Mod: Cinggis Qayan, Wrath of the Khans 3 eras -- Update 6

[kennydicke]

Globu

Thanks! Yes, I love those minis by Kev White. He's unbelievable. I bought, like, 120 of the Celtos ones during a sort of binge five years ago.

Is he famous? I don't know the names of those who model minis. I've also had similar experiences with 40k models, most recently Orks. (I would absolutely love a greenskin mod!)

Well, if it looks like hair at this scale, we can treat it as such. I'll see what I can do.

It may just be me, does anyone else think it looks like blonde hair? If not, it's fine as is. And I'm still thinking servant of manzan.

Very interesting on the bows -- especially that African one. Hey, I've seen posts like "Machaka could use some love..." -- may want to release that puppy.

I hadn't read that, but it's not as if I've read every post. All I've seen is trash-talk for my favorite national theme (except for one that you can probably guess). My artwork is so atrocious (by comparison, the javelin launcher is grade-A work) that I would need a sprites for them as well! And I would rather anyone wanting to help out focus on the other mod nation's that still need polishing. Though if someone who wanted to, made a sprite I could stomach (I quit using mine because I couldn't take it anymore) I would gladly take a look at 'Machaka, A Lesson in Balance;' the lesson of course being me learning to make a mod, edit the nationals, and, importantly, retain balance (which I don't think I did, I was rocking Ashdod's world last time I played SP with them, last year sometime). Also, if I could find out how to edit a nation, and not completely replace them, that would be real incentive. If memory serves, I tried a #copynation (or something) and couldn't get the changes to work. This was over a year ago.

Well, pricing can likely make an important distinction there -- in my own play I often find it fairly wasteful to splurge for cavalry archers when regular ones will do the job fine.

Whereas, I generally make as many cavalry archers as possible, and just use regular to supplement PD (unless I have to use them, or have a Gateway capable leader with longbowmen).

But aside from that, they can make for terrifying PD, if that is to be a national strength. Although given the offensive power level so far, these archers in PD may be a bit much -- but once it's balanced better, it can be a good fit. (That could also be remedied by a second class of cheaper foot archers using lesser bows, with these being used for PD instead.)

Once again, I tried to emphasize the fact that once the Mongols had captured a town/area, they didn't lose it unless they let you take it. (Generally, for strategic reasons.) Although, they already have too many strengths, from what I've gathered. I really like the idea of PD-only archers (another part of my Machaka mod was "Hunters," basically they were PD-only militia with bows (think I used lion tribe sprites).

As for the thematic element, at least to me, 14-damage long-range bows are pretty impressive. And now, coming to think of it, in light of the flaming arrows problem and what you've said about the Mongols' recurve bows, I don't think it would be inappropriate at all to use the stock Great Bow of Hinnom's EA archers. And that would make them fearsome and distinctive in itself.

If others like this idea, I could go for it. I would prefer to use a #newweapon, but vanilla weapons have their uses (and don't take ID slots). I disabled #armorpiercing at this point, but it would be my preference to add it back. I'm trying to go by popular consensus. If their can be such a thing for a new mod.

If you do go with armor piercing, though, it would seem appropriate to keep the damage down. It would make them a bit underwhelming against un-/lightly-armored targets, but then they're mostly dead meat anyway. It still seems like a tough fit, though, balance-wise, and will make them horrific in the early game.

I had hoped for a strong early-mid-game, with an underpowered late-game. Kind of matching the fast rise, fairly lengthy status quo, and ultimately quick fall at the end (as both the Huns and Mongols are known for). Strong early game is a natch. It would probably be best for an average-strong mid-game and a fairly weak late-game. Suggestions anyone?

I really like the use of Recurve in the name, since that gives the most descriptive information and is least abstract, giving something for the imagination to chew on. That may just be me though.

I merely named it a greatbow as a way for me to remember that was the basis of the weapon when I first made it. I prefer recurve myself, and it is the most accurate short name. (Mongol-style Hunnic Recurve, being more accurate still, but too long for my tastes.

As for giving the MP Glory map the same treatment... Not so sure about it. The larger one was a monster and took way more time than I expected. (I seem to like using "monster" and "monstrous" today -- I really hardly ever use those words.) Also, I'm working on a 650-province, meticulously tidied-up random-gen map that I hope to release some day. So probably not on the small Glory map.

'Tis a shame, 'tis a shame indeed. No biggie, though. I will just redo my own using the newest version. (That is, if the smaller map is even different now.)

Now, all that said, here are some preliminary samples of what I'm dubbing Mongol archers. They're not finalized, and still need some detail work (stray pixels, edges, and so forth), not to mention base sprites (these are pretty clearly action sprites). Details like colors and bow size can be changed easily, as shown here.

I like them myself. If nobody has problems with them, I'd like two. One for PD-only, one for the recruits; if you could make one have a slightly longer bow that would be cool, but not important. (Oh, looks like you already did!) If you can make them look like scale-type armor, great!; if not, I don't care too much. If you can add a buckler (a smaller shield that could generally be worn while firing a bow) that would be awesome. And pinball completes the scene... oops, I meant a small axe on a belt loop. If you don't want to take the time, cool. You've done more than I expected already. And I'm thoroughly impressed if you just whipped those up! (Still impressed if you didn't; they aren't my usual stick figures, that's fo' sho'!)
Edit: Forgot to mention that I like the tan guy and the dark-red/brown guy. But do the ones you find easiest to edit!

Let me know if you'd like me to proceed with these guys.

In essence, yes. Unless someone else really hates them for some logical reason, they'll fit nicely.


Thanks

Oh, and to whomever didn't like them having three survivals. The Altaic region tribes lived in a vast area, that was all at once mountainous, forested and a true wasteland (especially the Gobi Desert). I felt it was thematic for this and a couple other reasons. First, they Mongols would travel with four to five horses to each man/woman warrior; if supplies ran short they would let blood from the jugular of a horse and drink the blood (excellent nourishment, I'm told), allowing them to have a continuous supply a combination food/drink that was replenishable (my brother wanted me to give each unit a supply bonus, but I thought the survivals worked better for other reasons). Second, the heaviest factor in the Mongol dominance was not superior equipment (this was a close second), not their superior tactics (which was uncommonly good for a less *civilized* race, but probably only third; look up 'Subutai' for a more thorough example), but was the fact that their cavalry could move at lightning speeds (especially compared to larger, heavier European horses and soldiers) and that their foot troops were equally as fast relative to the less vigorous European counterparts (including the *barbarian* tribes). AP, mapmove and survival helped me to simulate speed. I will tone them down for balance. But I do feel it's thematic. I appreciate your thoughts, understand where your coming from, and am looking for a way to mitigate this with their other all too evident strengths!

Danke Schoen!

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Also, if I could find out how to edit a nation, and not completely replace them, that would be real incentive. If memory serves, I tried a #copynation (or something) and couldn't get the changes to work. This was over a year ago.

I think (and bear in mind that I haven't done this myself) that what you do is:

1 - edit existing national units. The game picks that up just fine.
2 - creating national spells = create normal spells then use the #restricted tab.
3 - For changing the nation itself, just #selectnation . Use appropriate commands to change what you want, and the game will overwrite existing nation data appropriately. Remember to drop in a #end when you finish changing things (this was always my weakest point when I did any coding), and all should be well.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I had hoped for a strong early-mid-game, with an underpowered late-game. Kind of matching the fast rise, fairly lengthy status quo, and ultimately quick fall at the end (as both the Huns and Mongols are known for). Strong early game is a natch. It would probably be best for an average-strong mid-game and a fairly weak late-game. Suggestions anyone?

A standard way to weaken late-game would be heavily restricting access to Astral, Death and Blood. The low MR on national troops should already help this along, as I imagine a Master Enslave would do truly horrible things to a Quyanate army.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Oh, and to whomever didn't like them having three survivals... (snippety)

I know I made a comment - my intent was more to register surprise than dislike. It does provide an exceptional level of mobility, which was presumably the intent. I guess it's pretty much appropriate for what they did historically, although I can't claim expertise on the subject.

[rdonj]

Yeah, the great bow is definitely too much. Longbows at 13 damage are considered quite powerful in dominions, and crossbows at 10 ap every 2 rounds even more so against armored targets. 15 ap every round for just one more resource than a longbow is not just good, it's ridiculously good. 10 ap is enough to consistently damage 20 prot, but not much higher. 15 ap is enough to consistently damage 30. Against more normal units with protection values ranging from 8-16, each shot fired from these great bows has a VERY good chance of killing your average human. Compare this to a crossbow, a crossbow will do the same amount of damage on average to a guy with 6 protection (militia) as a great bow will to a guy with 16(tough heavy infantry). They are really, really powerful in dominions with those stats.

Hopefully I haven't come across as being too harsh, I'm just trying to show you the math behind why everyone is saying they're too powerful . Personally, I would replace the horsebow with longbows and the great bows with the hinnom bows as others have suggested. This will enable you to use them with flaming arrows and make the great bows much less unreasonable. I think they would be better at +1 damage over longbows than +2, but I think it's a reasonable compromise.


The Tengri pretender - Expensive little chassis, but still ridiculously overpowered . At current price, you can take it awake while still having pretty good scales and decent dominion (or balanced scales and dominion NINE). Couple this with high awe, higher than 100% lightning resist (why?), 100% poison resist, immortality, ethereality, 0 enc trample, bunches of AN attacks, and an insanely high storm power value... if you can get this things #onebattlespells working, it will truly be an undefeatable monster. I am not kidding. And on top of that it has good buffing+mobility magic paths built in. He needs serious work to be fair. As an aside, for some reason in the pretender screen he is listed as having s3 and a3, but when I look at his magic paths to increase them, he only has them at 1. Not sure what's going on there.


Ulgen - Well, he's certainly no Tengri, so he's much more reasonable. Largely he seems a bit of a niche pretender... sort of like a sphinx on steroids, that can create mages (if GoRed, which is still cheaper and much less research than normal) I'm a bit concerned about his domsummon ability, and the amount of misc slots he has seems a bit much (same with the last guy too). It would be pretty easy to stack this guy with boosters and cast several great globals and spells, and you can get the magic to do so while taking him awake without sacrificing your scales.

Gazar Eej - Much more reasonable chassis. Possibly still better than its cost, and yet again the extremely high level of awe, but otherwise I don't see anything glaringly wrong with it. As a suggestion, consider bumping its cost to 100 points and lowering the awe to +1 or +2.

Genghis - Too many misc slots. Three maybe, but 4 just seems like too much. The level of fear could also drop a bit. Perhaps to +2? Other than that he is not too bad. I might actually lower his price though. Not all the way down to 0, but say somewhere around 20. Simultaneously, consider bumping his new path cost to 60-80.

Erlik - Why does he #onebattlespell undead mastery? This is an insanely good ability, way too good to be a #onebattlespell. Why not darkness? That seems reasonably thematic and not so overpowering. Either way he I think he is too cheap. He should probably be at least 150 points, and also, have fewer misc slots It seems also that he has a lot of magic paths. A pretender with three seperate magic paths probably should not be so skilled in a particular one. Especially not if he has such a high dominion score. I notice all of your pretenders have very high dominion scores. You might want to consider toning some of them down. For example, in vanilla there are only something like 2 pretenders with a dominion of 4, and those are the fountains, which have fairly low utility as far as pretenders go. Whereas all of yours are powerful mages, SCs, army enhancers, etc Consider bumping most of them down to 1 or 2 dominion, leaving Genghis with high dominion to represent his authority and ability to command.

I'm not going to talk much about the troops. Cavalry look more or less okay except for the ones with light lances, who suffer from a lack of dexterity and have lower attack values than intended. The basic infantry are slightly good for troops that are supposed to be a bit meh, but are probably fine. Qayan vessels having spy and assassinate is weird, but since they can't use those abilities it doesn't matter that much. The archers are just too good, even at 35 gold per. Even if they were cap only and 50 gold per archer, they would be too good :P Why do the javelin launchers have 0 encumbrance and all those resists?


One last thing... death worms. Their stats aren't too ridiculous, but their price is too low, and their attacks are way too good. They shouldn't be more than aoe1, and no, the worms really don't need fear :P

That was way longer than I'd intended... again, I hope I don't come off to harshly, everything I said above is just my personal opinion and entirely capable of being wrong!

[kennydicke]

Gregstrom

A note on the recurve bows: I had assumed (given the history and geography of the Ashdod/Hinnom/Gath source material) that the greatbows they used would be recurves. Their piccy looks sort of recurved, for that matter. If that assumption is correct, Qayanate bows shouldn't be quite up to those stats (Ashdod giants would presumably treat a 166 pound pull as a child's toy).

I always thought of the Gath nations as being Semitic, as nametype, unit/commander titles/names, startsites, heroes, etc. are *all* Semitic in origin. While they are truly great peoples, (especially the hittites, gotta love those who wield iron in while everyone around them is just hitting the bronze age! mod material?), I never thought of them as having recurve bows. But I wouldn't doubt it if I was wrong. If so, you are correct; if not, you are still correct. I tried to use the greatbow (when I was thinking it was an English longbow) as a reference, while staying on par/slightly better than it, weaker than the Gileadite bow, and stronger than the longbow (which to me was a standard long bow ~4.5-5ft long, while an English longbow was at least 6' long). If vanilla longbows are meant to represent standard longbows, the Mongol-style recurve should far outstrip it; if vanilla longbows are meant to represent English longbows the Mongol-style recurve *should* be comparable and slightly stronger with roughly equal (slightly higher) range and precision for the user. I can understand balance concerns, and tend to agree. I just like historical accuracy for some reason. I will tone them down to be about equal to a longbow for the larger recurve on foot units and slightly better than a composite bow for the mounted recurve. Further playtesting at those levels should determine their overall gamebreaking power. You raise really good points!

As far as vanguards etc. go: Their attack values drop (obviously enough) because you're using two weapons with a combined length of 6. Making the light lance a #bonus or adding some ambidexterity would fix this, as others have noted.

Not giving everyone ambidexterity was one concession I made to balance before even starting the mod. I would gladly give them all ambidexterity 2 if it's not too unbalancing.

The mental image of a horseman using a sabre and light lance while simultaneously getting effective use out of a buckler seems a little odd, though.

It does to my western sensibilities as well, but that is how the Mongols and Huns fought (when not shooting a bow, while still effectively using their buckler). History does not always match with logic, but we can try to force it!

My initial idea had been the creation of a sort of 'medium lance', with the lance's function of breaking on the first hit and the #bonus tag. I don't know if that's possible, though.

That was my initial idea as well, and was a topic I had wanted to broach at a further point. I'm actually pleased you brought it up. I am also unsure, I pretty much *just* delved into modding. My other attempts were mostly edits to prior code and a mirror of Machaka with a few new units that were probably way too strong. I assumed that the #charge tag made it *break* like lances, I am probably in error. If there is a decent way to do it, that anyone knows of, I'll take my best crack at it!

Mages: You're right on the button when you refer to Pythium. They and Mictlan are existing models of pantheonic faiths within the game. Pythium handles worshippers of something other than the Pretender by giving them the heretic tag, while Mictlan gives different sects the task of worshipping different aspects of the Pretender. Either works nicely. They're also (I think) a good model of the sort of mage power a magically diverse nation should have.

I was initially going to make the servanta of erlik, the closest thing to a true outcast, a heretic (I really like these one cold-bloods called Priests[?] of Sotek) as they were the only true outcasts. I should have made a note that one of the strengths of Mongol rule was that they were open to all races, creeds, and religions; they gave equality (at least, relative for the times) to men, women and other races that were *Mongol* (they themselves referred to any conquered/allied people in this way, they saw no difference between where someone was from, who he was descended from, what his skin color was, what his occupation was, or how he worshiped his chosen god; they only looked at if the person was useful to their society, whether as a warrior or workforce. (No slaves! Freedom was as important to them as it is *supposed* to be to American citizens.) For primarily this reason I decided against heretics; I also liked the pantheonic element to the lizardmen of Itza, so I thought I could incorporate a similarity. The only peoples they truly looked down on were the Chinese (cowards who hide behind walls), the Japanese (inhabitants of cursed islands) and the Koreans (who were too deadly to be engaged). All this aside, if the consensus is to make some heretics, or to remove #holy from some of them, I'll cast historicity aside!

By the way, why does the Quyan light scale they use have 0 enc? It doesn't matter for the cavalry, and the infantry are definitely under-encumbered given their levels of protection.

The leather-scale armor used by the Altaic tribes was not only tougher (read: protection), but lighter (read: encumbrance), more flexible (read: defense) and more durable (not really translatable to dominions) than the chain mail hauberks that were the European standard of the time. They didn't actually have lighter or heavier armors (the closest thing was an even tougher variation known as Lamellar armor, a more deflective albeit more rigid version) I took license to create variation; but technically, there should just be "Qayan Leather Scale" and "Qayan Lamellar Armor." Lamellar armor is actually what is shown in most depictions of Mongol, Rus, Turkic and Byzantine (ooh, another phenomenal race for a mod, the vanilla Pythium, a decent nation, does no justice; Byzantium, the Varyags of Miklagaard! I've already got a number of ideas, from twenty seconds of thought) warriors. Anyway, to a people whom both sexes donned armor at a very young age, and wore it as everyday clothing, a *light* armor would have no encumbrance. Once again, though, balance trumps historicity! Suggestions?

PS: Don't worry about the colonel thing. It certainly doesn't mean I'm any kind of expert.

Don't worry about the private thing. It certainly doesn't mean my last name is Parts! um roll: Please!

That wasn't meant as an insult Gregstrom. So please don't take it as such. I appreciate your input (as I do everyone's) and will strive to make everybody's suggestions gel into a fun, playable, and balanced mod nation!

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Gregstrom


I always thought of the Gath nations as being Semitic, as nametype, unit/commander titles/names, startsites, heroes, etc. are *all* Semitic in origin. While they are truly great peoples, (especially the hittites, gotta love those who wield iron in while everyone around them is just hitting the bronze age! mod material?), I never thought of them as having recurve bows.

My assumption was sort of based on their being right next door to Persia, and it seemed likely that they'd use similar bow technology.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I tried to use the greatbow (when I was thinking it was an English longbow) as a reference, while staying on par/slightly better than it, weaker than the Gileadite bow, and stronger than the longbow (which to me was a standard long bow ~4.5-5ft long, while an English longbow was at least 6' long). If vanilla longbows are meant to represent standard longbows, the Mongol-style recurve should far outstrip it; if vanilla longbows are meant to represent English longbows the Mongol-style recurve *should* be comparable and slightly stronger with roughly equal (slightly higher) range and precision for the user.

Interesting. I would have said that Man's placement in the Dom3verse (successors of the Sidhe, questing grail knights) placed them solidly as England, making their (vanilla) longbow the English longbow.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Not giving everyone ambidexterity was one concession I made to balance before even starting the mod. I would gladly give them all ambidexterity 2 if it's not too unbalancing.

Something needs to be done - as it stands the lighter cavalry types are only useful as archers (att 6 with their sword?).

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I assumed that the #charge tag made it *break* like lances, I am probably in error. If there is a decent way to do it, that anyone knows of, I'll take my best crack at it!

It probably does, but I can't personally confirm it. Try it and see, I guess.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

(snip Mongol inclusivity) For primarily this reason I decided against heretics; I also liked the pantheonic element to the lizardmen of Itza, so I thought I could incorporate a similarity. The only peoples they truly looked down on were the Chinese (cowards who hide behind walls), the Japanese (inhabitants of cursed islands) and the Koreans (who were too deadly to be engaged). All this aside, if the consensus is to make some heretics, or to remove #holy from some of them, I'll cast historicity aside!

Heretics in the Dominions sense just means they divert worship away from the Pretender. For Pythium the heretic cults are tolerated as a part of society, and Arco's heretic unit is presumably an influential part of mainstream society. I guess there could be an argument that to earn the #heretic tag you need to be a credible part of your society or no-one will listen to you. That's not to say you should necessarily use the #heretic tag, of course - it's one of a bunch of viable options, and what to do is up to the mod's creator.

If Qayan dominion is a sort of generalised Mongol-ness, any priest can spread it. If dominion is worship of the Pretender Tengri, then priests of Ulgen probably aren't going to be much help.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Anyway, to a people whom both sexes donned armor at a very young age, and wore it as everyday clothing, a *light* armor would have no encumbrance. Once again, though, balance trumps historicity! Suggestions?

One suggestion would be to increase the resource cost, I guess.

[rdonj]

Hmm, iirc priests of sotek have the heretic tag in Itza.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Hmm, iirc priests of sotek have the heretic tag in Itza.

Yep. In my version they worship Sotek, who is either not an old one, or is an old one on a different path from the others.

Games Workshop have actually retconned that difference and now Sotek is simply the most popular and powerful old one, in fact they seem to suggest he's the king of the old ones or something. Which is just less interesting, so I went with the old version. I also made slann unable to be empowered in blood.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Yep. In my version they worship Sotek, who is either not an old one, or is an old one on a different path from the others.

Games Workshop have actually retconned that difference and now Sotek is simply the most popular and powerful old one, in fact they seem to suggest he's the king of the old ones or something. Which is just less interesting, so I went with the old version. I also made slann unable to be empowered in blood.

Seriously? That's not nearly as cool . It would have been much better for him to be a god created by the skinks, or an aspect of khaine/khorne.

As regards his #onebattlespells not working, 3 of his gods have them and none of them work iirc. Those are Tengri, Ulrik, and Bay-Ulgen.

[kennydicke]

Gregstrom, once again Mein Freund!

I think (and bear in mind that I haven't done this myself) that what you do is:

1 - edit existing national units. The game picks that up just fine.
2 - creating national spells = create normal spells then use the #restricted tab.
3 - For changing the nation itself, just #selectnation . Use appropriate commands to change what you want, and the game will overwrite existing nation data appropriately. Remember to drop in a #end when you finish changing things (this was always my weakest point when I did any coding), and all should be well.

It was long ago that I tried, and while I have a little experience in programming, and the modding language is superbly easy (whoever created it was a *true* genius), I couldn't make it work. If I ever get around to making my Machaka replacement releasable, I would try extra hard with help from my new *friends.* I suspect the final #end tag was the culprit. That attempt got deleted long ago however.

A standard way to weaken late-game would be heavily restricting access to Astral, Death and Blood. The low MR on national troops should already help this along, as I imagine a Master Enslave would do truly horrible things to a Quyanate army.

Yeah, that was my fear. I hoped the MR would help some (and still think it should be 7-8 on most units for an even more obvious weakness). I also thought that Master Enslave could be horrid (along with magic duel against the mages) but I've never actually seen either spell be cast in SP, and can only assume people frequently use them in MP (they both seem very strong, in the right circumstances; circumstances that would be more common in MP, methinks). The Qayans have fairly limited access to blood and death (but good enough to make access perhaps too easy in lategame). So says I! They aren't Astral powerhouses, but are better than average (and probably better than that). Suggestions?

Oh, and to whomever didn't like them having three survivals... (snippety)

I know I made a comment - my intent was more to register surprise than dislike. It does provide an exceptional level of mobility, which was presumably the intent.

I'm sorry Gregstrom, I didn't mean to come off that way. I was annoyed that I couldn't find who wrote it, not at the content. I didn't feel it was a bad question, or without merit. I just couldn't find where I read it and was too lazy to Ctrl+F. I will edit the post so that it seems less *anal.*
Edit: The time limit for editing was up! At least I apologized, though.

I guess it's pretty much appropriate for what they did historically, although I can't claim expertise on the subject.

I will change it, if it's for the best. I would not claim expertise in any subject, but have a general knowledge of most and can remember pretty large chunks of data for short periods. I did about four hours of online research before starting the mod, which is mostly copied into a .txt file in my mods folder. I'm not a scholar by trade, but I am well read, well watched (History) and well versed in the subject of many ancient peoples/weapons/armors. I generally only spout stuff that is confirmed in at least two references (as per my college days).

Once again, I am sorry if I alienated you or anyone else with my pedantic ramblings, or sometimes curt comments. These are things I struggle with sometimes, and it does no good to hide from or lie about my shortcomings.

Thank you

[Sombre]

Hmm, lots to comment on. Let me pick out a few things from the thread so far which I think need to be flagged further, before I boot up the mod.

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

the question about silk clothing could be fixed by giving them armor with air shield

Not that this is possible outside of onebattlespell, but no no no. Having a silk vest on does not equate to airshield. Airshield can stop massive boulders, flaming arrows (without getting hit by the fire), seeking arrows etc. Airshield is a magical force batting away projectiles. A silk vest is just something to add to custom armours, or you could give the unit a natural #prot level of 4 or something.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Thank you! Can air shield be added to non-magical armor

No. It can't be added to magical items either. Nor is it a monster command. It would require a onebattlespell, unless I'm forgetting some monster you could copystats. Regardless I think putting air shield in to represent a silk vest is insane.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

Unfortunate, but not unexpected; as of my personal notes in the .dm, I may change their bows to vanilla weapons.

I would. From your descriptions, I would give all their archer units the longbow weapon. It still gives them the best human bows in the dom3 world, works with flaming arrows etc - only issue is it says 'longbow' instead of 'recurve compound horsebow' or whatever you want it to say. Which I don't think is an issue, much in the same way I wouldn't make a 'cutlass' weapon to replace 'falcion' or a 'gladius' to replace 'shortsword'.

Originally Posted by kennydicke

I noticed in the modding.pdf that onebattlespell can only be used on vanilla spells. I guess maybe you could edit a spell to get around this? I would be very interested in seeing how you accomplish this, if only to slake my thirst for knowledge. The spells were not being cast as normal, I hadn't tried actually giving the unit a gem to cast it with though.

Gems have nothing to do with it imo. If you point out the specific units its going wrong for I can take a look. onebattlespell has always acted a little weird though.

The method for getting round the vanilla restriction is to first make an exact copy of the vanilla spell using #copyspell - then you edit the original vanilla spell to be whatever you want it to be, then you #onebattlespell call it by ID number.

Other things:

If you do want units to fight with both sword and lance at the same time, you have to give the unit an appropriate level of ambi. Regardless of what historians say, there's no way I'm going to believe warriors would use a technique like that unless it was /useful/, therefore there should be a point to it in dom3. Two attacks at att8 is the lowest you could really go before it becomes too crappy to imagine a warrior using it. Even that is pretty abysmal. Remember ambidexterity can essentially be whatever value you like, because it /only/ matters for these weapons. So you can make it 10 if you want and realistically it won't cause any problems.

If you want a lance with charge bonus which beaks after one round and doesn't screw up the attack from the sword on the first round it needs #charge, #ammo 1 and #bonus. The #ammo 1 is the breaking part.

I see no reason not to make a new lance for the mongols. Unlike with missile weapons it isn't going to cause any flaming arrows style interaction problems.

Regarding encumbrance free armour or having low enc. Think very carefully about this. If you're saying all your guys, racially/culturally have high levels of endurance which set them apart from the other dom3 species/nations (like machaka) then give them enc 2. No lower. As concerns the armour, the fact that they're used to wearing it around as clothing doesn't mean it causes no enc. You might say it reduces the enc by 1 or something, but being used to something and it being magically weightless are different things. Knights used to do exercise in armour, but dom3 has its own system of armour and enc and it's best to stick to that if possible. Besides which, most of your stuff is mounted (which should mean base enc 5 or 4 with the racial bonus) and ignores the armour enc.