Avatar Crisis

[Endoperez]

Here are few thoughts about making new commanders. All were written on the spot, and the pricing guideline is untested and experimental and will only give guidelines that you then adjust. Try to play lots of different nations to get a feel for different things. Rangers and Tricksters remind me of LA Man and LA Ulm (both have stealthy guys and stealthy mages, so I suggest trying them if you haven't already.


Military commanders have +2 hp, +1 att/def more than similar non-commander units. Knight commanders get higher strength, archer commanders often get +1 precision, if units have stealth or siege bonus or castle defence bonus the commander usually gets it little higher, etc.

Most nations can only get level 4 in their primary path through a random, and level 3 in other paths only through a random.
Many nations can only reach level 4 with more than one random. Air-specializing nations shouldn't have too much difficulty getting at least one Air 4 mage, because they need that for item boosters.
There are many different mages, but the below categories might be helpful. Low-level mages are often researchers, mid-level mages combat mages and your main forgers/ritual casters, and high-level mages are often capital-only commanders you can't use everywhere because you don't have enough of them. All nations don't have all of these. Some mages won't fit into any of these.

Low-level mage: usually just level 1 in one or two paths, sometimes with random.
Mid-level mage: no more than four picks altogether, and with highest magic path between 2 and 3. Examples: E2F1 10%?, F3, F2S1, D2N1 100% ?.
High-level mage: more than four picks, at least level 3 (perhaps through randoms, but then it better be a good chance). More magic, good path combinations or many randoms that allow level 3 in more than one path make him more powerful.

All nations get a priest that they can recruit from every castle. Access to a priest of a certain level is better than a mage-priest of same level, because mage-priests require both lab and temple before they can be recruited. However, mage-priest of higher level is still better than a priest of lower level. H3 is very high, H2 is "high priest", H1 is normal priest.
Almost all nations get sacred units. Some also get sacred summons. Most sacred units are restricted to capital.


Very random and untested guideline for commander pricing:

Basic commander/scout: 30 gp
special abilities (stealth, illusions, spy, assassin, siege bonus...): each adds a little to the price, lets say 10 gp/ability at default rank.
Magic: +30gp/magic path or so, but this is the hardest to balance
sacred: +10 gp
Holy magic: +20 gp/pick, but varies a lot
Giant: +15 gp or so
+10 gp or so for every increase in leadership ability (#okleader to #greatleader, #nomagicleader to #poormagicleader etc)


Arcane Trickster: Stealth, glamour, 1 pick of magic, 35% random (I'll add 10 gp for this too)
-> 30+10+10+30+10 = 90 gp

Ranger-Sergeant: stealth, glamour, 3 picks of magic, sacred, 50% and 25% randoms (+15 and +10 or so)
-> 30+10+10+10+25+ 3*30 = 175 gp

Resource cost is #rcost + equipment resource cost. #rcost is 1 for most units. Big units automatically get higher resource costs. To avoid increasing resource costs of cavalry, use #ressize 2 to make their resource cost calculated as if they were size 2.



Ranger of the Shooting Star: #illusion gives them automatic +20 to Stealth (or thereabout), so #stealthy 0 will be enough. Give them a helmet, shieldless units need it to protect against missiles. Little ambidexterity will help. See EA Tien Chi to compare them to an existing sacred unit with two shortswords.

Ranger-Sergeant and Arcane Trickster:
Reverse their roles. Cheap Ranger-Sergeant can be recruited to lead your troops, or to research when you're short on money. Arcane Tricksters feel more thematic for a mage role than rangers.

If a mage has only random magic, he can be recruited even in castles that don't have a laboratory. Consider making Ranger-Sergeants H1 recruitable-everywhere priests with a random, or two partial randoms.

If you want Mystra to be a nation dominated by magic users, their recruitable-everywhere mages should be useful in the battlefield and have access to many paths that let them do lots of different stuff. You can make more than one rec-everywhere mage if you want each to be specialized. Nation that is too dependent on its capital-only mages won't feel that magical in a big game.


Whew, long post. Perhaps I should repost this as a "general guide to making mod nations". This became a lot longer than I thought.