Starting a mod, need advice.

[Duncan_Frost]

1) When selecting freespawn for a nation, can you pick randomly which ones you get? I'd like to get some Foul Spawn, but I don't want them to all be the same type. If I just use the name rather than the ID, will it pick randomly?

2) Can a magic site produce blood slaves?

3) Is it possible to make a magic weapon produce blood slaves on hit, similar to the Sickle whose Crop is Pain? How will that work in battle?

4) Finally, is it possible to make a battlefield spell to summon blood slaves?

[Sombre]

1) I don't understand how you're planning on getting these free spawn in the first place, let alone choosing what they are.

2) Yes.

3) No.

4) Good question. Yes you can make a battlefield summon of slaves, but I doubt they'd be usable as a magic resource like slaves generally are.

[Juzza]

1) I don't think that'll be possible

4) That sounds like an interesting idea, chances are they won't work as magical resources but you should test it out yourself and find out for sure.

[Edi]

Regarding effects that weapons can produce on hit, you are limited to otehr weapons (whether already existing or new ones you've modded in). The #secondaryeffect and #secondaryeffectalways work as #secondaryeffect <effect nbr> where the effect is the id number of another weapon.

[Endoperez]

You can't make a nation's dominions spawn free critters, but you can make a creature spawn units in various ways. I don't remember how it worked, exactly, but I think there are commands for:

- summoning units based on your dominion strength in the province, similar to Vampire Queen/vampires, Ghost King/ghosts etc

- automatically summoning few units of a spesific type every turn

- automatically summoning few units of a spesific type at the start of battle, at least if you use custom spells. It probably isn't possible to make cross-breeding a battle-spell.

- spending a turn to summon few creatures of a spesific type

Most of these can be combined with each other, but IIRC you can have only one of the three types of domsummon on the same unit.

These can be combined to summon 2-3 different types of creatures.

[Duncan_Frost]

Ah. That's what I meant. I wanted to make a Freak Master for my new nation who basically auto-casted Crossbreeding every turn. Looks like i'll just have to stick with Perfected Crossbreeding (300+ foul spawn!).

[Aezeal]

you can also try to make a balanced mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Starshine_Monarch]

> You can't make a nation's dominions spawn free critters

That would be really cool if they could add that to the modding commands though.

[Foodstamp]

I agree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

In addition to magic sites with recruitable independent units/commanders <3.

[Duncan_Frost]

Can't you? What about LA Ermor? Or is that tied to temples or something? I played a quick game as them and I had 3000 undead in my capital by turn 30, without any priests reanimating or similar. Plus, they were all of varying types.. or is that just an inherent ability of longdead that they vary?

[Endoperez]

There are many hard-coded things that modders can't duplicate via mod commands. LA Ermor's autospawning is one of them, spells summoning creatures from a spesific list is another, etc etc.

It is possible to make a spell summon national, varying undead if you use -1 or -2 as the unit number, I think, but no way to define the units a nation can get from them. This means that modded nations only get default, human corpses as national undead.

[Edi]

Such things are tied to reanimation lists, which are hardcoded. There was talk at one point of making reanimation lists moddable, but it has not happened. Would involve more work on Johan's part since he would have to do that.

[Saulot]

@Duncan_Frost:

Well, you could simply use Late Era Ermor as a base for an undead mod nation in early or mid, mod everything else to your own purposes, and take advantage of the freespawn in that way. However, that would come with the strangeness of getting some ermorian undead (like velites, lictors, etc.), plus some other strangeness.

In reference to your question. Ermor gets basic undead in all it's provinces, more with more dominion. Stronger undead in forts, and stronger undead in temples.

Edit:
Follow up question to everyone:
Is it possible to perform corpse to gem transformation with other gems gained a'la modded ravenfeast spell?

[spirokeat]

You could probably use LE Ermor as your template and then mod the undead that it summons to be what you want. That should theoretically work. That way your dominion would spawn like you want.

[AlgaeNymph]

This foul spawn nation looks like something I was thinking about. Would you tell us more about it, Mr. Frost?

[Duncan_Frost]

I just really like Crossbreeding, and I thought i'd try and make a nation sorta based around that, but in the meantime my fertile brain-fields have grown a crop of backstory.

Basically, a being of divine perfection was stranded in the lands of a crumbling empire. It was worshipped, but soon died. The inhabitants of said empire now strive to achieve such divine perfection by entering the Star Crater where the divine being landed. The crater is so full of magical residue and holy power that anyone entering will be mutated and transformed. Mostly the results are freaks and mutates, but occasionally a man may transcend into a partly-divine being.

All of that gives me ideas for recruitables, heroes and spells. Hooray for brain-fields! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

EDIT:

Well, looking at that, you probably want more than backstory. So here's a very basic list of pros and cons, which probably will change at some point...

Pros:

> Extremely powerful leaders with many special abilities.
> National summoning spells which can summon whole armies.
> Almost no-one should reach old age.
> Great nature and blood mages.

Cons:

> Almost all units are chaff.
> Generally low morale.
> Extremely limited magic paths.
> National summons cost many slaves/gems.

EDIT2:
Okay, i'm going to start work on it now. I'm not much of a modmaker, and my artistic skills.. uh.. leave something to be desired. Which luckily shouldn't matter much, as I can just use existing sprites for many of the units.

Smoke me a kipper, i'll be back for breakfast!

[AlgaeNymph]

Duncan_Frost said:
Basically, a being of divine perfection was stranded in the lands of a crumbling empire. It was worshipped, but soon died. The inhabitants of said empire now strive to achieve such divine perfection by entering the Star Crater where the divine being landed. The crater is so full of magical residue and holy power that anyone entering will be mutated and transformed. Mostly the results are freaks and mutates, but occasionally a man may transcend into a partly-divine being.

Hmm. My idea is for a nation that's a cross between the Shapers from Geneforge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneforge_series) and Isengard (since the original orcs were more like foul spawn than green gorilla-men). I haven't quite figured out the backstory, but I leaning toward an Ermorian origin, specifically magical research with the same motivations as those of the augur elders. The game-mechanical schitck would be that the cross breeding spells would be construction rather than blood magic (though they'd still use blood slaves).
Duncan_Frost said:
Looks like I'll just have to stick with Perfected Crossbreeding (300+ foul spawn!).

How about Cross Breeding variants that scale the way magic research does? (e.g., 15 slaves for 20 spawn, 20 for 40, 25 for 60, etc.) How do you change the number of spawn a spell gives, by the way?

[Saulot]

(This is all in the modding.pdf)

The same way you scale anything. YXXX is the format, where X is the base, such as 20, and Y is the magic multiplier, such as 5.

By the way, Y can be greater than 9 AFAIK, but this probably wouldn't come up.

To make it perfectly clear I'll present two examples:
1. With 5020 for range, would give a 2F caster casting a fireball 30 range, 4F caster would have 40 range.
2. With 1000 for nreff, a 2D caster would get 2 ghosts, while a 5D would get 5.