New Ulm Pretender ?

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Originally posted by Hawkmoon:
Yeah...if I were so inclined..I could learn to use the modding tools but I am basically lazy and short on time. What little time I do have is to be spent playing...As for the take on Iron Faith...to each his own...we are all a bit hypocritical anyway...why not in gaming as well...heh heh heh..."Magick is bad !! Err....except for any and all artifacts/spells/rituals that allow me to crush, conquer and retain my position of authority that is...heh heh heh...I eman...I cuold make a sort of Knight character out of the mounted mage as was suggested but I want my Knigh to look like a Knight and have some background fluff...ah well.....we all have hopes and dreams....

Well, it's quite simple to mod a Pretender.
If you want, post here the stats and abilities you want your KnightGod to have and I'd make it up - I'll use a Knight bitmap (choose the one you prefer from the ingame knights) and will have it replace the Alchimist (Ulm special Pretender). Basically that's what have been done in the HoburgSP mod, you can also have a look at it if you want to make it yourself ...

[Wauthan]

This would be a kickass idea as far as I'm conserned. An immortal combatant pretender that's not a vampire queen.

Personally I would just rip the stats for the Black Lord unit, perhaps add two to each attribute for good measure, slap the "immortal" power on him and leave him at that. Good solid 0 point pretender right there.

But I'm sure you guys will want to add one or two more powers on it just to spice things up a bit.

[PvK]

I haven't read the 2.08 modding doc yet - just the mod description on the patch page. However, it sounds like there may still be a bit of a bother trying to get this to work perfectly, if we can't add new pretenders nor get rid of old abilities. I think the Alchemist is the only Ulm-only pretender, so we sort of have to use him, and he has three misc slots and the super-alchemy ability, which may not be possible to remove. So it may still not be impossible to get this entirely right yet.

PvK

[Hawkmoon]

Well...definitely looks like there is enough interest to grab K and J's attention at least. I have no idea what a "fair" statline would be for such a Knight Commander nor would I have a clue as to what "powers" to give him, I just know that I want one dangit...heh heh heh. And again...not really interested in modding the game...I don't think we're out of line asking for a new Pretender in a future patch. Making a new Pretender has to be far less arduous than making a whole new theme, you think ? Then again, I'm sure they have better things to do other than modify their product for the sake of a few squeaky hinges...never hurts to ask though, right ?

[Wauthan]

Well considering this pretender will be part of a mod I personally think you might as well replace any suitable pretender. I would like this kind of unit available not just when I play Ulm. Couldn't the mounted archmage or the freaklord be replaced? As far as I've noticed they are pretenders that don't see much use anyways.

[PvK]

You could, though the one I made was specifically Ulmish, and one needs to watch out for abilities that can't be cleared, though I assume #clear works better in 2.08 than in 2.06, in which case there may be little or no difficulties.

Ideally one could add pretenders choices to a nation, so you could have a Warrior Kings of Ulm mod offering various options without removing any.

But now we have leadership and path cost, we can do pretty close. I'll see if I can steal time soon to finish my shot at it.

PvK

[PvK]

Ok, I'm working on it now.

The problem with unwanted abilities on the pretender appears to have been solved in 2.08, as well as the needed abilities to mod starting dominion, path cost, and leadership values. Thanks Illwinter!!

So, the only real drawbacks now are that you lose a pretender choice in order to gain this one, and you can't add varieties of Kings to Ulm in one mod without offering them to several other nations at the same time. Also, the pretender effect on hitpoint based on domain strength isn't really thematic with a mortal king.

I thought another way to mod this would be to have a pretender Pope, and give the warrior king as a starting commander to Ulm. This would make sense because you can always ressurrect a pope , but the King would be mortal and not subject to Domain effects on health. However, the warrior king unit would be a big advantage to Ulm even if they don't take the pope pretender, so it'd be unbalanced in that case, unless I chop down the number of starting military units Ulm has. Maybe that's the way to go.

Or, do all three - mods are easy enough to make, except for the graphics.

PvK