Mod: Mod thread- WH hordes of chaos

[Panpiper]

Burnsaber said:
If you make the standard bearer a commander, you can make him more powerful without making him cost bajillion gold.

Currently the banner bearer does not cost gold, it is a summonable troop. Plus the idea is not to make it even more powerful, but to find the right game cost that reflects it's current power.

I want to keep it a troop, not a commander, for a couple of reasons; I like the visual of the banner being among the troops when looking at the army setup screen. Also I envision that many players would want to have one such banner per unit and if it were a commander, that would turn into a 'lot' of commanders.

[llamabeast]

Um, I'm not really sure about summoning costs, that would take a bit more thought. Having a banner bearer is fine - there are already quite a few of these in Dominions, and they all have the morale boosting effect. Fear is a strong thing though - probably equivalent to Terror in Warhammer. It is similarly rare. If you really want fear then I would say make it fear+0.

What you could do is have two summons. One would be an ordinary banner bearer at the cost you describe or even cheaper, basically a slightly above-average warrior who gives a morale boost to his neighbours. Then you could have a higher-level summon to get a banner bearer with a powerful magical banner enchanted by the chaos gods to cause fear in their enemies. This guy could have the fear property, or it might even be possible to mod the weapon so that it causes AOE fear in those it strikes, which would be fun.

This is also slightly more warhammer-y to my mind. After all most standard bearers don't carry magic standards.

[Panpiper]

llamabeast said:
it might even be possible to mod the weapon so that it causes AOE fear in those it strikes, which would be fun.

You are right llamabeast, that could be seriously hilarious. It is also quite realistic. Panic is indeed contagious.

I would take your advice with the standard bearer and eliminate the fear from the basic version and create a 'better' more expensive version for the later game. However I don't really want to have a player wind up with 'redundant' standard bearers, as one never sees a unit with more than one banner. I would rather simply find the right cost for the banner bearer as is such that a player won't have them until they can afford their effect. Then they can gaze upon their army, rightfully proud of it's awesome power. :-)

[Panpiper]

Before this mod, I had never looked at spell modding before. My first stab at spell creation may have left something to be desired. Many thanks to Sombre for pointing me in the correct direction, any deviations are my own fault.

Does this look right to you all? Are there any glaring errors, inconsistencies or imbalances I should correct immediately?

-- Red Fire -

#newspell
#name "Red Fire"
#descr "An accurate (prec 10) midrange fire ball type spell that does aoe 1 18 damage, but can be resisted by mr."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 1
#path 0 0
#pathlevel 0 1
#fatiguecost 10
#effect 2
#damage 18
#aoe 1
#flightspr -1
#explspr 10113
#precision 10
#range 30
#spec 4096
#end

-- Yellow Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Tempering the Will"
#name "Yellow Fire"
#descr "It gives a "5+ ward save" in warhammer to mage and his unit."
#restricted 75
#school 4
#researchlevel 5
#path 0 4
#pathlevel 0 3
#fatiguecost 20
#aoe 8
#end

-- Green Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Confusion"
#name "Green Fire"
#descr "A unit in the area of effect has a 50% chance each turn of becoming confused, subject to magic resistance."
#restricted 75
#path 0 4
#end

-- Blue Fire -

#newspell
#name "Blue Fire"
#descr "An upgraded version of red fire. Prec 20, better range, more damage, more AOE. Again, can be resisted by mr."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 4
#path 0 0 -- The magic path for casting, IE: fire, water, etc.
#pathlevel 0 3
#fatiguecost 20
#effect 2
#damage 24
#aoe 3
#flightspr -1
#explspr 10141
#precision 20
#range 40
#spec 4096
#end

-- Violet Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Infernal Prison"
#name "Violet Fire"
#descr "Toast!"
#restricted 75
#school 5
#researchlevel 9
#path 0 4
#path 1 0
#pathlevel 0 4
#pathlevel 1 3
#fatiguecost 300
#end

-- Indigo fire -

#newspell
#name "Indigo Fire"
#descr "A combat summon of a handful of flying elementals."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 6
#path 0 4
#path 1 0
#pathlevel 0 3
#pathlevel 1 2
#fatiguecost 50
#effect 1
#nreff 5
#damage 2337
#end

#newmonster 2337
#spr1 "./chaos/indigo_fire_1.tga"
#spr2 "./chaos/indigo_fire_2.tga"
#name "Indigo Flame"
#descr "Indigo elemental, short lived but burns twice as hot."
#hp 1
#size 2
#prot 0
#mor 10
#mr 8
#enc 1
#str 10
#att 8
#def 10
#prec 8
#mapmove 0
#ap 30
#gcost 0
#rcost 1
#weapon 171 -- small area fire weapon effect
#flying
#end

[Burnsaber]

I hope you won't have those descriptions in the real version. You don't mention game mechanics in flavor text.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Having only cursory knowledge of Warhammer, I offer the following descriptions. I'm certain they could be better, but I'm trying to sleep before 2:00 AM. Maybe they'll provide some inspiration. As well... I have the feeling that they aren't quite the flavor for the Forces of Chaos, from what I do know... But if I was hijacking those spells to add to all nations, here's how I'd add em. I'd let someone who owns fluff material come up with nation-specific descriptions.

Red Fire - A spiritual flame, it burns unbelievers.
Red Fire - A spiritual flame, it burns those weak of mind and faith.

Yellow Fire - This flame burns away the doubts of the believers and makes them strong in their faith.

Green Fire - A sickly pale green fire that devours the sanity of your enemies.
Green Fire - A sickly pale green fire that consumes trust, causing friends to turn upon one another.

I hope this was of use, but if it missed the mark.. no big loss of my time. Best of luck with the mod.

[Panpiper]

Burnsaber said:
I hope you won't have those descriptions in the real version. You don't mention game mechanics in flavor text.

I was looking online for a good while for better descriptions but failed. It was not my intention to go with those descriptions and I do intend to replace them. I just didn't want to sit on this version of the mod solely because of the descriptions. The one's that are there are basically placeholders from when I copy/pasted Sombre's suggestions. I may stick with the description for Violet Fire however. "Toast!" is a pretty apt description, no? ;-)

[DrPraetorious]

A few suggestions:
The Lord of the End Times is at strong variance withe existing pretender chassis, making him difficult to balance.
I suggest lowering his magic to FSB, his cost to 150 pts., his dominion strength to 3, and his new path cost to 40.
A quick glance at your magic and it appears roughly comparable to MA Marignon.

- I assume that all of the natural prot-23 stuff represents chaos armor. Add "Chaos Armor" as an armor, and put it on them, instead.
- Having a "Dark Citadel" as your capital sounds thematic but is a huge disadvantage, and possibly a good part of the reason the position seems weak. Give them an admin-40 fort instead, maybe a regular Citadel.
- The warhound has to cost at least 4 gold. It could be a freespawn from some other unit, but 1/1 is unbalancing because of what it lets you do to your tax rates and blood hunting.
- The "Flail" is a two-handed weapon, the weapon you want would be closer to a morningstar.
- Even given that he's got 3 hands (cause of the flail), the Nurgle Chaos Warrior is too expensive - compare to the Emerald Guard. The other chaos warriors likewise.
- Likewise, the Chaos Knight is only marginally more elite than a conventional knight.
- Now, the *chosen* chaos knight legitimately costs 120 gold. Likewise the other chosen, although I think they could stand to have additional magic powers.

My suggestion -
* Give all of the "of Khorne" units Berserkers, even the little warriors. Bigger berserk as they rise in rank.
* Make all of the "of Nurgle" units Undead. This makes them all immune to disease. Now give the more elite ones a disease cloud.
* The Chosen should have a higher MR. The MR bonus for the Tzeentch types should be larger (+3 or more.) The Lord of Tzeentch should absolutely be MR 18 - one of the few units that could justify MR 20.
* Give all of the "of Slaanesh" a huge morale boost - and give the chosen ones Awe +1.

The Champions are too expensive. Compare them to the Jotun Herse. With the exception of the mage-lord of Tzeentch, the lords are too expensive as well.

In general, my suggestions would be to balance this nation against MA Jotunheim for the commanders, who are all so buff they count as giants, and MA Marignon for the military.

So I think you did overdo it nerfing your position.

[Panpiper]

A thousand 'thank you's DrPraetorious, I shall implement virtually all of your suggestions. The only ones I am debating are;

- I don't like the idea of making chaos armor something they 'wear' and can take off and replace. Chaos armor is something that is part of their bodies like a horn is to a rhino or armor plates are to a stegosaurus. I realize that making it a part of their bodies eliminates resource costs and encumbrance, but this is actually intentional, and leads to their high gold costs.

- The dark citadel IS thematic as a starting location. Rather than breaking that theme, I think I would rather just put back the resource bonus on the starting location.

- I've long worried about using the poison cloud effect with Nurgle champions and lords. Your suggestion about making it disease clouds and Nurgle followers undead would certainly make the effect more properly what it is supposed to be and appropriately less powerful than poison. However I worry that making Nurgle followers 'undead' will make them vastly weaker due to the power of priest banishments. I'll do it and see. I think I'll pump their magic resistance a tad though.

- The flail is listed twice in Edi's database. One of the entries has it as a single hand weapon. I used that one assuming it was a smaller flail. I just compared the stats with the two hand version and they are identical. Oops. The flail is very thematic for Nurgle. I guess I'll have to drop the shield (except that will require that I redo a bunch of sprites). Hmm... I guess morning stars are thematic too. ;-)

DrPraetorious said:
The Champions are too expensive. Compare them to the Jotun Herse. With the exception of the mage-lord of Tzeentch, the lords are too expensive as well.

Hmm... Here things get difficult. The Jotun Herse is only 60 gold. I see what you mean in that the actual stats are somewhat comparable, while chaos has attack and defense a bit higher, the Jotun Herse has significantly higher hit points and strength. However Nurgle Champions have disease clouds, Slaanesh have enslavement, Tzeentch has a 30% chance at astral 3 magic, and the Khorne champion would slaughter Jotun Herses in droves. I note that the stats of the Jotun Herse and those of the Jotun Gode are roughly similar, but due to the addition of Holy 2, the Jotun Gode cost 200 gold. For now, I shall work on the assumption that the additional talents of the chaos champions are roughly analogous to the the holy 2 of the Jotun Gode and drop the gold cost to 200, awaiting further feedback. The physical stats of champions and lords are very similar but lords have higher leadership, and domsummon 20 appropriate units for their power. They also start with a magic weapon. Again, being very unsure as to what extra value this should cost, I'll bump the lord cost of Nurgle and Khorne down to 270. Slaanesh has enslavement which especially when massed is very powerful. I'll put the Lord of Slaanesh at 300 GP. The Lord of Tzeentch which is appropriately awesome stays at it's current maxed out 400 GP.

Again, thank you ever so much for the lookover and advice. I really do not want this race mod to be out of balance, that's no fun for anyone.

[DrPraetorious]

- If they don't have Torso slots and you put Torso armor on them, then they can't take it off. You can certainly leave it at Enc-0. Should chaos armor be immune to Rust Mist and Armor of Achilles? Maybe it should.
The chief concern is that natural prot values cannot be boosted by an earth blessing.

- Pump their MR and possibly hit points (for nurgle).

- You could add a "horseman's flail" or a "light flail", if you wished. The 1-H flail is for use by giants and Gods (like the Mother of Rivers.)

If you're going to give them an Admin-20 capital, that's potentially workable, but a 10% reduction in the costs of capital only units might be apropriate, to compensate for the lost gold revenue. You also might wish to give them superior fortress options elsewhere - the Motte-and-bailey and the Citadel are both excellent forts that you could claim would be built more or less anywhere. The Wizards' Tower is a secret super-cool fort type that you might allow them to build, but that'd be weird.

What you really need to do is run some combat tests with your mages and thugs, and see how they do.