Mod: Warhammer Dwarfs, version 0.92 -- Quickfix

[Burnsaber]

I've been playtesting a bit more and come to the conclusion that Prospectors have to go. The border summoning thing was really intented as a minor boost to give the commander a sort of niche. But, yeah, it proved really much more powerful than I thought. My first response was "Hey, that's sort of cool", and the AI going insane was quite hilarious. It's always nice to hear about unforeseen strategies forming up, it's a sign of "open-ended" nation that can use many different strategies.

But I've managed to playtest a bit more now. The way how the border-summons work is just.. buggy. The way the AI reacts to it just doesn't maky any sense, which is a major immersion downer. Also, fighting against prospector spam could very well prove to be the most frustating thing ever to fight against, since it combines stealth (major annoyance) with combat summons (major annoyance, since you'll have to kill the same miners in each combat). Basing on the talk of this thread, most players seem to base a whole fort(s?) on massing these guys. This really isn't the path I want this nation to take gameplay wise. Conclusion: the bordersummon thing is pretty nifty and thematic, but the game really can't handle it, so it has to go.

Well, on the plus side, this change allows me to bring in a new thematic inclusion from the WFRP books to replace the "Prospector" (without the border summon, his niche is just way too small). Runebearers. They are dwarf messengers who use the dangereous underway to bring messages in order to allow commmunication between the isolated/sieged dwarf holds. Gameplay wise, they will have 10 leadership to lead small miner squads, major mapmove (4), high stealth, all survival skills (they travel underground, ignoring regular terrain obstacles) and a lot of magic slots. Miners will also get the "all survival skills" thing, but I'll bump their rescost to 40 to compensate for the bonus.

This way, the Ranger Champion is the best leader for stealth forces (due to his higher leadership), but the Runebearer can quickly transport items and gems to the frontlines. His one niche will be also to lead the mapmove 3 miners around to allow for nifty defensive tricks.

I'll probably make a new "Miner Ambush" combat spell to still allow some access to the "deep strike" strategy. I'll balance it against to the "Howl" spell.

As for other planned changes, I'll probably make Runeguards a lot more hardcore by giving them the "Runic Ward" instead of the basic dwarf shield. I'll likely bump their gold cost a bit too (60?), since this is a pretty major boost.

[rdonj]

Now that could make runeguards really interesting. I'd love to see that change. An increase in gcost would almost certainly be necessary to compensate, maybe even more than the 10 you're considering. Just as long as the rcost is not inflated too much more, as it is you really have to pray for a great start location to get more than a few per turn maximum.

Also, I agree about getting rid of prospectors. When you got them in large enough numbers, it really wasn't very easy to deal with the freespawn. Even if you could script to deal with them without your entire army going crazy chasing after the miners, the difficulty involved in killing them with the eventually huge numbers of dwarfs you could spawn, would have been a nightmare to deal with in mp. A howl-esque miner summon spell sounds nifty though.