Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

The next dragon up is the ferocious Lightning Dragon. The lightning dragon holds domain over both earth and sky. He's (technically "they're", but the dragon is male) able to use his twin breath weapons while on the ground (shapechange). He's capable of two bite attacks per round, as well as two deadly lightning ranged attacks (ground form only), but has no claw attacks. In the air (flying form), he loses his breath weapons, but can generate a powerful field of electricity (spring hawk power). Can also enter the water in ground form.

Advantages: can use 2 breath weapons at a time, has access to both Earth and Air paths (150 cost for other paths), versatile-can be a flyer, an artillery unit, and even enter the water as an (poor) amphibian. Storm-Immune, and gains power during storms. 200% lightning resistance.

Disadvantages: Exceptionally low Dominion (1), High cost. Possesses only 1 slot.
Gets fatigued much faster than other dragons.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

hmm able to go in water, i don't think that really mixes since water being a good conductor of elctricity would either have a negative effect on him or make him a waterborne weapon of battlefield wide electrical death.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

It does have a negative effect on him, which is why he's a *poor* amphibian :) He also loses his breath weapons in the water, and ofcourse can't fly, so all the electricity is contained inside his well-insulated hide. He's definitely at his weakest in the water.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

I'll probably be balancing these guys out for a while though. Nothing's completely set in stone. For instance, I raised the base Gluttony for dragons to 30, based on Cor2's suggestion. So any advice/thoughts are always welcome.

The Wildfire Dragon (over halfway there!)
 

The most common-and therefore one of the most infamous-of the dragon breeds is the Wildfire Dragon. Within it's three jewel-like eyes blaze hypnotic fires of hatred for all living things. Scarlet-winged and able to breathe fire, the Wildfire Dragon's talent for destruction is legendary.

Advantages: Heat Aura, greater than normal Pillage bonus (50), Fire resistance
(250%), Shock resistance (100%).
Disadvantages: Consumes greater than normal supplies (Gluttony 60), 100% susceptibility to Water/Ice, Berserk (0), not the most melee oriented of the dragon breeds.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

I got caught by the editing timer, so to continue...

The Wildfire Dragon is a female, she's a fast flyer (at 3 provinces per turn) with an excellent breath weapon, and while she starts with only the Fire path, she gets the advantage of other paths being the least expensive for her (at 75 for new paths) of all dragon breeds.

She also has the disadvantage of having a weak starting Dominion, at 1, and won't be able to enter the water.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Electric eels can go underwater without ill effect. Speaking of which, I think an AOE 1+ electric melee attack would be sort of appropriate underwater.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

I'm considering something along those lines, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

It's going to depend on how everything ends up balancing out, and I won't be starting that until all of the graphics are done--or atleast one for each dragon breed.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Just bumping this out of the pit of lost threads.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Thanks! I'll get back to it one of these days. I'm just waiting for inspiration-I want each dragon type to be recogniseably unique.

Next up with very likely be the Tsunami Dragon.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

yeah and they're electrical death machines for they're size, now multiply that by the size of a dragon - battlefeild wide bodypoping contest.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

How's this project doing?

Any chance it will be out by next patch? :cool:

::ham::house::potion::target::computer::

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Just saw this idea bumped and I'd like to chime my support. Check out Dragons of the Sixth World or something (forgot the exact name but a source book for Shadowrun.) Now THOSE are DRAGONS. Elemental forces of magic/nature that you just don't **** with. None of this "get a chest wound off a lance and relegated to forge/research" bs.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

If honey would like a few shortcuts (assuming graphs are the bottle neck) he can use my (originally stolen) graphs of the dragon nation mod (and maybe resize them if he still insists on even huger dragons and recolor and other adjustments are just as possible of course. It's probably not the way he wants to go but he could always replace them later.

Kissblade.. check out the ancient dragon summons I have in my dragons mod and see how impressive you think they are (they where meant to be impressive :D) Not much commanders would survive an assassination by my assassin summon (well he's just mean and probably assassinations with him are a waste of time since he could hurt whole armies bad, but it's thematic) or my dragon of light.. some of the elder dragons are nasty too :D...

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Sounds worthy of being an opponent in an MP game.
Do they AI well?

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

They probably would have made a good AI nation in the original version. If the AI knew how to build armies, anyway. Since then they've been nerfed pretty hard and the AI would probably have a pretty hard time being effective with them. The dragons Aezeal was referring to are all summons, with pretty hefty gem and research requirements.

For example the summoned assassin he was talking about requires alteration 6, 50 or so death gems and I think death 3 or 4 to summon. It also has ethereality, 100 or so hp and can natively cast soul vortex.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Well it's pretty easy to make the nation better for AI, just lower the cost of the recruitables by about 20 gc and 10 rec each :D the AI will send hordes of pretty strong, high HP and 2 attack troops your way then(would work for any nation though, but for these especiallY) Ow and set price for the wyrmlings too 999 so they don't get recruited. The AI probably won't use the summons very well but... the recruits and commanders are pretty decent in their own right. Try the nation Gandalf :D (Í've tried to balance it for MP so it's weaker since very strong troops and commanders are more easily exploited by human players, especially the once they get to the summons I made with all sorts of magic, abilities and resistances)... of course it would only take a few letters/numbers in the .dm file to make all summons recruitable too... which would severly overpower the nation :D

Anyway HOney could use my (stolen) graphs as temp replacements and update the mod later on. There are other endgame summons mods though (not played them... I never get to end game summoning.. to be honest I've never seen any of the angels, devils nearly only on enemies in MP and one SP game (demon monkeys) etc.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Hmmmm. Maybe I will try your nations with the summons as recruitables--I need a good opponent for an Ashdod + LA C'tis combo I am going to try.

-Max

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Seriously.. start with the nation with lower cost then.. those summons will kill you if you encounter them en masse in year one - two.

Anyway I'd be glad if you like the mod but let's discuss it in it's own thread and wait for Honey to reply to the requests made in here.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Why is it this was never moved to the maps and mods subforum? It's a mod right? (In progress, presumably)

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

moved.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

ow god ich can move threads.. the horror...

anyway having looked through the thread again I'm thinking the dragons are nice-ish but the coloring... I know it's sort of traditional for water (flood?) dragons to be blue but some dark blue might fit him better, might be scarier too. The Sirrocco dragon could be darker IMHO and the avalanche dragon (use that blue on the flood dragon) might need to be white/light blueish.. I know it's not terrible original but face it hunters need to blend in the environment. a blue dragon in white snowy regions might not catch much. Anyway just a thought. I still think your dustdragon should be a ghost/wraith/darkness/shadow dragon (really DUST dragon... no your posts since have not convinced me :))

anyway point of my post mostly was this: do plz continue this project (and your nation for dom 3 K.)

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Wow, this is an amazing project. Thanks HB for all the work you are doing on this!!!

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

You're welcome! thanks for the interest!

I'll be redoing the artwork on these guys...well, someday. I don't know when. The holidays have been *way* more draining than I expected them to be, and I'm just really low on energy. Plus, I've been getting back into Dwarf Fortress more, since I needed a break from Dom3, but I still don't have a good computer to run either game on. But, I'll keep at it.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Bump

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

yeah them holidays must have been REALLY draining, maybe he lives in a drain 3 dominion though.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Based on the recently discovered pliosaur dubbed "Predator X".

This critter makes Jaws look like a guppy.

After having seen a show about this awesome monster, I couldn't help but become fascinated with how closely this beasty resembles a real actual sea dragon. This thing had the most powerful jaws in all the animal kingdom, either living or dead. Jaws that were atleast 10 times as powerful as anything alive today, and up to 4 times as powerful as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Jaws that could crush a car. It was an extremely fast, powerful swimmer, and grew to a length of 50 feet and a weight of 100,000lbs, with all the most terrifying qualities of a great white shark and a saltwater crocodile.


So, my first thought ofcourse was "how can I make it even nastier?"
Well, it's going to be immortal, and it will have an undead (fossil) deathform.

Attachment 8810

I attempted to make him a little more dragonish (not that she needed much), and also added humps after realizing that we lack a real Loch Ness Monster for the game.

By the way, here's an updated list of the paths for each dragon type:

Earthquake dragons: Earth
Wildfire dragons: Fire, Air
Flood dragons: Water, Earth
Typhoon dragons: Water, Death
Lightning dragons: Earth, Air
Volcanic dragons: Earth, Fire
Sirocco dragons: Air, Fire
Plague dragons: Air, Death
Avalanche dragons: Water
Blight dragons: Nature, Blood
Dust dragons: Death
Tsunami dragons: Water, Blood
Creep dragons: Nature

The Tsunami dragon will be up next. It will have the ability to generate it's own bloodslaves which, as an entirely aquatic Pretender, should make it a rather interesting option.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Here's the attack sprite :

Attachment 8811

Enjoy!

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Hmmm, looks like a wolf to me.
Maybe lees bulky teeth?

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Thanks for your input, Swan.

The critter this dragon was based on had the biggest, bulkiest teeth of any predator that ever lived. They make even Megalodon's teeth look pitiful in comparison. I admit there is a certain "wolfishness" to the sprite, but I'm fine with that, and happy overall with the sprite.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

I just read the whole thread, that's some GREAT artwork you got there,HB:D Can't wait to see them in-game!

Also I must agree with Swan, the attack sprite's head looks like some kind of dog...the lower jaw just looks way too extended.Beside that,wonderful:)

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

mmh, maybe bulky is not the right word...
I meant that imo they teeth(and mouth) could look better longer and thiner.
I cutted the head and embigged the teeth, maybe lower jaw should/could be cutted a little more, even if the snake/shark mix seems good to me(well, ofc it does, or i would'nt have stopped to work on it)

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

This is exactly the reason why I don't show my attack sprites in my preview pics. Attack sprites are only visible for 0,5 seconds at a time. For someone to notice a flaw in them, they'd have to *stare* at the unit while it attacks, for several times, before actually taking notice. This very rarely happens (most players have a lot more to think about in battle than the quality of the attack sprites). Sometimes the player might pause the battle while the attack sprite is showing, but that's not a major corcern.

It's simply enough if the attack sprite shows aggressive movement and doesn't have any glitches (like disappearing equipment), that is all. For a attack sprite, that sprite is more than enough. Twiddling with it would be a waste of time (IMHO), no ones going to notice minor flaws in the attack sprite.

Prioritizing your work effort into where people actually notice it allows for faster production rate just in general, saves time.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Well ofc i would have said the same on normal pic, but Honey didn't post it, the idea is the same.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Swan, it's a nice pic, but the jaws aren't nearly long enough. This thing (the original) had a 10 foot long head, small brain (so most of that 10 feet was jaw), and looked like a cayman, as much as anything this side of Jacques Cousteau's personal Hell.

Re: Cataclysmic Dragons
 

Ah, then i fear the wolfiness is a necessary evil.