Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I find the idea of Death magic on bright wizards a bit odd. They're all about sudden violence and destruction, brightly-burning anger and violent temper. Not subtle in the least, but direct, forceful and effective.

Death magic, meanwhile, feels like a long-term path, fairly subtle, using summoned beings to do your work for you, some of them sneaking about, crippling your opponents to make them easier to kill later, ageing them, making them sick, and so on - the only point where it makes sense for a Bright Wizard is that it contains the fear spells, but leaving death out of Aqshy and giving the Empire a national "The Burning Head" F-spell for scaring people would feel far more thematic... or so I see it.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

My suggestion for where to put celestials, after looking at your list, is probably into either alteration or thaumaturgy.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

The paths on the mages look good, I'd just add a couple things about their abilities to make them more "unique":

-give the Gold mages a forge bonus(perhaps even place them in Construction school?)
-animal awe for Amber mages;
-why no undead leadership on the Amethyst mages? As far as I recall, they are skilled necromancers.

Also, I agree that steam tanks should be mid-game construction summons: probably a high protection trampler unable to be routed?
Don't remove them please, because I'd really like to see the gorgeous sprite you'll do for them:D

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

No, amethyst wizards are skilled anti necromancers. They use the Lore of Death, rather than the Lore of Necromancy. They also revere Morr, god of the dead, whose followers are basically crusaders against the undead. So they'll get anti undead spells and technically in dom3 they'll be able to cast all the death magic they probably shouldn't, but I'll try to discourage that in the description and through stuff like not having undead leadership.

I will make sure the wizards get appropriate special abilities - I just wasn't listing them all above. I agree Ambers should have animal awe and Golds will definitely get a 10% forge bonus at wizard level, probably 20% at Lord level. All the Lord level guys will get cool stuff, like the Golds will have high prot from turning to gold, the Grey Lords will fly and have glamour, the Amber Lord will ride a huge bear and entangle people who attack him etc. The Lords are going to be relatively pricey in gemcost, so you won't have many of them. Probably like 25 gems each.

The Steam Tank probably isn't going to get a very good graphic from me. I don't like drawing big stuff or inanimate things very much - see the doomwheel and screaming bell, which are very basic.

Re: Bright Wizards having death magic - it is only a very small amount and only for some of them. I could take it out though. I have already put in a burning head spell which is fireball + fear causing flaming skull summon at the point of impact - that currently requires F2D1 but I could make it F3 and just have it be more tiring for the mage to cast, or at higher research level.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Will a death mage still try to cast raise dead if it has no undead leadership? Is it even possible to give a death mage no undead leadership, given that death magic increases it (would being mindless work?)?

It's too bad the AI likes the raise dead spells so much, it's really hard for a death mage not to just turn into a skelly spammer after turn 5.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

I'll just give them #noleader. Pretty sure that removes all leadership regardless of paths.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Hrm...have you tried that? Not sure about #noleader specifically, but #noundeadleader (the undead leadership equivalent) says the unit "cannot lead undead units when it is a commander (unless it is a death or blood mage). This is the default." [emphasis mine] That implies that the leadership value will just be a baseline 0 adjusted by the normal B/D magic modifiers.

As a test (don't have a game machine avail. at the moment) someone could B or D empower a scout to see whether it gains undead leadership.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Actually stavis I don't think that test would work :)

However, as it happens I'm playing a game with Jomon, Broken Swords at the moment, and they have death mages with no undead leadership. Looking at the mod file it seems sombre accomplished this by giving them the #noleader tag. The only question that remains in my mind is whether they'll cast raise dead or not.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Like I said, #noleader not #noundeadleader. #noleader is a special tag, it really does remove all leadership.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

So I've finally gotten around to testing this now. Death mages who have no undead leadership WILL cast raise dead and the like, even if there are no friendly mages on the battlefield with undead leadership. Predictably, when they raise the dead, the dead disintegrate due to lack of undead leadership. Kind of a pain.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Sounds pretty annoying, but it's the best I can do. You'll have to just accept that amethysts are at a disadvantage once they go off script.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

The Celestial sprite looks a little like the Tomb King sprite. Is he related by any chance?

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Only by his love of bling!

The light wizard might be even more similar - he has a blue and gold stripe egyptian style headpiece.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

If only there was an easy way to restrict spells by nation :(

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

You could give the amethyst wizards some juicy national death battlesummoning spells (perhaps shade-like beings), which they could spam instead of undead summons? It's just a matter of making the spell seem better than animate dead in the eyes of the AI. (more effects, increased range?)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

That would certainly deal with the problem of summoning units that will just disintegrate. That spell could potentially be pretty powerful though so its implementation would have to be handled very carefully.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

There's one trick that one could use to make the spell seem more useful in the eyes of the AI. Since raise dead gives 10 soulless, we need to top that with >10 things summoned per spell. Giving the spell improved range and precision values might allow us to make the spell summon less guys (needs testing).

Make the spell summon say 15 Fillerunits. Being size 1, they will fill up 3 squares. Then make the summon spell nextspell a AoE1 instaskill spell. This will kill all of the fillers we summoned. Then have the *real* summoning the effect by nextspelling the nextspell.

Elegant? No (the spell will show wrong effect number in its description)

Will it work? ..Probably

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Obligatory sombre-nagging bump :)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Wouldn't it be more fun instead of doing fillerunit shenanigans to just create shade units with exhaustion? That way they'd never get overwhelming(and the whole idea of shades able to pierce the veil just for a few short moments is awesome)

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Exhaustion wouldn't quite be the right effect for that. Instead I'd suggest a low maxage and nextspelling decay on them. It would be closer to the effect that you're going for.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Bump.

Any news, Sombre?Perhaps we can send the Mod Fairy to visit you next night:p

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

*poke*

I'm sure that many dom3 addicts are eagerly awaiting their chance to burn heretics to the pyre and spread the faith of Sigmar with inspired sermons(and if that fails, big steel hammers work even better). I sure am!

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

News is only that I'm busy with lots of other things, so modding dom3 has taken a back seat for a while now. I would like to continue in the future though.

Hopefully one day I will release this mod.

Re: Warhammer MA: Empire
 

Oh, okay; I'm sorry to hear this:( I guess witch-hunting will have to wait.