Mod: Ermor - The Restoration - Draft v0.75

[Cerlin]

If you redid the guy character (Renatus?) And gave him the picks of both and maybe upped the cost, it would free your slot and give you one mage for the same role, or is that too powerful? I played this mod already LA and besides your living troops being somewhat under armored It works pretty well. I came up against C'tis and their heavy infantry takes a great toll on the Legions. A Cap only troop may work but Personally I'd rather have a few less perks and more availability. They already have 2 Cap only troops, I'd personally think that stronger armor everywhere would help. I would also mention though that I generally dont use the Praetorian or the Triarii because of the old age.

[Edi]

Thanks for the feedback. I've been considering getting rid of Triarius and Praetorian Guard precisely because their old age is also something of a thematic remnant from the Dominions 2 situation where Broken Empire was a parallel timeline. The old age is certainly not thematic now. So I removed that.

I did some tinkering, but I've got to go to bed. I think I'm going to keep the Renata and Renatus as the Pythian offshoots but with increased price. Made Censor and Lictor recruitable everywhere and added a new capital only commander, Shadow Priestess, using #3 of the four slots. I expect I'll use #4 for the Ermorian Cultist reworking.

The only problem is going to be redundancy with magic paths unless I tweak the Renatus and Renata custom randoms to slightly different to emphasize their roles.

[Endoperez]

Edi said:
Thanks for the feedback. I've been considering getting rid of Triarius and Praetorian Guard precisely because their old age is also something of a thematic remnant from the Dominions 2 situation where Broken Empire was a parallel timeline. The old age is certainly not thematic now. So I removed that.

I did some tinkering, but I've got to go to bed. I think I'm going to keep the Renata and Renatus as the Pythian offshoots but with increased price. Made Censor and Lictor recruitable everywhere and added a new capital only commander, Shadow Priestess, using #3 of the four slots. I expect I'll use #4 for the Ermorian Cultist reworking.

How are you going to replace Triarii and Praetorian Guard? Are those the units that will become the new heavy infantry?

What are the four unused units, btw? You mentioned two huskarls, and then there's the old Golden Naga, and I think another unused female pretender, perhaps old Mother of Rivers or something.

[Edi]

That ups the number of unused units to 6, possibly 7. Golden Naga, old Lady of Fortune, huskarls 1603 & 1604, 1137 & 1138 (Unused Minotaur & Unused Warlord, they are by those names in the game) and perhaps one of the markata units around number 1119 or thereabouts.

Not sure if old Daughter of the Land is also unused these days.

What I did with Triarius was change startage to just shy of old age with some variation, so if you get one from the high end, it will be old after about 12 turns. Praetorian guard, cleared the unit, copystatted Emerald Guard and renamed back to Praetorian Guard, then set startage to somewhere above 40 with variation so they will eventually become old.

Ineed to work on that mod some more and I apparently need to get into the graphics modding business to get an acceptable graphic for the Shadow Priestess. Might as well replace the Shadow Vestal blob at the same time. I'll post the tyweaked mod in a couple of days.

[Agrajag]

Just wanted you to know I'm rooting for you

[Edi]

I moved the thread here to the MAps & Mods forum because the place is more appropriate.

The mod has been updated to v0.75, so it's still a draft.

Changes

• Renata increased gold cost and changed magics (190 gold, WN, 100% WSN, 20% WSDN)
• Renatus increased gold cost and changed magics (190 gold, WD, 100% WSD, 20% WSDN)
• New graphic for Shadow Vestal
• New unit: Shadow Priestess (capital only)
• Ermorian Cultis changed to be thematic for the Restoration, copystatted base Ernorian Cultist and altered description.
• Lictor and Censor are no longer capital only
• Gem income 2D (Temple of the Dead), 2S (Temple of the Spheres)

I would like to hear feedback. Especially on the Shadow Priestess, because that one definitely needs a review for balance issues. It's very much an echo of the Dom2 Shadow Vestal, but there need to be ways to make sure it isn't abusable.

[VedalkenBear]

Downloading now and going to take a look at it, Edi. I'm actually surprised that you incorporated so much of my feedback/suggestions.

Initial Reactions: First and foremost, if you're going to keep that extremely high base encumbrance on the Shadow Priestess, say something about it in the fluff. (I recall the Nightmare Onyx Amazon unit having a fluff reason for their high encumbrance.) It's something disconcerting to find out.

As for the Shadow Priestess, as a whole, I didn't try to 'kit them out' in the short time I had, but my initial impression would be to drop their random paths (they give you nothing that the Grand Thaumaturgs don't, and they're both capital-only), reduce their cost to about 160g (maybe a bit lower), and make their encumbrance something 'normal'. Maybe not 'undead' normal (0), but lower than 10 base.

The Renata/Renatus I find overcosted; I would recruit enough of them to give me some variety, but I would never rely on them. I compare them to the Master Shugenja and Onmyoji of Jomon (i.e., similar LA mages), and find that at 160g, they would have (almost certainly) one less path than the Jomonese mages, but would be sacred. This seems a fair trade-off. I'm still not sure I would use them (the Thaumaturg is such a good priest-mage on so many levels...), but they'd be at least a better buy.

Anything else 'in particular' you want me to look at?