Endgame Diversity Mod - v1.2 released

[llamabeast]

Okay, version 1.04 is out. See the first post for changelist.

To answer the comments above suggesting waiting for gameplay responses before making further changes: that does indeed make sense. However, I would prefer new games about to start to use a version of the mod which I feel is as good as I can currently make it. It would be very frustrating to have a number of games report back and say "the Zmey is useless" (as it probably was in the first version) or "Treants can easily be screwed over by immobile opponents" when I have already realised this and have the solution.

The only real pure balance changes in this version are -5 to attack to the Shishi (I guess Zeldor won't like this, and NooBliss will think it's too little). I thought about it carefully though. The other changes are either thematic, following additional consideration, or to do with limiting magic diversification.

As Valerius points out in his insightful post (#236), it is sort of an anomaly that it is not easy, given powerful air or fire magic (or astral), to summon new casters in those paths. With A3 the Roc would "correct" this. However I actually really don't want to change this more than necessary - I think it is good and very interesting that the paths vary in how easy it is to get into them. In fact in general I don't really want to encourage diversification, although I can't help doing so a little. I've therefore reduced the Roc's magic to A2. This is quite a nasty nerf for the Roc, and so I've given him some stat boosts to try to help. Similar thinking has led me to change the magic paths on the Kraken considerably (why should water nations gain access to all sorcery paths?).

This version could be considered a "release candidate" for a long-term version of the mod ("v1.1"). If anyone points out any glaring mistakes in the near future I reserve the right to make some fixes, but otherwise I plan to keep the mod the same for some time. This will give time for comments for MP games to accumulate and offer further insight, so that over a rather long time frame there may be another version ("v1.2"). Anyway, basically this version should be fit for MP use and if you start learning about the units as they stand, they're not expected to change much in future.

Since the last version there have been lots of *really* helpful and insightful comments, all of which I have read several times over. Thanks very much everyone for those.