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

[Sombre]

And yes, Ogres are supposed to have below average skill. In warhammer they have the same weapon skill as a human and lower initiative, so they're less skilled.

[rdonj]

That one encounter is part of where it's coming from, yes. But high defense units do seem to be hard on the ogres. Once you get thugs going I suspect that won't really be the case anymore though. You're right though, my thinking on this is probably slightly skewed since I've only actually fought ogres with high defense sacreds.

I wasn't thinking about the lower initiative, I guess that makes sense.

[HoneyBadger]

For some reason your graphic preview has disappeared, Sombre.

[Sombre]

Free image hosting has a time limit I suppose.

It would be nice if shrapnel just gave us sensible png allowances, but I'm not holding my breath.

[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.