New mod: Nephilim

[Amos]

I decided to release this mod before Dom3. Its untested as usual. The mod is "Late Era" Nephilim.

Ver 0.14

[shovah]

thank you so much, i knew you had it in you! will test asap.

[shovah]

Very nice, summons are nice (are the blood ones the same? i never tested them) but the recruitables seem a little strong, specifically the big arachnid ones and those ranged ones. 15 resources and 1 gold for a 15an damage 1 shot per 2 turns is evil.

[Amos]

Blood summons are the same. At Astral 7 you get a very powerful leader.
As for balance, I have no idea how to set the prices on units.
I can make the ranged guy fire once every 3 turns but I think thats too much. I could maybe lower the dmg.
I was thinking of maybe removing the Judge from the beginning of the game, as he is too powerful.


I corrected some mistakes and uploaded the new version. Soul Lens is 10 dmg now.
Gate Keeper is capitol only unit.

[shovah]

good changes, ive seen the astral 7 guy (very nice), also like finally having a recruitable mage. If you remove the judge then they have no real ability to scout early game, it could be damaging.

[Amos]

Lol I removed the recruitable mage he was a mistake. The power of the units is offset by the inability to deploy quickly. The Judge can take out almost anything (He turns into the Shadow Lord Judge) so he should be used as an assassin SC in later game, thats why he costs so much.
I'm uploading the next version at the beginning of the thread.

[shovah]

ahh, never saw his second form.

[Amos]

Another version. Living Bonded turn Feral if they die in battle.
Corrected all the spelling errors.
If you want recruitable mages, they are going to be in my next mod "Human Trade Republics".

[Agrajag]

Where is the old thread where we tried to come up with a formula for translating stats into gold cost?
It could come in real handy for balancing new mods.

[thejeff]

Filename errors:
Flag1.tga should be flag1.tga
DarkPanisher1a.tga should be DarkExecutioner1a.tga


Seems very overpowered to me. Gate Keepers are SCs out of the box. I took level 9 independents without worrying. Cheap for what you get. They'd flatten a Neifel Jarl without a problem at a third of the price.

The archers are brutal as well. Biggest problem was keeping them from slaughtering my other troops.

I like the basic idea. Expensive (gem cost) high powered mages and the cheap high resource troops with neat abilities. Just needs more balancing.

I'd still buy Gate Keepers at 500 gold.

[Amos]

Oups. Corrected. Uploaded.
Gate Keeper 350g/30r and Sacred, STR 25
Key Keeper 200g, STR 25, 14 prot
Arachnid Lords 17 protection

Niefel Jarl is faster, has more defense and HP, plus he is a leader.
The 5 weapons on mages are a test thing. Its there to determine what weapons create the "Soul Feeding" effect, ie Soul Slay+ Life Drain.

[Amos]

Any problems?

[Valandil]

yes. The ruah claws/blades are extremely powerful, and the cavalry (forgot name) with ruah blades are quite a bit less expensive than the ought to be. Gate keepers, even at 450 with no slots, are insanely powerful. There's really no need for any other units. Killing light on the soul lenses makes them more powerfull than many spells, and they are only 1/15. Basically, the mod is overpowered. I like the graphics though.

[Amos]

People keep saying that national troops are underpowered and unneeded in the late game, so I thought if I made them Thug or SC quality but very expensive that that would solve the problem. Soul Lens is very inaccurate. They are as dangerous to the enemy as they are to you. I could make them more inaccurate though or extremely short ranged and non magical. I'm leaning toward the later. I wish I could insert 1 Death scale into the mod.
Can anyone do cost analysis?

New version: Higher resource costs, lower str on arachnids, Soul Lens is much shorter range and non magical.

[shovah]

Doing that with national troops would (or could) solve the problem but the thing is, it only does it to one nation in your mod making their nationals superior to others.

[Amos]

Try playing a game against Nephilim (You cant use Ermor obviously). If you are able to win against them with a regular nation then they only need small tweaks. If you cant win then they are broken and I'll try to fix them.

Lowered Soul Lens ammo to 3 shots.

[shovah]

Seeing as most of us can beat almost any nation using another nation that test isnt really fair, for 1 the ai is really bad at using summons and keeping up a blood dominion, 2 the ai would mis-use the units, causing huge friendly fire casualties with soul lens and would use gate keepers with troops, causing him to rout. The ai is generally quite poor and when given a mod to use is even worse. You could up the soul lens to 5 ammo, enough to justify the 25 resource cost but low enough not to be too deadly/cause massive friendly casualties(it should have stopped firing by the time troops reach combat)

[Amos]

You didnt like 3 shots? I thought even the slowest units could reach the enemy in 4-6 turns. I'm thinking of making their accuracy higher now that the range is so short. I know its basically tweaking but it could be a major change in the way you use the Bonded. I seem to be swaying from one extreme to another in terms of balance. I wish there was an absolute set of pricing rules. I made the accuracy so low as a way of offsetting their massive damage. Any ideas? I changed Soul Javelin and Soul Lens to armor piercing, lowered their damage to 0, gave them back magic (just didnt feel right them without magic) and set Lens ammo to 5 shots. They should get their damage from str.
As for Gate Keeper, lowered his strategic movement from 3 to 1. Will it lower his usefulness? He is a defender and not a fast strategic unit.

[thejeff]

The Gate Keepers can be used as defenders, but they are really SCs. Cutting their movement will make it harder to get them to the front, but if they spend most of their time taking provinces that won't make much difference.

Late game they're vulnerable: minimal slots no elemental resistance, but in early game they rule. Normal armies can't touch them, they can solo L9 indies without worries. They'd be a real threat in an early rush. What would you use to stop them with around turn 5?


In my test game, one of them just took a solo Wyrm. It was against the AI, so the Wyrm was unbuffed, but still...

[shovah]

Yea, they rock in a rush. I pummeled an impossible ermor by rushing with around 3-4 of them while mass producing arcebuses in my capitol (which had 175 resources a turn). Quickly surrounded the ulmish capitol, built a fortess on every province around it, put a gatekeeper in each on patrol and then later when i had thousands of gold cranked the pd up to 60 and removed the keepers. I killed the ulmish god so many times, an e9 wyrm ended up as an e2 wyrm, then i just slammed my pretender and 200 arcebuses into his capitol and watched the fireworks.

[Amos]

The nation should be played at 1 Death scale. That way you will soon find yourself short on money.
Are the Gate Keepers and Arcebuses the only units you use? In the next version I'm going to remove the site with resources, its too unbalancing.
I'll think what to do about Gate Keepers to make them less SCish at the beginning of the game.

[shovah]

I used them and maybe 5-10 men as a shield to stop cavalry from rushing my arcebuses. I also used a tooled out bengehemon |(empowered to f4 w1) and a few other summons. Death 1 honestly dosnt have that much of an impact on your cash flow for a LONG time and with gatekeepers being the only units causing any real upkeep i would guess id still have plenty (especially if i took order)

[Amos]

I'm removing ethereal from all arachnids except for Overlord and Shadow Lord (but I'm lowering Shadows HP). Lowering some Ruah weapons stats. Gate Keepers are still very powerful but not SCs. And lets hope that in Dom 3 I can set the Death scale to 2.
Dont you use Key Keepers at all? Now they are faster than Gate Keepers.

Finished with the sprites for my next mod:

http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/2541/brotherfire2oo6.jpghttp://img225.imageshack.us/img225/5040/brotherfire2aas7.jpg http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/7548/cavcap2jt7.jpghttp://img217.imageshack.us/img217/707/cavcap2aaj8.jpg http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/5404/millitia6zq6.jpghttp://img151.imageshack.us/img151/6043/millitia6aft0.jpg http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7559/hero2kg8.jpghttp://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6907/hero2anu2.jpg http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/4548/death1fz9.jpghttp://img215.imageshack.us/img215/1480/death1ahf8.jpg

I've finally made the hammer that I like.

[Amos]

Added "Enslave Mind" to Lilith and Lucifer.

The new mod is almost finished. Lets see if I can finish it before Dom 3 comes out. Should elephant and cavalry have "Animal" attribute?

[Morkilus]

Those are some very nice sprites.

[Amos]

Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Those are old version sprites though. I should probably replace them with a new version when I find the time.