Mod: Ulm Reborn v.1.7b - Updated 14th June 2009

[Sombre]

Well they aren't there to be your main picks - that's the white priests. The point of the White Acolytes is giving you drain immune researchers you can build outside of your cap. If you're just building one WP a turn then you're not going to be picking up that much speed on the research race. If you have WAs churned out by other forts (several forts are a good idea - this is Ulm we're talking about) then you're going to get the research moving at pace.

They're also sacred, which makes them cost efficient researchers. But I take your point. I'll drop their cost to 100 and keep them at +1 research for the average of 4RP.

Also, 0.9 is now out, so refer to the main post for the download ;]

[llamabeast]

Hi Sombre,

I had a quick look at the new version - I'm excited to try it, but haven't really had any time yet. Quick comments, because if I was a sensible person I would be in bed (got up ridiculously early this morning):
- I really like the white acolyte. I see you managed to find a good sprite as well.
- I really like the Emergent too! Clearly I'm particularly fond of things I was involved in discussing. I think he adds extra punch and flavour to the anchorites though, and they're a favourite unit of mine now. They have got quite low attack though - is that deliberate? No reason why not, just wondering.
- Your writing is exceptional. The quality of the mod is really impressive.
- I had something else interesting to say too, but I've forgotten it. Hopefully it'll come back to me.

Also, a separate issue - did you know that everything on linux is case sensitive? That means that if you give the name of a unit graphic (e.g. Troll Shaman.tga), and the real name has a character in a different case (Troll shaman.tga), the mod crashes. I've been meaning to mention this for a while - it's come up because the windows half of my computer has died, so I'm playing on linux now. Anyway, I can't remember if I had to fix Ulm Reborn, but I definitely had to do a few fixes to get Vaettiheim working (which I also looked at briefly and which is also awesome!).

[llamabeast]

Oh, I just found this quote by Endo:

As Johan said earlier, there is a typo (actually several) in the modding manual for itemslots, the precalculated values at the end are wrong. If you examine his protection more closely, you'll notice that his head protection is just 12, as if his protection was halved. To fix this, you should use #itemslots 31878 instead of 32006. In general, to fix this problem you have to decrease #itemslots value of all units that are affected by the halved head protection bug by 128.

Perhaps this'd fix the Hoch-Hammer's head protection bug?

[llamabeast]

Oh, I've remembered my other small comment - I think it would be good if Ulm had the Virtue as a pretender. Seems thematic.

[Sombre]

Hang on, 'find' a good sprite? You mean /make/ a good sprite. That is if hastily editing a black acolyte's robes to be white and giving him a book to carry actually counts

I didn't know that about Linux. It sounds very annoying. I'll try to fix that stuff up in future versions of my mods, but to be honest it's likely it'll slip my mind, I'm too used to windows.

In a future version Ulm Reborn will get an all new pretender and maybe a couple extra from the vanilla ones.

The Emergent has the same attack as the penitent - he's no more skilled, just stronger and more determined. I think the anchorites are good enough to use regularly now. Those immunities are nice when the magic is flying and they are still capable of dealing damage equal to their cost.

I hope you enjoy the mod - any and all feedback is very welcome. I'll probably try that itemslots fix soon too, see if I need to apply it to a bunch of my work.

[llamabeast]

Oops, sorry about the sprite! Well, it shows I thought it was Kristoffer quality, at least.

The case sensitive thing is a bit annoying, I'll try to note down anything I have to fix and let you know. I can imagine it would be very hard to hunt down any problems if you don't get any error messages yourself.

Makes sense about the Emergent. The Anchorites are cool.

I think the itemslots fix is probably worthwhile, because in trying to make a solid thug, having low head protection actually makes quite a big difference (1 in 5 hits or so do 10 more damage than they should, it's quite a lot).