Just Sharing my new mod - Umbarthium

[Agrajag]

I was a bit bored and feeling a bit creative, so I decided to mod a new nation.
After two days of none-stop programming and drawing (a measly 20 hours or so total) I managed to reach the final result - Umbarthium.

As the in-game description goes:
The Umbarhians are short folk with four arms each, they are incapable of natural death since their life spans 50,000 years, still most die at a much younger age for unnatural reasons. Each Umbarthian province is goverened by a Mage lord. Most Umbarthians carry no armor but are quick and powerful warriors. Blurgs, Umbarthian pets, also take part in Umbarthium's military power and are the only units capable of going underwater, under the command of a Blurg Trainer.

Download The 1.00 Version of the mod.

I'd really like some criticism (of the constructive type mainly), and mostly balance-wise as I feel this is where my mod is weakest (besides the not-too-perfect graphics).

So far one such criticism was recieved, regarding the "Gifted"

Originally posted by Boron:
that umbarthian gifted and umbarthian gifted commanders are though too strong .
4 20 amor negating attacks per turn , blessable .
so with quickness bless even doubled lol .
22 attack skill .
the bane of every melee sc hehe.

I agree here and Im on my way to fixing that, I wonder if changing the damage on each of those Gifted Swords to 5 would be good enough without underpowering or overpowering the Gifted (take into account their very high price), I'd really like some help here.

[QUOTW]Originally posted by Boron:
yeah good idea .
the 4 armed race is really a creative race .
perhaps you could add 4 arms for all leaders as slots if that is possible ?
cause a nataraja has 4 arms so it is technically possible but i don't know if it is possible as mod command .

one umbarthian gifted ( the unit not the leader he is far stronger )...[/quote]
(the "..." means the quote was trimmed for the important bits)
Is the Gifted unit (not the commander) really stronger than the commander?
Is that because the armor does not make up for the price and leadership disatvantages?

AND I really would like giving all Umbarthians 4 hand slots, but as far as the docs go, that isnt possible, I could give them three hands, but how does that make more sense?
Eventually I used the simple equipment slots available to most humans because that made the most sense of the available options.

Again, all criticism is welcome, the constructive kind is the most.
(I hope this doesnt get buried under a bunch of other threads and thrown into oblivion, I'll see abuot that tomorrow, its 1 AM already *yawn*.)

[Bossemanden]

Would it be possible to give them three hands and give the fourth a standard shield? Not optimal, but a believable workaround.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Agrajag:


(the "..." means the quote was trimmed for the important bits)
Is the Gifted unit (not the commander) really stronger than the commander?
Is that because the armor does not make up for the price and leadership disatvantages?

you misunderstood that
i wrote it in a bad way

the gifted unit is already way to strong .

the gifted commander itself is even stronger because you can equip him .

the problem with both is : you should lower the price to 70 gold for the gifted unit , but take away the +10 attack bonus on the weapon .
lowering that to +3-5 would be ok and decrease damage to 10 ap weapon damage .

perhaps even that is too strong because they have 4 weapons and are blessable .

you should remove armor negating from every special weapon you have made like the gifted sword . ( i think this is the only one but don't know about special heros if you made any ) .

no unit in dominions has natural armor negating weapons afaik .
you only can get armor negating by forging an weapons on leaders .
these an weapons are suboptimal either in attack+def boni or weapon lenghts though to keep the balance with other forgeable items .

furthermore you should decrease gemincome from starting sites . 5 n 5 d is far to much .
expect pyhtium and mictlan almost every nation that does consist of mortals and not undead has only 5 starting gem income .

[Agrajag]

Ok, Im done with 1.01.
This fixes the "Gifted"
The swords now have 10 armor piercing damage and only a bonus of 4 to attack.
Gifted commnaders now cost 135 gold and 78 resources.
Gifted now cost 75 gold and 18 resources.
Added a mod description.
Tweaked the items for more misc. item slots to compensate for the lack of four equipable hands.

EDIT: forgot to mention they now get 2 earth and 2 nature gems each turn.
EDIT II: and forgot to mention I nerfed the slingers as well, their slings now deal 4 damage and have a range of 25 (which is still quite powerful)

Ive overwritten the .zip on my webhost with the 1.01 Version, to download, just click the old link or the one in my signature.

currently I plan only on 1.02 which will give the umbarthians their own national heroes (and probably 1.03 because they'll be over or underpowered)

[ July 29, 2004, 08:18: Message edited by: Agrajag ]

[tinkthank]

ehm, I downloaded your mod --- but which nation does yours replace?

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
ehm, I downloaded your mod --- but which nation does yours replace?

The In-game description clearly states "Ulm" and so does actual gameplay (AKA Ulm).
Did you remember to unzip the .zip file into the "mods" directory in the dominions 2 directory?
Did you remember to enable it?
And start a new game when it is enabled and choosing the Umbarthium nation? (which will stand there instead of Ulm)

[ July 29, 2004, 11:38: Message edited by: Agrajag ]

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by Smauler:

Anyway, I haven't done any modding myself, and this is only a guess as to how it works, it just looks like it should work this way. Thus to get 4 arms, you add 30, instead of the 14 for three, or 6 for two arms. Anyway, you could give it a try, don't blame me it it doesn't work though

!!!
It worked!
I know binary, I just never thought of it myself
OK, I updated the .zip yet again so you can just redownload it for the latest Version (it still says its Version 1.01 though).
I'll start working on national heroes soon.

[Smauler]

Brilliant, glad it worked . I'll download your mod again (I've got 1.00 now) and give it a go. I think the docs descibe all alternatives apart from arms though, so you can't create any more than 2 heads, 1 body, or one feet though.

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by Smauler:
Brilliant, glad it worked . I'll download your mod again (I've got 1.00 now) and give it a go. I think the docs descibe all alternatives apart from arms though, so you can't create any more than 2 heads, 1 body, or one feet though.

Damnit, and I was just thinking about a four headed, two bodied, three feeted, twenty armed race of monkeys from mars...
Im happy atleast one person like my mod =O
I just discovered that those Umbarthians are real SC killers. (In a battle against them... luckily for me, Its not a hard map as its going right now and that was just an expirimental SC as I haven't yet mastered the arts of SCs =P).
So... No one else like my mod? Maybe I shouldnt design special heroes for them then

[Smauler]

Originally posted by Agrajag:
Damnit, and I was just thinking about a four headed, two bodied, three feeted, twenty armed race of monkeys from mars...
Im happy atleast one person like my mod =O
I just discovered that those Umbarthians are real SC killers. (In a battle against them... luckily for me, Its not a hard map as its going right now and that was just an expirimental SC as I haven't yet mastered the arts of SCs =P).
So... No one else like my mod? Maybe I shouldnt design special heroes for them then

I don't get SC's myself yet, I'm a bit of a newbie gameplaying-wise. I only got the full game less than a week ago. I still haven't played out games with each original nation, so I couldn't give a balanced view of yours. I will give it a full game tomorrow though, and if I can beat medium AI, either I'm improving, or it's overpowered