Age of Men: Themed Game

[Ironhawk]

I'm thinking of starting up a game soon with the theme: The Age of Men. Wanted it to be all about big armies clashing and mortal heroes instead of just mages wrathing everyone and SCs wiping out whole armies. To that end me and quantum came up with a pair of house rules

1) You can only have 1 mage per 25 regular units in an army in the field

2) Only recruitable size 2 units can be used as SC chasis

I've already got four players (myself included) and am looking for others who might be interested in a game like this. Let me know if you are. Comments and changes to the proposed house rules are also welcome.

[Boron]

What about using tka's spell/item limiting mods ?
Or making a small mod yourself ?

You could e.g. just mod out wrathful skies and a few other such "uberspells" and limit construction to lvl 2 e.g. .
This way it should be harder to do overwhelming SCs .

I have some concerns about rule 2 : only size 2 recruitable commanders may be turned into SCs :
Any knight is size 3 .
So nations like jotunheim , vanheim , man etc. are a bit disadvantaged then maybe .

Finally what about blood ? If someone plays mictlan e.g. and may not use blood he is severely disadvantaged .

[tka]

You can freely customize my mods to suit your game rules.
It's easy to change that Item Remover to remove only levels you want. link

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
I have some concerns about rule 2 : only size 2 recruitable commanders may be turned into SCs :
Any knight is size 3 .
So nations like jotunheim , vanheim , man etc. are a bit disadvantaged then maybe .

Seems likely that everyone will just pick a lich, the ghost king, or the vampire queen, all size 2.

Finally what about blood ? If someone plays mictlan e.g. and may not use blood he is severely disadvantaged .

So, people wouldn't want to play Mictlan in this game, eh?

[quantum_mechani]

Cainehill said:
Seems likely that everyone will just pick a lich, the ghost king, or the vampire queen, all size 2.

But they are not recruitable size two.

As for the other concerns, I doubt Vanhiem and Jotunhiem will be disadvantaged in a game were normal troops are so important (and anyone can get, say, a barbarian chief to make a SC).

We could probably make a mod toning down some spells and items (though wih items, it really has nothing to do with our rules, some items are just much better than others).

Since reseaching is fine without having a bunch of troops, having blood hunters in a lab province should be no problem.
I would also point out you will likely want patrolers, so thoose would account nicely for the required troops in non-lab provinces.

[Ironhawk]

I already have a mod lying around which bumps up supply and gold to handle bigger armies and also tones down some of the spells which are vicious to big armies. But I dont want to cut out wrathful, etc, just make them rarer. And the cost associated with the 25 troops per mage does that and at the same time ensures that troops will play a part in every battle.

Size 2 recruitable does rule out cavalry, so yeah that might be too restrictive. Maybe just say any recruitable? But Jotunhiem has a *significant* advantage there so perhaps no joats in this game?

As for blood, there is no problem with summoning troops. The same applies to any Nature nation as well. But given the number of troops you have to deploy I'm thinking that you'd still have about half living/half summoned?

Boron said:
What about using tka's spell/item limiting mods ?
Or making a small mod yourself ?

You could e.g. just mod out wrathful skies and a few other such "uberspells" and limit construction to lvl 2 e.g. .
This way it should be harder to do overwhelming SCs .

I have some concerns about rule 2 : only size 2 recruitable commanders may be turned into SCs :
Any knight is size 3 .
So nations like jotunheim , vanheim , man etc. are a bit disadvantaged then maybe .

Finally what about blood ? If someone plays mictlan e.g. and may not use blood he is severely disadvantaged .

[Boron]

Ironhawk said:
I already have a mod lying around which bumps up supply and gold to handle bigger armies and also tones down some of the spells which are vicious to big armies. But I dont want to cut out wrathful, etc, just make them rarer. And the cost associated with the 25 troops per mage does that and at the same time ensures that troops will play a part in every battle.

As for blood, there is no problem with summoning troops. The same applies to any Nature nation as well. But given the number of troops you have to deploy I'm thinking that you'd still have about half living/half summoned?

Hm only half troops summoned is probably a bit bad for abysia because their troops are very resource expensive .
As mictlan though i could just do 1000 slaves and 1000 devils that would be 50/50 ratio between national troops and summons .

Other concern : If someone uses lots of tartarians as mages ? Wouldn't that give that player a huge edge because recruitable SCs will probably have bigger difficulties killing them than real SCs ? And with less mages allowed this would probably help especially undead quite a bit too .

Finally Caine has a good question what about pretenders . A Vq/Gk needs not really equipping so by using such a pretender you don't break your houserule 2 only recruitable commanders may be equipped as SCs . They are no "SC" because they have no weapons ? .

And what about e.g. vampire lords used just with soul vortex as attackers ? Does such a vampire lord then count as a SC ? Or as a mage ? Or as none of that ?

I think it is better to use some kind of mod , maybe your mod . This way the rules can't be stretched . This will just naturally happen because one player sees a rule severer then another .

[quantum_mechani]

Boron said:

Hm only half troops summoned is probably a bit bad for abysia because their troops are very resource expensive .
As mictlan though i could just do 1000 slaves and 1000 devils that would be 50/50 ratio between national troops and summons .

Other concern : If someone uses lots of tartarians as mages ? Wouldn't that give that player a huge edge because recruitable SCs will probably have bigger difficulties killing them than real SCs ? And with less mages allowed this would probably help especially undead quite a bit too .

Finally Caine has a good question what about pretenders . A Vq/Gk needs not really equipping so by using such a pretender you don't break your houserule 2 only recruitable commanders may be equipped as SCs . They are no "SC" because they have no weapons ? .

And what about e.g. vampire lords used just with soul vortex as attackers ? Does such a vampire lord then count as a SC ? Or as a mage ? Or as none of that ?

OK, let me make a few examples to better define 'mages' and 'SCs':

Ghost Kings: While it is true that with buffs they don't need equipment to act as a SC, having magic makes them a mage, meaning he must drag along 25 troops that can be killed/routed.

Bane Lords: Being bigger than size 2 and non-recruitabe, he can't be equiped with items. However, as he is not a mage he can go solo and take out weak PD with his natural toughness.

Tartarians: While you can find some that can be a SC without being equiped with items, thier magic again means dragging along killable/routable troops.

VQs: She does present a bit of a problem as she will keep fighting if her escort troops route, unlike the GK. The simplest thing would just be to rule out immortal
pretenders and summons.

You also misunderstood Ironhawk, he said the summons/troop ratio was likely to be 50/50, not that there was a rule about it.

EDIT: On the topic of mounted commanders, just say that the size 2 rule is waived for mounted units (it should be obvious which units are mounted, if some disagreement occurs, just check for the mounted flag)

[Zen]

If you wanted to do the age of men, you should just make it so anything over size 4 is illegal (as far as commanders).

Then if you want to include the mandatory retinues, make it so that any unit defending or attacking has to have at least 25 troops (up to 25 for those with less leadership).

If you'd like I can whip together a mod removing all spells that produce Commanders over size 4 and of course GoR (the other exploit).

[Boron]

Zen said:
If you wanted to do the age of men, you should just make it so anything over size 4 is illegal (as far as commanders).

Then if you want to include the mandatory retinues, make it so that any unit defending or attacking has to have at least 25 troops (up to 25 for those with less leadership).

If you'd like I can whip together a mod removing all spells that produce Commanders over size 4 and of course GoR (the other exploit).

Do you think jotunheim could be allowed then too ? Just niefelheim gets disallowed but i think a normal jotun commander hasn't a big edge compared to a tuatha or van .

2nd i would suggest the following rule instead of the 25 men rule :
Each mage has to bring with him troops worth 300 gold .
This encourages players to build expensive units also like hydras or knights .