Draconian Mod Under construction

[Boron]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:

Draconian Commander
HP: 14 PROT: 10 MORALE: 13 MIR: 12 ENC: 7 AP: 10 Move: 1
STR: 12 ATT: 10 DF: 11 PRE: 10

Abilities: Fire Flare Breath (350), Mountain Survival, Fire res. (50), Flying

just that one unit as example :
i think with move you mean strategic movement .
you have a couple of flying units with movement 1 statistic so far .

if you really mean strategic movement with that then it is pretty worthless .
you still can only move 1 province / turn then .
so for strategic movement the flying ability is in vain .

in battle it will still be helpful .
but it depends whether your troops are flying through storm too ( don't know if this is a modcommand i am unfortunately a modding newbie ) or not . so when your draconians really have only 1 strategic move and not the ability to fly during storm in early-late midgame their flying ability will be even almost useless in battle with one staff of storm the enemy uses .


so an suggestion by me :
all flyers should have strat move 2 , this way they are still quite mobile but not as mobile as mictlan midgame demon / vampire armies with strat move 3 or caelum .
because your troops are stronger than caelums most likely which is thematically absolutely needed for draconians 2 strategic move would be a good choice i think .

furthermore you should make all draconians unable to fly during storm but 1-2 ones :
an air/storm dragon unit and perhaps one air/storm dragon leader .


perhaps you can make 4 kinds of dragons ( like in gothic 2 ) : 1 storm flying air dragon , 1 flying fire dragon , 1 not flying but tough earth dragon , 1 flying ice dragon

or if it is possible you could mod 3-4 of my above mentioned dragon kinds as special nation only summon spells like tien chi's celestial soldiers .


anyways looking really forward to your mod .
unfortunately i am no good name giver too
my names would either be plagiarism from e.g. d&d / dsa or boring

[WraithLord]

maybe you can give dragons a very high gold cost to balance them, something like 800-1100 gold. It might be thematic, after all dragons are known from their love of traesures. They may lend their help to the draconian race for huge soms of gold.

Also you might want to consider a small HP increase to all units/comanders (accompanied by some small increase in cost).
I suppose a draconian race should be physically strong.

looking forward to your complete mod

[Thilock_Dominus]

Boron

I'm not sure if it's possible to give a specific nation some specific spells yet, I'm gonna check when I'm home. Still alot of modding codes aren't avaible at the moment :/...So some of the things I have to add when Illwinter patches Dom2 (I hope they release another patch soon with some cool codes).

You convinced me to put the dragons into the nation, atleast to see how it works.
1. The dragons gonna be expensive.
2. Only recruitable in the capitol.
3. Not stronger than the Pretender dragons.

Also I was thinking of making Pseudo-dragons (a lá BGII ^_^) Some very cute-pink-fluffy-bunny-like , very weak creatures with blur...only I thought, dunno if I'm gonna make them.

finally if you plan in future a second mod :
if adding a theme is possible you could add the following theme :
corrupted & broken draconian empire :
there an evil dracolich pretender has taken over the draconian empire . now all draconians became undead and demoniac spoiled by the evil aura of the dracolich pretender god .
now the elemental dragons from base draconian nation are replaced by undead dragon/draconians , undead draco lichs and demon dragons/draconians .
they focus on blood + death

Hehehe...I had the same toughts when i started this mod ....when it's possible and I finished this one, i'll add it as a theme


best regards
Thilock

[ August 01, 2004, 17:37: Message edited by: Thilock_Dominus ]

[Thilock_Dominus]

Originally posted by izaqyos:
maybe you can give dragons a very high gold cost to balance them, something like 800-1100 gold. It might be thematic, after all dragons are known from their love of traesures. They may lend their help to the draconian race for huge soms of gold.

Also you might want to consider a small HP increase to all units/comanders (accompanied by some small increase in cost).
I suppose a draconian race should be physically strong.

looking forward to your complete mod

Tahnks

The standard Draconian gonna have HP: 14 and str: 12, magic Usersand priest a little less, heroes and commanders a bit more. You think it need more?

best regards
Thilock

[Sandman]

What weaknesses does this race have?

I can see gold cost as being the major one, but that's about it.

Is it really necessary to have their mages be amongst the most powerful in the game? Their most basic mage is quite powerful already, and they have a staggering THREE top-tier mages.

How many other nations have access to lvl 3 (excluding holy) in three different magic paths, with NONE of those mages being capital only?
And the arcane changeling effectively gives them access to all paths of magic. Way, way too powerful.

At the very least, you should remove the astral mage. Having lvl 3 in astral is not 'a little astral' like you say in your first post. Fire and air is plenty, and astral mages are very common anyway.

[Thilock_Dominus]

Originally posted by Sandman:
[QB] What weaknesses does this race have?

1. Expensive units/commanders
2. No archers.
3. No mounting/Cavalry.
4. Only one kind of units uses shield.
5. Units don't wear helmets execpt commanders which can forge them, but none at the start.
6. Some of the units are restricted to the capitol.
7. Can't command undead units.

Is it really necessary to have their mages be amongst the most powerful in the game? Their most basic mage is quite powerful already, and they have a staggering THREE top-tier mages.

How many other nations have access to lvl 3 (excluding holy) in three different magic paths, with NONE of those mages being capital only?
And the arcane changeling effectively gives them access to all paths of magic. Way, way too powerful.

It's already taken care off, It's an "old" list. I'll post a newer one soon.

About the 'Arcane Changeling', the six random is limited to the elements (No death, nature or astral) and are limited to recruitable in the capitol. I think it is one of the funniest creation I came up with. You buy something and don't know which magic paths it will have
Also it's more expensive than shown in the 'old' list.


best regards
Thilock

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:

1. Expensive units/commanders
2. No archers.
3. No mounting/Cavalry.
4. Only one kind of units uses shield.
5. Units don't wear helmets execpt commanders which can forge them, but none at the start.
6. Some of the units are restricted to the capitol.
7. Can't command undead units.

3. They have fliers. What do you need cavalry for?
4. Shield is slight prot/def. bonus plus prot. versus missiles. Scales are small prot. bonus, air magic in general is great against enemy missiles. Even without using storm you can cast Arrow Fend.
5. Helmet is small armor boost, scales are small armor boost. No helmets and no shields have slight effect together even over scales, but commanders unable to wield helmets would be much better restriction IMO.
6 and 7: This is the basic way! Normally the most powerful mages and/or units (often these are sacred) are restricted to capitol, and no nation except for few special ones have or should have undead commanders for free.
Having no access to either Death or Blood prevents them from commanding undead and demons, but how would they get them in the first place? And pretender having Death 4 can summon Revenants (D1), give them skull staff and skullface (+D * 2) and summon Mound King to lead the units...

Also, what was the nation you are replacing? C'tis, Caelum, Jotunheim, Ermor and maybe few others have special units available from the spell Reanimation. (Broken Emp.) Ermor always reanimates
longdead velites and/or legionaires, Jotunheim undead giants half the time, Caelum and C'tis sometimes but I'm not sure about the exact number.
Might be the same ½ as with Jotuns. Soulless from Carrion Reanimation are affected too, atleast when playing Jotunheim. Then you have all giants.

About the 'Arcane Changeling', the six random is limited to the elements (No death, nature or astral) and are limited to recruitable in the capitol. I think it is one of the funniest creation I came up with. You buy something and don't know which magic paths it will have
Also it's more expensive than shown in the 'old' list.

best regards
Thilock

Six randoms in four paths of magic? He ALWAYS has ATLEAST 2211, often three in one and you can reliably get 4 at mid- to late game. Also, you need maximum of 3 for elem. magic booster, and so can easily forge Staff of Elemental Masteries... And find all the elemental sites!
I have studied my Randoms -mathbook, and would post the spesific numbers if I were able to calculate them. No luck yet. However, 4 randoms would be much, and even 3 would fill the part you gave for them. Take a look at Arco Mystics.

[Boron]

lets just wait until the first beta comes out

after that i suggest you make a new thread where balance issues can be stated

Originally posted by Endoperez :

Six randoms in four paths of magic? He ALWAYS has ATLEAST 2211, often three in one and you can reliably get 4 at mid- to late game. Also, you need maximum of 3 for elem. magic booster, and so can easily forge Staff of Elemental Masteries... And find all the elemental sites!
I have studied my Randoms -mathbook, and would post the spesific numbers if I were able to calculate them. No luck yet. However, 4 randoms would be much, and even 3 would fill the part you gave for them. Take a look at Arco Mystics.

6 randoms might be a bit high yeah . but if they have "only" access to elemental magic and are capitol only perhaps not too strong .

a "trick" to make you chose could be giving them really the 6 elemental randoms but only a base research of 1-2 .

so you have to chose whether you gamble for e.g. air 4 or you want research .

as soon as you find sages this is of course rather unimportant . but you can't 100% rely on sages .


but just lets see how the mod turns out in the beta Version . still strong looking forward to the first beta

if serious imbalances become obvious they still can be changed after the beta by e.g. reducing the randoms to 4 and giving 2 base paths e.g. EW .

[Blitz]

Obviously there's really been no attempt to balance this mod. I don't think he's trying to make the race playable in multiplayer... obviously his units are too cheap, too powerful, and too versitile. Clearly this is a single-player race to be played for fun.

If that wasn't the intention, then I would point out that the race is terribly unbalanced. It surpases or equals several races in their "theme". It's a more powerful astral nation than Arcoscephale. It's a better flying nation than Caelum. It has better random magic than Tiern Chi S&A.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:
Like the Idea, Boron.

quote:

---

1 storm flying air dragon , 1 flying fire dragon , 1 not flying but tough earth dragon , 1 flying ice dragon

Do you mean Dragon or draconian? Wouldn't it be to overpowered to give draconian race fullblooded dragons?

Edit: updated the the mod banner

---

i don't know if it is possible with modding but i thought of giving these dragons to the draconian race as national nation specific spells with gemcost .
like the summon celestial soldiers spell from base tien chi .

if that is impossible then i share izaqyos
idea
i would make them then very expensive draconian units or better leaders . like the niefel jarls of jotunheim niefelheim but even more expensive :
500-1500 gold cost depending on their strengths .
what slots such dragons should have then is of course a problem . because a niefel jarl has all slots and for the dragons it's not thematic that they have arm + feet slots at least .

so if such a dragon costs then 1000 or 1500 gold he would need then superior stats to a jotunheim niefel jarl because consider the following scenario :
the dragon costs 1500 gold but no arm + feet slots .
so you fully euqip the missing slots .

the jotunplayer then fully euqips 3 jotun jarls with AN - weapons . with their high strength the jotun jarls will do at least 50 damage per hit

so my idea : give the dragons regeneration + very high hp ( 500-1000 ) . but no arm , feet and armor slots . protection between 10-25 .

this way they still can be swarmed by hordes of fodder and get damaged but they will give them a good fight . the high gold costs are prohibitive .
you won't have more than 1-2 dragon in the first 20 turns .
1500 gold for a nonsacred unit is 100 upkeep !
furthermore the dragons need a mr of about 20 ( like a doom horror ) .
otherwise it would be too frustrating seeing them getting killed repeatedly by soul slaying rylheh/arco/pythium mages .

so the dragons will really be terrible enemies but you won't see more than 1-2 in the first 20-30 turns .


you could economically weaken the draconians a bit ( if it is possible by modding commands ) by not allowing them higher scales then :
order 0 productivity 0 .
that would be very thematic too . dragons have more important things to do then to care about economy


finally if you plan in future a second mod :
if adding a theme is possible you could add the following theme :
corrupted & broken draconian empire :
there an evil dracolich pretender has taken over the draconian empire . now all draconians became undead and demoniac spoiled by the evil aura of the dracolich pretender god .
now the elemental dragons from base draconian nation are replaced by undead dragon/draconians , undead draco lichs and demon dragons/draconians .
they focus on blood + death