Dhem - The Allspring - Version 0.2 (now with pics)
 

I am making a series of 3 nations (EA, MA, and LA) for a nation.
http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/w...quise/Dhem.png

The first two are now done! Version 0.2 is out. It should address more exponential growth problems and adds the nation to the second age.

The pretender and descriptions have been added. The pretender is still super-beta though.

Next version will likely just be a documentation/description change and the addition of a pretender.

It begins when they discover the Allspring and begin gathering around it. The Allspring is a raw elemental layline, literally made out of elementals. They create a hierarchy around those who can tap into the raw power.

Gem Income:
2 Earth/Fire/Wind/Water

Units:
Slave (basically Micitan Slave)

Fourfold Elemental: 25 Gold/5 res (capital only)
str 4 prot 8
Flame Strike -Cold -Lightning Strikex2
Armor - Flesh Ward
hp 10 -mor 20 -mr 8 -att 6-def 6-ap 12-prec 10-enc 1
fire/cold/shock res 90%
Regeneration 5 hp/turn
Sacred, Magical (obviously)

Commanders:
150 gold/80 res
Speaker of Flame
Speaker of the Wind
Speaker of Water
Speaker of the Earth

All can 'call allies' to summon elementals each turn
Size-3 Fire
3 Size-1 Air
2 Size-2 Water
Size-3 Earth

Magic: 10% chance of their element 10 times


Page: 50 gold/10 res
No Magic
5 Research
Stealth 0

Wellspark 400 gold/100 res (capital only)
4 Misc Slots
str 8 prot 12
Small Area Fire/Frost/Shock/Stun
Armor: Flesh Ward
Fire/Cold/Shock Res: 100%
Regeneration 2hp/turn
2 Holy
hp 10-mor 18-mr 12-att 8-def 8-ap 12-prec 10-enc 0
magic/goodleader/goodmagicleader
Size 3


If anyone could tell me how to make a unit expire after several turns (I intend to have the Wellspark be cheaper but only last 8 turns). Feedback over what is blatantly overpowered if appreciated. The general idea is that the nation is extremely reliant upon elemental for their military. Nearly all their units are magical, and the rest likely are independents.

Now with 100% more first-post mod.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Sounds like a good idea.


Mod command-wise it's not possible, and I don't know a work-around for this.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

If the unit is a commander, you could give it a custom #onebattlespell that makes it start each battle with the "decay" effect.

That's about it, sadly.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Chance for magic levels, rounded to 1 decimal until 5, from where rounded to show how small the chances get:
0: 34.9%
1: 38.7%
2: 19.4%
3: 5.7%
4: 1.1%
5: 0.015%
6: 0.0014%
7: 0.000087%
8: 0.0000036%
9: 0.000000009%
10: 0.0000000001%

Gotten with following formula: (0.9^(10-X)*0.1^X)*(10CX) where X is the level of path and C is symbol for combination.

So they aren't very special mages really. They're actually really crap as casters, seeing how almost three quarters of them have 0 or 1 levels of a path.

6 chances of 30% would result in:
0: 11.8%
1: 30.3%
2: 32.4%
3: 18.5%
4: 5.9%
5: 1%
6: 0.007%

As a general rule, whatever amount of chances of 50% will result in the most common amount being the median, ie the most central value, of the possibilities. Like 2 and 3 in 5 chances of 50%. Chances under 50% will result in the most common value being closer to the start of the probability distribution. Like we see, upping the chance from 10% to 30% and lowering the maximum amount of picks results in the most common result rising slightly.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Are you wanting something that's only useful in combat for 8 rounds, or only lasts half a year or so before dying horribly?

For the former, exhaustion is pretty awesome. For the latter...maybe bad enough old age that they won't last the winter? Like maxage 5 or something.

That sacred guy seems crazy powerful. Lots of attacks(even with the low str, aren't some of those armor negating? and aoe?), powerful regen, near immunity to elemental magic, and blood vengeance? I can't imagine trying to face a group of 10 of them without mage support. I also can't imagine what bless to take (other than death and blood) since you have most everything covered already with them. Giving recruitables artifact-level gear is so off-normal that I can't conceive of how this would play out.

You do have a lot of nice ideas, like the random magic paths on the Speakers. That's just classy. And I always wanted to see a nation like this.

Now I have to think of how to make recruitables with Bone Armor work. Even better, a nation where all the commanders wear Pebble Skin Suits. Oh dear.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

How is this possible? doesn't #researchbonus need at least 1 magic path?(excluded holy)

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Just copystat the Gath recruitable, which has research without magic. However, you will get #wastesurvival and #sacred tags, which you can't get rid of.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

i always learn something new, i mean, who need education when you have this forum?

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

I ended up copying the philosopher, but even their mages have a high resource requirement, so full sloth is probably a bad idea (weak I know). I am trying to remove the philosophizer effect.

I am aware the mages are weak, and you may be right that they are too weak, especially considering this is EA. I think I will go with. 8 instances of 20%
0: 16.7%
1: 33.5%
2: 29.3%
3: 14.6%
4: 4.6%
5: 0.9%
6: 0.11%
7: 0.008192%
8: 0.000256%

I wanted players to be conflicted over getting mages or pages, and if the mages were all excellent, it would be no-contest.

I had wanted a unit that would die after about a year of use in order to give them significant problems commanding without summons or magic.


The elementals aren't that powerful in practice. The default flesh ward item does not give blood vengeance to units. but is basically a 0-protection armor. It gives something for earth-bless to work on.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Can you give wellsparks the effect where if they leave their home province they lose hitpoints? Then, just don't give them many hitpoints. This effect is present on things like hamadryads, I think

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

I cannot give them that without them gaining several other abilities that I don't want them to get. If you know a way to reset stealthy and awe, then sure. I tried setting them to -1 but the effects persisted.

Attached are the some of the sprites I made for this.

I can't seem to make an image for the fourfold elemental that I really like.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Are you using copystats to do that? You might look at the independent Blood Guard unit, which has the "home province" drawback.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Stavis, is there a way to search the wiki for all homesick units or did you just know that one from memory?

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

I happened to know that one from memory, but according to lch in the wiki thread, you should be able to click on the link to the effect, then go to the bottom left "what links here".

However, that does not currently seem to be working (I had issues initially with it for Construct Lord attribute, which then went away when lch looked at it; that one's not showing the linked pages either for me at the moment. :()

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Same here; that is why I asked. Thanks! :)

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Attached is the first part of what will eventually be a 3-age nation.

There are some extra units that are unused, but will eventually be used.

It feels a little odd at first because there are so few units that you can directly acquire, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, as this is my first nation.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Holy exponential growth batman.

Ok, in addition to the issues we discussed on IRC, the air elementals are really not ok in the quantities you can acquire them. This is a systematic problem that has to do with them not having any upkeep, so as long as you pay for the mages you can generate arbitrarily many of them.

End of year 2 i literally had 2 thousand of them floating around. I could not hire effective leaders for them fast enough. And that's after casualties from expanding and fighting a war (that the AI was losing badly). Basically, you quickly reach a point where the rate at which you can acquire new territory -> new income vastly outpaces the rate at which upkeep increases. And I totally overdid it, given I couldn't use more than half the elementals I was creating.

On the other hand, increasing cost/upkeep of the mages is not, by itself, the answer. The very random distribution of their paths means you need to buy an awful lot of them to get the useful ones - if upkeep was more than at present you'd never acquire enough mages to get ones that matter. Further, even present upkeep may be far too much, because I was supporting that obscene upkeep burden by stupidly fast expansion.

Further, the way you currently have units and upkeep structured, there's no way you're going to be able to even keep up in research. Fortunately, at the moment, you don't even have to. Unfortunately, that's because what they do is horribly broken.

Basically, free units you don't pay upkeep on is a bad idea. LA Ermor taught us this.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

Hmm, instead of a scout give them an immobile magicless immortal with 4 shapes, each shape can summon elementals. Give it an upkeep of 10000 (you'll never have any money). Make their mages (relatively cheaply) summonable (and maybe recruitable for 0gp at their cap only) and keep the summoning in (add some spells for castles, if possible also for labs and temples, and or maybe a high alchemy bonus whenever you want to build something). You get a nation that is not the slighest interested in their population, not even to the extend of taxing them (but also not killing them).

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

One possible solution to the current dynamic would be to give Speakers the option of a shape change. The career progression, so to speak, would be Page ----> Speaker -----> Overseer; the Overseers would lose the ability to summon and probably some/all paths, keep some research ability, but they would have increased leadership and (much?) lower upkeep.

This lets you put Speaker upkeep sky high to balance out elemental summons, but the ones that can't keep up (low paths) retire to administration and a lower pay grade. :)

In effect, you get to roll the dice on good paths as often as you want but aren't burdened unnecessarily by the whittles.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

I 'really' like that solution.

Oh, and under convincing by Squirrel, I have changed their magic to be vastly higher. 10 chances of 25%. They now can be genuinely powerful mages, but not as consistently as other groups.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

If you want something that dies slowly, you might be able to copy and edit blood guard settings. They lose 1 HP per month after leaving their home and eventually die off.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring
 

You cannot remove the berserk from that. Additionally, you can get it from Naedes(sp), but you cannot remove the creature having awe (and a few other abilities).

In the end I went with a solution by making the speakers have incredibly high upkeeps, so you cannot rely on the exponential unit production as easily.

Re: Dhem - The Allspring - Version 0.2
 

have you tried setting #awe -1 ?