Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Beautiful. Thanks for posting them! I wish more modders would post their graphics, since it's the only way I can look at them.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Thank you!
A question, though - is the vehicle a War Altar or War Wagon?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

It's a very unfinished war wagon. The War Altar looks quite different.

The war wagon code is all complete though and kicks some serious ***.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Yes, I remember - you did post it somewhere and it was quite good. While Altar looks differently, I have no actual miniature and don't remember how it looked laterally. So I was somewhat puzzled by this picture. Thanks.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

so you workin on this or lizardmen or both or just plain workin?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I'm not working on this currently. When I have lizardmen to a solid point, I will resume work on this and try to release a limited beta within the nearish future. The Empire is an absolutely vast nation which is going to take a lot of time to 'complete', since it has the max number of heroes (and then some), all the knightly orders, all the different colleges of magic etc. But I do want to get a version playable and then keep adding to it bit by bit, like I did with Ogres, Skaven and am doing with Lizardmen.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I'm excited about this. I like big Nations with a lot of options.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I've decided I'm going to take an unusual approach with this mod and model the Colleges of Magic system (which is a major feature of the nation and perhaps the most original thing about it) before anything else is done.

To sum up the system. You recruit initiates who summon wizards who summon wizard lords who summon the unique patriarch (or supreme patriarch for gold) for each College of Magic.

Initiate - a 100% random in virtually every path. Their research to gold ratio isn't good.
Wizard - Each College has a different one with different abilities, traits, paths etc. Each requires 1 in the appropriate path to summon and their summoning depends on research in the appropriate school. Each has 3 points of magic total.
Wizard Lord - As the wizard, but their path requirements match wizards, not apprentices. They're also higher research. They have 5 points magic, total.
Patriarch - They are unique and have many powerful abilities. They require boosted wizard lords to summon. They have at /least/ 7 points of magic total.

So Empire get varied magic, yes? Well eventually they do. They are almost the polar opposite of High Elves or Slann - they are excellent at a single type of magic, but there are no 'rainbows' amongst them whatsoever. It will also take a long time to research and summon all the different schools and in fact Empire's research isn't that hot,.. unless they pick certain schools to pursue and are willing to find and spend a lot of gems.

I have posted a lot about the Colleges of Magic before. I have very detailed plans for how they will all work, but they will require a lot of balancing.

Thus it makes sense for me to release the Colleges of Magic as a sort of pre-mod, changing a nation like, say, Marignon, to have them as national summons and remove its innate mages. This will allow people to test them and me to showcase the idea and evaluate how well it works. This is absolutely my priority project now. It will be released in the near future. It will feature little in the way of new graphics, using placeholders (recoloured generic mages in robes) but it will have new spells fitting the magic of the colleges.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Sounds great!

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Very interesting concept. I'd like to see how it turns out.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

The idea seems interesting, even though as it is now, I'd think it more suitable for, say, Chaos or Tomb Kings. I am not sure whether it's possible to change it so that spells would change existing wizards instead (turning unit into a new form with better magic and special abilities, plus appropriate gold cost for upkeep), but if it's so, I would make such approach...

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Because it's a summon you mean? It's fairly easy to explain.

"When Teclis brought magic to the humans of the Old World, he knew that while too short-lived to understand High Magic and the full truth of the eight Lores, human wizards could certainly master one Lore. He founded the Eight Colleges that stand today; Bright, Gold, Grey, Amber, Celestial, Light, Jade and Amethyst. The Colleges pick only wizards of clear potential to join their ranks and while they compete for the best and the brightest, they work together to license and thus control aspiring wizards. These minor mages, known as Initiates, may be employed by any of the Colleges to fill lesser roles, acting as scribes, investigating rumours of magical sites and the like. For ambitious Counts and generals, Initiates serve as both magical support and contacts through which fully fledged wizards from their patron College may be hired."

A summon doesn't have to mean you draw a magic circle and use gems to make something appear. You can even have 0 gem summons which then cost gold.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

This looks like its going to be another mod nation that will get me playing this game more than I should :D

I love the whole wizard summoning concept to get the magic working. Plus I love nations with large numbers of heroes.

One question on the wizard summoning though. If you summon the Patriarch of a school and it dies, will you be able to resummon it again or is it dead?


With Sombre behind the wheel this will be on par with the Skaven mod if not better!

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

You can resummon a slain patriarch as though it were a demon lord or similar unique summon. But the cost will be steep, of course.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Summons which cost not gems but gold are interesting, of course. I didn't know such were possible.
At the same time, an idea that a wizard can eventually reach higher state through certain rituals of initiation is more appealing to me. Or is it impossible to implement by modding?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I can't see a 'clean' way to do it, sadly. There's probably a few hacky ways to do it, but none of them appeal to me. Maybe you'll be able to work it out when you do 'em.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I don't think it's doable really. I don't really see the problem with summonable mages either.
If the nations have the accolyte and the normal wizard of each school (thats already quite a list on the recruit screen) then having the 2 higher powers of mages as summons is nice enough if they are not too high into the research tree and don't cost to much gems to get and still need upkeep.
When you said you could make them cost gold I think you meant upkeep right? or can you actually make them cost gold to summon (because I wouldn't know how).

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Yeah, upkeep. 0 gem cost summons which /then/ cost gold.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

hmm a mage that would normally cost 400 gold for would be cheap... or just incredibly expensive after a number of turn if the upkeep was high.

The biggest problem I can think of is you have NO recruitment times and/or restrictions by castles. YOu could just recruit TONS of the cheap summoning bastards, send them to a lab on the front, let them all summon a powerfull wizard and then send him out in the fight immediately, so he's consting only a very low upkeep.. and the summoners could then just KEEP on going.. powerfull mages could be used as expendable chaff. The primary investment is what makes a unit valuable and why you need to protect him.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

and when you've won a war you'd just separate the summoners in one prov + one powerfull firemage and the rest in another and cast a few fires from afar on it to kill all the powerfull mage chaff so you don't have to pay the upkeep :D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Well the summons in this mod cost gems (and have upkeep). I was just saying you could have summons which cost no gems, as an example of using summons in a way that isn't supernatural.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Then again it's not unreasonable for the most powerfull wizards to cost gems.. they'd need some magical investments to buy all their stuff and components and of course their patron needs to pay that, and they'd only work in a somewhat magically advanced place, wizards have their pride too so SOME research limit needs to be there. I'd say the most powerfull wizards might only come to lands where there was at least research level 6 in the paths they use most :D.

You'd just need to have some acceptable level of recruitable mages and since you insist on having all paths inboth nations (a topic on which I'm completely neutral there is a lot to be said for both options (more diversity between the nations and smaller recruitmentlines vs lore)) that would mean a line of 9 mages :D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

The summons are restricted by their gem cost and by research. There is only one recruitable mage, the 3rp 100 gold initiate used to summon College Wizards.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

hmmm if there is a gem cost that is of course a restriction.. I'm not sure how happy a nation will be if all their research needs to come from summons though and IMHO it will be pretty hard to balance but with your experience it'll probably end up ok anyway :D

Are you working actively on Empire again btw?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I had a thought. How about having the heads of the colleges, whatever they're called, available as pretenders? Them going for godhood would make about as much sense as anyone one else for the Empire (apart from the Emperor of course).

The reason for my thought was this. As we were discussing the other day, saying "I'm going to play Empire and concentrate on Bright Mages" is all very well, but in general you're best to site search for all paths, and so once your research has got fairly advanced you might as well get all the mages from all the colleges.

However, and here's the key bit, you could have the head of college be not especially strong/rather expensive for a pretender but, like the Mother of Rivers in CBM, give gems of the appropriate colour. So if you wanted to really concentrate on Bright Mages you'd take the Bright guy as your pretender and get an extra 6 gems a turn of fire gems, research straight up evocation and dominate with the Bright wizards while having only small numbers of the other colleges. So it would allow more explicit choice in how you play the nation.

What do you reckon?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Idea is nice, though I have the feeling Sombre has it all figured out allready and won't be making much changes.

After having said the idea is all right I have to say I think giving 6 gems might be a lil too much :D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Yeah, well 6 was just an arbitrary number, you could use whatever value seemed appropriate. 6 is what the Mother of Rivers gives in CBM though - seemed quite extreme to me!

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

well I don't play much, so certainly no CBM but it still seems a hell of a lot to me :D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I think making each of the leaders of the magic colleges a pretender choice really limits what the Empire is and can be in the game. You could do exactly what you are proposing by simply summoning the one master of the magic college that you want and just working within their magic paths and ignoring the others.

I would rather have them all as choices to summon. Who knows you might just need those other college heads later on to give the Empire a splash of a certain color here or there ;)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Er, what. No. The point with a pretender is that you start off with them and they could be a source of gems. Summoning a high level mage is a very different matter.

Anyway, say you took the Bright pretender, that wouldn't limit you from the other colleges at all. You'd be in the same position with respect to, say, the Amethyst college as if you'd just taken one of the vanilla pretenders. It's just that you'd have a boost getting started with the Bright wizards because of your extra fire gems.

I wasn't proposing limiting the available summons depending on who your pretender is. Just adding some pretenders which supply gems.

Anyhoo, this is an irrelevant discussion in a sense. We will have to see what Mr. Sombre is thinking!

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

It's an interesting idea. I actually think more pretender options should allow you to get hold of gems, because you can effectively already spend points at that stage on getting gold, so why not a specific type of gem?

Problem one is that I want to have the patriarchs available as unique summons. They aren't capable of god level magic, so they wouldn't make a lot of sense as F9 S9 pretenders. However I could add a symbol for each of the winds/lores/colleges of magic with minimum trouble, which would produce gems of the appropriate type. Something like a blackened obelisk for Fire, a model of the celestial spheres for heavens etc. Set their new path requirements very high, give them gem production, researchbonus, high in their natural path(s) etc

Problem two is for some reason I don't like doing pretenders. So we'll see what happens. But it's a good idea which would let people focus on one school heavily if they really wanted.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

How far along with Empire are you, Sombre?
I'm quite interested in taking up modding - I was looking at Empire as it as a nation I'm interested in, both in seeing it adapted here and otherwise.
Though if you're about to release something I will wait to see your go, your creations are top-notch. :)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Not very far at all. I have come code and I have some sprites, but it's nowhere near finished.

I'd work with someone to do it if we were on the same page about stuff and the artwork wouldn't end up looking like a mishmash.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

All right, I've finished the (possible) Bright Wizard pic. I went with the WRFP description of imperial bright mages (a'k'a well trained and inspired military leaders as well as mages). If you like the style & quality of the pic, I could be inspired to do more mages (but I'm getting more and more tempted to do Brettonia, so I could switch projects..).

http://xs541.xs.to/xs541/09285/bright_wizards981.jpg

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I think they look good, Burn! Though I would suspect a bright mage to have more fire, fiRE, FIRE!!

And, if I may throw my 2 cents worth in...

Why not start with a Brettonia mod while making the odd off graphic to help Sombre out with Empire? Not that Sombre really NEEDS help, I'd think, he is quite prodigious at turning out great artwork to go along with his mods. So I guess I'm saying, 'Go make Brettonia!' that way I can have a couple human Warhammer races with which to beat back the skaven, ogre, and lizard hordes!

:D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Well, magic is sort of tabu in Warhammer world. It is born of Chaos, corrupting and evil by it's very nature. Every spell a wizard casts might backfire by a Tzeenetch's Curse. Hence they really don't light stuff on fire just for a show, it's not worth of being impaled by pitchforks.

Besides, there will also be a Bright Order Patriarch, so I need to top the "Epicness" when/if I do him too. He can have fire.


Took heed of your advice, see the new hype thread for Breton for details

Sombre seems to a bit of a perfectionist (doing spawns for all the lizard gods! Damn, talk about fine-detail!) and his time is limited -> slow progress rate. He was the one to actually suggest that I help him out in IrC a while back. Besided, Im pretty hyed about the Empire nation myself. If I can somehow help to make surface faster, I'm all for it.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I have been super busy the last couple of days. Hopefully I can power out some ogre stuff tomorrow and get closer to doing actual content for Empire.

Until then let's wait and see about collaboration - I don't want to set you off doing stuff while I get sidetracked by another project or sit around twiddling my thumbs :]

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I can't picture you twiddling your thumbs Sombre. :)
(btw: Great job so far!)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Ugh. If llamabeast had the balls to do it..

Also, comment on the pic, comment on the pic! :o

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I think you could add in some fiery destruction to the attack sprite - at least that's what I though to do ;)



One of the ideas I'm working with is take the the Abyssian Warlord and Warmaster's unitid for the Warrior Priest. Why? For those who don't know, when a Warlord is made a prophet it turns into a Warmaster.

This should allow me to give a special appearance and abilities to the "Prophet of Sigmar".

Either way, this idea could be extended to the wizard orders, allowing the player to choose in which direction to specialize the nation. Here's a list of the units with a prophet form.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Good idea, I think. This somewhat limits usability of such a mod, of course - the mod nation wouldn't be usable along with existing one (Abyssia in this case), but a possibility for unique prophet characters outweights it for me. I'd probably use something like this for my Arabian-based mod even though I want it to be usable along with other nations. But this allows for unique Khalifs... And Warhammer would work best as a total conversion, I think.
As for Empire in particular, this could be used to make unique War Altar, for example (the armybook contains some indication that there is only one such).

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

A War Altar would be much better done as a unique summon. There is no problem with making new unique units.

The idea of making a unit which changes on being prophetised is quite cool though. I think the best thing to do would be to create a new unit for Abysia, exactly the same as the Abyssian Warlord, but obviously without the special propheting thing. Then Abysia would be left essentially unaffected (apart from losing one little cosmetic feature), while you would get to do the cool thing with the Prophet of Sigmar.

I personally am very keen on having all mod nations be compatible with all vanilla nations (ideally even those in other ages). I think both me and Sombre like mixing the Warhammer nations with the vanilla nations.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Burn, I think the Bright Wizard isn't one of your best, because:

1) His face looks funny.

2) He is generally a bit blurry and low and detail. Maybe he needs more bling.

Obviously he's still a pretty good sprite and I'm only offering criticisms because I think your sprites are amongst the very best.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Yeah regarding the mixing of warhammer and vanilla nations I think some people have this idea of a total conversion, but even if it were realistic (which I don't believe it is) I'm not sure it would be that much fun. I like adding the warhammer nations as dominions 3 nations which mix and match with other mod nations and the basegame.

There's something awesome about taking warhammer skaven up against legions of Jotun giants, or Tomb Kings against the goblins and oni of Shinuyama.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Not so awesome - I (Shinuyama goblins) killed off Skaven while Tomb Kings made a very strong peacetime development, after which we both took part in stomping down Ermor! :) Maybe if the game didn't turn into sheer boredom by the time of Skaven-stomping, I could agree with you, but I don't think mix and match is intristically better...
Of course, another thing needed for total conversion would be a possibility to make Warhammer-specific magic items and spells. Spells are sometimes possible, but items are sadly not (there are too many cool features currently not modable). If you meant this, I can only agree. But make all Warhammer nations excluding items (except maybe some may be modelled with summons already having them?) and with limited magic difference is certainly possible. Actually, I almost have them on paper - excluding graphics. A plus side of such an approach is that they should be balanced amongst themselves in this case. A minus side, of course, is ton of pics necessary at one time - what other problems do you see?
By the way, which Warhammer nations are still not taken by modders? ;)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Can't understand you, sorry. What was not good, and what are you suggesting caused it?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

... what? I don't get it. How is that anything to do with mixing warhammer and dom3 nations? Sounds more like you got bored in a specific game, during the first war?

No, I wasn't so much referring to spells and items. I think 90% of the spells in warhammer can be adequately represented in dom3, while the items are far less important to the warhammer flavour, and many of them are already represented by basegame items, or could be made so (almost all of the weapon style items in warhammer can be made for example). As you say, you can also make summons, heroes etc who already carry certain items, describe these in the text and give them appropriate abilities. A Skaven summon might be for an assassin or warlord armed with the Fellblade, who is struck with disease or decay when entering battle, but has a hugely powerful weapon etc.

Well I don't know if you noticed, but there have been a lot of projects where people almost have everything on paper and almost have all the ideas mapped out - but they don't come to be. In my experience having the stuff mapped out, doing the initial 'research' etc is virtually nothing of the time and effort it takes to make a mod. I have every warhammer nation pretty much mapped out, every warwind nation and a few others,.. but I don't feel it's actually progress. So as I said before, I wish you luck in making every warhammer nation for your own TC and look forward to playing it, but I don't think it's realistic.

For reference, here is the state of play regarding warhammer nations. I wouldn't say that any of them are 'taken' by any modders, since there's nothing to stop someone doing their own version.

Skaven (Done by me)
Ogre Kingdoms (Done by me)
Lizardmen (Done by me)
Tomb Kings (Done by llama)
Chaos Hordes (Panpiper has made a mod which isn't 100% finished but apparently covers most of this)
Empire (I am working on, handful of graphics and code)
Greenskins (Okin was working on, several graphics seen)
Bretonnia (Burnsaber is working on, several graphics seen)
Chaos Beasts (Zepath made some sprites for a chaos nation which included some beastmen, but other than that, nothing)
High Elves (I remember someone posted one or two graphics which looked ok - they are also /partially/ represented in Zepath's Sylvania)
Wood Elves (also partially represented in Sylvania, other than that, nothing)
Dark Elves (I made one unit graphic, someone made some slightly ropey looking ones from resizing the miniatures)
Dwarfs (There are some fantasy dwarf nations, but nothing warhammery really)
Chaos Dwarfs (Someone posted some decent sprites a while ago, for a few basic units)
Dogs of War/Tilea (I actually have code for about 10% of this, and some graphics never seen)
Araby (There are a couple of middle eastern mods, unfinished)
Vampire Counts/Sylvania (Partially covered, sort of, by Zepath's Sanguinia)
Classic Undead (Nothing here so far, really)

I think that's all of them. I might be missing something though.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

By the end of first war. What I meant is that the presence of Warhammer nations didn't add anything to the development of events. Also, while either classic Dominions nations or Warhammer ones have a rich history of interrelations already developed, they do not really have good reasons for relations between groups. Of course, some game scenarios can actually play along with this fact - but I at least think those where nations know of each other more interesting.
Another thing is that some Dominions nations have many similarities with Warhammer ones. And this makes them somewhat interchangeable, also creating a reason for mod-maker to make his mod nation overpowering in an effort to make it different from an existing ones. I feel such an impulse myself sometimes and I think that something similar could afflict the author of the Tomb Kings... :(

Yes. Now I see what you mean, thank you. I still think that it's possible, though it would probably be better to make them one at the time. I hope first ones would appear during the following winter when I have less work...

Thank you. I'd say two things considering this list first: it makes no sense to make Arabia under this project until we know what Warhammer Arabia actually looks like (some Warhammer novels descripted it, but that isn't the same as an actual official description). As for Arabian mods under work, I wouldn't include them here. At least my unfinished one was planned as a part of Dominions world and its storyline, as were others which I saw. Considering "Classic" Undead it's possible to think of them as Nagash's army - but I don't think it would be particularly different from Vampire Counts if he would be acknowldeged in their descriptions. I think that differences between vampire bloodlines could be more trouble here and it may be necessary to make them into different nations (as it isn't possible to change recruitables, etc. according to the Pretender's choice). What would you say on this?
Of Warhammer nations not covered I think I can make either High Elves or Tilea realtively quickly. THe latter especially as they don't require much new graphics...

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I don't feel that Tomb Kings is overpowered, but if you have some insight on that front I'm certain llama would like to hear it in the Tomb Kings thread.

I'm not including them as Warhammer nations. I mentioned them for the same reason I did the zepath nations - parts of them could be repurposed.

I'm not sure what you mean by project, are you referring to your own bid to make all the WH nations? There isn't a whole lot on Araby, but there is source material and they got a limited selection of Warmaster scale models too.

Well, I think there are a fair number of differences between the classic undead army lists, which more heavily featured necromancers, liches etc and the Vampire Counts.

If I were doing all WH nations I would split undead into Tomb Kings, Sylvania (with mortal units alongside undead), Undead (in the classic sense, with necromancers and liches prominent) and Vampire Counts (featuring the 4? remaining vampire bloodlines).

But realistically I'm not likely to get all that done. And people want Empire before I start anything else.

Depends if you want to make a quality mod nation, or just bash one or two out to up the number of Warhammer nations for a Warhammer themed game or something. I personally believe Tilea/Dogs of War requires some of the most diverse and difficult graphical and coding work, but that's just my take on it. I go into a little more depth and detail than a lot of people would.

Anyway, I swear by the 141 unholy gods of Wimpole Hall I will resume work on Empire this weekend. For real.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Thanks!
By project I meant what exists - as different people do different Warhammer nations with some coordination I think I saw. Maybe it's just me. :)
On Warhammer Undead I see your point. At the same time Necrarch bloodline I think was made as a replacement for old Liches/Necromancers. So at least them would take the same niche. Other lines also have slightly different realations with mortals. Another thing is that in Warhammer Necromancy is restricted to this serie of armies while even those of the others who clearly have access to Death magic (in Dominions sense) do not use zombies, etc. Possibly, it's just impractical, but this is one reason I think about total conversion...
As for Tilea I must note that it has units and characters which are quite the "human norm" as its core. This allows to use much conversion. Coding will necessiate more details, of course, but it's much easier for me than work on new graphics.