Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

With the Onni-Bushi, I saw the ability Defense. I think that would be better than Patrol for them. They are home bodies. I'm almost tempted to give them home sickness, but that might be a bit much.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Home sickness is a huge disadvantage for a recruitable unit, somewhere on the level of vanishing after one combat like Pythium's gladiators. Typically being map move-1 is enough to discourage using a unit on the aggressive, at least when the nation in question has plenty of map move-2 units to use instead.

I'm not saying a homesick recruitable couldn't work (just as a one-combat unit like the gladiator does work) but you should be aware of the restriction you are placing on it. For it to be worthwhile, it would have to be very powerful and moderately priced or above average and dirt cheap. Plus, if they are a homesick, polearm unit, you would be missing a golden opportunity if you didn't give them a castle defense bonus.

Certainly workable but something has to be given if that much is being taken away. Also, does the Onni-Bushi as-is (high moral, medium-to-heavy infantry with long reach, high-damage weapons) fill a role in MA Jomon's line-up that would need to be filled by some other unit if they were made homesick?

Think on it and let me know. I should have version 0.2 of the mod out pretty soon (now with national spells, pretenders and better images for the cap-only sites).

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Coolness. I'm having trouble figuring out what to do with the Wokou, image and uses. Any suggestions?

As to the Onni-Bushi, we should keep it is a high morale unit. I'm a little worried that something that should be a rare unit becomes something common, but then you are right, the Attendents are okay, but they aren't great center pieces, like the Onni-Bushi.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

I thought long and hard on the Wokou and I think I found the role for them: cheap shock troops. The idea is that the Wokou are very aggressive pirates who know they need to overwhelm the enemy quickly otherwise they'll lose to entrenched defenders. As such, they have stats like the the Ashigaru except: +1gp, +1moral, +1attack, +2Action Points. What that means is that because of their extra APs and lower encumbrance armor, they'll rush forward faster than any non-cavalry on the battlefield, throw their harpoons at the front line and then attack the entangled/wounded enemies with high-quality swords. Sounds pretty piratey to me. Between a higher base attack and the +2 bonus from the wakazashi, these guys will hit surprisingly often for a 9gp unit. The +1 moral will help them deal with the losses they'll take from their low armor. They also cost fewer resources than the ashigaru, so they'll be easier to mass in case you need an aggressive first wave or flanking squad on short notice.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Now that is a thought. I was using the Ronin body, but I don't think that will work at all. I'll go through my images and see if I can find that something close. I might use the slingers body, but those guys are way to skinny.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

For what it's worth, Eriu's Milesian Slinger looks a little burlier than your typical slinger.
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Milesian_Slinger

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Yes, yes that might work. I'll send you something tonight with that.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

The Miko is excellent against undead/demons but against everything else they are merely a high-accuracy, low, low defense/protection archer. Being sacred combined with cap-only is a real disadvantage for archers since they need to be massed to be truly effective. Also, most blesses don't really help archers (just air, death, and water). As such, we have two routes to take balancing this: make the Miko really cheap (easy but boring) or make them interesting...

To achieve the latter I'm thinking we can add a shield with high parry, zero protection, and zero encumbrance (we can call it something like "spirit ward"). This will be very effective at stopping incoming arrows (and a few projectile-based spells) but will do nothing to prevent damage in melee (since even with a shield block, it's adding zero protection). That way we have a flimsy, high accuracy archer who is almost impossible to take out with arrows.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm stealing this idea from a high elf warhammer mod I checked out once.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

I can see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto#...otective_items

Let's throw it in for now, and see if we can get some feed back on it when we put it out for others to play.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

We should think about forts. I would argue for something very impressive for the starting area (Jeweled City or Tel City or the Great City!) but the default to be something like a Castle. Maybe a Fortified city in Farm land. I really hadn't thought of it, but we are looking at a civilization that is more centralized in the Middle Era than in the Late Era.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

The Jomon of this era are supposed to be those refugees who fled the Yomi and Bakemono and swore fealty to the Ryujin. If this exodus was recent then MA Jomon's should be more of a military civilization. However, the spans of time between ages are considered pretty... nebulous. If lots of time has passed since the Jomon resettlement then they could have built up big, fancy, high-admin forts. Really, I'm open to anything. Just pick a range of forts and run with it.

LA Jomon's forts are:

#startfort 3 -- Fortified City
#defaultfort 40 -- Fortress
#mountainfort 37 -- Hill Fortress
#forestfort 34 -- Forest Fortress
#swampfort 11 -- Swamp Fort
#uwfort 12 -- Kelp Fortress
#deepfort 13 -- Kelp Citadel

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Thought the default was Fortified city already.
When the dom3server is up, I'll look through all that.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Wokou sounded cool and I was bored so I drew a quick sprite (using err... Ninja, Ronin, Ashigaru and Seal Hunter)

http://nikita.tnnet.fi/~elmokki/wokou.png

I didn't draw an attack sprite since I don't know if that's anything like what you want or if you just want to draw them yourself :) Feel free to do anything you like to that, ie cut for other sprites or draw on top on if you wish.

I was tempted to put the harpoon to his other hand, but I doubt that'd look good.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

That looks really good. I used a slinger base myself, and the long sword facing down, but the problem is that when we use it in batter, the guy is partial invisible.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

I like it. I'm going to use the it, but if want to created the Wokou Captain, and attack images, I would definitely use them. Otherwise, I have no trouble making attack sprites and captain sprites based on what you've created.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

I think an update is in order since some things have changed in our little mod. No word on when it will be released but we are looking for volunteers to test the mod out when it is ready.


Theme: The Jomon of the Middle era have 3 interwoven themes that we are upholding. One, is because it is based on the Heian Period of Japan, we are looking at a stronger centralized authority than in later periods. This means more units that are Capital only. For now this includes the Seigu, princess trained in the priesthood, and the Miko, shrine maidens trained in the use of bows.
Alone with this theme is the war with the Oni and other dark spirits. The exemplify this both the Miko and Seigu have Amulets that protect them give them resistance to Fire and Cold, elements used freely by the Oni, as well as sacred weapons that deal extra damage to undead and demons. Besides these capital only sacreds, there is the Onni-Bushi, women trained to protect there homes from demons and oni. Although they can be hired anywhere with a temple and a castle, they suffer from home sickness, preventing them from being used to take the battle to other territories.

Finally, there is our original theme, that of the Ryujin. In later eras, it would take an underwater fort in order to recruit the Ryujin, but in this era, the Jomon have turned to the Ryujin for protection, in response the Ryujin have created a powerful enclave inside capital where amphibious shark warriors and Ryujin can be recruited. This allows the Jomon early access to the sea if they desire.

Interesting units:

Onni-Bushi: These Warriors defend the home when there husbands, fathers and brothers go to war. Skilled in the Naginata, they are sacred and can easily dispatch minor demons and undead. Unfortunately they do not recover well when dispatched away from there homes.

Miko: Skilled archers wielding sacred bows, and serve to hunt down and destroy demons and undead.

Seigu: Princess trained in the arts of the Five Paths, skilled priestesses and mages.

Attendants: Bushi (Maybe a better name?) who are trained warriors, and fight for Samurai. They use No-Dachi and Naginatas, but do not have the protection that later Samurai would have.


Envoys: Dedicated priests that act as a go between for the Ryujin and the Jomon people as a whole. With some skill in water magic, they have the ability to take a few normal people down into the sea. During peace times, this would be envoys of the emperor or courtiers, but with the rise of a new god, the Envoys play a stronger role in helping conquer the underwater world.

To balance the rise of magical might that the Jomon now posses, they have yet to make certain advances that the later Jomon would make. First, they lack Heavy Samurai Armor, and Kabutos are only used by a few skilled samurai, so the protection of the Jomon is less. Second, Shugenja are a minor force in this day and age, and lack masters to help with magic. This means they are more reliant on weaker spell casters.
Finally, many of the more powerful mages are only recruitable in the capital.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

If anyone wants to help, one of the things I'm looking for is the Onni-Bushi,
Naginata wielding, Samurai Armored, Jingasa helmented Women. We are looking for something in a red pants/skirt/robes that are flowing a bit, but really, I just can't seem to crack this concept right. If anyone has any ideas or something, I would love some help with it.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Specifically, the female soldiers of MA Jomon all wear something in the style of a Hakama, with a white top and reddish-orange bottom. Legowarrior did a good job working up the Saigu and the Miko, so there's a good base to work from.

Once we get a teensy bit more preliminary work done (one or two more sprites, a few more unit descriptions and a last bit of balance testing) we'll be ready to release a beta version of the mod for people to try out. This has come together surprisingly fast and we're just looking to share the fun of making something cool.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

http://nikita.tnnet.fi/~elmokki/onni-bushi.png

Again, do whatever you want or do nothing. I'm not perfectly happy with it. It used to be an oreiad but the sleeves and hiding the cleavage hid most of the visible femininity (though that's what covering loose clothing does so...)

There's a bit of hair showing from under the jingasa, but it's not very visible with a black background.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Yeah, it is tough to create femininity on such a small scale. I like it better than the one I made. We shall use this.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...on+Recruit.png

It's coming! And some news, we have two versions coming out, but I'll let Shatner tell you more about it.

Here are a screen shots for now. Please remember that this is still a work in progress, and that I am not an artist.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e.../s428/Miko.png

Capital only Miko. Sacred bows and Daggers deal triple damage to undead and demons.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-y...Onna+Bushi.png
Onna-Bushi take damage if they leave their home province (lots of damage)

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-i...s428/Saigu.png
The Saigu is a capital only caster with linked random access to FAWEN.
One great feature about her is that she reduces unrest a bit where ever she goes. Pays to be related to the Emperor, doesn't it!

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

As Legowarrior alluded to, we are releasing a beta version of this mod very soon (in the next day, maybe two). Unfortunately, there were a few things we wanted to do with this mod which Dom3 just won't allow you to do, at least not in the manner in which we wanted to do them. Because of these technical limitations, we've decided to release two variants of the same mod:

1) MA Jomon, which contains a new nation entirely. It has all the summons MA Jomon should have (kami, not oni) but unfortunately it doesn't have access to any underwater province defense. This version should be the most friendly when it comes to being multi-mod compatible.

2) MA Jomon UW, which contains a heavily modified version of LA Jomon set in the Middle Era. It has underwater province defense (yay!) but also has all of LA Jomon's summons, including those it shouldn't (boo!). This one probably won't play as nicely with other, larger mods since it is co-opting an existing nation, which those other mods might themselves be tweaking.

Other than the oni summons, UW PD and mod-compatibility, the two mods are completely identical; same units, same commanders, same pretenders, etc. Once we release the beta version, Legowarrior and I are both really hoping people will find this new nation interesting, fun and compelling enough to offer feedback. Specifically, feedback concerning balance, feedback concerning theme, as well as any offers by you pixel-jockeys out there to improve on our sprites. We want this mod to both play well and look good so anything you guys have to offer on that front will be most appreciated.

Anyway, you can expect a new thread with more information as well as a link to download the mod sometime very soon.

Re: MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight
 

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Y...39-k/Units.gif

More pictures for your fun!