Mod: Epic Heroes Mod -Version 1.5 Released

[Xietor]

Beta version 0.14 adds a good bit of content.

There were the balance changes to the Blood Jarl, Elephantarch, and Fallen Angel.

Two new heroes were added thanks to Foodstamp and Dr. Praetorious.

And I changed Ermor's hero to one that hopefully is unique!

The weapon numbers used, armor number used, and custom names used are up to date. Hopefully the credits are up to date as well.

The updated list is now:

1. The Black Phoenix, Abysia
2. The Obsidian Medium, Agartha(added by Endoperez)
3. The Monkey King, Bandar Log(added by Endoperez)
4. The Blood-Cursed Champion, Mictlan
5. Beowulf, Man
6. The Blood Jarl, Jotunheim
7. The Fallen Angel, Pythium(Bandar Lover's idea)
8. The Immortal Assassin, Machaka
9. The Black Duke of Ulm, Ulm(Arralen's Black Steel Ulm Hero, modified a bit).
10. Black Heart Treant, Pangaea
11. The Sacred Yeti, Caelum
12. The Ancient Ophidian, Ctis
13. Grand Elephantarch, Arcosephale
14. Tithe Collector, Marignon
15. Misshapen Angel, Ermor
16. Mad Tinker, Vanheim
17. Ancient Master, Shin.
18. Li Bo, T'ien Ch'i(Dr. Praetorious)
19. Cathbad, Eriu (Foodstamp)


Enjoy! I will be adding one more hero in the near future, then doing a good bit of play testing while I await some heroes being done by others.

[Xietor]

This version adds Soulstealer, an epic hero for the R'lyeh.
Summoned through the void gate from a distant star-and it was not real happy about it.

Also, Ctis' Epic Hero gets a very unique new monster.
I just love this guy, and thanks to Amos for the sprite!

The updated list is now:

1. The Black Phoenix, Abysia
2. The Obsidian Medium, Agartha(added by Endoperez)
3. The Monkey King, Bandar Log(added by Endoperez)
4. The Blood-Cursed Champion, Mictlan
5. Beowulf, Man
6. The Blood Jarl, Jotunheim
7. The Fallen Angel, Pythium(Bandar Lover's idea)
8. The Immortal Assassin, Machaka
9. The Black Duke of Ulm, Ulm(Arralen's Black Steel Ulm Hero, modified a bit).
10. Black Heart Treant, Pangaea
11. The Sacred Yeti, Caelum
12. The Ancient Ophidian, Ctis
13. Grand Elephantarch, Arcosephale
14. Tithe Collector, Marignon
15. Misshapen Angel, Ermor
16. Mad Tinker, Vanheim
17. Ancient Master, Shin.
18. Li Bo, T'ien Ch'i(Dr. Praetorious)
19. Cathbad, Eriu (Foodstamp)
20. Soulstealer, R'lyeh(idea of a void assassin-tyrian)

I am going to be hosting a 9 player mp game soon featuring the Epic Hero Mod, the Worthy Hero Mod, and the reduced old age mod. Maybe another mod also, but undecided on that one.

The map is 110 provinces, 8 water. And the water spot is the best spot. Hopefully I can run it on llamabeast's server with a 24 hour a turn host rate.

[Xietor]

Beta version .17 corrected many errors. Some duplicate monster numbers were causing some improper dominion summoning. All 20 of the epic heroes have been tested now.

I reorganized the mod so that all new weapons are listed in order at the start of the mod. Before the mod leaves Beta, the same will happen to new armor and new monster summons. Did not have time or energy to tackle that today.

Beta .17 adds my last epic hero to the mod, the renegade starspawn for Atlantis. The final epic hero is under construction now by Edi. My goal is to bring the mod out of beta on Thursday.

Mictlan's hero has really been beefed up. No one seems to want to play Mictlan in mp. Well its starting hero can take provinces solo from the start. He is not invincible though, as he was killed taking the 2nd province i attacked with him, that had 3 lighting casters. he died in 1 round to lighting bolts. He also was given berserk, so he will win or die in fights. Sort of his curse. So it would still pay to be prudent with him. Jaguar warriors come to him in huge numbers.


The updated list is now:

1. The Black Phoenix, Abysia
2. The Obsidian Medium, Agartha(added by Endoperez)
3. The Monkey King, Bandar Log(added by Endoperez)
4. The Blood-Cursed Champion, Mictlan
5. Beowulf, Man
6. The Blood Jarl, Jotunheim
7. The Fallen Angel, Pythium(Bandar Lover's idea)
8. The Immortal Assassin, Machaka
9. The Black Duke of Ulm, Ulm(Arralen's Black Steel Ulm Hero, modified a bit).
10. Black Heart Treant, Pangaea
11. The Sacred Yeti, Caelum
12. The Ancient Ophidian, Ctis
13. Grand Elephantarch, Arcosephale
14. Tithe Collector, Marignon
15. Misshapen Angel, Ermor
16. Mad Tinker, Vanheim
17. Ancient Master, Shin.
18. Li Bo, T'ien Ch'i(Dr. Praetorious)
19. Cathbad, Eriu (Foodstamp)
20. Soulstealer, R'lyeh(idea of a void assassin-tyrian)
21. Renegade Starspawn(idea of Edi).

[Xietor]

I am happy to announce that Epic Heroes Mod is out of beta. Heroes have been tested, typos removed, mod files organized, and a text file added to thank the many contributors to the mod.

The final list:

1. The Black Phoenix, Abysia
2. The Obsidian Medium, Agartha(added by Endoperez)
3. The Monkey King, Bandar Log(added by Endoperez)
4. The Blood-Cursed Champion, Mictlan
5. Beowulf, Man
6. The Blood Jarl, Jotunheim
7. The Fallen Angel, Pythium(Bandar Lover's idea)
8. The Immortal Assassin, Machaka
9. The Black Duke of Ulm, Ulm(Arralen's Black Steel Ulm Hero, modified a bit).
10. Black Heart Treant, Pangaea
11. The Sacred Yeti, Caelum
12. The Ancient Ophidian, Ctis
13. Grand Elephantarch, Arcosephale
14. Tithe Collector, Marignon
15. Misshapen Angel, Ermor
16. Mad Tinker, Vanheim
17. Ancient Master, Shin.
18. Li Bo, T'ien Ch'i(Dr. Praetorious)
19. Cathbad, Eriu (Foodstamp)
20. Soulstealer, R'lyeh(idea of a void assassin-tyrian)
21. Renegade Starspawn(idea of Edi).
22. King-in-Exile, Oceania(Edi).

This version is not intended to be "final." This mod is my baby and I will always be refining the descriptions. In fact the Black Treant's descr. has been fine tuned a bit already, but that does not warrant a new version.

When I host a mp game, and receive feedback on balance issues, changes will be made. To prevent having new versions every day, now that the Mod is live(out of beta), new versions will include several changes made over the course of a week.

In fact, changes will be made daily to the mod, likely for weeks to come, before i am happy with every descr. The only descr. that is 100 percent safe is the Obsidian Medium, and that is only because Endoperez and I literally spent many hours going over every phrase in that descr.

[Xietor]

I am going to keep a running tab here of the changes for 1.1. When enough are made, i will release 1.1


1. Black Heart Treant-
a. descr is improved
b. added 1n and 1e.

2. Tithe Collector
a. itemslot issue fixed(he had 2 heads 3 misc)
In 1.1 he will have 1 head and 2 misc. I did catch this myself, but how i missed it when i did a preview of all 22 heroes is puzzling.
b. minor typo corrected

3. Ancient Ophidian-descr tweaked, typo corrected.

4. Sacred Yeti-

a.precision increased.

b. makemonster ability changed from 3 wingless to 1 winter wolf.

c. Magicleader added(so he can lead his winter wolves).

5. Grand Elephantarch:

a. Elephant Barding's prot lowered, so his starting prot is now 15.

b. His make unit ability changed from 2 heart companions to 2 hoplites.

c. Elephantarch enc raised from 0 to 1.

6.Black Phoenix-fire imps come to him now in great numbers.

7. Blood Jarl-

a. ice imps now radiate cold(even though fire imps do not radiate fire), and they have ice prot(stronger in cold weaker in hot climates).

b. Blood Jarl lost his free blood slave a turn abilty.

[jutetrea]

I ran the mod on a 22 human player map, just to check out the heroes and summons. These are initial impressions only and have not been playtested. I'm very excited about the mod and loved what I saw. Any nation I do not make mention of means I love the hero and how it fits and have no comments other than Schweeet!

Very strong, too strong?
Ulm, Man, Arco, Bandar
These seem to be SC's in their own right. Just by looking at the stats and not play testing, they seem to be more powerful than most summons and quite a few semi-sc pretenders. The low hp are their biggest weakness, but they would still dominate SP (probably defeatable with SC specific MP strategies, but pretty much all are). This is mostly off just stats, some of the items are really cool but pretty crazy - and then there are the summons. Essentially free gold for fantastic troops.
32 prot!

Summoning sacreds.
I think the Mict hero is damn cool, but 5(?) free sacreds a turn? that's 120 free gold right off the bat, no hit on the max dominion-based recruiting, and pretty much sweet units to begin with. Maybe just warriors.
Arco - not too terrible, but I think should be regular hoplites and not sacred HC's.
C'tis - sacred serpents, were never very impressed by them to begin with, but still sacred, low upkeep and blessabel.

Machaka - what a sweet ability! love it! Almost too powerful, but very, very cool. Does decay have a max amount of aging/damage or do they age till their dead? If till dead I actually think its too powerful. If he gets one shot off on a 300 hp unit and it dies.. that's a bit much. Maybe use the sharpest tooth's poison?

Black phoenix - looks real cool, love the artwork. Possibly weak?

Weak heroes, IMO (or maybe still good, but not up to snuff with the others)
Caelum - bit average, did i miss anything?
Pan - bit too nerfed? or is it still a gangbuster?
Van - compared to the others this guy seems very weak. Does he have a special I didn't notice? Essentially just a free 200g mage.
Oceania - bit average it seems, did I miss anything?

Ry'leh - scary, very much like the lack of slots. How does this guy do in melee?

Shin - love the hero, appropriate summons (good but not as fantastic as above), cool abilities

Tien - would dropping 1S and adding either 1F or 1E break him? Astral isn't a huge problem and can get randomly, cannot get 3F or 3E randomly.

Love it and definitely want to get in on your first game. I'd almost recommend random nations as well.

[jutetrea]

would also love to see this extended to EA

[Xietor]

Talk to Kristopher!

I love Dominions, but I never realized when I tackled this mod how much work would be involved in cranking out 22 unique thematic heroes-and i had a good bit of help. So I did not have to do all 22.

We are talking maybe one hundred hours of work. And I will be play testing, looking for ways to improve the descrs. for at least a month.

Turin is going to incorporate at least some of these heroes into his Worthy Heroes, but only for the EA and LA. I did not want these heroes used in the ma of worthy heroes, as it would seem weird to have 2 of Beowulf.

And Epic Heroes Mod(MA) may inspire someone else to do one for the EA or LA. I really believe that having a starting epic hero should cost design points, and maybe that would be a feature of Dom IV. For 40 points you start with your race's epic hero.

Still have not received much feedback on the likes or dislikes of the various heroes besides Beowulf. I am always curious to know how they are being received, and possible ways to improve upon them.