Magoserium
 

[edit: this post should always have newest version of mod attached for download. Now at 0.3.]

First release:

Mighty mages face extinction in EA. All their mana is being used to fuel their civilization. Their world teeters on the brink of collapse. Their only option--expand into neighboring countries, find new sources of mana to fuel their ever-increasing needs.

Highlights:
--many and varied magical servants recruitable in home province; skeleton dogs, aerial sylphs, water golems, crushing earth gnomes, and more.
--cripplingly low starting gem income, as all mana is going into pet projects, magical servants, political intrigues, and quests for immortality amongst the ancientest of sorcerors.
--meager priestly resources. the priestly tradition is new to Magoserium, and their adherents are politely and quietly scorned as lesser mages.
--powerful mages of all kinds.
--two new battle evocations.
--many, many, many cons for balancing.
--very different playstyle required....

Let me know what you think!

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Holy ****. Those mages are nice and versatile but i have problems with the troops.

Bone Servant: needs higher precision for patrolling

Spectral Servant: 5 gold and 10 resources for a fear+0, amphibious, ethereal, 100% immunities with high movement is far too cheap

The rest, other than the holy servant i just find a bit too cheap but no major problems.

edit: Also, if you increase the cost of all troops to 15 gold each that might balance it out as there would actually be a choice of where to spend your gold(the 500 gold pearl maker guys are the only real choice, getting a d6 mage rocks)

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Bone Servants: I'll take another look. Not sure why they would need more precision, as they are just undead dogs... they don't have any missile weapons (do I misunderstand something?).

Spectral Servants: they die very very fast. Good against low morale infantry, but archers and even slingers eat them alive. They are bone-china fragile. From my testing they seem on par with the other servants.

The mages may be too cheap. The Barons turn out to be the best deal, except with massive luck. The Archmage Citizens (the gem producers) are good about 1/3rd of the time. The other 2/3rds they are severely curtailed in usefulness due to old age.... I may have to take another look just to make sure.

Note that the servants are cheap on purpose. To start with you have no gems, and only one source of 1 astral pearl per month. This means your mages are expensive, fragile, all but useless commanders for the first X turns. Slow start. Thematically, one big cause of the lack of gems is the servants themselves. You are sacrificing gem production for good cheap versatile troops. To check this, they are only available from the home province. You will quickly find yourself using independants as the main core of your armies....

From my experience so far: early game relies upon servants; mid game you need independants; mid-late game you better have either great evocation or conjurings; late game mages come into their own.

Note that my best mages have all fallen to arrows, age, curses, horrors, etc.... They are as frail as they are powerful. Nothing like having a 500gold arch-mage die to a single arrow--or, even worse, die 7 turns after you recruit him, due to a disease he was recruited with.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

You think you could cut down on the descriptions a bit? I swear, reading it all makes my eyes bleed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

More seriously, you should consider changing the 'shock bolt' flysprite. Sort of weird it being an arrow... Also, I'd use a different color for the Earth Servant. It's mostly transparant as is.

Nitpicks aside though, it's a neat mod. Thanks for sharing it!

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Shockbolt: Will do.

Earth Servant: Yeah, that's annoying. I like the picture, but for some reason that color stone (kinda granite) comes off in battles as translucent.... Have to remember it for future ether/astral/ghost critters. Will do.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

An ethereal unit with fear+0 for only 5 gold and 10 resources is still far too cheap imo.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

They are all capitol only though.


I like your mod Uh-Nu-Buh.
Especially your choice to make all troops capitol only is very interesting.

The mages are also creative. Their magical power and eventual magic versality seems really great, but they have lots of built in weaknesses like old age, low hp etc..
And you have to use them as rainbows for sitesearching i think.

A wonderful different nation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

yea i like it too. A decent SC pretender(probably dormant) with high order and growth is nice as you have a fairly early thug/SC and can mass produce mages without worryign about old age as much

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

I'll take a close look at it. I'll play a quick 50 turns using the Ether Servants as the main core and see what happens. You may be right. So far, they have been so fragile that I have avoided putting them into play. It could be that a different style of play than mine would use them more effectively, and they would be unbalancing....

How would you use them most effectively?

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Screen of earth guys set to attack closest and a bunch of ether servants just behind on hold and attack closest, the earth servants reach combat and pin the enemy, the servants rush in and(due to small size and stacking fear+0) the enemy morale plummets, then the number of attacks and possibly evocations coming at them makes them rout.

I said the bone guys needed precision to make them good patrollers, now they just seem like weak ether servants.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

The Skeleton Servants are the weakest of the servants, no doubt. They have two pros: they count separately under leadership, and they do not rout. This might not be enough. They are supposed to be kind of undead dog constructs made of bones, gem dust, and wire. Perhaps speed would make them a more valuable unit. They could be better patrollers, and a quick reaction force....

Ether Servants--this is basically how I have used them in my trial games. If the enemy has slingers or archers they tend to get slaughtered while they are waiting for the Earth Servants to engage.

I take your suggestions seriously. I'll make some changes tonight after I have a chance to do some testing.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

BTW, what do you think of the other servants? Particularly the holy servants?

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

The other servants are nice but i havnt used them much due to the power of ether servants(who look very cool on the battlefield) and the holy servant hasnt been used much either as ive been going for good scales.

I hide my ether sevants just behind my earth servants and the hold and attack means the earth servants engage before them. As they are not large, archer, cavalry or closes its hard for them to be targetted by archers.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Changes in this version:

--shock bolt uses better special effects
--fire carpet uses better special effects
--Spectral Servant is slightly nerfed: susceptible to fire, is a poor amphibian, and speed is now 2/15
--Skeleton Servant is slightly upgraded: less susceptible to missile weapons (reflects that he is just bones, no flesh, and moves fast), has a higher precision for patrolling (8 instead of 5), and has great speed and endurance at 3/25
--Earth Servant now has upgraded sprite--more solid like the earth he is made of
--incresed Battle Lords to have a move of 3/10 to reflect their hardened history of war, and to give a strategic move of 3 to a commander that can escort the Skeleton Servants for quick reaction manuevers

I think the Skeleton Servants are finally up to the standards of the other servants. The Earth Servants quite plainly rock as cheap heavy infantry--their big constraints are they are capitol only units, they do not heal, they don't do much damage with their stonefist attack, and they have no shields so they are susceptible to missile fire.

All the servants are capital only units. None of them heal except in laboratories. They are many and varied, but they just barely equal out the lack of starting gem sites.... That lack is hard to get over until mid-game, and all but cripples a mage-based approach--and this in a land of mages!

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Pure black also counts as transparent.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

I tried your mod yesterday (before your update), and when looking at fire and air servent, the air servant seemed better that the other :

- stealth with glamour
- armor-negating ranged attack with 15 precision (versus a same-damage attack that is only armor-piercing and a precision of 8)

Exept for the fire resistance, the air servent seems much better.

Maybe the fire servant should have some other boost , such as more damage per attack, or a small area fire (unless he already have it and I missed ?)

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Earth Servant Sprite: I need to start completely over on it. I'll take a good look at it tonight and hope for inspiration. I like the current one very well, but it doesn't compress down in size very well, and the granite colors just make it too hard to see.

Air Servant Vs. Fire Servant: Shock Bolt singles an opponent out. It is similar to a light crossbow, except it does lightning damage, and fires every round! Shock Bolt does well against armor. Fire Carpet is an area of effect 2 weapon that does very little damage, but spreads it out; it does not need precision as much as the air attack does, and the damage is fire based. Fire Carpet does not do well against armor. They both have pros and cons.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Ok, I missed the "area damage" part for fire.

Looks good as it is then : as you say both have their merits.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

Earth Servant sprite is done! Very nice, too, I think.

Working on a 32X32 canvas is really hard. I much prefer the 64x64 or 128x128 pictures. A lot more detail, better color choice, more contrast, sharper edges, etc.

Tell me what you think!

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

You should update the first post whith the updated version, it will help to prevent confusion between versions.

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

The latest version will from now on be locatable in the first post of this thread, as per your quite logical request.

I have a couple of small changes I might make, but the mod is mostly done I think. I've been playing it, more or less, for weeks now, and it is a lot of fun!

Re: New Mod: Magoserium
 

This is really very good, Uh-Nu-Buh.

Ignore the complaint about the "long descriptions" I say-if they're what's currently present in the game, they're excellent, and not overly long at all.

Visually it's quite decent.

A couple of things, if I may:
1 it would be nice if blood magic were a bit less ever-present, since I'd think Magoserium, with their extensive knowledge of magic and the dangers of blood-magic, would probably restrict blood-magic if not outlaw it, but that's just an opinion.

2 it would be nice if they had some national summons. With all those little magical servants running around, certainly it seems reasonable that Magoserium would have access to larger and more powerful types.

If possible it would be great if these were added to the school of Construction, since no nation that I'm aware of currently has national construction summons, and from the descriptions of the servants, it seems like they're manufactured like a magical item, rather than summoned from somewhere else.

Another idea is for a summonable sacred Lich-like unit, since Magoserium is all about living longer than they should. The ones who actually have beaten Death and become liches or demi-liches might be looked upon as sacred teachers by even the Archmage Citizens.

The same thing can be said of national spells-it seems reasonable that Magoserium would have developed more than two exclusive spells and some improved versions of the spells currently present.

They might also have come up with an expensive but non-blood spell capable of restoring youth. Maybe Nature plus Astral, level 7 alteration, cost 25 astral pearls, 25 nature gems.

Re: Honey
 

My very very late post:
1. Or just add a bit of lore to it (Any chance of nation more descriptive nation desc.?)
2. Definitely! This has a lot of potential if modder is willing to put in even more time and work (a LOT of time).

3. I thought the air servants were very overpowered as well as they took 3x sized armies without losses and at a VERY low cost(gold/resources). The precision could be lowered to 8-12 and have glamour taken out in favor of 3-5 more protection (add some lore for it, I loved the descriptions)
4. Before trying mod, I gave pretender +10 air, making holy spirits the best missle fodder I've had yet.
5. Some units look a bit too dark (specifically Archmage Citizen, Mage Duke, Priest Magi and Holy Servant). The artwork's great, a little more contrast and brightness would go a great way towards helping me appreciate it. Earth servant, Spectral servant and bone servant could use a tad bit of brightness too maybe.
6. *very nitpicky* The spells' names are in lowercase. Eff the linux users (or post a separate link) and enter the world of standardization.
7. Uhhhh.... Same flag as Yomi? Hard to fight what you can't distinguish.
8. Pretender list is fairly limited, just bringing it up.
9. With Honey again, this nation really needs a youth spell for its' archmage citizens.
10. More of all spells really, it's a mage nation, most work should go into this.
11. National summon for elementals? Maybe bonus for Archmages summoning magic beings?
12. Elementarium produces 0 fire gems per turn. A typo or bug?
13. Wasn't really fond of archmages producing astral gems. It greatly adds to micromanagement. Nation-specific battlefield spells would help in this.
14. Drown is kind of weak, paralyze would make more sense if someone was drowning and it'd be much more useful then holding a unit in place (especially with a length of 1)


This mod is great though and has crazy potential, I just hope you update it again soon.

Cheers!

Re: Honey
 

And now an even latter post that is a bit tangent to the mod discussion, but since you mention drowning....

I have found that drowning prevents dying spell casters (who were previously enchanted with "Twiceborn") from being reborn as a wight and returned to their capitol. It is a permanent death even if they die in their own dominion. Perhaps the spell is weaker than a real drowning.

Getting back to the mod itself, I was unable to get the mod to work on my MAC. The mod folder name doesn't match the (.dm) file name and this may the source of the problem. I tried both attachment listing and neither one worked, so I removed this mod from the mods folder and put it in the trash bin. This was the first mod that I have tried that hasn't worked.

Re: Honey
 

Hmmm...although it's likely a bug, consider that spirits tended to have a lot of trouble crossing running water. Maybe it's actually a feature?

Re: Honey
 

By the way, I really like this mod. It had a lot of potential, and was-to my mind-very evocative of Ars Magica, the movie The Raven, and the play The tempest/the film Prospero's Books. I even detect an almost imperceptible hint of StarWars-the powerful mages equating Jedi masters and the spirits equating droids.

I hope-even if Uh-Nu-Buh is well and truly gone, that someone will take this up and roll with it. It's a very worthy theme for a nation, and could be extremely cool.