New Mod: Dragons

[Wish]

I made a mod to add a dragon for every path. and give the undersea nations their own unique dragon.

Some of the dragons are very different from your normal dragon, so please tool with it and tell me what seems very unbalanced.

added are:

* Storm dragon (air) all races -- arch azurite for human form
* Shadow dragon (astral) all races (this guy actually looks like a dragon shaped shadow on the battlefield) -- Shadow master for human form
* Gold Dragon (earth) all races -- Great Geomancer for human form
* Draco Sanguinius (Blood) -- for ulm, jotunhiem, vanhiem, mictlan, and abysia -- human form: ars sanguine
* Void Draggon (astral) for rlyeh -- starspawn human form
* Sea Dragon (water) for atlantis -- Great Seer of the Deep human form (not the exact same as the pretender version)

Like I said, tell me what you think.

here is a link to the mod:
CLICK

[Endoperez]

It seems incomplete. I quess you uploaded a wrong version...

Also, if you add new pretender forms without similar human forms, your enemy always knows you have a dragon. In base game, if your enemy knows that you have a Great Sage pretender, unless he sees it in battle he can't tell if it'll eat his archers.

[Wish]

It is complete. I had a bug finding cram session with the #dominions guys, and the current version in there should be the final version. whats not working for you?

[Endoperez]

It seems I wrecked something, and then checked the .dm - and didn't notice it is longer than what fits into my view at once!
I thought the file ended after #domversion!

I'll try to get something constructive shortly...

[Endoperez]

The new dragons are very powerful. Too powerful for their price, I'd say.

All: Level 2 is too much in most cases. If possible, increase new path cost even more. Test with dominion 2 instead of 1, but don't change it automatically. These are VERY powerful even in low dominion, in high they would be insane.
In most cases, the second form isn't needed. The research bonus is just an unneeded bonus. Why can't these dragons just snirk on the young ones who have to change forms to call forth their heritage?

Speaking of Heritage, Draco Sanguinus can cast Sanguine Heritage on turn 4. Compared to Fountain of Blood with the same level of Blood, at turn 6:
Fountain: 59 slaves with unrest being 0 for the whole time. Gladiators rock as patrollers, but even they aren't enough, because...
Ars Sangiune: 84 slaves and one turn of research because unrest went over 100 even with 50 assorted patrollers.
Give the dragon no blood hunt bonus, give the Ars Sangiune half the bonus of Blood Fountain, and new paths at 60 points. He won't be a combatant, but he CAN be a mobile super-slaver. Have him start with Blood 2, blood blessing is meh so he won't benefit from it that much.

Void Dragon - his breath kills most humans AND makes the others frightened, so they flee. The breath always hits. It can't be resisted. I conquered four provinces, starting from turn 2, with him. I had four Starspawns, one of them a commander, accompany him with Fire Archers orders. They weren't needed.
It shouldn't affect that many targets, but instead be very dangerous versus small groups. Even still, it might be good to make it resistable. Add effect 156 - feeblemind.
You might also change it to automatically feeblemind one person, with few uses every battle, without dealing damage. THE SC/mage disabling ability!

Shadow Dragon
Also able to conquer provinces on his own. Without spells researched, he conquered provinces defended by Barbarians, Ichtyids and 50 HI/archers. His breath weapon KILLS any human it hits. His Fear+2 is NOT less powerful. Fear start from -5 for a reason. His HP are NOT weaker! 110 is less than 125, but no enough to matter in battle.
Change his Fear to -3, make his breath weapon resistable (magic resistance negates). He has low protection, and that's hard to change with just three slots, so I think he's more balanced that the others. Consider lowering his encumberance to 1, this would allow him to don Flaming Helmet after 4 stars, giving him 7 prot. Hits down to 50-80, so he has to fight in own dominion.

Gold Dragon - He can't cast any Magma spells. Give him Earth 1 Fire 1, and take away his Awe. His breath weapon is powerful, but IT won't conquer provinces on its own, so its okay.
Even without awesome breath of other Dragons, he conquers provinces from turn 1, without suffering anything. He conquered province of 85 knights/longbowmen going down from 200+ to 100+ hits. No afflictions. Damage was mainly from the archers. He didn't attack them as I had planned, but they didn't shoot every turn because he was surrounded. He had only Earth 2, however, and cast no spells.
Leave out the #flyspr, and test if his breath attack works. If it does, say that instead of breathing, he makes the earth itself spit out molten death to his enemies, and watch the magma appearing from seemingly underground.

Storm Dragon. 110 hp is too much. Too cost-effective when compared to Titan - more hits, better prot, one less Air but fly and move 4, etc. Without equipment (and his Golden Shield), Titan is just worse, and costs 50 points more. What do you want him to be? Flying mad-caster? 80 hp, somewhat increased cost might do it.

Sea Dragon - the only of the Dragons that ever died in my tests, although I didn't test Storm Dragon as it is almost identical to White Dragon of the pretender mod. In indeps 6, tritons attack him, become poisoned, die and retreat. At indep 9, they killed him before they died of poison. Poison might fit him better than Frost. Remove breath weapon, add poison aura, and call his Great Seer form the only way he can command his followers without poisoning them. Then, the longer he survives, the more poisoned his foes become. Or then tone others down to his level, so that they can't conquer provinces on their own without script, spells, items OR research.

[Wish]

I can't say I agree with much of what you suggest for balancing. You want me to remove alot of what makes any individual dragon special.

I will make a few changes though

also I can't add magic resistance negates to a new weapon, its just not moddable. and madness strike does have the feeblemind secondary effect already

[Wish]

I did most of the changes to the shadow dragon you suggested. and gave the breath a smaller AoE, and reduced his precision.

I took the hunt off the draco sanguinius (but not ars sanguine) and increased his path cost to 85.

I toned down the madness strike so it isn't as accurate as it was before. Its already low damage low ammo.

Your suggestions to gold dragon completely remove what I added for thematic purposes. Dragons breath things, I'm not going to just make him a mage with an auto flamestrike (circa MoM) If you want him to cast magma, then give him a level of fire He breathes magma, he doesn't have to cast it. I'll reduce his fear by three, and up his cost.

I'll reduce the storm dragons hp to 90.

keep in mind dragons, even in CB, can solo indes really well too, so the fact that these dragons can should be no suprise.

[Endoperez]

Oh, I hadn't realized magic res. couldn't be added to weapons.

Sorry about the suggestions not working, but I found most of them very powerful. That isn't bad on its own, but they are too cheap for the price. Except, of course, if you replace the existing pantehon with monsters... In that case, go for it! I could use the bloodshed for entertainment! Especially for those damned Knights.

I also don't see how Draco Sanguinius could be useful except as a Blood hunter, which in most cases means he also needs an element to accompany it... However, it mighn't be as balanced as I though at first. He is very powerful, and will be nigh useless on battle. HP don't do much when you have neither protection, defense, or access to buff spells...

I don't think I mentioned it before:
Sea Dragon looks great.
Shadow Dragon looks great. And the red eye is freaky on the unit info screen...
Void Dragon looks strange, but I think that's intentional. However, I would change his description a little.

It mentioned something to the effect of "instead of legs, the Void Dragon has tentacles. His tail is also a tentacle."
The last sentence is strange - it doesn't add much information, and I don't think the difference between tail and tentacle is big enough to warrant a mention.

Also, the whip-slash might not be the best sound effect. Consider one of these for weapon sounds:
25, 49, 79, 83, 85 for sound effects. Or 28, the Horror sound, for the Void Dragon.

[Wish]

I have further reduced the power of some of the breath weapons, So they are more in line with red and blue dragon's weapons.

Also since other people are complaining ars sanguine is too good a hunter, I halved his dousing skill.

I'll look into the sound effect thing - is there a better list of sound effects than the one in the mod manual?

[Endoperez]

No. I recorded most of them, painfully. Unfortunately, they are wav (=big). Many of them are the same base sound, but there are some unused sounds in the middle of them. I'm not sure if they are placeholders or not. I didn't go past 80 or so, but I think they end before that.