Warhammer: Wood Elves

[Burnsaber]

Gave this a small whirl as promised. I'll go give a bit more detailed feedback once a new version is up. Some things that stood up for me.


-- Why Divine Glyph as pretender? Perhaps replace with ***** Queen? Also, do you have any national pretenders in the making (like the Elf Queen, the true Lady of the Lake, forgot her real name.)

-- Elf names? Perhaps overwrite the "sauromatia" nametype 136. Here is a elf name generator I found to make the job a bit easier. http://www.slacknhash.net/elf_name_generator.php

-- Typo: Unicorn summon description -> "sistenance" -> "sustenance"

-- Orion has a grey shadow in his grey graphic. The graphics in general could use a bit of "tidying up", you know, getting rid of broken pixels and the strange outlines.

-- The Noble has only 15 ap, despite being mounted.

[Sombre]

Rather than use up a nametype I'd give all the elves the plant nametype and then extend the plant nametype with a load of things that work for both plants and wood elves like 'Thunderbirch' or 'Fernwalker' etc

There are very few nametypes available, after all. I didn't use one for Itza because of this - stuck with Mictlan names.

I agree with Burnsaber and generally the graphics of this mod, as you know, need some serious work.

[alansmithee]

Thanks again for all the replies. I'll start working more on it in the next week or so. I know the graphics are bad, it's my first time trying so I've been ruining tons of sprites. And I put it out a bit early to get an idea about the playability and ideas behind the army. I think it does ok getting the feel for wood elves (high skilled fragile elves backed up by strong casters and tough nature spirits) and there's a lot of tricky stuff.

One major thing I'm thinking about is really focusing on the "wood" aspect. Sombre said I might could make more use of forestshape (currently only Orion and the dryads do), but I'm really worried about getting the balance right. Would the forestshape just be bonus (balance against the plainshape, and give a bonus for the woods)? If not, how much weight should the forestshape get? It's not like the tabletop where you're guaranteed a woods when you fight.

But thanks again for everyone's comments, and I hope people enjoy the mod.

[Thilock_Dominus]

An interesting way to use forestshape, would be that all the wood elves have forestshape. So you can actually make the wood elves be a bit stronger when fighting in woods, or bit weaker when not fighting in the woods

[Radio_Star]

I've got a fair amount of input, but so much of it hinges on things that could possibly change drastically in the near future. I think if we could get a new version with at least a definite unit list, we could start crunching through it.


In other words, I'm really liking the mod and want to see a new version ASAP.

[alansmithee]

Originally Posted by Thilock_Dominus

An interesting way to use forestshape, would be that all the wood elves have forestshape. So you can actually make the wood elves be a bit stronger when fighting in woods, or bit weaker when not fighting in the woods

I'm worried about balance in that case. New version has more use of forestshape, though. Biggest problem is since the amount of forest is so variable, it's hard to tell just how powerful they should be. I don't want them too weak outside of forests, because then the vast majority of the time you're gonna have units that are bad (and everything's already fairly expensive, and dies easily). Alternately, if the bonuses are too good they'll dominate forests (and if a map has high-forests, they'll be really insane). There's also the practical aspect of using too many unit numbers.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

I've got a fair amount of input, but so much of it hinges on things that could possibly change drastically in the near future. I think if we could get a new version with at least a definite unit list, we could start crunching through it.


In other words, I'm really liking the mod and want to see a new version ASAP.

Thanks for the support. I'm uploading a newer version now. I've cleaned up some of the graphics (mostly getting the black outlines/random bits gone), but that's an ongoing process. Also, final unit list is pretty much set (Wood elves don't have that much difference in unit selection in their army book). And I'd appreciate any and all feedback.

[Radio_Star]

It looks like wardancers are going to be very hard to balance. Out of the box they are absurdly good at wasting your gold and giving the enemy xp, but that changes really, really, really fast. A little clever positioning of your excellent arrowcatchers helps out from turn 1. A W9 bless is pretty much a given with the sacreds as they stand, bringing dancers to a disturbing 21 defense and 22 mv... and 4 attacks a round. Admittedly, those 4 attacks are for low damage (except that now brutal first strike). Thankfully, you've got some earth access and can cast things like strength of giants which will proc 4 times a round instead of 1. Weapons of sharpness. Rust mist. Iron bane. You're still arrow bait, but you've got significant air magic. Arrow fend. Storm if you want. Mass flight? Fog warriors? All the classics work. Wooden warriors, elemental buffs, you name it, you can cast it.

In summary, you've got a lot of damage potential balanced by significant weaknesses, but you've got natural access to the paths to eliminate all your weaknesses and multiply the bejeezus out of your strengths. I like the multiple attack sacreds for thematic reasons, but the multiplicative effect when buffed looks tough to balance.

Highborn are .. unmounted with a lance and hoof attack? Mounted with an old graphic and mv value?

Again, loving the mod but I think it'd be healthy to have a good conversation about balance on the wardancers.

[kianduatha]

Ah, that seems much better. I think this is going to be a turmoil-luck nation, just for the glory of getting Orion second turn like I just did in my test game. Then he got Heroic Quickness, and after he soloed Bogus and Co. he got Boots of quickness. He was personally killing at least 150 units a battle.

Force of Natures have an attack sprite that is smaller than the normal sprite, so they look like they are doing squats or something. It is very silly.

Frankly I am terrified of Elf's lategame abilities. They have very odd stats, and that means other nations basically have to go through hoops to find counters to their stuff. And you never know whether Elves will teleport in thugs(though they thankfully don't seem to have a terribly good chassis for them until lategame), directly assassinate your commanders or bring in a seemingly invincible army buffed up beyond belief.

[alansmithee]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

It looks like wardancers are going to be very hard to balance. Out of the box they are absurdly good at wasting your gold and giving the enemy xp, but that changes really, really, really fast. A little clever positioning of your excellent arrowcatchers helps out from turn 1. A W9 bless is pretty much a given with the sacreds as they stand, bringing dancers to a disturbing 21 defense and 22 mv... and 4 attacks a round. Admittedly, those 4 attacks are for low damage (except that now brutal first strike). Thankfully, you've got some earth access and can cast things like strength of giants which will proc 4 times a round instead of 1. Weapons of sharpness. Rust mist. Iron bane. You're still arrow bait, but you've got significant air magic. Arrow fend. Storm if you want. Mass flight? Fog warriors? All the classics work. Wooden warriors, elemental buffs, you name it, you can cast it.

In summary, you've got a lot of damage potential balanced by significant weaknesses, but you've got natural access to the paths to eliminate all your weaknesses and multiply the bejeezus out of your strengths. I like the multiple attack sacreds for thematic reasons, but the multiplicative effect when buffed looks tough to balance.

Highborn are .. unmounted with a lance and hoof attack? Mounted with an old graphic and mv value?

Again, loving the mod but I think it'd be healthy to have a good conversation about balance on the wardancers.

I'll fix the highborn. I decided to switch them late in the game, so I didn't check everything exactly. Should be unmounted, when I get home I'll fix it.

Also, I'm not sure what to do about wardancers. I could conceivably cut earth magic from the regular elves, but I have no idea what to replace it with (and if I don't replace it with something, that would leave them with 1 major path, 1 medium strength path, and 1 very minor path). I was looking at them as essentially slightly better battle vestals (better stats, no shield), and almost everyone universally says the vestals are horrible. I could give them 2 weapons instead of 1 weapon with two attacks, which would make them hit less (but would make the charge more devastating). Alternately, I could remove the charge attack but just give a 1 use weapon that has higher damage (in the tabletop game, they get bonus strength, essentially damage, on the charge). Any suggestions would be welcome, i think they're pretty close in feel to the tabletop but not quite there.

Originally Posted by kianduatha

Ah, that seems much better. I think this is going to be a turmoil-luck nation, just for the glory of getting Orion second turn like I just did in my test game. Then he got Heroic Quickness, and after he soloed Bogus and Co. he got Boots of quickness. He was personally killing at least 150 units a battle.

Force of Natures have an attack sprite that is smaller than the normal sprite, so they look like they are doing squats or something. It is very silly.

Frankly I am terrified of Elf's lategame abilities. They have very odd stats, and that means other nations basically have to go through hoops to find counters to their stuff. And you never know whether Elves will teleport in thugs(though they thankfully don't seem to have a terribly good chassis for them until lategame), directly assassinate your commanders or bring in a seemingly invincible army buffed up beyond belief.

I'll get on the Force of nature sprite when I get home. And I had hoped Orion was a bit weaker (although I guess getting the boots and heroic quickness helped). Although in the tabletop game he's pretty much unkillable in woods, and he is a demigod so I don't know if I want him too weak. Might need to cut him down a bit more though.

And I tried to match the feel from the tabletop. It's hard, since even though the vast majority of their troops lack armor, they aren't that easy to kill. It's just when something does hit them, they die horribly. I'm worried any strong buff to base units will make them too good, but if I hit the base units too much they will be worthless. I might could also work on magic paths (cut down on the air access?) to make everything not quite so easy. But at least in my testing I found getting much diversity hard, and the spellsingers to be pretty bad overall (which I intended). Research seems a problem, especially with no access to research boosters. And the spellweavers are already quite expensive (of course, from a lategame perspective the gold issue isn't much of one).

[Radio_Star]

Quick detail: Call of the Hunt isn't summoning a magicleader, leading to an instarout.