Mod: Cinggis Qayan, Wrath of the Khans 3 eras -- Update 6

[kennydicke]

rdonj, another familiar name?

Yeah, the great bow is definitely too much. Longbows at 13 damage are considered quite powerful in dominions, and crossbows at 10 ap every 2 rounds even more so against armored targets. 15 ap every round for just one more resource than a longbow is not just good, it's ridiculously good. 10 ap is enough to consistently damage 20 prot, but not much higher. 15 ap is enough to consistently damage 30. Against more normal units with protection values ranging from 8-16, each shot fired from these great bows has a VERY good chance of killing your average human. Compare this to a crossbow, a crossbow will do the same amount of damage on average to a guy with 6 protection (militia) as a great bow will to a guy with 16(tough heavy infantry). They are really, really powerful in dominions with those stats.

Thank you for mathematical analysis. I've got an update coming soon (depends on when I need sleep!) that will hopefully address some concerns. I wanted powerful, not uber. I suspected before I even posted the mod that they would be too strong, and have only gotten MASSIVE confirmation.

Hopefully I haven't come across as being too harsh, I'm just trying to show you the math behind why everyone is saying they're too powerful . Personally, I would replace the horsebow with longbows and the great bows with the hinnom bows as others have suggested. This will enable you to use them with flaming arrows and make the great bows much less unreasonable. I think they would be better at +1 damage over longbows than +2, but I think it's a reasonable compromise.

I'm probably the one who is too harsh, replying to everyone's slightest comment with longwinded ramblings and unsubstantiated claims. I will try a couple more times at a usable version of my #newweapons, before going vanilla. But it's growing ever closet to the point that I will have to.

The Tengri pretender - Expensive little chassis, but still ridiculously overpowered . At current price, you can take it awake while still having pretty good scales and decent dominion (or balanced scales and dominion NINE).

True dat, every time I used him I raised the cost. So, logically, I just quit using him so that I wouldn't have to raise the cost! My brother won't try any other pretender, and I used him alone to conquer a 50+ prov map before year two ended. He did die once, but all the priests I had made in the meantime called him back in two turns! It's either raise his cost so that he has to be sleeping (kinda silly, though I do like the Pantokrator, so feasable) or scale him down (probably best). I used the sky spirits I made first to scale up to the elder spirit multihero, and then scaled him up to get Tengri. Again, I overcompensated. Suggestions? I'm thinking less hp ~25-30, possibly no hardpaths (this would be unthematic though), about 5-6 stormpower, startdom reduced to 1-2, maybe half precision, reduce awe to 2-3, and only 1-2 misc slots. A nerf-nuke, if I might say so! Opinions?

C

ouple this with high awe, higher than 100% lightning resist (why?), 100% poison resist, immortality, ethereality, 0 enc trample, bunches of AN attacks, and an insanely high storm power value... if you can get this things #onebattlespells working, it will truly be an undefeatable monster. I am not kidding. And on top of that it has good buffing+mobility magic paths built in. He needs serious work to be fair.

I hadn't noticed the AN on his attacks. Really does make him a true beast! I was going for the raw power of a tornado, and a god, rolled into one. I succeeded far too well. My bro told me that there is something that can reduce shockres, I increased it to 150 to drive home that this guy can't be affected by lightning, is it annoying, unbalanced or unnecessary? If so, it's gone!

As an aside, for some reason in the pretender screen he is listed as having s3 and a3, but when I look at his magic paths to increase them, he only has them at 1. Not sure what's going on there.

I gave him the '#magicboost 53 2' tag, so that any magic skill taken would be boosted by two. My brother hates this tag and it was partly to annoy him. I think removing this would be for the best, depending on the other changes. (I suppose I could just limit it to a boost of one to air and astral, as a midway point.)

Ulgen - Well, he's certainly no Tengri, so he's much more reasonable. Largely he seems a bit of a niche pretender... sort of like a sphinx on steroids, that can create mages (if GoRed, which is still cheaper and much less research than normal)

I had the same thoughts, and I wouldn't want to meet a sphinx on steroids! I didn't really think about GoR on the domsummon ivy kings!

I'm a bit concerned about his domsummon ability,

As was I already, I wanted to make him an ivylord or whatever, where he summons extra vinemen, but couldn't. I didn't even think of trying to give him the ivy crown, can this be done?

and the amount of misc slots he has seems a bit much (same with the last guy too). It would be pretty easy to stack this guy with boosters and cast several great globals and spells, and you can get the magic to do so while taking him awake without sacrificing your scales.

Sorta what I wanted, a pretender custom made for casting varied globals. (He is the source of knowledge!) But definitely too much. I'm thinking about half the hp, removing all domsummons but possibly leaving/enhancing the makemonster, reducing awe by to 2-3, reducing misc slots to 2-3 and upping his cost to 175-180. Thoughts?

Gazar Eej - Much more reasonable chassis. Possibly still better than its cost, and yet again the extremely high level of awe, but otherwise I don't see anything glaringly wrong with it. As a suggestion, consider bumping its cost to 100 points and lowering the awe to +1 or +2.

She was supposed to cost 175 points, my bad! Is this an unreasonable change? Your suggestion of 100pts and much lower awe sound just right, though. Will be implemented. Should she have one less misc slot as well?

Genghis - Too many misc slots. Three maybe, but 4 just seems like too much. The level of fear could also drop a bit. Perhaps to +2? Other than that he is not too bad. I might actually lower his price though. Not all the way down to 0, but say somewhere around 20. Simultaneously, consider bumping his new path cost to 60-80.

I scaled Khan to multihero, then up to various khan heroes, from best of these (gesar/subutai) up to genghis. If you could offer scaling suggestions for them as well, I would appreciate it! I will lower his misc slots to two, for now. His fear will be +3, for now. His gcost reduced to 25, for now. And his path cost raised to 75, for now. This guy is actually my favorite, as he is a non-mage, human pretender who could potentially work! I say 'for now' pending further input. Not because I dislike the changes!

Erlik - Why does he #onebattlespell undead mastery? This is an insanely good ability, way too good to be a #onebattlespell.

I only play SP and have never seen the spell be cast; I didn't think it would be very powerful against anyone other than MA/LA Ermor. I'm sorry to assume, because that... you know the rest.

Why not darkness? That seems reasonably thematic and not so overpowering.

Very good suggestion, I was under the impression that darkness was overpowered/overused (plus I didn't want to hurt the national archers!); but if you like darkness better, and I do too in most regards, then so it shall be! I was originally going to see if I could do 'Ermorian Legion,' but this was unthematic troop-wise; my bro suggested undead mastery over the legions.

Either way he I think he is too cheap. He should probably be at least 150 points, and also, have fewer misc slots It seems also that he has a lot of magic paths. A pretender with three seperate magic paths probably should not be so skilled in a particular one. Especially not if he has such a high dominion score.

Well, I don't mind removing the blood pick, and the astral if I have too; I really think he should have at least two hardpaths in death. I agree his dominion should be lower.

I notice all of your pretenders have very high dominion scores. You might want to consider toning some of them down. For example, in vanilla there are only something like 2 pretenders with a dominion of 4, and those are the fountains, which have fairly low utility as far as pretenders go. Whereas all of yours are powerful mages, SCs, army enhancers, etc Consider bumping most of them down to 1 or 2 dominion, leaving Genghis with high dominion to represent his authority and ability to command.

It has been so long since I played without a slew of mods, I never even considered people who don't. I'm sure there are more high dom pretenders in the mods I use, but they aren't as strong as mine, perhaps (read: certainly). Will change for update.

I'm not going to talk much about the troops. Cavalry look more or less okay except for the ones with light lances, who suffer from a lack of dexterity and have lower attack values than intended.

Although unthematic, this was an attempt at balance. I plan on making both sabres #bonus, but I would give troops #ambidextrous 1-3 if anyone felt that #bonus wasn't enough.

The basic infantry are slightly good for troops that are supposed to be a bit meh, but are probably fine.

Meh, for a Mongol was elite for most at the time. I raised their price, however.

Qayan vessels having spy and assassinate is weird, but since they can't use those abilities it doesn't matter that much.

I gave them certain abilities so that if my bro GoRed one, they would be like a lesser priestess. I wouldn't mind removing them!

The archers are just too good, even at 35 gold per. Even if they were cap only and 50 gold per archer, they would be too good :P

Others agree with you rdonj, I have scaled down the bows. And will probably do so again. Will raise their price too. And may make cap only.

Why do the javelin launchers have 0 encumbrance and all those resists?

It was my way of simulating that they are a *construct.* They may be pulled by a horse, but are not alive. I thought that trample still increases fatigue at 0-enc, but I am probably wrong. Suggestions?

One last thing... death worms. Their stats aren't too ridiculous, but their price is too low, and their attacks are way too good. They shouldn't be more than aoe1, and no, the worms really don't need fear :P

Three primary aspects of the old legends of the death worms: they can kill at range with an electric discharge, they spew acid at range that dissolves armor and is poisonous, and, to this day, a large number of Mongolian people are deathly afraid of the worms and won't venture near their abode in the mountainous areas of the Gobi desert. To be thematic, Fear has to stay. I will lower (and thought I already did!) the aoe of worm attacks. Make any other suggestions that would make keeping fear plausible!

That was way longer than I'd intended... again, I hope I don't come off to harshly, everything I said above is just my personal opinion and entirely capable of being wrong!

No worries, I would bet at least a dozen people ignored my mod because of my needlessly long posts. I will try to downplay this in the future.

Every time I read one of these posts, it makes me rethink everything I've done! (It's a good thing!) When I post replies with lots of historical data, it is not to prove anyone wrong or display some sort of superior knowledge; it is merely to show where I was coming from, what I had in mind and what is *historical.* It may change things for your own thoughts if you understand the *supposed* nuances I was going for. Then again, it may reinforce them! Don't hesitate to wax philosophical further on the subject of dominions!

Thanks!