EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Original Post Replaced with Release Post

EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness
current release v1.04 on 26th Oct 2010

v1.04 Update

• Added +2 earth gems to Wolf Den site bringing the factions gem income inline with the vanilla nations (+6 per turn)

v1.03 Update

• Painted Warrior: No longer starts with old age
• Painted Warrior: Is now ambidextrous (was always meant to be, fixed typing error)

v1.02 Update

• Pictland Howl spell level increased from 0 to 2
• Windcall spell level increased from 0 to 1
• Pictish Wail ATT reduced from - 2 to -4
• Temple cost increased from 200 to the default 400
• Minor change to nation description

v1.01 Update

• Elder: Research increased from 1 to 4
• Hag: Healing increased from 20 to 40
• Wailing Woman: Pictish Wail now works as intended
• Wind Hawk: HP upgraded by 2, Str upgraded by 1
• Windcall: Number of summons increased from 8 to 10
• Sacred Skulls: Description shortened, was too long

Mod Features

• New Early Age Faction: Pictland
• 28 New Units, Complete with New Sprites
• 2 New Spells
• A Few New Armors and Weapons

Sprite Preview
Contains all units, but not their attack poses

http://i55.tinypic.com/2qbsz05.jpg

I'm proud to present my first mod EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness for download.

The nation is loosely based on ancient Celts and the Picts from the Conan setting, but to be honest I had an idea in my head of what I wanted them to be like and just went with it. They are primitive wildsmen, at home in the woods and friendly with the animals (they have Wolf and Hawk allies). Below is the background taken from the in-game description.

Background
Pictland is a realm of hundreds of small clans each with their own unique history and customs. The Great Council, made up of the clan chieftains, meets on a seasonal basis to discuss matters of great importance. All Pictish clans share some common traits. Sacrifice and ritualistic burnings are practiced widely, farming and husbandry are almost non-existant and most clans survive by hunting and gathering or by raiding others. Picts are adept woodsmen, they live amongst the plants and the animals, when a Pict is silent and still they become one with the forest and even the animals pay them no heed. Most Picts do not wear any armor, but helmets are worn by important clansmen as a symbol of their authority. Picts fight with bows, spears, axes, clubs and crude hunting knives and paint their faces blue before going into battle. Pictish settlements are small villages, the largest of which are permanent while the smaller ones move with the seasons.

Final Words
I hope you enjoy the mod and go easy on me, its my first try ;)

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Hi, welcome.
Be careful about province defense. Do NOT mix archers, or even javelin throwers, and melee troops. Since all your guys are unarmored, they'd suffer the Machaka syndrome: Archers will kill their friends and the whole army will rout.

Also, with no air access to fend off missiles, you'd better have good nature/earth buffs to help your troops in melee. They'd better be cheap too or they'll die in droves.

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Thanks for the heads up on Province defence! I'll probably mix Warriors with Savages then.

As for the lack of air access, the Wild Hawk summon was meant to go some way to adressing that, in numbers they should be able to rip through Archers hopefully, but not stand on their own against armoured troops. Of course this is not as easy as recruiting air troops, but hopefully adds an extra dimension to think about.

I want most troops to be cheap yes, they are only human, and come without armour. Hopefully the Shaman should help with the Earth/Nature buffs. Hopefully within a week I should get a playable version uploaded, then any advice from testing will be invaluable, as a new player there may be aspects of the game I'm still not too knowledgable about.

Overall I want them to be balanced, possibly slightly more challenging to play than most factions, but I want to avoid making them underpowered too :-D

Edit: Would giving everything except Hawks, Hags and Elders, (who have 0 leadership anyway) forest survival and sneak be overpowering?

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

That would be comparable to Pangaea so I wouldnt call it too overpowering. Stealth armies are rarely used effectively by most players anyway IMHO

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Hi Woodman, nice looking sprites!

#itemslots 14470 (will give you weapon, shield, helmet, boots, 2 trinkets)

#itemslots 12422 (will give you weapon, shield, helmet, 2 trinkets)

Goodluck on your mod!

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Thanks Foodstamp that will come in handy!

I edited the first post to have a new image with the completed set of Sprites and also edited the list to add the new units into it.

Time to start work on the text file now.

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Woodman, you seem to have PM's turned off.

So far I do like your mod. But I would change the wolves the guys are riding into Dire Wolves. (At least the image). Because the wolves are normally ridden by goblins, and look a bit to small for humans.

(I do like the blue guy. Actually, I want more blue guys! But I think that is just me).

If you want more advice/criticism. It would also be nice to cross-post this thread in the dom3mods forum. But be warned. The dom3mods forums is more of a gloves off, shields up kinda place. (So if somebody really doesn't like your mod, or you, they will say this. But so far the only nastiness has been aimed at shrapnel).

Link: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods

Re: W.I.P. EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Thanks for the support and advice Soy. I plan to go back to the graphics when I manage to get the mod up and running (lets just say there is more than one bug in it at the moment, lol).

There are a few tweaks I want to make to the sprites, I did plan on using the Dire Wolf originally because like you say the normal wolf is small, but its attack sprite is awful, its just looking up, hehe. I will try and either a) resize the current wolf, b) just resort to using the Dire Wolf instead.

Didn't know my PM was off, I'll take a look, thx Edit: Turned it on :-)

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wild
 

Updated first post with mod release! Please enjoy!

Includes new bigger wolves, as requested by Soy ;)

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

If you were still looking for an alternative to the wolf sprite I found one which after I did some recoloring I think works pretty well.

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

Hey tcon, that wolf is really nice. I'm okay for Wolves now, I'm happy with the way they came out in the end, also, it was the most time consuming sprite to make. Perhaps if I ever make a mod with a cold based nation I would use those Wolves, but I'm happy with the browny coloured Pictland Wolves for now ;)

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

Maybe it would work as a pretender?
Or after looking at it, maybe a really cool summons? Or a battle spell?

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

I have only played through about a dozen turns, but so far I like the team. The graphics are good and everything seems pretty well developed. There are only a few changes you may want to consider. The elder might be more balanced with a research of 3 or 4, giving him only 1 makes him not likely to be built and slightly worse than most nations researchers. The hag seems slightly underpowered having old age and only 1 astral, but if you increased the healer ability it would be a much more useful mage especially since most units don't have any armor this would really help. I really like using the savage, but a great club might fit the sprite better, regular clubs are usually one handed and the larger club would make him even more fun to use. If you decide to use the great club its #165 so you don't have to go looking for it. Overall though I really like the mod and how well you made the team, especially for a first release.

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

Hey tcon thanks for the feedback! You make a couple of really good points.

The Elder does one less research than a Philosopher but costs the same. The reason for this was because the Philosopher is Capital only, but the Elder can be built anywhere. However, this is actually no advantage, because the troops are so cheap and delicate and the clan leaders only control 40, you pretty much have to build a new commander every turn, meaning you don't have time for the Elders. So, giving an extra Research to the Elder might make them more viable, but I wouldn't want to make them better than the philosopher, so it will probably be just +1 extra reseach.

I agree with you about the Hag, because I'm not that familiar with the Healing ability I kind of guessed the amount, I wanted her to not be as good at healing as the Acros Priestess, but I might have made her too bad, perhaps a boost to 50 might do it.

As for the Savage, I think they are fairly balanced at the moment, they actually have only a 1 handed club if you pause and look at the attack sprite (its their arm going above their head with the club at the end). Giving them the Great Club is quite a boost in dmg (over double I think) which would make them better than the Berserker who is the Cap only version of a Savage (but without the Pillage ability).

The other things I'm looking at are the Pictish Wail (weapon of Wailing Woman) never seems to hit, it is -2 accuracy, it might need to be boosted to 0 or +1 or +2 and the Windcall spell is quite useless because the Hawks don't attack on the same turn they are summoned and get wiped. I think either the Hawks need a slight buff, or the spell range reduced to 1 perhaps, so that they spawn on the caster and then fly to enemy, they seem to attack the same turn as they fly, but not same turn as summon for some reason.

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

The fix for windcall should work, and I'm not sure why the wail isn't working. I can't tell if the attack is missing, or if the secondary effect just isn't hitting. You could try giving it a #flysprite for trouble shooting to see how accurate the attack is, or use #secondaryeffectalways to see if that fixes it because I'm not sure if it will trigger #secondaryeffect since it does 0 damage it might not consider it harming the unit and causing the secondary. Also, the philosopher has research 5.

Re: EA Pict, Way of the Wilderness
 

Ah thanks for the info on the Philosopher. At the time of making the mod I was actually playing Arcos and my Philosophers were only doing 2 research, now I start a new game again and see they do 5! It must have been my slothful domain that was making them do less or something. Thought it was strange because the database said 5, but in game was only 2 :)

I will fix up the Hag, Elder, Wail and Windcall and post an update soon, cheers for the advice!

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.01
 

Updated the first post in the thread with version 1.01 and list of changes!

Thx :p

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.01
 

Updated the first post in the thread with version 1.02 and list of changes. I feel now that the nation is done and dusted and I'm ready to move on to my next :D But if anyone points out anything in particular they think is broken or wrong that I missed I'll come back and fix.

Cheers all!

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.02
 

:up: I really love this mod. Love the name. Love the theme.
And its very well done. Excellent work as a first time effort.:clap:

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.02
 

Thanks very much for the kind comment, much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it!

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.03
 

I spotted a couple more mistakes, both regarding the Painted Warrior hero, fixed and uploaded new version on first post. I think its all done now :D

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.03
 

I wonder why wolves are auto-summoned by easily hireable researcher and multihero, but birds are only summoned by a single hero. What if that hero does not come? And why are birds not sneaky?

It seems strange that hags and priests have no forest walk. Hags are witches who live in forest, collecting herbs every day.

And where is clan chieftan who is supposed to be stronger authority than blood priest?

And whould it be thematic if this nation could build a special structure in every forest fort that auto-summons wolves and/or birds? IMHO this could be implenented with an immobile unit, hireable everywhere, with high cost, whose forest costs no money and spawns monsters. Or alternatively with a summonable immobile unit who is only summoned in forest and costs lots of nature gems.

//Playtesting this nation now. It takes lot of cunning to eat heavy infantry with wolves.

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.03
 

Hey mehrunes! Thanks for the feedback.

A quick point on the summon of birds, your Windcaller can summon 4 birds per turn, the Pack Leader auto-summons 1 wolf per turn, the only reason I did them slightly different to each other was just for a bit of thematic variance, the wolves follow their leader (like dogs :p ) but the birds come when called to.

The Packleader was also a last minute addition, because I found the Wolves for the Wolfriders really difficult to make, I wanted to find a way to include them in the mod on their own too. He is a cheap way of getting the wolves into your army (or using the Pictland howl spell in battle) whereas the Windcaller is a proper mage in his own right aswell as a summoner.

Only the warrior types have forest walk, the elderly (priests, hags and elders do not), I suppose it could be changed if you think its a gamebreaker, but I quite like it like this. The basic priest I mainly use just for building temples, the Bloodpriest is good for bringing into battle. As for hawks I'm not sure why they are not stealthy, I think (but maybe I'm wrong) flying units in general do not have stealth in this game (I assume you would see/hear a flock of birds coming across the sky).

Also, they are meant to be challenging/a bit different to play, I think because most people use custom nations in single player. I'm not a very good player myself, but I find you can hit a roadblock sometimes when you come up against heavy enemy resistance, but remember you can sneak an army behind enemy lines take their unguarded province, pillage it with your savages, set tax to 200 and move on, hopefully drawing some of their army away from the roadblock :D

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Updated first post with v1.04. This change adds +2 Earth gems to your income, the faction now has a total gem income of +6 (or +7 if you took the Sacred Skulls as a pretender). This is now inline with what vanilla nations in Early Age get.

Sorry for all the updates after I said the mod was finished :D But, luckily you can update the mod and the changes take effect in your game, you don't have to start a new one (something I wish I learned a bit earlier, lol).

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Very nice mod. Thanks for sharing!

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

No problem, glad you enjoyed and thanks for playing :)

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Just found this mod, I will have to download it and give it a try WoodMan.

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Thanks Jimbo, glad to see people are still trying the mod so long after it was made. :)

Sorry for the slow reply, I haven't played Dominions for quite some time now, but I still drop in the forums about once a month as it'll no doubt go back on my hardrive one day, great game.

Hope you enjoyed the faction ;)

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

What's changes are needed for Picland to be compatible with CBM? Everything seems fine, perhaps the monster or weapon extensions? :confused:

Thanks.

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Hi CK,

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can help you with that question. I have to admit, it has been a very, very long time since I played Dom3!

I'll have to get back into it sometime, it's an old gem for sure. But, right now it has been so long I really can't help, heh, sorry!

I hope someone else can!

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

There's a CBM compatible version here:http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...?showtopic=317 as part of the mod compatibility project.

Re: EA Pictland, Way of the Wilderness v1.04
 

Thanks! :happy: