First of all, my sincerest thanks to both of you.
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Originally Posted by VedalkenBear
Burn: Playing around with Alugra a little bit, I have some feedback.
1) Alugra is an incredible Blood nation. I'm sure that I could check what the Villain's Blood magic is, but I haven't seen less than 2. It would seem that a very good starting strategy is to buy a Preacher for your commander first turn, and then a Master + Villain + whatever for second turn, Gift the Villain, put him out to the first suitable Blood province, build a lab, and start hunting. Meanwhile, the Master you have will be Gifting Librarians so that you can get to Blood-2 as fast as possible (and for Alugra, that is pretty fast).
The Blood Sergeant is way too cheap for its effect. It has Dousing 1, correct? The Sergeant could easily be doubled in cost, and it wouldn't matter. I might suggest taking off the Dousing (as I don't think you could make them Blood-0 with Dousing-1 and make it work).
2) Librarians seem to be too efficient. Research-5 is too much, it seems, as research is blindingly fast. Research-3 would probably be a bit better. As it is, if I wanted to, I could probably take Drain-3, and not really care.
I'm about to start testing thugging/SCing Gifted commanders to see what happens. Smiths with their buff + Summon Earthpower might be overpowered.
BTW, I wanted to apologize for not getting to this sooner. The Jomon patch coming out, plus some school stuff, conspired to put this on a back burner for a few.
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1) You can see all gifted magic picks from this link (it's in the first post, you probably missed it):
http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs537&d=09106&f=picks497.jpeg -> Villains have automatical B2. It was orginally D1B1S1 base with 50% chance of second level in each path, but I changed it after a test game where I gifted 4 villains without any B2 for TBS. Since their "personal" spell (Villain's Escape) has to be b2 (so that b1 manifests are unable to cast it, due to balance and thematic reasons).
I think that I deluded myself into thinking that having summonable blood hunter would be somehow worse than having recruitable one. Yeah, Blood Sergeants have douse 1 and it doesn't work without the B1. I'll probably bump the cost (to 10-15? range) and remove the dousing. I alsohave this idea of making them increase unrest(5), since they don't have *official* status of a bloodhunter like most nations have. They're just monsters who snatch away daughters. IMO, Alugra isn't supposed to be a major blood nation (unless you *really* focus on it, since everything has a opportunity cost).
2) Yeah, I'll probably have to reduce it. The massive bonus is probably a leftover from the times when they had single AEFWSBDN pick.
Huh, I never realized that Smith can negate his fatigue gain with Earthpower. But I'll write more about that guy later.
Oh, Vedalkenbear see the "to-do" list in the first post. I've added some stuff from your first PM there.
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Originally Posted by Radio_Star
Smiths definitely seem like the go-to mage. Earth and astral individually are pretty awesome paths on the field and having both is tons of fun. Battlefield buffs, blade wind/magma eruption/falling fires/gifts of heaven depending on what chaff vs. heavy ratio you're looking at, prec. 100 astral fires if that's your need and since your national buffs (use air power is perfect here) scream reverse communion, you can buff up, reverse communion rattle off some gifts then blink your way into buff melee destruction. On top of all that, you've got a nice forge bonus in some very forge-friendly paths.
Baalz's guide to Marverni has some excellent tips on the dirty tricks you can pull with E/S druids most of which applies to smiths and requires substantially less equipment.
It's the cross-utility that makes them so appealing, to my mind. As you pointed out, they've got clear thug potential. On top of that, you also get fierce battle magic, mobility via the astral path, -and- forge bonuses. Total package, so to speak, making them the go to recruitable.
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Yeah, the instant I got the idea for Metallic Smiths, I knew that they'd be troublesome. I can't really change their path combos, since it's just too thematic the way it is. I want to encourage training the gifted diversly. Everyone is going to have a favourite, but it's be nice if all of the Gifted start from the same line. I'll probably do one of the following nerfs to Smith;
1) Reduce Slots even further. Taking away either hands (no hammers/Crystal Shields) or boots (no earth boots) will likely hurt.
2) Make them F1E1 base with 50% F/E/S/S. Could be annoying if you don't get E2 to "Gnome Lore"ing, thought.
3) Make the second astral pick 10%(or 20%) so that only one in 20(or 10) will have S2 and be thus able to teleport with crystal coin.
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Originally Posted by Radio_Star
In your thug testing, I'd also suggest taking a look at GoR'd temple guards. At least I think that's what the unit is. It's the demon national summons. They're 3b2f, sacred with good stats and an alternate ranged attack that's pretty respectable.
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Temple Guardians are quite sweet, but hard to thug. Neither F nor B is very bufftastic path and they don't have S for the national buffs, so you'll have to communion to get the ones that count.
It's probably just easier to have them use Phoenix Power and drown your foes in Hellfire
. Their mainpurpose is to give easier access to Baa'Lah. Oh, that reminds me, I really need to do that national hellfire spell.
Thanks for the feedback. It's really helpful to see what others think. You can't truly be objective when testing your own mod. These balance tweaks will surely be appreciated in the Alugra MP game, started once I've managed to finishsome old ones. I'll have to remember what's most important though. It's that Alugra is a fun and thematic nation to play.
So have you guys been having fun?
