Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail
 

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Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Thanks Burnsaber! The sprites look great. :)

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

YES!!!!!! DLed now. Can't wait for the updates!

Small personal thing- The nation description seems to have a few odd turns of phrase and wording. I'll just copy-paste below with what I think might be better wordings. Hope you don't mind, just trying to help!

"The glorious nation of Bretonnia rose like an immortal Phoenix from the ruins of Maverni. The first King, Gilles of Bastogne, and a few of his closest knights almost singlehandedly drove out the Ermorian legionnaires with a strength and courage that had never been witnessed on the face of the earth. Since that day, Bretonnia has been constantly expanding. Their well-organized feudal system keeps unrest to a minimum and their brave knights are well known for their skill and courage. The mysterious Grail, an artefact of unknown origin, allows the bravest of them to tap directly into the power of the awakening god. Recently, the waters of the sacred lake have been stirring. Monsters are on the move, harassing peasants. Sacred visions from the mysterious Damsels call for the mustering of all brave knights of Bretonnia. The petty squabbles of the nobles over their fiefs have now ended, and the whole nation is now united and determined to fight for the cause of the awakening god."

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Thanks for the compliment. I took extra care for quality, since being pretty is one of the main selling points of Bretonnia in WHFB. Judging from downloads, it's working here too.

I really enjoyed doing the graphics. Drawing heraldy is just so easy and fun. When I have all the time in the world, I might quickly whip up an additional "skin" for the nation with different heraldy and color schemes.


Well, to be fair, there probably won't be too many updates other than balance changes for a while. I have CPCS, Holy War & UWGEM to update, There's that metal nation too.

No I don't mind. I appreciate all help on the grammar & readability section.

Also, I'd like to remind that I'm lacking in Knight names. I have 71 at the moment, but I'd be more comfortable with 100 names. So if anyone has any suggestions for Frankish Knight names, I'm all ears. Suffixes are also good (Like "Sir Frank the Mighty").

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

I'll just throw this out there; I assume you've already tried a Google search on "Frankish names"? Because that returns a whole slew of historical and genealogical references (not to mention baby naming lists :smirk: )

In case you haven't, here's a few likely looking ones from the first page of results:
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/french.shtml
http://www.geocities.com/mariamnephi...es/franks.html
http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources...val/Franks.htm
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24316

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah I did (lots of those are already implemented), but apparently managed to miss the "Build your own Frankish name" thing. Apparently the adal- prefix means "noble" Then thre is a small list of second elements. Apparently -ger menas "lance". Thus Sir Adalger has a name meaning a "Noble Lance"

Thaks, I'm sure to have lots of fun with this.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

[quote=Burnsaber;703617]
Thus Sir Adalger has a name meaning a "Noble Lance"
/QUOTE]

Sooooo many double meanings... ;)

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Just had a chance to fire up the mod, and it looks really good.

I did notice a couple of minor things:
(1) "outrider" not capitalized in name of Yeoman Outrider.
(2) The Duke is a magic being. Is this intentional?

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

2) Yes. The grail knights are also magical. By drinking from the grail the knights are made into something that's not quite human anymore. This is represented by making them magic beings.


Excellent work on the mod burnsaber. And you got it out so quickly, I'm impressed. A few things. One of the commanders, dukes I believe, has in their flavor text something about attracting courtiers? But they don't :( Are you going to mod that in at some point? If not I think it would be better to remove that line because it gives the impression that they do, considering everything else works as advertised. Also I think your morale values are almost too directly based on warhammer values compared to the other warhammer mods. For example, compare Temple Guards with Grail Knights. Temple Guard have 18 morale to a Grail Knight's 14, despite Grail Knights being immune to psychology and having the same leadership. If anything I think Grail Knights should have even higher morale than temple guard on account of their special rule. I think the bretonnian knights have less morale in general than they probably should have as far as normal dominions nations go. It would also be nice if knights errant could have a somewhat lower resource cost in comparison to knights of the realm to represent their being easier to muster, but this is probably just a pipe dream (I would be in favor of them having the same gold cost as KotR). And I'm not sure how you feel about this but personally I think pegasus knights should be even more expensive (80+ gold), but also have a second hoof attack.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

analytic_kernel, thanks for the typo report, added to the fix list.

:up: Hit the nail right on the head there.

Gamleplay wise, it also allows me to restrict the guys who can lead them. +thematicness!

Thanks. I had a lot of days off, because seniors started to come back from their summer vacations in my job.

Yeah, I need to polish up the description a bit. It's a part of the explanation why they have so high resource cost. It goes a bit like this.

1) Duke is called to war and he of course comes, but he has lands to manage and needs a Steward.
2) Courtiers start pestering the Duke, seeing a shot of finally owning some land (even for a short while, unless should something happen to the Duke....), wasting his time and resources.
3) Dukes absolutely hate this mess, but it has to be done, because they need their steward to be at least somewhat trustworthy. (knights do not really think highly of Courtiers, just recruit some and see their "nicknames").

Hmm. Kinda true. I'll probably up the morale to 16, the standard effect should take care of the rest. Added to the fix list


They all have the small standard bonus. Sure the effect is pretty small, but when you stack a lot of them on top of one other..

The nobles are much more courageous when in presence of other Nobles. I mean, think of the ridicule in the courts should the word spread that you fled from an battlefield! You might even lose your fief!


Well, I rather like it the way it is now. Most people might prefer KotR's, but there are times when you just absolutely need as many lances on the field as possible (like against giants, who can damage even on shield hits, negleting the skill difference).

Besides, you can summon them from the Errantry War spell, so that makes them more common too.

Don't know. At least in my testing I always went for Grail Knights when I had the gold. A cost increase would just make the difference just too much.

Perhaps I should lift the "cap only" status from them, but limit them otherwise (high res cost?)

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah, grail knights should NOT be lead by anything other than damsels, dukes, and grail heroes.



You're right, I wasn't factoring in the standard bonus. So you can ignore what I said about the knight's morale... I think making the knights errant cheaper on resources would be slightly more thematic, but I agree that it's not necessary, and the errantry war spell will help a lot with the thematic feel of knights errant.

Making pegasus knights not cap-only seems like a good idea. They're should be rare, but if you have to choose between them and grail knights I think they're going to be a little too rare. Using high resources to keep their numbers down is probably a necessity though to keep the player from massing them.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Keep in mind that Lizardmen have a special extra dice when rolling leadership tests in warhammer. It equates to roughly +2 leadership. So the Temple Guard are virtually the hardest unit to break in warhammer.

I gave maneaters and flagellants morale 30 in dom3 because morale 30 is a special value which best represents the 'immune to psychology' rule. I think Grail Knights should probably have morale 30 also. They'll still rout when the army decides to (they can't abandon the lesser humans to die), but they'll never be chased off by fear etc.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Huh. I was under the impression that giving unit morale 30 made it mindless. But yeah, mor 30 sounds good. Fixed the fix list

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

50 morale is where you get mindlessness, 30 is just really stubborn.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Fair enough. I had actually overlooked the fact that Grail Knights are also magic beings, and so I thought the tag on the Duke was a copy-and-paste-related artifact. My discomfort with the tag was related to the fact that they could take double damage from weapons with #dt_magic. But, I guess if they're "not quite human", then it's a moot point.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Burn - do you still want me to go through the dm and smooth the descriptive text out a bit?

It would be easiest if I could do it in the dm and then just pass it to you.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah, the vulnerability to anti-magic gear was also intented feature. Dukes and Grail Knights are very strong for national, non-capital recruits, they need some sort of 'achilles heel' for opponent to abuse. If you look at their stats, you'll notice that there is no way those guys could be human (all stats +14!), so it also explains their superhuman abilities.

If you have the time, it would be nice. I'm a bit baffled by the Duke description for example, how could I make it more clear that the obscene resource cost is actually based on the Steward problem?

I'm also not too sure if I managed to explain the Feudal hierarchy clearly enough. Peasants -> KotR's -> Lords -> Dukes -> King. Or do I even really need to hammer it through?

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Very nice sprites, congrats !

I spotted both heroic weapons were length 0, isn't it supposed to be 2 for the sword and 4 for the lance ? I'm also wondering why breton lances deal only 8 damage, as opposed to the 16 damage of the regular lance.

In the fluff, aren't the peasants using hereditary longbows inspired from their elven neighbours's ones ? But maybe I'm mistaken on this one.

I find the ressource cost really high for a cap only sacred (grail knights). Overall their cavalry seems like nothing to write home about (more so compared to cbm varieties), I much prefer marignon/man/ulm one.

Playing them, the only easy solution seems to be going heavy on the thugs, or prod 3.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Er, their cavalry absolutely ruins marig or ulm's cavalry.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

*some clicks later,having understood the lance trick*(and compared vanilla resource costs !) : huh, well, I guess the half an hour editing limit will shout out loud to the world how much of a "insert favorite" I am. And I don't know for the fluff, but maybe longbows aren't required...

And really the graphics are cOOl !

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah, you're right. Will be fixed for the next version.

The Breton Heavy Lance allows for strenght, unlike normal lance. So it's basically 18-20 damage (depending on the knight in question) and allows the damage to be boosted by Earth Might/ Virtue of Nobility

Yeah, the Bowmen use longbows in WRFB, but it doesn't translate well to dominions 3. No matter how weak I make them, longbows are just that awesome that they'd overshadow the Knights by a wide margin. Bretonnia is a nation of Knights, not of peasant bowmen hiding behind yeomen arrow cathers.

Well, they deserve it. Defense 18 + prot 20 + awe makes them practically invincible to regular troops. 2 of them with some peasant bowmen can easily conquer most independent provinces. Without bless. Don't forget the Grail Virtues, too. And the unrest reduction.

It' pretty easy to miss, but the Knights have "Destrier Hoof" that's basically boosted version of CBM "Warhorse Hoof". Also even Knight Errants boast armor equal to Knights of the Chalice/MA Man Knights. The jump from prot 17 to 20 is huge, making sure that most human spears can't afflict your precious knights even with lucky rolls. It also makes them suprisingly resilient to crossbows.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

I am wondering, does anyone else feel like footed knights errant/KotR are just overdressed chaff? Maybe it's just trying to use them according to your rules of conduct vs the AI, but they seem to be basically equivalent to yeomen in staying power, and yeomen do more damage so are arguably more useful. With their encumbrance and lack of killing power it's very easy to wear them down. So I wonder how possible it would be for them to be equipped with a two handed weapon instead. This would give them more of a niche in the army, and I think be thematically justifiable. Alternatively, could I tempt you into giving them tower shields? It wouldn't really solve their problem, but I think it makes sense to arm them differently when on foot to their armament on horseback.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah, footed Knights aren't even in WRFP roster, I just needed some noble troops that weren't mounted to balance the summons of the Knight Commanders.

I'll probably give them stronger physical stats than rest of the Knights. Perhaps even encumberance 2. Different equipment isn't out of the question either, but it would require me to new graphics and remove the heraldic shields.

One option would be to give them bigger standard (the peasants can relate better to footed knights).

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Tried running the mod with other Warhammer mods and Dom3 kept crashing. Turns out Bretonnia shares several #newsites with Chaos Undivided 0.55:

790 and 791

Chaos also uses 792 and 793.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

*slams forehead*

Right, forgot to check against Chaos. Added to fix list

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Not sure where to go with this, but its a bit difficult to use the Dukes as PD raiding thugs when its so difficult to bless them. Thematically I suppose they can't have holy magic, but if they can only be maximized in battle that kind of hurts. The main issue is that its difficult to minimize their enc problem when they can neither bless themselves nor wear boots of the messenger.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

At the start of development, Dukes blessed themselves at the start of battle, but I changed it for thematic/gameplay reasons. Dukes are important men, leaders of armies and lords of huge fiefs. The thought of them going to battlefield solo is sort of proposterous. Also they were a bit too good with auto-bless at 200 gold (I really don't want to make them more expensive, it will only make them look worse when compared against Maidens). 200 gold might be a tad too cheap for a unit that can raid pd with minimal equipment (vine shield + frost brand is usually enough).

But you are right about that it might be annoying, forcing you to accompany them with maidens or indy priests. I'll have to ponder on this, I might make them auto-bless again (with a slight gold cost increase), just to reduce the micro.

Also, for any encumberance problems, see Girdle of Might. It's double good for Grail Heroes, since it also boosts their strenght, making the "Heroic Lance" even more heroic (one-shotting elephants is fun!).

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

OK, I'm going to update bretonnia next, it might take a while since I want to make the "King" hero for this update and I have big plans for his graphic, it will take time to make right.

But anyways, if anyone has a beef with the nation, now would be good time to speak up so that I can fix it for the next update. Below is the list of things I'm already determined to change.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

I'm looking forward to the update!
I can't wait for the King

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Update is on the works, here is the King Graphic as a teaser, I'm also curious about what you people think about the color scheme. I went with purple, because that is the colour of royalty.

http://xs942.xs.to/xs942/09354/bretonnian_king_1592.png

For his gameplay stats, we'll, let's just say that he will the most wanted non-magic hero in all of dom3-verse.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Definitely curious to see what he'll be like! One question though, shouldn't his banner and shield be purple as well?

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

I think currently the rider is a bit too eclipsed by the griffon/shield.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Doesn't work, because then the purple and gold shield would "drown" into the purple and gold barding.

Hmm. Looking at it from an new angle, I can see your point. I lowered his shield down and made it a bit less shiny. Changed pic below with a new hero, The Black Knight.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/2...nnianking1.png

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

I am liking the Black Knight he's looking good. I think the thigh is a bit big but the angle your pushing it at is kinda a hard one to adjust. On a second thought with the King the shield I would think would be down just one more pixel but its much better with it dropped as you've done. Very impressed.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Do you think that you could drop the foot knights' enc a bit perhaps? Or at least give them some two handed weapons, since as rdonj has posted already, there is essentially no reason to recruit them instead of Yeoman or mounted knights.

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

Yeah, I'm going to give them -1 Enc and +1 Str in the next update. If they still suck after that, I'll probably give them 2-handed weapons or reduce their encumberance further by a custom "Wooden Kite Shield" shield with only 1 encumberance, but lower stats all around)

Re: Warhammer Nation: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.6
 

On the plus side, at least Brettonia is in a good position to cast relief.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

OK, mod updated.

List of changes from 0.6 to 0.8

I'm intending to put this mod to a MP game soon, so I'm especially intrested in toughts and suggestions on that front.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

Seems like a neat mod, and I'll be sure to use it alongside the other Warhammer nations.

Simply looking at the graphics, I find most of the units look very good - especially most of the the mounted ones, where I think you've done a wonderful job.
That said, I feel the king looks a bit... bland, compared to his tabletop incarnation, as well as the other units - even the knights errant look flashier to me.

I imagine it's likely the default dom3 Gryphon's fault, coupled with the single-colour heraldry - but, rather than merely complaining, I figured I'd try to translate the tabletop model into a sprite, to see how that went, and I'm quite satisfied with the result. In addition to using it for my own pleasure, I figure I might as well share it with the rest of you, as well as giving Burnsaber the option of putting it in the mod, should he desire. The sprite itself is in the public domain and may be used however you desire.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

I must admit, that griffon looks absolutely wonderful. I tried to draw my own griffon, but it sucked pretty hard, so I defaulted to the Dom3 one. Do you mind if use a edited version of your King in the next update?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

You might look at changing up the battle auto-summons, especially on the Marquis. I was able to consistently get almost 30 provinces by the end of year one without an awake pretender in addition to making at least 3+ additional forts. Standard tactic was a small number of supporting units (10-15 or so cheap chaff) slightly back from 2 Marquis who were pushed all the way forward set to hold a turn, attack. It's a cheap enough force to facilitate early castle spam (and thus even more Marquis) while still expanding at breakneck speeds. I'd suggest switching the battle summon to something more along the lines of 1 knight and 3-5 chaff troopers, though even this may allow the same tactic.






Note: Tests run on milkshake, misfortune-3 order-3 pretender. Poorest result was 23 provinces and 3 forts(inc. start) with 1 building by the end of year one. Best result was 32 provinces and 4 forts with 3 building. Average was 27 provinces and 3 forts with 3 building. All builds did 0 research in year one.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

Far easier to simply recruit a duke every turn. He'll solo most provinces easily. However, I prefer to recruit 2 grail knights and a maiden every turn except the first, which is a duke. Every other turn I send out 4 knights and a maiden. That way, my expansion is good, but I still get a little research done. Crazy expansion w/no research is just asking for a ganking.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

I ran some tests with Dukes to similar results, but preferred the chaff generation on Marquis for utility. It's a trade either way, but in both cases the battle summons should be toned down. You can take your foot off of the gas in your initial expansion to recruit some mages and ramp up the research, but Bretonnia's in a great position to rapidly make up an early research deficit.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

Dukes have chaff generation too, and the chaff is better in any case. Re: the battle summons though, at least in the Duke's case i'm not sure how much of a difference it makes. Plus, even if Bretonnia is going to kick *** in the early game, they have a definite lack of late game power.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.8
 

Alrighty, quick balance update due to the very scary and unintented Hinnom (pre-fix) level expansion! Many thanks for the Radio Star for the report. Now the Lord, Marquis and Duke all have a honour guard of 1 mounted KoTR. I dropped gold costs slightly to compensate.

In my testing with the v0.81, Radio Star's expansion strat still works, but the expansion parties have to stop to summon more chaff after 2-3 provinces or put the Marquis at an considerable risk (basically you either have to put the Marquis or the chaff in the harm's way). Also, sometimes the expansion party is utterly humiliated when the honour guard KoTR's fall to lucky hits. Ichtyids and their nets suck, by the way.

As for the late game, you should remember that this nation is no MA man. You have solid shot an magic access of A4W4N4E2S2 which allows for a lot of nasty stuff. The problem is just how to capitalize strong magic with sucky research.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.81 -- Quick balance update
 

Haha, I've been immortalized in the mod. Awesome :D

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.81 -- Quick balance update
 

Yeah, I wanted to honour my supporters in some other way than mentioning name in the .readme file. I take it that you don't mind? Hopefully Sir Rond of R'donj didn't die a horrible death on the battlefield :D.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.81 -- Quick balance update
 

Nope, I don't mind :). I will have to start thugging out all the ronds I find. So far I haven't lost any... I'll have to make sure their deaths are all glorious.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.81 -- Quick balance update
 

After mulling over the nation a bit, the lack of astral (or, more precisely, astral counters) would probably be the death of Bretonnia.

Even though you get a neat little MR booster for your sacreds, the arcane bolts, oppositions, arcane dominations and, more to the point, mind hunts and magic duels would be absolutely brutal.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.81 -- Quick balance update
 

Yeah, your astral access is pretty minor (not counting heroes, both mage heroes have S3), but enough to feeblemind Mind Hunters with some S1 Grail Maidens.

Arcane Bolts and oppositions are painful, but are not impossible to counter, you just need decoys with high size and hp to make the enemy mages target them over your Grail Knights. Elementals are good (Bottle of Living Water is good for this purpose), as are Crushers, Wooden Constructs, Fall Bears and Summer Lions. All have high size(over 3) and have more hp that Grail Knights, Dukes, Grail Heroes or Damsels.

As for the battlefield wide "screw magic units" counters, things are a bit more difficult. Astral bless helps, as does casting antimagic or the Virtue of Purity. What I'd suggest is to just bench the magical units if the opponent shows astral mages able to casts those high S spells. You can thug out Marquis instead of Dukes and just use hordes of Errants instead of Grail Knights. Just remember to accomapnay the army with some Damsels equipped with mr boost items. With their high mr, they will be nearly immune to the "negates-easily" BF spells, but their presence will make the opponent cast those scripted BF spells, essentially wasting him mage turns, fatigue and gems.

But you are right, one of the main weaknessess of Bretonnia is its predictability. You can't just focus on Dukes or Grail Knights and expect the opponent to roll over, mix it up a little. This is just one reason why astral pretender is good for Breton.