Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Yeah, they really are better than Principes. They have a lower defense, to be sure, but also a higher attack and repel--and poison, both from their spears and from the coral armor. They for the record wipe the floor with equal numbers of Principes in an equal fight--even when you let the Principes start with a full javelin volley. On top of anything else is the high magic resist(13!) and high hitpoints(14!). Also you tend to have better buffing paths than Ermor, and even if they manage to pop a surprise Fog Warriors on you they'll still die to the poison.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

I'll give the Coral tribe warriors some nerfs in the next version, (-1 hp, att, def, mr, mor) should do the trick. I likely underestimated the effect of the poison armor when costing them.

As for the shamans, it seems that they are just underpriced. I'll beef up their gold cost.

As for your assestment on "Ride the Currents", I've got highly different opinions about it (mostly from Squirrel), but if it is too useful for defense, it could get some fine-tuning (higher cost?).

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Nah, Ride the Currents is fine. It's just more useful for EA Atlantis than for everyone else because they're more capital-centric.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Okay, time to update this thing. I recently sacrificed one MP game of mine to test how easy it really is to attack UW with a land nation under the new magic item settings. The results proved to be very disencouraging.

I was Shinuyama and had access to Kappas, most of the water breathing items, undead summons and all sorts of stuff to get UW access. Basically, my UW access was a lot better that of a average land nation.

And I had no shots. Total of 0% chance of winning against the organized defense of the UW nation. Many things contributed to this fact:

1) The Poor Ambhibian pelaties from magic items are absolutely crippling. Note that the penalties from water breathing items are NOT the same penalties received from being natural poor ambhibian. For reference:

Poor Ambihibian: Att -3, Def -3, enc +1, AP -4

a troop under water breathing item: Att -3, Def -3, enc +3, AP -6

That's right *****es. Encumberance +3. I mean WOW. Sure, if you have access to niefel giants of something, it just *might* be worthwhile to bring them UW. Under those penalties, anything else just dies against the basic Triton. You might be able to take your first province by suprise, but once the UW nation just beefs up his PD, your casualties will be devastating. And you actually have to forge items with gems for the priviledge of getting your units killed.

So, I'm going to make a new special combat spell that gives units underwater with breathing items get +4 attack, +5 def, +4 AP. So with that buff they would get total variables of: +1 Att, +2 Def, +3 Enc, -2 AP . You can live with that. I think that this buff could like W2 to cast and be in alteration or enchantment on level 3 or 4.

2) The combat casting in UW is a total mess. On land your options for good combat paths are mostly in evocation or thaum (only if you have S, though). In UW, your options are alt or thaum (again only if you have S). So, if you are moving from land to water or from water to land, you sometimes have to completely switch research gears to a completely new school of magic.

So to be blunt, you have to forge gems to assault UW *and* also possibly switch research to schools that you don't want go through just for the priviledge of suffering horrible casualties UW. Gah. No wonder that people usually just leave UW nations alone.

So, I'm going to go through all of the spells and make more of them castable UW. I'll leave the things that make absolutely no sense in UW alone, but the rest will be fair game. Rust Mist, Slime, Bane Fire, Sleep Cloud are examples of spells I'll make castable UW.


3) Not enough ambhibians to summon. This is where your options really start to diminish. You basically have Naiad Warriors + Sea Dogs + "some" Undead to summon if you want to get UW. That's about it. What if you don't have access to W+N? Well, you're fuc*ed basically. So what can I do to help?

I'll make the UW breathing stuff make some goddamn sense. Your normal longdead is able to get UW and that makes sense because it does not breathe, but a Bane Lord can't get to underwater altought it clearly does not breathe either. You can't believe how stupid it felt to forge Water Breathing Rings to my Ghost Generals, who obviously don't breathe in the first place. It's just pure WTF, from the start to finish. So I'll go through most of the summons and give ambhibian tags with the following principles:

Unit does not breathe: Poor Ambhibian (includes stuff like Bane Lords, Mound Fiends, Unfrozen, Manikins .. etc)


Unit does not breathe + incorporeal: Ambhibian (includes stuff like Spectres, Fall Bears, Winter Wolves, Ghosts)

All spells whose summoned units got UW tags will also made castable UW.


Creatures that have ties to fire & air elements are an exception, since they have an actual *reason* to have restricted UW access.

I'll also give all Vine Men a new water shape called "Kelp Men", making them basically ambhibious. Same thing will also happen Vine Ogres and Ivy Kings. This is to give both land nations and UW nations access to cheap chaff that is able to cross the water barrier and would be a competetive option in both.

4) No PD underwater
Oh boy, this is probably the most crippling of all. No PD means no way to effectively hold captured territory, and because UW indies suck, your defenses will be piss poor anyway. Hence, all the terrain you manage to capture will most likely be easily counter-raided away soon. The only option against this is to divide your forces to defend the territory, which will make you lose the major confrontations with the UW nation. There is not much I can do about this due to lack of modding tools, but I have an idea to alleviate the problem.

I'll make a special remote summon spell that summons a immobile kelp monster to a UW province province. The kelp monster will onebattlespell some kelp men (like 2 or 3) and have all normal + magic + undead leadership. Basically it will allow you to skip the recruitment of a expensive commander and let you recruit the troops that you need to defend the province while the commander itself will give some units too. The summon will only need N1 to cast and will be cheap in gems.

I'll be sure to give UW nations some love too, see the "fix-list" below for more details. I'm also going to stop pushing the alternate "coastal recruit" versions of the nations and push more for a "global" UWGIM mod. The future options will be: UWGIM global (like the old one, no national changes) and UWGIM nations (global + global UW nation changes)

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

This all sounds excellent. Let me know if there's any way I can help. I especially like the idea of 'fixing' stuff which in vanilla doesn't really make sense.

I think it would be wise to avoid making death too strong against UW though. It's already a very powerful path and if it's actually giving you better options to go underwater than nature, air and water, that feels very wrong (which it might with stuff like fully amphibious ghosts). I believe the way to counter this is just to make sure that the N summons, W summons etc that are going to go underwater are comparably good.

I also think more sites should be added, coded to appear on coastal provinces, that give decent indy troops for invading the seas. This is especially helpful on NI maps, but also on regular maps it would be awesome to be able to take the coasts and get amphibious troops of good quality (better than mermen and naked shamblers) and inversely, it would be more incentive for the water nations to actually try and hold the coasts.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Yeah, I started working on the mod and immediately noticed some stupid stuff. Apparently you can make Gargoyles and Living Statues underwater, but not Crushers/Wooden Constructs/Clockwork Horrors. Which makes absolutely perfect sense!


True. But the thing is that UW nations have very good priests (Oceania and Atlantis especially) and you can't really compose the bulk of your forces from Ghosts (they are too expensive) and the basic linebackers of Soulless and Longdead will still suffer from the poor ambhibian penalties (especially the reduced AP hurts as the enemies will get a lot of banishments in before the guys are in melee). But it is a valid concern and I'll keep an eye on the issue.

Out the top of my head, nature will get increased access in the form of Kelp Men and Manikins. I'll probably also make Sea dogs a pure nature summon. Water will get the new "ease UW item penalties" spell and amphibious Winter Wolves. Air is a bit problematic. Wyverns, Draconians and the like don't really make sense UW. We could perhaps mod something in for air, but I really don't have many ideas. Giving air magic a copy of the "negate UW item penalties" spell is an option thought.

Good idea. Basing on my experiences with the Holy War mod, I'd say that something like ~3-4 unique common sites (to prevent duplicates) and a couple of uncommon sites for variety would be good and likely enough. I could use ideas for them thought. One that allowed recruitment of ichtyids (and a resource bonus to boot) would be good, but what else?

But since I'm probably going to let go of most of the national stuff, I'll have a lot of excess graphics that I could use for modded good amphibian units for these sites. The "Merman Knight", "Son of Selkie" and the "Coral Tribe" unit graphics could be used for new units. I'll probably also scrap the "Troll Ambassador" unit, so her graphic could also be used for this purpose.

Well, I could use ideas (and code) for the coastal sites. Also the Air summon problem. I'm also a bit unsure if I can make a decent "Kelp Man" sprite (no good base sprites for kelp creature), but I'd like to try myself first.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

I see no reason why air has to be a good magic path for UW summons. Air Queens are specifically prohibited from going UW, after all. Air can let you breath UW, but let you do awesome stuff down there? Uh... huh?

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Excellent changes. Gone are the days where you have to go abovewater to cast Streams from Hades(ugh).

And yeah, I see why Air wouldn't have any good underwater summons. However, the Phantasmal Warrior/Wolf/False Horror series as well as every Lightning spell except Thunderstrike works underwater, so I'm not worried about Air's straight power there. In general Air is really light on the summons, anyways.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

It doesn't have to have a good summon, but it should be better for UW access than death.

I think a W/A combo summon that can fly into the water, dive in and get a water shape would be cool. Squall elemental? Dire cormorant? ;]

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Okay, yeah, we really do need a W/A combo summon--"Flying Fish"?

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

Some things would rust horribly in the sea. Clockwork horrors definitely shouldn't work underwater, as their mechanisms would sieze up in like a day. Probably the same for mechanical men.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

A new use for the 'taking damage underwater' mod command, you say??

Gosh.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod v0.91 - Quickfix
 

You are probably right about the air summon. I'll give them a copy of the "ease UW item penalties" spell though, so that they can actually do something with all that UW item access.

Well, you can bring some heavy infantry underwater with breathing items and they never suffer from anykind of rusting. It would be odd if I applied the "rusting" logic on the Mechanical dudes but not on them. Besides, they are "magic beings", so it's not that much of stretch to assume that they are enchanted against rusting. Clockwork Horrors suck in UW anyways, mostly because of the reduced AP from poor ambhibian. I really see no reason to nerf them even further.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

OK, UWGIM global released! Note that the .dm file does not overwrite the old one, you should just delete the old "UWGIM-global" .dm file before DL'ing the new version. This version make absolutely no national changes and is intented for those who like their UW nations as vanilla as possible.

I have tested that most of the spells work underwater, but I really can't test the balance of applications of all these changes. Especially the water evocations working underwater is a BIG change and I'd like to hear thoughts on the matter. (Hint: Expansion with "cold blast" is fun because there are no archers to kill your mages). I also didn't up any prices on anything because of it got UW access, which might raise minor balance issues but I really doubt it.

I also only went through the national summons on wiki. I might have missed some national units and spells that should be castable underwater. If you see something that does fit with the logic of this mod, please report it and I'll fix it.

List of changes this "global" mod version makes:

Notable national summons that got UW access:
Panganea Carrion creatures, national undead summons (Shura, Civatateo, Baen Sidhe), Monster & Jaguar Toads



The "national" version of UWGIM will be released sometime in the future and concentrate on making EA/MA Oceania/Atlantis suck considerably less.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Mmm, Shura getting amphibian.

This actually might make most of the UW nations more viable--especially the Manifest Vitriol/Vine men shenanigans. Oh my goodness, you can field summons armies without needing to give all your casters amulets of the fish <3

The only truly silly spell I see is Earthquake...you're swimming.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

yeah earthquake doesn't make sense. falling frost.... not sure if the frost would "fall" in the water. or at least not that painfully.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Read the description for the spell.

I see no reason why a event like that couldn't happen underwater.

Falling frost does pure frost damage. So a 100% frostres unit is immune, no matter how feeble it otherwise might be. So, the spell does not in fact do any damage in the form of falling icicles and stuff, it is just cold. Things like momentum and friction do not apply, it is just magical drop in the temperature. And you can make frost underwater in dom3, I know this because "Grip of Winter" works underwater in vanilla.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Earthquake makes a lot of sense to me - I would actually expect it to be very nasty in the real world, because of the shock waves being transmitted through the water.

The ones I don't think should be included are Rust Mist, Healing Mist and Freezing Mist, and arguably Sleep Cloud, because (a) mists don't make a lot of sense under water, and (b) they are horrible spells whose graphics make my game run so slowly that I generally have to give up watching any battle in which they are cast. Mainly (a) though. On the other hand I think Cloud of Death makes sense under water as it could be seen as a purely mystical cloud.

I also feel Cold Bolt, Cold Blast and Slime don't feel right, as they appear to have momentum and you'd expect them to get stopped in their tracks underwater. However I can see why you've included them and I think it's probably fine.

I also agree that Falling Frosts doesn't feel right, but reckon that on balance it is probably okay and again it is useful to include for gameplay. At least there is consistency that, admittedly surprisingly, all the cold evocations work underwater.

If there were no shortage of spell slots I would be tempted to make alternative versions of Cold Bolt, Cold Blast, Slime and Falling Frosts which were underwater-only, had exactly the same effects, but had different graphics and descriptions which were more consistent with being underwater. However the lack of spell slots means this probably isn't worthwhile.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Oh, I forgot to actually say my main reaction - this looks really great, thanks Burnsaber!

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

The thing is that "Poison Cloud" is castable in UW in vanilla. If this magical cloud of poison can stay "concentrated" on a specific area for a certain time before dispersing to the enviroment, other clouds should too. Their function is pretty much the same, the only difference is the inclusion of "Mist" in the title. The thing is, I don't see why a W/E mage couldn't make a certain area of water corrosive by applicating the "Rust Mist" spell. The poor name choice of the spell is just semantics. I could easily change the name to "Rust Cloud" and it wouldn't change a thing.


Yeah, my logic here is the same. It's pure frost damage, a magical drop in temperature. Friction and momentum do not matter here, as the spells clearly do no physical damage. That's why "Ice Strike" is still not castable underwater.

Well, I could just edit the vanilla spells to have different graphical effects. "Slime" for example could just have a explosion of goo happen at the target and we could skip the missile graphic. People would notice that for sure, but probably not care. (it would just make the battle run faster)

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Actually falling frost is demonstrably physical in nature, since those caught in the aoe get to make a def check to avoid any damage. This is distinct from falling fire or acid rain.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Also while my new computer means no slowdown for me no matter how many clouds are cast in a battle, I sympathise with llama having been in that situation myself. It quickly makes battles unwatchable on older PCs.

Would it be possible to change the graphics of the cloud to make them less resource intensive? A lower density cloud effect for instance.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Hmm. Kind of true I suppose. Never thought of it from that angle. It's just the fact that when a mage casts it underwater, the following effect does not really "look" or "feel" like it doesn't belong. You could say that my limit on making a spell castable is if it feels right. Sort of like if your opponent casted the spell, would you scream out "BS! He can't do that!"? If that happens, I'm not getting the effect I'm looking for.

On the other hand, water magic sort of sucking underwater just does not feel right. I think I could make "Falling Frost" not castable UW, but make "Water Strike" better and harder to cast since W1 mages can now spam "cold bolt/blast/slime" so they have something to cast. To be short, we could make "water strike" into a powerful mid-game UW water combat spell.

I think it could in the intrests of this mod to fiddle with some spell effects (mostly the "mist" cloud spells) to make them "look right" UW. I don't think that it should be up to this mod to do something about "fire cloud" and the like. I don't want to "feature creep" this mod. Perhaps CBM or the community sprite mod?

Actually, one probably just could add the code for the new effects themselves to the bottom of their copy of CBM. It's just a graphical change, so it won't "activate" any cheating alarms or the like. Anyways, this stuff is sort of a tangent and could use its own thread if any further discussion is needed.


In other news, I had a very boring lecture today and got into thinking of one aspect of UW nations that I have forgot to tackle. Prentenders.
Underwater pretenders, to be more precise. Anyone who has played a underwater knows this problem. Most of them just suck and their problems can be directly traced to a single point in all of them.

They give water magic. Water magic on pretender is just useless for a underwater nation and you are using precious desgin points on stuff that you don't want. Must be the reason why the liches/ghost king are the most popular underwater pretenders. The root of the problem is that the water magic on these pretenders is pretty thematic and thus CBM cannot really touch the issue. See the title of this mod? Underwater GAMEPLAY improvement mod, we are not so constrained here.

Of course I want to keep stuff as thematic as possible, but I kind of think of the issue like this. If all of the *thematic* pretenders are useless just because of their thematicness, players are forced to use the unthematic ones. Since we are talking about pretenders here, what point is to them to be thematic if no one is going to see them in-game? My orginal idea was just to give them new modded pretenders, but that would be lame. I'd rather just make the already thematic options better than add new "super-pretenders" to replace the old ones.

Here is some quick brainstorming to get some discussion going:

Son of the Sea (All UW Nations) -> This guy is hopeless. He'd be perfect a pretender.. for a *land* nation. He has nothing that a UW nation could want. Just more of that "so usefull" water magic. His mere concept is unsalvageable since no other path really make sense for so "sea" focused dude. Thus his change could be most drastic. I'd rewrite his unitname and description to make him the "Lord of Storms", sort of like angry Poseidon who raises storms to devour sailors and to mess with Odysseys. The bringing units underwater could be explained as him saving some guys that strike him fancy (when he feels like it). That would allow us to change his magic to "A2W1" which would give much more of a niche. Or perhaps A1W1 "base" and give him a land shape with +1 air and his water shape could have +1 water.

Dagon (Atlantis) -> More water magic? Ugh. I'd just make him E1W1 and perhaps increase path cost to 60. One option also is to just make him magicless and decrease his base cost.

Draikana (R'lyeh + Atlantis) -> She has SC potential but those paths are pretty ugly. Lich/Ghost King is just a better choice for a SC that diversifies to death, which leaves her with no real niche. As an underwater witch, perhaps she could be W1D1N1 with perhaps somewhat higher path cost? We could also just scrap the water magic alltogether, it's not that necessary of her theme. She is a titaness cursed with a hideous form (= death magic) which allows her to breathe underwater. Don't really see where the water magic comes into play. So another choice would be to make her just have D as base and lower her path cost to 30 or 20 to make her more attractive next to a Lich.

Old Man of the Sea (Oceania)-> Yet again, more water magic. Might have some SC potential, but once again the Liches/GK are a better choice for the diversification SC niche. I'd give him some lordship over the sea winds and let him be A1W1S1 base. He'd then be a sort of rainbow/diversification/semi-SC all-rounder for pretty cheap. Oceania could appreciate the chance to get their hands on those air boosters.

Lord of the Waves (Oceania) -> Base E is nice. I guess he is sort of supposed to be more of a SC than the "Old Man of the Sea" with his higher base stats, but it's not enough to make him better compared to him. It's simple: Astral >> Earth and the man can just take earth himself with his lower pathcost. The lord could perhaps get air magic too (wind makes waves after all). One option is that he could get the "Wave Trident" as a base weapon. That would certainly be thematic.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "Global" version released.
 

Do you not think falling frost might make it more difficult to get underwater against an underwater nation ?

You will now face, potentially, massed falling frost hitting everything that isn't undead.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "National" version released.
 

Okay, a new version of the global mod and released the national version.

Changes in the global mod:
- UW pretenders made better
- Falling Frost no longer castable UW
- "Water Strike" was made better (number of effects 1+ so that it is a lot better on high W mages)

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "National" version released.
 

It looks like the national version doesn't have Coral Hauberk/Basalt Armor encumbrance changes in it, if you meant to still include those.

Also the Wave Breaker on the Lord of the Waves doesn't seem to be enough of a 'fix' for him...it doesn't onebattlespell or anything, he just hits stuff a bunch of times and you really shouldn't be putting him in combat without at least a shield or something...and a Wave Breaker is two-handed.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- "National" version released.
 

:doh:

Forgot add the changes from my test mod to the actual version.

I'll do a quickfix tomorrow for that. As for the Lord of the Waves, I'll try to figure something out.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- Quickfixes for all
 

Okay, quickfix for the coral armor. Updated both the global and national version as I also did some more work on pretenders. Nerid, Dagon and the Great Seer of the Deeps now also benefit from changes. Didn't boost Lord of the Waves that much, just slightly boosted stats and he got a "Crown" armor. I'd like to start careful first with these pretender changes, since I'm piling this stuff on already boosted CBM pretenders.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- Quickfixes for all
 

Mmm, I love the new Dagon--early game SC like a Wyrm(not quite as good of course) but has full slots for later. You have plenty of room for scales and a few magic paths to make him terrifying, too.

Incidentally the Coral Hauberk change makes Triton Troopers actually recruitable for UW combat, especially vs someone like R'lyeh. And Shark Knights are downright scary! I actually really like it, because things like Coral Guards for EA Atlantis suddenly have a niche as 19 prot badasses.

EA Oceania has this weird thing going on where it gets two different mermage recruits from its underwater castles right now. Also MA Atlantis has Atlantean Light Infantry recruited from coastal forts when presumably Reef Warriors should be able to be recruited.

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- Quickfixes for all
 

Hmm. I removed all traces of the coastal recruitment stuff, but this might be some sort of clash with the recruitment changes of CBM. I'll look into it. Just to be sure, you didn't have UWGIM global + national enabled together or national + CBM both enabled?

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- Quickfixes for all
 

I had the national one and All Ages enabled, so I just double checked with nothing but UWGIM national and it's still doing it.

By the way, are there any plans to fix Trident Knights for the mod still?

Re: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod- Quickfixes for all
 

Hey Burnsaber, a couple of things.

CBM has that typo "#selectnation31" -- you may want to fix that in your version of it.

And in regard to this:

I don't think you have -- at least not for Oceania as of v0.91. The code that does all that seems to still be in there:


I had removed all this stuff in my own version of CBM long ago and forgotten about it, since I found it screws up Oceania's PD by providing it with a gimped, magic-less mermage. Now that I've been messing around and know a bit more about Dom3 modding, I realize it's probably a matter of the PD 2nd commander not being reassigned to the new unit ID or something, but as it, it does cause that problem. (See attached screenshot.)