Forest Of Loren - Release

[Thilock_Dominus]

NB: This is a beta test of Forest Of Loren.
To download it click on the attachment on this post.



---WHAT DOES FOREST OF LOREN (BETA) OFFER ---
A whole new nation!
A cool Banner
A flag
6 Uniqued Pretenders.
Spirit Of The Forest, Black Unicorn, Elven Master Druid, Forest Dragon and Forest Dragon Elven Form.
11 new units
14 new commanders
10 new weapons
4 new armors
200 new names



--- BETA TEST NOTES ---
I need all the feed back I can get. You can write it in this thread, PM me or write an E-mail to me. The only way to improve it and balance it is if people test it and comments the problem. Any comments, suggestions and critiques are welcome.
The first thing I'm very bad with grammer and there's some spell errors in the mod so if you people point out where it would be cool.
Also the most obivious thing is the cost of the units is it to high to low. If it's totally unbalanced I'll just build a MP mod of (FOL)Forest Of Loren so there's two version of FOL a single/rpg version and a multiplayer version.
Some of the unit description aren't finished and some of the description I've decided to redo.





--- TODO LIST ---
*Add 50 extra names. - DONE.
*Make 4 heroes which eventually join you if you're lucky enough.
*Add 2 extra Pretender. - DONE.
*Remake and/or finish some of the unit descriptions. - DONE.
*Add Special Nation Magic
*Improve some of the unit sprites.
*Remake nation Flag. - DONE.
*Write a README file and a PDF file with all stuff about Forest Of Loren and its units etc.



--- KNOWN ISSUE ---
*The Forest Dragon can only shapeshift after turn 1.
*The Forest Dragon does not suffer from -2 magic penalty.
*Problems with restricting the pretenders to FOL nation.
*Due to unable to make new sites, the unicorn, silver unicorn and moonlight Mistress isn't 'only recruitable' at start province.
* Glade Guard is missing Castle defend +1

These issues may be solved in a later dom2 patch or in Dom3.

*** NEW RELEASE v. 0.92 Beta ***

--- Added ---
* Two new Pretenders - Tree of Life and Forest Monolith.
* Full Description to all units/Pretenders/Commanders.

--- Graphical changes ---
* The FOL flag (again).
* Minor changes to Forest Dragon.
(this wont be the last )


--- New Weapon ---
*Added Ancient Forest Sprites.


--- Balance issues ---
* Huge reduce in Stealth abilities in general. (Though a new ability like Forest stealth would be appriciated )
* Ritual Sword no longer have Armor piercing.
* Thorned Claw no longer have Armor piercing and don't count as a magical weapon.
* Elven Archer -1 Precision
* Faery no longer have 100% Shock res.
* Faery Queen No longer have 100% shock res. and reduced Magic res. from 20 to 18.
* Unicorn don't have stealth.
* Silver Unicorn don't have stealth.
* Moonlight Mistress don't have stealth.
* Wardancer reduced fear to -4 and reduced Magic res. by -1.
* Wardancer Champion reduced fear to -2 and reduced Magic res. by -1.
* Forest Dryad cost 50 gold instead of 40.
* Willow dryad cost 145 gold instead of 135 gold.
* Elven Scout lost the ability to instill uprising.
* Forest Priestess added awe +0
* Meadow Priestess added awe +0
* Elven Druid added research bonus +2
* Elven Elder Druid added research bonus +2


--- Misc. changes ---
* Moonlight Mistress can now only be bought at starting province.
* Black Bull, Lord of The Wild and Vine Dragon have been replaced with Black Unicorn, Forest Dragon and Spirit of the Forest. (This will break your current game if you these pretenders)
* Waywatcher is now recruitable in every castle.
* Elven Scout and Waywatcher aren't affected by the stealthy cutdown.


It was my intension to have 5 only-recruitable-at-province units (waywatcher, Treant, Unicorn, Silver Unicorn, Moonlight Mistress), but it's not possible at current time.
So instead I change the waywatcher around with Moonlight Mistress. If people want to play as it meant only recruit these five units at the home province.
That will make it difficult to play FOL, because the only level 3 priest is only avaible at home province.



*** Changes from v.091 ***
* Wardancer and Wardancer chamipon no longer holy(sacred).
* New flag.
* New Banner.
* Added 50 more names (200 names are now avaible split into 3 catagories).
* Changed the stats of Forest Shield.
* Corrected the name of Spirit of the Forest.
* reduced the cost of Unicorn and Silver Unicorn by 10.

with best regards
Thilock Dominus

[odd_enuf]

one question, why would you choose the forrest dragon over the green dragon?

[BigDaddy]

It looks cooler and probably doesn't get a paths penalty for being in dragon form.

[Thilock_Dominus]

There's some diffrences between Forest Dragon and Green Dragon. Forest dragon cost 75, have acid breath and a 1 misc slot more and 2 extra movement points. But don't have resistance to anything.

OT: Seems that the server I'm hosting my pictures is down or I've used up my bandweight for this month.

[Saber Cherry]

Thilock_Dominus said:
OT: Seems that the server I'm hosting my pictures is down or I've used up my bandweight for this month.

That's OK, we can still DL and look at them=)

By the way, I'm not sure if you knew, but you can put a shadow under the unit by using violet pixels. Color (RGB) {255, 0, 255}. Nobody pays much attention to shadows so you can just do an oval or trapezoid.

[Thilock_Dominus]

Saber Cherry said:

That's OK, we can still DL and look at them=)

By the way, I'm not sure if you knew, but you can put a shadow under the unit by using violet pixels. Color (RGB) {255, 0, 255}. Nobody pays much attention to shadows so you can just do an oval or trapezoid.

Does the units not drop a shadow in FOL? It does in mine.
Could I get a feedback on the if the units drops shadows? I made a transparent black which blend 50% with the dom2 background.
Take a look: http://thilockdominus.freehomepage.c...shadowunit.jpg

OT: It seems that it just the server was down, but up and running now

[liga]

Thilock_Dominus said:
NB: This is a beta test of Forest Of Loren.
To download it click on the attachment on this post.

now news to see just at start of a working day ..., I'll test it as soon as I can ... I'm also testing Ogala ...

good play and thank you
Liga

[Johan K]

Thilock_Dominus said:
*The Forest Dragon can only shapeshift after turn 1.

The problem here is that the dragon is wounded the first turn because of dominion HP bonus. It would be fatal to change form. All Dominions dragons start with the other form. If you put the other shape first (and make it a god), it will work properly, but you'll see the wrong image during god selection. It is not possible to make him work exactly like a standard dragon right now.

[johan osterman]

Not sure if this is your intention, but changing the scales in the mod will not just change the scales for the modded nation but for all nations in the game were the mod is used. The wardancers might also be an issue, their defense combined with their offensive power, sacred status and fear makes them quite formidable.

[Thilock_Dominus]

johan osterman said:
Not sure if this is your intention, but changing the scales in the mod will not just change the scales for the modded nation but for all nations in the game were the mod is used. The wardancers might also be an issue, their defense combined with their offensive power, sacred status and fear makes them quite formidable.

Okay, I was not aware of the scale thing.
That War dancers issue concerned myself, but I gave them the chance with the current stats into the beta test to see how people responding to them.

Yvelina Said:
Beautiful looking mod. It does not look particularly overpowered, either, which is a first as far as I am concerned. There are a few things that puzzle me, though.

The defense of the units is extremely high - too high to make sense. A groundpounder worth a dozen of golds should not have better combat stats than a Vanir hero.

Another strange thing is the forest shield - it decreases defense. If you are trying to model the fact that the shield actually slows the infantryman down, I think that you are on the wrong track. First, it will probably have unexpected results when rolling for an arrow hit. Second, in Dominions, even heavy, cumbersome shields, like the tower shields, increase defence. Now, I am rapier fencer, but I have gone against my boyfriend's SCA heavy fighter setup, and I assure you - a shield is a Heck of a defence.

I am not quite sure what is going on with income. You talk about a penalty to income, but I seem to be getting better capital income than I expected. Maybe a fluke.

And last, are these elves supposed to have some trouble with research? They have great combat mages, but no researchers to speak off.

The Forest Shield is an error, the stats that is. There will be new stats to the Forest Shield, it was made in haste.

The Research issue: Well it was my intension to aim low. I used it as a compensation to the more stronger units types. But I'll take a look at it.