Mod: Warhammer "Chaos Undivided" race

[rdonj]

Bump in the hope that maybe this mod can be reworked a bit for the next warhammer-based mod game. Plus a few thoughts.

First, nurgle units. I think all the nurgle units should be given 0 encumbrance, or at least from the chosen on up. It's more dominionsy and would make them more attractive. Also, their flails only doing 1 damage is just too low, even with multiple attacks. Although, if the nurgle warriors were made to have 0 encumbrance they might be able to do without a stronger weapon as chaff killers/blockers just fine. Flail armed marauders, on the other hand, are not really very well off. Also, I think when you got to the lords and champions you got the hp mixed up between nurgle and khorne, because the khornate units start having more health. This may be true for greater demons also, I haven't gotten that far in my game yet.

I'm also not sure I like tzeentch's warriors either. They don't feel strange enough, and perhaps aren't different enough from Khorne's.

Slaaneshi warriors I think have too much defense. Of course, the encumbrance kills them, but until then, they're incredibly tough. Actually I was fighting them with the ogres at one point and it was completely hopeless on my end, I could hardly hurt them. And the chosen warriors are much worse, especially with an earth bless to lessen encumbrance issues.

The lords are fun and thematically interesting but for the purposes of balance I think they might be a little excessive. For example, the lord of Khorne can solo almost any independant province, and the lord of Slaanesh can solo many independants as well. Actually the lord of Tzeentch is probably the only one that can't solo indy provinces from turn 1. And a lord of Khorne with no more than a dozen knights can kill large armies with no losses. Which may partly be because the knights are too strong... I think the chaos steed hoof and bite attack is a bit too powerful at 20 damage.

One odd thing I noticed is when one of my lords of slaanesh picked up a shield from an indy, it got rid of the enchanted spear. I tried passing it around to other slaaneshi lords and the same thing happened, kind of strange bug.

[rdonj]

The lord of end times himself is also ridiculously powerful. His being immortal is really not quite fair, with his high awe, standard, and excellent combat stats. And I think it might be better if he was restricted to only blood, water, astral and death magic, for thematic purposes.

[rdonj]

The chaos chariots have only an attack skill of 4 with the whip and halberd attacks.

[sum1lost]

Originally Posted by Panpiper

Chaos Cultists, the priests for Chaos, now have a single magic pick in blood magic instead of fire magic.

I've noted a few things with regard to Chaos Cultists. One is that with their previous one pick in fire magic, they are rather more useful than the typical priest when they show up as the basic commander in province defense. Another thing is that their current "Chaos Blessed" starting ritual which is based on the ritual spell of "Cross Breeding" currently uses fire as it's path. The "Cross Breeding" ritual is actually a blood path. Finally, I find the idea of blood magic far more thematic than that of fire for Chaos Cultists.

I bring this up because it is with some reticence that I convert the cultists magic pick to blood as it would seem this would make Chaos much more effective with regard to blood hunting. That said, in my own test games with Chaos, I rarely blood hunt with a sorcerer that has only one pick in blood. I'll use the few sorcerers that pop up with two blood for that. (Though it is entirely possible that I don't know how to properly blood hunt.)

Finally a question. It would seem to me to be very thematic to allow Chaos Cultists to blood sacrifice, especially given how the priests now have blood magic. However I am unsure as to whether this might make Chaos too powerful. I don't want to turn Chaos into a Mictlan however with nopreach and dyingdom, as this seems both unthematic for Chaos (it's rather the opposite of dying) and looks to me like a lot of extra micromanagement. Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether giving Chaos sacrificedom would be unbalancing? (Balance in this mod is more important than being thematic.)

For the time being, blood sacrifice is in the mod, pending feedback.

Version 0.50 uploaded. (Half way there?)

Suggestion- instead of giving them no preach, maybe give some of the preists heretic? It seems that this might thematically represent the dissension between the powers, while at the same time giving them the ability to rapidly reduce non-chaos dominion?

[Panpiper]

Apparently we are no longer permitted to modify posts made more than 30 minutes ago. How on earth a modder is supposed to maintain a changelog now is beyond me.

Version 0.52
"Chaos steed hoof and bite" damage reduced to 18 from 20. Enchanted Spear carried by Lords of Slaanesh is now a custom weapon that is one handed instead of two handed as is the normal enchanted spear. It has also been toned down somewhat doing slightly less damage and having both less attack and defense bonus, it is after all a one handed spear. This should have the effect of reducing further the ability of Lords of Slaanesh to solo independents (even though Lords are 400 point units, none of them should be able to 'solo' independents). Slaanesh warriors and chosen defense dropped by one, attack increased by one. Champion and Lords of Slaanesh defense dropped by one. Nurgle units being undead are now all encumbrance 0. Nurgle flail damage increased by one. Lord of Khorne HP dropped to 30, equal to Lord of Nurgle, fear effect also dropped to remove bonus. This should keep them from being able to solo independents. Nurgle and Khorne greater demons now have equal health. Lord of the End Times immortality removed and new path cost increased to 80, natural magic paths now: blood, water, astral and death magic, not fire.

*

Rdonj, sorry, I was away from Dominions for a good while. Unfortunately my interest in modding any particular game lasts only for the time I am actually 'playing' the game, and I did not see this post until yesterday. Fortunately for this mod anyway, I come back to Dominions fairly consistantly for several years now.

I have made changes to the mod based on your feedback. I have not addressed the lack of 'specialness' for the warriors of Tzeentch. The problem is I'm not sure what to do with them to make them more Tzeentch like and special, but still keep them essentially human warriors.

I also have not changed the chaos chariot attack skill of the whip and halberd as I am not sure what is going on there. The chaos chariot has an attack value of 14. Does it suffer a negative 10 on regular attacks because it is a trample unit? If so aught I simply boost the attack value of the chariot itself or would that affect the trample attack as well? I suppose I could equip the chariots with custom whips and halbards and boost the attack values of the custom weapons. I'm not sure.

Sum1lost, your idea is a very good one, but I am not sure how to give a 'chance' at being a heretic to the cultists and I don't want to make 'all' the Chaos priest heretics as that would doom Chaos. Even if I knew how to give a chance at having heretic, I would be concerned about the consequence of the starting cultist being a heretic as that would be a damaging blow right at the start. I suppose I could make the starting cultist a unique unit (identical to regular cultists in every way except for having no chance of heresy) but that still leave me stuck at not knowing how to do it.

[rdonj]

Hey, glad to see you come back. I'm certainly happy with the changes you made, I almost would have gone farther with the flails but they're much better off now than before. The change to the undead was really big, nurgle warriors are much more useful now. Lords of khorne really did need to lose that fear aura, even though that's going to hurt them a lot. They were just a little too much though being powerful out of the box thugs.

The problem the chariots have is that they're not ambidextrous. They need a fairly hefty bonus to offest the weapon length penalty from the whip and halberd. The trample attack I'm pretty sure doesn't care about your attack skill, the size of the trampling unit. So that should be unaffected by any change you make.

I don't honestly know what to do with the warriors of Tzeentch either. They do have increased magic resistance so there is at least some difference. Maybe the chosen could have luck cursing weapons....

I am 99% positive it's impossible to have randomly heretical units. The only way I can think of that you could manage it is with the crossbreeding spell. Obviously that won't work for a recruitable commander.

[llamabeast]

You can modify the first post in any thread, so you should use that one for the changelog.

[Panpiper]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

You can modify the first post in any thread, so you should use that one for the changelog.

That should have been obvious to me, eh? Thank you Llamabeast.

Originally Posted by rdonj

I almost would have gone farther with the flails but they're much better off now than before. The change to the undead was really big

I don't honestly know what to do with the warriors of Tzeentch either. They do have increased magic resistance so there is at least some difference. Maybe the chosen could have luck cursing weapons...

Given that I dropped the encumbrance for the Nurgle units to zero, I didn't want to give too big a boost to their primary weapon. If people find they are still too weak, I'll consider bumping it again.

Your suggestion about Tzeentch suggested a good idea. I have given the chosen of Tzeentch halberd, a 'magic' effect (no other boost). Of the chosen (let alone the regular warriors), they alone have a magic weapon. This may not be enough, but with that and their naturally higher magic resistance, they are 'special'.

I gave full ambidexterity to the Chaos Warrior Chariot (each of the two weapons is wielded by a separate warrior). That should have been obvious to me the first time I wrote the mod, but I missed it and never looked back.

[rdonj]

Magic halberds for the chosen does sound pretty nifty. They're still a little bit niche but should be pretty useful on astral nations.

[Panpiper]

I encountered several weird bugs while attempting to fix the spear problem. I have not gotten to the bottom of what was causing the bugs where one hand weapons would seem to be functioning as two handed. I do however have a workaround where by using a number code rather than the name string I am able to specify a one handed spear which does do the trick. The numbered spear however has higher stats which required dropping the natural stats of the Lord of Slaanesh, not what I had originally wanted to do. This disadvantages a custom equipped lord, but I guess they're likely still tough enough once fully kitted.