Ulm Reborn v.1.7b - Updated 14th June 2009
 

PREVIEW IMAGE.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...%20preview.png


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Summary: A New LA nation which thematically replaces Ulm, Black Forest but can now be played alongside it. The malediction is replaced by a miraculous event, the Aufklarung (enlightenment). Ulm turns away from encroaching evil and the Iron Faith becomes the focus of the nation. Includes 3 national summons and 1 new priest spell.

Strengths:
1. Powerful priests, extra holy magic and great preaching
2. Numerous sacreds suited to different bless strats
3. Magical diversity via summonable casters
4. Black Priests may spawn hordes of free penitent
5. Drain immune White Priest/Acolyte

Weaknesses:
1. Recruitable paths restricted to earth and minor astral
2. Resource and capital centric nation
3. Lacks light or missile troops
4. Slow moving armies
5. Vulnerable to battle magic

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-- version 1.7

-- TWEAK - Sturmheld and Sternheld now H1 priests

-- TWEAK - White Priests no longer martial leaders

-- FIX - Fixed Host of Aufklarung cost

-- TWEAK - Gave Black Steel Helmet and Black Steel Kite Shield to appropriate commanders

-- TWEAK - Added the CBM Warhorse hoof and used it for cavalry units instead of hoof. I agree with that CBM change and want to unify this vanilla mod and the CBM version

-- TWEAK - Removed armour piercing from spirit Hammers and reduced damage, making them useful almost only against demons and undead, which is fine

-- TWEAK - Removed some of the copystatting



--- version 1.6

-- FIX - Gave Reborn Lord a helment

-- TWEAK - Increased precision for punish the unjust spell


UPDATE TO 1.5 for 3.15 basegame

This update doesn't add much in the way of content, it just brings Ulm Reborn up to date with 3.15 and the changes made to regular MA and LA Ulm. I think 1.6 might not be far away if people come to the thread with suggestions. It's basically a finished nation though.

-- Several changes to descriptions and flavour, based on 3.15 update to MA and LA Ulm

-- Checked for conflicts against CBM1.21, LA Jomon Broken

-- White Priests no longer attract penitent

-- Black Priests given more chance of E2, differentiated from regular Ulm Black Priests a bit, no forgebonus here

-- Neugeboren Lord and troops stats tweaked, given new White Halberd weapon, a counterpart to the new Guardians of MA Ulm

-- Forgebonus of white priests up to 15, same as black priests of LA Ulm

-- Hoch-Hammer leadership reduced

-- Production bonus in all forts reduced to 20%

-- Stern/Sturmheld get better mr

-- Sturmheld only summonable by H4, ie prophet

-- An extra gem for 4 gems standard LA starting income

-- Sternkind get plate cuirass armour

-- Added new Host of the Aufklarung mass Sternkind summon

-- Changed White Hammer into more of a holy weapon

-- Reduced black zwei gcost to 14

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Seems different. The fact that their best priest is holy 2, they only have 1 path of magic(earth, goes to level 3), that they only have 4 good units(all high resource cost, 3 are sacred) and no starting gem income seems a little weak.

The theme is pretty nice and i can see some blesses(e9n4 maybe) working very well.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Their best priest should be H3. Capitol only white priest. If not that's my error.

The balance isn't even vaguely final. I just thought I'd get a download out for people so they can get in on the creation of the nation. If a unit seems under/overpowered let me know and I'll make changes.

I think I messed up on the starting gem income. I thought I'd given them some earth. But yeah, they're going to be a priest/bless nation. They also spawn quite a lot of sacred penitents which are more powerful versions of flagellents.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

I thought they spawned something but never checked. THe E3 Guy is holy2 but i actually guessed he was meant to be holy3(they have another holy2 priest so...). I'll playtest in about 2 hours.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Doh, I guess I didn't save changes the last time I was editing the dm. Fixed a couple of errors (such as the priest and gem income) and I'll upload v0.35 momentarily.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Nuts! I had already started a game with v0.3! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I'll interrupt my current game to give this one a whirl. It should be interesting. Thanks, Sombre! :-D

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

No problem. I wouldn't go for a long drawn out game with the nation because they're still going through balancing changes, getting new units etc. Of course a lot of those will work with a saved game from an old version, but some of it might well require you to start over.

Thanks for playtesting. I look forward to your comments.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Since blesses are expensive AND their sacreds need good scales how about a bunch of national summons(just an idea)?

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Okay, here's the quick-and-dirty review of v0.35....

I created a quick game on the Silent Seas (wraparound) map. For speed & simplicity, I selected one Easy Defensive AI opponent: Desert Tombs C'tis. I wasn't looking for a challenge here; I just wanted to try out the mod.

Pretender Design: Since I have all of these yummy sacred units, I wanted a good bless. But Ulm also requires good scales. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif I chose an imprisoned N9E5 Great Mother. Regenerating Berserker Guardians? Yes, please! Scales were Order 3, Productivity 3, Growth 1, and Drain 3. Extra points went into dominion strength.

(No, I haven't even attempted any magical research yet. Black steel all the way!)

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

• Sacred Guardians and Black Knights rock hard. Oh, yes....
• As usual, Ulm is resource-starved. This problem is made even worse by the lousy 5-Admin fort that you get at the capital. Building up a decent Ulmish army takes a long time with 5 Admin and only three border provinces.
• The killer priest-power is very very nice. White Priests are very good, indeed.
• But they're old. I guess that's thematic -- it seems that nearly every LA nation has old mages & priests -- but it sure is inconvenient.
• The freespawn Penitents aren't killer, but they can still be quite useful. And they're free! What's not to like?
• Oh, that's what. For some reason, all of my Penitents appeared with a random affliction. Is there any particular reason for that?
• The Black Acolyte doesn't seem to be very useful. I might as well recruit a Black Priest instead.

So, with that in mind, here are a few things I'd change:

• Maybe add some random F1 to some of the mages? Fire works very well with the theme. Just look at Marignon.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
• Please give Ulm a decent fort, especially at the capitol. Massive resource costs + low Admin values = very very slow recruiting.
• Maybe the Black Acolyte could be stealthy? Stealth preaching seems thematic, and it would give me a reason to recruit them.
• Take away the Penitents' afflictions, unless there's a particular reason to have them. If so, please explain it to the player.
• Speaking about the Penitents: Stop the freespawning. Instead, how about a Summon Allies command?
• Finally, maybe some (or all) of the mages could be Drain-immune like the MA Ulm smiths? Drain seems very thematic for Iron Faith Ulm, and it gives the player a way to recover some of the insane points that he'll spend on Productivity and blessings...

My overall impression of the theme is very positive. Iron Faith Ulm looks like it could be a lot more fun than Black Forest Ulm. Please take all of my ideas as suggestions, not complaints.

Thanks for doing this! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif I've attached my save file, just in case anyone else wants to look at it.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

- Well marignon is all about purging sinners with fire - they are based on the myth of witch burning and the actions of the catholic inquisition. Ulm Reborn does have an inquisition of sorts, but it's more the kind where,... well,... they lock you up in walking armour and brainwash you. I don't want to give them fire on the mage priests, but I could give them national summon access to fire. Maybe some forge based stuff.

- I thought the starting fort would be the same as LA Ulm's but I guess that got cleared. I find the fort type bit of modding pretty confusing to be honest.. but I'll give them a better starting fort. As for the forts they should build in other places, like forest etc - I'd love suggestions (with the fort type numbers if possible).

- Right now the Black Acolyte is just a cheap way of ferrying troops and they're the only priest that isn't cap only. You're right they're much worse than the black priests (their domsummon is much less frequent) - I'll make them very cheap and stealthy sounds good too.

- The penitent's afflictions are a leftover from the flagellents that they're based on. It wasn't intended and I'll fix it.

- For now I like the freespawning. It frees up the priests to preach and do priesty things. It also encourages dom strength. I'll see in the future if it's too random though.

- They might also have lost Ulm's 20(25?)% prod bonus in all forts. Either way, they're getting a resource boost in the update. They are a cap dwelling nation (their recruitment screen is more than halved outside the cap) so they need it to crank out resources to make up for bad start positions and so on.

- Because there's no mod command for immunity to drain I'd have to copystats something that already had it. That something wouldn't have inquisition bonus and might have other stuff we don't want like armour and weapons. I'll look into getting drain immunity on the white priest and he'll lose the inquisition bonus. It might not be possible to get it right though.

- All 'white' units are getting max age boosts to represent their new lease on life.

Your comments are very helpful, particularly the way you set them out. I'd love to hear more like that.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Ok v0.4 is another balance fixer with no new content. The position should be a bit stronger now thanks to better fort setup, non-old white priests unaffected by drain and numerous other tweaks.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Apart from national summons(which are hard to balance impliment and invent) you made basically all the changes i want.

Do pentients cost upkeep? I relied purely on sacred troops and mages but got a high upkeep quickly so im not sure. For the white mage guy would a minor(im thinking maybe 10%) forge bonus be unthematic? I just feel it would help(and you have some very thuggable commanders).

My biggest problem is probably that any bless that works well with your recruitables(with the exception of n9 imo) dosnt really help pentients - they like fire, water, death, astral and blood due to their survivability problems and 2 attacks where-as your sacreds(although fire and water also help your expensive capitol only cavalry) like earth, nature and maybe a minor astral bless.

One strategy I like:
Imprisoned Cyclops
Earth9(it is amazing on your high prot sacreds)N9(berserk is good and the regen on 30health guardian commanders is nice)
Dominion 4(can be increased with temples and early on you cant make many sacreds)
order3,prod3,death2,cold2,misfortune2,drain3

The cyclops is a nice combatant when he breaks out(29 prot and insane regen when he casts personal regen), even with so many negative scales you have 13% more income and 30% more resources than base scales.

Your sacreds, with their god-like protection(anchorites and templar have 24 head 25 body where-as neugeboren guard have 24 head 27 body. Your capitol churns out mages, guards and templars as recuired and your forts produce acolytes, anchorites and black zweihanders.

Your hochmeisters(better defence and more attacks) and neugeboren lords(better prot and health, fear, standard, can wear boots) can make great thugs.


One suggestion i would make for the mod is adding a 50% random for earth/astral and another 10% random for astral to white priests.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Ok v0.4 is going up now. I actually had it done last time I posted but forgot to upload it. Doh.

One new thing that I've put in is awe (0) on the Neugeboren Lord (and on the white priest, but who cares about that?). At 300 gold he isn't going to be overpowering or anything - it just reinforces that the Lords are real badasses. And yeah, he makes a good thug. I was actually able to thug them up very early in a test game due to all the earth magic.

Oh and the drain immune white priest is in there.

I think adding astral to the white priests might well happen in the future. I'm very tempted to make a new kind of priests so you can go a very heavy penitent route with the nation if you want. Something like an H1 no magic priest with high leadership who spawns many penitent but really doesn't do much else. Black shepherd maybe?

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Ok after some thinking,... the white priests are getting one astral each. This is primarily to allow them to cast thew two national summons,..

One summons 5 Sternkind - These are sort of ulmish angels. They can fly, have hammers and are sacred. They whomp a fair bit of ***, but cost astral pearls, which ulm reborn doesn't have in abundance. They can only be cast by white priests (req S1 H3).

The other summons one Sternheld commander unit - A more powerful sternkind that could be a good thug. On top of that it has A1 F1. Both units have tasty holy hammers.

I've also given level 1 ulm priests the spell healing light for free and level 2 priests will get a form of wind guide to make those crossbows more useful - hopefully i can get it to be neagted by anything but low MR, similar to the LA Ulm national spell for E3 (i forget the name).

I'm also working on a grand hochmeister leader (possibly hero) but I'm having a lot of trouble getting the templar graphic extracted so I can modify it. I made one that looked pretty good but it was sized wrong becuase I have to do that mostly by eye.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Is there a reason pentients only have fists in the most current version?

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Probably because I forgot to give them a weapon. It seems like I'm doomed to miss countless little errors with releases of this nation. Probably because I haven't had time to playtest them much at all.

-sigh-

New version will be up tomorrow or the day after. In the meantime I suggest going into the dm file and giving them a flail.

The new version will feature the badass Hochhammer leader, who carries an incredibly powerful divine hammer and has what I think are the best graphics I've done so far. He'll be expensive and have zero magic/priest powers, but he'll make a scary thug commander and have some other nice abilities. I'm tempted to make him a hero, but I want to show off the graphic in the main lineup and I know Ulm Reborn doesn't really like to take luck domain.

After that release I'm going back to work on all 3 released mods at once; I want to get them all to a 'final' version. That means lots of actually playing the game and enjoying other people's mods too (updating modlist in the process).

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Sounds good, sombre.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Looks good, Sombre. I'll try it out this evening and send you some more feedback.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Release tomorrow probably. You get national summon troops (sternkind) and national summon leader (sternheld) with new graphics, as well as the hochhammer.

I've run into a lot of bugs ith modding commands trying to get this stuff working. Contrary to what I was expecting, this has turned out to be the hardest nation to mod so far.

For example - Copyspell doesn't work, aoe on weapons doesn't work, secondaryeffectalways doesn't seem to work properly,.. etc.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Okay, I played another quick game with v0.4. Here are some more thoughts:

• The Penitent is not sacred anymore. (He also doesn't have a weapon, but you knew that.)
• Stealthy Black Advocates are very cool indeed.
• Reborn Lords are fantastic thugs. N9E9 bless makes them even better.
• Bless me? Bless you!
• The Fortified City is a welcome addition to the capital. Now I can start cranking those lovely Black Templars and Reborn Guardians off of the assembly line in a reasonable period of time.
• The White Priests don't have any Sorcery magic yet. I'm figuring that this will happen in the new release, but I wanted to make sure you knew about it.

I love your description of the national summons. Mighty angels with the Hammer of Truth is a great fit for the Iron Faith. I also agree with your decision to add Sorcery instead of Fire magic. There's no need to steal Marignon's thunder....

I'm a modding doofus, but I think I can read some of the .dm file:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>#startfort 3
#swampfort 11</pre><hr />
Those lines specify that Ulm will get the Fortified City at the capital and a zero-admin Swamp Fort in the swamp, correct? (Lesson for the day: Don't build a castle in the swamp.)

Suggestions for other forts:

• Farmlands: 30-admin Castle (#41)
• Forest: 20-admin Forest Castle (#35)
• Hills: 20-admin Mountain Citadel (#9)
• Other: 20-admin Motte-and-Bailey (#7)

What I really like about this mod is the abundance of tough choices. The combination of high-resource Ulmish units and strong blessing potential makes the player choose carefully when starting the game. Do I go for good scales and a decent blessing, or do I sacrifice scales for a great blessing? And which blessing(s) do I pick? And what about adding magical diversity? You don't have enough points to do everything you want, so you have to choose very carefully.

Great mod, Sombre! I'm looking forward to the next release! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

That's another very helpful response. I especially appreciate you finding the numbers for the forts - I'll add it in just as you posted (I really suck at forts for my mod nations for some reason - I either forget them or enter the wrong numbers).

The penitent is sacred, disease free, flail armed and just as throwaway and swarmy as ever in v.05. I'm actually a bit suspicious of whether domsummon works the way I thought it did (does the white priest attract more than the black priest?). Maybe something to balance and alter for 0.6?

White Priests get S1 in 0.5

The national summons are a bit odd. They're not super powerful, nor are they that expensive and they don't require researching. They're more like extra units in the regular Ulm lineup that you can get (possibly via alchemy) once you have a gem income. The Sternheld has A3 S1, so he opens up a lot of magical options for Ulm (possibly a bit strong actually). They are sacred undead, so I think I'll put in the doctor's bless fix (so you can bless undead).

In 0.5 there are two priest spells - one healing at H1, one lightning bolt (sort of) at H2 - I'm not sure how balanced they are since you don't need to research them but they didn't seem awesome in testing, just a nice addition.

0.5 will be up tomorrow for sure. For now I've attached a graphic preview (also good for people who are considering trying the mod out). I've gone for a fairly unified graphic feel to the whole mod.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

0.5 is up. I think the national summons might not be balanced and the hoch hammer might need to be cheaper and less of a killing machine. I had 4 of them in one squad last game and they racked up a crapload of kills.

0.6 will be balancing changes, maybe add a national hero or two. I might add a penitent farming 'Black Shepherd' commander, or he might be one of the aformentioned national heroes. If you think the nation could really do with something or needs a balancing change please do chime in.

Happy blessings and may the Aufklarung reward ye.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

I'm sticking up v0.6 earlier than anticipated because I found various bugs in playtesting that were pissing me off. I'm hoping there should be less of a tide of penitent in this version, because I've figured out that domsummon didn't work the way I thought it did. In v0.5 you could amass a silly number of them.

Also added a penitent spawning national hero 'The Grey Shepherd'.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

The attachment for the first post is still v0.6. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Did you mean 'still 0.5' ?

It's 0.6 now. I was having trouble uploading.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Ummm ... yeah. That's what I meant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

I started another test game with v0.6. This time, I picked an imprisoned Oracle with E9S4N4 and five candles. Scales were Order 1, Productivity 3, Cold 1, Growth 1, Luck 1, and Drain 3. As before, I picked the Silent Seas wraparound map and one Easy AI opponent.

More thoughts:

• I really like the two new Holy battle spells. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif Smite the unbelievers! Heal the faithful!
• I love the new national summoning spells, but I think they might be a bit overpowered at Level 0. That much oomph should require a little research first. Perhaps they should be Conjuration 4 or 5?
• Sternheld make great archers. A lucky random event gave me a Storm Bow, which I promptly gave to my Sternheld. ZOT!
• Hoch-Hammers are extremely impressive, especially if you prophetize one of them. Actually, I'm worried that they might be a bit overpowered. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif However, those killer hammers only get two shots, and then they're basically just overpriced Hochmeisters....
• I really like the division that you made between the three priest commanders. Each one has his own role now. Black Acolytes for stealthy preaching, Black Priests for summoning hordes of chaff, and White Priests for Divine Blessing &amp; magic support.
• Speaking of hordes of chaff ... three or four Black Priests accompanying your army make for a neverending supply of free Penitents.

Pretender suggestions:

• Please make the Forge Lord (id #1230) an available pretender for Ulm Reborn. Forging &amp; Ulm go together like coffee &amp; donuts!
• The Divine Glyph (id #1025) and/or the Sacred Statue (id #472) might also be thematic.
• The Scorpion King (id #655) might not be thematic, but he'd sure be a great chassis for a killer F9E9 bless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Iron Faith Ulm is really shaping up to be a great nation. You've done an excellent job in keeping the theme, while still making a nation with some interesting playability and potential.

You win a medal! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon44.gif[/img]

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

The reason the summons got lvl 0 was to make them more like additional holy spells. I put them in the conjuration school rather than divine so that they'd be easier for people to spot. I could raise them up a couple of levels, but I'm not going to put them too high up because Ulm Reborn isn't exactly flash when it comes to researching and the summons aren't exactly superpowered (although the sternheld is a pretty impressive mage considering).

I really don't want to make an overpowered nation,.. at the moment I see the potential problems as the hoch-hammer, the sternheld and the domspawning. I don't want to swap the domspawning for #summon or call allies if I can help it, but the problem is I can only give the priests domsummon, domsummon2 (half as effective) or domsummon20 (a twentieth as effective). Domsummon20 is useless for penitent, but it seems domsummon2 might be too much (right now the white priests have domsummon2 and the blacks have domsummon2 and summon1. I think what I'll do for now is give the blacks domsummon2 with no extra summon and the whites summon1 or summon2.

I like to use summon or domsummon because the AI does better with it than call allies.

The hoch-hammer does initially seem like it might be overpowered, but for 400 it's not /that/ good. If you get a group of them together they can give low morale armies a real shock and of course they tear through undead like crazy,.. but I don't want to nerf em. They're a fun unit after all. I'm tempted to give them only one ammo for the spirit hammers and reduce their cost to 350 or so.

I'll sort some pretender options out in the next version for sure. Maybe even make a new one. That's probably a little while away though - I want to let the balance sit on this one for s bit, see what's what and work on the other two mods (both near final).

One thing that I've decided while making this mod and vaettihiem SE is that nations based on or replacing vanilla sides are just as interesting, if not more so, than completely new concept, art etc mod nations (like my first, Avernum).

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

I'm not calling it overpowered. Please don't think that! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Ulm Reborn v0.6 is powerful. It combines traditional Ulmish strength with some powerful priests and sacred units. Several of the recruitable commanders are very thuggy. Free Penitents can be very nice -- even though they're not great units -- because they're free. The additional Holy spells are just icing on the cake.

Then again, Ulm still has its limitations:

• Lack of magic flexibility. The White Priests are strong in Earth magic with a smattering of Astral. The Sternheld can use Air magic. And ... um ... that's it. Any other magic schools will have to come from the pretender and/or independents.
• Resource-heavy units. Those Reborn Guardians and Black Templars are really nice, but you can only crank out so many of them per turn.
• The best units are capitol-only.
• The almost-mandatory Drain dominion (to give you enough points for other cool stuff) will seriously hinder your magic research. No easy access to research boosters (especially Skull Mentors) will make your research even slower.
• Unless you're making an all-cavalry army (and how many resources would that need?), you'll be limited to a strategic move of one. All of that armour makes Ulm slow....

So, yeah, please take my posts as compliments. I really like Ulm Reborn, and I'm only trying to help. If I'm annoying you, please feel free to ignore me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

No your responses have been very helpful. Far from annoying. In fact I'd like more people to chime in with opinions on mods, even if it's to say "This is horribly overpowered" or "This unit is thematically dodgy and not worth the gold". There's a perception that mod nations are all hugely overpowered and I think it's generally better to be cautious - after all if most people just use them for single player they probably wouldn't mind an extra bit of challenge.

Re: Drain. White priests are drain immune (I hope) which makes the drain scale less of a,.. well,.. a drain. Plus magic research isn't as important with UR as sheer priest and troops power. At least until late in the game.

One thing Ulm Reborn does do as advertised is crack unbeliever skulls. For a human nation they have really, really heavy guys, including thuggy commanders. There's nothing they like better than just slugging it out and slowly grinding through enemy territory. Free penitent (although they cost a lot of upkeep for spawns) and very survivable troops means once the juggernaut starts moving it's very hard to stop.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

I like this mod, a lot Sombre. I don't really have anything to add or suggest to make it better. And I do like all the penitents, personally. Making more appear the stronger your dominion seems to fit as well. The stronger your god, the greater the pull to attract those who are fanatical for your cause. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Hoch-hammers are great too. Maybe make their hammer a one hit wonder, kinda like a lance maybe.

That's pretty much it. Keep up the good work.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Thanks :]

Check out vaettihiem and Avernum if you have time. They'll get new versions fairly soon (minor update to vaetti, national summons for Avernum).

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

I'm bumping this because I'm going to update it to the latest version tomorrow. There will also be updates to the CBM nations I made.

Biggest change will be that the nation will no longer overwrite Ulm Black Forest. Instead it will be titled 'New Ulm' and act seperately. It will include various fixes and maybe a new sternheld national hero.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

This is just a symantics issue, so feel free to ignore me. I kinda' like the mod staying named Ulm Reborn. It would fit thematically, with the original Ulm having fallen to the dark side. Your nation can be the remnants that got out before the fall and began rebuilding anew. Like the Numenorians in the Silmarillion. I'm such a nerd. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Yeah thematically it's still being a replacement. I mean playing with Ulm Reborn and Ulm at the same time doesn't make much sense 'story wise'. But in terms of gameplay and compatbility with other mods and for playtesting purposes it's much better to have it as a seperate nation. You avoid having the national summons and spells from the old Ulm, for instance.

In the end, you still have the choice of using Ulm Reborn instead of Ulm. It's just not automatic.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Oh, I understand they'll both be playable. I just like Ulm Reborn instead of New Ulm. Like I said, it's just symantics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Semantics, yar. Well they'll actually be called 'New Ulm, Iron Faith Reborn' in much the same way the Jomon Broken is called 'New Jomon, Broken Swords'.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Ahh...best of both worlds. Let's totally ignore the last three posts. *Walks away non-chalantly whistling*

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

Heh. Well don't ignore this post, because it's telling you that the new version 0.8 is attached (or will be in 3 minutes or so).

It includes balancing changes, graphical tidying up of a couple of units (notably the geboren) and a new national summon, the Sturmheld, who is A3F2. The Sternheld is now A2S2. The Sturmheld is also a multihero, giving you a little bit more variety.

And most importantly the nation is no longer a replacement, but stands on its own. That means you'll have to make new games to play it.

Re: New Nation: Ulm Reborn
 

God damnit.

I somehow managed to lose the pikemen in this new version. Or maybe I forgot to ever make them recruitable? Regardless, version 0.85 is attached and sorts this out. It also temporarily gets rid of 'reward the faithful' because it wasn't working properly and my white priests keep spamming it instead of casting blade wind and smite. Pretty annoying.

So yeah, attached to the first post is 0.85. Don't bother getting it if you don't care about missing pikemen and a dodgy healing spell staying in ;]

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

AARGH.

I messed up the 0.85 update. Anyone who downloaded it should get the 0.86 attached to first post instead. Otherwise they'll still have the cruddy healing spell and furthermore the pike graphic will be messed up.

Sorry guys. Anyway, it's fixed now.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

I've just been having a quick look at this, it looks awesome. I'm going to spend more time on it later, but for the moment here's a couple of quick comments.

- Super pedantically: In the description for Wrath of the Aufklarung, "firey" should be "fiery".
- There's something funny about the Hoch-Hammer's head protection. Try putting a black steel helmet on one. The protection doesn't go up properly.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Heheh. I don't mind corrections to language. Sometimes I have to write this stuff late at night or in a hurry, so typos and strange spelling errors get in there all the time. It's fixed for the next version, anyway.

Actually in several mods I've displayed my total inability to recognise whether it should be capitol or capital though, so some of this is just my brain falling apart, I'm sure :]

I think the weird head protection thing is the strange 'helmet bug' discovered by amos. Regardless, there's not much I can do about it.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Haven't tried this one yet. I'll look into it and then report. :p

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

I like the mod though, I don't overly like the summons, but I think thats just me, I'm not a huge fan of fliers, I think the most important thing that you accomplished is that it's balanced with the standard nations and thats really important, but I love the um, Penitents I noticed with Flagrents for marignon are just anoying to produce because their holy and the most you can get is ten a turn while the Penitents just come flocking to you! it's great! I love it!

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Yeah the flaggies for Marignon pretty much suck. You can't really use them as a real mob of rabble, which somewhat defeats the point (and lavour) of them. I believe they also all start with afflictions, unlike the penitent.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Ah, yeah I noticed that too, and nothing in their description even explained how so, which kind of bugs me.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Well, after having played it some, I'll offer some comments.

Most play experience has come from playing this nation with an S9 Sleeping Oracle with Order3, Productivity3, Growth1, Luck3, Drain 3. So the bless was effective while also allowing other abilities. I also played on 50 Magic Sites.

First, it is quite interesting. There are several new units added to "Iron Faith", plus quite good Priests/Mages. The national summons are effective (though see below).

My main issues with the nation:

1) It is FAR too capital-centric. You have _no_ national mages recruitable outside the capital. This means you must rely on luck to be able to recruit more than one mage/turn. On anything more than the smallest map, this is crippling. One way to fix this is to make the Black Priest recruitable everywhere. This is hardly ideal, as this nation wants Drain scale for points to do a Bless strategy and (AFAIK, certainly implied) the Black Priests are not immune to Drain Scale.

2) Regarding the Magic themselves, I can't think of many nations even in LE that have weaker magic. Not a random among the national mages, and while Earth 3 is certainly nothing to complain about, they are saddled with Astral 1 which is not enough for Teleport without a booster (which they can't make with their national mages). While I understand Ulm is not known for its magic, I feel like some boost should be done here (esp. considering point 1) above).

3) The Penitents are nice, but everything flows from the capital. I'll note that not even _Mictlan_ has a capital-only issue like this nation. The problem with Penitents is that they are chaff (unless going for a heavy Bless strategy that doesn't really work for lack of points) that are tied to capital-only commanders.

4) White Priest? Very nice. But where do you get the money for them? I was lucky enough to get a 1000g event on the 3rd turn so I didn't have to worry _so_ much, but there was a definite 'what to spend money on' that was an interesting conundrum.

5) The general point is that this nation seems to need too many points. It needs Order and Production to have the money to purchase its units (which seem pretty reasonable, though the White halberd unit seems a bit overcosted), and while it can take Drain that mightily interferes with any research you might want to do. OTOH, it also wants at least one 9-level Bless. I chose one that from my experience worked well with the Penitents, and it does at least a bit.

6) National summons looked pretty good, except that, if you play the default LE settings, I'm not exactly sure where you're supposed to get the gems for them. Again, I was _very_ lucky in that my first or second Gnome Lore found the Tower of the Iron Order. I'd suppose a research path for them is to go to Evocation-4 for Blade Wind and the Astral search spell, then go for Thaumaturgy for the Earth search spell and Conjuration for Summon Earthpower/national summons.

The one 'national holy' spell is cute. I guess you could use massed Black Priests to throw them early.

I would stress that the one change I would make to this nation would be to give them _some_ national mage outside their capital.

Oh, they also have a very nice stealth preacher which is about the only commander their non-capital castles will build. Maybe up its cost to 80 or 90 and give it E1, bump the Black Priest to about E1?1(FAES) and its cost a bit and make it non-capital-only. Well, if the Acolyte gets magic, the Priest may not need to lose that status.

The one unit I'm curious about is the Mindless MB non-capital-only sacred troop. It implies that when they die, you get another unit. I never had one die, so some details would be nice.

Am I playing the nation wrong?

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

The answer to most of your woes is that your not meant to able to do things easily, such as the national summons, few people would make such a mistake to make their national summons unavailble to the nation, they require astral gems, just use a bit of alchemy.

As for the national mages, I agree that the black priests should not be restricted to the capital, however I don't think they should have their magic increased, late age is less about magic than the other ages besides, their black 'priests' not black mages.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

Well just to start things off, I want to point out that I always intended this nation to be hard to play. I don't want them to be very underpowered, but they're supposed to be challenging and to force decisive gameplans. As a result the AI sort of sucks uing them. From the get go I set my sights on a nation that /really/ wants;

High Dominion for spawns and widescale sacred production.
Resources and an economy focused on national recruits (so production and order)
A high earth bless for the super-armoured sacreds.
A bless suitable for the swarms of sacred chaff (ie, not earth)

So even at the creation stage you're faced with some hard choices. You obviously can't have all of these things. On the other hand if you specialise completely your plan can easily go very wrong.

On the other hand, you have made a couple of very good points about Ulm Reborn's weakness on a larger map (over 120 or so provinces). I didn't intend for them to just fall over and die if the map is big, so this is something I'm interested in rectifying.

Point by point:

1) They are meant to be capital centric, but I do take your point. I am happy for them to be just about as capital centric as a nation can be in dom3, but not to the point where it's very frustrating for the player. I am willing to make Black Priests available everywhere in the next version. This allows frontline chaff production (although it's decided by dominion, unlike the white priests). I will also be giving the black priest an earth random so you'll get H2E2 ones maybe 40% of the time. This allows them better site searching, earthpower etc. Cost might go up a smidge. They are still there to be priests and penitent gatherers, but with some E2 you'll get a bit more research and whatnot from them.

2) Well the national summons give you some more magic. I think I'll stick a 10% or so random extra astral on the white priests, but this is always going to be a very weak nation magically, apart from the E3 that is. I mean they're like LA Ulm only with even LESS magic. It's intentional.

3) I played one game focusing on penitent and one game focusing on Anchorites and reborn guard. They were about equal - once the penitent machine gets going they can do impressive damage, but I was lucky enough to be fighting Ctis so archer mayhem wasn't really a factor. With black priests available out of capital the penitent should be more useful/nyumerous. Beware of the fact that they still cost upkeep though.

4) Yep, I wanted more hard decisions in the nation regarding gold usage. I think the white priests are priced ok, but maybe the reborn guard could do with being a bit cheaper.

5) I totally agree. They were designed with that in mind. On the other hand if this makes them too painful to play maybe I need to rethink a couple of things. I didn't find drain hosed my research /that/ bad because of white priest immunity, but it's hard to get very far up the tree, that's for sure.

6) Again, it's hard choices. You have to use the astral search spell, but that burns up precious pearls, cuts into research etc. I think I might need to reduce the cost of the 8 sternkind spell though or people won't want to summon them and wil go for the Stern/Sturmheld instead.

The mindless magic units are Anchorites - when they die a pissed off penitent falls out of the sealed armour and starts smacking things. I believe the bless remains on him too, although for me that was generally an earth bless so didn't help. I think some people have used them to great effect, although they might need a slight cost reduction because they almost always get killed off. Regardless they're sacred and not cap only, which means you should have some of them out there at some point.

Oh before I forget - were you using regular Ulm Reborn or CBM Ulm Reborn? They aren't crazy different, but the balance is obviously changed.

Re: LA Nation: Ulm Reborn - UPDATE v.085
 

It does seem like research is very difficult. White priests have plenty of other stuff to be getting on with, and their research isn't _that_ good anyway. Black priests are essentially useless in a drain dominion. And you don't have access to owl quills or skull mentors.

How about adding another unit, called perhaps a White Acolyte, or a Monk, or a Librarian? Someone who conducts historical and academic studies in the cloisters of the new kingdom. They could have no magic, or else ?1, but produce a few research (5?), be recruitable anywhere and be drain immune. I think that would make a big difference.

Then you could keep the White Priests as capital only without screwing the nation over in the long term (there's no way you can survive on a largeish map if you can only produce researchers in one place, is there?).

I do think the Anchorites should be cheaper. The die very easily, and the emerging penitent is normally instantly cut down. Maybe when they emerge they could be berserk?