Mod: EA Alchera - now ver. 2.0!

[the Vanishag]

well, 1.51 is up

Thanks to Burnsaber for the clarification, and to RadioStar, whose suggestion for the Rainbow Serpent became (toned down a little), the trickster hero Maui. Combining Ethereal and Luck is dangerously powerful: in a test, I conquered a number of Independent nations with good soldiers w/ Maui and 10 Dream Warriors (without blessing them!)

I didn't try them against overwhelming numbers - that should balance out the only 1-in-8 hits of Lucky Ethereal units, and of course human players would use spells and/or magic weapons to negate the ethereality, but I still wonder about balance: not basic power, but the "exploitability" of combinations.

to Sombre: I downloaded Jomon: Broken and look forward to trying it - and wow, are your sprites pretty (in the expansive sense, like "look how beautifully drawn that sucking gut wound is"). I'm a little abashed.

to Honeybadger: I have to agree w/ you about the Arboleths - they should be utterly inhuman, which would make them amoral rather than immoral, but they seem to be pursuing very conventional "human" ends, which deprives them of their excuse. Of course, one could also see them as victims of their Pretender God whose response to being enslaved was to enslave others...

[Lavaere]

haven't had a look in a while, but nice to know that Maui is one of the heroes. hope you gave him his Grandfathers Jawbone as one of his weapons, in place of a Patu

[Lavaere]

OK, for the Maui hero. There are many things similar between all the Pacific Islands. One he fished up the land, so Maori's he fished up New Zealand, Tahitians he fished up Tahiti. And so forth, all with the jawbone. Another universal thing is that he brought back or discovered fire, so maybe give him some fire magic.

Everything else is looking sweet. Really wish I could help with aborigine part, but I'm Maori and not Aussie. And Aussie Mythos is different from the rest of the Pacific as far as I know.

[the Vanishag]

Thanks, Lavaere. I really appreciate it. I'll be updating Maui soon - it's a little tricky, as he's such a storied and important character: I've even thought about giving him different traits in each era, reflecting different Maui stories.

I'll add the jawbone and fire magic, but I'm not sure what to do about the story that he fished up the island: it's really hard to reconcile with my having made him a hero and not a pretender (I decided he had too much personality to be a pretender).

Kupe and Toitehuatahi should be less important than Maui, but they fill the "great ancestor" role well and, as far as I've found, have less thoroughly developed stories and personalities, so I felt OK about smushing them together to make a Pretender "type" (thus "Kupe Toitehuatahi").

Please keep letting me know how I'm doing and what I'm missing: I've decided to add summonable bird-people, but not until MA, and the biggest thing holding me up on the Taniwha is that they take the forms of all kinds of aquatic creatures (sharks, eels, octopai), so I'm having a hard time settling on one form (I suppose I could give them two aquatic shapes plus a land shape).

For MA Alchera, I'm thinking about having a number of sacred Moko warriors, based on their whakapapa (geneology/ family history) - they'd have different on-bless specials to reflect their whakapapa. I'm also thinking, once I get Taniwha worked out, about having a "Ritual of Rebirth"-like water + divine spell that allows the caster to be reborn as a Taniwha after being killed, as the possibility of becoming a Tanwha after death is a really interesting part of the myth for me.

Given that it looks like blessed warriors will be a very important part of MA Alchera, I think I may also add a "High" Tohunga with Holy 3 and random magic picks that give him a chance of being able to cast any of the Tohunga-specific spells. For balance's sake, I figure he'd be capital-only.

Ok, I'm rambling, but that should give all of you an idea of where I'm thinking about taking this. Suggestions and feedback are very, very welcome. Oh, and I should post an updated sprite-sheet in a day or two.

[llamabeast]

For MA Alchera, I'm thinking about having a number of sacred Moko warriors, based on their whakapapa (geneology/ family history) - they'd have different on-bless specials to reflect their whakapapa. I'm also thinking, once I get Taniwha worked out, about having a "Ritual of Rebirth"-like water + divine spell that allows the caster to be reborn as a Taniwha after being killed, as the possibility of becoming a Tanwha after death is a really interesting part of the myth for me.

Not meaning to rain on your parade, but I don't think you can really do on-bless specials (apart from copying Mictlan's Eagle Warriors), nor do I think you can mod a variant of Ritual of Rebirth. I would be happy to find I was wrong of course.

[Burnsaber]

For MA Alchera, I'm thinking about having a number of sacred Moko warriors, based on their whakapapa (geneology/ family history) - they'd have different on-bless specials to reflect their whakapapa. I'm also thinking, once I get Taniwha worked out, about having a "Ritual of Rebirth"-like water + divine spell that allows the caster to be reborn as a Taniwha after being killed, as the possibility of becoming a Tanwha after death is a really interesting part of the myth for me.

Llamabeast is right, you really can't do these things as you advertised. But here are some mod haxing ideas.

You can't really mod Twiceborn, but you could make it national for MA Alchera and change it's paths and alter the wight mage unit. This would, however, take away twiceborn from all other nations.

About the Moko warriors, you could mod a different types of blessing spells. Like that Moko Warrior caste A has a corresponding Priest with a modded blessing spell. Since blessing spells don't have any effect once the target is blessed, the Moko Warriors could only take benefit from one of these spells at a time. There isn't any way to make caste A blessing blessing ignore caste B (unless you're willing to give them strange tags, like undead/demon/magic being/amphibian). But you just could make the blessings rebundant gameplay wise. What if the caste B & C blessing spells give something that A has already? Then there really wouldn't be any reason to use cross-caste blessings.

About Taniwha, you could make it like the "Banquet for the Dead" for Ashdod. It would kill the caster and summon a Taniwha (reincarantion of sorts?). If you're intrested, I suggest you PM chrispederson (or was it chrispedersen?) about it, he did some testing with modding the spell effect a while back.

[mehrunes_dagon]

i'm playtestin the mod, ver 1.51, on land of legends map

//slowly expandin with 2 gangs of thunderstrikers

found 1 error and 1 strange feature

1 error) mod does not work under linux. To make it work under both windoze and linux, change backslash to forwardslash in alchera.dm

2 strange feature) tangaroa tahunga in shark form has all human slots available. Is that a bug or feature?

PS not so many national heroes and national summons. Hope this will be fixed soon?

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by mehrunes_dagon

PS not so many national heroes and national summons. Hope this will be fixed soon?

Fixed isn't the right word to use here. Do you mean you enjoy the mod so you hope to encourage him to go on making content for it?

[llamabeast]

True about the slashes though. I just had to do a search-and-replace to change backslashes to forward slashes and then it worked.

[DakaSha]

i dont use the mod nations but this is def the nation dom is most lacking in. i loooooooooove how dom uses "real" mythology and/or cultures and blends them with the fantasy setting. this setting should be part of the game already