Mod: Mod thread- WH hordes of chaos

[DrPraetorious]

A few suggestions:
The Lord of the End Times is at strong variance withe existing pretender chassis, making him difficult to balance.
I suggest lowering his magic to FSB, his cost to 150 pts., his dominion strength to 3, and his new path cost to 40.
A quick glance at your magic and it appears roughly comparable to MA Marignon.

- I assume that all of the natural prot-23 stuff represents chaos armor. Add "Chaos Armor" as an armor, and put it on them, instead.
- Having a "Dark Citadel" as your capital sounds thematic but is a huge disadvantage, and possibly a good part of the reason the position seems weak. Give them an admin-40 fort instead, maybe a regular Citadel.
- The warhound has to cost at least 4 gold. It could be a freespawn from some other unit, but 1/1 is unbalancing because of what it lets you do to your tax rates and blood hunting.
- The "Flail" is a two-handed weapon, the weapon you want would be closer to a morningstar.
- Even given that he's got 3 hands (cause of the flail), the Nurgle Chaos Warrior is too expensive - compare to the Emerald Guard. The other chaos warriors likewise.
- Likewise, the Chaos Knight is only marginally more elite than a conventional knight.
- Now, the *chosen* chaos knight legitimately costs 120 gold. Likewise the other chosen, although I think they could stand to have additional magic powers.

My suggestion -
* Give all of the "of Khorne" units Berserkers, even the little warriors. Bigger berserk as they rise in rank.
* Make all of the "of Nurgle" units Undead. This makes them all immune to disease. Now give the more elite ones a disease cloud.
* The Chosen should have a higher MR. The MR bonus for the Tzeentch types should be larger (+3 or more.) The Lord of Tzeentch should absolutely be MR 18 - one of the few units that could justify MR 20.
* Give all of the "of Slaanesh" a huge morale boost - and give the chosen ones Awe +1.

The Champions are too expensive. Compare them to the Jotun Herse. With the exception of the mage-lord of Tzeentch, the lords are too expensive as well.

In general, my suggestions would be to balance this nation against MA Jotunheim for the commanders, who are all so buff they count as giants, and MA Marignon for the military.

So I think you did overdo it nerfing your position.

[Panpiper]

A thousand 'thank you's DrPraetorious, I shall implement virtually all of your suggestions. The only ones I am debating are;

- I don't like the idea of making chaos armor something they 'wear' and can take off and replace. Chaos armor is something that is part of their bodies like a horn is to a rhino or armor plates are to a stegosaurus. I realize that making it a part of their bodies eliminates resource costs and encumbrance, but this is actually intentional, and leads to their high gold costs.

- The dark citadel IS thematic as a starting location. Rather than breaking that theme, I think I would rather just put back the resource bonus on the starting location.

- I've long worried about using the poison cloud effect with Nurgle champions and lords. Your suggestion about making it disease clouds and Nurgle followers undead would certainly make the effect more properly what it is supposed to be and appropriately less powerful than poison. However I worry that making Nurgle followers 'undead' will make them vastly weaker due to the power of priest banishments. I'll do it and see. I think I'll pump their magic resistance a tad though.

- The flail is listed twice in Edi's database. One of the entries has it as a single hand weapon. I used that one assuming it was a smaller flail. I just compared the stats with the two hand version and they are identical. Oops. The flail is very thematic for Nurgle. I guess I'll have to drop the shield (except that will require that I redo a bunch of sprites). Hmm... I guess morning stars are thematic too. ;-)

DrPraetorious said:
The Champions are too expensive. Compare them to the Jotun Herse. With the exception of the mage-lord of Tzeentch, the lords are too expensive as well.

Hmm... Here things get difficult. The Jotun Herse is only 60 gold. I see what you mean in that the actual stats are somewhat comparable, while chaos has attack and defense a bit higher, the Jotun Herse has significantly higher hit points and strength. However Nurgle Champions have disease clouds, Slaanesh have enslavement, Tzeentch has a 30% chance at astral 3 magic, and the Khorne champion would slaughter Jotun Herses in droves. I note that the stats of the Jotun Herse and those of the Jotun Gode are roughly similar, but due to the addition of Holy 2, the Jotun Gode cost 200 gold. For now, I shall work on the assumption that the additional talents of the chaos champions are roughly analogous to the the holy 2 of the Jotun Gode and drop the gold cost to 200, awaiting further feedback. The physical stats of champions and lords are very similar but lords have higher leadership, and domsummon 20 appropriate units for their power. They also start with a magic weapon. Again, being very unsure as to what extra value this should cost, I'll bump the lord cost of Nurgle and Khorne down to 270. Slaanesh has enslavement which especially when massed is very powerful. I'll put the Lord of Slaanesh at 300 GP. The Lord of Tzeentch which is appropriately awesome stays at it's current maxed out 400 GP.

Again, thank you ever so much for the lookover and advice. I really do not want this race mod to be out of balance, that's no fun for anyone.

[DrPraetorious]

- If they don't have Torso slots and you put Torso armor on them, then they can't take it off. You can certainly leave it at Enc-0. Should chaos armor be immune to Rust Mist and Armor of Achilles? Maybe it should.
The chief concern is that natural prot values cannot be boosted by an earth blessing.

- Pump their MR and possibly hit points (for nurgle).

- You could add a "horseman's flail" or a "light flail", if you wished. The 1-H flail is for use by giants and Gods (like the Mother of Rivers.)

If you're going to give them an Admin-20 capital, that's potentially workable, but a 10% reduction in the costs of capital only units might be apropriate, to compensate for the lost gold revenue. You also might wish to give them superior fortress options elsewhere - the Motte-and-bailey and the Citadel are both excellent forts that you could claim would be built more or less anywhere. The Wizards' Tower is a secret super-cool fort type that you might allow them to build, but that'd be weird.

What you really need to do is run some combat tests with your mages and thugs, and see how they do.

[DrPraetorious]

Oh, one other thing - your sprites look nice, but they have black outlines around them. This is how you prevent that from happening (in GIMP):

take an image that still has a transparency layer, shrink it down to your heart's content.

once you are finished working on the image:

select layer -> transparency -> threshold alpha

you may want to try this a couple of times but the default value (127, which corresponds to 50%) usually works fine.

NOW flatten the image to add the black background (Image -> Flatten Image). Make sure that your background is black when you do this.

Tada.

[Panpiper]

DrPraetorious said:
- If they don't have Torso slots and you put Torso armor on them, then they can't take it off.

!!!

I did not know this! I shall promptly create chaos armor to put on them.

Pump their MR and possibly hit points (for nurgle).

I think I shall do this. I did another test game with the current 0.42 version and found myself 'not' recruiting Nurgle units because of their undeadedness.

You could add a "horseman's flail" or a "light flail", if you wished.

This too I should (shall) do.

If you're going to give them an Admin-20 capital, that's potentially workable, but a 10% reduction in the costs of capital only units might be appropriate, to compensate for the lost gold revenue.

I understood that the administration of a fort affected it's resource collection from neighboring territories. I was not aware it also affected gold collection somehow.

What you really need to do is run some combat tests with your mages and thugs, and see how they do.

My newbieness reveals itself. I am not sure how to go about doing such 'combat tests'. Guidelines as to how to do that would make for a good addition to your Bugrom thread.

Your advice on sprites is much appreciated, but you assume a greater understanding on our parts than may be warrented. I think I understand what you mean about 'transparency layer' though I don't yet know how to create such a thing. I haven't a clue what 'threshold alpha' means, though I am sure that by 'trying' to follow your instructions, I might at least gain a clue. ;-) Paraphrasing; If we paint the sprite on a layer that is transparent, then we won't get bleedover dark pixels at the edge of our sprite. 'Flattening' the image onto a black background afterwards gives us our final product without the dark borders. I think I get the theory. Now I just have to figure out where all the buttons are, what the labels mean, and how not to get lost in the morass of options. (How I long for the fictional 'simpler times'.)

[Amos]

Unless you resize or skew/rotate a sprite you shouldnt get bleedover dark pixels. I dont use Gimp so cant help you with that. You dont have to use transparency at all, if you paint on pure black (0,0,0) background. Personally, I only use transparency when I'm playing with alot of layers.

[Panpiper]

Actually I use resize and rotate quite a bit. I find for instance if trying to get a nice graduated shade on a small sprite, it is easier to paint the shading with an airbrush tool on a 'sprite' three times larger then shrink down. In fact in order to get a nicer blending effect, even on sprites that I have built pixel by pixel at the normal sprite size, I will often blow it up to three times it's size and use the blend tool to get a cleaner shading. When then shrunk back down, the pixel shading looks far better. This way I can build the sprite using only a handful of shade gradations and still make it look like I used dozens.

I stand however in awe of your sprite painting talents Amos.