New Nation-\

[HoneyBadger]

Based on August Derleth's "Fthaggua", Lovecraftian fire-vampires, combined with Richard Sharpe Shaver's "Dero"-subterranean humanoids, and influenced by the Phantasm movies, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos concepts, and a whole lot of other things.

All original graphics-I'm not saying they're great, but I guarantee original. I didn't play around with shadows or transparencies much, so they're missing, as of now.

Late-age nation

Plenty of national summons, equivalent to Lanka, Mictlan.

A 1 (one) Pretender nation. F'Thaqqua is meant to be played, thematically and for balance-purposes, with only the "Great Death" Chassis.

Heroes-4 unique, 1 multi, and I plan to add more.

Low to very low magic.

Lots of immortal, etherial, life-drainer summons.

National troops are generally old/have short lifespans, have low hit-points, are all capable of going berserk, and all are expensive. They're all sacred too, most are size 1, and I'm going to be adding darkvision and stealth. Some will have insanity too, when I figure out how to add it.

Very little leadership, across the board.

Very low starting gems-1 astral-but there's a national summon that produces them.

I've played it in SP enough to get something of a handle on it, and it's not terribly easy to exploit the best aspects of the nation, but I won't claim it's very balanced, either.
I'm going to work hard on getting the balancing right though, especially the National Summons.

I mostly made it to get a handle on the overall process of creating a mod-thanks go to everyone here for providing an excellent enviroment to research how to do that, and what mistakes to avoid.

[Starshine_Monarch]

Okay...Where is it?

[Sombre]

He said he'll upload it today or tomorrow - which in modspeak could mean any time this month.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, it's taking me longer than I thought it would, due to my computer breaking down and needing to do a few last minute fixes, but I'll have it up as soon as possible.

[Shovah32]

Sombre said:
He said he'll upload it today or tomorrow - which in modspeak could mean any time this month.



Sounds like this prophecy is coming true http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah yeah, I don't want to hear it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif I could upload it sooner, but there's some minor things I want to fix before I do, I've decided. So, you'll have to wait a bit, but the end product will benefit from it.

[Valandil]

Erm. Does it have strengths?

[Juzza]

come oon!! post it!! pwease? I don't care if it's not finnish just release another few updates later!!

[HoneyBadger]

Erm...strength of character?

I will post it soon, I have the next 3 days off.

[Valandil]

Actually, that's sufficient strength for me. Can't wait.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, I've finally got things...eh, more or less to where I'm satisfied with them, except that I cannot get my heroes to show up.

Can anyone help with some suggestions for what the problem might be? I've got 4 unique heroes, and 1 multi-hero.

Thanks for quick responses, as if I can get this solved today, I'll post the mod today, I promise!

[HoneyBadger]

Also, how would one go about reducing the availability of Pretenders for a nation? I only want this F'thaqqua to have 1 Pretender, ideally, but I can't figure out how to make that happen.

[Shovah32]

How about making this one pretender so completely awesome that the others are worthless?
Just a suggestion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[HoneyBadger]

eh...nah. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Amos]

Also, how would one go about reducing the availability of Pretenders for a nation? I only want this F'thaqqua to have 1 Pretender, ideally, but I can't figure out how to make that happen.



You cant.

[Sombre]

Well you could technically make all the other default pretenders so expensive that no-one could ever use them. That would work.

As for heroes, the code is very simple and is clear enough in the mod manual. In the nation section you put

#multihero1 (unit #)
#hero1 (unit #)
#hero2 ... etc

If you've done that and you can't getting any with turmoil 3 luck 3 then I don't know what's wrong. Even with incorrect numbers you should still get something.

[Juzza]

and if you have no numbers you either get a serpent or funny looking gladiator.

If it isn't working after what sombre said, perhaps! you have them in the wrong spot in list, some things need to be in certain order for them to work properly, I had that happen with the nations description once.

[Amos]

If you want to test your heroes in game set your #luckevents 75 .

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, I got heroes working-I don't know if it mattered or not, but I rearranged where the heroes were in the document, and that seemed to help a lot.

I'd already played 2 games to over 100 rounds without any heroes showing up-with max luck/turmoil.

I think I will raise the cost for the other Pretenders. That's a good idea, if it can be done in such a way that it only affects those Pretenders for those nations?

[Sombre]

You can't do it so it only effects the pretenders for just your nation, no.

The default pretender selection is hardcoded, so the best you can do is change those units which are in the default selection. This will obviously impact all other nations.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, it's all ready to go-not balanced for MP, though.

Please let me know what you think, suggestions are very welcome-aside from the artwork, since I've done pretty much as well as I can, with a mouse, except for adding shadows, transparencies, etc, and little things that I can, at this stage, figure out for myself. If I had a scanner, it'd be a different story, but for now, I'm satisfied.

I will be extensively modifying the summons, using Edi's databases, so expect big changes there.

Thanks everyone!

[Shovah32]

Just started trying it but F'thaggua are called scouts in their description but lack stealth.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, I need to fix that-I need to fix lots of things, but I wanted to get this posted so people could take a look at it, since I said I would.

I'm also going to include a spell that summons up a swarm of F'thaggua, sometime.

[Shovah32]

If you take the great death pretender(as you intended) the nation does not seem overly powerful to me, although with your prophet to divine bless and an S9 blessing the recruitables and the PD become very powerful.
Without empowerment(to allow teleportation) or taking multiple high paths on your pretender its extremely difficult to get any gems or pearls. With your only mobile mages being S1 finding sites is rare and with 1(maybe a few extra from lucky astral searches) astral income spells such as arcane probing are extremely expensive and again, require the pretenders attention.
As a bless rush nation these guys could be very powerful, the nihilists and deathsheads have insane offensive power per square(alot of nihilists tend to survive the wounds that send them berserk) although they are vunerable to AoE attacks but an S9 bless(W9 or F9 or both would really help) makes them tougher - the same square does not often get hit twice.

[HoneyBadger]

That's one of the reasons the Great Death Pretender is the only one that should be used, because it limits your potential bless.

They're meant to be vulnerable, firstly, to trample, and secondly to spells like Bladewind, and ofcourse archers.

You'd have a hard time getting both F9 and W9, and still being able to cast the summons, once I've fixed them, since, except for a few heroes, their magic problem never really goes away.

I usually go with W9, As7, awake, Dom5, with all negative scales except Luck at 3.

I'll post a fix tonight or tomorrow for some things, if I can find the time.

[Valandil]

The summoned demons are almost impossible to lead, since you have no mobile undead leaders...

[Valandil]

Furthermore, weapons tentacles and triple bite should probably be melee, as opposed to range one.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, I got some fixes done, but I'm going to wait to repost until tomorrow, because I just downloaded Edi's databases, and I want to go over the information.

[Valandil]

Those dero with 4 attacks are _Brutal_ with F9. Wow.

[HoneyBadger]

Update for this mod is officially on hold due to my hard drive dying a painful death.

The planned improvements include: fixing the stealth issue on the F'thaggua, fixing a description typo, adding a Chaos Titan summon, and another summon, along with a few spells that summon larger numbers of the other summons. 1 hero to add, and 1 multihero, as well as a few Pretenders, since I can't get rid of the majority of them. Also, generally improving the balance and utility of most units, and adding special abilities, including insanity and afflictions to some.