A new tengu nation
 

I am new to here but I thought I'd make a post about something I am working on right now. I decided since Yomi covers the demon angle quite well that there needs to be a nation led by tengu from mountains isolated from much of the rest of the Dom 3 world. I'll include the files for it when it is complete but I figured I'd start the topic while I was still working on the concept for the nation. And these tengu will be the raven/crow faced ones as well for those wondering about that.

This is what I have so far;

Recruits
Ashigaru: Standard footman
Yosomono: Stealth soldier as well as stealth archer
Horse Archer: Not sure if it will be samurai or not
Horse Lancer: Not sure if it will be samurai or not
Samurai: Will be on foot
Winged Samurai: One with katana and one with yari (sacred)
Tengu Warriors: One with katana and one with yari (sacred)

Commanders
Yosomono Leader
Samurai Leader
Sword Saint
Winged Samurai General
Tengu General
Tengu Sword Saint
Apprentice Air Mage
Master Air Mage
Apprentice Swordsmith
Master Swordsmith

Still need to work out new summons, heros, magic sites and forts for them.

Suggestions would be great on what I have so far.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

out of curiosity, have you played EA much? Or ma?

Yomi covers the demon angle. LA is when the magic has gone out of the world in many ways, which is why jomon is so humanish.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

You could make them Korean instead of Japanese.

Firstly, all that swordsmithing was actually Korean, not Japanese. So if you're going to give them forge bonuses and katanas, that's fine.

You'd call their mages Mudang (I suggest Fire/Air/Nature/Death, although I forget what the Tengu summon gets), and make them mage/priests.

The swordsmiths, meanwhile, would get a forge bonus, and water/earth/death/air.

You might give them a mix of Japanese and LA T'ien Ch'i armaments.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

I meant Yomi sum1lost, but thanks for pointing that out.

DrPraetorious, that sounds like an excellent idea. I'll have to consider what other changes I'd have to do but it wouldn't seem like much. Maybe I could make a korean and japanese variant for those interested in either country.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

*chuckles*

Realize that Yomi/Sinuyama/Jomon dwell very little on actual Japanese history. Jomon depicts _roughly_ Sengoku Jidai period (~1470-1600), except that the Onmyoji and Shugenja are quite anachronistic by that part. Oh, and you don't have guns in the game, either. Yomi and Sinuyama you really can't place anywhere in recorded Japanese history.

I'm looking into a 'more historical' method of doing Japan, and it's going to be an interesting dilemma as to how to do it and not look like a total TC knock-off.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

VedalkenBear, I know that the japanese influenced nations in the game are nearly all fantasy and I would actually like to see a more historical version of Japan in the game as well. I just decided I also wanted to make a nation for the tengu.

Progress wise, I have modified some graphics up for the mod but it isn't much but tampering with the sprites from the actual game. I'm mainly recoloring the units to have dark red uniforms since when I do make a flag graphic it will be dark red. I'm working on the more japanese based version right now.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

Alright, been busy with other stuff... mainly school related but I should be getting down to seriously tackling this mod concept once I get settled in.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

Now that sounds like an awesome idea. I can see cheap forging with those paths being really advantagaeous, especialy if they get Tengus, whom I remember having superhuman stats and the commanders get Air magic...

The severely complicated, muddled history...
 

of the Sword.

Firstly, I'd like to thank DrPraetorious for clueing me in to the long and-apparently-rich tradition of Korean swordsmithing. Korea is a fascinating place that, unfortunately and surprisingly, considering we fought a war there in my dad's lifetime, and that my grandfather actually fought in, I never heard a lot about growing up.

Anything that wasn't within the scope of the tv series M.A.S.H. (not even the movie!) we just didn't learn about.

As far as "all the swordsmithing" being Korean, as opposed *to* Japanese, from what I can tell, yes the concept/art of sword making did originally come from Korea to Japan, in the 6th century AD (atleast, what hadn't already arrived by way of China), but by the 10th century (somewhere between 700 AD with Amakuni, and 987 AD with the Koto swords), they split off considerably.

Not too much is known about the Korean swords, because the Japanese turned around and either looted or destroyed them in WW2, as much as they possibly could. I'd hazard a guess, without knowing much more about it, that they were strongly influenced somewhere along the line by invading Chinese, who were in turn influenced strongly by the Indians, who ofcourse got a lot of peculiar notions from the Greeks. But, it must be said that the Koreans are the only people I've encountered so far, who had stone-based sword technology and didn't come from South America.

Korean swordmaking started somewhere around 3000 BC, and by 57 BC they had iron swords. The Han (Chinese) were the ones who came up with the whole "folding" technique, though, and then passed it on to Korea and Japan.

So it's a little bit broader of a subject than to say that the Sword started with Korea, but the history of the sword in Korea is definitely a big, very shady area to explore.

Re: The severely complicated, muddled history...
 

That was interesting HB, thanks for taking the time to write that.

Re: The severely complicated, muddled history...
 

Yes, that was informative.

About the mod though, I have about half the graphics done at the moment. If my homework doesn't keep me busy this weekend I will finish the work on the graphics and perhaps move onto the actual hard part of writing up the mod.

Re: The severely complicated, muddled history...
 

It's my pleasure.

Swords and their history are a really interesting subject. And if you're going to discuss and understand the Tengu, who were said to be great craftspeople and masters of kenjitsu, then you need to understand the relation of swords in Asia.

By the way, it might also be useful to familiarize one's self with Shugendo. Tengus were believed to be followers of Shugendo, and are usually depicted wearing the yamabushi.

Tengus also tended to carry around fans which had magical power over winds, and could sometimes shapechange into human form. They were also often depicted as vengeful ghosts and spirits of war, chaos, and vanity, but not always as evil beings.

The king of the Tengu is Shojobi. He's said to have the strength of 1000 normal Tengu and is a prominent figure in Shugendo.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ll/Tengu01.jpg

This is just the recruitable units. I have not really started on the commanders yet but I figured I'd give a glimpse of the mod or at least how the units are going to look. I know the shadows on a few of the units need to be fixed as well. It isn't too creative either but I figure it gets the job done.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

I think the graphics are quite respectable.

Might I suggest a human sacred commander "kensai" unit? Or possibly as a multi-hero: Human, no armor, dressed in clothes similar to "akidogi" (wiki it), great attack/defense, high MR, armed with one of the better magical 2-handed swords, possibly with some special abilities , but basically there as a fast, hard to hit (as opposed to tough, armored) chaff-killer.

Just a thought.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

The problem with that idea is that to be a chaff killer, the Kensai would probably need defense in the 30s or more incase he got surrounded. Even if he was given some magically forged armour, the human HP could be killer - although not as much as without the armour(obviously).

Re: A new tengu nation
 

I was actually thinking about doing something like that. Have to see how it will work out once I get to play-testing. School has been taking much of my time though, and even weekends are being taken over by homework at the moment.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

Shovah, I think, with Dominions, we've got one of two options: either allow humans to *be* humans, with "human hit-points" and all the rest, and still manage to rise to the challenge of finding a way to produce "merely" human units which bridge the gap between being chaff and destroying chaff,

or,

we own up to humans being in the game only because we want them in the game for sentimental reasons, but only as second-class citizens.

As difficult as option 1 may be, and as much as the current limitations of humans in Dominions may seem insurmountable, option 2 is fairly ridiculous and very lame.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

I will hopefully finish the images for the commanders by this weekend as long as I find time for it. Playtesting it might be a problem for me since I can't view battles since my machine is a bit too slow to be running the game. This should not be much of a problem if I get my dad's laptop by the time playtesting is needed.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

The graphics on the previous page look really really nice. The only negative comment I'd have would be that the crow head one of them has looks a bit funny. Maybe a bit small or something.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

Thanks for the comments. About the crow heads, I just transferred the tengu head from one of the regular units in the game over where the human head should be but perhaps they are too small. I'll consider working on the issue.

Re: A new tengu nation
 

I have a few of the commanders done... I still have finishing details to do on 1 of them and have to actually make up the other 7 or so still. So things are moving along but still quite slowly.