Mod: Cinggis Qayan, Wrath of the Khans 3 eras -- Update 6

[Globu]

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Hmm, it does look like hair to me. I like it, and if you change it so that it looks like black hair, or more clearly (to me, it really is subjective) like a hairband, I will make one of the mages a female with a pike or #newweapon (Spear of Justice?). Suggestions? (The only reason I wouldn't use her for the Priestess of Tengri, is that I consider her a more traditional caster... but if some people think that it would be good for the priestess, it's fine with me. Maybe use her for Servant of Manzan?) BTW, that is a cool mini from a company I hadn't heard of, and you did a pretty good job of making a dominions conversion.

Thanks! Yes, I love those minis by Kev White. He's unbelievable. I bought, like, 120 of the Celtos ones during a sort of binge five years ago.

Well, if it looks like hair at this scale, we can treat it as such. I'll see what I can do.

Recurves were amazing, and played a huge role in Hunnic, Mongol, Turkic, and Persian dominancy. (In many of these cases, bad leadership did what opposing armies could not... stop the might of mounted archers!) [ . . . ]

Very interesting on the bows -- especially that African one. Hey, I've seen posts like "Machaka could use some love..." -- may want to release that puppy.

I really want to keep them #armorpiercing, or I, for one, would never recruit them over a mounted archer. [ . . . ] I really liked the thematic element of the Mongols carrying armorpiercing arrows, but if is too overpowering in the dominions 3 metagame, then it had better go. [ . . . ] Although switching over to vanilla bows is another option I've considered.

Well, pricing can likely make an important distinction there -- in my own play I often find it fairly wasteful to splurge for cavalry archers when regular ones will do the job fine.

But aside from that, they can make for terrifying PD, if that is to be a national strength. Although given the offensive power level so far, these archers in PD may be a bit much -- but once it's balanced better, it can be a good fit. (That could also be remedied by a second class of cheaper foot archers using lesser bows, with these being used for PD instead.)

As for the thematic element, at least to me, 14-damage long-range bows are pretty impressive. And now, coming to think of it, in light of the flaming arrows problem and what you've said about the Mongols' recurve bows, I don't think it would be inappropriate at all to use the stock Great Bow of Hinnom's EA archers. And that would make them fearsome and distinctive in itself.

If you do go with armor piercing, though, it would seem appropriate to keep the damage down. It would make them a bit underwhelming against un-/lightly-armored targets, but then they're mostly dead meat anyway. It still seems like a tough fit, though, balance-wise, and will make them horrific in the early game.

(Which was an arbitrary name... anyone like "Qayan Largebow" or "Qayan Large Recurve" or "Qayan Infantry Bow" better?

I really like the use of Recurve in the name, since that gives the most descriptive information and is least abstract, giving something for the imagination to chew on. That may just be me though.

Thanks for the help. I had d/led the new version of Glory just minutes before I made that post. Is there any way I could get you to make a version of the smaller Glory map with fixed starts? I made one myself, but on the G6 version.

My pleasure!

As for giving the MP Glory map the same treatment... Not so sure about it. The larger one was a monster and took way more time than I expected. (I seem to like using "monster" and "monstrous" today -- I really hardly ever use those words.) Also, I'm working on a 650-province, meticulously tidied-up random-gen map that I hope to release some day. So probably not on the small Glory map.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Now, all that said, here are some preliminary samples of what I'm dubbing Mongol archers. They're not finalized, and still need some detail work (stray pixels, edges, and so forth), not to mention base sprites (these are pretty clearly action sprites). Details like colors and bow size can be changed easily, as shown here. And I'll be throwing in a little nocked arrow, of course.

Let me know if you'd like me to proceed with one or both of these guys. (Each can be a different variant archer.) I can also customize, if you have a use for it, the female archer sprite I put up in the Avernum mod thread.