Mod: Epic Heroes Mod -Version 1.5 Released

[DrPraetorious]

Li Bo does put out a tremendous heap of research - but he mostly has paths you get on your mages anyway, and MA T'ien Ch'i would not be inclined to take a rainbow pretender for that reason. He's got a lot of *total* picks, but not a single 4, and the only magic diversity he adds is fire.

If he had 4F3E3D he'd be much more powerful even though he had six fewer magic picks.

MA T'ien Ch'i is also generally regarded as something of a weak position, so it "deserves" a strong hero. So if all he does is crank out science, I think that's fair.

That said, he could easily lose the crazy weaponry, which I didn't put on him. With that armament you can use him as a SC leader on turn 2 to take provinces.

[Xietor]

Good comments. I really appreciate the in depth comments Turin. I really do. And they are all accurate, though i will
not make all of the changes.

The hero for Arcos will have a high mr. As do all of the heroes. I know elephants have low mr, but he is just riding the beast. If it dies he will ride another. He has better moves than most elephants because that is consistent with his descr. An added bonus is it allows him to fire his 3 crossbows, then still catch up with the pack to attack!

Ermor-the unintended effect is he does not look like an angel! He is a sad sight compared to an angel. He is small and shrunken. His radiant aura is gone! Air Magic? Gone!

As to the recuperation, I decided that all epic heroes that are not immortal get that ability. Arcos. does not, but he has priestesses that can heal his afflictions. Thematic or not, I made the decision that we will not have crippled Epic Heroes.

"Machaka: Why is he ethereal and doesn´t need his eyes? Powerlevelwise he is fine compared to the other heroes, but some backstory explanation would be nice."

He does not need eyes because he has acute night vision being an assassin trained by black sorcerors. The best magical assassins do not need flashlights! He is ethereal
because many dom III assassins are ethereal AND his skin was burned away and reformed thousands of times, making it less substantive.

"Argatha: Maybe add a research bonus? would fit with the sage theme of the statue." Agreed and done.

"Abysia: awesome!" Thank you.


"Caelum: Very cool, typo in the mod file though stealth should be stealthy and shouldn´t he get the animal tag?"
yes and yes.


"Atlantis: Death magic doesn´t really make sense to be forbidden in r´lyeh, since the starspawns get it as randoms, blood magic would be a lot more fitting. I´d also remove the wraith sword since it´s not shown in the pic. His etherealness's is questionable too."

You cannot show everything in his picture. Just because you do not see a wraith sword, does not mean he does not own one. And the fact that starspawns do death magic makes his death magic more thematic then blood. It is more natural for a starspawn to have death magic. The descr says he was banned for casting spells even the rlyeh forbid. Just because the rlyeh have limited death magic, does not mean they are open to all of its potential uses. He was not outcast for knowing death magic, but putting it to forbidden uses.

Atlantis is another of those "weaker" races, and that is why he is ethereal. It is not that big a deal, as he has astral magic and can cast it anyway. Maybe he found a way to keep it up permanently.

I renamed Ulm's lance and removed his poison resist. He has death magic because of his dark past that is hinted at in his descr. He has partial fire resist because he is a master smith and works around forges a lot.

I added a more thematic ranged attack for the Blood-Cursed Champion.

Tien Chi's weapons/armor were removed. We are getting ready to play a mp game, and the good Dr. is playing Tien Chi. So we can get a better idea of his abilities in a mp setting soon.

Marignon slots fixed, and he was given the 3 map moves.

[Turin]

You are forgetting nature 3, which you can´t get and which is a huge jump in power because it lets you access gift of health and mother oak with boosters.
Also air 3 which is very important considering it lets you forge boosters. You can get it from CMs, but the chances are only one in 160.
Additionally he gets earth 2, CMs only get earth one and earth 2 is another milestone for earth boosters.
Well and s3 as well, which is another 1 in 160 chance.

So maybe he doesn´t add a lot of diversity, but he significantly increases the maximum realistically attainable magic level of Tien´chi in 5 paths right from the start of the game. If he lost one in every magic path he would be comparable to the worthy heroes version of tien´chi´s heroes. And those are generally considered to be among the best heroes in the game.

[DrPraetorious]

I certainly wouldn't argue that Li Bo is useless. HOWEVER, if you were to take away his +1 on all paths, he'd be an EA celestial master. That's quite nice to have but hardly epic.

If you gave this guy to MA Ermor I agree, he'd be completely frickin' nuts

Put another way - most of the epic heroes are inferior pretenders. Some of them are inferior SC pretenders, some of them are inferior magic-diversity pretenders, and some of them mainly spawn troops (which more pretenders should do, IMO, some of them can but it's pretty useless.)

Li Bo, on the other hand, is an inferior rainbow pretender. If you think rainbow pretenders are backflips of better than SC or magic diversity pretenders, yeah, he's unbalanced. Otherwise he's not.

[Turin]

Ok if EA Celestial masters get a total of 10 magic picks you are right, but last I checked they get only 7 to 8, aren´t immortal and are old.

As for inferior rainbow pretender, creating him with a the cheapest rainbow chassis for the paths he has would be the frost father, which costs 255 points. Add at least another 100 for immortality, the holy levels, blessability and the low dominion a standard rainbow brings. I don´t think inferior applies here. Are any of the other heroes worth even close to 350 design points?

[DrPraetorious]

Let's compare him to the Abductor that EA Niefelheim gets in the basic game (who is also a sacred priest, so that's a wash.)

To get WWWDDDAAA off of a destroyer of worlds (a roughly equivalent chassis, and the only giant IIRC that starts with two of WDA) costs 247 points.

I think you greatly overestimate immortality - if you really think that's worth as much as 6 magic picks, strip the immortality off, but on a unit that can't actually fight, it's only a big deal because of the recuperation, and *all* the heroes get that. Also, rainbow pretenders are penalized for their flexibility by lowering their starting dom - and since Li Bo *doesn't* take paths which T'ien Ch'i doesn't already get (except for two fire) it's really unfair to penalize him in that respect.

If you really must give him fewer magic picks, give him magic picks in other categories instead of what he gets now, otherwise he's just a researcher.

Totally design points, by the way, is a much better comparison than totalling picks since, as has been pointed out, more picks in one category is generally better (up to a point) than a few picks in many categories.

[Turin]

Edit: Just noticed that Xietor has toned the tien´chi hero down reasonably, so the stuff below doesn´t really apply anymore. I´ll leave it here, because it´s fun arguing with Dr. Praet.


Umm why not use the Son of Niefel, which is actually a far better chassis than the hero in question, costs only 213 points, spawns units and has one point higher dominion than a rainbow chassis.
Considering that the abductor is probably the best hero in the base game that should tell you something about li bo.

And immortality on a high level mage hero with access to teleport spells is incredibly useful for suicide tactics like porting, summon earth power and casting rain of stones. Later on you can use him as a wrathful skies caster together with a retreating staff of storm wielder and the only thing you risk is an air booster.
He also is the bane of any SC, you can simply teleport in and then try to charm/curse/horrormark with no risk at all.

The immortality gets even better when you consider that you can easily take a high dom thug pretender, since libo covers virtually all your magic needs with the exception of death magic.

In addition Li bo gives you easy access to the following important globals, items and spells which tien´chi usually doesn´t get/would need to design a pretender for:
Mother oak
gift of health
flaming arrows
dwarven hammers
air boosters
earth boosters
treelords staff
gaia´s blessing
golem construction
army of gold

etc

[DrPraetorious]

You greatly overestimate the importance of the nature - you can summon that off of a Naiad at conjuration 5, not exactly science fiction level stuff. Those combat spells (of which you forgot arrow fend) can be cast pretty easily through a communion (except gaia's blessing) - one of the few things MA T'ien Ch'i actually can do well is build communion matrices.

Yeah, he enables MA T'ien Ch'i to cast somecool stuff which it can't otherwise do. The real question is: why can't MA T'ien Ch'i do any cool stuff?

Is it because it's a MA nation that only gets one 3, and that's in water which is easy to boost? All you've done is drive home the point that MA T'ien Ch'i can get a really good hero without unbalancing anything.

If you were concerned about his total points cost or total number of picks, you could pull off an air, drop the water entirely and he'd be much cheaper, no less powerful, but less thematic. He's a master of the way, he has to have water magic even though you don't even want it. Likewise the nature; that's more useful than the water but still hardly where you'd invest points if you were designing a T'ien Ch'i pretender. It's a small research bonus mainly included for thematic purposes, which is also why he's immortal.