Mod: Kingdom of Angmar - Version 0.52 available

[kianduatha]

Oooh, very nice. You might want to keep the Witch-King just S3D4 and not have a magicboost, especially since prophetizing him gives you an H5 guy off the bat.

The spellcasters definitely got enough of a jump now--I keep waffling about whether they're worth sacrificing design points on a bless for(definitely at least a tasty rainbow)

You might want to consider giving them a slightly smaller starting army--right now what they get is enough to blind-attack first turn with only one or two losses.

[Radio_Star]

It seems like orcs and goblins should have the same (probably 100) darkvision? Is the difference a balance consideration or a flavor consideration?

[LumenPlacidum]

Flavor. Snaga goblins were the type of orcs that lived in Moria. Slightly smaller and better adapted to a life in complete darkness.

[LumenPlacidum]

Barrow Wight (Conj 4, requires 2D1S costing 10 death gems for now; the magic paths available to it are 1D1S +100% WDSB, so one in four can recast the summoning spell):


So far, they've been quite capable thugs in my tests. Magic duel will bring them down right quick, though.

And, with that, I'll be updating the download to include the three spells I've added as well as some of the balance changes people have suggested and I've made.

The three spells are:
Command the Pit - 6 blood slaves for 12 snaga goblins.
Raise Barrow Wight - 10 death gems for 1 barrow wight commander.
Enrage Uruloki - 15 fire gems for a remote attack of a huge dragon that flies off after it fights. I haven't posted stats for the dragon because I don't have an original sprite for it for now. I'm using the red dragon pretender sprite.

[kianduatha]

Enrage Uruloki seems rather underpowered--half the time it just flies into melee and gets instagibbed, and even when it isn't acting dumb it isn't very effective, even against province defense. Awe +0 (or fire shield) and a melee AOE-3 fire attack seem thematic and rather justified.

[LumenPlacidum]

The spell isn't exactly what I wanted it to be. However, I'm surprised that the dragon isn't being effective for you. 18 protection with a lot of hitpoints and fear is decent on the defensive side. The protection goes up when the thing goes berserk. The offensive power of it is pretty scary, and it will TEAR UP thugs with moderately high DEF and thugs of pretty much any protection level.

Initially, I wanted it to fly in and attack, then SIT there if it won, just waiting to defend its territory.

I'd be willing to increase the HP, Att, Def, or even Prot (a little), in order to make the dragon fairly competent. Also, I sort of just quickly gave it weapons. I might give it 2 claw attacks and make its fire breath have Str range instead of Str/2 and increase the AoE.

[kianduatha]

I think I was unlucky in my first half-dozen casts of the thing. Further testing has been much better--it can at least take out 10 province defense most of the time. It just seems closer to the power of Call of the Wild than that of Ghost Riders--and given that it's a level 8 spell that requires a F3 cap-only mage and 3 separate boosters to cast...

as far as getting it to sit there afterwards...with the new patch, maybe make it under Angmar's control(still attacking randomly in combat, of course) and give it Shattered Soul 100? I have no idea what would happen, but it sure would be hilarious.

[LumenPlacidum]

Oh, is that what shattered soul does? I've never known.

[LumenPlacidum]

I actually rather like the shattered soul idea, but my problem is that I can't seem to get these blasted farsummons to summon ONLY a commander. I had intended for Raise Barrow Wight to be Send Barrow Wight (since the lore says that the Witch King sent them into the barrow downs), but that didn't work either.

The problem is that when you farsummon something, you seem to name a unit type and what you get is a commander of that type plus as many units as the number of effects, but that always seems to be at least 1.

If it were at all reasonable to talk about mated pairs of dragons, then it might work, except that the troop versions can then be pulled out and put on other commanders for ridiculous artillery.

The nazgul multiheroes are extremely rare, but when you get one, it gives you so many more possibilities! Just ran a test game and got a D3A3 one pretty early on. Now that's a powerful thug.

Finally, I was trying to think of something to spice up the Gundabad Elite Warriors, since while they became more fair when they lost their 1-handed flails, they also became more blah. So, I was thinking about some of the lesser-used one handed melee items, and thought that the armor-breaking effect of the Star of Heroes would be interesting (and damn scary) to really challenge those elite unit rushes at the beginning of the game, since so many of them rely on heavy armor to push them through. Would that be horribly broken?

[kianduatha]

The (messy) workaround is having the other unit just have an invisible sprite and onebattlespell something that instagibs themself. Alternately you could just say that they had some Rhudaur hunters to follow afterwards and occupy the province afterwards. The barrow wight summon is way easier, just put in a handful of dispossessed spirits as well. No biggie.

I think of everything to do to the Elite Warrior, just plain replacing their morningstar and shield with a flail and giving them full plate(with only the half helmet so their head prot is still lower) is the single thing that'll make them unique without grossly overpowering them. They'll still die to crossbows/flaming arrows/spells of all sorts(anything with a lance also destroys them), and lucky hits will still get them. They might need a price bump to like 33 gold in that case(with wolf riders going up to 50, which probably should happen anyways since they're brutally powerful).