Mod in Progress: Holy War

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

What was the limitation on #nextspells?

Ugh, I really shouldn't post right before sleepy-time. I meant the harcoded limit of newspells (It was 136 now, IIRC). That's not too much. CPCS uses these slots like mad (I didn't know of the limit when I was making it) which restricts its compactibility with other mods.

I'll have to be alot more conservative with spells in this mod. Shame, really. I had this cool flagnellation spell thought out for Blood. It would have given awesome buffs, but forced a lot mr-easily-negates affliction checks. It would have require like 6-7 spell slots thought, so it's a "no can do" at the moment.

Originally Posted by Trumanator

I was wondering how much damage my dominion was causing. Not that it helped me that much.

Well, it was annoying. I orginally had a Apothecary (Healer 20) in both of armies and thought that would be enough. Eventually, I had to put my all Alchemists of the Five Elements to heal, which was kind of non-efficient use 300gp mages. I lost one W3 Celestial Master to disease though.

[Burnsaber]

Now that Divine is sort of done, I've moved my efforts to the Priests. I'll probably start with the graphical works, since Divine was mostly code typing. I thought that I might just as well do graphics for the guys I'm going to add as magic site recruitables (I really don't like that most holy sites just give some random gem, they should do holy stuff).

So I did a bit of brainstorming and here's the results. Feel free to comment and contribute your ideas.

Independents:
Templars:
Hoburg Milita 483/ Pilgrim - cheap, militia grade unit with a bit higher morale, afflictions
Burgmeister Guard 271/ Templar Knight - Sacred Knights
Hoburg Crossbows 273/ Templars - Sacred elite heavy infantry
Hog Knight 1196/ Crusader - very elite but expensive sacreds, also a commander!!
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Hoburg Champion 272/ Templar Commander, sacred thug
Hoburg Priest 1195/ Warrior Monk, H1
Horticulturist 1198/Templar Abbot H2 - expensive, old




Units from holy sites:

- the 8 crosspath guys
- Follower - cheap religious minded troops
- Pilgrims
- Warrior Monks - sacreds, high def & att, but extremely vulnerable to arrows
- Scourges - Uber flagnellants
- Penitents - come in many flavours, former mercenaries that want to get their sins forgiven
- Tomb Wardens - soldiers with some anti-undead gear, lanters?
- Vanilla Flagnellants
- Temple Guardians - sacred infantry, get "homesick"
- Demon hunter - sacred anti-demon troops
- war Cleric - sacred cavalry. Spread faith by smashing skulls

Holy Commanders

- Mystic - 1?H1
- Mysticist - 1?H2 - old
- Rabble Rouser - F10%H1, summons followers
- Zealot - H1 commander flagnellat, summons flagnellants but causes unrest
- Preacher - H1 with inquistor
- Battle Pilgrim - summons pilgrims, standard?
- Wise Man - "Guru" rare, old, H3
- Warrior Priest - H1 priest that can fight
- Choirboy - Communion slave
- Choir leader - H1 auto communion master

[Burnsaber]

I decided to give everyone a sneak peek on the artwork I'll produce for these mods. I'll also shed some light on the methods I use to create these, in the case that someone is intrested.

The first thing to make clear is that I'm no artist. I can figure out how to basic shading (what areas of the picture are lighter/darker depending on where the "light" is coming from), but that's about it. I can't create anything from scratch (I've tried, but the poses are simply crimes versus geometry & anatomy and all proportions are wrong).

My method involves simply recoloring excisting KO's excellent base vanilla sprites and combining them to make new poses for the units. To show this, I've added images of the "base" sprites I used to the preview pic above.

I'll go over these pics one by one.

a) Pilgrim. I really like how he turned out. I just basically recolored the Mictlan Slave pic and widened him a bit to give the expression of wearing a thick robe.

b) Templar Knight. I just basically mixed & matched parts of several vanilla cavalry units and recolored the shield and cape. I originally had the Hospitaller Knight cross in the shield, but I decided not to include any real world symbols in the units. Templars are basically a knightly order dedicated to protecting Pilgrims on their joyrneys.

c) Templar. Well, you can't always win. I used Man's Warden as a base. I don't like the way he seems to be crouching, but it's working well enough. If I try make every pic perfect this mod will never be completed.

d) Crusader. Pretty much the same as Templar Knight.

e) Templar Commander. Ditto.

f) Templar Monk. Here I used a sprite I already made as a base. Just add some blingbling to a regular unit and you have a commander.

g) Templar Abbot. This is basically a recolor of "Augur" in Sombre's Arga Dis mod.

h) Battle Relic. I recolored the wooden telestic animate to marble and drew a simple golden box for it to hold. This unit was originally intented for HW: Divine as construction summon, but the new patch completely broke holy rituals, so I had to scrap it. The idea is that the box holds remains of some long dead saint and thus the statue is possessed by the saint's spirit. Currently I don't really know what to do with this pic. Perhaps a Earth/holy construct summon?

i) Stone Tablet. I basically copy-pasted parts of the monolith and used them to expand the orginal. The writing was a piece of cake. Currently I don't really know what to do with this pic. Perhaps a Earth/holy construct summon?

j) True Believer. I don't know who the base pic guy is. I just found him in a sprite dump picture. His pose intrigued me and I just drew him a robe, gave some stuff to hold to and a halo. Voila', now we have a generic human holy hero. I'll give him to each human nation which already doesn't have a hero with H3.

k) White Bandar. I did this over a year ago as a monkey hero. He is basically a recolor of basic bandar.

l) Earth Keeper. He's a Earth/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. Giving the stoneguy the torso of a Ulmish flaildude worked pretty well after some recoloring.

m) Fire Keeper. He's a Fire/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I originally had the whole halberd be bronze but it didn't look good. The black shaft really makes the weapon look badass.

n) Water Keeper. He's a water/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I'm also quite happy how this turned out, although I had to redo the kelp hair like 3 times before it looked good.

o) Air Keeper. He's a Air/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I just attached the torso of a valkyrie with a tiny air elemental and did some recoloring. I'm not happy with the shield though. I might get back to this and remove the shield.

p) Scourge. This guy will feature in few magic sites. Basically a beefed up flagnellant. He's just a simple recolor of the flail ulm infantry. The graphic looks quite sweet on the battlefield.

[Endoperez]

That almost counts as a sprite-making tutorial! Could you post that somewhere like the modding tips thread, and upload the image to a post?

While I'm not sure I agree with all of your choices (mostly thematic reasons), this is starting to look pretty good.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

That almost counts as a sprite-making tutorial! Could you post that somewhere like the modding tips thread, and upload the image to a post?

I took heed of this and put a link to the post in Modding Tips thread.
If people are intrested, I could probably whip up a "tutorial" of sorts where I go over the process step-by-step with several screenies and stuff.

Originally Posted by Endoperez

While I'm not sure I agree with all of your choices (mostly thematic reasons), this is starting to look pretty good.

Would you mind to elaborate? I'm always for increasing "thematicness".

[Endoperez]

Generic human hero for all human nations overlaps with prophet. Not a big problem.


Your changes to priests (as outlined in the first post, I hope it's not outdated) are worse:

Increasing priest levels. National priests aren't used, but neither are national military commanders. I wouldn't mind +1 holy to all priests and +1 holy to all holy spells, similar to DomII, only effect being increased preaching. It would hurt prophets, though, so you probably won't do that.

Totally banning indy priests. This one isn't a problem with the theme, but with gameplay, since it will affect many nations' preaching capability. Nations without mage-priests will have lots of trouble against armies supported by mage-priests, even if the mage-priests aren't improved as much.

[Jazzepi]

I'd like to see a tutorial with in depth editing.

Jazzepi

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Generic human hero for all human nations overlaps with prophet. Not a big problem.

Well, to admit, that info was outdated. I gave the orginal H4 hero idea some thought and noticed it was pretty.. extreme. My orginal idea was that all nations should have at least theoretical access to H4 (without the Sword of Justice). A H3 hero is enough and I won't add a second one to nations that already have H3 on a hero. I really haven't studied yet which nations lack at least H3 hero, but at least monkeys are in this binge.

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Increasing priest levels. National priests aren't used, but neither are national military commanders. I wouldn't mind +1 holy to all priests and +1 holy to all holy spells, similar to DomII, only effect being increased preaching. It would hurt prophets, though, so you probably won't do that.

Well yeah, military commanders are quite hopeless. There is simply no way to redeem them. But priests have hope. The new divine spells from HWD* are a sizeable carrot to recruit them, especially when combined with the decrease of holy levels on mage-priests. Yeah, mages will still rule supreme, but I'm no miracle worker. The best effect I can hope for is that from time to time the player will recruit a national priest to offer some combat support and to do some preaching.

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Totally banning indy priests. This one isn't a problem with the theme, but with gameplay, since it will affect many nations' preaching capability. Nations without mage-priests will have lots of trouble against armies supported by mage-priests, even if the mage-priests aren't improved as much.

In my experience, dominion really isn't *that* important. The morale swing can be nasty, but it's not that big of a deal if you prepare for it. Besides, if your opponent is using his mage-priests to preach, it's probably not the most cost effective use of themand you'll trumph over him since your mages actually have researched some useful spells instead of preaching.

Besides, there will be lots of indy priests if you bother to look for them. Many of the new common holy sites* will allow recruitment of Priests in many varieties (Rabble Rousers, Preachers, Warrior Priests, Zealots, Templar Monks,... etc). However if this proves to be a problem, I could just allow some of the rarer indy priests (like Hoburg & Amazons).

*I haven't decided yet on how many holy sites there will be with HW on. Remember that I'll be overwriting many of the old ones in the process. Perhaps 15 common sites, 15 uncommon ones and 5 rare? I'll have to run a lot of test with this until I find the number which will make the holy sites *sorta* common (I know that because holy lacks a radar it's a but micro to have sites that must be manual-searched, so I won't be making them that common)

Originally Posted by Jazzepi

I'd like to see a tutorial with in depth editing.

Jazzepi

Then you'll get one. In the next weekend, probably. I'll just have to figure out which unit will a good example. It will probably be the rabble-rouser. He will require recoloring, parts from 2 base sprites and the creation of a torch!

[llamabeast]

WOW! Those sprites are absolutely top-notch. I'm very much looking forward to playing with this (which may be after release unfortunately, depending on thesis woes).