.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

It's basically like hinnom's pop-eating. Except easier to manage I think.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I think it's an interesting twist. A blood Nation with pop-eating makes sense for vampires, afterall. It will definitely differentiate them from every other blood-Nation. And it will help avoid the 'Hinnom effect', of having a very powerful Nation that just gets more and more powerful by the end-game.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I've been having bad luck with the game while playing this race.

Once it went off into la-la land while moving, once the game simply vanished during turn generation. I wonder if there is something about it that confuses the game engine.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Play-tested this mod myself many times, and never had any problems. This mod doesnt have anything that could cause the usual problems - like holy pretender.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

The Mighty AI's have been driving me nuts.

This race starts slow but becomes unbeatable if it has enough time to act. At the mighty level I'm getting overrun before I have enough vampires.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

It looks like I'm going to win against the Mighty AI's--I cut back on the number of AI's a bit and it went better. I've been at war with all my neighbors basically the whole game but I was able to hold them off with assassins (I kept assassins in every province of theirs touching me and kept killing the commanders--while their armies could have walked over my empire they couldn't move because they were leaderless) until the vampire production ramped up enough.

I won't call it won yet because I have now come across C'tis and they outgun me 2-1 but they haven't declared war yet.



A couple of things:

The vampires are described as immortal but they are not. I waited to hit Pangea until I had a candle in the target province because it was going to be a tough battle (*LOTS* of troops had accumulated while my assassins kept killing their leaders.) I lost 1/4 of my army in the strike and nobody showed up in my capital.

The master vampire you get from Blood Trap either shouldn't be able to research or should require a specific "Summon allies" command. As it stands he researches and the vampires pile up. I just completed my research and have over 1200 points/turn.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

P.S. I forgot:

Vampire summoning depends on the terrain you are in.

Put a sorcerer to blood hunting in the plans and vampires pile up. In the hills and nothing.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

You are right. I'll have to fix that.

Will higher cost fix this?

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Could be.

It's now winter of the 11th year, somehow I'm at peace with everyone. The three nations that started near me are now dead and I'm catching up with C'tis--the only real opposition left.

Research is 4300 points per turn--I have them all on research so they don't show up in the army screen while I'm trying to collect the vampires.



Also, did you do something to the vampire lord? I have recruited some, given them skull staffs and am having them recruit more--the intention is to use them as blood hunters. (I've found a 60% off site, makes them a *GOOD* deal!) The problem is that they won't stay on monthly casting. The new vampire lord shows up but the orders are cancelled.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I'd be interested in knowing how many freebie vampires were cropping up per turn at the end.

Giving the vampire master a gold cost might be interesting - there would effectively be a limit to how many you could summon.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I think I was up to around 600 from the main group and I don't have a count on the blood hunters (~350 slaves/turn at the peak, declining due to the dominion kill) when I decided I had enough firepower that C'tis was no longer a threat and there was no point in playing it out. I didn't have enough death gems to recruit enough wraithlords to lead them all.

Gold wouldn't have been much of a limit, anyway--my upkeep was under 2000 and I hadn't recruited anything beyond blood hunters for a long time. I forget what my income was up to, something in excess of 20k--I had Gift of Nature's Bounty up.

I was using the vast amounts of gold to make conquest easier--every province I took I put at least PD 80 in. This way I didn't need to worry about maintaining a battle line, each strike group just wandered around taking provinces. The number of provinces that got retaken was very low, doing it this way was faster than a battle line that would keep having to stop to seige castles.

(Strangely enough the AI hardly was interested in globals. For years I had Gift of Health/Gift of Nature's Bounty/Strands of Arcane Power/Wrath of God up, the 5th slot empty. Finally Bogarus started casting The Kindly Ones and I would promptly dispel it. Gift of Health finally got taken out and I didn't bother to replace it as all my fighting was in enemy dominion and there were no enemy mages in my dominion that might feemblemind the guy who cast Strands of Arcane Power.)

I'm now trying it against 8 impossibles. I'm #1 in all but army size and research. Patella somehow severely crippled themselves--when I found them they had 4 provinces to my probably 40. They declared war, I took them down to two but they have expanded back to 4 after my mercs got too weak (going the other direction through indies.) I've got assassins in every one of his provinces but the capital and he's not expanding any more but right now I'm not in a position to finish him off. I'm hoping to pin him in his capital and dom-kill him as I don't feel like taking the casualties I almost certainly would against his pretender.

I have just encountered Tian Chi and Mictlan, no hostilities yet. I'm cursing the random events--an assassin was in the process of taking an indie province. All the commanders were gone, time to attack--oops, I get the province but now it has a castle that I'm sieging!

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

My girlfriend is in a hospital sick. I'll fix those two issues plus the thrall spell as soon as I'm able.

I added new sprite and:
#maxage 2000
#poisonres 90
#coldres 50
#fireres -50
#darkvision 100
#darkpower 2
#regeneration 50
#domsummon20 405
#def 23

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I don't know enough about modding to know if that would mess up it's ability to keep an order.

I fixed some of the immortality problem on my machine. Vs 8 impossible AI's. Two dominion kills so far, I'm at war with two neighbors, at peace with three.

My dominion is eating into Gath's space two levels by now and my dominion down there hasn't spread very well because it's the area I dom-killed Mictlan in not too long ago. On the other side I'm having an awful time pushing my dominion into Marignon. I want a white candle to attack into so I get my vampires back. I picked off one ragged layer of provinces and I haven't managed to push any farther. He's got temples in every province and apparently a strong dominion. The True Bloods are ramping up well, though, I'm now #3 in army size.

I'm probably going to win this.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Version 0.27

- Fixed "immortality" descriptions;
- Added description to vampires who are able to domsummon others;
- "True Blood Vampires" are now able to become Masters if GoRed;
- Raised price on "Blood Trap" spell;
- Lowered price on "Create Thralls" spell and fixed its description to reflect that.

It shouldnt.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Added the "Summon Vampire Count" spell.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I'm about ready to declare this game won. vs 8 Impossible AI's, it's using your previous version but with the summons that are described as immortal actually being immortal.

It's been going slowly because it's been *VERY* hard to push dominion into my neighbor to the north and I'm only fighting in my own dominion for the immortality.

I finally sent out a dozen assassins with stone idols (I didn't actually assassinate with them) and it cracked his dominion, he's collapsing now. While the edge of my dominion remained fixed in the north I pushed the southern edge across half the map to kill Gath--the vampires always following the dominion line.

I'll try your latest revision, I'm thinking the race is too powerful in SP but probably hopeless in MP because it ramps up slowly.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Ok, I tested this mod out and on the 3rd turn my capital got attacked by a vampire count independant army with a ton of vampires and thralls. It was enough to wipe out my intial army and everything else I had recruited up to that turn effectively taking me out of the game. That kind of stuff obviously needs to be toned down.

Also it doesnt look like any of your vampires are immortal which takes away any excitement I had had for this mod. So I probably will not investigate further unless you change this in the future. You say you fixed the description for Immortality, but I dont see it at all so I dont know what you meant by that.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I would venture to guess Amos had nothing to do with that vampire count army attacking you, I'm pretty sure it's a normal random event that he has no control over.

If the maesters of the blood rose were immortal, and the sacreds, the vampiri would be completely unbeatable so I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. They're quite powerful as it is with heavy armor and a significant amount of regeneration.

Though the sacreds don't really offer that much over the blood legionnaires. Giving up a shield for 3 more armor, 2 more hp and 1 more mr really isn't worth it. I'm not quite sure just what bless you'd use to make up for the lack of a shield... they do have a lot les upkeep though.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I've played several games with the mod and never had anything like this happen. Did you take misfortune??

I do agree that they are not (and it was the immortality that made me look at this in the first place) but given my experience with the race that's probably for the best. They would be too powerful otherwise.

The race is a bit slow to start but once you get your blood economy up it's already a very powerful race.

If you're not faced with an immediate threat, cast blood trap. Cast it again. Cast it some more. Then cast blood trap.

For your slaves you get a unit *PER TURN* for the rest of the game. No upkeep, no food. Summon Wraith Lords to lead them so you don't need too big a pile of commanders.

Sure, they aren't the best of units but against anything short of well-prepared mages or SC's quantity has a quality all it's own.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Nothing to do with the mod - except for the new sprites. It's a regular in-game event.

The idea for the mod was to make more "realistic" vampires. Only the most powerful vampires in literature and movies are actually immortal. I removed immortality and replaced it with very high def and regen.
By "fixing the descriptions" I meant that I removed mentioning of immortality, which I forgot to do before.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Amos' Travelers mod is a nation of immortal fliers. You might want to give that a try, since it might be closer to what you thought this mod would be. They can't recruit any mages but have seducers that might help with that.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

well I think most set ups for nations of immortals would be pretty unbalanced in longer games why would you even want that.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Well, in the travelers mod you do get immortals and you can get tons of them. However, they die of old age after only a few years (probably makes them great targets for wind of death) and most of them aren't very good at killing, so they're more like an endless wave of chaff. Some of them do get mind blasts though. All in all I didn't find the immortals themselves to be overpowered, but maybe if I had used more battle magic they would have been (though amos' mods tend to have pretty poor artillery mage potential, and I think that's one of them).

The immortals in llamabeast's tomb kings aren't bad either. They're sacred medium infantry, possibly heavy infantry equivalent for the age, but it takes a lot of work, gold and gems to make very many of them and just building them is not a winning strategy. I should know because llamabeast is proving it to me right now in the warhammerama game :)

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Well if they die fast anyway you can hardly call them immortal can you :D

and I was talking about a whole nation of really undying immortals :D.

I think immortal units are great for flavor but insisting on a whole nation of them is just too much I'd say.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

This is probably true.

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

rdonj... I said it... so .... why the probably :D

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

I meant probably in the affirmative "yes, you're right" sort of sense :)

Re: Reign of the Vampiri
 

Too powerful? When we have experts that feel they can beat anything?
Maybe you could add immortality, tweak it to operate well with the AI intelligence, set it up with a great god and scales on a really large map...
then start an MP scenario game. All vs the Reign of the Vampiri.
"the Vampiri have settled into the Carpathian Mountains. They must be rousted before they can consolidate their power base" or something like that. Id be glad to host it.

(just a thought)