Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Your commanders are your siege machines. All your noncaster commanders should have at least Piercers, more likely Ethereal Crossbows or Thunder Bows.

Wow, I just realized that the Rune spells are 0-fatigue. Those anvils can keep on casting forever.

Oh, by the way, Grudgestone might do with going down to Evo-2. Frankly, most of your Earth casters have better things to be doing anyways(Legions of Steel comes to mind, as do Earth Might and Earth Meld) and people are going to get level 2 anyways for Arcane Probing.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I guess we just disagree on what is acceptable power level. I could argue why Pythium is just plain better than all of the nations you mentioned, but it would probably be best if we just "agree to disagree" and continue on. Tangents and derails serve no one.

Here is the point where the issue boils down. I just don't see v0.7 dwarfs being weak. I just don't see it. Sure, you have weaknessess, but you have some insane strenghts. Forgebonus 30, superb national troops, summons that can throw 3 Thunder Strikes for 0 fatigue, summons that throw "ingnore shields" 10 AN damage with prec 15 to range 30, national anti-thug/SC chassis for fire gems, prospectors, etc...


Well, people don't really use them for that role (because you have Adons), just because even forgebonus 15 is seriously awesome on a mage that can reach "high level" forgings. I know that dwarfs don't have recruitable SC chassis to "feed" with their forgebonus 30, but still, there is a *lot* of scary **** you can do with them. Besides, Runelords being expensive is also a thematic consideration (In, WH there are likely about max 30 runelords remaining) and affects the King/Runelord competition for the capital commander slot.


Sorry, but not going to happen. Dwarfs aren't supposed to be throwing fireballs around. Anvils of Doom are the only exception.

Exactly why should Runesmiths be thugs? Since when has that been a argument for comparing mages? (Master Smiths suck balls, you can't thug them!). And if Runsmiths were good thug chassises, why would you ever recruit Giant Slayers/Kings? And remember that just their upkeep/research ratio is second to Journeymen, they still, well.. do more research. If I just made them cheapest researchers, why would you ever recruit Journeymen? Now, Journeymen are the most cost-effective solution, but runesmiths give more (research)bang for your buck, ideal when you have some excess cash flow.


But the thing is, Dwarfs aren't that weak in magic currently. Sure, your battlefield magic sucks (until you get anvils), but you can make that up by summons and rituals. There is also is a lot you can do with Journeymen in combat.

See Sombre's post at the end of 5th page for some good reasons why war machines/gunpowder sucks. This mod is a conversion of the tabletop dwarf army into dom3 universe, not a straight conversion (the reasons for that are manifold, I won't start listing them here). To tell you the truth, even if I had the tools to make workable war machines, I probably won't implement them. Why? Because they are boring (gameplay wise).

There really isn't anything intresting about a nation that is always hunched back to end of the battlefield with troops at "Guard Commander" in every battle. Thematic, sure. Boring as hell? Heck yes.

The basic "lighting" attack would be just too powerful, because you have extremely easy access to "Strenght of Giants". 16 AN lightning damage is just way too much. Besides, the basic lightning weapon is just prec 0, which would make thunderers cause a lot of friendly casualties (=unthematic). Also, it's pretty clear from the description and the graphic that they basically use guns (oh right, silly me, "Thunder Staffs"). Why would strenght increase their damage with a gun?

But like you said, they are pretty wicked as they are. You kinda got me on the air items (although Winged Shoes do not give mapmove 3, they just give mapmove +1), but as far as I know there is no forgeable item that gives 3 formiable melee troops with accurate AN+ignore-shield lighting damage to range 30. Thunderers are powerful, are easily accessible and do not cost a lot of mage time. They are fine as they are.

I'll probably give the Flamethrowers a bit more ammo though. Added to fix-list.

Well, the elemental access in the v0.6 was way over the top and I guess I sort of "spoiled" you guys into it with it. The only reason Runesmiths even have elemental access was just to make the paths on the Anvil seem more thematic. It'd be odd if you just randomly got a summon with power in the elements when your other mages are restricted to Earth/Fire/Astral. I made the runelord elemental random 100% in v0.6 out of some random "oh noes, it's too weak" panic attack. Think about it, why should Runelords have common access to water magic? What does water magic have to do with with forging, runes and ancestors? Same thing applies to air magic.

You have a point about the odd 50% random, I'll beef it up to 100% for v0.8, added to fix list.

Good point. Added to fix list.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Last thing about this, I do think Pythium is stronger than the 3 nations I mentioned (maybe not C'Tis, but I'm a sucker for dominion effects). You just mentioned the mages, and I was speaking to that.

I don't think they're Man/Malacha weak, but I see them closer to there than the (non-Ashdod) top. I don't see the slayers as being that good at all. They just seem to die to easily. And everyone knows as the game progresses, troops have less and less use.

I respect the thematic consideration. But I would never choose to recruit a king. You need the research too badly.
I found runesmiths to be decently thuggable in 0.6. That was one of the reasons I thought the slayers were so sub-par: they were totally bettered by runesmiths as thugs. And as it stands, i'd still never recruit a king or slayer. I see thugging being handled by golems for the most part now, or possibly, journeymen. The stealth still gives journeyman a place, even if they weren't more gold-efficient.

I don't know about rituals making up for it, but I think the thunderers can help a bit making up for magic lack. I do see midgame potentially being a problem if you haven't hit anvils yet (which are really really amazing, and I love the changes to them)
That's not a big deal, just wondered was it something intentional, since the mod follows the tabletop pretty close. Besides, the anvils pretty much can do most of the "artillery" stuff anyways.
Pretty sure they give 3, as everything with flying has mapmove 3 (I could be wrong on that though)

And again, I'd like to stress how much I enjoy the mod, it's great fun and looks wonderful.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

...er...you do use a text editor that does find/replace, right? If you include the slashes as part of the string to replace, it should only match on the file paths ("/DWARVES/" --> "/DWARFS/"). Just saying. Though, as you say, it has no impact when actually playing.

Hah! English has a long and glorious tradition of bad puns made in poor taste; try substituting 'y' for 'i', and 's' for 'th':
Hurri --> Hurry
Thorri --> Sorry

...and since it apparently requires explanation even to notice, I definitely wouldn't change any of them.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I still get the dwarf engineer sprite 2 error.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

And that's about the level I'm aiming for. v0.8 will bring some more slight buffs (see the fix list for details), so they should be powerful enough after that.

Well, slayers are not thugs in the same way as Bane Lords, for example. They, are perfect anti thug/sc units, thought (high attack value + immunity to awe + slayer axes). I admit that doesn't really translate well to a SP experience. Althought stone boots and some random good shield should be "enough" survival for what the AI throws at you.

And troops really have less use, but you have some nice specialist units to throw a unpreprepared opponent off. Arbalests hit for 16ap damage, meaning that they can consistently do damage to prot 30 units! Hammers/Slayers are basically immune to awe & fear and hammers hit with magic damage and high attack value, which allows them occasionally to overwhelm thugs. Ironbreakers can be easily buffed to be elemental-immune with "ward spells" and beefed to mr 19 and prot 26 (even more with army of lead/gold). Where is your god now?

Sure, those things have counters, but my point is that your troops are really nice templates to get a lot of mileage out of battlefield buffs and thus have solid late game uses.


It's a shame that I couldn't make the Kings drain-immune. I'll have to try to think about a solution. I might make Kings non-cap (perhaps with a higher gold cost, do disencourage unthematic spamming).

Heh, good thing that I nerfed the smith armor some more then :P.

Well, like I said, Giant Slayers are more like anti-thugs than thugs themselves. So it's pretty likely that you wont recruit some for SP. As for the kings, see comment above this quote. And like I said, journeymen are cost-effective but because of the tight castle commanders slots, I often go for Runesmiths after my first forts have been built (because they basically do 50% more research than journeymen and massing them also has the side-effect of getting that nice 10% elemental random).

Well, we both were right (sort of). I did a quick test, and equipping winged shoes only gives +1 to the mapmove statistic on the unit screen but still allows you to fly over two provinces (basically mapmove 3). But if you give it to mapmove 2 guy, he can fly over 3! provinces.

The more you know...

Thanks, I appreciate it. Your comments have been helpful and given me a lot to think about.

TECHNO BABBLE hits Burnsaber (roll: d20=18 + 4 = 22 over 12 AC)
The attack is super-effective! (roll: 100d6=126)
BURNSABER takes 126 damage!
BURNSABER is stunned!

(sorry, I'm pretty computer illeterate)


Oh, it was a pun! Heh, should have noticed.

Note that the new mod .dm file does not overwrite the old one! I changed the name so that the mod would appear with other WH mods in the "mod enabling" screen. So, you'll have to start a new game (and preferably delete the old .dm file, dubbed "Dwarves").

(Apparently I forgot to mention that on the first page. Fixed now, thought)

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Dwarf kings would be nice recruit-anywhere, but they really would have to be more expensive/somehow worse if so. Slayers would still be your anti-SC(with some King support for the brutal Cursed Luck). If Kings were 150 gold base, Journeymen Runesmiths would be more efficient researchers no matter the scales--and better thugs, besides. Being able to cast Invulnerability goes a long way. If you were planning on just doing Fire Brand/Shield of Gleaming Gold, you'd go with Slayers(for the luck) or Runesmiths(for the 30 prot/reinvig). Clan Kings are used with their default weapon(and shapechanged for defense) for the Cursed Luck. Otherwise it's just not worth it(excluding the possibility of a high bless).

It gives you a bit more flexibility, which is nice. Now I have to try like an E9N4 blessed thug strategy and see how it works(it won't).

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I've still not really had a chance to play the mod, but I was wondering... any chance dwarves could have higher parry on their shields? Being shorter than normal, I would think that their shields would cover proportionally more of their body than the same shield used by a human. So it might make sense to have their shields have a little more parry. It also seems slightly strange that shields are the one piece of armor that the dwarves don't really do well (aside from runic wards). Four parry shields everywhere leaves them strangely vulnerable to arrows. Anyway it's not a big deal, just seemed a bit odd to me.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Yeah, 150 gold (a bit higher for the oathstoned form, because of the +1 researchbonus) was along the lines I was thinking of. I also was thinking of changing their "Grudges" ranged attack to just cursing without the damage aspect. Of course, I'd have to edit the vanilla ranged "Curse" attack to do so, but it will only "break" the low-end "Summon Likho" bogarus summon, so no biggie.

That's one reason I'm not really worried about dwarfs being weak in MP. You can, if you so choose, absolutely decimate thugs /(SC's even, with more effort). The PD only needs minimal support to really shine vs thugs. Your PD is composed of high morale troops (suck it awe/fear!) with good damage output and because of crossbow/arbalests, air shield is a necessity. You are really not rushable by awake SC's (because one hit by a King will just decimate them) and your capital pd can stop many rush-types with minimal support. When you take into account the absolutely monstereous defence values of some of your castles, it won't take much effort to survive to the mid-game.

E9N4 bless should really work out for Runeguards (at least for expansion). They would be pretty much indestructible and they have okay damage output.

Trust me, Dwarfs aren't vulnerable to arrows. At all. Though Crossbows might occasionally take damage with their measly prot value of 13 :D. Dwarf shields have +2 prot value compared to normal shields, which coupled with their already high port values makes their shield blocks nigh impossible to penetrate by recruitable troops (even giants).

Opposing crossbows and flaming projectiles are slightly more problematic, but hey, it wouldn't be really fair if they were immune to everything, would it?

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I was under the impression that the prot value of a shield had no effect on missiles. If they hit the shield they were negated entirely. The behaviour of armour negating lightning attacks when used against shielded troops would seem to bear this out.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

You are entirely correct, protection doesn't matter at all against missiles. It's a yes or no deal, which is why shields provide such a strong protection against missiles. Like the shield which gives an added air shield? Already removes a higher percentage of missiles on its own.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Except it seems that lightning from Storm Demons does not follow this--they absolutely destroy troops even if they have 7 parry tower shields. Thunderers, on the other hand, follow standard shield parry rules. The difference is huge.

And reading the manual again, shield parry is stupid effective and several times more important than shield protection(especially when you already have ~20 prot). It would make sense for at least Runeguards and Ironbreakers to have absolutely badass shields, and probably the standard infantry too. By "absolutely badass" I mean vanilla tower shields(or kite shields, even).

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Sorry, I was kind confusing back in my message. Rdonj was questioning the benefit of the custom "Dwarven Shields", since they don't grant extra parry compared to normal shields and thus make them more vulnerable to arrows. My response to that was the fact htat due their high prot values, dwarfs pretty much ignore arrows already.

As for the custom shields, I meant to say that their melee shield blocks are more efficient due to +2 extra prot, which is the bonus granted by the "Dwarven Shields". (the basic clansdwarf, for example, has 32 prot shield block. Even giants have trouble hitting through that, so they "need" clean high attack hits to damage dwarfs)

You sure? Thunderers should ignore shields, since their damage is in the secandaryattack, not the weapon itself (it's a lot like how the Sauromatian poison archers always get the poison damage through, unless the arrow misses completely). I really didn't notice any thunderer shots lost to shield block in my testing (but I was moslty fighting against abysia in that test). The Storm Demon ignoring shields is probably some special hardcoded (a'k'a not moddable) tag it has on the weapon.

IIRC, the manual values are incorrect. Someone tested them a while back and the protection by parry wasn't as big as the manual would make you believe. Can't recall the name of the thread in question, though. IrC vets might recall the exact numbers.

As for the tower shields on Runeguards/Ironbreakers, it would just make the weaker, since it'd just boost their encumberance without that much gain. I think they're pretty fine as they are.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

A prospector and a some rangers makes a crazy effective force for the price. Expansion, stealthy raiding and regular battles. I´m beating equal numbers of Ashdods elites WITH magic support with ease and have yet to face anything that stands a chance.

Flanking just seems crazy good, broken even. The question is, can it be effectively countered in early game in MP.

I know this will be different in MP but considering you can pump out one of these stealthy raiding forces in every fort every turn it seems a bit too powerful to me. On top of that they break down walls before anyone can say slartibartfast.

As the nation looks now I´d just take uber scales and rush everyone one by one with prospector raiders, wars that would end the same turn they started.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

To ignore the shields, it would need to be secondaryeffectalways, I believe. I haven't checked which secondaryeffect you've used (nor tested my claim).

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Yeah, the dwarfs have great protection under those shields, so they are largely immune to short bows/long bows/composite bows. Of course, due to the way dominions works you still get the occasional fantastic hit (such as an unfatigued, e9 runeguard taking 13 damage from a random short bow). That's not really a big deal though. The part that sort of bugs me, is that dwarfs don't use short bows, they use 12 damage crossbows, which happen to be some of the best weapons to use to kill dwarfs since they only use mediocre shields. That said, I'm not sure how much I really want to see 8 encumbrance ironbreakers, or 7 encumbrance runeguard. If the price of having reasonable encumbrance levels is being a bit vulnerable to missile weapons, I can live with it.

They are quite amazing in melee though.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Prospector/Ranger is pretty nifty...but you're using all your commander slots for noncasters. It's really nasty if you can catch someone unawares(sieging their cap from stealth before they can manage to reinforce province defense), but if they even have a turn of preparation, they should be able to fend you off. Flanking shenanigans only really work in smaller engagements(with the amusing exception of castle storming), unless you have like a dozen prospectors.

Strictly though, if you take Prod-3 you are somewhat of a terror(early game) against certain nations. But that's because you're not recruiting casters and going for a blitz-kill or two.

And Ashdod is prettymuch the worst nation to go up against Dwarves with. You have no chance of ever sieging a dwarven castle, you're the one outnumbered(noone wants to be outnumbered by dwarves), you rely overly much on protection(Adons get absolutely creamed by base 24 damage warpicks, E9 bless or not), and if things go south the Dwarven player just goes after you with some Giant slayers or something. They're not called that for nothing. I'd be terrified of Dwarves if I were Ashdod--especially since the scary armies are stealthy.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Yeah, prospectors kinda got me suprise. The summoning thing was just supposed to be a nifty bonus and nice defendive trick. I was sort of thinking "Nifty, didn't see that coming". I've been playing with them a bit and the battle AI going crazy because of them really seems like a bug (and makes raising pd quite ineffective countermeasure against them). It's just.. cheap. Having a unit that's really only effective because the AI is retarted.

I don't think they're really that broken balance wise. Your forts cost a ton, which makes it even harder to "spam" them without heavy consequences. I'll probably nerf them anyway though, since I really don't like how they play out in the battlefield. It just seems.. buggy and cheap.

I'll have to think of something. I might up their costs further, or reduce the amount of miners summoned to 3 or perhaps make them noleaders. Or I might remove them as a recruitable alltogether and make them summonable by some remote "miner ambush" spell.

This very well might be the case. In any case, I'll take a look into it.

Yeah, if you go with the regular "crossbows at the very back"-placement, you will get friendly fire. Remember that dwarfs are about tight communities and teamwork, you need to place your crossbows closer to avoid friendly fire. Don't worry, they can take the heat.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Speaking of those dwarfs archers, they maybe take the heat a bit too easily. I think you can bypass basic melee units altogether, as the shooters have damn good melee weapons, combined with surprisingly high attack skill. They tend to beat the crap out of indies with no support, twenty of them being able to reliably expand versus anything, well you'll take some hits against knights, if you don't bother buying a prospector.

Flanking a dwarven army can lead to sharp consequences !

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I like that these guys aren't aiming for Ashdod. Ashdod, to me, has kind of taken on the role of "Eeeevil Empire" status, and these dwarfs, with their slayers and such, seem like a good remedy for that. They might not be able to defeat Ashdod on their lonesome own, but they seem like they'd make ideal partners in an alliance against the Nephilim.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I wouldn't try this on a player. They're good, but, they still only have 13 protection. And cost 30! resources. All someone has to do to beat them is mass 4 resource short bows.

I'll try moving my crossbows further up and see if that helps any.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Yeah, autoflanking is pretty annoying.

Some spells (destruction or even worse armor of achilles but Gifts from Heaven and Flame Erruption, too - all more or less "natural" choices against dwarves imo) are ridiculously hard to use because of their range/precision issues.
Your only option is to (attack)*x(spell)*y(cast) or something and it's bad enough to only cast one to three spells and risk your mages up close before the AI takes over. Now with autoflankers this becomes impossible at all since you don't know if you move forward or backward. It doesn't actually matter much if that's one or hundrets of miners summoned.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

But then you ambush his shortbow army with some rangers, who can brutalize shortbows--especially when the bowmen are shooting at random flanking miners.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

That is true, up to a point. Rangers are still probably technically archers though, so if you set your shortbows to fire archers, they won't waste quite as much time on the miners. You would probably still need something to deal with the miners though. I think a lot of weirdness with dealing with the flanking miners could be dealt with just by never scripting attack/fire closest on anything that you don't want to set chasing miners down. Use attack rear for your melee units, and probably fire archers for any ranged units you have. The problem though is you can't really just ignore the miners, they're pretty nasty in melee. So you need to have some method of killing them. A thug or two on each flank would probably be sufficient, more or less.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Personally I'd just turn miners into standard stealth/siege units and remove the summon from the prospector. I don't think there's a better way to simulate their 'deep strike' stuff. I considered it briefly with the sneaky skaven units like gutter runners who can also use those tunnel attacks, but in the end it just caused too much hassle.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Agree with sombre, even though I love to own the AI with prospectors in SP.

It would really be cool to add a remote attack spell with miners instead. Perhaps even make it low in research, easy to cast and remove miners from recruitment entirely.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I don't think it would really hurt the dwarfs too much to lose them, either. I've been playing with o3/p3 using longbeards to expand, and they're doing comparably to the crossbows. I think I lose units more often, but I still win plenty of battles without any losses, and these armies actually have a decent mapmove on them. Plus I have been recruiting mages (engineers, magic 3) instead of prospectors, so magic is a lot healthier than it was under crossbow expansion.

The unit that I'm actually having the most trouble finding a use for is the runeguard. They're completely unnecessary for the purposes of expansion, though they are tremendously difficult to kill. But the difficulty in massing them makes it a bit hard imo to justify using them as a bless strategy. And the reinvigoration from an e9 bless is barely enough for your big mages to notice. Though they will appreciate it. Actually I think you'd almost want to go all the way to e10 if you really wanted them to work, due to their incredibly low numbers and high encumbrance. Otherwise they are begging to be overwhelmed.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I've been playtesting a bit more and come to the conclusion that Prospectors have to go. The border summoning thing was really intented as a minor boost to give the commander a sort of niche. But, yeah, it proved really much more powerful than I thought. My first response was "Hey, that's sort of cool", and the AI going insane was quite hilarious. It's always nice to hear about unforeseen strategies forming up, it's a sign of "open-ended" nation that can use many different strategies.

But I've managed to playtest a bit more now. The way how the border-summons work is just.. buggy. The way the AI reacts to it just doesn't maky any sense, which is a major immersion downer. Also, fighting against prospector spam could very well prove to be the most frustating thing ever to fight against, since it combines stealth (major annoyance) with combat summons (major annoyance, since you'll have to kill the same miners in each combat). Basing on the talk of this thread, most players seem to base a whole fort(s?) on massing these guys. This really isn't the path I want this nation to take gameplay wise. Conclusion: the bordersummon thing is pretty nifty and thematic, but the game really can't handle it, so it has to go.

Well, on the plus side, this change allows me to bring in a new thematic inclusion from the WFRP books to replace the "Prospector" (without the border summon, his niche is just way too small). Runebearers. They are dwarf messengers who use the dangereous underway to bring messages in order to allow commmunication between the isolated/sieged dwarf holds. Gameplay wise, they will have 10 leadership to lead small miner squads, major mapmove (4), high stealth, all survival skills (they travel underground, ignoring regular terrain obstacles) and a lot of magic slots. Miners will also get the "all survival skills" thing, but I'll bump their rescost to 40 to compensate for the bonus.

This way, the Ranger Champion is the best leader for stealth forces (due to his higher leadership), but the Runebearer can quickly transport items and gems to the frontlines. His one niche will be also to lead the mapmove 3 miners around to allow for nifty defensive tricks.

I'll probably make a new "Miner Ambush" combat spell to still allow some access to the "deep strike" strategy. I'll balance it against to the "Howl" spell.

As for other planned changes, I'll probably make Runeguards a lot more hardcore by giving them the "Runic Ward" instead of the basic dwarf shield. I'll likely bump their gold cost a bit too (60?), since this is a pretty major boost.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Now that could make runeguards really interesting. I'd love to see that change. An increase in gcost would almost certainly be necessary to compensate, maybe even more than the 10 you're considering. Just as long as the rcost is not inflated too much more, as it is you really have to pray for a great start location to get more than a few per turn maximum.

Also, I agree about getting rid of prospectors. When you got them in large enough numbers, it really wasn't very easy to deal with the freespawn. Even if you could script to deal with them without your entire army going crazy chasing after the miners, the difficulty involved in killing them with the eventually huge numbers of dwarfs you could spawn, would have been a nightmare to deal with in mp. A howl-esque miner summon spell sounds nifty though.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Will you give the runeguards a two handed weapon as well?

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Runic wards are still shields, so it would be difficult to give them a 2 handed weapon. I suppose he could make them a one-handed version of a two-handed weapon to use, but I wouldn't go that direction personally.

By the way, thunderers definitely are parried by shields. They're pretty decent even as is though. I've been playing dwarfs vs brettonia... they're my go to weapon for grail knights/kotr.

Also, I'm really liking iron breakers. They cost an arm, a leg, and a spleen, but they just do not die. And the Dwarfs do a pretty good job with buffs, so it doesn't really even take much effort to make them even better.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Could mapmove 4 really make sense for a dwarven messenger? That is as fast as fast undead cavalry riding across open plains, by both day and night. How can a dwarf cover that much ground?

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Underground roller coaster?

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

First of all, Runebearers cheat. They travel along the abandoned and nearly forgotten underground tunnels build during the golden empire, basically giving them a major shortcut (to anywhere). They don't need to follow rivers to find a shallow point to cross and neither do they get slowed down by rain, winterstorms and muddy terrain.

Second, they are not called "Runebearers" just for fun. Let's just say that they are packing something more to help them run than just a dry pair of socks.

Third, do not underestimate the power of dwarven willpower and sheer refusal to give up, even when faced with a nigh impossible task.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I would recommend waiting to remove prospectors now until there's some multi-player action with the dwarves. As it is, you'll have almost no battlefield magic presence until you hit the anvils (outside of some buffs). I kinda saw prospectors as a way to help deal with that. Against AI scripting they're good, but I don't think it would be as gamebreaking against a human player (I could be wrong though).

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

The thing is that you can't script pd, allowing prospectors to raid even 15+ pd provinces without losses. Combine this with stealth. Also "no battlefield magic" is a pretty heavy statement. Everyone seems to overlook Journeyman Runesmiths. Sure, E2 is not much, but it is everything you need, especially if you give them Earth Boots.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

There's many things that are able to raid provinces, I don't think prospectors are unusual in that regard. I just think it might be a bit hasty, considering most (if not all) of the testing has been coming against AI opponents.

And E2 isn't much at all, especially since you can't really afford to span the journeymen (with castles costing so much, you need someone to research) and they can't lead troops. Also, most of the big earth combat magic is really exhausting, and you're wasting at least one turn to summon earthpower them.

Going after anvils really also has the benefits of giving you all the runes right there.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

The thing prospectors do that normal PD raiders don't though, is flee rather than dying when they fail. They're also pretty cheap. You're expending a lot of effort to make large enough groups of them to take out significant PD, should your opponent choose to field it. But chances are you'll never lose a single prospector to anything but routing. Except possibly battlefield-wide AoE spells.

As for journeyman runesmiths, well, honestly so far mostly I've used them to run around and build forts/temples... but they are still quite useful in battle. They can cast plenty of decent spells with just summon earthpower. I'm not quite sure why it's a "waste" of a turn to cast, either... summon earthpower is a quite handy buff. The only thing I really miss from them is the rune of grungni (which is only marginally better than legions of steel anyway). But a journeyman runesmith can cast just about every other buff you'd want. Just bring a runesmith around for weapons of sharpness and you're good.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I realize the AI is a spectacularly bad opponent to test on for this, but I decided, basically, I was going to try to beat the AI with armies of nothing but prospectors. Took O3/P1/G3/L3 with a dormant dom10 brother of war for scales and domspread ability.

For the first phase of the game, I did the two prospector+two rounds of crossbowman production expansion while I built up castles, to produce more and more groups like this. Eventually, when it started becoming too expensive to produce max crossbowmen every turn from every fort, I stopped producing them altogether to focus just on forts and prospectors. I'm now in late winter of year 3, producing 22 prospectors each turn, who in turn generate essentially 88 freespawn every turn... who do 24 damage a hit, screw with opponent scripting, have pretty decent armor, etc. Long story short, swarms of prospectors are entirely capable of killing entire armies by themselves with no losses or even any real danger to them. Maybe if you start bringing real magic into the battles things would change a bit, but I don't think there's much chance of actually getting any kind of real attrition in on said prospector swarms.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

E2 is enough for you to cast Legions of Steel, Earth Might/Strength of Giants, Armor of Achilles/Destruction and Earth Meld (+ you have Grudgestone). Those spells, if used right, can be a lot more devastating than the exhausting Blade Wind. Armed with boots, Journeymen can also take care of casting Weapons of Sharpness.

"Summon Earthpower" as a waste of turn? That reinvogration bonus is absolutely awesome. I often cast it as my first spell, even if the caster isn't likely going to cast any other earth spells (like E2F3 mage for example). Journeymen are also your most cost-effective researchers in the terms of upkeep.

On other news, my final exam for this fall will be Wednesday. I'll start forging the 0.8 update after that.

Althought I got a surge of inspiration today and drew Thorgrim (The High King, holder of the Book of Grudges). I'll probably fiddle with the axe a bit, but other than that, he's pretty finished.

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/2...rfpreview7.png

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I'm fiddling around with some of the proposed changes--Runeguards are absolutely terrifying with a high bless. You give up a ton to do so(no air access, imprisoned pretender usually, no gold left over for castles), but the results are hilarious. Think of an E10N4S4 bless. They're suddenly 0 enc, 24 protection, high defense, shielded troops with 17 magic resist.

Of course, your expansion isn't really any higher than that of a normal Longbeard or something strategy. In fact, because of the crazy goldcost of recruiting full on Runesmiths just for troop ferrying(ugh, but thematic), you take a while to get a second castle up. The real bonus is just having these badass Runeguards around.

I really wouldn't put them above 60 goldcost right now, though. You have that gigantic cost of needing to use a 220 gp commander just to bless them. And while they're more or less immune to conventional troops, magic still does a number on them(it just has to not be MR-resistable) and you'll never have a lot of them.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

By waste of a turn, I mean it's entirely necessary to cast it to be able to reach any of the decent spells, as opposed to being optional (but amazing) for higher earth caster. Also, legions of steel is inferior to the national spell. And iirc Destruction and Earth Meld have pretty high fatigue, too (I had them in mind, not just blade wind)

I actually love the journeymen, I just don't think they're well-built to be handling much combat casting.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Well, when I was playing the dwarfs, my most generic sequence of orders for a journeyman runesmith was Summon Earthpower, Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants, X, X.

With a runesmith, my order sequence was Rune of Grungni, Summon Earthpower, Strength of Giants, X, X.

These are pretty similar buff cycles honestly, and while the rune of grungni is slightly superior to legions of steel, it's not really that superior on dwarfs, who have high MR and don't get the weapons of sharpness effect that often. Anyway, once you get construction 7 I think journeyman runesmiths are almost superior to real runesmiths for the majority of your battlefield needs. With boots and summon earthpower they reach four earth, and if you really want it higher and can make one, a crystal shield will bring them to the same spellcasting fatigue as a runesmith with 5 earth magic. Four earth is enough for almost anything you could need, and will allow you to cast all the buffs you want. More cheaply, and for less fatigue than a runesmith due to the lesser spellcasting encumbrance.

Another interesting thing you could do, since dwarfs forge so cheaply, would be to make communion matrixes with your astral random runelords. Then you can make communions with your runesmiths for things like petrify spam, or actually get someone to a decent level of astral magic other than an anvil.

Anvil of doom
 

I'm playtestesting Dwarves version 0.7 against other warhammer nations, with mighty AI (=160% bonus). Anvil of doom, when summoned at least every 2nd turn, is a real killer. I'm filling hall of fame with them.

I suggest making them immobile, increasin their gem cost, making the one who summon them 10 years older, increasing research level of the killing runes, or something like that

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Yes, they are killer against the AI. The question is if they are killer against actual players. They actually were immobile in the past, and they were absolutely useless because they couldn't accompany actual armies into battle. Frankly, they're your only 'good' battlemages, and do require sacrifices to get to.

What spells were you using with the Anvil against the AI?

I do agree though that the Runelord changes have inadvertently made the Anvil of Doom spell too easy to cast; maybe bump it up to Holy-4 or Earth-6? Speaking of which, the Runelord hero is a bit lackluster these days; Sure, he has S2, which is nice, but before the Runelord changes he was the badass who was actually able to summon Anvils without being prophetized.

Re: Anvil of doom
 

Please never do any of these. Oh dear god, please. That would be just crippling. If you really need to nerf them, maybe make the runes have some sort of fatigue cost attributed to them so the anvils can't cast all day. But anything beyond that would just be pointlessly excessive. The anvils are pretty much the only way the dwarfs are going to get any kind of decent battlefield magic other than earth, and the requirements are already pretty high. Given that they're also quite large and healthy, they should also make somewhat easy targets....

Anyway I think the anvil in its current iteration is an interesting sort of mechanic and I would like to see them stay as they are.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

Do the anvils have any sort of armour on them, currently?

I was thinking that, considering they're massive blocks of metal, you might represent that by giving them armour, which could then be rusted away via various spells, leaving the anvil itself intact, but with a serious penalty to Prot.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

It's one of those units that will just smash the AI, because the AI just too retarted to come up with anwsers. It's the same thing as with thugs/SC's/BF spells and the like. If you feel like they spoil your SP experience, you can just not summon them. Really, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to come up with anwsers to the Anvils, but the AI is too dumb to use them.

Some examples, just out of my head:
1) Mind Duel (you can easily use S2 mages to duel them, since anvil costs 35 gems, you will easily come out ahead)
2) Fire/Attack Largest commands (Anvils have more hp/size than most units in dwarf armies)
3) Troops with fire & shock resistance
4) Seeking Arrows (2 hits will often kill, 1 cripples their spellcasting with the +5 enc affliction)
5) Disease Demons/ Manifestation (depending on the script of the Anvil)

I have been thinking about making the primal runes cost 10/15 fatigue, but I hardly see a reason for it, since in my testing Anvils seem to start spamming "Paralyze" after running out of script.

Rune of Thunder/Fire really look and seem powerful in game. But one should realize that other nations can get really similiar effect by just bringing mages into battle. Rune of Thunder equals 3 thunderstrikes (admittely with much lower fatigue), which in turn is not that much more amazing than 3 High Seraphs. Rune of Fire basically has the desctuctive power of 3-4 F2 mages going for Falling Fires. And with the fatigue aspect going to waste as soon as the script runs out...

Earth 6 is a bit problematic, since you'd need two earth boosters to cast the spell, which is pretty hard to do in CBM 1.6(or get really luck out with randoms, since the chance for Runelord E5 with 0.8 randoms is about 2%). H4 would likely be okay, although it's just a logistical problem with prophet placing.

I'll probably dwiddle with his paths a bit and make him a bit more thematic too. A1W1F2E3S2H3, the elemental will power represent his ancient knowledge (from the golden empire, when dwarfs were more connected to the elements). I'll give him a pretty big researchpenalty thought (he doesn't share his screts). I might give him H4 too, since that'd make him able to easily power himself up to casting the primal runes (ancient power!).

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.7
 

I don't really think the primal runes need to cost fatigue either. I have had more luck getting them to continue to fire after the script runs out, but I've only used them against huge chaffy AI armies, so.... Also, when things start getting close to the anvils, their precision is so high that with rune of fire, I've frequently seen all the shots hit one square, which can seriously lower the total damage output on most things.

If you did change the runelord hero like that, he would definitely be much more useful. It would be very tempting to manually site search with him early on, but if he could actually cast the primal runes that would make him pretty awesome.

Re: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.8 - First stable release!
 

New version.

Tired.

That is all.