Mod: Nation - Tomb Kings - v1.03 released (March 2009)!

[Jazzepi]

I was also curious, to the other people that have played this nation, what bless(es)/chassis did you use?

Jazzepi

[llamabeast]

Okay. I've decided to leave Immortals at 2 death gems for the moment - while they can be utterly deadly in defense, it's true that defense isn't the way to win and they do require a large investment of time. They're also effectively more expensive since the Tomb Kings that summon them are going to cost more.

New version coming in a few moments...

[llamabeast]

I've just released v1.00 (see the first post).

Changes:

- Asp archers and Buried both slightly more expensive; the Buried also lost a point of defense and a point of MR.
- Tomb Kings gain a guaranteed earth pick, but now cost 500 gold (up from 420). They may be the most powerful mages in the Middle Age now. Frequent access to E2 is a major boost to the nation.
- Anubites are faster but have slightly lower strength.
- Servants of Horus are much improved - they gained no fewer than 4 to attack between their weapon (+3 - it is magic after all) and their own skill (+1). They also gained a point of MR and another point of reinvig. They are probably still inferior to the anubites (certainly they lose in tests with even numbers of each) but are potent demon killers. They are also now summoned in groups of 20, so you basically summon a legion rather than faffing around with little groups.
- The nation now gets an additional fire and earth gem from its home sites, making it inferior only to Pythium for initial gem income. This should make it easier to use the national summons, which are pretty key if people start using Wither Bones or something on you.
- The national holy spells are *much* more effective. Each casting of the MR-negates spells effectively casts them 3 times on top of each other. As a result they tend to stick pretty well, meaning that it is very worthwhile to bring along contingents of priests to get your armies buffed up. That was a design goal from the beginning which in fact hadn't really worked out. That should also serve to make the non-sacred national troops more attractive.
- Servant of Set is a bit cheaper (8 gems rather than 10)
- Ushabtis are slightly harder to research (Ench 4 from, I think, 3). However, they remain very cheap (12 gems) and once you have one you will be completely elephant-proof.
- Bone scorpions gain two points of MR (-> 16), but are harder to summon (D5). These are vicious things.

Hopefully these changes will lead to lots more choice in what options you can exploit, and make things feel more balanced.

[llamabeast]

Also I'm terrified to see it's almost a year and a half since I released this. Eek!

[llamabeast]

Jazzepi - lots of blesses are quite interesting. W9 (and even W9F9) make your Burieds extremely vicious. W9E9 is curiously effective in making them tougher, and is also good for your Ushabtis. D9 (or D9W9) can make your Asp Archers very nasty - it can be hard to avoid their poison entirely, and with a high death bless any damage tends to cause an affliction. Astral is good for resisting banishment, and W9S9 can make your Burieds very hard to hurt. Nature is fairly useless since nothing can regenerate and nothing flees anyway. Blood might be reasonably useful, at least as a side effect if you wanted a Blood Fountain or something as your pretender.

I think now, though, you could reasonably opt for a low-bless strategy and go for scales. Your troops are all pretty decent once buffed by your priests. The fact that they never tire nor flee can make them pretty effective, and Strength of the Tomb means they can hurt armoured things.

I think there are quite a lot of different options on what you might want to focus one, which I'm pleased with. I'll be interested to see what you go for.

[Jazzepi]

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but when I play the mod with CBM and the mod installed, there are two Son of the Sun with "no description available". Both cost 0 points. One of them has Awe +1 from the start.

Also, why the heck do the mages with no armor, ~and~ no weapons, cost 3 resources?

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

Sounds like an id conflict. Unless llama specifically went through and checked it against the latest CBM, that'll happen.

You should be able to fix it yourself easily enough though.

[Gregstrom]

I think there are two Sons of the Sun in CBM - I'm pretty sure I've seen it with just CBM and no other mods in place. I think one has F and one has S, or something similar.

[rdonj]

Well, in Warhammerama I went with a W/S bless on an oracle, with high order, sloth, and magic. I don't remember for the other scales. It was a small game vs lizards, ogres, and rats, and I was terrified of wither bones, plus I figured there had to be a significant amount of banishment spam that would be coming at me. And the lizards have tons of powerful priests, so the extra magic resistance seemed like a very good idea (and most definitely was). My buried weren't quite good enough killers to take out ogres or E10 lizard temple guards, but sulphur haze worked well to kill both of those. And by the time I was fighting the lizards I had cloud of death, supplemented by the occasional shadow blast... all of which the buried are almost completely immune to.

I haven't tried any other bless with them really, W/S just seemed the best fit for them to me, plus it's cheap. I can see fire being quite devastating though. If you can get by using an earth bless it would be great for your tomb kings later on. And death would be nice as well. If only sorcerors were sacred, I can only imagine how delightful it would be watching your enemies become horrifically afflicted in a giant cloud of burning vapors.

And with immortals, keep in mind that they have map move 3. Sure, I was playing a small game where I had only a fairly small amount of land to fight in. I actually was never more than 3 provinces from the front, I think. But even without survival skills 3 map move should get just about anywhere pretty quickly. I would also think, if you had 100 blessed, well-buffed immortals you could kill just about any tartarian you could find. And do it again and again. But having them basically limited to a defensive role is a pretty significant mark against them.



In any case, this update imo sounds like a pretty significant boost to the tomb kings overall. I'll have to get a game or two going

[llamabeast]

I'm just about to upload another mini-update, v1.01.

Changes:

- I appear to have gone mad while balancing the Ushabti. They have now lost 2 points of protection and 1 of MR, the ritual blade has 1 attack rather than 2 and they cost 14 rather than 12 gems. They're still excellent. The Ushabti Avatars have gone up to 40 gems (from 30). They are still quite awesome and pretty cheap (considering you don't need GoH or GoR), and could easily be a strategy in themselves I reckon.
- Buried now cost 22.
- Tomb Priest cost -> 120 (from 100).
- High Priest cost -> 240 (from 210). The priests are better now that their buffs are so much more effective. Acolytes have stayed the same because they've not been improved, and their main cost is the opportunity cost of not hiring someone else anyway.
- Buried Sorcerors cost -> 200 (from 180). They were always meant to be expensive.
- The Gilded Scorpion now costs 150 design points, down from 175. He's extremely powerful, but short on slots.
- Fixed the Sons of the Sun. The problem was mysterious but I just worked around it.
- Fixed all the other non-standard pretenders so that they have CBM stats. Otherwise they would have vanilla stats even under CBM, because they're actually copies of the pretender units.

So I guess generally this update is a gentle nerf. v1.00 was probably a bit of a buff though, so hopefully they remain strong. The overall change has been a slight increase in expense and an improvement in magic and summons, which is probably to the nation's benefit overall.