Mod: MA al-Nadim - The thousand and one nights 1.01)

[mehrunes_dagon]

elmokki, will you please replace all backward slashes to forward slashes in .dm file, to let linux/macos playtesters join windoze p[laytesters in playtestin

ps Summary/briefin is jagged and partially unreadable on my computer due to lots of spaces you inserted

[elmokki]

I finally bothered to make an update. I forgot to fix the nation summary text, but it can wait.

The balance changes should be somewhat drastic.

With scimitars losing a point of defence pretty much all units lose one point of defence and along with their other nerf dervishes are losing a total of 3 defence. This might be a bit drastic, but playtesting will show if dervishes need their base defence 3 back or if the scimitars need their defence back.

Making Grand Viziers capital only fits very well thematically, as the nation should be somewhat centered on the Bejeweled City. From a game balance viewpoint this gave the normal viziers a need for buff, which +1F should do fine. I deemed the gold cost reduction of the mystics a must for anyone to actually recruit them. Still, at 90 gold they might be slightly too cheap, especially as they are not supposed to be communion slaves for the grand viziers. Alchemists should be more interesting now, as a player has to decide if he wants a powerful priest, a powerful battle mage or a powerful researcher/magic diversifier from his capital each turn.

But well, playtest and tell me what you think. My goal is to make al-Nadim balanced enough to be a viable multiplayer nation.

0.85
- Fixed the djinn summons.
- Made the djinn summons more expensive and slightly higher (4, 5 and 8 from 3, 4 and 7) on the conjuration tree.
- Made Grand Vizier capital only
- Gave +1 Fire to Vizier and +20 gold to price (now 140 gold)
- Made mystic cheaper (was 120 gold, now 90 gold)
- Lowered dervish base defence (13 -> 12)
- Moved a point of defence from scimitar to damage (from 5-1-1-2 to 6-1-0-2)
- Changed \ to / so penguin people can play too!

File itself is available at the first post.

In other news, if I bother to make a LA al-Nadim, it will most definately be less Ottoman Empire and more lovecraftian than I first thought.

[Jack_Trowell]

Good Mod, just a few things I notices :

- Camel archers seems overpriced : while it's good having access to composite bows, it does not justify a cost 5 times higher that a base archer.
Don't forget that the increased defense that they get from being a mounted unit will usually not be used at all, and their low protection make them easy targets for ennemy archers.

At least you didn't crippled them as archers by giving them poor precision like in vanilla. (too bad one of the few things dominions is bad at is simulating the importance of archer cavalry, if only there were a "fire and move back" order for those units ...)

I think that 30 gold, or maybe 25 would be more appropriate for such units, as even ith good mobility and above average precision, they're still ligh armored archers.

- in the descriotion of the nation and viziers, you mention air magic as somthing they are good at, while it should be water magic from what I can see.

[elmokki]

After quite a break a new version is up at the first post.

0.86
- Made slight changes to province defence. It's still weak, but I reckon that suits the nation quite well with the capital centric backstory and nomadic ways of life et cetera.
* Mullah replaced Commander as the <20 cost commander. It's mostly a backstory change, as mullahs are supposed to be not only a religious but also an adminstrative authority. Mullah will die to slight archer fire easier, but he's a level 1 priest.
* Gave 1 Al-Nadim Archer per province defence point <20 in addition to the 2 militias of old
* Made >20 province defence give a Vizier. The other choice would've been a Commander, but it felt a bit boring.
* Instead of 2 spear armed Al-Nadim Infantry per province defence, it's now 1 spear and 1 scimitar.
- Fixed the nation description to tell correct magic paths. It's still strangely wrapped though. Need to look into it again later.
- Made Camel Archers cheaper 50g -> 25g
- Gave both camel units "Camel Bite" instead of the 2 damage bite. There seemed to be no proper original bites and the old one didn't have #nostr. Currently it's 10/1/0/3 #nostr #bonus weapon, which basically is a bite of a lizard mount with -33% damage.

Now, the thing is, I was thinking of making an another mod, but that was mostly about my obsession to the coolness of bagpipes and kilts and claymores, and I thought I'd better finish Al-Nadim before I go make a mod about that. British Isles are pretty well covered already anyway

I've got a few questions about the balancedness of this mod and I'd like to hear answers of someone who isn't me.

First of all, the province defence. It was really weak and is still very weak. Should it be stronger? I could scrap the militia unit as a whole and make <20 PD 1 archer 1 spear infantry per point and >20 1-1.5 scimitar infantry 0.5-1 beduin raider per point. Currently it's 2 miltia 1 archer <20 and 1 spear infantry 1 scimitar infantry >20. Personally I like the idea of it being weak, but is it too weak?

Secondly, the commanders. Is there something that's lacking or something that should definately be removed? Of the non-priest or mage commanders I know absolutely none will almost ever be hired apart from assassin and beduin chieftain. All except Mubarizun Commander and Assassin are pretty much essential to the theme of the nation though. I don't feel like they're worthless of existing in the mod. Assassin has it's niche and isn't really something that is making the nation too powerful, so I believe it has earned it's right to exist too. Mubarizun commander on the other hand is capital only and will have to be such, which is also why it'll be never recruited.

Mages and priests are always a huge problem. Are the mages and priests too expensive or too cheap? Is there too much magic diversity? I personally am unsure about Mystic - 1S1H stealthy (+25 once I fix it) spy at 90g. It feels a bit cheap compared to 1S stealthy LA Ulm Illuminated one at 70g, but I doubt it'd really be hired much if it was considerably more expensive. Magic diversity bugs me too. While I'm pretty happy with only Mystics (1S1H) and Viziers (2F1W and 110% FWES) being available outside the capital and Grand Vizier (2F2W1S 110% FWES) being available in capital, capital only Alchemist (1E 210% FAES) bothers me a bit. It gives you a somewhat realible access to 3E, 2A and 2W. I don't really know if that's too much. One thing which I'm thinking is removing the guaranteed 1E from the Alchemist, but it'll still leave Al-Nadim with quite decent access to all elemental magic.

I'm quite happy with the non-commander units. Everything has it's niche atleast thematically if not game technically. Mubarizuns are a kick-*** but capital only heavy infantry. I'm tempted to tone them down slightly (attack and defence 13 to 12), but in general they feel pretty fine as long as they are capital only. I don't feel like there's anything I should definately remove except maybe militia, nor that there's anything I should definately add. I still do have the graphics for a heavier lance armed cavalry for Al-Nadim (supplied with the mod and defined in the mod by the way), but I think it's cooler of the camels fill the cavalry slot. In general I find the non-sacred troops solid but nothing really spectacular. Camel Cavalry price might need tuning though. It doesn't feel like it's a very strong unit.

Even after a nerf Dervish still makes me wonder. It's recruitable everywhere and with a bless a swarm of them can be really devastating. On the other hand they'll drop like flies to any missile troops or anything that can actually outnumber them enough to punch through their defence even after the massive losses they're likely to take. They will definately stay as recruit everywhere, but do they need a cost increase or nerf?

Also, in general, is Al-Nadim missing something or is something wrong? I do want to make this nation balanced and interesting. I personally like the heroes very much.

I do know Al-Nadim only has the skeleton supply of pretender chassises available. How do I add more of the existing ones to the list? Atleast some of the fire orientated pretenders need to be there.

[Wrana]

[/quote]
Did they use more than one archer per camel in combat though? Atleast it'd look a bit silly with a dromedar.
Supply bonus is something to think about (though especially with the possible scrapping of lancer the heavier camel cavalry is actually quite a good unit, the archer less so.)
[/quote]

Again sorry for long time before answering, but still: in combat, they mostly shoot dismounted (I think about action picture as including 1 archer still monuted and the other dismounted standing beside). But: actually in later period Iran and India they used double shooters from camel-back: armed with special "camel-guns"! (mentioned in Osprey's "War Elephants")! IIUC, these were something more like petronelles or "hook arquebuse", but still... These soldiers sat in a special big basket on the animal's back.
I'll probably add something more later - possibly even picture!

[Wrana]

I'd definitely remove militia as such. While Middle East states often levied common citizens as defensive troops, they were not completely untrained and often got some moderate to good equipment - I'd say something more like Bogarus lesser troops than common militia. I'd still think raiders would be more thematic.
As for other comments I'll try to test it in a few days,
Keep up the good work!

[elmokki]

I personally think the gladiator like raiders would suit a lot better to an EA version of this nation which would probably be filled with stealthy cavalry and recruitable djinns. Sadly if I ever want to make the same loosely arabic theme for an another era, it'll most definately be LA.

I was thinking of a loosely Ottoman empire based highly bureucratic one where magic is highly institutionalized and an underground Abdul Alhazred cult with something like fire/death/blood/astral-mages (probably really low level and/or random paths though) along with the official state sanctioned fire/water scholarly ones. Fire because I want to give some era a possibility to actually summon ghul (edit: actually an ifrit bey with a death random can do it) and the idea of corrupted/dead/whatever djinns sounds kind of cool too. If djinns are beings of smokeless fire, they could be beings of smokeless banefire ;P

I think two riders on a dromedar would not work without making that basket, and I believe the camel riders just simply are cooler this way. I personally like my mods as streamlined and smooth as possible and somewhat detest having multiple units on the same sprite. Technically I could make camel archers summon a foot archer unit for every battle, but that kind of feels like a non-smooth hack solution too.

Also, for me historicity doesn't really matter much as Dominions isn't a very historical game. Personally I think al-Nadim is quite historical enough when compared to other human nations in the game. It feels arabic to me atleast and that's enough for me

EDIT: Oh yeah, regarding militia. I reckon I'll make a leather armored version of the spear infantry next time I can be arsed to. That should serve as a weak but not as terrible militia unit.

Also, I did just realize that the shortbow archers aren't there just for the theme. There's plenty of fire to access flaming arrows and that should warrant archers in some cases.

[elmokki]

Here's actually an older heavy infantry sprite I'd use for LA al-Nadim and I just wanted to do some drawing to see if I can make a decent looking janissary uniform. I don't really know what janissaries should be armed with in dom3 as firearms are out of question and just making them kickass crossbowmen feels a bit boring. Crossbowman with shield and scimitar seems a bit hard to draw (shield on back and seathed scimitar and crossbow?) but would sound like a sensible option. And yeah, I know, the janissary hat should not be a cone. I'll look into it later.

For theme I reckon secret cult would be too LA Ulmish, so maybe it's either nasty al-Nadim with something like 2D 1F 1W 100% FW 10% DFWS mages or a less nasty al-Nadim that has forsaken it's past and centered itself more on astrology with 2S 1F 1W 100% FW 10% FWSE mages. Those are the two choices of main mages I find the most interesting. There should probably be some other mage too though.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by elmokki

Crossbowman with shield and scimitar seems a bit hard to draw.

Actually it's not. Just "copy-paste" the crossbow sprite from the LA Man "Tower Defender" unit to the units back and that's about it.

[elmokki]

0.87
- Militia replaced by Al-Nadim Light Infantry, which is basically a Militia with shield and normal infantry stats.
- Due to above, you'll only get 1 light infantry an 1 archer per PD point <20
- Some fixes to text all around
- The lowest level ifrit and marid summons cost a bit more gems

New version at first post.