Re: Making leadership matter
 

shouldn't you be able to do a new spell using #copyspell, then change AOE? This new spell is then assigned as onebattlespell.

I think any further discussion on *how* to mod commanders should go into the mod section, I think.

Well, I was curious to where this ominous spell effects table (mentioned in the manual 9.14 spell effects) exists.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

Yeah, you can change AOE, range, make it only affect undead, whatever. There is a huge amount of flexibility. But the effect would always be (for example) +4 strength. And you can't do entirely new effects - for example there is no spell to add Poison Spines to a unit, do you can't make a new spell to do it.

Technically you can only use #onebattlespell (automatic casting of spell at start of battle) for existing spells, but in practice we've got a very good workaround so it's not actually an issue.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

Wouldnt changing that change the whole consept of the game. It is going to make it even more complicated. Instead of planning how to reach some research target now you'd have to plan how to buff your units by buying more than 1-2 commanders early on.And that time would have been used to get mages. So I feel(I could be wrong) but if commanders start giving bonuses, then all the races that rely on magic will be severely hurt since they cannot cope with some nations armies without magic and the need to get the commanders to buff the troops to be competative(even though a bit on the loosing side since that races with good magic dont generally have good starting armies and good recruitable troops) with the nations that will do so.It will make their research even slower thus taking them out of the game if they choose to use commanders. If they don't then the opposing armies(imagine vans or sth similar) will have better troops and better buffs(coming from the commanders) and thus completely steamroll them.
It is a good Idea but I reckon it will have a huge impact on the ballance of the game and then many more things will need to be changed. I am one of the people who supports the moto "if it's not broken don't fix it".
edit: But yea having a mod around that idea wouldnt be too bad.(and it always can be playtested to see how it works out at the end)

Re: Making leadership matter
 

I agree.
Conceptually it would be a great way to boost the weaker troops and force some hard decisions about recruiting commanders vs mages.
In practice it would be used to buff thugs, sacreds and other elites for early rushes.

This is particularly true since in general a buff that boosts a strength is better than one that boosts a weakness, so good troops benefit more from a given buff than weak ones. And that the only real way to control the strength of most of the potential buffs is to change the AoE, which again means it'll be more effective on a few elites than on a mass of chaff.

A mod nation designed around the concept could avoid most of the pitfalls.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

The Bretonnia mod is interesting.

When you recruit a commander, you get a few free troops to go with him. In battle, the commanders are always accompanied by a free knight (even if he's killed he's back in the next battle). Between these two effects it's quite tempting (but definitely not OP) to recruit commanders, so I think it works well.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

The Bretonnia mod is interesting.

When you recruit a commander, you get a few free troops to go with him. In battle, the commanders are always accompanied by a free knight (even if he's killed he's back in the next battle). Between these two effects it's quite tempting (but definitely not OP) to recruit commanders, so I think it works well.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

Yeap. This is what I had in mind :)

Re: Making leadership matter
 

This would also make assassins even more useless than they currently are.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

regular assassins are pretty worthless anyway.

Re: Making leadership matter
 

Not entirely. They are useful to bring in cursed daggers and lycanthropos amulets to enemy thugs. They are useful to kill regular commanders who would be able to lead troops out of a province where the only leader got killed. That's situational, but not a reason to make them even less useful.
They are also useful in forcing opponents to deploy bodyguards instead of fielding the troops where they are more useful.
I don't like making assassins totally useless in order to make commanders more useful.