Mod: Epic Heroes Mod -Version 1.5 Released

[Turin]

I usually focus on the aspects I don´t like when giving feedback, so if I come across as too harsh, please keep this in mind. Overall it´s a great mod and highly recommended for SP.

So here is the feedback in nation order:

Arco:
The elephant hero seems fine mostly, but 18 MR is over the top, that´s something only the very best archmages have and a big part of the unit is an animal, which always have low MR. In addition I´d reduce his MR to 18, so he can keep formation with normal elephant units.

Ermor: The description is a bit weird: what are the unintended effects? And recuperation and misshapen don´t really fit together.

Pythium: Nothing to critize.
Man: nothing to critize
Ulm: Cool hero, but the death magic is weird. In addition I´d give him a regular lance, since the lance in the picture isn´t black and you don´t have to use the weird ambidextrous 8. I´d also give him the regular black steel plate, since a prot 22 0 def 0 enc plate really doesn´t fit into the dom3 world. And where does teh poison and fire resistance come from?
Marignon: Misses the head slot, since he doesn´t wear armor you could give him mapmove 3
Mictlan: I´d lose the bow, since he doesn´t have on in the picture and it doesn´t really fit to a jaguar. The awe effect doesn´t really fit the unit as well.
Tien´chi: Holy mother of overpoweredness, this guy puts any rainbow pretender to shame. You could maybe keep the powerlevel if you make him immobile and give him a research malus. But a combined total of 16 magiclevels( a standard high mage type unit gets 5 and the best base game heroes get 12) 4 holy + immortality make him one of the most powerful units, if not the most powerful in the game.
Machaka: Why is he ethereal and doesn´t need his eyes? Powerlevelwise he is fine compared to the other heroes, but some backstory explanation would be nice.
Argatha: Maybe add a research bonus? would fit with the sage theme of the statue.
Abysia: awesome!
Caelum: Very cool, typo in the mod file though stealth should be stealthy and shouldn´t he get the animal tag?
Atlantis: Death magic doesn´t really make sense to be forbidden in r´lyeh, since the starspawns get it as randoms, blood magic would be a lot more fitting. I´d also remove the wraith sword since it´s not shown in the pic. His ethearelness is questionable too.

That´s it for now, haven´t played with them yet, so no comment on the attack sprites and detailed powerlevels.

[jutetrea]

Just wanted to add to the comments a bit.

Played 1 SP game so far with MA Mict - the nation really is boring. The hero on the other hand kicked serious butt. Possibly almost too much. I finally lost him to a 3-in-a-row smite. This was after solo-ing about 8 provinces though with nary a scratch (1 affliction, recup'd).

The bow is nice, I'd rather not see it leave but possibly something similar yet a bit more thematic? Toned down version of storm of thorns? I'm good with the awe as well.
Possibly jack the hp's a bit and drop the protection to 18-20? That starting 23(?) protection is pretty tough. Although the lowish HP + high prot works well - good for indys, scarier vs nations.

The summons were strangely underwhelming compared to his solo power, but that's to be expected. It was useful for sitting on top of a castle and bringing in allies to actually siege it.

Going to try him as a prophet and see how it effects him. Will his claws be affected by an F9 bless?

All in all he made what seems to be a pretty boring nation pretty fun. Never played Mictlan, but the lack of blood was still wierd..especially with the national blood spells just sitting there.

[DrPraetorious]

Li Bo does put out a tremendous heap of research - but he mostly has paths you get on your mages anyway, and MA T'ien Ch'i would not be inclined to take a rainbow pretender for that reason. He's got a lot of *total* picks, but not a single 4, and the only magic diversity he adds is fire.

If he had 4F3E3D he'd be much more powerful even though he had six fewer magic picks.

MA T'ien Ch'i is also generally regarded as something of a weak position, so it "deserves" a strong hero. So if all he does is crank out science, I think that's fair.

That said, he could easily lose the crazy weaponry, which I didn't put on him. With that armament you can use him as a SC leader on turn 2 to take provinces.

[Xietor]

Good comments. I really appreciate the in depth comments Turin. I really do. And they are all accurate, though i will
not make all of the changes.

The hero for Arcos will have a high mr. As do all of the heroes. I know elephants have low mr, but he is just riding the beast. If it dies he will ride another. He has better moves than most elephants because that is consistent with his descr. An added bonus is it allows him to fire his 3 crossbows, then still catch up with the pack to attack!

Ermor-the unintended effect is he does not look like an angel! He is a sad sight compared to an angel. He is small and shrunken. His radiant aura is gone! Air Magic? Gone!

As to the recuperation, I decided that all epic heroes that are not immortal get that ability. Arcos. does not, but he has priestesses that can heal his afflictions. Thematic or not, I made the decision that we will not have crippled Epic Heroes.

"Machaka: Why is he ethereal and doesn´t need his eyes? Powerlevelwise he is fine compared to the other heroes, but some backstory explanation would be nice."

He does not need eyes because he has acute night vision being an assassin trained by black sorcerors. The best magical assassins do not need flashlights! He is ethereal
because many dom III assassins are ethereal AND his skin was burned away and reformed thousands of times, making it less substantive.

"Argatha: Maybe add a research bonus? would fit with the sage theme of the statue." Agreed and done.

"Abysia: awesome!" Thank you.


"Caelum: Very cool, typo in the mod file though stealth should be stealthy and shouldn´t he get the animal tag?"
yes and yes.


"Atlantis: Death magic doesn´t really make sense to be forbidden in r´lyeh, since the starspawns get it as randoms, blood magic would be a lot more fitting. I´d also remove the wraith sword since it´s not shown in the pic. His etherealness's is questionable too."

You cannot show everything in his picture. Just because you do not see a wraith sword, does not mean he does not own one. And the fact that starspawns do death magic makes his death magic more thematic then blood. It is more natural for a starspawn to have death magic. The descr says he was banned for casting spells even the rlyeh forbid. Just because the rlyeh have limited death magic, does not mean they are open to all of its potential uses. He was not outcast for knowing death magic, but putting it to forbidden uses.

Atlantis is another of those "weaker" races, and that is why he is ethereal. It is not that big a deal, as he has astral magic and can cast it anyway. Maybe he found a way to keep it up permanently.

I renamed Ulm's lance and removed his poison resist. He has death magic because of his dark past that is hinted at in his descr. He has partial fire resist because he is a master smith and works around forges a lot.

I added a more thematic ranged attack for the Blood-Cursed Champion.

Tien Chi's weapons/armor were removed. We are getting ready to play a mp game, and the good Dr. is playing Tien Chi. So we can get a better idea of his abilities in a mp setting soon.

Marignon slots fixed, and he was given the 3 map moves.

[Turin]

You are forgetting nature 3, which you can´t get and which is a huge jump in power because it lets you access gift of health and mother oak with boosters.
Also air 3 which is very important considering it lets you forge boosters. You can get it from CMs, but the chances are only one in 160.
Additionally he gets earth 2, CMs only get earth one and earth 2 is another milestone for earth boosters.
Well and s3 as well, which is another 1 in 160 chance.

So maybe he doesn´t add a lot of diversity, but he significantly increases the maximum realistically attainable magic level of Tien´chi in 5 paths right from the start of the game. If he lost one in every magic path he would be comparable to the worthy heroes version of tien´chi´s heroes. And those are generally considered to be among the best heroes in the game.

[DrPraetorious]

I certainly wouldn't argue that Li Bo is useless. HOWEVER, if you were to take away his +1 on all paths, he'd be an EA celestial master. That's quite nice to have but hardly epic.

If you gave this guy to MA Ermor I agree, he'd be completely frickin' nuts

Put another way - most of the epic heroes are inferior pretenders. Some of them are inferior SC pretenders, some of them are inferior magic-diversity pretenders, and some of them mainly spawn troops (which more pretenders should do, IMO, some of them can but it's pretty useless.)

Li Bo, on the other hand, is an inferior rainbow pretender. If you think rainbow pretenders are backflips of better than SC or magic diversity pretenders, yeah, he's unbalanced. Otherwise he's not.

[Turin]

Ok if EA Celestial masters get a total of 10 magic picks you are right, but last I checked they get only 7 to 8, aren´t immortal and are old.

As for inferior rainbow pretender, creating him with a the cheapest rainbow chassis for the paths he has would be the frost father, which costs 255 points. Add at least another 100 for immortality, the holy levels, blessability and the low dominion a standard rainbow brings. I don´t think inferior applies here. Are any of the other heroes worth even close to 350 design points?

[DrPraetorious]

Let's compare him to the Abductor that EA Niefelheim gets in the basic game (who is also a sacred priest, so that's a wash.)

To get WWWDDDAAA off of a destroyer of worlds (a roughly equivalent chassis, and the only giant IIRC that starts with two of WDA) costs 247 points.

I think you greatly overestimate immortality - if you really think that's worth as much as 6 magic picks, strip the immortality off, but on a unit that can't actually fight, it's only a big deal because of the recuperation, and *all* the heroes get that. Also, rainbow pretenders are penalized for their flexibility by lowering their starting dom - and since Li Bo *doesn't* take paths which T'ien Ch'i doesn't already get (except for two fire) it's really unfair to penalize him in that respect.

If you really must give him fewer magic picks, give him magic picks in other categories instead of what he gets now, otherwise he's just a researcher.

Totally design points, by the way, is a much better comparison than totalling picks since, as has been pointed out, more picks in one category is generally better (up to a point) than a few picks in many categories.