Mod: Ogre Kingdoms - MA Warhammer Nation - 0.9 minor update

[llamabeast]

If you want to stick it on my server let me know.

[Sombre]

My latest thought is that I'm going to give slaughtermasters a 100% DFE. This will make them slightly better at research (not so much it really matters though), will allow them a little bit of site searching (again, negligible) and a little bit of forging. It will also differentiate them somewhat in terms of some summons I'm giving Ogres.

B3E1 = Dig Mawpit. A mawpit is an immobile commander much like a monolith or sacred statue, though it has not slots. It has H2 allowing it to blood sacrifice in place of a slaughtermaster (note ogres cannot preach). It will also have domspread 1. Of course in combat it will be useless. You dig these to get upkeep free blood sacrificers and to push your dom, which will be the ogres new mid and lategame strat.

B3F1 = Summon Mawfiend. A mawfiend is an ogre sized demon born from the inferno of the maw's arrival. More details on these a bit later.

B4D1 = Abomination of the Maw. These are the aformentiond 'mawbominations'. They kill the populace at an alarming rate, are masters of pillaging and in combat are virtually unstoppable wrecking balls, with high mr, multiple attacks (with drain), amazing prot etc. They will be size 4, but don't be confused, they could tear a slavegiant in half. The drawbacks is they have either insanity or shattered soul, cost a lot and have no slots. The premise is they are there to unleash on the world in the lategame, trashing enemy territory (and temples) and facilitating a win through sheer stompyness or domspread.

[llamabeast]

Sounds good.

I think you want to be careful with domspread 1. If the things are cheapish, you could spam them ridiculously. It might be better to have them holy 3 with no domspread, so that you can only have one per province producing dominion.

The difficulty with Ogres is like you were saying the other day, that they don't grow much more powerful as the game goes on. Your abomination of the maw sounds good for that, but how are they going to research it? My worry is that having a powerful rainbow research pretender gives an ogre nation such a ridiculous advantage that it becomes non-optional. An ogre nation with a rainbow pretender might will be able to reach the high level summons in half as many turns as one without.

[Sombre]

That is true, however the abomination will be limited not only by research level (which will still be one ogres can reach without a dedicated pretender) as it will also have fairly high cost in blood slaves and it will require a boosted slaughtermaster in order to get it. Possibly even B5D1.

I did consider making the mawpits simple H3 blood sacrificers, but I'm not hugely keen on them casting divine bless and smite during battles. They still wouldn't give Ogres a legitimately frightening dompush ability either imo. Whatever I choose to do with them, I'll make sure they cost an appropriate amount. After all if you have to spend a lot of blood slaves on them, that's necessarily less of your nasty troops you're fielding.

Another option and one that feels like something of a cop out, is giving ogres a national 'mercenary mage' commander with inflated cost (for what he does) but access to more paths (probably like F1 with 100% FEA and 100% FEAWSD). The butcher remains a better longterm researcher, but these guys would be better for rushing to a certain spell. I don't want to do that though because it's quite lame, no matter how I justify it.

Regarding the rainbow pretender - yes, he is a clear choice for ogres and thematically that's a bit annoying. However it's good in a way that they can make full use of a slightly odd pretender pick like an awake great sage that does research.

[llamabeast]

Maybe instead of a mercenary mage you could have some maw demon summon which is quite magically powerful? That would add a bit more late-game scaling.

I realise that wouldn't solve the research issue though. Maybe you could reduce their research malus a bit?

[Sombre]

I could, but it's a pretty major feature of the race, the fact they can't research worth a damn.

This is going to come up with dwarfs as well, because they don't even use magic in Warhammer. The idea is that since Ogres will really only want to research blood and construction, the research malus isn't such a crippling problem,.. I guess the same could be somewhat true of dwarfs,... well I'll think of something clever.

I'm definitely giving Ogres a hero with some nice magic - an Ogre Mage trained in the courts of Cathay after his intellect was dramatically enhanced through their advanced eastern alchemy.

In terms of magical diversity, they have the heliophagii I guess, along with whatever their pretender can summon. With the extra minor paths on slaughtermasters they should have a little more chance of branching also.

They pose a tricky problem. I'll implement the changes I've thought up and see how they play with those. The graphic for the abominations is going to have to be something special though.

[HoneyBadger]

I like that the Ogres struggle, magically. I think they should-it's a big part of what makes them interesting as a Nation. Dom3 already has (compared to it's unit and Nation diversity) an extremely limited magic system, in that there's only 8 paths, total. And most Nations are already able to get atleast *some* access to most if not all of the paths, without Pretender interference.

Adding in bootstrapping, empowerment, booster items, the ability to convert Astral to other gem types, etc. and having 8 separate magical paths loses a lot of it's meaning.

[Sombre]

Here is the latest thinking on the Ogre upgrade:

The idea is to add a daemonic/chaos influence to Ogres which matches what blood magic does in dom3 and makes them more interesting mid and late game. When the Great Maw impacted it unleashed a huge amount of energy and the area around it, known as the wastes, is still rife with Chaotic energy. I'm not changing the story of the maw and saying it's a chunk of warpstone or anything, but it is, at least in part, of Chaos. Countering this is the more shamanic mountains/wilds magic of the Ogres' new home which has roots far back before the impact of the Maw.

Slaughtermasters: Will now be H2B3 with EF50%. In recent years Slaughtermasters have begun to split into 3 types. Normal vanilla ones (1/2 with just B3), those with a connection to earth from which the Maw emerged (1/4 with E1) and those with a connection to the burned wasteland and chaos fallout around the maw (1/4 with F1). The earth enabled SMs can dig new mawpits. The fire enabled SMs can bind Henchfiends and later even Fiends of the Waste. This change is done.

Mawpits: Immobile holes in the ground surrounded by jutting teeth/bones/rocks. They are simply H3 and 0 gold upkeep making them fantastic for blood sacrificing and little else. I'm hoping to stop them from smiting/banishing somehow. Their summoning cost in terms of blood slaves is reasonably low, they don't need to be researched and Ogre temples are incredibly cheap (100 gold) since they can't preach or anything. Code is done, graphic is currently a placeholder and might be that way for a while.

Henchfiends: Researchers (by Ogre standards) with B1 + DF100% magic, they allow the Ogre Kingdoms to channel blood slave income into research, but still the nation won't have good research unless you /really/ push for it. They are spined demons with robes and are completely inedible (even by Ogre standards). They appear to SMs who are compelled to roam the wastes around the maw and offer power in exchange for blood spilled on the blackened sands. They are then bound to the SMs and do their bidding, patiently exerting influence on the Ogres as a race. They aren't sacred because they aren't 'orthodox' children of the maw. I've done the code for these guys, I'll just give them a simple graphic and they're done.

Fiends of the Waste: Badasses. These are Ogre sized daemons of magical and physical prowess. Think somewhere below a heliophagii or Verminlord in stats (at least D2F2B2 magic) They are somewhat ogrish but have no mouth, many eyes, horns and the trademark backward knees. It is rare for a SM to bind one - only Groth Onefinger the hero has bound several - and they require a vast sacrifice of burned bodies to summon. Again they are a corrupting influence on the Ogre race, drawing it towards chaos, and aren't sacred. I want to do a tasty graphic for them so they'll take a while.

Yhetee Shamans: Summonable by N2 hunters. These are shamans of the mountainous wilds with low nature, earth and water magic (I'm thinking W1N1E1 + 100% WNE). Their research isn't handicapped like Ogres but isn't great. The attractive thing about them is they get three nice national spells to cast - cold immunity buff for Ogres, a spray of ice/rock shards and a howl which attracts sabretusks rather than wolves (if possible to code). I've coded them, the graphic is easy but I haven't done the spells, though those shouldn't take long.

Abominations of the Maw: A straightforward blood summon at the top end of the gut magic/gorgers/mawtribe spectrum. I've talked about these guys before. Total juggernauts, also with dom spread. They are out of the box SCs that you can't do anything to upgrade (no slots) and will be economical, but straightforward (no flight etc). They make the world dread dealing with you because they are extremely destructive (causing unrest, pop death etc). I have almost finished the code, the graphic will take a while. I think I'm going to have them be slavegiants who were dragged to the Maw, forced to gaze upon it and covered in armour/weapons much like pitfighters. So they'll be size 6 and all that.

Mawgut: Another commander summon in the maw/gut magic line (so blood + holy). Butchers who have given themselves over the the Maw - their gut splits open and becomes a maw like mouth which they must feed. Consequently they grow much, much fatter. They are B4 H3 with berserk, great hp and regen + an awesome devour attack which also drains life. They also spread dom and tend to eat population. No research from these. I've started the graphic, the code is nearly done.


Feedback plox!

[llamabeast]

All sounds very awesome, dramatic and appropriately scary to me, although the Mawgut sounds a bit yucky!

Suggestion on how to prevent the Mawpit casting battle spells: Create a spell called Fatigue Self or something which does that - hits the caster with a load of fatigue damage, e.g. 180. Then set #onebattlespell Fatigue Self for the Mawpit, so that in battle it will always be asleep. You could also give it negative reinvig, if that works (like clockwork horrors) so that it doesn't wake up in long battles.

[Burnsaber]

If you want to prevent the Mawpits from being useful in combat, here's some ideas:

1) you could give them ridiculous encumberance and negative reinvogration -5 so that once they pass out the from the spellcasting, fatigue they regain from resting is negated by the reinvogration. But that's kinda hacky and unaesthetic solution.

2)I'd probably make them #onebattlespell a custom spell that would give them 100 fatigue combined with the negative reinvogration, but since that requies some hacking, I can understand if you don't want go that route.

3) Give them 1hp and secondaryshape with weaker magic. Then give the firstshape poisoncloud and no poisonres so that it will kill itself on the first turn. Or #onebattlespell that will make it kill itself (like Shockwave or something like that).

EDIT: Ninja'd by Llama!