Mod: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail

[Burnsaber]

Alrighty, quick balance update due to the very scary and unintented Hinnom (pre-fix) level expansion! Many thanks for the Radio Star for the report. Now the Lord, Marquis and Duke all have a honour guard of 1 mounted KoTR. I dropped gold costs slightly to compensate.

In my testing with the v0.81, Radio Star's expansion strat still works, but the expansion parties have to stop to summon more chaff after 2-3 provinces or put the Marquis at an considerable risk (basically you either have to put the Marquis or the chaff in the harm's way). Also, sometimes the expansion party is utterly humiliated when the honour guard KoTR's fall to lucky hits. Ichtyids and their nets suck, by the way.

As for the late game, you should remember that this nation is no MA man. You have solid shot an magic access of A4W4N4E2S2 which allows for a lot of nasty stuff. The problem is just how to capitalize strong magic with sucky research.

[rdonj]

Haha, I've been immortalized in the mod. Awesome

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Haha, I've been immortalized in the mod. Awesome

Yeah, I wanted to honour my supporters in some other way than mentioning name in the .readme file. I take it that you don't mind? Hopefully Sir Rond of R'donj didn't die a horrible death on the battlefield .

[rdonj]

Nope, I don't mind . I will have to start thugging out all the ronds I find. So far I haven't lost any... I'll have to make sure their deaths are all glorious.

[Radio_Star]

After mulling over the nation a bit, the lack of astral (or, more precisely, astral counters) would probably be the death of Bretonnia.

Even though you get a neat little MR booster for your sacreds, the arcane bolts, oppositions, arcane dominations and, more to the point, mind hunts and magic duels would be absolutely brutal.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

After mulling over the nation a bit, the lack of astral (or, more precisely, astral counters) would probably be the death of Bretonnia.

Even though you get a neat little MR booster for your sacreds, the arcane bolts, oppositions, arcane dominations and, more to the point, mind hunts and magic duels would be absolutely brutal.

Yeah, your astral access is pretty minor (not counting heroes, both mage heroes have S3), but enough to feeblemind Mind Hunters with some S1 Grail Maidens.

Arcane Bolts and oppositions are painful, but are not impossible to counter, you just need decoys with high size and hp to make the enemy mages target them over your Grail Knights. Elementals are good (Bottle of Living Water is good for this purpose), as are Crushers, Wooden Constructs, Fall Bears and Summer Lions. All have high size(over 3) and have more hp that Grail Knights, Dukes, Grail Heroes or Damsels.

As for the battlefield wide "screw magic units" counters, things are a bit more difficult. Astral bless helps, as does casting antimagic or the Virtue of Purity. What I'd suggest is to just bench the magical units if the opponent shows astral mages able to casts those high S spells. You can thug out Marquis instead of Dukes and just use hordes of Errants instead of Grail Knights. Just remember to accomapnay the army with some Damsels equipped with mr boost items. With their high mr, they will be nearly immune to the "negates-easily" BF spells, but their presence will make the opponent cast those scripted BF spells, essentially wasting him mage turns, fatigue and gems.

But you are right, one of the main weaknessess of Bretonnia is its predictability. You can't just focus on Dukes or Grail Knights and expect the opponent to roll over, mix it up a little. This is just one reason why astral pretender is good for Breton.

[Joelz]

Just thought to drop by and inform you that Bretonnia conflicts with the Ogre Kingdom mod.

When running both mods simultaneously the "Destrier hoof" is replaced by "Sky giant Bone" and the "The Black Knight" has his weapon set to "Heavy Chains".
Also most of the Bretonnian males have more ogre like names like "Stump Bonebelly" or "Choppa Balfug" etc.

Otherwise nothing bad to say about the mods. Keep up the good work