Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[Warhammer]

After reading the entire thread, I think this is best/most easily solved by increasing the upkeep or the initial cost of the sacreds. Once you get in the realm of changing unit stats such as strength, armor, etc., you change the balance between nations too much. Tweaking the cost of the units preserves the uniqueness of the units, and allows for a more moderate tweak. It might take a couple of tries to settle on the exact costs, but it is the easiest way to handle it.

[HoneyBadger]

I think this thread has by now 7 or 8 different topics, but it was a joke anyway so it really doesn't matter.

[Saxon]

Humans are very good walkers comparativly. Horses are seen as strong, as they carry us, but actually spend most of the day standing in place, eating grass.

Have you heard about the hunting of kangaroos? You just follow it all day. It will hope away each time you get close, so you just keep going. That night, you both lie down to rest. In the morning, you walk over and hit it in the head. The lactic acid build up is so much the kangroo (built for sprints) cannot move the next day, but the human is just fine.

Speaking of which, we need kangaroo's in this game. Perhaps in Dom 4 we can have a nation with that mythology in it. Kangaroos jumping over heavy infantry and attacking archers/mages?

[Twan]

A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae
low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)
high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors

[Endoperez]

Twan said:
A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae

Freezing Mist, W3A1, Evoc 3, 1 AN damage on AoE of 4+. Only mediocre range.

low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)

Darkvision would become even less useful than it currently is. Some nations are supposed to have a benefit. It only comes into play in very late game (Darkness) or when they defend their castles (Cave Castle, Cave Citadel etc), and if anyone with Nature (anyone after a while) could circumvent this, well... I'd rather have few illusion-strong nations than few underground ones made even weaker.

low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune

Eye of the Void is Constr 4, S1 and gives the commander with it an ability to dispel nearby illusions, similar to your suggested True Seeing ability. Regeneration (Thaum 3, N3 for AoE 1, Thaum 8, N4 for whole battlefield), reinvigoration (Relief) and increased magic resistance (Tempering the Will, Antimagic) are other abilities that a commander gets from Constr 4 item, and as you can see, abilities of this level aren't given to units in low-level spells. It isn't a perfect comparison, of course, but I don't think "true seeing" is supposed to be that easy to come by.

high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors

What about flying creatures? Mistform? Ethereal? True ethereal? Capability of canceling out Mistform and mirror images (both Air effects) would work; being unable to affect flying units would make Valkyries immune. Affecting ethereal creatures would be strange as it would kill Ghosts and such. Dispelling Phantasmal creatures would be strange because then this would be a very spesifically anti-Air spell.

[Twan]

Darkvision will become useful once maps will be made with (dark) cave provinces, then spells will be needed to grant darkvision.

Eye of the Void is the cheapest +2 penetration item, don't know if anybody already made one for the anti-illusion flavor effect.

Freezing mist is a crosspath spell including a level 3 skill so isn't a common spell. I was thinking about a spell a common elemental mage can cast (say f2 *or* w2).

The last spell is of course another anti-illusion spell and illusions are an air magic thing. As air is near impossible to develop with a non air nation, it's one of the many anti air spells that should exist out of air magic.

[DrPraetorious]

The cavalry in this weight range don't generally pay for barding - none of the amazons do, for example, including the onyx maiden who has almost entirely the same equipment (she costs 1 RP less since she doesn't have a javelin.)

Beyond that, given the speed of the Fey horses, it seems pretty obvious they are not wearing barding. It'd be nice if there was some way for enemy units to exploit a lack of barding on your horses.

maybe - when a mounted unit is repelled by a reach weapon, it has to resist a big pile of stun damage using the barding? Then the barding would need to be specified and have a rating, this is getting off topic anyway.

Now, if it were needful to raise the resource cost of Vans (which I don't think it is, but for the sake of argument), we could just have them wear light-weight, magical barding, which seems common enough in Vanheim, and would presumably have the same resource cost as whatever barding slightly heavier cavalry usually get.