Mod: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail

[Burnsaber]

OK, mod updated.

List of changes from 0.6 to 0.8

- Improved graphic for Pegasus Knights and Grail Knights
- 2 new heroes, The King and The Black Knight
- Removed autosummons, but powered other summons.
- Morale boosted for Grail Knights to 30
- KotR to hp 12 to bring "in line" with MA Mar/man knights
- Better stats for footed knights (+1 str, -1 enc)
- Added lenght to "Heroic" weapons
- Made Questing Knights into no-leaders
- Pegasus knights to recruit everywhere, with slight increse in resource cost.
- Made compactible with the chaos mod
- Added Trumanator's fixed nation description
- More Knight names (104 different names now)
- Improved grammar in descriptions
- Footed KotR got castledef and patrolbonus
- Hounour Guard of Knight Commanders changed for thematic reasons. Lord gets now 1 mounted KoTR. Marquis and Duke get 2 Mounted KoTR's. Gold costs raised to compensate.
- Starting Commander changed to Lord.

I'm intending to put this mod to a MP game soon, so I'm especially intrested in toughts and suggestions on that front.

[Calchet]

Seems like a neat mod, and I'll be sure to use it alongside the other Warhammer nations.

Simply looking at the graphics, I find most of the units look very good - especially most of the the mounted ones, where I think you've done a wonderful job.
That said, I feel the king looks a bit... bland, compared to his tabletop incarnation, as well as the other units - even the knights errant look flashier to me.

I imagine it's likely the default dom3 Gryphon's fault, coupled with the single-colour heraldry - but, rather than merely complaining, I figured I'd try to translate the tabletop model into a sprite, to see how that went, and I'm quite satisfied with the result. In addition to using it for my own pleasure, I figure I might as well share it with the rest of you, as well as giving Burnsaber the option of putting it in the mod, should he desire. The sprite itself is in the public domain and may be used however you desire.

[Radio_Star]

You might look at changing up the battle auto-summons, especially on the Marquis. I was able to consistently get almost 30 provinces by the end of year one without an awake pretender in addition to making at least 3+ additional forts. Standard tactic was a small number of supporting units (10-15 or so cheap chaff) slightly back from 2 Marquis who were pushed all the way forward set to hold a turn, attack. It's a cheap enough force to facilitate early castle spam (and thus even more Marquis) while still expanding at breakneck speeds. I'd suggest switching the battle summon to something more along the lines of 1 knight and 3-5 chaff troopers, though even this may allow the same tactic.






Note: Tests run on milkshake, misfortune-3 order-3 pretender. Poorest result was 23 provinces and 3 forts(inc. start) with 1 building by the end of year one. Best result was 32 provinces and 4 forts with 3 building. Average was 27 provinces and 3 forts with 3 building. All builds did 0 research in year one.

[Radio_Star]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

OK, mod updated.

List of changes from 0.6 to 0.8

- Removed autosummons, but powered other summons.

I'm intending to put this mod to a MP game soon, so I'm especially intrested in toughts and suggestions on that front.

Autosummons are still present, albeit at (I think) a reduced frequency. Is this WAD?

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Er. Downloaded fix and still got the sky giant bone. Deleted the mod and reinstalled from .82.zip and still got the error.

Hmm. when taking a closer look, it seems that Sombre has forgotten to update the "this mod takes following slots" summary in the Ogre .dm file(which I was using as a reference point for clash avoiding). But when I actually took a look at the code, it seems the actual weapon numbers roach deep in to Brettonnia territory.

I'll probably have to renumber all weapons, and it will take some time. I can promise to whip something up for the next weekend. But I have some good news. Today I had a spare hour or so and got inspired, so I made a pic for Green Knight (I actually got so into drawing him that I almost was late from work!), I might be able to wiggle him in to the next update. The redrawn King will likely have to wait, thought.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Edit: I also get a no such spell crash bug if I load CBM after Bretonnia. Is it intended to be CBM compatible?

Yeah, of course. The error is probably cause of the tinkering I did with Bogarus national spells to give the commanders battlesummons. You just need to load CBM first. I added a warning about that in the first post.

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I've been playing with this mod a lot this weekend and enjoying it very much. Thanks, Burnsaber.

I think the "Summon allies" and bodyguards of the different commanders are a bit messed up - or, in any case, they certainly don't match the descriptions.

Yeah, sorry, They've been under a *lot* of changes lately, the descriptions probably are laggin behind a bit. I also could make it a bit more clear which parts hint at domsummons.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Autosummons are still present, albeit at (I think) a reduced frequency. Is this WAD?

Yeah, WAD, they're domsummons. You get those guys when in high dominion (a'k'a when you have high control over the population in a province). This will be made more clearer in the descriptions in the next version.

[Radio_Star]

Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.

Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.

First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.

I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.

As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description. The odds of you taking the enchantress awake are pretty small, but whether you take her dormant or imprisoned will depend on your ...



Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia. Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3. Now the hard stuff! In ascending order of debateability (it's a word because I say so, darn it):



Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.

Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....



Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.

The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....



Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.

What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?

The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.

Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.

How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.

Granted, this is all pretty theoretical. If you think the answer is to gather up some knights and lay the above buffs on them, go prod. 3.



Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless. Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.

Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.

Marquis vs Lords. Thugwise, they're pretty comparable. They've got the same bodyguard and the stat difference isn't enormous. The chaff generation on a Marquis is infinitely superior. Basic men at arms are just awful. Paying 50% more per commander can add up, but there's also the opportunity cost since you can only snag one per turn. If you're going prod. 3 and using Marquis and Lords more for thuggery than chaff generation, Lords are the way to go. You will of course want Marquis if you're shorting prod. and using commanders to generate troops. All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.

Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.



Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things? Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy? Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?

Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.

Your facepalm was in vain, for you were not the who made the error. I added that after reading your post about the issue. So unless you can see into the future, you shouldn't worry about it.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.

I hope that we can get some discussion going. I'm not sure how to play Bretonnia myself.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.

Yeah I agree about that Earth bless, you also need hammers for the thugging you're going to do. But about taking E9? I'm not so sure about that. Your guys already have great prot, and boosting strenghts only works for a point. No matter how much prot you have the word "AN" will spell doom for you. E9 is an expensive bless and I'm not sure if you get the full bang for your buck here.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.

Yeah, you need astral and earth. Trusting to get lucky randoms with Damsels isn't that great stragedy.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description.

fixed in 0.83, thanks for reporting.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia.

Amen to that brother. Only scale I've taken everytime is Order.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3.

Not sure I agree on misfortune 3, that's some serious bad mojo right there. Your fortune teller action isn't that good, I would take it as a minor bonus, not as an stragedy. T'ien C'hi this nation ain't. Perhaps for SP, since you can restart if your lab/temple burns on turn 2 or 3 (especially crippling for Breton), but for MPI never go over misfortune 2 and even then the constant barbarian and knight attacks are annoying.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.

Agreed, I often take death 1 or 2 with Breton, since your mages are quite young. But I can see the allure of the Growth scale considering your (quite clever) taxing stragedy. It's all good thought, since it's quite thematic. Bretonnian Knights are known for their courage and skill, not for their empathy towards the peasants.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....

Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.

The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....

Magic is a bit of no-brainer (and thematic, Bretonnia is the land of magical knights and monsters after all). I can't see a situation where you'd need 120 points so bad that you'd go from +1 research to -1. Not with your 220gp damsels.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.

Grail Knights are support troops, not a stragedy in themselves (although they work well for expansion). A force composed of just Grail Knights, although powerful, is easily counterable. But when you mix them up with peasants and regular knights, setting the Grail Knights at the back and buffing them up with flight, they show their true might. They take the heat off from your frontline troops and now-lanceless knights and can occansionally stumble and kill something important in the backlines while flying around.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?

The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.

Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.

How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.

The way to kill things with breton recruitables is Lances. But since they are one-shot only, you need to aim them. Flight is great for sparkling your knights around the battlefield to bypass your opponents frontline lance-suckers. Since Breton lances allow for str damage, casting earth might (with a gem) will make the knights doubly scary. The way for knights to keep killing troops after the lance strike is exhausted is to outfatigue the enemy. With two attacks per guy,the knights should be able to score more critical hits on average. Spells like Sleep, Dessication, Numbness, Stellar Cascades and Orb Lighting spam allows you to fatigue the enemy quickly.

But taking low or prot and drowning your foes in men-at-arms freespanwn, supported by relief and casters, sounds also intresting. If you have a high E god, he could support this strat by casting "Curse of Stones", allowing your men-at-arms to actually kill something though critical hits. Doesn't Quaqmire increase encumberance too? Sleep Clouds from high N damsels could also exhaust the opposing troops.

But I think the question isn't about either-or. You can have both Knights and men-at-arms to use their abilities to the fullest. The chaff take the hits while the Knights kill stuff.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless.

The KoTR's (both footed and mounted) decrease unrest by 1 point each point in the province where they are. So they can theoretically actually make you money.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.

in 0.83 I made the Errants slightly cheper and KotR's slight more expensive. The increase and decrease was just 2 gold but makes the gold difference larger. Knight Errants are perfect for expansion and other situations where you just need lances, NOW. They're also good to wield against giant nations, since the Giants can damage your knights on shield hits, basically reducing your def to 10 something. Losing a Errantas is a lot more painless than losing a KotR.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.

Just a warning, this strat won't likely work in MP. High province count, low army count, high income and no research in graph will make you an absolutely uningnoreable rush target.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.

Unfotunately you can only mod the summons in instances of 1,2 or 5.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.

I reduced their res cost in 0.83, they now cost 10 resources.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things?

There is one way to kill things that does not necessarily take any killing at all. Make the enemy flee into nothingness, abusing their lack of courage and honor to decimate them. Your remote attacks and flying Grail thugs can easily take all retreat routes froman advancing army. Then use a force of N2 or higher maidens and Damsels to spam Panic and forcing them to retreat, into your provinces

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy?

Certainly, I could see this working. See the castle stragedy quide for LA Man in the main thread, intrestring read.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?

Tough one. It's getting quite late here, so I can't ponder on this further. Perhaps some one else has some ideas?

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!

Yeah, we need more discussion. just because I made the mod doens't mean that I have all (or even the best anwsers) to stragedy questions.