Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game.
 

Oldbloods are nice, but aren't they cap only? :)

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game.
 

haha yes, but on those rare occasions you don't buy a 4th generation Slaan... :D

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game.
 

OK, here is the final version of the Warhammer mod we are using. I tested for bugs and found some (apparently llamascript had some problems with Brettonnian summons), but managed to fix them. Many of the Chaos problems have been addressed. If the are any remaining balance problems, they are highly suggested to be addressed by diplomacy.

The game is up on the llamaserver. Let's try to get this thing stated by thursday.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

You know, its a late date, and I'm not going to drop or anything, but this map seems absurdly small. It seems a pity that many nations won't have a chance to deploy all their cool summons and such, since it will all be over so fast.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

Yeah, I'd go fast research on a map this size, but it's settled and done now. We'll see how aggressively people play.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

That's the general idea. We have a lot to test in these games. We'll se how the first one goes and mix it up based on the feedback for the next. As every modder knows, more games = better feedback. One more advantage of the speed is that if you get eliminated early, you won't have to wait for 6 months to get your next Warhammer fix.

Besides, Sombre refuses to play on anything that has even close to 15 provs per player. How could we play without him? He's such a lovable character afterall and his absence would just fill us all with bitter tears and decimate all joy out of our lives.

Yeah, I thought about the possibility of easy research, but decided to stick with as "vanilla" settings as possible for the first game. The HoF is large because heroes are awesome and thematic for the WH universe.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

To all people who want to play on big maps: Die in a fire.

Seriously though, I don't think this map is going to mean people can't use their summons etc. It will mean you can't use ALL of them and that you'll have to target research rather than eventually getting all of it. This makes sense to me.

Reply to squirrel re: Itza balance pending.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game.
 

I guess I'll address all these points, but I think you're being a little bit hysterical. That said if Itza does prove to have overpowered elements they'll definitely get nerfed down. No-one likes a Hinnom after all.

Stegadons - These I admit have not been thoroughly tested, so the price could be off (too high or too low). I don't think the archer part of them is a big deal - it causes a few casualties, but only fires twice and is more of a flavour thing. They certainly got elephants beat in both morale and protection, but they share the similar problem of being expensive lowish mr animals that are stopped by roughly the same counters. They're cold blooded too, so they will fatigue out about as much as elephants in my experience. The main difference is that it's much harder to reach critical mass with stegadons than elephants because of the cost. And critical mass is a huge deal with tramplers - once you reach it prot and the like becomes a lot less relevant. We'll see how they perform I suppose.

Slann 4th and 5th gen - To an extent I guess a Slann player would still build these guys no matter what they cost, because otherwise they only have priests. While they are devastating combat mages in battlefield communions and they have a huge spread of paths, the actual depth of the paths is very shallow considering the cost. On paper they look great and if you go adding up the path totals, they seem like ubermages (they are by far the most expensive mages in the game though) but they're actually pretty hard to use and you have to make quite a few just to get the right paths. You then have to worry about upkeep and probably keep a bunch of them dormant (which does still cost you, for no benefit). They suck for research after all.

Scouts - That the scout costs 1g makes little difference. How many are going to get built? I think all national scouts should be 1g personally. Equally the fact the scouts aren't found and killed isn't massively important. It's just a scout. A good one, but consider the opportunity cost for Itza (most expensive forts of any nation, want to build huge amounts of skink priests).

Saurus Scar Veteran - Again, how many will be built? They could make decent mini thugs but the opportunity cost would be substantial and itza isn't very good at budget forging. All the saurus have magic weapons so I don't know why you're excited about that - it isn't like it's an enchanted sword with strong + to stats or anything. The 20g price reflects that national 40ldr commanders just don't get built because of the opportunity cost. If this proves to be too cheap and someone is owning with armies of these guys, I'll definitely look into it though. Unequipped saurus scar veterans would get their asses kicked by most stuff, so again I think you're being a bit silly suggesting you could win by spamming them with your 1400 gold forts.

Cheap Researchers - Yes, Itza has decent research. It's in the upper tier of vanilla. It isn't outstanding as far as I can see. I will adjust it if it's really too good.

H3 priests - These are also very expensive mages who have to do a lot of stuff to make up for their cost. If you are using them just as H3 priests they probably aren't worth it. Admittedly it is another string to their bow, but you pay for the variety and if you buy a jack of all trades and he only does one thing, you're losing out the whole time. It's another matter of opportunity costs. The strong religiosity of the nation is intended though and balanced by their extra expensive temples in my opinion. Temples you'll need to build, really, to get what you want from the forts. Along with labs, that is.

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

It might be the settings we're using, but with NI i'd love 1g scouts and 20g commanders. I do think its a big deal since there aren't independents available, and you're going to want to shuttle units around.

Also, glamour and can't be found stealth are substantial advantages that other nations don't have on their scouts. This is magnified with NI because scouts are harder to replace.

Critical mass of stegadons is like 2. 1 is often acceptable. (Tested)

People are downplaying magic weapons in this context, but they were such a big deal for TNN when the topic of their sacreds came up on the IRC channel... Make up your minds - are magic weapons good or just a minor advantage?

Re: Sign of the Hammer - A Warhammer Mod Game. Send Pretenders!
 

Massing magic weapons for peanuts - I suppose. Saurus are supposed to be efficient units within reason. Magic weapons are a perk of the race, same concept as with Caelum. I don't think it's a huge deal though, as all these normal troops have the normal counters and after the normal troop phase, magic weapons/attacks are as standard for all races.

Itza good at everything! - They are a varied and flexible nation. They have both highly specialised and jack of all trades units. They also have a /lot/ of content, which leads to greater variety. But they have weaknesses like lack of path depth, reliance on extremely expensive units (Who are not SCs), the cold blooded trait, vulnerability to missiles, depleted pretender selection, poor forging,.... They are certainly strong and if you take their units in isolation they can look incredibly overpowered because they push some dom3 limits.