How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

So angels are supposed to fight the devils in an eternal war. Except if these are the angles and devils that are fighting I think the war will be over soon.

Angel:
HP: 17 Prot: 7 Moral:18 MR: 18 Enc:1 Str:13 Att: 11 Def:13

Awe(+4), weapon Flambeau

Devil:
HP: 35 Prot: 8 Moral: 30 MR: 17 Enc: 2 Str: 13 Att: 18 Def: 16


Now the angel has an awesome weapon. No doubt. The flambeau will kill the Devil in one hit ... if the angel can hit, which he won't ( unless fire 9 blessed ). The devil OTOH will also one hit the angle if he hits, which he will.

No wonder the angel has a lower ( but still excellent ) moral, they die all of the time.

The Awe effect is awesome against normal troops but against devils it is almost 100% useless.

To make matters worse there are more devils around since blood is cheaper than gems and soul contracts quite commonly make devils even cheaper than 7 blood!

The problem I have is that I can't see what to give to angels without making them into Ubermenches. If I bump their attack/defence enough to enable them to compete with devils they will whomp normal troops due to their awe effect. If I give them enough prot to protect them from devils, again, they will whomp humans.

Perhaps the way would be to remove the awe and bump their attack/defence. But that also ruins their flavour.

It's difficult. Any ideas?

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

The simplest solution is to give them abilities and/or items that are only effective versus "evil" creatures (demons, devils, undead). That way they can fight more effectively against such creatures without being utterly overwhelming against humans.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Not to play devil's advocate (eh eh) here, but Flambeau has instrinct attack bonus of 4. So, Angels trying to hit Devils have effective att 15 versus def 16, which isn't that bad. Include the huge damage from multiplication and armour piercing and Angels aren't that much wimps anymore, at least if they get the first hit.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I think it would be nice if Angels got some sort of boost. Anytime I've used them, they've died off remarkably rapidly, without accomplishing much of anything. Perhaps they are just hard to use well, and I haven't found the right tactics/situation. In any case, as it stands, I consider Angelic Host to be a very expensive way to summon a fire mage.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Isn't the weapons' attack bonus automatically included on the unit stats?

So a naked angel would have Att 7...

But more to the point, why would it be so bad for angels to be really good vs humans?

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Yes, unless it's a special bonus versus a particular creature or thing.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

No, weapon attack bonus *is not* included in the basic unit stat screen. There is a simple reason for this: multiple weapons. If you right-click the attack stat you will see the attack value of each separate attack, and this rarely is the basic stat of that unit.

Defence value, however, is shown in the stat screen. This is because in DomII the weapon you attack with matters, the one you defend does not.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Are you sure? I'd've sworn that when I was tweaking the Ashikaga mod some months back that both weapons and armor, and not just armor, got factored in. I may be wrong. I strongly suspect I may be getting senile. (I am over 40, after all.)

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Dont attack values of multiple weapons stack, regardless of the specific weapon being used?

Hmm you may be right though, I never really though about it.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I'm with Endoperez here. Attack bonuses don't show up unless you're clicking on the attack value of unit description. Try Virtue pretender and you see the difference when using Flambeau.

Dunno if mods would do it a bit differently, though.

Edit: and attack bonuses don't stack, unlike defence bonuses. Each weapon gets its own attack bonus as a modification.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

So its possible then that angels may do pretty well vs devils, although it looks to me like Devils still have the edge... and are MUCH MUCH cheaper...

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

If you factor in the cost difference between devils and angels, the angels are either too expensive or too weak (or both). BTW, this has been said before a while back in other threads. However, until this thread, I don't think anyone's actually proposed doing anything about it.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Easiest way to keep the flavor of the Angels and the Devils is to change the Flambeau in length to one more than the trident (You also didn't account for the double attacks of the Devil and the paralytic poison of the tail) and add in a decent about of att. (I'd say 4 is enough).

Thus the Angel will repel (occasionally) a devil thrust, and has a much greater chance to one hit the devil away. This doesn't impact normal troops because it's not the fact that angels can hit normal troops but that normal troops can't hit the Angel.

Also lowering the cost of the Angel spells by 1/3 (35 for Angelic Host) would even them out. (5 Astral per Angel, including the commander).

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I liked the damage shield that worked specifically against undead Zen (IIRC) mentioned a while back when discussing Virtue. Probably angels would be given a slightly weaker Version should there ever be such a shield. Wouldn't keep them alive any longer without some marble warriors -level buffs, though.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Also keep in mind how many different types of devils and demons exist in the game compared to how many angel type units. This is another unbalance... hopefully adjusted with Dominions_3.

Combine the above with how there are so many more bad events which kill population it seems this fantasy universe is doomed for the forces of good.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

First what's the cost of an angel ?
If you say the commanding arch angel is worth 20 pearls than each of the 6 angels costs 5 astral pearls . That is not so bad especially when you clamhoard .
Devils are sure cheaper though .

A angel has an attackskill of 15 and defence of 13 but he is sacred .
The devil has attack 18 with trident and 17 with barbed tail , 16 defence .

The main problem is imo that the angel has only 17 hp + 7 protection while the devil has 35 hp and 8 protection .

As it is the angel ( without bless effets ) hits ~36% of the time will the devil hits the not waterblessed angel 85,5% with his trident and 79,7% with his barbed tail .

As Zen said the devil has enough damage potential to kill the angel in 1 combat round .
21 + 2d6 oe damage with trident + 12 + 2d6 oe damage with barbed tail .

I think a good idea would be to give the Angel 25 - 30 hp .

Giving the angel 4 more attack as Zen suggested is too much : He has already a flamebeau and if you run a fire 9/10 bless for +4/5 additional attack then suddenly the angel would have an attackrating of 23-24 !
Then he would be the bane of all banelords , tartarians and other SCs because he has a flamebeau .

Hm really hard to balance the angel imo . If you make him too strong he wipes out either normal troops extremely well too or he is the bane of all undead/demon SCs .
As it is now his relatively low hp , protection and defense let the angel die after 1-2 hits though and he gets hit too much .

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Heh, a Blessing that actually works for it's blessed units?!?! OMG.

An Angel that is the bane of all Undead?!? OMG.

Keep away from that, most assuredly.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Careful, Zen. Haven't you noticed by now that Boron doesn't react well to sarcasm?

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Well,
I remarked Angels are quite weak, but didn't bother much because :
1/ When you get Angels you get a very cool leader with F3. With devils you have either units+basic leader , or 1 mage leader, but not both
2/ As far as The Eternal Battle Between Georges and Saddam uhh.. no Angels and Devils is concerned http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif, did you look at the *other* Angel-type guy, the Harbinger ? Horn = AoE 5 attack str 5AP, x3 vs devils, this could kill 12 devils in 2 rounds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif !! Guy costs 25 pearls, not that expensive.

So the "angel" side ain't that poor ... But I agree that stg like say Att+2 def+4 and Prot to 10 will make the basic Angeltrooper more worthwhile.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Lol .
That's perhaps a language thing lol http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
If the sarcasm is not absolutely clear it is a bit hard to know if this is sarcasm or not .


Back on the topic though with Zens suggestion the Angel then together with a firebless might be really frightening even to an Ice devil SC e.g. but why not this should be his role i guess .
His low hp + def let him die still pretty easy to non undead/demons .

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

The Angelic ost is also a bit costly because it can be projected anywhere. I would vote for some more HP though, like a tiny +4

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I take it you have not tried this. I have. They do not work. I had a thread about it some time ago. I figure that the horn has an MR check it's the only way I can explain the total non-factor that is the horn of the harbringer. It's useless. Does nothing. Zip. Clearly you should try things before claiming that they fix everything.

I know it was bad enough just with what I was showing. I did not want to make it seem like I was piling on. Of course that is how it works in game.

Doesn't that require the devil to fail a moral check? I don't think that will be happening any time soon.

This would help substantially. Of course if the angels can hit it will be an intersting battle. The angles will probably 1 hit the devils and the devils will one hit the angles. Weird battles to be sure.

HA. I have to totally agree.

I think that is it! Perhaps it could be implemented as follows: a second attack which does some minimal damage ( let's say 4 points ) x3 against devils/undead with a good sized area effect ( like 5 squares or something ) with no range. Much like the harbinger's horn ( but less powerful ). If you can mod 2nd attacks it should be brain dead simple to implement. That along with the +4 attack would make them USEFUL ( but perhaps not cost effective ) against devils.

Interesting.

Perhaps good can at least hold off evil in the eternal war!

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Devils have built-in weaknesses in the various spells and weapons that are extra-effective against them. Angels are vulnerable to everything that affects magic beings, though, but devils don't generally have those themselves.

Angels are generally sacred, though, so if you are really "holy enough" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, you may be able to make up the difference. It seems thematic that pretender gods with weak bless effects would have a harder time using angels to full effect. Similarly, perhaps during an ascenscion war, demons do tend to have the upper hand in some ways. Once someone is a real god, perhaps their bless bonus lets angels or whatever minion they choose take care of things like demons. In other words, I'm not sure that we'd necessarily expect angels to be as dangerous as the better demons. Seems more like a thematic question that could be answered either way. I'd be interested to hear what Illwinter might have to say about why they chose the values they did.

Seems though like one thing the Angels could really use which would be thematic, would be a defense that only worked against demons.

PvK

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

To summarize!

Were I to mod them I would probably do the following:

1) Attack +4
2) 2nd melee attack. Area attack let's say 1. Damage 4 x5 versus undead/demon.
3) An air shield would be nice. It's kind of a shame that they die to arrows like that. either 50% or 75%.

Would I summon such a troop? I think so. They are good against the most common SC's undead/demons. And anything that counters what we see a lot of today ( bane lords gone wild! ) is, IMO, a good thing.

Heck them being remotely targetable could be a *real* boone as they could potentially KILL the solo undead SC/Demons that are running around all of the time. Horray.

Hell it would even be nice if there was another Version of the spell that worked like Ghost Riders in that the host would go away after the combat. It would, of course, cost considerably less than the current spell. Perhaps 10 astral pearls.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Ok #3 is optional. It may make them *too* good ( but it's really not a big thing ).

I think that #1 and #2 combined would make them quite excellent at what they are supposed to do: kill those unholy things without sigifigantly empowering them against normal troops ( which is the only thing that they are even a little good at today ).

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I wonder if you've ever seen a tartarian in the game? The typical one has 150-250 HPs, making it almost impossible for the angel to kill in 1 hit. The tartarians on the other hand only have to hit the angel once, and also have a variety of magic paths they can use.

In addition, you say "if you run a fire 9/10 bless" : well, yes, _IF_ you do. How many people run fire blessings for the effect on angels? And even with an unholy, er, holy, attack rating, the angels still die like holy flies to many forms of attack, especially magical.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

In my Caelum SP game (circa turn 60) I've summoned tartarians and got the monstrum as the first one. Very impressive. Once I finish kitting it out it'll eat almost anything in the game as a light snack. Heck, even freshly summoned with no gear whatsoever it'll rip up most things. Boron needs to take another hard look at Zen's SCQR.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Tartarians are very, very nasty. A Tartarian Cyclop has full slots, loads of hp, decent base prot, generally nice stats, and Earth-4, which allows Invulnerability and Iron Will for starters. The Tartarian Manticores have even more hp and flight, but far fewer slots and different (2?/2?) magic. Still, they cost not only Conj-9 research, but death-7 to cast, 10 death gems per, usually 20 nature for Gift of Reason, and additional time w/ Chalice / Gift of Health to remove feeblemind and other fun afflictions.

But yeah, an angel will have trouble with one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

One bit: Archangels, Harbingers are unbounded. Their demonic / devilish rival nobility are capped, and don't benefit from divine backing unless made into prophets or given Shrouds. Weak gods, weak angels; this makes a lot of sense to me. It's also thematic with the usual story lines of Good being under siege and seriously threatened by Evil. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Uhm that's true but a single devil TROOP can eat a harbringer or an archangel. It may actually take two devils TROOPS depending upon how the battle goes.

The change of a modest increase in attack and an area effect holy attack as a 2nd attack would make the angels worth while as a hard counter to devils/undead. They would still be inefficient vs. normal troops which is ok by me.

As a hard counter they should PROBABLY be very cost efficient against the troop they are going to counter. I mean that is the way that counters are supposed to work. But I would live with +4 attack and the holy attack.

It would also be nice to have a similar hard counter to magical units. It looks quite a bit like ether warriors are supposed to fit that bill, however they lack the skills to consistantly hit and they are not remote targeted. They are also hampered by their 1 strategic movement.

However I would not want to destroy the spell as it stands. Perhaps a slight bump to their attack rating ( perhaps +2 or so would do it ). And two new spells one that would be remote targeted ( and more expensive on a per-unit basis, perhaps 8 ether warriors and some leader, for 50 gems or so ) and a ghost rider like spell for 10-15 gems that would be the normal load of 15 warriors+1 ether lord.

This would make astral summons ( which are currently ... uhm ... lacking ) the summons of "hard counters."

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Definitely slap more HP on the angels, equal to the devil's maybe? 100 FR would also be fitting. They already have FR 50, and the Flambeau should give them another 50%, but because it's intrinsic instead of an item, it does not, and the archangel will fry his minions half the time with falling fires, fireballs and other offensive fore spells.

Blood summons are available far earlier and are much cheaper and use a type of magical resource generally not suited to much more than summoning nasties, while the angels are expensive, die quickly and the resources generally are much better used elsewhere. It is quite telling that you generally need to drop at least two Angelic Hosts on a moderately large indie province (at indie strength 7) to conquer it with them, and even then you will lose two to three of them, most likely because the Archangel will flashfry his minions with fire magic instead of laying the smackdown on the enemy.

Tight now, the angels are a completely losing proposition almost every time, unless you have insane amounts of astral pearls to spare or find a conjuration bonus site like The Crypt Underneath or The Ultimate Gateway. With the latter one, they become a viable option, but that site is very rare.

Edi

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

You didn't include the costs .
1 angel costs about 4-7 pearls depending how much you think the archangel alone is worth .
1 Tartarian costs normally 10 deathgems + 20 nature for GoR + at least 40 gems for equipment .

With Zen's change with +4 to attack the normal angel with fire 5 bless would have an attack of 24 without experience .
So the 6 angels who are worth about 30 pearls would have a not too bad chance to get 2-3 hits in the first combat round and each hit would do 26x3 + 2d6 oe ap damage .
Against tartarians this is not a big chance but at least a chance and banelords at least would be defeated easily cause there 1 hit is enough normally .

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Personally all the Angels are underpowered, from Virtue, to the smallest Angel of the Host.
I'm going to adjust their stats in my mod in fact.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I'm fully confident that Zen's mod will address Angels. They will not be uber units but hopefully they will on a cost basis whoop devils.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

And Cohen's mod will also, probably by giving them 50 HPs and Fire-4. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I like the idea of making Angels stronger. But another possibility would be to simply make them cheaper, either by reducing the gems/magic paths necessary to summon them, or by increasing the number that you get from the spells.

Sometthing else to consider is that Angels compare poorly to Devils because Devils are too strong, not because Angels are too weak. Heck, I'd rather see Devils weakened than Angels strengthened.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Perhaps all that is needed is to make angles as hoardable as devils are - give the archangles a summon allies command that produces unit angles.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Well the Last thing I would like to see if hoards of angels roaming the landsscape.

I would also not want to see people using angel to whomp on human armies, that's just not horribly thematic.

Sadly there is no way ( currently ) to mod new holy weapons which could potentially fix the suitation.

The changes already proposed ( attack buff like +4, longer length weapons although I don't know why that works at all!, and a few more HP) should help considerably.

What I would be looking for is angels who are very cost effective aginst evil forces yet not cost effective against humans.

What I also want to avoid is the current rut I am in where if I see an SC who is a devil/undead I summon up on Bane Lord ( since they are so damn nice and cheap, and they have 19 str ) and give him a holy weapon and let him one hit the SC. It works, but I don't find it thematic that I prefer to give holy weapons to undead ... sounds a little weird to me!

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

That's quite thematic . The angels just kill all the heathens like in Dogma http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .
So they just do their job and you can't say they do something bad . They only kill the heathens and the evil ppl http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

So Angels should be very powerful but few (expensive), whereas devils are many (cheap) but Angels eat their lunch.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

More serious i have i think a not too bad idea :

Vynd's and Jack Simth's suggestions are very nice but iirc not doable with the current modding commands .

So my new suggestion : It seems you can't mod a weapon yet to triple damage vs undead e.g. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif .

So give them as Zen said higher attack rating but instead a herald lance as built in weapon and a bit higher hp .

My unblessed new angel would look then like the following :
Weapon herald lance ,total attack of 17-20 , total defence at 12-13 , hp 25 - 30 .

This way he would hit a devil with 16 defense with 54,8% with 17 attack , with 79,7% with 20 attack .
Then the herald lance would result in 19 x 3 + 2d6 oe damage vs. 8 protection +2d6 oe from the devil .

Voila , a dead devil . If you run a quickness blessing the angel should be quite horrible against devils and without he would still kill normally 1-2 devils before he dies because with 25 - 30 hp he should survive one devil at least .

With the herald lance he would not do much damage against normal troops though so normal troops would be a counter to angels while the angel would be a counter to devils and finally the circle is closed with devils as a good counter to normal troops .


The biggest problem is though that you get 6 angels + 1 leader for 50 astral while you will have normally way higher numbers of devils/FoDs as opponents .
100 pearls = 250 blood via wish and soul contract is very popular so i think normally a typical encounter is 1 angel vs 3-4 devils .
If you alter the defence of the angel though then he gets way too good against normal troops as Huzurdaddi says and this should be avoided .
Perhaps Awe should be removed and replaced by something more useful against devils .
Really hard to make them fit because you have to keep in mind that they can get blessed and if their defense is too high together with awe they will rock normal troops as well .

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

This nicely explains why I constantly see you taking Virtues as your pretender with abysia. Hmmm.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

There needs to be more types of angelic beings as well just to balance the high number of devils which also exist in the game.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I take Virtue because:

Awe 6 is good for EARLY expansion, because many indeps have Morale 10. It's useless lategame against any equipped SC.
Has Air Magic by default. You can summon Air Queens, and forge Air boosters to allow your Warlock to summon Storm Demons.

Virtue however die easily by an unlucky lance hit (that broke mistform). And has poor magic flexibility (new cost 80), not to count very poor combat skill. It's not comparable to a GK right now. If sometimes I don't play with GK (or VQ with Abysya) it's because I see them too strong and sometimes I'd like to change.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I think angels could use some armor, up their protection. (I am thinking of various representations that show St. Michael wearing armor, theme-wise).

Not sure how far this would rectify their weakness, but I was surprised it hadn't been suggested yet.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

I think it is due to :

1) Those robes don't look like they protect too much, although they could have armor underneath.
2) At least I am trying desperatly to make sure that they are not much better against humans.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Angel should be better than an human, but remember:

1- Angel of the Host hasn't drain life weapon so they die.
2- They costs gems, and are few.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Yeah point 2 is exactly the reasoning .
They already have Awe and a rather good attack too .
If they keep the flamebeau it is still 13 ap wpndamage against humans .

If you remove awe , give them very low def but 15-20 protection and herald lances instead of flamebeaus they would rock devils but still not be good against humans .
But a "Tankangel" is not very thematic i think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

There's still "natural protection".
This could be thought skin, scales or such, as a sort of immunity to weapons (like angelic being). However I believe more in raising their att&def stats, and leaving them with their actual protection.
I'd like however to give them a 50% air shield in the mod, but I can't.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

Yes removing the awe and replacing it with prot would make them much better against devils. But like you said it is not thematic.

Another possibility is reducing the moral of devils to 18 ( or less ! ). That would make the awe work.

Re: How to mod Angels to not be wimps.
 

A devil IMO hasn't that attraction for a beautiful being that strikes you with AWE.
Even if a sort of HATE XXX (something that increases damage and attack) skill should be in, I'd put in both factions.