Mod: Kingdom of Angmar - Version 0.52 available

[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.

[BigDaddy]

Originally Posted by 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.

You can consider part of the cost of HFH as a premium, however, because it is a raiding spell. If/when they win, they can be flown out of the province the next turn, or used again... etc. You can cast it on anywhere.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

You can consider part of the cost of HFH as a premium, however, because it is a raiding spell. If/when they win, they can be flown out of the province the next turn, or used again... etc. You can cast it on anywhere.

That is most certainly true, yes. It is probable that horde from hell has a built in transport fee to go with it, probably between 5 and 10 gems worth, imo. I thought about mentioning this, but since the imps would still be over 1 slave per imp and under 2, I didn't figure it changed the math enough to mention.



The barrow wight cost looks fine for now, they're probably more or less equivalent to shura at present with added vulnerability to magic duel making it kind of painful to equip them.

[LumenPlacidum]

Hahaha, goes to show how often I play blood nations. So, Summon Imp isn't a ritual, huh? Yeah, you're right about that not being fair then.