A New Mod: Oglala Sioux

[tinkthank]

OK -- any feedback on the balance? Do you folks still feel it is overpowered? What about the summons?
Thanks much

[Saber Cherry]

No balance feedback yet, but the non-mounted Oglala Hunter needs ambidextrity (I suggest 3).

And by the way, don't you think forest survival would be natural for Hunters? If they have to sneak around deep behind enemy lines, and they have hunting bows and hunting knives, being able to hunt and travel efficiently through forests seems natural.

[The_Tauren13]

First off, Id like to commend your wisdom in attempting to make a more balanced nation to replace T'ien Ch'i. After playing a bit, your mod looks to be better than T'ien Ch'i, but certainly not superior to any of the powerful nations. Good job
However, I have only tested it in SP... which means I cant really say how it would stack up in MP. Anyways, here are my thoughts:

• The troops make very effective patrollers because of their cheap cost for high movement. If you patrol with your starting troops, you can go up to 200 tax at the beginning and usually clear up the unrest!
  
  All the troops are inexpensive for their stats: a 12 attack, 14 defense, 11 morale and 11 MR unit for only 10 gold! Yes, I know they have no armor, but this is taken into account in the resource cost, which allows you to get extra pretender points with sloth. Also, even with no bless effect, the Crazy Horse Riders only need about 10 to take level 9 indies with no losses! Luckily, they are capitol only. These troop strengths should be more or less (hopefully) balanced out by the abysmal artifact forging and lack of powerful specialized magic.
  
  I found vine ogres to be highly superior to the treants... The treant has only slightly higher stats, but has encumbrance and fire susceptability. For 4x the cost (8x with a ivy crown), they are not even close to worth it. Even the holy golem is superior 1 to 1 for a cheaper price. The other 3 summons look fairly nice and well balanced, though.
  
  Why the 6 starting gem income? With all the low level paths, you can already search far better than other nations, so will have higher gem income anyway.

This is a fun nation to play. I would like to try it out in MP some time, if I can

[Saber Cherry]

The_Tauren13 said:
Why the 6 starting gem income?

I won't put words in his mouth, but since you cannot mod sites, sometimes it is hard to get exactly the type and number of gems you want AND all the capitol-only troops. It is probably possible to make it 5-gem income, but maybe not.

From my playing, I've noticed that Hunters (mounted) utterly destroy everything. Compared to shortbows, their bows have more damage, more precision, more range, more arrows, and kill anything they even scratch (strong poison does 15 damage on average). And they have the highest armor. They seem like the best unit... and, well, overpowered for the price. They annihilate anything that is not poison immune, even units with 18 protection and tower shields (I got in some fights with Living Ermor).

Furthermore, because all the units have lots of strat moves and negligible resource cost... it feels wierd. You can do things like not build anything for 2 turns, then suddenly build 25 cavalry and get them to the front, thus saving 2 turns of upkeep compared to nations with resource costs. Resources are supposed to cover labor as well as materials, and raising / training horses is fairly labor-intensive.

So, my suggestions...

1) The Hunting Bow is just vastly superior to all other bows. I think it should either get weak poison (5 damage), lower stats, or an increased (gold and resource) cost. Curently, I cannot justify building any unit without a hunting bow, especially because those units ALSO have the most armor AND shields.

2) The hunters on foot... I never built them. I suppose I could, but their costs are so close to mounted units that I can't find a good reason to do so. They need a compelling reason to be built (whether that means making them better or all the other units worse). And, as I noted before, they need ambidextrity 3 or 4 to use their current weapons correctly. However... You can't give a unit a spear, knife, and shield! That requires 3 hands .

3) The Crazy Horse Riders are supposed to be the best at melee, but really, with the high attack and defense values, all the mounted units are good at melee... the Crazy Horse Riders don't seem to have any skills that make them better at melee than other units. Why not give them Berserk +2? Then if a player was using them as a ranged unit (violating the description), and they got hurt, they would charge into melee combat as you would expect

4) I find the Holy Chieftains extremely expensive. Holy 4 is nice, and rare. But at 290 gold, you buy one for your prophet, and never again. In fact, I waited until turn 8 to buy a prophet, because those things are so expensive. Also, at holy 4, he needs higher magic resistance (say, 16). In fact, several of your other priests and mages also (IMO) need higher magic resistance, considering that indy holy-2 priests get 14 mr (+4 bonus) and your lowest-level warriors already get 11 mr.

5) Giving humans a base mr 11 is interesting, and you justify it with "Magical Talismans" and such. But that's just in the description. None of the units wear helmets, so why not give them a 'helmet' called "Talisman" or "Pouch of Ancestral Bones" or whatever, to justify the increased magic resistance?

6) Some of your units are drawn holding falchions and listed as using spears. I understand that graphic manipulations are a complete pain... but I suggest you change one or the other. If any Native American tribes whatsoever used any sort of blade-like weapon, that would be a quick and easy fix, even if the Oglala Sioux didn't. IMO, it's OK for a nation to not exactly reflect a specific history or mythology. No Sioux tribe was ever able to summon longdead warriors, for example.

7) You might want to mod the Jade Emperor into some Sioux-specific deity, since it is only available to Tien Chi. It seems wierd to pick the Jade Emperor to lead them, with his obvious oriental background.

8) Warrior Chieftain is 50% more expensive, and VASTLY superior to the Oglala Raider (leader), since they both have stealth. I would never build a raider leader (at the current price, leadership, and abilities). Non-leader raiders seem kind of expensive too... making them cheaper and decreasing the siege bonus to 2 would make them more desireable, IMO.


Anyway, those are my thoughts right now, though I have not yet played a full game. Keep up the good work, and remember, everyone loves graphics It's hard, but a few hours in GIMP can take away shields from the units listed as not using shields, make units in full scale mail look like they're wearing feathered (or leather, or warpaint) armor, and replace steel helmets with hair or feathers. If you go for it, remember that details are not too important... you might be working on a 800x600 version of a unit (I suggest blowing icons up to around size before modifying them), but once people see it on the screen, it will only be 64x64 pixels and little errors will be unnoticable. Of course, it's up to you

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks so much for these comments!

Tauren:
- Treants inferior to Ogres. Yes. Endoperez said this to me as well, and I answered "Well, every low-level summons is inferior to Ogres in terms of gem cost", but I think that is a lame thing to say now. I think I should make them tramplers as well. Or decrease the gem cost? Thanks for your feedback.
- Troops inexpensive as a mounted unit: Yes, that is the "flavor" and raison d'etre of this mod. In my tests, they got spanked by vanilla Ulm and Marignon AI, so I am not worried yet, and had real problems with Abysia and Machaka too. Have you really been able to make a lot of Crazy Horse Riders?
- 6 starting gem income: Unintentional, but unavoidable. It is a toss-up between gem income and capital-only troop-sites.

Cherry: (Starting with the things on which our opinion differs)
- Hm, Cherry, we have COMPELTELY different playing styles. I found myself recruiting Holy Chieftains whenever I could. It is not just Holy 4, *he is the only holy-4 STEALTHY unit in the game*. I do not want to make him cheaper, I want to make him even more expensive -- I dont want dozens of these guys running round. These are the best stealthy preachers in the game, and with a few Crazy Horse bodyguards then can even survive getting caught by patrollers. I personally like the price for my playstyle, or find them too expensive. (Consider Lizard Lord guy for 280.)
- Raiders have stealth 10, Warrior Chieftains stealth 0. Raiders are the only commander with higher stealth (besides the Holy Chieftain at 5), they are "designed" to lead raiders in small stealth parties. But perhaps I should make the Warrior Chieftain more expensive (rather than the Raider less so)? As it is now, my Raiders survive patrolling parties MUCH better than my War-Chiefs set to stealthy preaching.
- Crazy Horse Riders *DO* have etheralness, but ok, I suppose that is not enough. I did NOT want to give them any features which could be got by a blessing (such as Beserk), since these are the only holy units, as I wrote in my Readme, hence the lack thereof. But I see your point. Would you also accept slightly cheaper (65) or 1 better attack and/or both? Otherwise, yes, I could give them beserk-2, if this does make sense.

(Things I agree with
- Graphics -- yes!! I wish....
- Edit the Jade Emperor .... yeah, of course! Doh! Good idea, thanks!
- Hunting Bow Nerf -- ok. I never really bought so many Hunters, because the times I tested I never really had the Resources for them. I think I will increase the Resources on the hunter too.
- Foot Hunter Sucking: Ok. I didnt make many of these guys either. Cheaper ok? Ambidexterity... ok.
- I cannot find a way to add Magic Resistance to items, hence I dispatched with any Items which did such. Am I missing something?

THANKS TONS!!!

[The_Tauren13]

tinkthank said:
- Treants inferior to Ogres. Yes. Endoperez said this to me as well, and I answered "Well, every low-level summons is inferior to Ogres in terms of gem cost", but I think that is a lame thing to say now. I think I should make them tramplers as well. Or decrease the gem cost? Thanks for your feedback.

The reason I compared them to vine ogres is that the 2N2H guys who summon them can also make vine ogres really easily. I think if you made the treants more like Dark Vines, that is, gave them like 126 HP, they would be usefull tankers for your archers.

tinkthank said:
- Troops inexpensive as a mounted unit: Yes, that is the "flavor" and raison d'etre of this mod. In my tests, they got spanked by vanilla Ulm and Marignon AI, so I am not worried yet, and had real problems with Abysia and Machaka too. Have you really been able to make a lot of Crazy Horse Riders?

Well, with 200 tax at the beggining, you can build 3-4 per turn. I took a F9A5 Phoenix, and wow, with the starting troops as backup, they could rip level 9 indies to pieces.



Here's some more thoughts:

• I cant say I found much use for the Elucidator of Traditions. I would prefer the Warrior Chieftan in almost every aspect. Everyone else, however, I found had a specific use. Well done!
  
  Some of the troops have a base protection of 1. Why? Theyre just humans, arent they?
  
  The Master of Dream-Visions has no forge penalty. With a fully random pick, you can really have him forge most of what you need, making the nation not really all that bad at forging.

[Scott Hebert]

As an aside, tinkthank, if you can give me the stats for your commanders, I'll 'run them through' the mill I've got going...

[Saber Cherry]

tinkthank said:
- Hm, Cherry, we have COMPELTELY different playing styles.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that too That's ok, if there is a playing style that uses the units I would not consider using, then they are probably fine!

- Raiders have stealth 10, Warrior Chieftains stealth 0. Raiders are the only commander with higher stealth (besides the Holy Chieftain at 5), they are "designed" to lead raiders in small stealth parties. But perhaps I should make the Warrior Chieftain more expensive (rather than the Raider less so)?

Hmmm, yeah. Holy-2, sacred, stealthy, mounted, leadership 50, encumbrance 3, precision 12, 2 attacks and a longbow, Standard +8 make them similar to a Centaur Hierophant (80g).

- Crazy Horse Riders *DO* have etheralness, but ok, I suppose that is not enough. I did NOT want to give them any features which could be got by a blessing (such as Beserk), since these are the only holy units, as I wrote in my Readme, hence the lack thereof. But I see your point. Would you also accept slightly cheaper (65) or 1 better attack and/or both? Otherwise, yes, I could give them beserk-2, if this does make sense.

I'm not saying they're too good or not good enough; they seem about right. Rather, they are described as being "THE melee unit" but have nothing specifically melee about them. Why not give them a shortbow instead of a longbow, or precision 10, or remove the bow altogether and give them a special spear with 2x attacks (and only 2 damage, perhaps), or give Raiders 13 attack so that Crazies at least have a better melee attack than other units? Right now, I would strongly consider keeping Crazies at the rear and giving them a fire-9 bless (for awesome flaming longbow arrows), virtually immune to harm because they are really far away from the enemy and ethereal. But that sort of defeats their designed purpose, right?

- Hunting Bow Nerf -- ok. I never really bought so many Hunters, because the times I tested I never really had the Resources for them. I think I will increase the Resources on the hunter too.

Try buying a bunch... I was considering taking a screenshot of a huge Living Ermorian army advancing, right at the instant the green poison drop appeared on their icons, but decided not to. Those guys are - wow

- Foot Hunter Sucking: Ok. I didnt make many of these guys either. Cheaper ok? Ambidexterity... ok.

And 2 weapons + shield is a no-no You could add ambidextrity and remove shield, or just remove the dagger and let them keep the shield (and maybe make the spear poisoned).

- I cannot find a way to add Magic Resistance to items, hence I dispatched with any Items which did such. Am I missing something?

Yeah... you can't add MR to items. Basically, I was making a purely aesthetic suggestion, where you make a helmet:

#newweapon 250
#name "Talisman of Ancestral Spirits and Puppy Tails"
#type 4
#prot 0
#def 0
#enc 0
#end

...and give it to all the units. That way, even though you can't tell by right-clicking on the item name, the units seem less like super-humans with MR 11 and more like humans with MR 10 that are getting +1 MR from a magical talisman. Technically, nothing changes, since you hard-code 11 MR into the units either way (or 12 for units with magic war paint). But it's just a suggestion that has nothing to do with balance or gameplay.

THANKS TONS!!!

You're welcome =)

[tinkthank]

OK great stuff here, thank you.

Tauren: Yes, you are right. I dont want to go overboard, but I have decreased the cost of Treants by one and increased their hitpoints by 14. Maybe that is not enough, I will have to test more, I just dont want them too "über".
I have used an Elucidator often as a cheap preacher; he is much better in boosting Dominion than the Warrior Chieftan. (Now that the WC costs more (see below), I think it is a good deal too.) Maybe it is a matter of style; I use him a lot because I play the Preacher in a lot of games and try to keep my candles up higher than anyone else.
The Master of Dream Penalties cannot forge any decent Elemental equipment whatsoever, and he will need proper picks to be able to forge anything non-astral and non-nature, and (especially for the Nature) he is expensive for that. I agree that I do use him when I can, but I often cannot, so I dont really see a need for changing here, but I will change in the future, if need be, surely. I noticed I had to forge most with Mot4Ds and MM.

Scott, what stats do you need? You can grab everything you need from the .dm file, right?

OK, Cherry, what you are saying makes sense, I took another look and tried to do some testing, but was unable to complete due to my need to test YOUR mod ... ;-)

But here is what I have done so far:
- Increased price of Warrior Chieftan by 5
- Decreased Hunting Bow to Weak Poison -- I hope this will do
- Increased recources of Hunter by 2
- Made the foothunter only 15 gold, he lost his spear
- As indicated above, improved the Treant cost/HP ratio

Cherry, a fire blessing will NOT give you flaming arrows, it ONLY works on melee weapons.
I have not yet figured out what to do, but will probably go with your suggestion in giving Crazies shortbows, or limit their ammo supply more (to 8 or so).

THANKS VERY MUCH!!!