New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

Presented here is a new Late Ages nation for your game-time enjoyment:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif Sanguinia http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

Unknown to mortals, undying sanguivorous creatures of terrifying power - vampires - have long contested one another for rulership of their elite, enigmatic society on the fringes of human lands. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif When the Malediction befell the nation of Ulm, the vampires who lived secretly on that kingdom's periphery seized the opportunity to unite and forge a new dominion. The Bloodletters, a cabal of wizened, shriveled vampire-mages, speak of a new god who will lay the world of mortals bare for domination by vampiric overlords. Under their guidance and the power of their ritual blood-spilling, the Counts of the Sanguine clan have united the vampire clans, revealed themselves to mortals, enthralled entire villages to their service, and created a new kingdom. To strengthen their realm even more, the Bloodletters have contacted the Heliophagii who advise and aid the vampiric masters of Sanguinia in sating their thirst for the blood of the world.

This nation is an addition to the normal Late Ages nations (nation number 71) and will not replace any of the original nations. This mod is quite a bit different from the nation mods I've done for Dom 2 and from Teutanion, my first Dom 3 nation mod. All of the commanders are immortal vampires statistically modeled after the "native" vampires already in the game. It's a little odd and probably imbalanced in some areas. I've had both stunning success and crushing failure in play-testing and am still playing around with it. I wanted to release it now so others can get there hands on it. With your help and comments hopefully I can put the polish on it! Load it up, check out the readme file, and give the vamps a try. Please let me know your impressions and concerns so I can make this mod even better! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

v1.0: 39 downloads

CHANGES FOR v1.1:

-#nopreach flag removed, your vampires can now preach as well as sacrifice to spread their dominion
-Bloodletter Holy magic ability increased to 2
-Reeves, Counts, Original Vampire, and Patriarch given ambidexterity
-Death Dealer stealthiness decreased to +0
-Stalker stealthiness increased to +20 in vampire form

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

I know dominion spread needs to be limited to avoid massed vampires becoming a problem but only being able to preform blood sacrifices (no preaching) along with your best recruitable priests having only holy 1. However, if you can spread your dominion well then e9 (unequiped) vampire counts casting stoneskin are beasts (regen, immortality, insane prot, rapier and life drain, nice stats)

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

This mod is pretty cool, but I'm not sure why the assassin has a paralyze attack. Was it supposed to be a life drain? I'm still going through my test, so I don't see anything else yet. Thanks for working on this!

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Shovah32, not having a ton of experience with blood nations, I knew striking the right balance with a blood-obsessed nation would be tough. They have #dyingdom, #sacrificedom, and #nopreach for the very reason you mention -- massed vampires. That tactic was obvious from the start of making the mod and one I sought to prevent while still retaining the immortality of the vamps. My intent was to make the primary challenge while playing as Sanguinia to spread your dominion. Once you've convinced the people of the next province over to accept your god (by sacrificing their neighbors), then the vampires (with the kinds of insane power you mention) sweep in and slaughter the meek and weary.

Perhaps Bloodletters sould be Holy 2?

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Ihgalli, I gave the Death Dealers paralyze as an alternative to life drain on purpose. Since it's their task to stalk and murder individual enemies I thought it would be appropriate that they have the ability to make their targets seize up in the moment of action. Think of it as another poison at their disposal. This also gives them (slightly) more of a chance against tougher, mounted enemies.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Were cool nation, I think it's very unique in a way that it has a pile of disadvantages coupled with advantages...hmmm, EA Agartha is also like that and I also like them a lot... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Say, this is based on Warhammer right?

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Nerfix, yes it is roughly based on the Vampire Counts army from Fantasy Battles. (Teutanion was based on the Empire and Bretonnia.) I'm hoping to make a few more nations with similar inspirations. The next one may be a mix of the High Elves and Wood Elves, but I'm hoping to get some of kinks worked out of Sanguinia at the same time.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

I'd love to see Chaos. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Frank is already working on Skaven.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

That's cool.

you know, I've recently read about Warhammer and I have found some paralels to Dominions which has made me wonder if either of the devs has played it.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

I thought it was based on warhammer aswell. Increasing bloodletters to holy 2 would help alot but they still have trouble getting slaves since they have no cheap mages.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

I think you should switch the stealth of the spy and the assassin. Spys generally have +20 and assassins usually have just +0. Did you intentionally not want the vampires to fight effectively with their rapier/drain combo? The more powerful vampires should probably be given ambidexterity, unless you thought vamps shouldn't be especially skilled.

Personally, I think you should enable preaching and make the spy a priest too. At least then you wouldn't have to rely on the very expensive blood hunters completely. Since all the priests are so weak, it wouldn't be an exceptionally powerful dominion push anyway.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

I look forward to seeing the Skaven mod that was mentioned. I've started working on a Wood/High Elf nation.

Shovah32, the Bloodletters have a slight dousing bonus to improve slave-gathering and the reeves at least have Blood 1, but in a nation ruled exclusively by vampires there simply *arent* cheap mages. With some of the other changes planned for v1.1 these difficulties should be mitigated.

Ighalli, thanks for the help! When the spy is in bat form its stealth goes up to +20. I will probably raise the stat in its vampire form as you suggest and may lower the assassin's. I had not considered the impact of what are actually dual weapons on the fighting ability of the reeves and counts. I will include their ambidexterity in v1.1. Preaching will be in too.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

Hmm, a single bloodletter (with a dousing rod of course) per 5000+ pop province could lead to fairly cheap and effective blood hunting, thanks for the advice.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia
 

FYI, Sanguinia has been updated to v1.1 to address some of the suggestions made here. Enjoy!

Interesting nation.
 

I was fiddling with this nation in a game that got interesting before it ran into a crash bug.

Some comments --

It's easy to spam the Hall of Fame with recruitable immortals, since dying over and over makes you famous. Helps balance their cost.

No randoms, death or nature make for pretty limited magic. First summons with paths that you don't start with might be at the Heliophagus level. No Death is a little weird because the traditional vampire summons are blood/death. No death, air, or fire means no access to the common research boosters. It might be best for the pretender to have some death or nature magic; not sure that fire/blood helps that much. Death in particular is easier to bootstrap; a D2 mage can summon a D1 mage and build a 10-gem D booster for another D2 mage, and a D1 mage can find more sites remotely.

Reeves are ugly in drain scale. Poor research, and reanimation ceases to matter when there are no corpses left -- both ghouls and soulless require bodies. And if the bloodletters are better hunters for the cost, that may leave either not taking drain, or using the reeves HOF spammers to take advantage of their immortality. So... hmm, avoid drain scale, or I need to find a better use for them.

I have a suspicion that immortal assassins and spies would be annoying to enemies in MP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif At least the assassins aren't astral... immortal, horror-marking assassins would be truly annoying. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

The temptation with this nation is go take advantage of immortality and go commander-heavy... especially after HOF spamming.

Re: Interesting nation.
 

My advice: take any pretender with e9(cyclops is good) and any paths you want for forging (i also suggest growth both for blood hunting and to make back any corpses you 'make' through pillaging ect) and, once your do some research in alteration your counts in friendly dominion are like gods.

To put it simply:
High prot armour+e9 bless prot+prot spells+regen+lifedrain+immortality=good. Thats not including any equipment you put on them. If your facing bigger armies you could always send a few (i suggest 1 for every 40 or so enemies) and script them with: summon earthpower, invunerability, bladewind, bladewind, attack closest, make sure some-one blesses aswell. Any vampires who get good heroic abilities (ie obesity, legendary cruelty ect) may be ready to get equipped so load em up with a charcoal shield, horror helm, boots of quickness, pendant of luck and anti magic amulet and send them out to destroy in the name of their god.

Re: Interesting nation.
 

Taqwus, you've pretty much got the idea. Sanguinia is commander-centric to the extreme. The only really viable troop recruits are the Blood Drakes and they are also expensive. As recruitable immortals, the Sanguine vampires are nearly gods themselves. Whichever pretender you choose has simply beaten them to the punch and acquired their loyalty. Thus, if I gave them access to yet more paths (Blood, Earth, and Astral are quite robust) I think they would be well over the top. If you want Death, take the Vampire Queen.

In the play-testing I have done, the Death Dealers are quite nasty against AI players and I can imagine the pain they would be in MP. Waiting to hear if anyone ever uses this nation in an MP game...

Also, was the crash bug in any way related to this mod?

Shovah32, I still haven't been able to sufficiently play-test Sanguinia as I've been giving LA Man and my other nations Teutanion and Sylvania a decent run-through while building two other mods (including a revival of the Underkings from Dom 2). I have noticed that the AI is not very good with Sanguinia -- having thoroughly trounced it twice while playing as other LA nations. It takes a skilled human player to make this nation shine. But shine it apparently can! Thanks for your continued interest and the strategy suggestions!

Crash bug -- dunno.
 

I don't know if the crash bug was related, since it hasn't been diagnosed or fixed -- but I've had two games crash during computation in 3.01, and the only common mods in use were Worthy Heroes, Hunter of Horrors nerfing, and Standards and Streamers. Seem to recall reading that there may be an issue with #clearmagic as used in Worthy Heroes, so I might need to fiddle with that and see what happens -- after a holiday trip, that is.

Personally, I would be annoyed if I had to kill the same pesky assassin over and over again. That alone might be worth something in MP if it affects a player's judgment. :p

Play-test
 

I loaded up Sanguinia today to get some play-testing done as I've been terrible about testing my nations much after releasing them. Shovah32's strategy of tricking out Sanguine Counts with decent magic items and letting them loose on an enemy army with a blessing and Stoneskin or Ironskin is pretty nasty. However, I took a Death-5/Blood-5 Vamp Queen as a pretender instead of a high Earth magic god as Shovah suggests. Still, I didn't have to worry about the spread of my dominion most of the time because the Counts simply would not die. The Counts were given Heart Finder Swords, Lead Shields, the cheap strength-boosting boots, and attack/defense skill boosting misc items. With PD 35 (thanks to a random event) in the home province, I had very little trouble scooping up blood slaves (taking ~10/turn) to make items and then to sick Infernal Disease on enemy commanders. Stalkers, who could cover the entire map in two-three turns in bat form, were given the disease-spreading amulets and sent to the AI capitals. I culled two AI nations in this way -- weakening their base and then invading with uber-Counts supported by Blood Drakes -- before being obliterated by another of my mod nations, Sylvania, who simply had many more troops and those (damn) Aspect Archers.

Re: Play-test
 

I tried this nation today but commanders dont cast holy spells even when scripted - to see this start a new game and use the first commander to attack and script him to bless himself. He wont do it.

Re: Play-test
 

That sounds like it might be a result of bless not working properly on undead, unless the nation has a hidden #undeadnation or #unholy tag, which Sanguinia doesn't.

There's a hotfix available in the Black Tome of thingjig mod, made by Dr P.

Re: Play-test
 

So it was intentional that this nation shouldn't be able to bless?

Re: Play-test
 

No it's not. There's a bug which prevents undead from being blessed, it should be fixed in the next patch. Until we get the new patch, Download the hotfix http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...;Number=500877

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

I just downloaded this, and it seems like I have a very odd bug where I have all the Bogarus unique spells, but no other overlap. Also, this nation does have its own uniques right? I couldn't find any at all.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

I'm not sure what you mean by uniques. Nothing in the mod uses the unique tag.

The bug is that sanguinia uses the same nation number as Bogarus, since it was made well before Bogarus came out. It's easy to fix.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

Well I was just a little surprised that the nation didn't have any of it's own spells. If it had the same number wouldn't it have the Bogarus recruitables too? Thats what was puzzling to me, I got all the spells but none of the recruits.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

no the game places bogarus and give that nation number all those spells, the mod probably clear the nations recruits etc but unless a spell is specifically names and then switched off they will still be there.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

And no, Sanguinia doesn't come with any spells. They weren't a working feature when the mod was made.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

My bad then, thanks.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

bumping this thread for Baalz' review in his new mod nation game :)

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

As far as I understand the idea of mod creator was to hold dominion from overspreading.. Do prophet/temples/home province spread dominion? Or, like with Micltan do not?

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

They do not.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

is someone supporting the mod?

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

Sombre has made a bit of an update to it in the LA mod combo pack.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

If he likes vampires, it would be cool if he fixed this lifedrain issue if it's possible. These vampires in lategame loose all their charm because of it.

Re: New Nation: Sanguinia (Update v1.1)
 

The immortal 0 enc high statted mages you mean? Yeah they're useless without free bonus lifedrain that nothing else in dom3 has.

I'm not 'fixing' this because it behaves as standard in dom3. Also you should direct your comments to the Late Combo Mod thread, because this thread is for the standalone version of Sanguinia, which has nothing to do with me.