Mod: Padmassa, the Black Coven - Alpha

[DrPraetorious]

Blood/death is a short path (vampires suck), and I've been doing a fair amount of thinking on what national spells would fit with the blood/death and earth/death combos, which are a little underpopulated.

Padmassan national spells should go in Blood or Construction, by preference.

These could be a lot of work to figure out how to get them going, so any advice before I start would be appreciated (or if anyone already knows how to make spells do this stuff.) Likewise, I'm always looking for ideas for more evil.

EEEDDDDD, const 7, "Obsidian Legion" - gives everyone stoneskin. 3 earth gems? Maybe should be const 9? Can I just copy stoneskin and change the AoE or does that still not work? Ought to do something else evil - is Army of Gold (for example) it's own effect number or is it set up to be Ironskin + a secondary effect, I wonder?

BD, blood 3, "Shadow Baiting"
BDDD, blood 5, "Shadow Blood Frenzy"
BDDDD, blood 7, "Slavering Horde of Shadows"

Spilled innocent blood is used as bait to lure shadow beasts into the material world. Combat summonings, make 5, 12 and 35+ shade beasts, respectively, at the cost of 1, 2 or 6 blood slaves. Easy to do.
Maybe it should summon "corrupted" shade beasts - maybe berserkers, maybe sacred. Shade beasts are pretty corrupt already, though.

BBBDDDD, blood 6, "Army of Midnight"

Raises the invisible black banner of the heliophagi atop the highest steeple in a distant province. At the stroke of midnight, a legion of shadows will descend on the people of that province and seek to slay anyone in it. They do not even know who called them from the darkness, and if victorious will not serve you. Easy to do.

BBDD, blood 4, "Black Blood"
BBBBDDDD, blood 8, "Rain of Black Blood"

Attack spells. The second one affects the entire battlefield.

Black blood could legitimately do Bane/ageing damage, MR damage like shadow blast, or poison, or all three (that'd be pretty crazy.) I'm not sure how to put multiple damage types/effects on a spell - if I copyspell "banefire" and then change the damage type to poison, maybe?

[DrPraetorious]

At a GC of 100, the gray man would cost nearly *twice* the upkeep of a Pegasus Rider, and nearly twice the resources, for a position that has less resources and money to begin with. Originally I priced the Grey Man at 80/61 (compare to the Knight of Avalon - he has a lot more powers, but being undead is a big drawback), but found I never used them.

In evaluating the cost of the Gray Man, keep the economics of the position in mind:

Your capital does get +20 resources, but is only admin 10, which is an income-hit equivalent to 2 levels of turmoil in the early game, and a big resource hit once you've taken even a few provinces.

Once you have some provinces to start blood-hunting, you can summon extremely elite units at very competitive prices - but most of them cost upkeep, and blood-hunting hurts your income.

Those circle masters *are* an excellent deal at 100 gold a pop - so you're going to want to build a lot of castles to churn them out in quantity. These castles don't give you the option on Gray Men, and chances are they make more resources than your capital (since they've got a higher admin even if built on a mountain.)

I've been sitting here playing the position and I have to say that the false knights are very competitive troops when doing early expansion - possibly even overpowered. They make a lot of attacks, EA independents don't hit that hard, and with their modest equipment and unbarded mounts thay're available in very large numbers.

Sure, they die, but that's okay, you don't want to keep paying upkeep on them anyway.

[Shovah32]

I agree the knights are good, i mix flail knights 2:1 with gray men, works very nicely I also like being able to mass produce little children at my forts while pouring all my gold into mages, good times indeed.

[Memento]

IMHO, the spell "hatch draconians" is VERY VERY overpowered. For just 18 blood slaves you can get 100 of them per turn. (Just take B9E4 blood fountain). They are Blessed!!! and has MR of 16!!!!!!!, which means no one can banish them that simply. And to conjure this hordes you just need a province with 5000 pop and 3 circle masters. I simply cannot imagine what can stop this hordes.

[DrPraetorious]

Oops, that's a typo.

nreff should be 1001 not 10001, meaning that a B9E4 god could make 10/turn, not 91/turn. Still nasty, but hardly unstoppable.

I'll fix that when I release the next version of the mod (which will include more artwork, mainly.)

[Memento]

ok, but you still get 31 cool units for just 18 blood slaves. Imagine how much blood slaves will you get at turn 30. The Mictlanian hords will look like puppets for you, especiaally if you take f9w9 bless. This nasty reptilians have a protection of 18 - arrows are useless against them. MR 14 + you can easily reseach enchantment 4 to further protect them against banishing.Again it is too much.
Maybe too make blood magic more easily used, you would give the conjurer dousing effect of 1? This will encourage everyone to reseach Blood Magic from the start of the game.

About magic: you give 5 magic path exept f, n, and air. Nachure is easyly gained through indies, and with some luck you will get air 1 Hich circle master. Too big from the the start imho.

My opinion - right now this mod is overpowered.

[DrPraetorious]

I'm confused - how do you get 31 per turn for 18? I'm counting at most 10 per turn unless you can boost your blood magic to 31.

Are you being sarcastic about the douse bonus?

Many EA nations get five paths. EA Arco, for example. EA Arco also gets a more powerful army (aside from blood summons.)

Also note that the nation has major disadvantages - particularly the very low admin in the capital.

[Memento]

Well when I played, I didnt bother to hire anybody except mages and maybe some indy commanders - and you dont need admin to hire mages.
the spell "Hatch draconoids" is level 2 reseach, cost 18 blood slaves and gives you 31+ draconoids.
I am not sarcastic about giving dousing to conjurers

[DrPraetorious]

The number of draconoids is a TYPO. After it is fixed you will not get 31+ any more. It should be 1+1/level of blood magic (which would be 4+1/level past 3), but I think I'm going to change it to a fixed number (it'll be comparable to a Lanka or Mictlan blood summon in terms of cost/effect.) I'm not doing another version of the mod until I finish some other stuff, though.

Conjurers are already nearly as eficient blood hunters as mictlan priests; I'm aware that circle masters are a much better deal, so I might make the circle masters capital only, or just drop the Conjurers entirely.

Admin also makes money; quite a bit of money, since your capital has 40,000 people in it.

[Memento]

DrPraetorious said:
Conjurers are already nearly as eficient blood hunters as mictlan priests;

they are not sacred, so their upkeep is twice bigger then mictlan priests