Mod: MA-Desdares: (updated with new sprites, tweaks)

[superdestructo]

Blah blah blah, my first public mod.

I don't know how many conflicts it will have, as i haven't downloaded and looked at many other mods. If anyone has that information handy, i'd like to take a look at it. I tried to pick fairly random consecutive numbers.

It is a Middle Age Mod.
Nation Number 78
Units: 2850 - 2866
Armors: 280 - 287
Weapons: 680 - 683
Sites: 780 - 782


Remaining problems:
I don't know how to format text to display correctly. The biggest issue being the nation summary is cut off.

Some of the custom units I have made for this mod. If you want to use them for something else, go ahead.

The wizard on the left replaces the old lavamancer. I also redid the crimson commander and edited the battle maiden. All sprites have been cleaned up. Flag and banner have been created.


Original screen


Still needs a little more testing, but it is practically done at this point.

Comments and criticism welcome.

[Alderanas]

Can you put the download into a zip file so i can download it.

[Wauthan]

Took a quick look and I must say that your work looks promising. And as strange as it sounds you seem to have overnerfed the units. My comments might seem harsh, but that's just because I like your mod and hope to see the finished version.

Battle Maiden - Hits hard but can't take a punch. 10 hp is bit low, and high defence is negated by berserk. 60 gold seems excessive since they will be hard to keep alive.

Crimson Rouge - Great unit concept but way to expensive. Especially since they got such low morale. I would put them at 12 gold.

Crimson Guard - No way that I'm building these guys. The stats are not worth the upkeep. 15 Gold sounds a lot better, since they have nothing save their low resource cost to show for it.

Stalwart - Heart Companions by another name, but cost 10 more resources. Sacred castle defenders is not that optimal since defence often comes as a suprise, and these guys can not be built in the numbers needed to make the bonus count.

Devoted - Worth more then a mere 3 gold. With a even a modest bless strategy these guys are already strong units (morale 15 plus shield and javelin).

Dark Lord - Too expensive in both gold and resources. Death 3 sacred knight commander is a great thug. Two heads, trample and selfblesser is a bit over the top. Trampling actually makes him a weaker unit.

The casters - Are pretty well balanced, if perhaps a bit too similar. I would either turn them into the classic three tiers of power, or give them more individual flavor (resistances and survival abilities?).

Crimson Commander - Why would I invest in this guy instead of a 40 gold independent commander with the same stats? His sword alone makes little difference. His sprite show him using a shield. Why did you chose to give him a crossbow?

Gold Standard - Good concept for a unit, and a great way to make sure all your units are blessed. Should be expensive but 300 gold and 65 resources are too much. He's a good deal better then Pangeas priestess, but not that much.

Kunoichi - A really poor assassin. Low damage and weak stats makes this unit hard to sell. I would much rather buy one caster then two of these. Give her sacred, priest 1, dualwielded daggers and full leather armour and she looks much more attractive.

Your pretender feels overpriced as well. 75 points seems more appropriate. He's basicly a thougher version of one of the cheap rainbow pretenders.

[dmentd]

I will post an opposing point of view on this mod. I played 4 years in game, and I think the nation is a bit too strong.

First, I will admit I enjoy the nation, concept, and execution. The idea of zealots working for low cost with resources and domain limiting them, supplemented by high cost mercenaries is just cool. I also think people can take advantage of this.

Since you can hire two solid sacreds anywhere, assume someone will use a dual bless strategy with fire and water, like I did. Those 3 gp guys are tough with a high defense, boosted further with the bless, and a good shield to prevent archers from slaughtering them. You can afford to lower some income scales because these guys are cheap, jack up the resource scales, and use them as your exclusive recruitable troop. Archers you will get from indys. Same thing with inexpensive priests for blessing.

Then we get to summons. You have the ability to summon massive amounts of immortal troops quickly. You also have the ability to summon these troops in any of your pop centers because you can recruit inexpensive death mages everywhere. This represents a massive power that is hard to beat.

Granted I was only playing against the AI, but I stomped the impossible AI harder than nearly any other mod. I know this strategy is not following the theme, but I do think this strategy is how MP would take advantage of the mod.

[Wauthan]

Tried out the lava elementals now. These guys are really good. But I think you should keep them as they are, just change the spell into a battlefield summon like the other elementals.

You combined the power of both fire and earth and turned them into permanent armies. A 0 enc trampler with a fireshield is badass. Underwater lava elemtentals are bit odd. Shouldn't these guys turn into regular earth elementals when cooled down?

The immortal undead are overpowered. An army of liches? With these guys around you're just about unbeatable inside your own dominion. Remove the #immortal command and they would be just fine. I understand the concept your going for, eternal champions, but isn't covered by the fact that the units can be "resummoned" when they fall.

But if you want to keep the immortal nature of these units you could easily change them into national heroes. That way you keep the concept but limit the numbers. The CBM has similar heroes for LA Agartha, and they work really well.

[superdestructo]

Yeah, I can compress in .zip format.
My winzip program expired and won't work without registration, but WinRAR seems to be able to compress as .zip as well. So i'll do that.

Mod:

Thanks for the input, and don't worry, i'm not offended by any "criticism" - i find it helpful

I know I have to make some adjustments.
I pretty much dialed in all the values off the top of my head, and hadn't really done a lot of game-testing. A lot of the indy units such as the priest offset some of the balance I wanted to achieve.

I fixed the summon costs for elementals, but the other technical problems haven't been addressed.


As for gameplay, I defiantly agree about the immortal units being overpowered. Instead of eliminating them, i am going to try to quintuple their gem cost and increase the research and summon requirements. They now cost 5 and 10 gems each.

Mercenary units and the mercenary commander have been altered to cost 0 resources. The melee merc has been reduced to 30 gold and the ranged merc has been improved slightly. The commander has been reduced to 90 gold.

Now, you can hire a full 40 man squad for 1290 gold and 0 resources. Of course, their wages will be almost 100 gold per turn, but they are decent troops. Perhaps they should not be included in normal armies in large numbers, but they should be useful regardless.

Devoted militia now cost 5 gold and have been slowed down to 1/7 movement speed and now have 5 encumbrance. Their morale is also down slightly. Resource cost slightly reduced. They can be somewhat powerful with good blessings.

Stalwart heavy infantry have been slightly reduced in costs. Battle Maidens have been reduced in cost to 45. They now have high magic resistance and some reinvigoration, while their berserk ability has been reduced to 1.

All summons now cost more gems and research and magic levels have been improved.

National mages have been altered slightly.

The Gold Standard priest/commander unit now has a lower resource cost and priest level 2.

The mounted commander unit has been reduced in cost to 330/60, has improved leadership abilities and has lost all death magic.

The kunoichi assassin now dual wields and has ambidexterity.


Anyway, thanks for the input. Might still need a little more adjustment. At some point i will get to fixing up the graphics a little bit as well.






Here is a full list of changes I have made:


Units:

Stalwart: (Heavy Infantry)
gcost -5
rcost -5
prec: -1

Devoted: (Holy militia)
AP -3
Map Move -1
Morale -1
rcost -2
enc +1

Crimson Guard: (Melee Mercenary)
gcost -15
rcost -3 (0)

Crimson Rogue: (Ranged Merc)
morale +1
prec +1
rcost -3 (0)

Battle Maiden: (capital specific melee)
gcost -15
mr +5
berserk -2
reinvigoration +3
heals afflictions


Commanders:

Crimson Commander: (merc commander)
gcost -30
rcost -9 (0)
pillagebonus +15
hp +1
mr +1
prec +1
lose Crossbow
upgrade helmet

Gold Standard: (gold priest)
rcost -15
Holy power -> lv2
#expertleader

Dark Lord: (cavalry general)
gcost -90
rcost -5
morale +2
lose all death magic
#superiorleader
#expertundeadleader
#poormagicleader

Kunoichi: (assassin/spy)
gcost -15
stealth -5
ambidextrous +2
(now dual wields)


Deathmaster: (Death Magic Spellcaster)
gcost +60
Death Magic +1
Fire Magic -1
#fear 1

Blightcaster:
#forgebonus 20

Lavamancer:
gcost +30
researchbonus 3


Summons:
Eternal Legion: (immortal undead melee)
AP -1
Def -1
Summoncost -> 5 gems ea.

Eternal Rider: (immortal undead horseman)
Summoncost -> 10 gems ea.

Lava Elemental: (small lava elemental)
Protection -4
lose pooramphibian
Summoncost -> 10 gems ea.

Lava Giant: (large lava elemental)
Protection -2
lose pooramphibian
Summoncost -> 60 gems


Hero:
gcost -30
pathcost -25 (25)
Loses deathmagic
Loses earthmagic
Firemagic +2 (3)
#superiorleader
#expertundeadleader
#goodmagicleader



Spells:
Legionnaire Reborn"
Cost 1deathgems -> 5deathgems
Req -> lv 2 deathmagic


Stalwart Score"
Cost 20death -> 100deathgems
Req -> lv 5 deathmagic
Research level -> lv 4

Legion Reborn - removed


Rider Reborn:
Cost 2deathgems -> 10deathgems
Req -> lv 3 deathmagic
Research level -> lv 2


Thirteen Riders:
Cost 26deathgems -> 130deathgems
Req -> lv 4 deathmagic
Research level -> lv 6


Lord's Runion -> Lord's Return:
Cost 50deathgems -> 75deathgems
Req -> lv 6 deathmagic


Lava Elemental:
Cost 3 firegems -> 10firegems
Req -> lv2 fire, lv1 earth

Lava Elementals:
Cost 18 firegems -> 60firegems
Req -> lv3 fire, lv2 earth


Lava Giant:
Cost 30 firegems -> 60 firegems
Req -> lv4 fire, lv2 earth

[Wauthan]

I've made a more extensive SP test this time and I must say that your mod have taken a big leap forward.
It's much better balanced now, well for SP atleast, to the point that all that is needed is merely fine tuning.

The immortal legionaire summons work just fine now, and the recruitable units are worth their gold.
The nation works along a very neat concept in that you want to use a strong bless strategy but need
good scales, and high dominion, to afford the troops.

The sacred units are such that any bless will work well, though F9 is brilliant with the Devoted, and give
the nation have a very strong PD. All in all you can be proud in having created a fun and interesting nation,
and one that is a good challenge to play against in SP. The battlemaiden is a really neat unit now.

I did change a few things though.

Added a few HP to the dark lord and made him Priest 2. So he can be a more survivable thug and to
give you more reason to build him. BTW you don't need to use the #itemslot command for new units,
since the game usually defaults to the correct value.

Made golden standard priest 1. He is bargain already since you summons his own Devoted.
Ten of them keeps the frontlines well supplied.

Made deathmaster capital only. He's a very strong caster and this puts a limit on how many you can field at once.

Lowered the cost for the elementals, since your nerf makes them a lot easier to deal with. 5 for Elemental,
25 for Elementals and 30 for the Lava Giant (it was the small ones that were too cheap).

I also added a few new heroes, since it just felt appropriate that a herocentric nation had all heroslots filled.

Hope my feedback is of any use.

[Cor2]

Superdestruct: If you need a good, free program to zip and unzip (no spy/adware invoved) I suggest Alzip.

Just down loaded, will get back to you on the. mod

[superdestructo]

Alright, finally got back to this.



New update has fixed sprites. I also created the lavamancer sprite from scratch, re-drew the crimson commander and edited battle maiden. Also edited the shield to be more 3-D, un-leaned and shortened the hero slightly, cleaned up the lava-elemental, fixed undead, eliminated extra black pixels, made a flag and a banner.

I also added the missing arrow sprites to the Crimson Rogue's Mercenary Bow. I think the missing sprites caused them to automatically hit their target or something... 'cause they were taking out everything instantly...

From a gameplay standpoint, here's what I remember doing.

I basically agree about the lava elementals, as fire gems are worth more. I put the summon costs back to the original numbers.

I put the gold standard back to 1 priest level and reduced his domsummon from 3 to 4.

I reduced the parry of the shield by 1.

I raised the armor value of the full plate by 1.

Increased Stalwart resource cost by 5.

I made the Crimson Commander have goodleader.

Removed fear from the deathmaster.
Removed the 25% chance of extra death level for deathmaster.
Made deathmaster +10 years older. He's 5-6 over old age now.

Gave the Dark Lord superiorleader in all categories.
Increased his cost to 360 gold.
Gave him the ability to decrease unrest by 10. Should be useful now.
However, when testing this it seems that there will always be some unrest anyway. A bunch of Dark Lords seem to keep unrest above 1 but under 10, depending on tax-level, no matter how many I recruit?


Overall, the race should be weakened slightly. A lot of unique stuff you can do. Updated ZIP is attached.

[Tyrian]

Dark Lord seems to me very overpriced. Same problem for his undead counter part(but in gems). Compare him to a wraith lord, equaly immortal, and more powerful, but more easier to conjure.