CherryMod Thread

[Mind Elemental]

Just making sure -- that Japan theme would be for Tien Chi, right?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Mind Elemental:
Just making sure -- that Japan theme would be for Tien Chi, right?

Unfortunately, I think so. It would be fun for Tien Chi and Japan to fight, but it makes more sense to make Japan a Tien Chi theme than a theme for anyone else. Though I've been considering Man too.

[Saber Cherry]

Some preliminary infantry rebalancing thoughts... I'm making the assumption that all humans are different, and the strong ones are given heavy armor, the agile ones are trained as light infantry, and cheap militia is weak, poorly fed, untrained rabble. Non-professional soldiers have low mental discipline and thus low MR, and morale increases with armor and wages. Both of those would increase MY morale. Also, armor interferes with precision and ability to swing weapons accurately.

____... PS LM MM LI MI HI HE LA HA

RES_... 2 3 10 9 15 99 99 6 99
PROT... 1 5 9 8 12 99 99 6 99
GP__... 3 4 6 8 10 12 14 8 10
SUP_... 6 7 8 10 15 20 20 10 15
HP__... 7 8 9 10 10 11 12 9 10
STR_... 8 8 9 10 10 11 11 10 10
ATT_... 6 8 9 11 10 9 10 8 9
DEF_... 7 8 9 11 10 9 10 8 9
MRST... 9 9 9 10 10 10 11 10 10
MRL_... 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 8 9
PREC... 8 8 9 10 9 8 9 11 10
ENC_... 5 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3
MP__... 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 1
AP__... 7 8 9 12 12 12 12 12 12

This is much more clear in the Excel chart, if anyone can host it. These are my preliminary infantry rebalancing thoughts, for rebalancing the base units (on top of which armor/weapons are added). Essentially, these will be basic guidelines - not an "All heavy elite infantry will have these stats" thing. I'd prefer to do stat modifications in the equipment, though.

Translations:

PS=Peasant/Slave
LM/MM=Militia
LI/MI/HI=Infantry
HE=Heavy Elite
LA/HA=Archers

RES, PROT: The maximum values for resources and protection to be considered within this "class".

GP, SUP: The gold cost and supply usage for a unit in this "class". This is not just what the soldier eats, but his entourage, transport, and repair supply considerations as well.

If you have any comments, suggestions, questions, or just can't read the **** thing, feel free to tell me=)

[ November 26, 2003, 05:57: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[LordArioch]

It might help if you tried to add spaces to line up the numbers. Also why are the HI 99 prot? I assume you just mean some high value in general?

EDIT: Oh 99 is a maximum. Just goes to show you can never expect ignorant people like me to read carefully through a whole post before replying to it. It's truely a sad world.

[ November 26, 2003, 07:57: Message edited by: LordArioch ]

[Keir Maxwell]

I'm making the assumption that all humans are different, and the strong ones are given heavy armor, the agile ones are trained as light infantry,

In alot of societies how a soldier fights is determined by social factors more than individual capabilites. Some societies make a more conscious use of their resources and but most are at least as much driven by social standing. Even with Rome it is argued that after a certain date the Praetorian Guard cease to be an elite unit in reality due to the degree of corruption and nepotism involved.

Cheers

Keir

[Endoperez]

About the animal theme, what if they ONLY required resources? Like, wolves costing 1 gp/10 res, and bears 1gp/30 res? The problem comes with castles... If fortress could be replaced with a temple for this theme, it would be good. But a fortress (den? homely cave?) with a building time of 1/cost of 150, no defence rating and no walls inside would work too, if we can mod these things.
But animals would be quite weak versus archers, and most players would just recruit indies for that reason. They do have money... Even with population-killing dominion. Well, the druids would take most of that money, and buildings.

And how would vine men, and nature magic, fit in? Animals/vine men? Vine men with some equipment? A national hero Fenris the Great Wolf, leading an army with Gift of Reasoned Vine Ogre wearing Fenris pelt? Maybe blocking (the creation of) certain items should be considered. Maybe Malrus the Son of Fenris?

Just some weird ideas... It's nice to read all this, but all these things won't fit in one mod.

EDIT: can a unit have a cost of zero?

[ November 26, 2003, 10:45: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
About the animal theme, what if they ONLY required resources? Like, wolves costing 1 gp/10 res, and bears 1gp/30 res? The problem comes with castles... If fortress could be replaced with a temple for this theme, it would be good. But a fortress (den? homely cave?) with a building time of 1/cost of 150, no defence rating and no walls inside would work too, if we can mod these things.

That makes quite a lot of sense. Of course, resources would be DIFFERENT to animals - they would be food, habitat, and so forth... so, ideally, the special sites that provide supply to humans would provide resources to animals, and things like the great iron mine would be worthless to animals... farmland/forest/swamp would be high-resource, desert/waste/ocean/mountain would be low. But that's more than the engine can handle=(

It would be interesting, though, for animals to only spend gold recruiting indy units, with all national animal units resource-only. Or all summoned/dominion-spawned, like Ermor.

Thanks for the ideas!

On other notes: Cavalry. The mount's ability to absorb damage and missile fire are discounted in Dominions... if a missile lands on a square full of light cavalry, it will wound a rider (AFAICT). That's unrealistic.

Ideal solution:

Mounted units are all modeled with a rider and mount (like Machaka spider cavalry, and Atlantian lobster cavalry). Each has independant stats, including HP. Every attack rolls to pick which to hit, based on their relative size... so, for example, an arrow landing on a Freak Lord would be MUCH more likely to hit the Freak than the Lord. When one dies, the other appears alone (like War Lobsters after their riders die). This means that the rider can become dismounted. Some attacks, like area-effect attacks, would hit both mount and rider.

CherryMod fix - what I intend to do until mount/rider units are more fully modeled in the Doms II engine:

Add +40% HP to all mounted units, to model the hits and damage that are absorbed by the mount. If this makes cavalry overpowered, I'll increase their gold price a little; but I think cavalry (especially light/medium cav) are unrealistically weak. Oh, and I might add "War Horse" units that spawn when knights are killed (and leave after battle).

-Cherry

Edit. New Japanese pretender: The Great Ninja, a stealthy, cheap, poison-immune, air-shielded assassin with 3 dominion, who spawns ninjas.

[ December 04, 2003, 05:26: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Mind Elemental]

I like the cavalry ideas, especially as a knight's fatigue should go through the roof if he gets dismounted.

Hrm. Why not also give the Japanese a melee samurai pretender? I always wondered at the lack of human pretenders who could kick butt in a fight -- there has to be a god or two out there who emphasises brawn over magic, right?

[Bossemanden]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
CherryMod fix - what I intend to do until mount/rider units are more fully modeled in the Doms II engine:

Add +40% HP to all mounted units, to model the hits and damage that are absorbed by the mount. If this makes cavalry overpowered, I'll increase their gold price a little; but I think cavalry (especially light/medium cav) are unrealistically weak. Oh, and I might add "War Horse" units that spawn when knights are killed (and leave after battle).

-Cherry

If you increase HP by 40% then you should also decrease protection for the heavy cavalry. The horse is usually less well armoured than the rider.
For light/medium it sounds about right though.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Bossemanden:
If you increase HP by 40% then you should also decrease protection for the heavy cavalry.

That's tough, since protection is a property of the armor. I might give HC and Knights a smaller HP bonus, instead, like +20%.

New Pretenders:

Warmage - a human rainbow mage, similar to the archmage, but more costly. Starts with Crystal Shield, helmet, Rainbow Armor, Wand of Wild Fire, and a base 4 reinvigoration.

Seeker of Knowledge - another human rainbow mage, with a site-searching bonus. I would like to do one of two things: either allow "autosearch", so that the Seeker automatically detects all magic sites within his level just by visiting a province, without searching... or allow searching at +1 level in all paths (including paths at zero, like holy/unholy). Either would represent his uncanny ability to find magic sites, and penchant for spending all his free time doing so. Both are probably impossible right now.

New Theme:

Gnomes (pangea, ulm, or man theme... not sure which). Small, expensive, highly magical, and with extremely low morale. This race would get a large (~50%) gold income bonus in all provinces, and require order+3 and productivity of at least +1. However, the gnomish units would all be weak, cowardly, and pricey (though with stealth, high defense, and glamour) so other than the powerful national mages, the gnome race would be mostly reliant on hiring indy troops. The Gnome theme would also include a Gold Mine capitol special site.

New Afflictions:

Horribly Disfigured: +2 Morale, Cause Lesser Fear (-4), normal leadership halved.
The unit has such terribly ugly scars on his face that few can bear to look at him. As such, he seeks solace in battle.

Battle Rage: Berserk +1.
Fighting one too many battles and being wounded one too many times has lit the soldier's fires of hatred. He has made a solemn oath that none shall harm him again, and live. Note that this is not necessarily a good thing (on a leader, for example).

I hope I can mod in new afflictions eventually!

Originally posted by Mind Elemental:
Hrm. Why not also give the Japanese a melee samurai pretender? I always wondered at the lack of human pretenders who could kick butt in a fight -- there has to be a god or two out there who emphasises brawn over magic, right?

That's a good idea. I'm pondering how to make it work. He would have to have some advantage over a non-human supercombattant, like a Wyrm or Manticore... possibly immortality, regeneration, coming pre-equipped with nice stuff (so you don't drop items every time he dies)... humans are quite fragile, as a single high roll can kill them. Awe might be good as well.

-Cherry

[ December 09, 2003, 20:34: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]