New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

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

Kharam Dzu

The dwarves once ruled vast subterranean kingdoms, rich with the wealth of the earth and the traditions of a thousand years. Now the old Underkings exist only in legend and pressure from other races has cause many dwarves to seek their fortunes above ground. The dwarves who settled in Kharam Dzu, a volcanic archipelago, have put their famous ingenuity [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon07.gif[/img] to work in ship-building and have become the premier shipwrights in the world. As a rising sea power [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Fish.gif[/img], they soon found that robbing others of their gold by piracy and raids was much easier than mining it from the earth oneself. From the Office of the Admiralty in the heart of Kharam Dzu, letters of mark are issued to aspiring dwarven privateers and the island markets bustle with the captured booty they return. Nearly all coastal peoples have come to fear the black flag of Kharam Dzu, which can appear on the horizon without warning http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif and means certain death or enslavement at the hands of the dwarves.

This nation is an addition to the normal Late Ages nations (nation number 73) and will not replace any of the original nations. This mod is based on the concept for my Dominions 2 nation mod "Halls of the Underkings". Kharam Dzu reintroduces the dwarves as a nation of their own, but they've changed through the ages and now -- in the Late Age -- are not what they once were. These dwarves live above ground, indeed on the water, and are far from honorable. Of course, they still have all that great dwarven craftsmanship going for them. This nation is entirely sea-faring and invites strategies that capitalize on their great mobility. Load it up, check out the readme file, and give the dwarves a try. Please let me know your impressions and concerns so I can make this mod even better!

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

You're aware that putting sailing on non-commanders doesn't do anything http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif?

Delvers (specifically, Delver Armor) need to cost more resources - compare to an Ulm unit. You could reduce their cold cost, if you wish.

Perhaps the longbeard should be old?

You're going to be fielding a craptons-of-crap strategy as this nation, that being the biggest benefit of units that cost so few resources - consider making all of them slightly cheaper to compensate for the fact that none of them wear armor.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

I just noticed what the Black Market does after several turns of marveling over my abundant heaps of money!

You can give them a capital site that generates money if you wish, but it shouldn't generate resources as well, and forget what I said about making the troops cheaper http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

DrPraetorious, the sailing ability on the recruitables is there in the event a player wishes to use Gift of Reason on any of his/her troops. It's the same reason I include commands for leadership ability on all monsters including even the lowest tier troops.

The low resource costs are a result of all the units being Size 1. After I lost two hundred dwarves and their commander in three successively horrendous turns of one battle to trampling opponents I realized why its best they don't have the same resource costs as Size 2 units. It's also easier to nuke five dwarves in one square than three humans. And the Delvers, while having slightly stronger armor than Black Steel, are not as powerful fighters as Ulmic infantry or knights, nor are they well armed, and underwater -- where they belong -- they are even less-so. I tried to offset the overall cheap resource costs of the units with slightly higher gold costs and found that it balanced out alright in play-testing.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

It's true that, in spite of the odd math, the nation does not seem unbalanced. The unit that presently worries me is the crossbowman - who will also do very bad things to elephants, by and by.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

I was hoping the dwarves would come out from under the iron boot of the Vanir in a mod, and it's nice to see that they have. Even better, they're pirates, so what's not to like? great job! I'll definitely be downloading this one.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

DrPraetorious, the repeater crossbowmen can still be shot to death just as easily as the other dwarves and decent flying troops could cause them serious trouble.

HoneyBadger, let me know what you like and dislike once you've loaded it up and played a bit.

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

It might be a little while, I've got a lot on my plate right now (something like 6 mod nations, plus work, plus the holidays etc), but definitely will do, Zepath. Hmmm might get to it tonight...

Re: New Nation: Kharam Dzu
 

I have been playing around with this mod a lot recently and I thought I would give some feedback.

First are good things: To begin with the core idea is super awesome. I mean, dwarf pirates??? I love the national heroes, your idea to make a couple of immobile ones was great! I like your unit concepts allot, they fit in very well with the theme and are fun to use. I think the art is very good as well, and basically it is just a high quality mod.

This does not mean it is perfect, and personally I found it to be slightly unbalanced. These are the things I noted, and I offer my suggestions below

Chaplains- are very very very strong. for 150g and 3r you get a mage that gets 2 random picks in fire earth or death, this alone is not overpowered but the fact that they are level two priests makes them REALLY good. I think that having the chaplain be such a good priest takes away from the pirate flavor. My feelings on this would be to either make the chaplain holy 1, or to make a new holy 1 priest and bump the chaplain up in cost, or to take away the chaplain's magic and create a new dwarf mage unit.

Angel Killers- I think these are over powered because their sword is armor piercing, I think flavor wise it would make more sense to make the weapon magic. I also would increase gold cost by about 5.

buccaneers- since dwarves are size 1 and 5 of them fit into a square the berserk 2 is devastating, I would bring it to berserk 1

balloonist- 1 air and 1 astral gem a turn seems a little much, I would do air only.

overall- I think I would replace death magic with air magic for a more consistent flavor.

Kharam Dzu
 

Ok, this is really late, but...

I think the guys in the diving armor are fantastic.
All the units are good, for that matter, although if I could request, either a Nemo Pretender in a Nautilus, or a Nautilus high-level construction summon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think it would be both appropriate and fun to include a reference to 20,000 leagues under the sea in this nation.
I forget if it's there, but if not, it'd be nice to see the Ancient Kraken as an alternate Pretender here too.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

HoneyBadger, I'm glad you like 'em. When I conceived of this nation of dwarven pirates the image of first generation diving gear immediately came to mind. As a result this nation is probably a little out of place even in the Late Ages, but the dwarves are always supposed to have a leg-up (or keg-up perhaps) in the realm of technology. Equipping them with 18th or 19th century-esque accessories seemed right. I've put aside my nation mods while working on Nova Deus and this on could really use an update... Great idea on the Nautilus, btw!

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

Zepath: That's a great mod, respect !
Never had such a funny feeling while playing dom3 as with those dwarf pirates :-)
I wonder where you got all the ideas from ? The Beer Guard guy .... brilliant !
And after scanning the .dm file i found out about the parrot demon.... excellent !

Could you explain the "background" of the death magic skill ?
I understand it is thematic from the black skull and bone flag but somehow i feel that a seafaring race should have some air skills. Just can't imaging an dwarven pirate necromancer...



While playing i found myself recruiting only repeater-crossbowmen and bombards. (I still have to go underwater and try out those diver guys). Maybe it is my playstyle, but does not make the bombard (grenade thrower) the "normal" pirate guys useless ?

Some ideas i got while playing:
repeater-crossbowmen: Maybe those guys could use a nerf ? If the weapon idea is based on the chinese chu-ko-nu, the range and accuracy should be inferior to a normal bow.
As it is now the dwarfen repeater crossbowmen have longer range than a bigger human crossbowmen but twice the rate of fire ... seems unlogical to me, with all respect to the dwarfen craftmanship.
Adding castle defense bonus ?

Aging: All dwarfes seem to be rather young..

Bombards: maybe less damage and adding "strength not added" ? Also Armor-Piercing or just flame damage instead of Armor Negating damage ? And maybe less range / less accuracy..

Idea for new units:
Sniper: A commander. I think of sailing-age sharpshooters sniping at enemy captains from the top of the mast.

Catapult: In the description of the bombards, you described big catapults on ships. Could not the dwarfes dismantle such an catapult and use it on land instead of on ships ?

For all the shieldless, armorless guys like longbeards:
adding a unit like a "tower shield bearer". He once stole a big tower shield of an enemy and now carry this shield with both hands into battle to give the longbeards cover. Unit has ridicule fighting skill (useless kick), high enc and slow movement but thanks to the huge shield good shield protection and big size (2) to attract arrows.

Have to go back to the game and launch some raiding partys :-)

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

How about a dwarf close-combat specialist with bladed armor and armed with daggers?

Sniper's very good.

I'm thinking seige engines might work a bit like Early Era Ermor's gladiators-you pay a fee to "rent" them for one battle-the cost of setting them up, and then they're "left behind". Included with small catapults (or better yet a horizontal vector mangonel-ballista, unless you're throwing fire, or throwing over a body of soldiers.) could be giant shields.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

This sounds very fun and I'll give it a go tomorrow. I'm surprised more people haven't had a look at this one.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

I got around to trying out this great mod and I had a blast. The nation is brimming with character, yet it surprisingly doesn't feel that out of place in Dominions.

I haven't played it enough to make any balancing suggestions, but it seems to me that rather than beer the pirates would be more concerned about rum or grog. I'm also curious to know why you decided to stick to only one nametype rather than giving the national heroes set names.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

Now of course this is my opinion


but these guys feel more like Goblins Than Dwarfs. You gotta use horde tatics and if anything big shows up expect to lose craploads. I dont see y Dwarfs couldnt be size 2 while not as tall as humans im sure they could make up for it in bulk. Hp in line with humans feels wrong. Dwarfs are supposed to be "tougher" .. And then late age and only 6 Protection :| Dwarfs die by the boatloads to shortbows and slings. Then Dwarfs using Falchions?!?!?!?!?

Have to agree with a guy above. Air Magic makes more sense then Death

Stil a fun mod and a nice change of pace.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

They're pirate dwarves, not warhammer or Lord of the rings dwarves. I like the fact that they're different too. Dominions is a game which tends to shy away from stereotypical fantasy nations.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

There are graphics for a very nice "cannon" unit, which doesn't seem to be in this mod yet. Any plans to add it?

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

Even in LoTR, dwarves carried around swords a lot more than they did axes. Infact-I'm not sure-but I think that in the Hobbit, the dwarves all had swords, not an axe among them.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

You would be correct Honeybadger. I think the axes only came into play at the Battle of Five Armies...even then though, I dunno. Been too long since I last read The Hobbit.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

Awesome stuff.
A few of my thoughts, though I didn't play test the mod yet, but from what I see and read:

Falchions are good. Dwarves with short, heavy swords are not without precedence.
Some sort of 'dwarven marines' with a bit of heavier armour would not be a terrible idea.
Death magic makes sense to me. Pirates did a lot of killing and were very superstisious. A pirate necromancer would never be short on corpses.
How about a heavy crossbow/light ballista unit? Slow but heavy ballista operated by two dwarves.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

With a mod like this, it really is a shame that Dom 3 doesn't support naval battles

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

It's still good fun taking it to the underwater filth of the world with teams of delvers and water mages.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

From some of the descriptions, I thought the dwarves of Kharam Dzu *were* the filth of the world?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

Well it takes filth to know filth, haharrr -rattles falchion-

I think this version of the mod has a couple of serious balance problems. I prefer my CBM version - pirates have mapmove 2 so they can actually use sailing, repeater crossbows aren't the only thing worth building etc.

Re: Kharam Dzu
 

This is an idea for a "Semi-random" province which incorporates Kharam Dzu:

"Amahr Du Balad-Durr" (umlaut above the last u)

In Dwarvish: "Towers of the Battle-Waite"

The province contains a massive fortress (fortified city)
and must be seiged to take it over.
It also contains a Great Gold Mine, a Great Iron Mine, and two Bronze Pillars.

Once the capital city and home of the Dwarven race, since the Dwarves took to the sea to pillage and plunder, the Amahr has been reduced significantly in political importance. However, the Dwarves have not forgotten their glorious past. The city is still lovingly maintained and cared for, as both a land-based Royal Court and as a hospital and hospice for aged and crippled veterans-including over a thousand longbeard soldiers who are simply too 'set in their ways' to venture out to sea-the Pirates take care of their own, and they consider this to be 'Home Sweet Home'.

It's guarded by 12 Crusher golems, 120 delvers, 360 dwarven repeater-crossbows, and fully 1200 longbeards, and led by 9 vice admirals and 1 Crusty Old Captain.

The vice-admirals are armed with:
Fire Bola, Robe of Etheriality, and Black Steel Helm.

The Crusty Old Captain is armed with a Shadow Brand, Jade Armor, Wraith Crown, Amulet of Rejuvenation, and Elixer of Life.

This province shows up in Late Era games-even ones in which Kharam Dzu isn't used. I'm not sure how it would work, exactly, but I think it would be a fun random.