Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Brief strategy guide -
Try an awake red dragon with fire 4, turmoil 3, productivity 3, growth 2 and luck 3.
He gives you fire magic, and if you hand him your starting troops he can walk into a province site-unseen on turn 1.
The turmoil/luck gives you an excellent shot at Padmassa's very powerful national heroes.
Buy the mad priests on some turns to save up for expensive national mages on other turns. The priests have only a 50:50 shot of doing anything useful on any given turn, so you'll need a fair number of them.
Turn your scout into a prophet and have it fly around animating corpses. When you send people site searching, they can pick up the undead on their way.

The attached mod file includes only one pic - Amos did a very nice Asi for me, and Frank is also working on some graphics (of Aurochs, mainly).

If anyone else wants to contribute art, great - I can't draw at all.

I'd like feedback on the game balance and on the flavor text, mainly. The position seems balanced to me (even slightly weak) but YMMV. I'm hoping to set things up so that players are encouraged to pursue a blood economy *early*. Let me know if people think that is a viable strategy or not.

If anyone can suggest some evil which they're not doing, I'd love to hear it.

Padmassa, the Black Coven
Advantages: Awesomely powerful mages of blood and death, powerful and inexpensive national summons.
Weaknesses: National troops are expensive and have poor morale.
Race: Humans, mainly
Military: Cowardly human mercenaries, once-human thralls, cross-bred creatures, demons and undead.
Magic: Blood, Death and Earth, limited access to Astral and Water.
Priests: Weak, insane. Can perform blood sacrifices and animate the dead.

0.11 Changelog:
- Fixed a few typos.
- Befouled priest is insane again (oops.)
- Horror Ridden and Possessed Aurochs now have poison clouds and coldblood, like Hags.
- Thrall Children no longer recruitable - Hags spawn them in your dominion.
- Fixed description tags on the Aurochs.
- Added Gore attack to mounted villains.
- Mounted Villain I is now mace/whip instead of spear/whip.
- Adjusted cost of Gray Men.
- Removed bite attacks from the Faceless. Giving them poison spit causes them to use it, so they'll just make do with fewer weapons.
- Removed low % randoms from the Conjurer and Circle Master.
- Improved undead leadership on the Witch - lowering it makes early soul-less economy very hard to manage.
- Changed one of the heroes. "Great Hag" is now "Mistress of Ararat" - has a different schtick, no longer thugable, really. Powers you actually care about remain the same.
- Added Amos *****in' Asi sprite. Trying to keep custom graphics to a minimum, though.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

A new mod nation! And it isn't in the LA! Madness!

I'll check it out right away. This is your first nation right?

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

To encourage early blood economy in my Insectoid mod, the nation is heavily dependant on dominion through the use of #sacrificedom, #dyingdom, #nopreach, #domsummon as the main source of the unit recruitment, and the blood magic to summon the leaders.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Ok, my very first reactions,.....

The conjurer seems sort of cheap, as does the circle master,.. possibly the high circle master too. I suppose this is to encourage using the magic heavy part of padmassa though. I still think maybe they could all be upped a touch. I'm also not entirely sure about the circle master description. I'm not really so po-faced that I can't appreciate a joke in the descriptions, I just think that when you're paying for a top level mage you want to stick with the (very flavoursome) feel of the other descriptions.

I think the Gray Man is also a bit underpriced. I mean as it stands I don't feel compelled to use the knights at all - with the GM you get a much stronger unit with lots of specials who has incredible morale - the weak point of padmassa generally. 50 gold is just too cheap - they aren't sacred (which fits) so you aren't limited by holy resources either when cranking them out.

I really like the combination of bad morale troops and a lack of reliable priests. It puts a new spin on things.

The other thing is that I think the thrall children shouldn't be buyable at all. I really think there should be some sort of child catcher leader who generates them as a domsummon instead - this would stop the AI using them as much (I'm sure they would cause the AI to mess up risk calculations etc) and limit their numbers in a less artificial way,.. it would also be fun to build up squads of child catchers to spawn the little buggers. Makes for a very evil and flavoursome leader unit too.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

The conjurer and the circle master have the same price point as the independent versions. I could (and probably should) strip the randoms off, which I'd originally added to counteract an increased price. Also note that your capital is only admin 10 - so consider that you are very poor, even by EA standards.

The Gray Man is too cheap, that price point is from before he was cavalry. Do you think 70 would be more fair? I don't want to make him too expensive to use.

Dyingdom does encourage bloodhunting - however, it discourages you from spending your blood slaves on troops. In test games I found that I made more buck-imps with dyingdom off.

This is the first nation I've posted - I've made others but didn't like them enough to get them even to the state this one is in.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

70 for the GM is much better. In the vaettihiem mod my wolf trolls were pretty much smashing everything up - they ended up costing 100 each and they're still well worth using. I think the GM is in a similar situation - people are willing to pay for quality and survivability because in the long run it pays for itself, plus it reduces micromanagement.

Definately a very interesting nation and I look forward to seeing them progress. Glad you decided to post it up.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Are the "Venomous Fangs" of Gray Man and Black Rider the same as "Venomous Fangs" for the Corrupted Priest or is it a weapon of their aurochs?

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

It's the same as the fangs on the priest. All the faceless get it.

Since some of the faceless are now mounted, I'm considering removing it or changing it back to a poison spit. It's kinda silly to go around biting people from horseback.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Silly or just plain COOL!?!?

No your right it's silly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

You could just explain the fangs as the aurochs. I think the Gray men should cost atleast 100 gold, they are fast, stealthy and extremely survivable. To top it all off they have 4 attacks and fear+0.

On another note, the whip/spear mounted villian has some serious attack problems due to both of his weapons being long(whip strikes with attack4, spear with attack5)

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Blood/death is a short path (vampires suck), and I've been doing a fair amount of thinking on what national spells would fit with the blood/death and earth/death combos, which are a little underpopulated.

Padmassan national spells should go in Blood or Construction, by preference.

These could be a lot of work to figure out how to get them going, so any advice before I start would be appreciated (or if anyone already knows how to make spells do this stuff.) Likewise, I'm always looking for ideas for more evil.

EEEDDDDD, const 7, "Obsidian Legion" - gives everyone stoneskin. 3 earth gems? Maybe should be const 9? Can I just copy stoneskin and change the AoE or does that still not work? Ought to do something else evil - is Army of Gold (for example) it's own effect number or is it set up to be Ironskin + a secondary effect, I wonder?

BD, blood 3, "Shadow Baiting"
BDDD, blood 5, "Shadow Blood Frenzy"
BDDDD, blood 7, "Slavering Horde of Shadows"

Spilled innocent blood is used as bait to lure shadow beasts into the material world. Combat summonings, make 5, 12 and 35+ shade beasts, respectively, at the cost of 1, 2 or 6 blood slaves. Easy to do.
Maybe it should summon "corrupted" shade beasts - maybe berserkers, maybe sacred. Shade beasts are pretty corrupt already, though.

BBBDDDD, blood 6, "Army of Midnight"

Raises the invisible black banner of the heliophagi atop the highest steeple in a distant province. At the stroke of midnight, a legion of shadows will descend on the people of that province and seek to slay anyone in it. They do not even know who called them from the darkness, and if victorious will not serve you. Easy to do.

BBDD, blood 4, "Black Blood"
BBBBDDDD, blood 8, "Rain of Black Blood"

Attack spells. The second one affects the entire battlefield.

Black blood could legitimately do Bane/ageing damage, MR damage like shadow blast, or poison, or all three (that'd be pretty crazy.) I'm not sure how to put multiple damage types/effects on a spell - if I copyspell "banefire" and then change the damage type to poison, maybe?

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

At a GC of 100, the gray man would cost nearly *twice* the upkeep of a Pegasus Rider, and nearly twice the resources, for a position that has less resources and money to begin with. Originally I priced the Grey Man at 80/61 (compare to the Knight of Avalon - he has a lot more powers, but being undead is a big drawback), but found I never used them.

In evaluating the cost of the Gray Man, keep the economics of the position in mind:

Your capital does get +20 resources, but is only admin 10, which is an income-hit equivalent to 2 levels of turmoil in the early game, and a big resource hit once you've taken even a few provinces.

Once you have some provinces to start blood-hunting, you can summon extremely elite units at very competitive prices - but most of them cost upkeep, and blood-hunting hurts your income.

Those circle masters *are* an excellent deal at 100 gold a pop - so you're going to want to build a lot of castles to churn them out in quantity. These castles don't give you the option on Gray Men, and chances are they make more resources than your capital (since they've got a higher admin even if built on a mountain.)

I've been sitting here playing the position and I have to say that the false knights are very competitive troops when doing early expansion - possibly even overpowered. They make a lot of attacks, EA independents don't hit that hard, and with their modest equipment and unbarded mounts thay're available in very large numbers.

Sure, they die, but that's okay, you don't want to keep paying upkeep on them anyway.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

I agree the knights are good, i mix flail knights 2:1 with gray men, works very nicely http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I also like being able to mass produce little children at my forts while pouring all my gold into mages, good times indeed.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

IMHO, the spell "hatch draconians" is VERY VERY overpowered. For just 18 blood slaves you can get 100 of them per turn. (Just take B9E4 blood fountain). They are Blessed!!! and has MR of 16!!!!!!!, which means no one can banish them that simply. And to conjure this hordes you just need a province with 5000 pop and 3 circle masters. I simply cannot imagine what can stop this hordes.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Oops, that's a typo.

nreff should be 1001 not 10001, meaning that a B9E4 god could make 10/turn, not 91/turn. Still nasty, but hardly unstoppable.

I'll fix that when I release the next version of the mod (which will include more artwork, mainly.)

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

ok, but you still get 31 cool units for just 18 blood slaves. Imagine how much blood slaves will you get at turn 30. The Mictlanian hords will look like puppets for you, especiaally if you take f9w9 bless. This nasty reptilians have a protection of 18 - arrows are useless against them. MR 14 + you can easily reseach enchantment 4 to further protect them against banishing.Again it is too much.
Maybe too make blood magic more easily used, you would give the conjurer dousing effect of 1? This will encourage everyone to reseach Blood Magic from the start of the game.

About magic: you give 5 magic path exept f, n, and air. Nachure is easyly gained through indies, and with some luck you will get air 1 Hich circle master. Too big from the the start imho.

My opinion - right now this mod is overpowered.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

I'm confused - how do you get 31 per turn for 18? I'm counting at most 10 per turn unless you can boost your blood magic to 31.

Are you being sarcastic about the douse bonus?

Many EA nations get five paths. EA Arco, for example. EA Arco also gets a more powerful army (aside from blood summons.)

Also note that the nation has major disadvantages - particularly the very low admin in the capital.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Well when I played, I didnt bother to hire anybody except mages and maybe some indy commanders - and you dont need admin to hire mages.
the spell "Hatch draconoids" is level 2 reseach, cost 18 blood slaves and gives you 31+ draconoids.
I am not sarcastic about giving dousing to conjurers

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

The number of draconoids is a TYPO. After it is fixed you will not get 31+ any more. It should be 1+1/level of blood magic (which would be 4+1/level past 3), but I think I'm going to change it to a fixed number (it'll be comparable to a Lanka or Mictlan blood summon in terms of cost/effect.) I'm not doing another version of the mod until I finish some other stuff, though.

Conjurers are already nearly as eficient blood hunters as mictlan priests; I'm aware that circle masters are a much better deal, so I might make the circle masters capital only, or just drop the Conjurers entirely.

Admin also makes money; quite a bit of money, since your capital has 40,000 people in it.

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

they are not sacred, so their upkeep is twice bigger then mictlan priests

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

Has anyone tried this as an AI?
Does the randomness of the mad priests offset AI logic (one-minded stupidity) by making it at least a chance of doing a smart thing once in a while? That might be worth expanding on?

Re: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha
 

I played a couple of games with it as AI against some other people's nations.

It did better than most, but I don't recall what it was doing with the priests. As I recall, the odds of a crazy priest doing anything remotely useful (let alone cool, like becoming a bonus prophet) are quite low.