Mod: MA Skavenblight 1.15 hotfix

[Kristoffer O]

Now I've tried 0.3 some.

I still got caught up in the summoning swamp Only researched thau 1 and evo 3. My prince of death just walked around with his armies and couldn't cast a single spell.

I found that I didn't recruit any troops at all, so no gutter runners for me. I spent all my money on Warlords, moulders and castles and then new warlords (some occasional other commanders). I got myself indie commandes to move troops with (feels a bit silly, but it bugged me when I had to stop summoning units). I only used my warlords to move troops when i accidentally had too much chaff.

I thought I was invincible, but with 4 mighty AI's it became hard when Machaka attacked me with even more chaff. Fortunately I spawned troops faster then he got them to the front. But, then an unforseen problem emerged. Maintenance. With Machakas advance my own expansion stopped and my army still grew. I found myself unable to recruit commanders unless I alchemized. And my maintenance continued to grow (as did my army). I find myself unable to start a research, as I can't generate money, and I can't stop getting chaff that costs maintainance. I should get some plague censers and put my warlords in their midst.

The other balancing factor I discovered were the cave fortresses. In most provinces skaven build 1200 castles. Thats good. I still managed to get 5 new ones rather early, but it made my expansion somewhat slower. I built mainly in forests, as they got 800 hillforts there.

I entirely avoided censer bearers after I played a short game where my armies and commanders got annihilated by my own poison . I got the doom-bell-hero in that game. Hoped he would become unequally obese, but no such luck

I got a most amazing assassin prophet, fat as Butterbean (he got himself the heroic obesity), Inberke by name. Eshin assassins are good, very good. They have higher att and def skills than most heroes and more than any recruitable unit I know of. Vanadrotdts got 14-16 right ? What will you do when you make dark elf assassins with WS9 ? Eshin only has 6 IIRC.

I also find it a bit strange that the assassins can instill uprisnings.

At first I was ipressed with the skavenslaves and thought that they were the way to go, but I soon realized they they were chaff. The chieftains summoning is probably not an issue. Warlords might be (each warlord generates 32 gold each turn) as clanrats with falchions are quite useful. Since they have high AP they do not suffer that bad from routs (and they do rout).

Turn 36 or something (spring year 3):
6 forts (and one lost to machaka)
27 warlords - 108 clanrats generated
4 chieftains - ? skaven slaves
6 master moulder - 6 rat ogres
1 moulder - 4 giant rats
1 plague priest - 3 pestilence clan
1 Warlock
5 assassins
a handful of other commanders to move troops

Income 1169
Maintainance 876 and growing

Machakas Manticore with Blade Wind is my main concern atm.

BTW - skavenslaves are quite resistant to area attacks . Only one of the three slaves get hit by each area attack.

[Sombre]

Saulot - Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure why you wouldn't bother with research, since the Skaven are actually quite good at it and can cast an array of excellent spells. Perhaps the allure of summon allies was too much for you, as it was for K O. Certainly I don't want people feeling research is pointless for the Skaven - when I played with them I didn't feel this way at all, but I wasn't trying to crank out a summoning system.

Were you using 0.2 or 0.3? In 0.3 the summoning of allies was nerfed quite a bit - only one rat ogre instead of two, increased upkeep costs, nor globadier or warpfire thrower allies etc.

Anyway, let me address the points you raised numerically.

1. Indeed they are. The Skaven army as a whole is fast and likes to lap around, which makes up for the fact that they tend to get torn to pieces by massed archers and nations like tienchi. Gian Rats, however, aren't the best fighters in the world. In fact they tend to take a few casualties then run away - as one might expect. Rat Ogres have much more staying power and like to berserk, but aren't supposed to be available in numbers unless you're going for a dedicated Moulder strat (which would work best with lots of blood, I reckon).

2. A fair point, but if I made them slower they would lose some utility as frontline/flank chaff. I'll think about it.

3. Originally they used the standard bite/claw, but in order to actually do damage to heavier infantry and properly represent their power in the Warhammer world (where 5 or so can tear up a unit) I wanted them to be better. I could have increased their strength and attack stats, but this would put them well out of line with my methods of stat conversion from WH to Dom3. Basically in WH they aren't penalised at all for not having weapons - their claws are as long and hard as shortswords after all. I felt the dom3 standard bite and claw attacks didn't really make sense as compared with random weapons, at least in the case of the Rat Ogres, so I upgraded them. In my tests Rat Ogres still get hacked to pieces by massed infantry, killing maybe 2 each before they go down. I might make them a bit weaker, but they are supposed to be a real handful for the enemy, so maybe changing their cost and availability makes more sense.

4. Gutter Runners are a unit I haven't changed since I stuck them in, so I'm not surprised they have balance issues. I agree with you in regards to the gutter blades, those will get weak poison instead of strong. Regarding the shuriken, the standard dom3 shuriken has these stats:

Damage - 1 (plus strength)
No. of attacks - 2
Range - strength
Prec - 0
Ammo - 4
Strong Poison

Pretty similar to the Eshin ones. More ammo, but no prec bonus. However this weapon is, as far as I know, only used by Jomonese Ninja, not something you'd be able to mass and not something that comes cheap. Because there's no 'medium poison' I'm going to give the Eshin shuriken 'weak poison' and I'm going to reduce the damage to -1, so they won't be too hot versus armoured troops. I could also push up the goldcost of the gutter runners, who as Eshin troops are supposed to cost a pretty penny, but this will already have made the significantly weaker (the strong poison was the real problem I think).

5. Plague Priest has no plague attack in 0.3. However you can now summon plague rats with a little blood magic, who look exactly like Moulder rats and can really ruin someone's day.

6. I dropped him to 130 gold in 0.3 (mostly by accident), but it's going back up in 0.4 and his

[Theonlystd]

Question


Pestilen Censor Bearers not having 100Poison Resistance .. I understand y the Monks dont have it.. But the Sacred units blessed from the god arent immune to the there own poison clouds?


Way of design?



Edit-Summoned the Plague Rats.. I got 10 regular giant rats.

[Sombre]

Oops, you're right. I'd fixed that on my version, but not the one I uploaded. May bad. It'll be fixed in 0.4 and plague rats do indeed kick ***.

Yes, they are supposed to take some poison damage - it sends them berserk more often than not and it's thematic - plague censer bearers are quite capable of killing themselves by breathing in too much incense. I'm not entirely happy with the way poison clouds and poison globes still kill off units with like 80 poison res - I think it's a flaw in the game,.. thus in the next version there will be a nifty spell available to plague priests and chantors (and grey seers, but they generally have better things to do) which for the cost of 1 death gem will grant poison immunity/greatly increased res to your army.

I might release 0.35 tonight, which will have no new graphical content, but will implement the bugfixes and balance changes mentioned in this thread.

[Sombre]

It's up, in case you hadn't noticed.

[Theonlystd]

Sombre said:
Oops, you're right. I'd fixed that on my version, but not the one I uploaded. May bad. It'll be fixed in 0.4 and plague rats do indeed kick ***.

Yes, they are supposed to take some poison damage - it sends them berserk more often than not and it's thematic - plague censer bearers are quite capable of killing themselves by breathing in too much incense. I'm not entirely happy with the way poison clouds and poison globes still kill off units with like 80 poison res - I think it's a flaw in the game,.. thus in the next version there will be a nifty spell available to plague priests and chantors (and grey seers, but they generally have better things to do) which for the cost of 1 death gem will grant poison immunity/greatly increased res to your army.

I might release 0.35 tonight, which will have no new graphical content, but will implement the bugfixes and balance changes mentioned in this thread.

Ah sounds like a good spell

Pretty much atm the Plague Monks,Censor bearers and poison globes guy have to be kept in a seperate army that i use to weaken the enemy army before the main one attacks it cause they end up killing more of my troops than the Enemy does if included with the main army

[Humakty]

I've playtested them on a big map, and they don't seem overpowered to mee.(v 0.35)I used mostly big units of glaive users, with various eshin/moulder/pestilent support, and I think they aren't specially tought : they rout way too easily to be of a great threat to the strongest armies (man, vanheim...).I only crushed agartha, which as usual used indeps, so I think they look quite balanced to me, as most summons they can cast easily have a cold cost. On a small map it may be easy to swarm with summons, but I don't think you can go without the stormvermins in the long run (10 morale !).I don't think you've got much work to do left on this one Sombre, and as usual what as been done is... Whaw. (I'm a warhammer bachground fan, and I've dreamed of a strategy PC game on warhammer for years

[Sombre]

Problems with morale can be offset a great deal by using Plague Priests to spam sermons along with their summoning of undead. I've also found mixing spawn created with the Pitbreeding spell into units does wonders to bring up their average morale (many spawn have mor 16) and of course if you can get plague monks to berserk they do very nicely as well.

In a recent test game I tried going for a Skryre heavy army (I had gone pestilens/moulder in the previous one) and it was very fun mangling stuff up using great hordes of slaves and brown clanrats backed up by warpfire throwers and spells.