Ashikaga mod v2.0

[Potatoman]

Version 2.00 of my Japanese themed Dominions II mod, the Ashikaga Shogunate, is now complete and ready for download! It replaces the basic nation of Tien'Chi with a feudal shogunate of warriors based on the Ashikaga, or Warring States, era of Japanese history. Version 2.00 of the mod includes 21 completely new units and heroes with hand crafted .tga sprites, full unit & nation descriptions, appropriate flags & banners, and numerous bug fixes.

The mod includes:
</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">21 original units, complete with unique colorful sprites and full unit descriptions</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nation specific summons. Supernatural units such as Oni and Tengu can now fight for your cause</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Compatability with Unwise's Shield Icon Flags mod (thanks Arryn)</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A new set of weapons and armors</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A complete roster of national heroes</font> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Numerous tweaks and balance revisions</font><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
V3.0 isn't really on the horizon, though I will continue to make bug fixes and tweak the balance if players request it.

As always, feel free to post your compliments and criticisms in this thread; if you make a good case for a change then there's a good chance you'll get your way.

v2.0 of this mod uses unit numbers 2400-2416, weapon numbers 700-707, and armor numbers 250-254.

It can be downloaded from my website here. (http://students.washington.edu/torgo/ashikaga.zip)

Have fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[gibson]

Just downloaded and playing with a little, looks cool! Some of the unit stats seem a little high for mortals, but I'll withhold judgement on that until I've had time to test it in more depth.

I wasn't able to find the nation specific summon spells...what path are they? Do you start with them, or are they researchable?

Thanks for the hard work you've obviously put into it; the theme has flavor that rivals that of the stock nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Daynarr]

Now THIS is what I've been waiting for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Great work!

[Taqwus]

Dim Mak? That's a bit harsh. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Kristoffer O]

I made it available on Illwinter as well.

Gibson: the spells are available at start. Death-nature, water-nature, fire-nature and earth-astral. They have the old celestial names, but bring other units.

[PhilD]

I usually am not that good at this game... the Samurai are a very tough lot!

Does the Daikyu work? I only have a very small number of the Samurai Bowmen, but while they do make a bow's "snap" noise when animating, and seem to "fire" without moving to the enemy, I don't see any arrows flying, and, most importantly, I don't see any enemies dying (whereas, when I send in Samurai Swordsmen, the enemies die a lot!)... so I'm wondering if the weapon modding does really work...

[Potatoman]

The archers do fire and inflict damage, but there is unfortunately no way to choose a projectile model for a range attack, so the arrows are invisible. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I'll make a patch that changes them back to longbows until it's possible to make modded range weapons function.

[ February 17, 2004, 19:47: Message edited by: Potatoman ]

[PhilD]

OK, now I DO see enemies dying. Still no arrows, though.

[Potatoman]

The temporary fix has been uploaded.

[gibson]

Unless they are meant to be pretender based spells, are the national summons meant to uncastable by the national mages (excepting a lucky tengu)? I can understand it being a limitation of the modding tools, or even a balance issue (as the summons seem pretty nice), so I'm just curious what the motivating factor was to provide starting spells that the national mages can't easily cast.

[Daynarr]

What really surprises me is that shuriken has animation and it is also new weapon (I think).

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by gibson:
Unless they are meant to be pretender based spells, are the national summons meant to uncastable by the national mages (excepting a lucky tengu)? I can understand it being a limitation of the modding tools, or even a balance issue (as the summons seem pretty nice), so I'm just curious what the motivating factor was to provide starting spells that the national mages can't easily cast. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually they aren’t so hard to cast and yes, tengus are the ones to do it. They get 2 nature and 2 random picks but those picks are always of the same type so it’s pretty easy to get tengu with 2N 2D or 2N 2F, etc. They are bit costly but they work. Just playing a new game with this mod and so far I have 3 tengus who can cast 3 different summons.

[gibson]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Actually they aren’t so hard to cast and yes, tengus are the ones to do it. They get 2 nature and 2 random picks but those picks are always of the same type so it’s pretty easy to get tengu with 2N 2D or 2N 2F, etc. They are bit costly but they work. Just playing a new game with this mod and so far I have 3 tengus who can cast 3 different summons. [/QB]<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Gotcha, thanks! I meant to buy some more tengu but they are expensive...seems order 3 is pretty important to this nation. Otherwise looks to be a very powerful and colorful nation. Thanks for your work Potatoman.

[PhilD]

Even without magic (all mages are very expensive), the Ashikaga seem awfully strong to me.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but the Samurai Swordsman, Samurai Bowman, and Samurai Horseman, all seem pretty strong: fast, deadly, and durable. The Bowman and Horseman are expensive, and they don't exactly have extra heavy protection, but in my one test game, they all tended to rout enemies quickly enough to take few losses; the high morale does a lot for this, of course.

In the game I started yesterday (vs 12 AI on Targa's map), by turn 34 I have killed Ulm, am at war with Pangaea and Abysia (and sieging both their capitals), and generally feel very comfortable (twice as many provinces as the closest AI). And I believe the only spells I've cast so far were site-searchers...

At least, this is all much better than I'm usually doing!

[Potatoman]

Yes, my recent playtests have also indicated that Samurai might again be too strong. The problem in balancing them stems from their lack of a shield, making them fragile to enemy archers- their high stats and strong weapon more a result of my attempt to balance that weakness than simply an intent make them uber. I think I unbalanced them slightly when creating equipment; the Yukino****a-Do and Yoroi have a significantly boosted prot value over their old placeholder armor of Lorica Segmentata. The v2.01 Version will significantly reduce the prot of both Samurai and Ninja units.

National Summons:
Celestial Soldiers --> Summon Obake Yurei 2N 2D
Demon of Celestial Fire ---> Summon Aka-Oni 2N 2F
Demon of Celestial Rivers --> Summon Ao-Oni 2N 2W

The chance of a Tengu being able to summon one of the three is close to 1/3. Lucky Mahotsukai Masters can also be equpped with a thistle mace, and summon either Oni.

Gibson: Order 3 is always nice... But have you seen the national heroes? Might consider luck 3 a must have after using them for a while... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[PDF]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
The archers do fire and inflict damage, but there is unfortunately no way to choose a projectile model for a range attack, so the arrows are invisible. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I'll make a patch that changes them back to longbows until it's possible to make modded range weapons function. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Isn't it possible in 2.08 to use an existing but not used bow id - eg the Great Bow, and override its stats and name to make this the Japanese bow you want ?

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
Yes, my recent playtests have also indicated that Samurai might again be too strong. The problem in balancing them stems from their lack of a shield, making them fragile to enemy archers- their high stats and strong weapon more a result of my attempt to balance that weakness than simply an intent make them uber. I think I unbalanced them slightly when creating equipment; the Yukino****a-Do and Yoroi have a significantly boosted prot value over their old placeholder armor of Lorica Segmentata. The v2.01 Version will significantly reduce the prot of both Samurai and Ninja units.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The thing is, even with lowish protection, they move quickly enough that archer fire isn't that deadly. Against independents, the samurai crash in to the enemy infantry very quickly, while the horsemen rush to the archers and rout them quickly.

What makes the samurai units so deadly, IMHO, is that they have terrific morale (thus can charge under fire without routing), and move very quickly for strong infantry. The Horsemen are extremely fast cavalry with good stats and good protection, AND excellent morale. This means the whole lot can charge blindly toward the enemy lines; even if they suffer some losses, they will very often rout them quickly, and with their high speed, routing units often die during the rout.

Plus, the Daikyu has long range, high damage, and good precision; I find myself suffering from very little friendly fire. And not having to wait for the slow-motion arrows to cross the battlefield is almost a bonus (you don't see the misses, though) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

For this much power, I don't think the Samurai are very expensive. 13 Gold for a Samurai Swordsman is only 30% more than a random heavy infantry, and it's way more efficient and durable. At 50 Gold, the Horseman is sure expensive, but it's also very efficient, and its resource cost means you can quickly field large numbers of them after a few turns.


Gibson: Order 3 is always nice... But have you seen the national heroes? Might consider luck 3 a must have after using them for a while... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like Luck, even though it's supposed to be inefficient.

Anyway - I've found a new favorite nation, at least for my SP games. Thanks a lot for this nice mod Potatoman!

[Taqwus]

The scorpion-mounted hero Ho-Hsien-Ku should have the #mounted flag most likely.
I'm not seeing any effect from #horrormark on the Mahotsukai Master/Adept; they don't show the mark in-game anyway.
Playing Last night, ISTR that the Dragon hero still had the Fly Whisk and the Demon-Slaying Sword, but looking at the new .dm I don't see why that would still be the case.
The new Oni units are quite fun; unlike the old national summons, not sacred, but still very useful. Just can't mix 'em.
Jonin are _lethal_ assassins. I wonder if they should cost even more than they do now; great att/def, 50% more hp/str than most humans, highly mobile due to survival skills, multiple attacks including the (magical?) Knife Hand and dual bane daggers. I've a Prophet Jonin that combined with fire-9 blessing and heroic strength dispatches his victims rather readily (e.g. 52 strength in dominion => shuriken does 57 (edit; 57, not 31; +str, not +str/2) dmg at range 26. Took out a Marignon Witchhunter-General with one throw. And if he misses, he's got four flaming-weapon high-str attacks, and is protected by glamour, ethereal (wraith crown), good prot (marble breastplate), water elemental plus reinvig from amulet of resilience. Yowch.)

[ February 18, 2004, 14:50: Message edited by: Taqwus ]

[Potatoman]

The v2.01 Version is out. It fixes the #mounted bugs, reduces Joinin strength and shuriken dmg, slows samurai movement speed and reduces their prot, replaces the Daikyu with longbows, and re-colors the yamabushi Monk.

#horrormark inflicts horror marks on enemy units the masters attack; it does not make the masters themselves horror marked.

[Arryn]

The internal Version number in the .dm file is still 2.00, are you sure this is the correct .dm file in the archive?

[ February 19, 2004, 02:59: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Potatoman]

Yeah, I always forget to update the #Versionnumber in the .dm file.

[Taqwus]

Figured out the Demon-slaying Sword and Annoying Fly-Whisk -- it's probably a conflict between Ashikaga and SC's "Pre-patch fix" mod. Hm, if there were a way to specify the order in which mods were applied...