Mod: Epic Heroes Mod -Version 1.5 Released

[Xietor]

I am happy to announce that Epic Heroes Mod is out of beta. Heroes have been tested, typos removed, mod files organized, and a text file added to thank the many contributors to the mod.

The final list:

1. The Black Phoenix, Abysia
2. The Obsidian Medium, Agartha(added by Endoperez)
3. The Monkey King, Bandar Log(added by Endoperez)
4. The Blood-Cursed Champion, Mictlan
5. Beowulf, Man
6. The Blood Jarl, Jotunheim
7. The Fallen Angel, Pythium(Bandar Lover's idea)
8. The Immortal Assassin, Machaka
9. The Black Duke of Ulm, Ulm(Arralen's Black Steel Ulm Hero, modified a bit).
10. Black Heart Treant, Pangaea
11. The Sacred Yeti, Caelum
12. The Ancient Ophidian, Ctis
13. Grand Elephantarch, Arcosephale
14. Tithe Collector, Marignon
15. Misshapen Angel, Ermor
16. Mad Tinker, Vanheim
17. Ancient Master, Shin.
18. Li Bo, T'ien Ch'i(Dr. Praetorious)
19. Cathbad, Eriu (Foodstamp)
20. Soulstealer, R'lyeh(idea of a void assassin-tyrian)
21. Renegade Starspawn(idea of Edi).
22. King-in-Exile, Oceania(Edi).

This version is not intended to be "final." This mod is my baby and I will always be refining the descriptions. In fact the Black Treant's descr. has been fine tuned a bit already, but that does not warrant a new version.

When I host a mp game, and receive feedback on balance issues, changes will be made. To prevent having new versions every day, now that the Mod is live(out of beta), new versions will include several changes made over the course of a week.

In fact, changes will be made daily to the mod, likely for weeks to come, before i am happy with every descr. The only descr. that is 100 percent safe is the Obsidian Medium, and that is only because Endoperez and I literally spent many hours going over every phrase in that descr.

[Xietor]

I am going to keep a running tab here of the changes for 1.1. When enough are made, i will release 1.1


1. Black Heart Treant-
a. descr is improved
b. added 1n and 1e.

2. Tithe Collector
a. itemslot issue fixed(he had 2 heads 3 misc)
In 1.1 he will have 1 head and 2 misc. I did catch this myself, but how i missed it when i did a preview of all 22 heroes is puzzling.
b. minor typo corrected

3. Ancient Ophidian-descr tweaked, typo corrected.

4. Sacred Yeti-

a.precision increased.

b. makemonster ability changed from 3 wingless to 1 winter wolf.

c. Magicleader added(so he can lead his winter wolves).

5. Grand Elephantarch:

a. Elephant Barding's prot lowered, so his starting prot is now 15.

b. His make unit ability changed from 2 heart companions to 2 hoplites.

c. Elephantarch enc raised from 0 to 1.

6.Black Phoenix-fire imps come to him now in great numbers.

7. Blood Jarl-

a. ice imps now radiate cold(even though fire imps do not radiate fire), and they have ice prot(stronger in cold weaker in hot climates).

b. Blood Jarl lost his free blood slave a turn abilty.

[jutetrea]

I ran the mod on a 22 human player map, just to check out the heroes and summons. These are initial impressions only and have not been playtested. I'm very excited about the mod and loved what I saw. Any nation I do not make mention of means I love the hero and how it fits and have no comments other than Schweeet!

Very strong, too strong?
Ulm, Man, Arco, Bandar
These seem to be SC's in their own right. Just by looking at the stats and not play testing, they seem to be more powerful than most summons and quite a few semi-sc pretenders. The low hp are their biggest weakness, but they would still dominate SP (probably defeatable with SC specific MP strategies, but pretty much all are). This is mostly off just stats, some of the items are really cool but pretty crazy - and then there are the summons. Essentially free gold for fantastic troops.
32 prot!

Summoning sacreds.
I think the Mict hero is damn cool, but 5(?) free sacreds a turn? that's 120 free gold right off the bat, no hit on the max dominion-based recruiting, and pretty much sweet units to begin with. Maybe just warriors.
Arco - not too terrible, but I think should be regular hoplites and not sacred HC's.
C'tis - sacred serpents, were never very impressed by them to begin with, but still sacred, low upkeep and blessabel.

Machaka - what a sweet ability! love it! Almost too powerful, but very, very cool. Does decay have a max amount of aging/damage or do they age till their dead? If till dead I actually think its too powerful. If he gets one shot off on a 300 hp unit and it dies.. that's a bit much. Maybe use the sharpest tooth's poison?

Black phoenix - looks real cool, love the artwork. Possibly weak?

Weak heroes, IMO (or maybe still good, but not up to snuff with the others)
Caelum - bit average, did i miss anything?
Pan - bit too nerfed? or is it still a gangbuster?
Van - compared to the others this guy seems very weak. Does he have a special I didn't notice? Essentially just a free 200g mage.
Oceania - bit average it seems, did I miss anything?

Ry'leh - scary, very much like the lack of slots. How does this guy do in melee?

Shin - love the hero, appropriate summons (good but not as fantastic as above), cool abilities

Tien - would dropping 1S and adding either 1F or 1E break him? Astral isn't a huge problem and can get randomly, cannot get 3F or 3E randomly.

Love it and definitely want to get in on your first game. I'd almost recommend random nations as well.

[jutetrea]

would also love to see this extended to EA

[Xietor]

Talk to Kristopher!

I love Dominions, but I never realized when I tackled this mod how much work would be involved in cranking out 22 unique thematic heroes-and i had a good bit of help. So I did not have to do all 22.

We are talking maybe one hundred hours of work. And I will be play testing, looking for ways to improve the descrs. for at least a month.

Turin is going to incorporate at least some of these heroes into his Worthy Heroes, but only for the EA and LA. I did not want these heroes used in the ma of worthy heroes, as it would seem weird to have 2 of Beowulf.

And Epic Heroes Mod(MA) may inspire someone else to do one for the EA or LA. I really believe that having a starting epic hero should cost design points, and maybe that would be a feature of Dom IV. For 40 points you start with your race's epic hero.

Still have not received much feedback on the likes or dislikes of the various heroes besides Beowulf. I am always curious to know how they are being received, and possible ways to improve upon them.

[Xietor]

Van-well they have the best early expansion, so they get a 6 hp hero. But all heroes are very useful. Did you take a strong dominion and let the tinker sit in it a bit? He makes things ya know! Nice things!

Mictlan-Jaguar warriors die pretty easy. And in the 62 player game, no one wanted to play MA Mictlan. That hero is a bit overpowered on purpose.

The Sacred Yeti weak? He does summon wingless which are not too good. But he has 40 hps! Look at the claws on him? Fear
plus 5 also. 20 prot. Fear the yeti! I may beef up his ranged attack. I made a special throw boulder attack but with his poor prec and the boulder's -4, he never hits anything.

Man-Beowulf was my 1st hero, and he is a bit tough.

Bandar needs all the help they can get. Monkey king was endoperez creation and i nerfed him to 8 hp. He is still wicked powerful, but bandar sucks so i give them some slack.
He also causes unrest, and has other negative features!

Ulm-They need a powerful hero. Anyone that has a mr of 9 needs help. And the Black Duke's hp are not exceptional. His does have a wicked summon.

Elephantarch-He may be overpowered, especially since arcos is a tough mp race anyway.

Black Phoenix may appear weak, but it is flying immortal and is 3 fire. That means it can harass armies in its dominion as well as the pretender phoenix can.

Machaka is not a strong race, so we can give the immortal assassin's backstab ability the benefit of the doubt.

Do not call Oceania average-Edi made that hero. heh.

Dr. P made the t'ien chi hero. I nerfed it a tad actually by taking away its flying, but added the weapons and a couple other things.

[Xietor]

oh, and lol. Leave that Ctis hero in a strong dominion and look what she summons. It does not get much better than that!

And I am adding 1e1n to pan. next version.

I am worried about the elephantarch. he may be a bit too powerful. Did you see his special summon? leave him in a strong dom a few turns.

[jutetrea]

K, didn't see any of the domsummons yet, just played for 2 turns to see what summon allies does. I'll check that out later.

Yeti - I didn't think he had comparable stats for a melee and his summons weren't up to par with ulm/man/arco. Not sure if he had any other abilities.

K, I can see the Mict hero for MA...but that's one I'd think should be nerfed a bit for EA/LA. But I'm a Mict noob so could be wrong. Even if jag warriors are kind of weak, they're still sacred, and a free 120 gold. Pretty much giving any free sacreds kind of messes up the point cost limitation of having a high dom. At 20g Mict seems like it would be limited by its purchase of 4-8/turn and then add another 6 on top?

I'll test out the Arco hero later, seems like a great early indy killer with some support. Not sure how it would work as an MP SC.. SP I think it would rock.

Ulm - even if his hp's are great... pretty much everything else is. Before playtesting, my initial inclination would be to either drop some def or nerf his item effects. Obviously not sure till i get to play with it.

Machaka - think it matters if its a guarenteed kill. Being immortal he can kamikaze pretenders, die but still get the kill.

TC - losing the flying is kind of wierd thematically, but maybe necessary. All the blue robes in EA fly, but I don't think in LA and I'm not familiar with MA TC so unsure. Still think 3F or 3E would be a huge help.

Hmm, so i have to check for dom summons for C'tis and Van - will do.

Love the idea, and the implementation. Like the fact so far that there seem to be quite a few quirky things (summons, interesting items and such) which I like a lot.

[jutetrea]

Interesting on the dom summons - few comments

Should the ice imps get cold aura?

Never saw a domsummons for C'tis at dom 6, just the serpents

dom summons from van are nice, makes him much better. Does he have a forge bonus? can't remember. If not, IMO he should.

tithe collector.. Am I missing something? Do the summons do anything?

Ry'leh - does he have a summon?

Yeti - seems like he has good volume, but still lower quality troops

Is backstab MR resistable? Or does it need to pass defense/prot? Only tried twice, but failed to hit both times.

[Xietor]

Jut, thanks for the initial feedback.

It really helps. You do need to consider their whole package though and that includes special summons. The whole point of the Tinker(if you read the descr) is what he builds. Same with marignon. The tithe collector builds a sacred monument, and while it cannot hit back, hitting them does have consequences.

Read the descr of that thing ctis summons. I know for a fact that the balance is not right on. It needs a good bit of testing.

Your advice on the sacred summons is good, and i will have to consider it. They do not have to pay the big upfront cost, then they get 1/2 maintenance because they are sacred.

Mictlan is so bad i really do not mind. But the others....
I think i will remove sacred summons for arcos for sure and replace it with a hoplite. 2 serpents for ctis i can live with, and it is thematic with a snake hero.