Mod: Avernum, Crystal Souls v1.5 UPDATE

[Sombre]

Version 1.00 is up.

Numerous minor fixes including sorting out those trog spells and giving worthy heroes esque misc slots to the hero units.

[Azriel]

I can imagine a Geneforge mod, too. They would be extremely summons-heavy.... Three basic leader-types: Agents, Shapers, and Guardians but there would be others, too, like independent serviles, drakes, etc. And then there are the insane ones that have had a bit too much cannister juice. Too much fun!

[Foodstamp]

This mod is a lot of fun. This nation is very powerful but I think it is neat for single player play.

I lucked out and picked up 3 heroes within the first year of the game. My strategy consisted of making tons of gem producers with my great scales and summoning troglodytes like woah.

I made my phophet the slith gladiator guy with the excellent regen, and he pwnd anyone foolish enough to step in my domain (65 hp with 8 candles).

Next time I play, I am going to try a different pretender setup. I am going to go 3 order 3 magic 3 growth, enough death for the mid range undead leaders, and enough nature/water for clams. My astral economy was unreal, and I can only imagine with clams to boot


Balance/ bugs-------------------------------------

Really, talking about mod balance is truly a matter of opinion in dominions, but one thing that did stand out was the power of the Trog khazi with 3 blood / 3 earth. In my game I did not have growth scale, so they picked up afflictions pretty fast from old age, but they seem very underpriced in any case for what they are capable of.

The only bug I found was a typo in the description of the starting commander. Ben needs to be replaced with "been".


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Conclusion

This is really a fun mod. I am going to fiddle around with the unit numbers and the nation number so I can play this mod with my mods in the same game. I am curious to see if the AI has the brain power to pearl horde with this nation or use the summons properly.

There are a lot of different units to choose from, and I admit I was a bit lost when it came to the theme of the nation because I have never played the original game. It seemed like the Nephil could be developed into a nation of their own, as could the sliths, but I imagine this probably conflicts with the original games story.

The graphics fit in PERFECT. You did an excellent job of resizing and making these graphics work.

I love this mod, nice work!

[PvK]

Looks very, very nice!

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img] However in 3.08, it is suffering from the two-headed bug from explicitly setting the unit slots based on the incorrect values in the mod manual, which now correctly end up with you getting two heads if you enter that number.

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img] The half helmet on the Avernite units isn't working.

[Sombre]

Yeah that 3.08 itemslots dealie means I'll have to update pretty much all of my mods.

Thanks for the bug report - keep them coming :]

Foodstamp - if you think that the nation is /over/powered rather than just powerful, then we have a problem and I'll need to go through the balance again. I thought that making the Crystal Souls cost 500 would make pearl hoarding with them at least slightly difficult, but maybe I need to either whack the cost up even more or otherwise hose them off a bit (maybe nix their research value).

The trog khazi is perhaps a bit underpriced. They have a cost left over from when they were somewhat weaker. Khazis in Exile were tough as all getout, so I think what I need to do is pump up their cost, particularly given the astral pearl economy you can get going with this nation. I might give them a random of fire/water as well, just for the fun blood summons - though this would be reflected in the updated cost.

[Foodstamp]

Actually I did not think the nation was overpowered. I just thought that the one trog caster was underpriced. This nation IS very easy to gem horde with. Even with order 3, sloth 2 I was able to turn out Crystals every turn after a certain point, and I was still able to grab casters every turn because I had researched Thaum.

I think the nation is a lot of fun, and balanced enough imo. I found this nation to be fairly weak when expanding early, it had an average/above average mid game, and a very powerful late game.

[Sombre]

Hmm. One way of stopping that might be to increase the resource cost of the Crystal Souls, making it hard to make one every turn, especially if you want to crank out national troops.

When I play with them I spam a lot of troggies too - that's what they're there for. They make really solid heavy infantry, although they tend to get ruined with afflictions after a few battles.

[Sombre]

The next version will be up tonight.

1.1 will fix the bugs you mentioned and sort out all the itemslots making Avernum 3.08 compatible.

[Sombre]

Updated, check the first post for details.

[Shovah32]

Sorry if its been mentioned already but trog defenders dont have shields which they have in their pictures.

ps: try an S9N4 bless and heavy scales. Your vahnatai warriors work great with it(they can survive just long enough for their shurikens to decimate the enemy) and later on when you combine vahnatai warriors with trog defenders(hence the n4 bless to combat afflictions) you have a very strong army with great survivability and offensive power. You also have a very powerful late-game pretender, good scales and an army with great MR.