Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Before talking about the mod, I'd like to thank Thilock_Dominus for allowing me the use of his graphics from his Dominions 2 mod, and also offering to design a banner for this one (which turned out great in my opinion). And graphical inconsistencies/ugliness is due entirely to my clumsy editing of his originals, which were great. Also, I am using numerous place holder images (glade riders, wind hawk riders, wind hawk rider champion, treekin, force of nature) which will be replaced. There's also a couple of units (shadow sentinel and royal eagle come to mind) which I hope to upgrade later. But since the mod rules are functional, I wanted to start getting feedback. This is my first mod, and is probably quite unbalanced. It should be balanced against (and compatible with) the other Warhammer nations, which I think are generally also balanced against the regular MA nations. Any comments, critiques, or advice would be more than welcome.

A few things about design philosophy. First, I tried to stay as close as possible to the Wood Elf army book. I was also working to create a general baseline elf stat line. What that ended up being is a boosted defense, attack, precision, and AP. This came at the expense of str and hp. I still think the elves are better stat-wise (as they should be), but hopefully the cost will help keep a balance. Also, because of Warhammer rules, archery isn't as devestating (nor is being unarmored in general). The only elf unit that has actual armor is the wild riders, and none have shields. In WH, distance, formation (skirmishers, which elves mostly are), and cover mitigate archer damage. Dominions has essentially 3 protections against archery, and the only one elves really have (based on the army book) is magical. With that in mind, I decided to give one unit true shields (and hopefully costed them enough), and added two pseudo-shields to a couple other units to simulate the protections afforded them in the warhammer rules. Now, I'm particularly worried about one unit in question (the wardancers) being too strong based on their dodge shield, but I think with the cost, low hp, and lack of any other protection they will hopefully be ok. Also, as the premier archers in WH, I gave them a base bow that is extremely strong. However, all units otherwise have very low dmg weapons (outside of charges).

So I hope people enjoy this, and give me feedback. This is VERY early in the testing, so I'm more than open to other ideas or suggestions.


edit: Unit list is pretty much set. Might add windriders back in later (code is there), but that depends on my modeling, and also if I can think of a battlefield role for them. All "forest spirits" now get a forest shape (treekin, force of nature, wild riders + commander, dryads). Orion tuned down a bit, and added a new hero. Wardancers cheaper (still trying to get the balance right on them).

edit: New version, more bug fixes, spellweavers changed, added female tag to seducer. Still graphics need work, I'll try to get some work in later (vacation ended sooner than expected). Attachment 9186

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Coolio. Initial impressions:

Waywatchers are devastating with their glamour, 36 defense and immunity to arrows. Quite killable, though.

Dryads are scary because they are a recruitable with fear. They're even scarier, though, because they share the same unit number as Orion, King of the Woods. So whenever they leave the forest they become immortal badasses.

Treekin should probably also look like trees(and seem way too powerful for their low cost), and Warhawk Riders should probably fly. Glade Riders and Warhawk Riders should also probably only have 9 hp as well.

I have to applaud you, by the way, on the Force of Nature. It's absolutely terrifying. Ugh, Blood Vengeance on a 150 hp murdermachine who has perfect paths for Strength of Gaia.

It seems like you don't terribly need an armored unit other than the Wild Riders. The parry shield works wonderfully on Wayfarers, and various forest creatures work for your high protection needs. Not to mention just casting Wooden Warriors on your guys.

All in all, very nice. I'm looking forwards to seeing how this one pans out. I am also looking forward to playing against these guys and burning out their forests. Just think of casting Firestorm on a Wood Elf army.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Thanks for the input. Dryad shapechange was a late addition, only has fear in the forests. I thought mounted units usually have higher hp (also in the tabletop game, Warhawk riders actually have 2 wounds). And there were a couple errors (as you found out) on some costs from when I was testing spells, which are now fixed (was supposed to be 15, not 5 gems for 3 treekin). Also bumped up the cost on waywatchers, dryads, and bradwraiths.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Awesome, I'll take a look as soon as I'm able. I might also have some suggestions for editing the missing sprites.

Just out of curiosity, how did you decide to play out the relations between Bretonnia and Wood Elves? In WRFB, those two have it very.. complicated.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Oh man. Orion. This guy is just a bit much, don't you think? This guy is pretty much the ultimate sc/anti-sc, and you don't even need to give him any gear if you keep him in dominion.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

The mod will crash on linux. You must use the same case in all filename on the harddrive and in the *.dm file (best to keep everything lowercase).

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I think you mean linux will crash on this mod ;P

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I like it except for the earsplitting sound that the elven bows use.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

:p .

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Messed around with it for a few minutes and noticed the following:

Area fear attack on the summonable riders = iwin button. 1 round of combat drops everything in front of these guys to around -20 or lower morale and then the routing starts. If memory serves, the spell is something like 15 gems and produces around 15 guys each causing area fear. Twice. At 15 gems you can spam multiple copies of this and probably instarout even large armies.

Unicorns keep full slots if GoR'd.

The only hero that popped up for me was a generic multihero. Not sure what's going on with that.


All in all, they already feel pretty diverse and interesting to play. Are there pretender chassis in our future? Any other national spells?

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Gave this a small whirl as promised. I'll go give a bit more detailed feedback once a new version is up. Some things that stood up for me.


-- Why Divine Glyph as pretender? Perhaps replace with ***** Queen? Also, do you have any national pretenders in the making (like the Elf Queen, the true Lady of the Lake, forgot her real name.)

-- Elf names? Perhaps overwrite the "sauromatia" nametype 136. Here is a elf name generator I found to make the job a bit easier. http://www.slacknhash.net/elf_name_generator.php

-- Typo: Unicorn summon description -> "sistenance" -> "sustenance"

-- Orion has a grey shadow in his grey graphic. The graphics in general could use a bit of "tidying up", you know, getting rid of broken pixels and the strange outlines.

-- The Noble has only 15 ap, despite being mounted.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Rather than use up a nametype I'd give all the elves the plant nametype and then extend the plant nametype with a load of things that work for both plants and wood elves like 'Thunderbirch' or 'Fernwalker' etc

There are very few nametypes available, after all. I didn't use one for Itza because of this - stuck with Mictlan names.

I agree with Burnsaber and generally the graphics of this mod, as you know, need some serious work.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Thanks again for all the replies. I'll start working more on it in the next week or so. I know the graphics are bad, it's my first time trying so I've been ruining tons of sprites. And I put it out a bit early to get an idea about the playability and ideas behind the army. I think it does ok getting the feel for wood elves (high skilled fragile elves backed up by strong casters and tough nature spirits) and there's a lot of tricky stuff.

One major thing I'm thinking about is really focusing on the "wood" aspect. Sombre said I might could make more use of forestshape (currently only Orion and the dryads do), but I'm really worried about getting the balance right. Would the forestshape just be bonus (balance against the plainshape, and give a bonus for the woods)? If not, how much weight should the forestshape get? It's not like the tabletop where you're guaranteed a woods when you fight.

But thanks again for everyone's comments, and I hope people enjoy the mod.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

An interesting way to use forestshape, would be that all the wood elves have forestshape. So you can actually make the wood elves be a bit stronger when fighting in woods, or bit weaker when not fighting in the woods ;)

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I've got a fair amount of input, but so much of it hinges on things that could possibly change drastically in the near future. I think if we could get a new version with at least a definite unit list, we could start crunching through it.


In other words, I'm really liking the mod and want to see a new version ASAP. :D

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I'm worried about balance in that case. New version has more use of forestshape, though. Biggest problem is since the amount of forest is so variable, it's hard to tell just how powerful they should be. I don't want them too weak outside of forests, because then the vast majority of the time you're gonna have units that are bad (and everything's already fairly expensive, and dies easily). Alternately, if the bonuses are too good they'll dominate forests (and if a map has high-forests, they'll be really insane). There's also the practical aspect of using too many unit numbers.

Thanks for the support. I'm uploading a newer version now. I've cleaned up some of the graphics (mostly getting the black outlines/random bits gone), but that's an ongoing process. Also, final unit list is pretty much set (Wood elves don't have that much difference in unit selection in their army book). And I'd appreciate any and all feedback.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

It looks like wardancers are going to be very hard to balance. Out of the box they are absurdly good at wasting your gold and giving the enemy xp, but that changes really, really, really fast. A little clever positioning of your excellent arrowcatchers helps out from turn 1. A W9 bless is pretty much a given with the sacreds as they stand, bringing dancers to a disturbing 21 defense and 22 mv... and 4 attacks a round. Admittedly, those 4 attacks are for low damage (except that now brutal first strike). Thankfully, you've got some earth access and can cast things like strength of giants which will proc 4 times a round instead of 1. Weapons of sharpness. Rust mist. Iron bane. You're still arrow bait, but you've got significant air magic. Arrow fend. Storm if you want. Mass flight? Fog warriors? All the classics work. Wooden warriors, elemental buffs, you name it, you can cast it.

In summary, you've got a lot of damage potential balanced by significant weaknesses, but you've got natural access to the paths to eliminate all your weaknesses and multiply the bejeezus out of your strengths. I like the multiple attack sacreds for thematic reasons, but the multiplicative effect when buffed looks tough to balance.

Highborn are .. unmounted with a lance and hoof attack? Mounted with an old graphic and mv value?

Again, loving the mod but I think it'd be healthy to have a good conversation about balance on the wardancers.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Ah, that seems much better. I think this is going to be a turmoil-luck nation, just for the glory of getting Orion second turn like I just did in my test game. Then he got Heroic Quickness, and after he soloed Bogus and Co. he got Boots of quickness. He was personally killing at least 150 units a battle.

Force of Natures have an attack sprite that is smaller than the normal sprite, so they look like they are doing squats or something. It is very silly.

Frankly I am terrified of Elf's lategame abilities. They have very odd stats, and that means other nations basically have to go through hoops to find counters to their stuff. And you never know whether Elves will teleport in thugs(though they thankfully don't seem to have a terribly good chassis for them until lategame), directly assassinate your commanders or bring in a seemingly invincible army buffed up beyond belief.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I'll fix the highborn. I decided to switch them late in the game, so I didn't check everything exactly. Should be unmounted, when I get home I'll fix it.

Also, I'm not sure what to do about wardancers. I could conceivably cut earth magic from the regular elves, but I have no idea what to replace it with (and if I don't replace it with something, that would leave them with 1 major path, 1 medium strength path, and 1 very minor path). I was looking at them as essentially slightly better battle vestals (better stats, no shield), and almost everyone universally says the vestals are horrible. I could give them 2 weapons instead of 1 weapon with two attacks, which would make them hit less (but would make the charge more devastating). Alternately, I could remove the charge attack but just give a 1 use weapon that has higher damage (in the tabletop game, they get bonus strength, essentially damage, on the charge). Any suggestions would be welcome, i think they're pretty close in feel to the tabletop but not quite there.

I'll get on the Force of nature sprite when I get home. And I had hoped Orion was a bit weaker (although I guess getting the boots and heroic quickness helped). Although in the tabletop game he's pretty much unkillable in woods, and he is a demigod so I don't know if I want him too weak. Might need to cut him down a bit more though.

And I tried to match the feel from the tabletop. It's hard, since even though the vast majority of their troops lack armor, they aren't that easy to kill. It's just when something does hit them, they die horribly. I'm worried any strong buff to base units will make them too good, but if I hit the base units too much they will be worthless. I might could also work on magic paths (cut down on the air access?) to make everything not quite so easy. But at least in my testing I found getting much diversity hard, and the spellsingers to be pretty bad overall (which I intended). Research seems a problem, especially with no access to research boosters. And the spellweavers are already quite expensive (of course, from a lategame perspective the gold issue isn't much of one).

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Quick detail: Call of the Hunt isn't summoning a magicleader, leading to an instarout.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I think the biggest balance issue for Orion right now is simply that there are no other heros, so you're more likely to get him--that and his ranged attack is absolutely bogus. the AOE 2 on those javelins means that on average you're melting 6 or 7 squares a round, and shields don't help against it. Frankly, the straight out 20 arrows was not as bad. Changing that back and getting some more heros(I'd suggest someone who can actually summon unicorns, for one) should balance him just fine.

It seems like the mages are rather expensive for what they do; My perception is that Wood elf mages should be slightly better than Brettonian mages, and right now they're not.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Actually, I added another hero, so there's 2 now. There's 1 more I'm planning on adding, that should finish. I cut it down to 1 arrow with 3 aoe. In the tabletop, his bow works like a bolt-thrower (and a high strength, multi-wound one at that) so I've been trying to get the same effect.

And the mages being expensive is partially for balance. I had them cheaper originally, but was told they were too good. I might cut the singers price, but I was told that the weaver should actually be around 550 or 600. They should be better than Brettonian mages, but I don't know what to do. I'll tinker a bit, maybe add reinvig and another path of nature?

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Well, here's the question: what can you actually *do* with a spellweaver? He can buff troops. He can lab-cast. He gets you high nature(useless) and air(decent). A spellweaver is worth at most 450, and even that's pushing it.

Every truly expensive mage(400+) in CBM can solo a province with some minimal gear/buff spells. Except the Couatl, I guess, but I've honestly never tried with one of those.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I was one of the people (the only person?) to tell him the spellweavers needed to be more expensive. I compared them to slann. A fifth gen slann has 10 magic paths and h3, sacred, 12 rp a turn. The vast majority of these will have amazingly useless paths. They have 50 hp, but only misc slots and a random 5th gen would likely experience significant difficulties trying to solo pd without summoning elementals. 650 gold.

Spellweaver - 8 magic paths, h3, sacred, 10 rp/turn. These have the possibility to get to N or A 5! Without even considering the 10% random. Or 3 water or earth. These are much more versatile mages than a 5th gen slann, do not have the horrible vulnerability to magic duel, and could technically be made into thugs if you really wanted to. Otherwise their prospects for province soloing are probably fairly equal. You can get amazingly high paths out of these, and they actually forge worth a damn. I think the cost is justifiable.

Also, high nature is not useless. The wood elves have a few very high path nature spells that they would very much like to cast, and gift of nature's bounty can be quite powerful.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Really, other mages shouldn't be compared to Slann--they're meant to be ludicrously expensive.

branchwraith
 

judging by the description

``Branchwraiths usually appear in the form of a beautiful woman, only showing their other side when attacking''

$subj should be seducing in female form, right?

I suggest that their sex be switched to female

Treekin
 

$subj forest shape missing, presumably due to bug in monster 2436 definition

IMHO 2436 should be forest shape of 2418, and so in monster 2436 definition `forestshape' directive should be changed to `plainshape'

Force of nature fails to regain magic skill in forest
 

i summoned force of nature in swamp, then moved him to forest. The creature got his forest form but not magic. I expected his magic skill to rise to 3 earth/5 nature, but he still is 2 earth/4 nature

Any ideas how to fix this? How to correctly code magic penalty in non-forest?

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

It's just magicboost -1 iirc.

fixed force of nature magic decay
 

thanks, Sombre

I've patched the mod file, fixing wrong case in file name and 3 problems described in my 3 posts

Here goes the list of changes

608a609
> #female
644a646
> #female
913,914c915,918
< #magicskill 6 4
< #magicskill 3 2
---
> #magicskill 6 5
> #magicskill 3 3
> #magicboost 6 -1
> #magicboost 3 -1
1070c1074
< #forestshape 2418
---
> #plainshape 2418
1451c1455
< #damage 2414
---
> #damage 2435
1552c1556
< #flag "./Athelloren/ALflag.tga"
---
> #flag "./Athelloren/alflag.tga"

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

I should have an update this week. Just got back to my home computer. I didn't know about the magicboost command (is it in the guidebook?) so I'll add that. Same for the "female" tag (I saw it now, must've missed it before, didn't know it mattered).

Thanks for all the input everyone.

shadow weaver
 

$subj is unable to lead anyone, including undead he auto-summons

alansmithee, is this bug or feature?

Warhammer: Wood Elves - after-action report
 

Played one game to the end.

Vampire Queen, awoke, with 4 astral/nature/fire, sloth 3, disorder 3, luck 3

Played on Epotara with Warhammer six and conceptual balance mods against difficult AI

My capital city happened to be on a swamp, so i had financial problems in the beginning

I was attacked by Jomon early in the game. Slowly defeated him by hordes of Wild hunters/Wild riders with help of treekin, suffering heavy losses. Mummies of wild hunters, undead prophet and dust priests animated undead for me

The wild horses never routed and preferred to die honorably. So i only attacked with bigger force, and thus expanded slowly

In the middle of the Jomon war, when half of Hall of fame was mine, Arcocephale attacked me. I sent three queens of water and lots of undead and took her capital which happened to be near.

I was playing defensively, spending all gems for summoning troops and empowering ether lord. Since there was not much forest around, most of my nature gems went to faerie courts and wraith lord equipment. When Brettonia attacked me, i actively defended my territory, mostly with local defense, wraith lords and one group of flying thunderstrikes, while kokythiads helped water queens to finish Arcocephale.

Combat-useful summons, big investments in local province defense and global enchantments (gift of health, strands of arcane power) helped a lot. Without them, Brettonia would have eaten me quickly.

With no real threat besides Brettonia, big income of undead troops, gems and money, high-level summons, and since Brettonia was not using magic in combat, I captured all Brettonia territory and won game (by victory points)

Waging war in more than one direction appears to be difficult. Fighting against heavily protected and tough troops (not dying after 2 strikes of Kurnous' shard) is hard. But, defending territory is easy due to effective local defense. Playing without spies (bringing accurate military report) is dangerous and difficult

On the whole the wood race is slightly under-powered. Can be played against AI with some difficulties. I believe wood elves would not survive long enough to learn conjuration 9 in multi-player

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves - after-action report
 

Thanks for all your testing. I really appreciate it. Also, before I make some comments the noleader on the heroes is intentional. I need mindless to make Orion unbreakable, and the other hero is shunned by society, but doesn't actually invite the spirits to follow him. I kinda took a little liberty creating him from the WE army book, but I think that's how one of the casters tempted by the evil spirits would be.

As for your testing, I have some questions. For one, why the vamp queen? I think with such a weak bless and low gold from your scales, using the wild riders to expand wouldn't be optimal. My intent in design was to allow for either a strong bless (using wild riders/war dancers and also your sacred summons), or to go more scales if you want and expand with archers/wall. Also, with your casters you have your choice of alteration (to buff your troops) or evocation (blast with air magic). All the units have fairly high stats (atk/def/pre) so with buffing their armor they should be pretty durable. Strength of giants and weapons of sharpness should help cut through high armor (or the high national spell, but that's alt 8 iirc). And as for spies, it seems many nations don't have actual spies. A lot of your units are able to sneak, so you should have some intel (or hiring indy scouts is always an option).

I'll look at balancing more, what are some areas you feel could/should be improved to make them more on equal footing? I'll see about adding things to the next update if it's necessary.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Yes, my pretender is not optimal for the race

I planned to hire some useful independent mages and sacred troops, but found none

As for your suggestion to use WE natinal mages as offensive air spellers, it seems me to costly. I don't believe i could afford that in the game.

Re: Warhammer: Wood Elves
 

Just played a short game with all warhammer races and happened to notice that both Bretonnia and Wood Elves have the same shade of green as their nation's score graph line.
It doesn't cause much confusion though since you can just deactivate the other one to see which one is which. Just thought to point it out.