Mod: Kingdom of Angmar - Version 0.52 available

[DaveCG]

Originally Posted by LumenPlacidum

Pfft, just wait 'til I do Mordor. That's gonna be a hell of a nation to raid. After all, one does not simply WALK into Mordor.
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I'm so sorry.

But what if you had wizards? or bears...

Or bear wizards!

On a more serious note you're doing some great work, I'm slogging though a .dm file for my EA Machaka mod atm (only 7 months late!) and it really takes it out of me, but yeah like I said great sprites and great ideas so far, looking forward to the finished one.

[LumenPlacidum]

Hmm, it turns out that my plan to have all wraiths spread dominion like a prophet might not work in conjunction with #dyingdom. Even bolstering the Witch King to a domspread of 3, he doesn't really improve dominion. I will assume that it is one of the things blocked by #dyingdom.

I've added in Ringwraith multiheroes. All Nazgul (the Witch King included) will have an overall magicboost of 2. The Witch King's starting paths are S1D2 now, to get him up to the S3D4 I wanted. Each Ringwraith has D1 +100% FAEDB, meaning that they'll have either 3 death and 3 of one of fire, air, earth, or blood, or they'll have 4 death. Most of their stats are the same as those of the Witch King, or only slightly worse, but they are not immortal (though that may change... it WAS really hard to permanently kill any ringwraith, but the Witch King has immortality to represent Glorfindel's prophecy about him).

Other heroes and multiheroes I'm thinking about:

The Great Goblin - Would be a pretty strong blood mage and priest, I think, as well as having some pretty good thug options. The Great Goblin lived in the Misty Mountains, just as Angmar does, so I don't think it would be unreasonable to create a connection there.

Possibly a named Balrog. Balrogs, however, are going to be extremely strong summons from the early age. Getting this hero early on would probably make you a complete steamroller with the Witch King, a pretender god, and a balrog SC... I probably shouldn't. When I make them, Balrogs will be powerful death and fire mages, with randoms possibly coming from astral, earth and blood.

Wight King - The last Dunedain king of Rhudaur, raised and given sorcery after his slaughter at the hands of the wild-men of his kingdom. Probably awe in addition to his fear aura. Priestly powers with some death magic seem appropriate.

[rdonj]

I've been very sick recently and haven't had much chance to play with the mod, but I do have a suggestion. Remove the reinvigoration from wolf riders and reduce encumbrance to 4. The reason cavalry has a fixed level of encumbrance is because the mount is getting fatigue, not the rider (or at least this is my understanding of that particular mechanic). Since it is the orc that's supposed to have the reinvigoration rather than the wolf, it doesn't really make sense for them to have it. Also, in the current implementation wolf riders are more or less e9 sacreds for no design points or bless requirement with their extremely heavy armor and low effective encumbrance.

Also, I think non-immortal nazgul is probably best. It makes the witch king extra special and having several free, powerful immortals seems overkill.

[LumenPlacidum]

Sure, I'll give that a try. Do you think they'll really be a viable choice after that?

Also, I realized that one effective way to give Angmar a bigger army and still require them to pay for it with their early gains is by having national spells that summon the recruitables, just in numbers. I think a "Command the Pits" spell that gave you 12 snaga goblins for 1-2 gems would create the teeming masses of goblins that I'd envision for the nation. They would have the same upkeep, but you'd bypass their initial recruitment and resource costs. Also, the ability to lay down a few of these spells while under siege would be very scary, since an essentially unguarded fortress could be made to have hundreds of tiny little medium infantry scampering around everywhere in a couple turns.

I don't really want the snagas to compete for the gems that would be used for the wraith summons when I make those, so I'll probably make it a blood spell. This will allow really massive armies of goblins to be running around, while the orcs and angmar humans form an elite core of the forces. This is perfect. My only worries are to a) prevent this option from being completely overpowered, and to b) allow the snagas en masse to be a moderately effective idea throughout the mid-game also.

Is there some way to restrict a spell to being cast in a mountains province? Doesn't really make sense for goblins to just be springing up out of the plains.

Also, I'm working on adding summons for Barrow Wights. I'm thinking that S1D2H1 is good for them. Conjuration 4, probably. Passable combat stats, with fear +0, cold aura, and ethereality, probably rusty equipment. How many death gems would someone expect to pay for that? Somewhere between 8 and 15 is my guess.

[rdonj]

12 snaga for 2 blood slaves would be insanely cheap. I would suggest no fewer than 1 slave per snaga, to be comparable to normal spells. I don't know exactly how much they should cost offhand, but take a look at the blood spells in skaven, or things like crossbreeding to get a feel for what they should think about costing. Also if you make them summonable like that they should cost even less. Say 4 or 6 gold, but with an artificial resource hike to make them less recruitable earlier. Just leaving the gold costs on the summons should be enough to keep them from becoming overpowered. Although that will make them much less attractive to use also.

Well, there are definitely spells that can only be cast in mountains such as jomon's yama no kami, but I don't know if there are any that you could copy to summon troops.

No idea how much the barrow wights should cost, I'd have to actually see them first.

[LumenPlacidum]

1 slave per snaga?! These goblins aren't particularly effective. Bone fiends come at 9 fiends per 3 slaves, and they have good hitpoints, attack, defense, and 2 attacks at about the same damage. Square by square, they're very comparable. I don't think they'd be worth any more than 2:1, and I think even that is stretching it. You can only actually get blood magic with your cap-only mages anyway, and they have to perform the double duty of hunting and summoning. The slaves are worth comparatively more for Angmar than for other blood nations because of the relative lack of blood mages.

Edit: didn't notice bone fiends were size 3 so the square-by-square comparison isn't exactly right. Imps, however, are a reasonable comparison. Less armor and damage, encumbrance, WAY bigger defense, flying, fire immune, banishable are the differences. Imps weigh in at 5 per slave...

I'll try 12 snaga per 6 slaves, because I like to err on the side of caution, but I suspect it won't be a good enough option for people to actually use it.

[Humakty]

As recruit everywhere mages really suck at battlefield magic, I think you can rebalance it with other advantages. Many base game nation with bad recruit everywhere mages have gorgeous other options. Formoria is a good example I think.

[LumenPlacidum]

Uh, what's the good alternative open to Fomoria to make up for their mages? Unless you mean the Fomorian Kings...

[Gregstrom]

Morrigans. And Wrath of the Morrigans.

[rdonj]

Sorry, I'm still pretty sick and kind of gave a price without really thinking it through. However while it is true that snaga are not that amazing, they also aren't completely terrible either. Using the price of imps as per the summon imp spell does not really work. All combat summons are much cheaper than summon spells that permanently give you units. It's just not a fair comparison. If you want to look at the cost of imps, you have to look at horde from hell or infernal forces. Horde from hell summons a devil (at 3 slaves, which is crazy cheap) and a bunch of imps, at 44 slaves for 25 units. That's a bit over 1 slave per imp. Anyway, going with a 2:1 ratio sounds reasonable.