Mod: New nation: NATURE rising 0.30

[jutetrea]

Ok, yup I'm a dumbass. That being said, it was fun combo'd.

Pros: Great thuggable commanders, stealth heavy preacher, ants, great sacreds

Cons: Costly units, ants, lack of magic diversity, lack of magical leadership variety, slow research

I'm slogging through another game now, 8 player (no indy) aran, almost down to 3 nations and I'll roll over the rest methinks. Much tougher.

Rambles:

Water nations - what to do? Pure pretender or indy luck so far.

Research - recommendations? Real slow

Cost - gold is still a huge issue, even with order 3 growth 3, sloth 1, heat 1, luck 2 I'm always poor.

Seems there's a big jump from the cheap units, hawk/boar/dog to the medium units spider/lion. <10g to 40g. The spider might be worth the 40g, but I'm not sure the lion is. I think a good medium 20g unit might be nice.

ants - it really seemed my whole game revolved around ants and research. The 2N guys for ok priced research and magical leadership and masses and masses of ants.

Didn't bother much with the elephants, figured if I was going to spend 100, might as well spend 160 and get a sacred berserker.

Bears are great, very difficult to mass due to cost, but with recup they stick around awhile.

ants - it really seemed my whole game revolved around ants and research. The 2N guys for ok priced research and magical leadership and masses and masses of ants.

Is the limited magical leadership part of the grand design? the 2N guys having 40 normal leadership was very very key.

Any chance of getting a good chunk of magical leadership for under 100g?

Most of my game consisted of buying the 2N guys everywhere I could every turn, troops on the front line (which tapped the gold) and ants everywhere else. Slowly move the ants to the front to get armies of 200-400 and use them as buffers for the real troops. After a battle, consolidate and move the mages into a lab to summon animals or vine ogres.

Guardians were very very fun, favorite unit by far. Thuggable, but by no means unbeatable. Survival went way up once I was able to branch into other magic paths/items. I've got like 10 running around currently.

Vine queen - only built 1 to cast GoH and Mother, haven't used for much else except the freespawns a bit.

Keeper - Didn't use many keepers (1), could never afford em. Didn't have a big bless, and didn't stealth preach. Was nice for pushing dom at the borders though. Next time I'm going to try to use these earlier.

How are the tanglers, didn't really use them. Price primarily.

Went with a sleeping enchantress 4F4E4S4D, worked out ok, missed the 5% regen, although regen rings were plentiful.

Got lucky and got a gnome, witch, sage and lore master sites which eventually got me into all the paths.

How are you feeling about varying the magic just a bit? Even with 1 unit with a 2 random in something like 1N 100%NX 50%X

nature/water - oceania
nature/death, nature/blood, nature/earth - Pan
Nature/Air - man, Eriu
Nature/fire - not too thematic
Nature/astral - ??

I think air or water have to be accessible via pretender or nation just to deal with water nations. But curious to see if I'm just blind to an approach.

[Sombre]

In issue with gold free units like the ants, is that they really encourage micro throughout the entire game. I can only imagine what it's like shipping ants around when you have like 8 forts. And if you don't, you're missing out.

[jutetrea]

Yeah, big micro without a lot of punch...but it does give you something to do with all those forts when you can't afford to buy anything Plus with the 1 move its worse (although I don't mind the 1 move or eek, the 3 battlefield move). They've got to be weak. They really did take up my whole game it seems.

Possibly just give the keeper very good magic leader as well? Nice that the vine queen has it, but I'd rather bring a keeper into battle vs a vine queen.

Trying a bless strat this time, a 9N2F4E3S enchantress. Didn't really want to take nature since its redundant, but the regen seems to be the only useful bless besides fire. Earth prot doesn't seem to affect them (because of no armor?) and while reinvig is nice, doesn't seem to be the problem yet although ahven't had huge battles. I initially wanted to try a E9N10 Cyclops but prot doesn't work and can't find a good petender

Not a fan of immobiles, and the orb thingy is too expensive for other paths cuz I think you need a little (air or water)/earth/astral (shoulda gone 2A on the above ench).

So far, 4 bears can cruise through indy's at 5. I've had like ~10 battles and only have lost 1 to elephants (out of 3 elephant indy combats). Bloody brutal with +8 berserk (nature bless stacks)

Research still seems slow, but isn't 100g for 4 research normal? Possibly just seems slow cuz of limited options?

Think I'll ditch the ants and see if play flows better.

[Cor2]

I like the ants but I see your point about micro. At least they don't rout, you would hang yourself trying to collect them all back up.

I am afraid the Bears need nerfing. In my test game that is all I recruited and nothing could stop them ( I had a nature 9 bless) Thier only drawback is the low MR.

I see the limited magic as a trade off for:
1 Free units
2 A badass sacred
3 the most powerful preists in the game
4 thuggable units
5 the most powerful single path recuitable mage in the game (I think 6 is it right)


I have been tweeking and I have already raised the magic leadership to 80 on the Witchplants

Might I add that I found the tanglers to be Awesome. They are worth the gold IMHO, but not when you could by 2/3 of a bear. They tangle when they are attack and have 3 sleep vines attacks (total of 9 attacks!) They are a real thug killer. By my calculations ( i could be wrong) if three of them attack a SC, the final attack gets +52 to hit. Ouch. They should die to archers and hordes of chaff.

For research I usually use boars, they are half as cheap for upkeep (sacred). But I guess it seems slow b/c there is no native research items.


I am alos going to bring start site in line with others of early era (ie 6) and have the bears capital only.

[Cor2]

I ran a test game were I set Nature to Impossible AI and played one on one. It did pretty well. The AI favored the Tanglers, and of course hordes of indy chaff.

Other tweeks i am going to introduce:
1 a random pick mage so you can get elemental magic(its going to be cool, and have a research bonus)
2 I have already raised the Vine queens magic leadership to max.
3 I will lower the cost of the lions as per your suggestion Jutetrea.
4. Add an amphib unit and commander, I am thinking Toads and turtles, we will see.
5. I am going to fix the guardian and the Keeper's slots, they should not have head or feet (B/C horns and hooves)

[jutetrea]

Been playing this mod a lot:

I'm still running the 9N4E(2F1W3S) bless against impossible and mighty ai.

I'd love to see vans in some of the battles the bears are in, I THINK they'd do just as well. 16 bears and a keeper can take out about 200 pans of a 400 pan army. How do you plan on nerfing them? Right now they may be a bit better than vans, but cost over twice as much. Plus they really need a nature bless to be truly fearsome (I think), which limits options a bit and is very redundant with the national path.

Kind of oddball, but did you think of giving them a "thick fur" type armor so the +4 prot of earth works?

If capital only, will the cost drop or will there be more changes?

Really sad about the loss of guardian feet slots, no more flying boots. 10 prot for the head is a bit low for an ideal thug, especially with such a low defense when berserked. Do you plan on adding a gore attack by default to simulate horns?

Im curious how theyd fare with a preset god of 9N and a no indy map.

[Cor2]

I was thinking of dropping their hp to 40 instaed of 60. Maybe dropping berserk some. You may be right.

If i gave them thick fur then rust and destruction and such would work on them. Seems silly.

I was going to give them a antler attack, better than gore, i think the moose might have it already.

thanks for playing and all the great feedback Jutetrea.

[jutetrea]

Couple more thoughts:

What's the reasoning behind the fort types? Pretty brutal starting with a 5 or 10 admin fort, I'm quite psyched when I capture an enemy capital.

oddball thought: Any interest in making the 3 armed Ettin available for summons? I've always wanted to play a nation where one could be used as a thug.

Lanka > Bears. Started up a new game (N10A2) vs an impossible Lanka, their high str guys did a number on the bears. Luckily I've started using the keepers to ferry bears instead of the boars and the 4H banishment helped.

So far sauro's wrath of ancestors (para), high str units, and fatigue casters have been their biggest problems. Similar to the giants in that at size 5 you're only getting 1(?) a square and they get mobbed. They're fantastic against indy's or < 80 troop armies but mobs do quite a number even with 20% regen. With the 60 hp and good regen they can usually shrug off the single big hit from a lance, or small heavy cav squads. Archers don't do much against them either. Finding them very similar to giants but without the cold aura but with berserk (which is a good and occasionally bad thing).

Very similar to giants, with a couple differences - cold aura which is huge, cold resistence - meh, and 15 MR which is huge. Bears get fear +0 which is huge, recup which is nice but an 8 MR which is a huge negative. I'm not so sure they need to be nerfed all that much.

Boars - would you think about giving them a boost? I just looked through the EA nations and it isn't uncommon to find similar plus an ability for similar cost.
Arco - + heal, 20g diff
Ermor - +1 100Random, 30g, +1H 30g
Mict (bit different though), +1 10Rand -40g
TC - similar, minus stealth -15g, +1 100Rand +10g
Tir - +1A +glam +80 leader, darkvision, 50g

Possibly a 50% random for 2N possibility, or 2H, or increase leadership. Healing would be sweet and it kind of fits. Or on the other hand, reducing their cost to say 75ish.

I could just be using them wrong, and I have started using them for researching to keep costs down. I still find I need a ton of vine mages to ferry magical troops.

Guardians - They actually die pretty easily, especially unblessed. With the limited item types available they aren't a huge killing force. I've been using hydra armor, horned helm (which will be going away), eye shield+kris (or whatever I can lay my hands on) or gladiator gloves, ring of regen and anything else I can get for another misc. With const 6 items and a bit of magical diversity by that point they do pretty well as thugs. I still like them a lot, just don't use them as much.

hounds, boars, apes
Have you been able to successfully use the hounds or boars? They seem to rout quicker then base infantry and have less impact on a battle even in large #'s. Still ok in large #'s, but I can't seem to use em right as they flee.

The apes seem too expensive as well, their ranged attack is minimally useful and in melee they are chaff. Any thought on dropping their HP/size a bit and reducing their cost? I like the idea thematically, and limiting the ranged to sticks/stones but 20/5 is pretty expensive for a cash strapped nation. I'd rather find indy's at 10/4 and get 30 range.

Pretenders:
Tree is good, although I personally hate immobile. What's teh reasoning for giving the orb thing an 80 path cost? Unsure about balance wise, but for utility he'd jump way up there with a 40 path cost. Lower would be better, but unsure if you'd rather have a higher base price and lower path cost. like 150 start, 20 path or something around there, whatever works out with Endo's pretender cost formula.

Still playing it, still liking it. I'm thinking the bears make it much more of a bless nation in my mind. Although my next game will be going for a moderate N4-N6 bless and good scales. Used the tree this time for an N10A2 and mostly good scales and its working out ok, except Lanka.