Mod: Kingdom of Angmar - Version 0.52 available

[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).

[LumenPlacidum]

I'm working hard on making sure that my Dark Lord pretender chassis is awesome. Here's a bit of a WIP image of the sprite being created:



Mostly, this is being done by loosely immitating the movie replica armor pictured here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ord_Sauron.jpg

...the shoulder blades might have to be omitted for the sake of being kind of ridiculous...

Also, I've done a couple concept sketches for a Balrog, being designed as a summon for the eventual Early Age version of this nation (Angband: Battle of Sudden Flame), but that might double as a possible pretender chassis for Angmar. Balrogs are going to be *hardcore* with fear and awe baseline (being demons of terror and maia before all). The Whip of Many Thongs that all balrogs have will probably be AoE2 fire and have a couple of attacks; on a hit, the target will be entangled. I'm very hesitant to bring up this debate, but I'm unsure whether or not I want my balrogs to have wings, and if any item slots should be unavailable. Finally, I know that I want them to have fire and death magic, but I don't know what peripheral magics they should have. Suggestions welcome!

[Baneslave]

Originally Posted by LumenPlacidum

...the shoulder blades might have to be omitted for the sake of being kind of ridiculous...

Sounds good IMO, as those look very out of place.

[mehrunes_dagon]

fort description contains illegal command

farmlandfort

according to modding manual, farmlandfort should be defined with command

farmfort

[rdonj]

So I've been playing this mod a bit in SP. I'm just wondering, does anyone else feel like this nation is kind of wasting its death gems if it's not cranking out an endless supply of barrow wights with them? They bring a lot to the nation - magic diversity, mind hunt protection, decent thugs, reasonably effective battle mages, reanimators, and h2 priests if you really need them. At conj 4 there's not much reason NOT to go with these guys over building skull mentors because they get most of the research for the same cost while being much more versatile. The magic duel weakness is still pretty bad, but you can avoid this to an extent by only using the s2 ones as thugs with pearls and a starshine skullcap and script returning on your guys if necessary. I wonder if they almost do too much for you. What do other people think?

I'm also not really sure I get the use of the elite warriors. Gundabad warriors are pretty close to as good and way more massable. In fact they're pretty much your only massable armored unit. I just don't really see the point in building elite warriors, which you can only get half the number of. For me gundabad warriors basically make elite warriors useless.

[LumenPlacidum]

Well, you're not the only one to comment about the elite warriors vs. the regular ones, and people seemed to much prefer the regular warrior sprite (the elite is kinda crap). Maybe I'll just leave the elites out. Are the warriors good enough to recruit? I gave them a bit of a resource discount because of the salvaged nature of their armor, but it might have been too much.

As for the barrow wights, I do want them to be used, and I think they have enough problems with the extra fire damage, undead, and magic duel vulnerability. You're saying they're a good deal just for the research? Hmm, probably true. With a nation as research-starved as Angmar, though, it seems like they would need SOME way out. Also, the fact that you have to summon them with the Witch King (or a pretender) until you get the 1/4 random correct is a bit of a drawback, adding onto his already-extensive list of roles. If you have a possible suggestion for toning them down, I'd be glad to consider it.

[rdonj]

Gundabad warriors are about half the resources for a unit with more defense, more or less the same prot, more or less the same morale (due to berserk), and 2 less hp... other stats are a bit worse off, and they only have mapmove 1 instead of 2, but if I want a higher resource unit I'd generally prefer the warg riders to the elite warriors because they fatigue out less quickly.

Barrow wights aren't a good deal JUST for the research, no. You'd be better of making skull mentors if that's all you want. But there's no reason to make skull mentors because they can research, fight, forge, search for magic sites, etc as needed. They are much more versatile for basically the same cost. And they'll never get useless like skull mentors eventually will. You still want to forge lightless lanterns though. Also it's not strictly necessary to summon them with the witch king until you get the proper random if you use a skull staff, which you will want anyway eventually. The witch king can probably spare the time to summon a few though, it's certainly a better use of his time than casting arcane probing or researching. Probably making them worse at researching or unable to reanimate (not sure that's possible) would be the best "fix", but I'd rather hear back from other people first.

[kianduatha]

My personal preference would be to simply make them more expensive. 15 or so gems wouldn't be too outrageous for them.

Gundabad warriors are pretty nice, not gonna lie. I find the flavor text between the Gundabad Warriors and the Angmar Swordsmen pretty jarring though without the Elite Warriors there.

The reason the Gundabad Warrior is so nice is because he has the most 'bang' for your resources, which is almost always going to be your problem. People will of course buy him, because he costs even less resources than an Angmar Bowman(who by the way would still benefit from a composite bow or something--short bows just plain suck in MA)