Rate of feedback on nation mods

[Kristoffer O]

I would love to play some warhammer mods. Skaven in particular. It was a while since I played WFB, but I still have a Dark Elf army somewhere. Screaming bell could be a national construct much like the juggernaut.

I think I personally prefer cliché-mods and rip-off-mods, since I can get into them quickly and get a grip. Since I do not play very much dom3 nowdays I would probably not give myself time to get into an entirely new nation, i.e. I'm lazy when it comes to dom3 playing.

If I were to play seriously and with other players I would probably prefer a game with new ones, if balanced that is.

A lotr mod would be great. During the development of Dom PPP a friend made a six player (3 vs 3) scenario on a homemade middle earth map. It was a very fun, but not fully balanced game. It was unmodded, but fun anyway. Ermor was placed in Mordor, Jotun in Isengard, Vanheim in Lorien and Rivendell, Ulm in Gondor and Man in Rohan. Not sure who the last one was. Abysia as Haradrim perhaps.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, maybe I'm coming round. Go skaven!

I reckon (without having put much thought in) they might be the most interesting Warhammer nation to do. Orcs and goblins are cool too, but my need for them was covered by Vaettiheim. The elves and Bretonnians are basically already done by Sylvania and Teutanion respectively. The undead races are kind of covered already. Lizardmen are a bit like C'tis. I suppose there's dwarves and dark elves as well, but they're not as interestingly different as skaven.

[Sombre]

Well in that case I'll stick it on my to-do list and have a quick go at graphics in the next hour or so, see how viable it is.

Couple of additions to the above army list - Plague Monks and Plague Priests with poison res, plus poison cloud producing censor bearers. Also the Verminlord Greater Daemon as a high end national summon. It's amazing how well 90% of warhammer stuff actually fits in dom3.

[Sombre]

Oh and re: other warhammer nations - I honestly don't see myself getting tired of dom3 for a good few years, especially if I can find a few cool folk to have the odd pbem game with, such as llama. So in the due course of time I could end up making all the sides from warhammer - for me doing the graphics is as relaxing as painting the miniatures.

[Sombre]

Attached (if it works) is a first draft of a clanrat. I wanted to get the general shape of the thing looking right before I did anything fancy, so it's a bit rough looking. Warhammer models are sort of cartoony and distorted, so I had to compensate, imagine what a 'dom3 Skaven' would look like. I based it upon the classic plastic model clanrats that tended to be used in droves.

[llamabeast]

That is _awesome_ Sombre!

*llamabeast is excited*

[Sombre]

Just for kicks I made a very quick template for gutter runner and assassin, just by draping the clanrat I made in a quick tatty robe and repositioning him slightly.

It's amazingly effective, just dropping a robe on something ;]

Please do bear in mind this stuff is all rough work and hopefully I'll be able to clean it up if I were to release it as final - I'm just blitzing through different things seeing how hard skaven would be.

Anyway, image should be attached.

[Sombre]

Ok, ok, LAST ONE TONIGHT, I promise ;]

Here's a poison wind globadier I knocked up. Again, it's a rough draft if you will.

[HoneyBadger]

Honestly? I try very hard *not* to give a lot of feedback, just because I have so many ideas of my own, and ways of looking at things in my head that, if you ask me for suggestions, most of the time I'll just end up telling you how to create an entirely different nation from what you had in mind.
I've done it before, and I'll probably end up doing it again, but I really try to avoid it because it's obnoxious and impolite-and really serves little purpose other than to confuse people.

If I see something I like-and the mods here are absolutely fantastic-I will try to say something, *if* I see something specific that I can compliment on without rambling on about it (like I am now). At the same time, there are mods I like just because they fit my own style and ideas. For instance, Amos's mods are absolutely professional, works of art, BUT they're not balanced for vanilla (or so he says) so they're not ones I pay the most attention to right now, because I'm still trying to learn the game.

I have favorite mods (Amos's among them, even though I don't use them that often), but that's just my opinion. I haven't seen any truly lousy mods.

The worst one I've seen was Uh-nu-buh's Hive mod, and that was very clearly and obviously a work in progress that he never completed, and I liked the concepts and ideas behind it so much that I redid the artwork for it and asked his permission to complete it and release it as a finished product. He hasn't answered me back about that, and it's been about a month, so I am going to assume he doesn't care and release it under his name when I get a chance.

So, yes, everyone is doing brilliantly. I am very *very* appreciative of the hard work that's been put into the mods-and I'd really like to see them taken a little more seriously than they sometimes seem to be. I only compliment sparingly because I don't want to seem to be judging some mods as better than others-mind you, some *are* better, but that's like judging one gift as better than another because one's more expensive.

All the mods are gifts, and I recognise that.

I don't know if this is true, but I believe some of the mods from Dom2 were incorporated into the Dom3 game by the Devs? I think that's the right attitude and direction.

The Devs *do* put in a lot of work on the nations they release, and it's wonderful that they do-we wouldn't be here without them-but atleast some of the mods have had just as much, or even more, work put into them, because they're individual labors of love compared to the labor-as a whole-that is Dom3.
It's an effort on a smaller scale, but one that we as a community can be proud of for each other and for ourselves.

[HoneyBadger]

I wanted to break this up because I have so much to say on this subject, and it was getting hard to read.

Foodstamp, Sombre, I download all your mods. Infact, Haida would be one of the first nations I'd like to see added to Dom4 as official, off the top of my head. Please continue to make mods, because they're awesome, and I use them all the time.

This is the part where I rant about nations and my ideas/suggestions for them-even though I explicitly said I wouldn't. It's a weakness and a character flaw, so please forgive me or atleast feel free to ignore me.

Skaven's a terrific idea. I think you could have an absolutely, Dominion-ey, credible nation based on rat-men. I think anyone wanting to transform the basic Warhammer-style Skaven into a Dominions nation could benefit greatly from reading James Herbert's Rats trilogy-The Rats, Lair, and Domain (and the graphic novel based on them-The City.)

There's rat-soldiers, giant black rats, truly disgusting and horrifying mother rats, and rat zombies. It's fun stuff.

You could even include the concept of the "Rat King" (try Wiki) and China Meiville's novel of the same name.

For some reason, don't ask me why, I'd really like to see a kind of Asian riverboat pirate rat-man with a head-band weilding twin katanas. Don't ask me why, I can't explain myself other than to suggest it's a flashback from TMNT.

Anyway, as you can see, I'm a fanatical freak when it comes to nation mods. I love them and can't get enough. I'm currently working on like 15 and none of them are getting done, because I don't have the time to work on them, and I honestly don't have the time to download/play every single nation mod right now-but I will, eventually.

So, please keep making them, if only to keep me off medication And please, please, please update them for 3.08 and later patches! If you don't, then I don't know if they're going to work for me or not, and my computer's twitchy as it is.

And, if anyone's crazy or bored enough (both preferrably) to want to make a nation based on one of my ideas, please feel free to contact me. I'm also quite willing to help others make their own-I just again may not have the time.

Finally (you guessed it-when I have the time) I'm planning on creating, or atleast helping/encouraging the creation of, a massive multi-player mod, based on Perpetuality, which incorporates several (atleast 10, I'd like 21) nation mods into it, as well as all the vanilla mods of every era, run on the "little artizanal map"-itself a mod-of 1200+ provinces.

Hopefully, that will help spread the word and familiarize people with the nation mods that are out there, and how they work, compared to the vanilla nations.