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

[kennydicke]

Globu

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.

Is he famous? I don't know the names of those who model minis. I've also had similar experiences with 40k models, most recently Orks. (I would absolutely love a greenskin mod!)

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

It may just be me, does anyone else think it looks like blonde hair? If not, it's fine as is. And I'm still thinking servant of manzan.

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 hadn't read that, but it's not as if I've read every post. All I've seen is trash-talk for my favorite national theme (except for one that you can probably guess). My artwork is so atrocious (by comparison, the javelin launcher is grade-A work) that I would need a sprites for them as well! And I would rather anyone wanting to help out focus on the other mod nation's that still need polishing. Though if someone who wanted to, made a sprite I could stomach (I quit using mine because I couldn't take it anymore) I would gladly take a look at 'Machaka, A Lesson in Balance;' the lesson of course being me learning to make a mod, edit the nationals, and, importantly, retain balance (which I don't think I did, I was rocking Ashdod's world last time I played SP with them, last year sometime). Also, if I could find out how to edit a nation, and not completely replace them, that would be real incentive. If memory serves, I tried a #copynation (or something) and couldn't get the changes to work. This was over a year ago.

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.

Whereas, I generally make as many cavalry archers as possible, and just use regular to supplement PD (unless I have to use them, or have a Gateway capable leader with longbowmen).

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.)

Once again, I tried to emphasize the fact that once the Mongols had captured a town/area, they didn't lose it unless they let you take it. (Generally, for strategic reasons.) Although, they already have too many strengths, from what I've gathered. I really like the idea of PD-only archers (another part of my Machaka mod was "Hunters," basically they were PD-only militia with bows (think I used lion tribe sprites).

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 others like this idea, I could go for it. I would prefer to use a #newweapon, but vanilla weapons have their uses (and don't take ID slots). I disabled #armorpiercing at this point, but it would be my preference to add it back. I'm trying to go by popular consensus. If their can be such a thing for a new mod.

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.

I had hoped for a strong early-mid-game, with an underpowered late-game. Kind of matching the fast rise, fairly lengthy status quo, and ultimately quick fall at the end (as both the Huns and Mongols are known for). Strong early game is a natch. It would probably be best for an average-strong mid-game and a fairly weak late-game. Suggestions anyone?

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.

I merely named it a greatbow as a way for me to remember that was the basis of the weapon when I first made it. I prefer recurve myself, and it is the most accurate short name. (Mongol-style Hunnic Recurve, being more accurate still, but too long for my tastes.

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.

'Tis a shame, 'tis a shame indeed. No biggie, though. I will just redo my own using the newest version. (That is, if the smaller map is even different now.)

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.

I like them myself. If nobody has problems with them, I'd like two. One for PD-only, one for the recruits; if you could make one have a slightly longer bow that would be cool, but not important. (Oh, looks like you already did!) If you can make them look like scale-type armor, great!; if not, I don't care too much. If you can add a buckler (a smaller shield that could generally be worn while firing a bow) that would be awesome. And pinball completes the scene... oops, I meant a small axe on a belt loop. If you don't want to take the time, cool. You've done more than I expected already. And I'm thoroughly impressed if you just whipped those up! (Still impressed if you didn't; they aren't my usual stick figures, that's fo' sho'!)
Edit: Forgot to mention that I like the tan guy and the dark-red/brown guy. But do the ones you find easiest to edit!

Let me know if you'd like me to proceed with these guys.

In essence, yes. Unless someone else really hates them for some logical reason, they'll fit nicely.


Thanks

Oh, and to whomever didn't like them having three survivals. The Altaic region tribes lived in a vast area, that was all at once mountainous, forested and a true wasteland (especially the Gobi Desert). I felt it was thematic for this and a couple other reasons. First, they Mongols would travel with four to five horses to each man/woman warrior; if supplies ran short they would let blood from the jugular of a horse and drink the blood (excellent nourishment, I'm told), allowing them to have a continuous supply a combination food/drink that was replenishable (my brother wanted me to give each unit a supply bonus, but I thought the survivals worked better for other reasons). Second, the heaviest factor in the Mongol dominance was not superior equipment (this was a close second), not their superior tactics (which was uncommonly good for a less *civilized* race, but probably only third; look up 'Subutai' for a more thorough example), but was the fact that their cavalry could move at lightning speeds (especially compared to larger, heavier European horses and soldiers) and that their foot troops were equally as fast relative to the less vigorous European counterparts (including the *barbarian* tribes). AP, mapmove and survival helped me to simulate speed. I will tone them down for balance. But I do feel it's thematic. I appreciate your thoughts, understand where your coming from, and am looking for a way to mitigate this with their other all too evident strengths!

Danke Schoen!

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Also, if I could find out how to edit a nation, and not completely replace them, that would be real incentive. If memory serves, I tried a #copynation (or something) and couldn't get the changes to work. This was over a year ago.

I think (and bear in mind that I haven't done this myself) that what you do is:

1 - edit existing national units. The game picks that up just fine.
2 - creating national spells = create normal spells then use the #restricted tab.
3 - For changing the nation itself, just #selectnation . Use appropriate commands to change what you want, and the game will overwrite existing nation data appropriately. Remember to drop in a #end when you finish changing things (this was always my weakest point when I did any coding), and all should be well.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I had hoped for a strong early-mid-game, with an underpowered late-game. Kind of matching the fast rise, fairly lengthy status quo, and ultimately quick fall at the end (as both the Huns and Mongols are known for). Strong early game is a natch. It would probably be best for an average-strong mid-game and a fairly weak late-game. Suggestions anyone?

A standard way to weaken late-game would be heavily restricting access to Astral, Death and Blood. The low MR on national troops should already help this along, as I imagine a Master Enslave would do truly horrible things to a Quyanate army.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Oh, and to whomever didn't like them having three survivals... (snippety)

I know I made a comment - my intent was more to register surprise than dislike. It does provide an exceptional level of mobility, which was presumably the intent. I guess it's pretty much appropriate for what they did historically, although I can't claim expertise on the subject.

[rdonj]

Yeah, the great bow is definitely too much. Longbows at 13 damage are considered quite powerful in dominions, and crossbows at 10 ap every 2 rounds even more so against armored targets. 15 ap every round for just one more resource than a longbow is not just good, it's ridiculously good. 10 ap is enough to consistently damage 20 prot, but not much higher. 15 ap is enough to consistently damage 30. Against more normal units with protection values ranging from 8-16, each shot fired from these great bows has a VERY good chance of killing your average human. Compare this to a crossbow, a crossbow will do the same amount of damage on average to a guy with 6 protection (militia) as a great bow will to a guy with 16(tough heavy infantry). They are really, really powerful in dominions with those stats.

Hopefully I haven't come across as being too harsh, I'm just trying to show you the math behind why everyone is saying they're too powerful . Personally, I would replace the horsebow with longbows and the great bows with the hinnom bows as others have suggested. This will enable you to use them with flaming arrows and make the great bows much less unreasonable. I think they would be better at +1 damage over longbows than +2, but I think it's a reasonable compromise.


The Tengri pretender - Expensive little chassis, but still ridiculously overpowered . At current price, you can take it awake while still having pretty good scales and decent dominion (or balanced scales and dominion NINE). Couple this with high awe, higher than 100% lightning resist (why?), 100% poison resist, immortality, ethereality, 0 enc trample, bunches of AN attacks, and an insanely high storm power value... if you can get this things #onebattlespells working, it will truly be an undefeatable monster. I am not kidding. And on top of that it has good buffing+mobility magic paths built in. He needs serious work to be fair. As an aside, for some reason in the pretender screen he is listed as having s3 and a3, but when I look at his magic paths to increase them, he only has them at 1. Not sure what's going on there.


Ulgen - Well, he's certainly no Tengri, so he's much more reasonable. Largely he seems a bit of a niche pretender... sort of like a sphinx on steroids, that can create mages (if GoRed, which is still cheaper and much less research than normal) I'm a bit concerned about his domsummon ability, and the amount of misc slots he has seems a bit much (same with the last guy too). It would be pretty easy to stack this guy with boosters and cast several great globals and spells, and you can get the magic to do so while taking him awake without sacrificing your scales.

Gazar Eej - Much more reasonable chassis. Possibly still better than its cost, and yet again the extremely high level of awe, but otherwise I don't see anything glaringly wrong with it. As a suggestion, consider bumping its cost to 100 points and lowering the awe to +1 or +2.

Genghis - Too many misc slots. Three maybe, but 4 just seems like too much. The level of fear could also drop a bit. Perhaps to +2? Other than that he is not too bad. I might actually lower his price though. Not all the way down to 0, but say somewhere around 20. Simultaneously, consider bumping his new path cost to 60-80.

Erlik - Why does he #onebattlespell undead mastery? This is an insanely good ability, way too good to be a #onebattlespell. Why not darkness? That seems reasonably thematic and not so overpowering. Either way he I think he is too cheap. He should probably be at least 150 points, and also, have fewer misc slots It seems also that he has a lot of magic paths. A pretender with three seperate magic paths probably should not be so skilled in a particular one. Especially not if he has such a high dominion score. I notice all of your pretenders have very high dominion scores. You might want to consider toning some of them down. For example, in vanilla there are only something like 2 pretenders with a dominion of 4, and those are the fountains, which have fairly low utility as far as pretenders go. Whereas all of yours are powerful mages, SCs, army enhancers, etc Consider bumping most of them down to 1 or 2 dominion, leaving Genghis with high dominion to represent his authority and ability to command.

I'm not going to talk much about the troops. Cavalry look more or less okay except for the ones with light lances, who suffer from a lack of dexterity and have lower attack values than intended. The basic infantry are slightly good for troops that are supposed to be a bit meh, but are probably fine. Qayan vessels having spy and assassinate is weird, but since they can't use those abilities it doesn't matter that much. The archers are just too good, even at 35 gold per. Even if they were cap only and 50 gold per archer, they would be too good :P Why do the javelin launchers have 0 encumbrance and all those resists?


One last thing... death worms. Their stats aren't too ridiculous, but their price is too low, and their attacks are way too good. They shouldn't be more than aoe1, and no, the worms really don't need fear :P

That was way longer than I'd intended... again, I hope I don't come off to harshly, everything I said above is just my personal opinion and entirely capable of being wrong!