Mod Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod [Archive]

Burnsaber

August 1st, 2009, 04:20 PM

Ok, I've decided to start to my updating cavalcade from this mod. The planned changes will include these:

1) MA & LA version of the mod.
2) More air & fire sites underwater. The vanilla underwater site distribution is so heavily focused on earth & nature that it isn't even funny.
3) More UW sites allowing the recruitment of independent mages (with paths other than water), these will be uncommon sites. One uncommon unique mage site per path (- blood & water) should do the trick. Ideas about what these mages could be (like backround stuff) will be greatly appreciated.
4) "The Underwater Guide": a cheap, low-level water summon spell for a commander with the ability to lead troops underwater. This should allow UW access even without construction research.
5) "Ride the Currents": I'm not sure if I can make it to work, but I'll announce it anyways. This (if I get it to work) spell will basically be a water magic teleport, but only between two water provinces. If that works, I should be also be able to make a higher level version that is basically UW only "Gateway". This should fix the absolutely massively annoying "only 1 water province movement" 'feature', and make water magic more useful underwater.

If any of you have any comments concerning the changes in the version 0.6 (are the recruits too powerful, for example?) this would an absolutely wonderful time to announce them.

Burnsaber

August 2nd, 2009, 02:10 AM

Yay, triple post!

Anyways forgot to mention one important thing. I'll also be making a global version (that'll work in all-ages games) without the new coastal recruits for the UW nations, because people seem to be intimitated by them. It's a bit wonky solution, but it's probably necessary to make this mod more vanilla friendly.

I can understand why people would be against the new recruits ("you dare to mod *new* units to sacred vanilla nations? How dare thee!"), but I really see it as necessary. Besides LA R'lyeh, UW nations aren't reallly ramping up the victories in the Hall of Fame, you see? If I just make the UW-access more common, it would just make the UW nations even weaker.

Besides, the "only crap in land castles" feature, although thematic, really doesn't work in the long term. It just makes it hard for UW nations to hold their land provinces and disencourages them from going to land, which leads to the "turtle underwater" problem.

Sombre

August 2nd, 2009, 07:00 AM

You can definitely make an underwater only gateway and teleport - tiamat is underwater provinces only so you can use that as a starting point.

Frozen Lama

August 2nd, 2009, 05:53 PM

Well i only have good feedback on this mod from watertotalwar. the kelp fortress change is really noticable. actually have to build forts.

Sombre

August 3rd, 2009, 04:23 AM

Yeah I think the kelp fortress change should definitely be something that's in every game.

the Vanishag

August 4th, 2009, 08:45 AM

Well i only have good feedback on this mod from watertotalwar. the kelp fortress change is really noticable. actually have to build forts.

I'm playing EA Atlantis in Water War and actually doing pretty well. As one of the few water nations without any access to nature mages, I'd probably be toast by now without that change.

Also, I approve of the unit changes/adds - unfortunately, they weren't compatible w/ all ages. Any chance of making a future version with the units that is compatible?

2c

Burnsaber

August 4th, 2009, 01:22 PM

Also, I approve of the unit changes/adds - unfortunately, they weren't compatible w/ all ages. Any chance of making a future version with the units that is compatible?

Unfortunately this is impossible due to lack modding tools. You can't mod land/sea recruits for those nation who have them. This meant that in order to get EA R'lyeh coastal recruits, I had to mod MA R'lyeh into eraly era and make it a copy of EA R'lyeh and overwrite MA R'lyehs nationals coastal recruits.

I could make a global versio with recruits, but MA Atlantis and EA R'lyeh would be left out.

Burnsaber

August 7th, 2009, 01:57 PM

Okay, here's another preview. These will be independent mages from uncommon UW sites. In vanilla all independent UW mages are water mages, which are completely useless for UW nations, since all of the have good water magic already. You can probably guess which mages focus in what path.

http://xs942.xs.to/xs942/09325/uwgimpreview793.png

Here are the paths & special abilites I've planned for them:

-Albatross Mage 2A1W 10% A/W/N/S, lose all water magic on land
-Drowned Captain 2D1W, big pillagebonus, stealthy, poor researcher
-Sulphur Mage 2F1W1A, aquatic, some fire & poisonresistance
-Coral Druid 1N1H 100% N/W/A, animalawe
-Ictyid Stargazer 1S1H 100% S/N, prevent bad events, slightly insane (visions of R'lyeh)
-Seasmith 1E 50% E/W/F/N pic, forgebonus 10

Expect the one on the far right. The draq troll, yeah. She'll be a cheap summon (level 3 conjuration, W2, costs 5 water gems) that can lead troop underwater like the sea troll king. Because of the coral armor, she will also be able to support in combat (poison spikes + regen + lots of hp).

Here are the sites I'm going to add. The last ones listed per each path are the uncommon ones

Fire (2 common, 2 uncommon)
-Tropical Current, 1F 1W
-Underwater Volcano, 2F
-Fountain of Sulphur 2F 1A, Sulphur Mages, unq
-The Flame that Shall Always Burn 2F 1S
Air (2 common, 2 uncommon)
-Air Bubble (2A)
-Sea Wind (1A 1W)
-Albatross Island 2A 1W, Albatross Mages, unq
-Valley of the Electric Eels (2A 1W 1N), unq
Water (1 common, 1 uncommon)
-The Greatest Current, 2W, unq
-Chaotic Current, 2W 1A
Earth (1 uncommon)
-Sea Forges, 1E 1F 1W, Seasmiths, unq
Nature (1 uncommon)
-Grove of Kelp, 2N 1W, Coral Druids, unq
Death (1 common, 1 uncommon)
-Ancient Kraken Carcass. 2D
-Bermuda, 2D 1W, Drowned Captain, unq
Astral (1 common, 1 uncommon)
-The Island of the Lost, 3S, unq
-Gorge of Visions, 2S 1N, Ichtyid Stargazer, unq

Burnsaber

August 10th, 2009, 07:51 PM

Mod updated. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember that my goal is to make it easier to get into and out of water. I have a long rant about this, but I'm too tired to type it now. Let's see how I feel tomorrow.

I'll likely soon start a MP game to test this mod to the fullest.

DonCorazon

August 10th, 2009, 08:44 PM

Well I haven't tried this mod but thanks in advance - I whole-heartedly agree with the concept. I don't really enjoy playing as an UW nation, nor fighting them. I love the concept and the content of UWs but it's just too painful to fight them on their own turf and too dull to spend most of the game turtling below the waves.

/begin off-topic ramble -
I was thinking about a game set up where there were not many UW provinces (and NO UW nations) and the oceans served more as a reward for whatever nation could get UW to grab them. It might add another strategic objective to contemplate (always a good thing to have more paths to victory to consider) - do I grab the UWs before my foes...

Of course you'd then probably have to ban nations with amphibious units etc or worry about nations with no access to paths that lead to UW capabilities so it might not really be feasible in practice...

NTJedi

August 12th, 2009, 02:08 AM

Okay, I did this mod to fix some things that bug me about UW nations and the underwater concept in general.

... ...

Why?
I mean seriously, has anyone ever forged pills of water breathing to bring troops underwater just so that they could get their asses handed to them because of the poor amphibian penalties? The poor amphibian penalty alone makes it exremely difficult for a land nation to assault underwater effectively. The air requirement on Amulte of the Fish is just plain annoying due to lack of air sites underwater and hampers EA R'lyeh considerably.

All great stuff Burnsaber! Did you know in Dominions_2 any water mages could enter water provinces and the higher the water magic the more troops could follow!

Unfortunately the DOM_3 beta testers never complained enough when the developers removed this ability and thus crippling what little assistance the AI opponents had for expanding into water provinces. As a result during our LAN games which include AI opponents we have no choice, but to play only land maps OR very specific and few AI opponents.
:(

Why?
I don't even have to explain the Kelp Fortress change. The new sites are added because vanilla underwater gem income is very heavily focused towards nature & earth, which really warps the amount of available stragedies to UW nations.

Yes, an oddity in Dom_3... also strange how there's no blood sites in water provinces. One of the developers said there's no blood sites because the blood washes away the water, but actually blood and water would mix. There's fire sites in water provinces... strange how water doesn't extinguish fire sites. :re:

Burnsaber

August 12th, 2009, 04:04 AM

All great stuff Burnsaber! Did you know in Dominions_2 any water mages could enter water provinces and the higher the water magic the more troops could follow!

Yeah, I knew. Did you know that this feature was even in Dom:PPP? :P

But yeah, it's a shame to see it gone.

Yes, an oddity in Dom_3... also strange how there's no blood sites in water provinces. One of the developers said there's no blood sites because the blood washes away the water, but actually blood and water would mix. There's fire sites in water provinces... strange how water doesn't extinguish fire sites. :re:

Well, you can't blood hunt underwater so it sort of makes sense to have water as "no blood" zone.

BandarLover

August 12th, 2009, 01:25 PM

Burnsaber

August 12th, 2009, 04:50 PM

So I finally got around to DLing this because I generally don't play the UW nations at all due to the problems you listed in first post. I'll give my thoughts about my upcoming play test later. Instead, I have to ask, is there a difference between the UW Enhancement mod vs. the UW Improvement mod that is lumped into the rar file download. A cursory look thru both DM's shows no noticeable differences.

Ugh. The old version was called "Enchantment" but everyone kept pestering me if it's supposed to be "Enchanment" mod (there's a difference). Knowing my lack of linguistic ability, I just decided to rename it. Apparently the old name stuck on to the MA+LA and the Global version (you'll see that the banner has the correct name). I'll fix it for the next version.

And thanks in advance for the feedback. If the water breathing item change isn't enough, I have some other plans to make water more accessible, like:

1) Revamping some summons to be more amphibious. Like Vine Men for example. They don't breathe, so why can't they go underwater? Same with Bane Lords and many other units. They deserve poor ampihibian tag at least. Why do ghosts have poor amphibian tag? They're ethereal, it's not like matter could hamper them, at least according to all common ghost lore.

2) More summons for UW accessible units (probably to nature, since it's available to everyone through indy shamans). Kelp Men, anyone? Sea Dogs could also be a pure nature summon, IMHO.

3) Turbo-charging water-breathing item access (sea king's goblet to level 0 and cost W1, Barrel of Air level 0 air 1, Manual of Water Breathing level 0 N1). If I get desperate that should do the trick.

BandarLover

August 12th, 2009, 06:34 PM

Small bug report. The Oceania spell, Call to Arms, is suppose to summon selkie warriors (I think) and instead summons the Wanderer hero, but as a reg unit and not the hero unit.

BandarLover

August 12th, 2009, 10:42 PM

Besides the bug reported above, my initial thoughts after playing a shortened SP game using this mod. I only played as UW nations so I can't yet comment on the ease of land nations to get into the water:

It does seem easier to get troops out of the water, or rather the commanders. Pretty big plus for Ry'leh, (Mindlords rock!) and Oceania. Not that big a deal for Atlantis.

I've not found any of the new magic sites I think. I'm not that familiar with UW sites as it is, so it's possible I've gotten them without really knowing they were new.

Love, love, LOVE the unit types. I'd tried your Oceania enhancement mod before, so I already liked the idea of Selkies and new merman units, and the Atlantian coastal units have nice flavor, nothing to write home about, but still solid troops. I do, however, really like what you did for Ry'leh. Your Dema warrior additions are very cool. Add to that the Doomsayer hero who can convert enemies AND freespawn troops and I think you've gotten me hooked on an UW nation. Kudos!

That's pretty much all I got for a first impression. I cut the game short because I was also running one of the better independents mods, gold version, and when the Doomsayer converted some of the indy troops with high gold costs, my upkeep shot up into the stratosphere! (I went from about 300g upkeep to over 4000 the next turn)

A question. Do you plan on incorporating your cross path combat spells mod to this? Or did you alrdy and my lack of UW knowledge is showing again? Also, what is the difference between the Selkie Mist spell and the regular old mist spell?

This is all for now. Thanks again for your hard work!!

Burnsaber

August 13th, 2009, 04:21 AM

That's pretty much all I got for a first impression. I cut the game short because I was also running one of the better independents mods, gold version, and when the Doomsayer converted some of the indy troops with high gold costs, my upkeep shot up into the stratosphere! (I went from about 300g upkeep to over 4000 the next turn)

A question. Do you plan on incorporating your cross path combat spells mod to this? Or did you alrdy and my lack of UW knowledge is showing again? Also, what is the difference between the Selkie Mist spell and the regular old mist spell?

Yeah, if you plan on playing with EA R'lyeh, I'd suggest you use a NI map. Makes life a lot easier.

Actually, I already have incorporated the UW spells from CPCS into the mod ("Befoul", "Oxidize", "Surge of Algae", "Chaotic Currents", "Deep Drowning", "Call Drowned", "Ink Strike").

Selkie Mist easier to cast than regular A3 mist (1/4th of Daughters of Selkie can cast it without boosters) and causes the "Rain" effect too.

Burnsaber

August 21st, 2009, 05:06 AM

Ok, I did a quick update in preparation of a worthcoming MP game.

Important changes from version 0.80 to 0.81:
- Manual of Water Breathing now reguires just N1 to forge.
- "Water Strike" spell boosted significantly.
- "Crushing Pressure" now just does pure damage. Highly lowered fatigue cost.
- "Call Drowned" summons more ghosts. Fear the fear auras!
- EA R'lyeh now starts with "Living Castle" with 30 admin.
- EA Atlantis now starts with admin 40 "Kelp Citadel". Although a bit unthematic, the guys need the extra resources.
- Bug with the Call to Arms spell fixed.

Frozen Lama

August 21st, 2009, 03:53 PM

question: (or maybe a report)

in a random test game i got a pathless daughter of selkie. it looked like it was a wave lord, and he turned into a daughter when i sent him on land. how? when i tried it again, it didn't happen. maybe i just forgot which unit i had, but then i could find a way to get a pathless daughter

Edit: I figured it out. when the turtle chief goes onto land, he become a daughter of selkie, then he stays as one even if he goes back underwater. i assume this isn't WAD?

Burnsaber

August 21st, 2009, 06:05 PM

Burnsaber

August 22nd, 2009, 06:40 AM

Ok, v0.82 uploaded and the turtle bug fixed.

Trumanator

August 22nd, 2009, 11:57 PM

Trumanator

August 23rd, 2009, 01:12 AM

One more thing- Can you please please pretty PLEASE give the shamans one more astral level?! I'm just having fantasies of fighting off EA Oceanian KOTD with Deep Ones plus Fortunas Meddling...

Burnsaber

August 23rd, 2009, 03:38 AM

Too late now I guess, but IMO the only possible way to make the living pillars really viable would be to 1) give Atlantis a decent way to get an E bless, and/or 2) give living pillars an enc value thats actually sane.

Yeah, Living Pillars are problematic, but the LA Agarthan blind sacred dudes get some use with similar handicaps (high resource cost, high encumbereance), so I don't think that they're hopeless. Now EA atlantis has a higher admin fort and the Pillars costs fewer resources (+ a mr boost). If that doesn't work, perhaps further boost is necessary, but I'll just see how they are now.

They're not obciously going to be pure bless material at any point, but should work as an occasional support troop. (they're pretty good at taking lance hits from KotD's).

One more thing- Can you please please pretty PLEASE give the shamans one more astral level?! I'm just having fantasies of fighting off EA Oceanian KOTD with Deep Ones plus Fortunas Meddling...

Sorry, but I'll keep them the way they are. It was a desing decision to make all of the new coastal mages give 1 one mora path access (Oceania now gets consistent A2 on land, R'lyeh D2 and Atlantis gets access to nature with the shaman). You can hit S2 with that 10% random thought with coral tribe shaman.

Trumanator

August 23rd, 2009, 01:03 PM

Burnsaber

August 23rd, 2009, 03:23 PM

Well, to give credit where its due, the admin increase and the res cost reduction combined to make them much better than they were. I can now consistently use them to expand with an E9 N4 bless, which I actually got cheaper than I thought I would. 4 of them set to guard com. w/a BQ set to divine bless, smite X4, spells actually do quite well against most indies. I still think that in general though, Atlantis is toast in any war they might have w/Oceania before around turn 20 or so.

I won't be so sure. Oceanian troops rely a lot on their defense and armor, KotD's especially so. Some alteration research will give you access to "Earth Meld" (allowing you to hit them) and "Oxidize" (to get rid of their armor). If the Oceania player just spams Oceanian tritons, your SC should be able to handle them.

Jarkko

August 25th, 2009, 07:51 AM

Burnsaber

August 25th, 2009, 08:19 AM

Played a bit more yesterday with this mod.

The female water troll (the Conjuration 2 W2, 5 W gems spell, name escapes right now) is just amazing value for the price for certain nations. Hello Bane Lord who is cheaper, easier to get, regenerates, is blessable, has massive leadership, can lead land-bound troops under water and is not undead :o Ok, she has pretty high encumbarance, but a minor earth-bless negates that.

Seems to me to be too good to be true, but might of course feel very differetly in a real game...

EDIT: Now that I think of it, not sure if the trollette is available from something in CPCS instead rather than UWGIM, as I had both those enabled (with CBM1.5 and the no-gem-generators -mod).

The Trollette is from UWGIM, but shes not sacred. Are you sure you don't have other mods enabled than CBM, CPCS, and no gem gens? She can only be sacred by a result of mod clash.

But yeah, thanks for the report. Due to a brainfart, I forgot to give her special itemslots (just misc slots) :doh:. I'll upload a fixed version shortly. She's meant to be tough (because her death will result in drowning of all his "guests" underwater), but not thug material.

Jarkko

August 25th, 2009, 08:39 AM

The Trollette is from UWGIM, but shes not sacred. Are you sure you don't have other mods enabled than CBM, CPCS, and no gem gens? She can only be sacred by a result of mod clash.

Yes, I am positive. However, I may have had a brainfart myself, I made her prophet just to check things (you know, just to see how big HP pool she would have in Dom10 ;) ), and of coure she became sacred and blessed from that :angel

Jarkko

August 26th, 2009, 11:02 AM

But yeah, thanks for the report. Due to a brainfart, I forgot to give her special itemslots (just misc slots) :doh:.
In the Jenga version she still has only misc slots, is this intentional now?

Other than that, I think it is much better that her leadership is toned down (as it is in Jenga version) and HP downed to 40. It's a slight bummer she can't lead magical troops though as there is now way to give her the crown (no head-slot). With a bit of experience and a Barrel of Air or Goblet of the Sea King she can lead really amazing numbers of troops under the waves.

Burnsaber

August 26th, 2009, 05:05 PM

In the Jenga version she still has only misc slots, is this intentional now?

Yeah, it is, I also updated the download from this thread.

Other than that, I think it is much better that her leadership is toned down (as it is in Jenga version) and HP downed to 40. It's a slight bummer she can't lead magical troops though as there is now way to give her the crown (no head-slot). With a bit of experience and a Barrel of Air or Goblet of the Sea King she can lead really amazing numbers of troops under the waves.

Yeah, the 160 leadership was actually a bug (she is copystatting the Son of the Sea pretender for her amazing UW abilities). I also hit her stats with a nerf stick based on your post and slightly increased cost to make you summon Ice Drakes if you need something for combat. I'll probably give her some magical leadership in the next version, but I don't want to release yet another version just because of that. But anyways, glad to hear that shes working for your UW needs.

BandarLover

August 31st, 2009, 01:42 AM

meant to post this sooner, another small bug report:

In my last game with Ry'leh using this mod, their land PD had slave tritons in it. Just weird seeing aquatic units on land. :D

Burnsaber

August 31st, 2009, 06:01 AM

meant to post this sooner, another small bug report:

In my last game with Ry'leh using this mod, their land PD had slave tritons in it. Just weird seeing aquatic units on land. :D

Did they fight or did they instantly drown?

BandarLover

August 31st, 2009, 09:10 AM

Interestingly enough, they fought! :D

Burnsaber

August 31st, 2009, 09:46 AM

Interestingly enough, they fought! :D

Ok, then it's just a 'cosmetic' thing. I won't do a quickfix update for that. Added to the fix list, thought. Thanks for the bug report!

Squirrelloid

September 12th, 2009, 01:01 AM

Looked over the spells today.

The Traverse the Sea spell being the same level as gateway and requiring W5 compared to Gateway's S4, while being more limited in effect, is really poor design. Yes, its 3 gems cheaper, but that doesn't even begin to make up for a more limited ability to use it. Why not give it the same limitation as the Ride the Currents - must be to a friendly province (without the lab requirement). Now it has some advantages over gateway, but is still strictly inferior to astral travel. (Honestly, Astral Travel is too high level as it is, because by the time you have it, you don't care about armies anymore).

Burnsaber

September 12th, 2009, 03:40 AM

Squirrelloid

September 12th, 2009, 09:15 AM

The Traverse the Sea spell being the same level as gateway and requiring W5 compared to Gateway's S4, while being more limited in effect, is really poor design. Yes, its 3 gems cheaper, but that doesn't even begin to make up for a more limited ability to use it. Now it has some advantages over gateway, but is still strictly inferior to astral travel. (Honestly, Astral Travel is too high level as it is, because by the time you have it, you don't care about armies anymore).

Stritcly inferior to Astral Travel? Astral Travel is researchlevel 9 and costs 25 astral gems. It's not a valid comparison.

My point was such a boost wouldn't make it too powerful.

And for why it's harder to cast than Gateway, it's because the spell, althought necessary is sort counterinituative to this mod number #1 goal: to make access to water easier. There is no way for a land nation to attack UW if the uw-nation can just use these spells to cheaply teleport an army on the magic phase at the path of the invading army.

So, you take a bunch of sucky nations (Oceania, Atlantis), and then you make it easier to attack them, but it isn't acceptable to let them actually defend themselves?

They'd have to know exactly where they were being attacked to use it thusly. And considering land nations can generally duplicate that effect (admittedly on a somewhat smaller scale) with strategic move 2 or even 3 (cavalry)... it really doesn't seem unreasonable to allow a larger effect when that effect requires gems, a mage turn casting, and a mage who can lead the army in the first place, gems spent on boosters, and having dedicated the RPs to acquiring it (and sufficient construction). Especially since water nations will often have more border territories than land nations because there is less water and its often strung out along the land (which they may or may not hold or be able to hold).

With W5 it can't be reached without boosters, requiring both thaumathurgy and construction research (there are some expections,like MA Atlantis and EA Oceania). The intention of the spell is to allow movement in UW over that non-moddable 1 province restriction. It is costed and pathed for that use.

So basically water nations can't have nice things?

Why not give it the same limitation as the Ride the Currents - must be to a friendly province (without the lab requirement).

Well, if people deem it that unusable, I might consider it. But this spell does something quite new, I first want to see how the 'conservative' version works before turbo-charging it.

Oh, it'll be used. Only because water nations will be so desperate for *anything* that they'll have to pony up and use it. That doesn't make it not a really poorly balanced spell that takes too much investment of mage time, research, and gems for what it does. Its just most water nations *don't have any other choice* but to try to use it.

As for you comparisons to Gateway and other astral travel spells:
1) Remember that these cost water gems. With gem gens out of the picture water gems will be perhaps the most useless gems in the game. If you can use the water version over the astral version, you will likely do so.
2) Water nations are a lot better at water magic than astral. (expect for R'lyeh, of course)
3) Water magic is a *lot* easier and cheaper to boost than astral magic.

1) Irrelevant. Most water nations are stuck with water income - you're basically penalizing them (again) for being a water nation. (Also, its not like water doesn't have perfectly playable summons for the midgame when this spell might actually be useful).

2) Still irrelevant. Its pretty easy to get an S2 mage to S4 for gateway. You take ES on your pretender if you don't have ES naturally for crystal coin, especially if you've got astral to want the coin. W2 mages aren't really boostable to W5 in any reasonable way. MA oceania has a mere 1/4 of their casters who can reasonably be boosted high enough (W3 + 2 boosters, all their mages are W2 + 1/4 of ?100%), and doing so takes *construction 6*. EA Atlantis is no better off. Natural S3+ mages are a lot less rare than W4+ mages.

3) Sure, 2 boosters cost more gems for astral than water (20s 10e vs. 20w), but S2 is a lot more common for astral nations than W3 is even for many water nations, and boosting S is a lot better than boosting W. And astral has the RoS and RoW for even more boosting options - not that they're cheap, but you can do it. Water has... a unique trident?

And we're talking about access to a spell that even without the lab limitation is still vastly more limited in the long term than gateway, since at some point that water nation needs to traverse the land if it expects to win.

As written, the spell is more useful for EA Rlyeh than nations who actually need it like MA Oceania and EA Atlantis. That's just silly.

Burnsaber

September 13th, 2009, 05:20 AM

Stritcly inferior to Astral Travel? Astral Travel is researchlevel 9 and costs 25 astral gems. It's not a valid comparison.

My point was such a boost wouldn't make it too powerful.

Egh? I'm having hard time understanding your argument. Because a lower research level, with different magic path spell is weaker than a high research one with a different path doesn't mean that you should boost the weaker one. That's like boosting "Falling Fires" because it's not as good as "Niefel Flames".

Especially since water nations will often have more border territories than land nations because there is less water and its often strung out along the land (which they may or may not hold or be able to hold).

Water provinces are pretty large and most land provinces only have connecion to a single water province. If you see a huge army on a coastal province, they usually have only one water province to move to. Without the lab requirement, defensive maneuvers would be too easy.

With W5 it can't be reached without boosters, requiring both thaumathurgy and construction research (there are some expections,like MA Atlantis and EA Oceania). The intention of the spell is to allow movement in UW over that non-moddable 1 province restriction. It is costed and pathed for that use.

So basically water nations can't have nice things?

*cough*

You read the first post, right?

Underwater nation balance
EA Oceania:
- New coastal recruits, 5 new heroes (5 total), KotD nerf, and a bundle of national spells
EA Atlantis:
- New coastal recruits, 2 new heroes (4 total), national H3 MR-boosting spell and Mage of the Deep and Basalt Queen made cheaper. Also improved MR for Coral Guards and Living Pillars. Also better admin on starting fort (40 now)
EA R'lyeh
- New coastal recruits, 2 new heroes (4 total), Better admin on starting fort (30 now)

MA Oceania
- New coastal recruits, 3 new heroes (4 total), some national spells and Capricorns now only lose 1 point of water magic on land (instead of losing 1 point in all paths).
MA Atlantis:
- New coastal recruits, national H3 MR-boosting spell. Also improved MR for Coral Guards, Mother Guards and War Lobsters.
MA R'lyeh
- Slightly improved coastal recruits.

LA R'lyeh
- No changes

They got plenty of nice things. Hence my reluctance to give them a superior teleportation spell just for their use. Now that I think about it, this argument must be some sort of misunderstanding. Allow me to restate the intention of the spell

Traverse the Sea isn't intented in no shape or form to duplicate the stragedies and or uses of the Gateway or Astral Travel spells. It is a modded mid-game spell with the intention of allowing you to move your map move 1 troops around in your territory and is supposed to require some planning on your part to do so. It's not an offensive spell, it's not an defensive spell, it's just a movement spell. If you want astral travel or gateway, then just use those spells instead, perhaps take some astral on your pretender.

Sombre

September 13th, 2009, 09:27 AM

Strategies.

Squirrelloid

September 13th, 2009, 12:17 PM

Water provinces are pretty large and most land provinces only have connecion to a single water province. If you see a huge army on a coastal province, they usually have only one water province to move to. Without the lab requirement, defensive maneuvers would be too easy.

If you want to keep the effect as is, it should require something like W3 and 5 or fewer gems... and maybe only require Thaum 4. Its literally less than half as good as gateway, and making it harder to cast just makes it laughable.

Also, many land provinces do connect to multiple water provinces.
Map: Aran - see provinces 15, 17, 25, 27, 48, 56, 81, 89, 90. That's at least half the coastal provinces.
Map: Cradle of Dominions - see provinces 85, 94, 103 for examples (not surveying the whole map - those were 3 of the first 4 coastal provinces i looked at).
Map: Urraparand - 137, 142, 147, 148 were 4 of the first 5 provinces i looked at, all with at least 2 adj water provinces.

And as I said, the effect of my proposed modified version is sort of like having map move 2-3 units and a nearby fortress on land, except slightly improved (which it should be, since it requires W5, mage time to cast from a mage capable of leading an army, and gems as opposed to just moving the units).

[quote]
Underwater nation balance
MA Oceania
- New coastal recruits, 3 new heroes (4 total), some national spells and Capricorns now only lose 1 point of water magic on land (instead of losing 1 point in all paths).

They got plenty of nice things. Hence my reluctance to give them a superior teleportation spell just for their use. Now that I think about it, this argument must be some sort of misunderstanding.

I'm just going to focus on one here for clarity.

More heroes? Nice, but not really a balance change. I mean, its not like many land nations didn't already have a bunch of heroes anyway. And given MA Oceania needs to use their pretender to get actual good magic paths, taking luck scales is sort of out of the question.

Coastal recruits/improve capricorn land performance: these were (1) essential anyway if MA Oceania wasn't going to suck, and (2) have absolutely nothing to do with making it easier for MA Oceania to repel invaders *in the water* who now have a much easier time doing so.

So basically, MA Oceania is now easier to invade and got nothing to compensate for that.

Allow me to restate the intention of the spell

Traverse the Sea isn't intented in no shape or form to duplicate the stragedies and or uses of the Gateway or Astral Travel spells. It is a modded mid-game spell with the intention of allowing you to move your map move 1 troops around in your territory and is supposed to require some planning on your part to do so. It's not an offensive spell, it's not an defensive spell, it's just a movement spell. If you want astral travel or gateway, then just use those spells instead, perhaps take some astral on your pretender.

Movement is inherently either defensive or offensive. Its changing the strategic value of your troops.

Regardless, it is vastly overpriced for what it does in terms of mage skill, gem cost, and RPs. Either it needs improving or it needs to be easier to access and cast.

kianduatha

October 5th, 2009, 09:58 AM

Burnsaber

October 5th, 2009, 02:18 PM

As of CBM 1.6, coral priests are now EA Atlantis' most cost efficient researcher(despite only a 50% chance at a pick, their rock-bottom cost and sacred status trump everything else). Not only that, but since only half of them can even research, you have an entire army of spare preachers and blessers. Since you're an underwater nation, you were going to need those preachers anyways...and this allows you to in turn take a lower dominion score if you want.

But alas, with UWGIM enabled, these tiny powerhouses don't even exist. Now, the coral shaman is amazing, and frankly does a ton for Atlantis' magic diversity...but it would be nice to have the coral priest around.

Unfortunately it's simply not possible. You see, due to modding stuff, the only way I could give EA Atlantis new coastal recruits was to edit the excisting coastal recruits. So basically, Coral Shaman is Coral Priest. IIRC, UWGIM reduces the cost of Mage of Deep dramatically, so you have an borderline effective researcher now there.

kianduatha

October 5th, 2009, 02:57 PM

IIRC, UWGIM reduces the cost of Mage of Deep dramatically, so you have an borderline effective researcher now there.

It does reduce the cost of the Mage of the Deep to 200 gold...but then, so does CBM 1.6.

Assuming Magic 1:

Mage of the Deep(200g, 7 research) - 28.6 initial ,1.9g upkeep/point of research

Basalt King(500g, 10.1 research, sacred) - 49.5 initial, 1.65 upkeep/point of research

Coral Shaman(190g, 6.1 research, sacred) -31.1 initial, 1.04g upkeep/point of research

Coral Priest(45g, 2 research, sacred) -22.5 initial, 0.75g upkeep/point of research

That on its own doesn't seem too bad; there's the loss of extra 'freebie' H1 commanders, but you needed more castles to get out the priests, so it's about even. The real problem is that in UWGIM, your best researcher by almost a factor of 2 is coastal only. This can be...quite problematic. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a solution other than to shift the magic diversity over to the Mage of the Deep(they're even noted as being magically diverse) with another 25% random AN, then leave the coral priest alone. It doesn't get you level 2 nature, though.

Edit: It does give you a ridiculously good communion master a decent chunk of the time, though. And I suppose you could make the first random 100% EWFSN, but it doesn't seem...right.

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2009, 04:21 PM

Wouldn't it be possible to add a new commander to EA Atlantis that was a Coral Priest copy? I realize this takes a unit ID number away from modders, but there's quite a few of those...

kianduatha

October 6th, 2009, 12:52 AM

Other notes that I have after doing some more testing with various combinations of CBM 1.6 and this mod:

EA R'lyeh loses their slave troll recruits with this mod. Now personally, I didn't even know that CBM gave them slave trolls, but there you have it.

with EA Atlantis, CBM gives Living Pillars 12 MR. Enabling UWGIM lowers that to 10 :(

It really would be nice to get the Coral Priests back at perhaps UW-only castles as Squirreloid mentioned. It would give a certain reason to spam castles underwater. Also, the Coral Priest is the only worthwhile commander Atlantis can get for under 200 gold.

Burnsaber

November 6th, 2009, 11:27 AM

Alright, new version.

This version is fully compactible with the UW changes in CBM 1.6, so no nations should loose boosts because this mod is enabled.

Other changes include:
- "Manual of Water Breathing" and "Troll King's Goblet" made con4 items due to concerns of nature being better for UW access than water.
- "Traverse the Seas" spell made easier to cast
- Troll Ambassador alchemy bug fixed.
- Improved the description on the Ambassador spell
- Increase to KoTR resource cost (to 35 rcost)
- Increased price for the Queens (40 water gems)
- Changed EA Oceania starting gem income to W3N2S1 (from W4N2), should make diversifying easier (it was also odd that site called "Palace of Pearls" gave no pearls).
- Changed EA R'lyeh PD into amphibious units.

If no sudden bugs emerge, this version should be pretty final. I have some ideas for additional improvements, but I'll wait for feedback on how this one works before going for them. If this mod already makes UW nations playable, my work is done (there's no point in messing with vanilla just for the sake of it).

Illuminated One

November 6th, 2009, 03:50 PM

Burnsaber

November 6th, 2009, 04:19 PM

I noticed just recently but land nations are not able to build castles underwater. This is really a bummer since without Kelp Fortresses there might not be really many castles to take. In any case it still encourages ignoring the uw nations for the first half of the game.

I know, but unfortunately that's not moddable. Well, it's not like you could recruit anything new.

Also, what is the advantage of a RoWB over a sea kings goblet? Both cost the same (And seriously who would attack an uw nation before he has const-4?).

I assume that you Manual of Water Breathing? In the previous version, MoWB was con 2 while SKG was con 6. This sort of made nature better for UW access than water (with the prevelance of indy N shamans). Now the option is there (if you don't have W mages, for example), but you should thematically use water UW breathing items over nature equivalents.

HoneyBadger

November 6th, 2009, 06:02 PM

This looks great, Burnsaber. I always like to see underwater getting attention.

Speaking of water and construction items, what does everyone think of adding a Const 6 Forgeable item that only needed water paths (W4, maybe? Allowing you to build an aquatic Nation without access to air, in other words), and allowed aquatic units (commanders only would be fine) to breathe on land?

Stavis_L

November 6th, 2009, 06:13 PM

Speaking of water and construction items, what does everyone think of adding a Const 6 Forgeable item that only needed water paths (W4, maybe? Allowing you to build an aquatic Nation without access to air, in other words), and allowed aquatic units (commanders only would be fine) to breathe on land?

Er...you mean like the modified Amulet of the Fish (Con 4 in UWGIM?)

:confused:

HoneyBadger

November 6th, 2009, 06:29 PM

Oh, I must have missed that...anyway, no. I'd like the Amulet of the Fish to stay the same, actually. I think it's a good item to have in the game as a lesser magic forging, for those who can take advantage of it, although some thought might perhaps be put into rebalancing it, I haven't looked at the Amulet of the Fish in a while.

I'd rather see a water-only item be more difficult to forge, to keep any possible issues with balance under control.

By the way, is it possible to add blood magic sites to underwater provinces? I think it should be...but I can't verify it.

Trumanator

November 6th, 2009, 07:08 PM

The mod makes the fish ammy W only.

HoneyBadger

November 6th, 2009, 10:31 PM

That's what I'm disagreeing with, yes.

Trumanator

November 6th, 2009, 10:42 PM

Can you name a water nation with A access?

Frozen Lama

November 6th, 2009, 10:46 PM

EA Oceania with this mod

HoneyBadger

November 6th, 2009, 10:50 PM

Yeah, every single one, via their Pretender.

Since when should a single path item be as cheap to forge as a dual path item? Giving the ability to create an alternative item that works the same as an Amulet of the Fish, with water only, is enough. I don't see any good reason why it should replace the Amulet of the Fish, or be easier to create.

Frozen Lama

November 6th, 2009, 10:56 PM

wait you want to just make an item that does the same as ammy of the fish, but is w only? so why would you ever build the AotF?

Trumanator

November 7th, 2009, 12:47 AM

Being forced to take A on your pretender just to get out of the water is just lame. Its not like people are that scared of Mind Lords and Triton kings as thugs or whatever anyway, so it seems like a trivial "downside" compared to a significant upside.

Amonchakad

November 7th, 2009, 02:01 AM

Quick bug report: the "new" EA R'lyeh is still in MA, you forgot to switch #era 2 to #era 1;)

Beside that,great work! I'll be testing it in a couple of games in the next days, and I'll report anything I find.

Regarding underwater fortresses, while the common nature fort site almost made underwater fort building redundant, especially with high magic site settings, it actually gave a chance to land nations to secure a water foothold.
This is just an idea that springed to my mind right now, but perhaps you could consider letting all land nations build an underwater fort? Make it one of the very expensive ones; it won't give national units anyway, I think; but it still will be useful as a hiding place and as a resource/supply centre. After all if humans get to magically breathe underwater, what's stopping them from building an outpost while they're at it:D

kianduatha

November 7th, 2009, 02:36 AM

I don't quite understand the problem. This mod makes the items that confer water breathing cheaper, and it only stands to reason that it would make the Amulet of the Fish cheaper. The only way to make that happen is to make the Amulet single-path.

There are only a few nations that it actually affects, too. EA R'lyeh, which needs the boost; EA Oceania, which could use the reduced price; and MA Oceania(as essentially a water booster).

Trumanator

November 7th, 2009, 04:16 AM

He just said that fort modding is impossible at the moment. Also, EA Ryleh is MA Ryleh in order to give it land recruits. Its a modding workaround since he can't just add new ones for EA on land.

Burnsaber

November 7th, 2009, 05:09 AM

Quick bug report: the "new" EA R'lyeh is still in MA, you forgot to switch #era 2 to #era 1;)

Err. Right. :doh:

I uploaded a quickfix version 0.91.

This is just an idea that springed to my mind right now, but perhaps you could consider letting all land nations build an underwater fort? Make it one of the very expensive ones; it won't give national units anyway, I think; but it still will be useful as a hiding place and as a resource/supply centre. After all if humans get to magically breathe underwater, what's stopping them from building an outpost while they're at it:D

Once again, not moddable. In case we still need to boost the levels of UW access, I have some ideas. Note that I'm keeping these in reserve, I'll only implement them if they are really needed.:

1) Give all units that don't breathe poor ambhibian (Bane Lords + many other undead, elementals, Vinemen, and so forth).
2) New easy nature summon, "Kelpmen", who get stronger in UW.
3) A spell that builds a UW fort, but is only castable from land.
4) Turbocharge UW access by making the breathing items uber-easy to forge (I'm talking about making them level 0 and 1 cost for all of them).

HoneyBadger

November 7th, 2009, 07:18 AM

Ok, I've read up on the AOTF, and I think it should be a lesser magical item, rather than a greater item. I still think the Air/Water requirement should be maintained.

What I'm suggesting is that AOTF be less expensive in terms of path level and research "cost", while an additional item exists that allows the use of Water only, to also get units on land, but at a higher cost in path level and research.

In other words, the AOTF would be lesser (2 Const), but still require A1W1, while the ??? water only item would be greater (4 Const), and require W4.

That would make AOTF an opportunistic forging, which means if you can make it, and you need it, great, while still keeping a balance present, in terms of aquatic units having serious difficulty achieving land.

I happen to like that aspect of the game. I'm in favor of maintaining it, since it keeps the oceans mysterious and threatening to land-dwellers, since on land you never really see what's going on down there, while at the same time making aquatic Nations entirely different from land or amphibious Nations.

When a powerful unit from the sea manages to climb onto the shore, and starts wreaking havoc, it's an extraordinary event. I don't mind if it happens more often than it currently does--and I don't mind if it should happen more often--but I don't want the status quo to be entirely shattered.

I happen to believe the Devs had a purpose in doing things the way they did them, and even though their understanding of balancing apparently just isn't complete in terms of gameplay, the way they've set things up has created an ambiance in the game that I think is important, even vital.

I'm all for modding the hell out of the game, 9 ways from Sunday, but I still want the spirit of the game as it comes out of the box to be preserved, and I really feel that this is a piece of that, however small.

Aquatic Nations, after all, already have their own set of advantages. Making land easy to get to just erodes away at the whole idea of playing an aquatic Nation. With the possible exception of Hinnom, I don't believe there's a single EA Nation that's more powerful than Oceania, except for the fact that they're almost entirely aquatic. They possess the single best Sacred recruitables in the game, pound for pound, along with all their other advantages. Give them the ability to forge endless cheap Amulets of the Fish, without requiring air magic, and I really believe it could break their balance, giving them the potential to turn into another Hinnom.

Maybe not as bad, but still unbalanced, and potentially very bad. Imagine self-healing heavily blessed sacred calvalry commanders with magic weapons that can strike at any water or coastal area almost at will, and then retreat to near-complete safety.

But maybe I'm wrong. How about some actual arguments against what I'm espousing? Why should we have a single do-everything item, when we have the option of diversification, each element of which represents different strategic choices for the player to make? What are the benefits? What's wrong with keeping the Amulet of the Fish as-is? Other than as a Greater magical item, which I'm absolutely against. It's quite thematic at the very least, and I require deeper reasons as to why this area of the game should be greatly simplified, when it could be corrected without what I consider overtly handwavey simplification.

For that matter, you could add an even cheaper (as far as paths and research go) forgeable item-a helmet for instance-that did exactly what the Amulet of the Fish does, that required Earth 1, Air 1, Water 1, and represented a sortof reverse diving helmet. Make it a minor (Const 0) item that costs 5 Earth gems, and it will make Earth gems more interesting for aquatic Nations.

Maybe you could even add an item that requires Nature 2, Water 2. Armour maybe, akin to the Shambler skin. It could compete with the AOTF in the lesser forgeable item category, and cost 5 Nature and 5 Water gems. That would make it an option for Oceania, allowing them a more expensive but easier to reach option to get on land a little earlier, without breaking balance.

Burnsaber

November 7th, 2009, 08:10 AM

while an additional item exists that allows the use of Water only, to also get units on land, but at a higher cost in path level and research.

Not possible with the modding tools we got. Aquatic troops are stuck in the seas.

I happen to like that aspect of the game. I'm in favor of maintaining it, since it keeps the oceans mysterious and threatening to land-dwellers, since on land you never really see what's going on down there, while at the same time making aquatic Nations entirely different from land or amphibious Nations.

Actually, that's the very thing I'm trying to fix - land and sea is just way too much apart. Why? Think of it this way. The UW nations aren't really playing the game, instead they are stuck into this "mini-game" of UW dominance. It doesn't really matter how this "mini-game" plays out, since the winning player is 95% of the time, decided on land.

Land players can enter the mini-game, but it's really really difficult and usually really not worth the bother. The players in the mini-game can try to get to the real game on land, but none of the sea nations can really compare or manage any kind land dominance, they are just too handicapped. (the exception of MA/LA R'lyeh, though)

Besides, all the fun of the MP comes from interacting with players. What's the point of making it nigh-impossible to interact with some players?

When a powerful unit from the sea manages to climb onto the shore, and starts wreaking havoc, it's an extraordinary event. I don't mind if it happens more often than it currently does--and I don't mind if it should happen more often--but I don't want the status quo to be entirely shattered.

That's a good thematic standpoint, but this is a gameplay improvement mod. I want to keep things as close to vanilla as possible, but there just has to be some sacrfices.

I happen to believe the Devs had a purpose in doing things the way they did them, and even though their understanding of balancing apparently just isn't complete in terms of gameplay, the way they've set things up has created an ambiance in the game that I think is important, even vital.

I'm all for modding the hell out of the game, 9 ways from Sunday, but I still want the spirit of the game as it comes out of the box to be preserved, and I really feel that this is a piece of that, however small.

I admit that KO and JK are really bigger men than I am, and that dom3 is a masterpiece of genius minds. But they are just men, not gods. They can make mistakes. AotF as A1W1 is one of them. I'll explain it more in detail below this post.

Aquatic Nations, after all, already have their own set of advantages. Making land easy to get to just erodes away at the whole idea of playing an aquatic Nation. With the possible exception of Hinnom, I don't believe there's a single EA Nation that's more powerful than Oceania, except for the fact that they're almost entirely aquatic. They possess the single best Sacred recruitables in the game, pound for pound, along with all their other advantages. Give them the ability to forge endless cheap Amulets of the Fish, without requiring air magic, and I really believe it could break their balance, giving them the potential to turn into another Hinnom.

:re:

EA Oceania, another Hinnom? Seriously?

No really, I mean are you really serious? Are you 100% sure that you want to stand behind that statement?

I just want to be sure before I post my intese rant about how EA Oceania sucks major balls. I'd also like you to specify if you are talking about UWGIM version of EA Oceania, or the vanilla one. (trust me, big difference)

Maybe not as bad, but still unbalanced, and potentially very bad. Imagine self-healing heavily blessed sacred calvalry commanders with magic weapons that can strike at any water or coastal area almost at will, and then retreat to near-complete safety.

You can't bring KotD's to land. There is no way to do that.

But maybe I'm wrong. How about some actual arguments against what I'm espousing?

1) Air gems are really rare find underwater. This is bad, because it makes your ability to forge this item base on dumb luck (=very bad gameplay element). I've often had over 12 water provinces with 0 air gem income. Astral is also a rare find, which makes alchemizing air gems really, really painful.
2) EA R'lyeh. The nation just has to have access to that item in order to have any chance in winning the game. Reguring you to spend valuable pretender points in taking air magic and then using even more valuable pretender turns to search air sites and to forge a ****ty items is just absurd. Note that you do all these ridicilious things just to act as any other nation, there is no real subjective benefit to you by doing these things.
3) The air reguirement is non-thematic. The amulet just creates a bubble of water around you. Why would you need air magic to do that?

I have tons of other reasons, but I really don't have the time to list them all.

For that matter, you could add an even cheaper (as far as paths and research go) forgeable item-a helmet for instance-that did exactly what the Amulet of the Fish does, that required Earth 1, Air 1, Water 1, and represented a sortof reverse diving helmet. Make it a minor (Const 0) item that costs 5 Earth gems, and it will make Earth gems more interesting for aquatic Nations.

Maybe you could even add an item that requires Nature 2, Water 2. Armour maybe, akin to the Shambler skin. It could compete with the AOTF in the lesser forgeable item category, and cost 5 Nature and 5 Water gems. That would make it an option for Oceania, allowing them a more expensive but easier to reach option to get on land a little earlier, without breaking balance.

Nothing you mention is actaully doable. I can't copy items (so basically, AotF is the only land breathing item, ever) and neither can I make a item that reguires three paths to forge.

Also, if you are really bothered about making AotF cost W1 to forge, you should likely try to argument in the CBM 1.6 thread, since it now does the exact same change (and is leagues above the popularity of this mod).

If you were talking about SP, you are free to alter your own version of the mod to keep the item as it is. As a fellow modder, that shouldn't prove difficult for you.

HoneyBadger

November 7th, 2009, 09:18 AM

I'm not talking about troops, I'm talking about commanders. I realize that troops are beyond our capabilities.

EA R'lyeh is broken, in terms of MP. Changing AOTF will help, a little, but isn't going to fix it.

The air requirement I can explain, thematically, about a dozen different ways. Do you prefer the air pressure theory, the chemical element theory, or the osmosis theory? Suffice to say that water can go stale over time, as the oxygen leaves it. The oxygen content in a given volume of water isn't unlimited, and can fluctuate greatly even in oceans and lakes. Considering that you've got a decent sized being breathing said oxygen, that amulet will quickly become a murder weapon unless something more substantial than a passing breeze is replenishing that oxygen.

Add to that concerns about maintaining the balance between water and air pressure.

EA Oceania only sucks because it's aquatic. There isn't another EA underwater Nation that can compete with it, if confined to the water only. It's crappy because land Nations exist, not out of any real fault of it's own. Whatever the state of the game happens to be in practice, in theory Knights of the Deep should be able to go on land with an AOTF. It doesn't happen, but I'm not satisfied that there's any real reasoning behind that decision. If an Ancient Kraken can do it, there's no good reason a KOTD shouldn't be able to.

As far as it never happening, there's probably a way to mod in a landform that still retains it's aquatic nature, thus allowing them to go on land, while still requiring the AOTF. Since this is a modding thread anyway, I don't see any reason the vanilla game should be the final say on what makes good balancing.

If AOTF is the only possibility, then sadly my argument is moot, and I might as well stop. Not much I can do about arbitrary modding restrictions, especially now that the Devs haven't been heard from in months. Considering such a restriction, then yes, the best thing left to us would be to remove the air requirement. It's certainly far from what I would consider ideal, however.

I know I can mod it in easily enough. The reason I'm debating it on the boards is because I want some discussion and some different viewpoints. CBM is great, but I don't consider it a very good environment for discussion.

Graeme Dice

November 7th, 2009, 10:12 AM

In other words, the AOTF would be lesser (2 Const), but still require A1W1, while the ??? water only item would be greater (4 Const), and require W4.

Do you really feel that 25 water gems per commander is a reasonable cost to spend getting onto land?

Aquatic Nations, after all, already have their own set of advantages. Making land easy to get to just erodes away at the whole idea of playing an aquatic Nation.

This is nonsense. Making the amulet of the fish doesn't make for easy land access for EA R'Lyeh and EA Oceania. It makes land access _possible_. Expecting players to use their pretender to forge a single amulet of the fish every turn for the entire game is single player thinking.

With the possible exception of Hinnom, I don't believe there's a single EA Nation that's more powerful than Oceania, except for the fact that they're almost entirely aquatic. They possess the single best Sacred recruitables in the game, pound for pound, along with all their other advantages. Give them the ability to forge endless cheap Amulets of the Fish, without requiring air magic, and I really believe it could break their balance, giving them the potential to turn into another Hinnom.

You clearly don't even know what the amulet of the fish does. It allows a single commander to go either above or below water. It does nothing for his troops, and EA Oceania's troops are aquatic only. Knights of the deep are aquatic, and are nothing more than a slightly better version of white centaurs, so they will never be a serious threat to land nations. MA Oceania's Trident Knights are already amphibious, so this certainly doesn't change anything there. EA Oceania can already forge amulets of the fish at A1W1, so they aren't affected in any serious way by this change.

Maybe not as bad, but still unbalanced, and potentially very bad. Imagine self-healing heavily blessed sacred calvalry commanders with magic weapons that can strike at any water or coastal area almost at will, and then retreat to near-complete safety.

All magic weapons do is make units better against ethereal troops. The basic magic weapon has _no_ other effect. Triton kings can't self-bless, and have terrible magic paths, so they aren't much more than thugs. Capricorns are already amphibious. Please remember that there are no gem generators in the game unless you happen to agree with the developers idea of proper balance.

What's wrong with keeping the Amulet of the Fish as-is?

As is, EA R'lyeh cannot forge them for its mindlords. Pretender forging is not sufficient for cheap items that need to go on hundreds of your aquatic mages.

Maybe you could even add an item that requires Nature 2, Water 2. Armour maybe, akin to the Shambler skin. It could compete with the AOTF in the lesser forgeable item category, and cost 5 Nature and 5 Water gems. That would make it an option for Oceania, allowing them a more expensive but easier to reach option to get on land a little earlier, without breaking balance.

Triton kings can already get A1. MA Oceania is already amphibious. Have you even bothered to look at the capabiliies of the nations that you claim would be affected by this? Or are you simply scared by the thought of change?

Illuminated One

November 7th, 2009, 02:08 PM

Once again, not moddable. In case we still need to boost the levels of UW access, I have some ideas. Note that I'm keeping these in reserve, I'll only implement them if they are really needed.:

1) Give all units that don't breathe poor ambhibian (Bane Lords + many other undead, elementals, Vinemen, and so forth).
2) New easy nature summon, "Kelpmen", who get stronger in UW.
3) A spell that builds a UW fort, but is only castable from land.
4) Turbocharge UW access by making the breathing items uber-easy to forge (I'm talking about making them level 0 and 1 cost for all of them).

Hmm, I didn't know that.
I neither think it's the lack of access into the water that's a problem nor the lack of uw summons (so no to 1, 2, 4). Seriously you don't just start a war because you can but because you want to profit (and you'll certainly wait until you either have good summons, thugs or some powerful magic, I really see noone attacking an uw nation with const-0 gear and nationals and winning, if there is any balance). The problem is simply that after you have won the war (or invested into labs and temples in the course of your conquest) you risk loosing everything to the next best uw sneak attack (oceania?) without PD and castles - easier access actually makes this worse (because if you can tir can also).
So I'd suggest simply making the kelp forest spell reasonably cheap - not cheap and accesible enough to make it spammable, though. It's fine if it's castable uw only, since this requires you to hold a uw province for a couple of turns (instead of stealth take + instafort).

HoneyBadger

November 7th, 2009, 07:42 PM

I don't have any problem with change. I want to know that it's change for the better. Are you afraid of asking questions? I'd rather be wrong than blind, quite frankly.

I am very familiar with what the AOTF does. Making it cheaper won't by itself fix EA Aboleths. The fact that it doesn't affect troops doesn't necessarily solve the problem of giving Nations that are nearly invulnerable at the start of the game, the ability to indiscriminately raid the surface.

Imagine just the possibility of a 10 Dominion Ancient Kraken with say 4 earth, 4 death, and 4 nature, that can raid from any shore, and then escape without any fear of retaliation. You're talking about shifting the dynamic of the whole game, where outlying shore provinces will need to be fortified. I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, but I think it deserves atleast some discussion.

Magic weapons in the early age? Are you at all familiar with the early age of the game? It's a free magical weapon on top of the attacks the unit already gets, on top of self healing, sacredness, and the fact that it's tough calvalry commander.

I was suggesting the nature/water item as an alternative to the amulet of the fish, to let Oceania get on land more easily than they already can--as a choice, for them and for any other Nation that can take advantage of the situation. Not as a replacement for the AOTF. I never said that it was, in any way.

Graeme Dice

November 7th, 2009, 08:14 PM

Imagine just the possibility of a 10 Dominion Ancient Kraken with say 4 earth, 4 death, and 4 nature, that can raid from any shore, and then escape without any fear of retaliation.

That wouldn't give it any capabilities that something with boots of flying or stealth doesn't already have.

You're talking about shifting the dynamic of the whole game, where outlying shore provinces will need to be fortified. I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, but I think it deserves atleast some discussion.

If you don't need to fortify land provinces adjacent to water provinces because the underwater nations are so pathetic that they aren't a threat, then that's a serious balance problem.

Magic weapons in the early age? Are you at all familiar with the early age of the game? It's a free magical weapon on top of the attacks the unit already gets, on top of self healing, sacredness, and the fact that it's tough calvalry commander.

Why are you worried about Trident Lords being turned into thugs by EA Oceania? MA Oceania has trident lords, EA does not. Triton kings don't turn into centaurs on land. EA Oceania has no centaur or mounted troops on land. Even then, they are essentially equivalent to centaur hierophants or cataphract commanders, and can't self-bless. You should really be worried about Pangaea, or even Ulm, where black lords are nearly as tough as Trident lords. Triton kings are nothing special in the EA. They have one less misc slot than every land based commander, and the are members of what is arguably the weakest nation in the entire game.

Magic weapons are only better than regular weapons if the opponent is ethereal or mistformed.

HoneyBadger

November 7th, 2009, 08:57 PM

Well, my biggest issue was having more possibilities than just the AOTF. If that's impossible, then there's really not a lot to argue about.

Illuminated One

November 8th, 2009, 01:43 PM

Ah, I think I've found a difference between RoWB and Sea Kings Goblet.
You cannot rout with Sea Kings Goblet (that is if someone carrying it routs he's autokilled) - so always use RoWB for SCs.

kianduatha

November 9th, 2009, 02:18 AM

Would it be at all reasonable to make Asp Turtles commanders out of the box? There's precedent with the Kithaironic Lion summon, it would make Asp Turtles more attractive because you can actually get them out of the water with an Amulet of the Fish(!), and it would definitely give more options semi-late game for Underwater nations. It's not like they would be spammed, either. In that same level of Conj, you get Catoblepases(Catoblepi?), which are for many purposes way better.

HoneyBadger

November 9th, 2009, 03:08 AM

It's an interesting idea, kianduatha, but there already exists the Leviathan in the game, which is an undead amphibious version of the asp turtle. Making the asp turtle a commander would kind of overshadow the Leviathan in the game, I would think?

Aside from that, there are a host of other critters that could be added to the game, to make the later game more interesting, underwater.

Personally, I was very surprised not to see *any* crocodiles in the game. It seems like a giant saltwater croc would make for an excellent lategame summon, and we know they're amphibious. Crocodiles are one of the most important animals ever, in historical mythology, and they really deserve some place in the game.

For that matter, their are whales which don't appear anywhere in the game (Japanese myth gives us the Bake-kujira, according to Wikipedia, "a ghostly whale skeleton that drifts along the coastline", and which was accompanied by a host of strange and ominous birds, fish, and other creatures--sounds like a perfect lategame summon to me, and could maybe even be a commander?), as well as an enormous variety of prehistoric creatures, and plenty of strange beings from mythology as well.

I'm sold on the idea of the AOTF being water only (because we've been given no choice, really), but with units, we know for certain that they can be added, copied, and modified, in nearly infinite variety.

It seems to me that the asp turtle already fulfills a function in the game, rather admirably, and that the fault lies more with an underpopulated lategame ocean, with a lot of spaces left in it to fill, than it does with what we've already been given.

Burnsaber

November 9th, 2009, 06:00 AM

Hmm, I didn't know that.
I neither think it's the lack of access into the water that's a problem nor the lack of uw summons (so no to 1, 2, 4). Seriously you don't just start a war because you can but because you want to profit (and you'll certainly wait until you either have good summons, thugs or some powerful magic, I really see noone attacking an uw nation with const-0 gear and nationals and winning, if there is any balance). The problem is simply that after you have won the war (or invested into labs and temples in the course of your conquest) you risk loosing everything to the next best uw sneak attack (oceania?) without PD and castles - easier access actually makes this worse (because if you can tir can also).

You have a good point about the lack of pd, but (once again) it's one of those things I can't mod.

So I'd suggest simply making the kelp forest spell reasonably cheap - not cheap and accesible enough to make it spammable, though.

With all respect, that's quite hard. Very hard in fact. "Accessible", "cheap" and "not spammable" is a bit of a oxymoron and all those terms are subjective. Something can be unspammable in a small game, but be spammable in a large game. There is a good reason why "Wizard's Tower" and the like are so high in the research.

It's fine if it's castable uw only, since this requires you to hold a uw province for a couple of turns (instead of stealth take + instafort).

UW is so easily defendable that I really wouldn't mind there being a trick that land nations could use to take really firm hold in the seas. Besides, the sea player still has a chance to teleport in before the fort is build. But it's sort of moot point to discuss changes that might not get implemented at all.

(and the fort wouldn't be too useful for you anyway with the sucky recruits).

As for making the Asp Turtle a commander, that's very good idea. I'll probably make the leviathan a commander too, so that it won't be overshadowed by the Asp.

Squirrelloid

November 9th, 2009, 06:55 PM

I should note there are disadvantages to making units into commanders, such as being able to be targetted by Mindhunt. I'd rather leave leviathans and Asp Turtles as is, fwiw. You can always GoR them if you want commanders, after all.

Edit: Things that might help UW nations

More amphibious summons castable underwater. Especially for W magic. W has lots of summons, but most of them are either land only or aquatic and UW only. Makes breaking onto land hard. Something in the Conj 2-4 range would be esp nice.

EA Atlantis needs its infantry to be less of a one-trick pony. Basically, it has 10 flavors of the same thing along an armor gradient. Some harpoon troops would help (LA Atlantis has them, so there's some thematic justification). Some troops with actually decent defense might also be nice - i think the best they manage now is like 11.

Is it possible to make a spell which transforms aquatic troops into an alternate amphibious form? I mean, I know you can define a new creature type that is a copy with the amphibious tag instead. But can you target normal troops en-masse with such a spell?

kianduatha

November 9th, 2009, 08:26 PM

There already is something in Conj 2-4: the Sea Troll. It's just that Sea Trolls suck because they have no armor or weapons or defense or attack.

I guess you could make Kraken amphibious; but only if Sea King's Court also gets some trolls riding them.

I guess Coral Guards could stand to be a bit more useful; I'd feel pretty comfortable making Sharkskin armor 0 def 0 enc, Coral Cuirass 0 def 1 enc, and Coral Hauberk -1 def 2 enc. Even just pick one of those, and you'll have someone with 12 defense at least. I'd personally go for the coral changes, given that Coral Guards need something more than 1 to attack and defense to justify fully double the cost of normal Shamblers.

Squirrelloid

November 9th, 2009, 09:00 PM

Sea Trolls also cost cash in upkeep, unlike most summons, and a lot of cash at that. This makes them not very viable.

kianduatha

November 12th, 2009, 12:23 AM

Looking into things for EA Atlantis, I finally noticed what their coastal troop recruit is. If only I had realized it sooner in my multiplayer game. I am going to destroy R'lyeh so hard with these. High attack, high defense, decent protection, shield, high magic resist, barbs to deal with Lobo Guards, decent encumbrance. I think once I get some coastal castles up I'm never recruiting anything else again unless I need fire/cold immunity. Combine that with Atlantis being able to actually summon Kydnides with the Shamans, I think we're set for them.

Squirrelloid

November 12th, 2009, 11:27 AM

kianduatha

November 12th, 2009, 12:43 PM

Squirrelloid

November 12th, 2009, 01:44 PM

Not under this mod; Research Alt-2 and Oceania's Knights of the Deep are no longer a problem. Boil is actually as far as I know entirely created for EA Atlantis to deal with those pesky Knights--it's a 100 precision aoe 1 spell that does 8+AN damage, so it goes through all their defenses like butter.

Yes, Earth Meld + Boil = lots of dead KotD. Of course, you need to send a bunch of BKs to the front lines to make extensive use of this.

kianduatha

January 15th, 2010, 07:21 AM

Hrm, resurrection time I suppose.

Wouldn't it make sense to give Ichtycentaurs and Trident Knights hoof attacks? You know, like the centaurs they're based off of?

Burnsaber

January 23rd, 2010, 04:23 AM

Hrm, resurrection time I suppose.

Wouldn't it make sense to give Ichtycentaurs and Trident Knights hoof attacks? You know, like the centaurs they're based off of?

I suppose. I was under the impression that they get hoof attack on land. Impact weapons would likely suck underwater so I can sort of understand why they don't have it.

I guess the question boils down to if they need it. I was under the impression that ichtycentaurs are good troops. Sure, they have trouble dealing damage, but they shouldn't be perfect. MA Oceanian's problem is not in its troops, but it's mages.

kianduatha

January 23rd, 2010, 10:10 AM

I suppose. I was under the impression that they get hoof attack on land. Impact weapons would likely suck underwater so I can sort of understand why they don't have it.

I guess the question boils down to if they need it. I was under the impression that ichtycentaurs are good troops. Sure, they have trouble dealing damage, but they shouldn't be perfect. MA Oceanian's problem is not in its troops, but it's mages.

Right now they don't get hoof attacks on land. You have a point, though, that ichtycentaurs are already the best thing going for Oceania troop-wise, and boosting them might only decrease diversity. Trident Knights definitely should get the 2nd attack, at least. Maybe then they could kill something before fatiguing out.

As I understand it, MA Oceania suffers from having no real way to deal damage without mage support(minus the first strike on ichtycentaurs), and their mages have terrible, terrible paths for dealing damage(max 2W4N1E1A pre-booster? You can't do anything with that).

Tollund

January 23rd, 2010, 12:51 PM

Well you can cast bone melter, but that's about it otherwise.

Sombre

January 23rd, 2010, 01:28 PM

I support extra hoof attacks on land. It makes sense.

The real issue with MA Oceania will always remain their horrible mages (on land).

kianduatha

January 23rd, 2010, 07:14 PM

The most subtle fix to Capricorns that I can think of is giving them linked randoms. This would flat out make the 10% randoms amazing. 1 in 10 Capricorns is either 2A, 2E(so really 3E), 4W(where W starts to get fun), or 5N(boosterless Mother Oak). Maybe boost it to a 15% random, too--but either way, you would get actual non-useless mages at least some of the time.

Also, even with a hoof attack Trident Knights probably need another point of attack skill.

Sombre

January 23rd, 2010, 08:12 PM

Yeah but you can't mod linked randoms.

kianduatha

January 23rd, 2010, 11:03 PM

Ugh. Right. I should've known that. Unfortunately, you'd need to bump the second random up to about 50% to get the same effectiveness(1 in 10 Capricorns actually being useful for something)

Burnsaber

January 24th, 2010, 03:39 AM

In UWGIM, Oceania has the "Call Selkie" (A3W2N1 seducing mage) spell in conj4 and recruitable Daughter of Selkie 1A1W (110% A/E/W/N) random mage in coastal forts.

I think that should help in the magic department. I'll give ichtycentaurs hoof atttack on land in the next version.

Squirrelloid

January 24th, 2010, 04:22 AM

I think part of the problem is all these E1 randoms don't translate into enough E to do anything useful - like make boots and therefore hammers!

kianduatha

February 17th, 2010, 03:09 AM

So after finishing a MP game as EA Atlantis with this mod, I can't help but feel like I'm playing a completely different game than even CBM.

-Ride the Currents is amazing and makes you incredibly versatile as far as quickly organizing raids to entire coastlines. I could leave my Basalt Kings in my capital until I needed them, then zoom them out to deal with threats as they come. Think of yourself as coastal Eriu, but with a decent lategame.

-I spent a good chunk of water gems to make water-breathing items, oddly enough. If there was one thing to make underwater nations less obnoxious to play, it'd be giving them national mages(Mage of the Deep, mermage, slave mage) who can grant waterbreathing to troops.

-Coral Tribe Warriors are bogusly powerful. They give you the ability to simply crush R'lyeh because of their high base MR, Defense and repel(plus poison if they ever do land a hit). They even are fairly high damage(15 w/ poison). Especially in EA these guys can go toe-to-toe with almost any land nation. It was like having recruit-anywhere Assartuts, honestly. No bless and lower base damage, but they have a shield.

-Coral Tribe Shamans are amazing. I had twice as many of these guys as any other type of mage, and they let me shoot up the research ladder altogether faster than Atlantis has the right to. It really changed the nature of the game, though, as I actually ended up Astral and Nature heavy in the end. I was actually based off of my coastal forts, and my Basalt Kings were there just for support. I only created a few Mages of the Deep because I needed a token W4 guy to cast Maelstrom and Water Queens. This had the odd effect that I was a nature-heavy nation(Mmm, dragon master-ed Frost Drakes).

So basically my main force was from coastal forts and exclusively the Shamans and Coral Tribe Warriors, with Basalt Kings/Queens for supplementary raiding. If anything I had stronger infantry than most EA nations. The poison also basically makes you exceptionally dangerous to cavalry. Tir Na Nog for instance lost several Sidhe Lords by forgetting to script Resist Poison.

Methinks the Coral Tribe needs to be toned down some--as it is they become your military and magical backbone. I kept on trying to thug out my Basalt Kings, only to realize that they were better spent casting Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants and Quickening on these monsters. Suddenly they're 14 hp, 15 prot, 17 str, 15 att, 16 def murder machines(and that's before the 2-3 stars these guys usually get). Slap on Army of Lead(something you can easily 1st-round) and they're also 17 MR.

Squirrelloid

February 17th, 2010, 06:19 PM

Now I'm really sad the one game I played with UWGIM EA Atlantis involved a map in which getting onto land was virtually impossible for a water nation. (That and having to fight EA Oceania tooth and claw almost all game to stay alive, so resources to dedicate to landward expansion were non-existent).

They may seem like monsters (and they do seem perhaps a little much), but considering what troop and buffing options other nations have... it may be more that Atlantis's other troops are just so far below decent that these things really shined in comparison. Are they really better than buffed Ermorian principes?

kianduatha

February 17th, 2010, 11:55 PM

Yeah, they really are better than Principes. They have a lower defense, to be sure, but also a higher attack and repel--and poison, both from their spears and from the coral armor. They for the record wipe the floor with equal numbers of Principes in an equal fight--even when you let the Principes start with a full javelin volley. On top of anything else is the high magic resist(13!) and high hitpoints(14!). Also you tend to have better buffing paths than Ermor, and even if they manage to pop a surprise Fog Warriors on you they'll still die to the poison.

Burnsaber

February 18th, 2010, 05:01 AM

I'll give the Coral tribe warriors some nerfs in the next version, (-1 hp, att, def, mr, mor) should do the trick. I likely underestimated the effect of the poison armor when costing them.

As for the shamans, it seems that they are just underpriced. I'll beef up their gold cost.

As for your assestment on "Ride the Currents", I've got highly different opinions about it (mostly from Squirrel), but if it is too useful for defense, it could get some fine-tuning (higher cost?).

kianduatha

February 18th, 2010, 06:01 AM

Nah, Ride the Currents is fine. It's just more useful for EA Atlantis than for everyone else because they're more capital-centric.

Burnsaber

April 12th, 2010, 07:19 AM

Okay, time to update this thing. I recently sacrificed one MP game of mine to test how easy it really is to attack UW with a land nation under the new magic item settings. The results proved to be very disencouraging.

I was Shinuyama and had access to Kappas, most of the water breathing items, undead summons and all sorts of stuff to get UW access. Basically, my UW access was a lot better that of a average land nation.

And I had no shots. Total of 0% chance of winning against the organized defense of the UW nation. Many things contributed to this fact:

1) The Poor Ambhibian pelaties from magic items are absolutely crippling. Note that the penalties from water breathing items are NOT the same penalties received from being natural poor ambhibian. For reference:

Poor Ambihibian: Att -3, Def -3, enc +1, AP -4

a troop under water breathing item: Att -3, Def -3, enc +3, AP -6

That's right *****es. Encumberance +3. I mean WOW. Sure, if you have access to niefel giants of something, it just *might* be worthwhile to bring them UW. Under those penalties, anything else just dies against the basic Triton. You might be able to take your first province by suprise, but once the UW nation just beefs up his PD, your casualties will be devastating. And you actually have to forge items with gems for the priviledge of getting your units killed.

So, I'm going to make a new special combat spell that gives units underwater with breathing items get +4 attack, +5 def, +4 AP. So with that buff they would get total variables of: +1 Att, +2 Def, +3 Enc, -2 AP . You can live with that. I think that this buff could like W2 to cast and be in alteration or enchantment on level 3 or 4.

2) The combat casting in UW is a total mess. On land your options for good combat paths are mostly in evocation or thaum (only if you have S, though). In UW, your options are alt or thaum (again only if you have S). So, if you are moving from land to water or from water to land, you sometimes have to completely switch research gears to a completely new school of magic.

So to be blunt, you have to forge gems to assault UW *and* also possibly switch research to schools that you don't want go through just for the priviledge of suffering horrible casualties UW. Gah. No wonder that people usually just leave UW nations alone.

So, I'm going to go through all of the spells and make more of them castable UW. I'll leave the things that make absolutely no sense in UW alone, but the rest will be fair game. Rust Mist, Slime, Bane Fire, Sleep Cloud are examples of spells I'll make castable UW.

3) Not enough ambhibians to summon. This is where your options really start to diminish. You basically have Naiad Warriors + Sea Dogs + "some" Undead to summon if you want to get UW. That's about it. What if you don't have access to W+N? Well, you're fuc*ed basically. So what can I do to help?

I'll make the UW breathing stuff make some goddamn sense. Your normal longdead is able to get UW and that makes sense because it does not breathe, but a Bane Lord can't get to underwater altought it clearly does not breathe either. You can't believe how stupid it felt to forge Water Breathing Rings to my Ghost Generals, who obviously don't breathe in the first place. It's just pure WTF, from the start to finish. So I'll go through most of the summons and give ambhibian tags with the following principles:

Unit does not breathe: Poor Ambhibian (includes stuff like Bane Lords, Mound Fiends, Unfrozen, Manikins .. etc)

Unit does not breathe + incorporeal: Ambhibian (includes stuff like Spectres, Fall Bears, Winter Wolves, Ghosts)

All spells whose summoned units got UW tags will also made castable UW.

Creatures that have ties to fire & air elements are an exception, since they have an actual *reason* to have restricted UW access.

I'll also give all Vine Men a new water shape called "Kelp Men", making them basically ambhibious. Same thing will also happen Vine Ogres and Ivy Kings. This is to give both land nations and UW nations access to cheap chaff that is able to cross the water barrier and would be a competetive option in both.

4) No PD underwater
Oh boy, this is probably the most crippling of all. No PD means no way to effectively hold captured territory, and because UW indies suck, your defenses will be piss poor anyway. Hence, all the terrain you manage to capture will most likely be easily counter-raided away soon. The only option against this is to divide your forces to defend the territory, which will make you lose the major confrontations with the UW nation. There is not much I can do about this due to lack of modding tools, but I have an idea to alleviate the problem.

I'll make a special remote summon spell that summons a immobile kelp monster to a UW province province. The kelp monster will onebattlespell some kelp men (like 2 or 3) and have all normal + magic + undead leadership. Basically it will allow you to skip the recruitment of a expensive commander and let you recruit the troops that you need to defend the province while the commander itself will give some units too. The summon will only need N1 to cast and will be cheap in gems.

I'll be sure to give UW nations some love too, see the "fix-list" below for more details. I'm also going to stop pushing the alternate "coastal recruit" versions of the nations and push more for a "global" UWGIM mod. The future options will be: UWGIM global (like the old one, no national changes) and UWGIM nations (global + global UW nation changes)

- New W spell to counter UW breathing item penalties.
- More spells castable UW
- Kelp Men
- "not-breathers" to poor ambihibian or ambhibian
- N1 remote kelp monster summon to get "PD"
- Thetis's Belssing down to Alt 7 or 6
- Give the basic merman commander stealth so that there would "indy scouts" available UW.
- The shielded ichtyid will get a landform with a bigger "Asp Shield" to provide a effective archer counter.

Sombre

April 12th, 2010, 08:47 AM

This all sounds excellent. Let me know if there's any way I can help. I especially like the idea of 'fixing' stuff which in vanilla doesn't really make sense.

I think it would be wise to avoid making death too strong against UW though. It's already a very powerful path and if it's actually giving you better options to go underwater than nature, air and water, that feels very wrong (which it might with stuff like fully amphibious ghosts). I believe the way to counter this is just to make sure that the N summons, W summons etc that are going to go underwater are comparably good.

I also think more sites should be added, coded to appear on coastal provinces, that give decent indy troops for invading the seas. This is especially helpful on NI maps, but also on regular maps it would be awesome to be able to take the coasts and get amphibious troops of good quality (better than mermen and naked shamblers) and inversely, it would be more incentive for the water nations to actually try and hold the coasts.

Burnsaber

April 12th, 2010, 12:37 PM

I especially like the idea of 'fixing' stuff which in vanilla doesn't really make sense.

Yeah, I started working on the mod and immediately noticed some stupid stuff. Apparently you can make Gargoyles and Living Statues underwater, but not Crushers/Wooden Constructs/Clockwork Horrors. Which makes absolutely perfect sense!

I think it would be wise to avoid making death too strong against UW though. It's already a very powerful path and if it's actually giving you better options to go underwater than nature, air and water, that feels very wrong (which it might with stuff like fully amphibious ghosts). I believe the way to counter this is just to make sure that the N summons, W summons etc that are going to go underwater are comparably good.

True. But the thing is that UW nations have very good priests (Oceania and Atlantis especially) and you can't really compose the bulk of your forces from Ghosts (they are too expensive) and the basic linebackers of Soulless and Longdead will still suffer from the poor ambhibian penalties (especially the reduced AP hurts as the enemies will get a lot of banishments in before the guys are in melee). But it is a valid concern and I'll keep an eye on the issue.

Out the top of my head, nature will get increased access in the form of Kelp Men and Manikins. I'll probably also make Sea dogs a pure nature summon. Water will get the new "ease UW item penalties" spell and amphibious Winter Wolves. Air is a bit problematic. Wyverns, Draconians and the like don't really make sense UW. We could perhaps mod something in for air, but I really don't have many ideas. Giving air magic a copy of the "negate UW item penalties" spell is an option thought.

I also think more sites should be added, coded to appear on coastal provinces, that give decent indy troops for invading the seas. This is especially helpful on NI maps, but also on regular maps it would be awesome to be able to take the coasts and get amphibious troops of good quality (better than mermen and naked shamblers) and inversely, it would be more incentive for the water nations to actually try and hold the coasts.

Good idea. Basing on my experiences with the Holy War mod, I'd say that something like ~3-4 unique common sites (to prevent duplicates) and a couple of uncommon sites for variety would be good and likely enough. I could use ideas for them thought. One that allowed recruitment of ichtyids (and a resource bonus to boot) would be good, but what else?

But since I'm probably going to let go of most of the national stuff, I'll have a lot of excess graphics that I could use for modded good amphibian units for these sites. The "Merman Knight", "Son of Selkie" and the "Coral Tribe" unit graphics could be used for new units. I'll probably also scrap the "Troll Ambassador" unit, so her graphic could also be used for this purpose.

This all sounds excellent. Let me know if there's any way I can help.

Well, I could use ideas (and code) for the coastal sites. Also the Air summon problem. I'm also a bit unsure if I can make a decent "Kelp Man" sprite (no good base sprites for kelp creature), but I'd like to try myself first.

Squirrelloid

April 12th, 2010, 01:02 PM

kianduatha

April 12th, 2010, 01:30 PM

Excellent changes. Gone are the days where you have to go abovewater to cast Streams from Hades(ugh).

And yeah, I see why Air wouldn't have any good underwater summons. However, the Phantasmal Warrior/Wolf/False Horror series as well as every Lightning spell except Thunderstrike works underwater, so I'm not worried about Air's straight power there. In general Air is really light on the summons, anyways.

Sombre

April 12th, 2010, 01:31 PM

It doesn't have to have a good summon, but it should be better for UW access than death.

I think a W/A combo summon that can fly into the water, dive in and get a water shape would be cool. Squall elemental? Dire cormorant? ;]

kianduatha

April 12th, 2010, 02:34 PM

Okay, yeah, we really do need a W/A combo summon--"Flying Fish"?

llamabeast

April 12th, 2010, 06:28 PM

Some things would rust horribly in the sea. Clockwork horrors definitely shouldn't work underwater, as their mechanisms would sieze up in like a day. Probably the same for mechanical men.

Sombre

April 12th, 2010, 06:29 PM

A new use for the 'taking damage underwater' mod command, you say??

Gosh.

Burnsaber

April 12th, 2010, 10:41 PM

I see no reason why air has to be a good magic path for UW summons. Air Queens are specifically prohibited from going UW, after all. Air can let you breath UW, but let you do awesome stuff down there? Uh... huh?

You are probably right about the air summon. I'll give them a copy of the "ease UW item penalties" spell though, so that they can actually do something with all that UW item access.

Some things would rust horribly in the sea. Clockwork horrors definitely shouldn't work underwater, as their mechanisms would sieze up in like a day. Probably the same for mechanical men.

Well, you can bring some heavy infantry underwater with breathing items and they never suffer from anykind of rusting. It would be odd if I applied the "rusting" logic on the Mechanical dudes but not on them. Besides, they are "magic beings", so it's not that much of stretch to assume that they are enchanted against rusting. Clockwork Horrors suck in UW anyways, mostly because of the reduced AP from poor ambhibian. I really see no reason to nerf them even further.

Burnsaber

April 20th, 2010, 07:05 AM

OK, UWGIM global released! Note that the .dm file does not overwrite the old one, you should just delete the old "UWGIM-global" .dm file before DL'ing the new version. This version make absolutely no national changes and is intented for those who like their UW nations as vanilla as possible.

I have tested that most of the spells work underwater, but I really can't test the balance of applications of all these changes. Especially the water evocations working underwater is a BIG change and I'd like to hear thoughts on the matter. (Hint: Expansion with "cold blast" is fun because there are no archers to kill your mages). I also didn't up any prices on anything because of it got UW access, which might raise minor balance issues but I really doubt it.

I also only went through the national summons on wiki. I might have missed some national units and spells that should be castable underwater. If you see something that does fit with the logic of this mod, please report it and I'll fix it.

List of changes this "global" mod version makes:

"Global Changes"

- "Prince of Death" into poorambhibian
- "Mother of Rivers", "Lady of Fortune" and "Lady of Springs" made into amphibians. (they were born form water)
- "Summon Sea Dogs" now reguires W1
- Thetis' Blessing down to ench 7
- Two new (W2/A2) spells that can partly negate UW breathing item penalties
- New summon "Awaken Kelp Ancient" that basically gives you "free" immobile "PD" commander underwater.
- "Living castle" now only reguires nature magic and is cheaper. It can now only be casted from land
- "Boil" now reguires just F2
- Vine Men/Ogres & Kings transform into Kelp equivalents if they move underwater, making them amphibious.
- Some uncommon UW indy mage sites and other sites to slightly balance gem income UW.
- Some common coastal sites that give access to good UW units
- "Ichtyid Warrior" unit got a parry 7 custom shield to act as a good arrow catcher for UW nations.

SPELLS:

- The following spells have been made castable in UW. Any summons from a summoning spell have of course been made into poor amphibians.

CONJURATION:

Black Servant
Awaken Vine Men
Revive Wight
Revive Bane
Awaken Vine Ogre
Summon Winter Wolves
Summon Fall Bears
Revive Bane Lord
Summon Lammashtas
Summon Ghosts
Call Eater of the Dead
Animal Horde
Awaken Ivy King
Summon Mound Fiend
Call Wraith Lord
Legions of Wights
Tartarian Gate

ALTERATION:

Manifest Vitriol

EVOCATION:

Slime
Cold Bolt
Cold Blast
Rust Mist
Freezing Mist
Healing Light
Sleep Cloud
Falling Frost
Earthquake
Healing Mists
Magma Eruption
Bane Fire
Cloud of Death
Niefel Flames

CONSTRUCTION:

Clockwork Horrors
Construct Manikin
Crusher Construction
Construct Mandragora
Mechanical Men
Siege Golem
Golem Construction
Iron Dragon
Juggernaut
Poison Golem

ENCHANTMENT

Revive King
Create Revenant
Behemoth
Pale Riders
Hidden in Snow
Reanimate Archers
Ziz

THAUMATHURGY

Rage
Leeching Darkness
Hydrophobia

Notable national summons that got UW access:
Panganea Carrion creatures, national undead summons (Shura, Civatateo, Baen Sidhe), Monster & Jaguar Toads

The "national" version of UWGIM will be released sometime in the future and concentrate on making EA/MA Oceania/Atlantis suck considerably less.

kianduatha

April 20th, 2010, 11:17 PM

Mmm, Shura getting amphibian.

This actually might make most of the UW nations more viable--especially the Manifest Vitriol/Vine men shenanigans. Oh my goodness, you can field summons armies without needing to give all your casters amulets of the fish <3

The only truly silly spell I see is Earthquake...you're swimming.

Frozen Lama

April 20th, 2010, 11:19 PM

yeah earthquake doesn't make sense. falling frost.... not sure if the frost would "fall" in the water. or at least not that painfully.

Burnsaber

April 21st, 2010, 03:38 AM

The only truly silly spell I see is Earthquake...you're swimming.

Read the description for the spell.

With a thundering boom, the ground heaves and erupts, throwing soldiers into crevices that close after a few seconds

I see no reason why a event like that couldn't happen underwater.

yeah earthquake doesn't make sense. falling frost.... not sure if the frost would "fall" in the water. or at least not that painfully.

Falling frost does pure frost damage. So a 100% frostres unit is immune, no matter how feeble it otherwise might be. So, the spell does not in fact do any damage in the form of falling icicles and stuff, it is just cold. Things like momentum and friction do not apply, it is just magical drop in the temperature. And you can make frost underwater in dom3, I know this because "Grip of Winter" works underwater in vanilla.

llamabeast

April 21st, 2010, 05:03 AM

Earthquake makes a lot of sense to me - I would actually expect it to be very nasty in the real world, because of the shock waves being transmitted through the water.

The ones I don't think should be included are Rust Mist, Healing Mist and Freezing Mist, and arguably Sleep Cloud, because (a) mists don't make a lot of sense under water, and (b) they are horrible spells whose graphics make my game run so slowly that I generally have to give up watching any battle in which they are cast. Mainly (a) though. On the other hand I think Cloud of Death makes sense under water as it could be seen as a purely mystical cloud.

I also feel Cold Bolt, Cold Blast and Slime don't feel right, as they appear to have momentum and you'd expect them to get stopped in their tracks underwater. However I can see why you've included them and I think it's probably fine.

I also agree that Falling Frosts doesn't feel right, but reckon that on balance it is probably okay and again it is useful to include for gameplay. At least there is consistency that, admittedly surprisingly, all the cold evocations work underwater.

If there were no shortage of spell slots I would be tempted to make alternative versions of Cold Bolt, Cold Blast, Slime and Falling Frosts which were underwater-only, had exactly the same effects, but had different graphics and descriptions which were more consistent with being underwater. However the lack of spell slots means this probably isn't worthwhile.

llamabeast

April 21st, 2010, 05:03 AM

Oh, I forgot to actually say my main reaction - this looks really great, thanks Burnsaber!

Burnsaber

April 21st, 2010, 06:28 AM

The ones I don't think should be included are Rust Mist, Healing Mist and Freezing Mist, and arguably Sleep Cloud, because (a) mists don't make a lot of sense under water, and (b) they are horrible spells whose graphics make my game run so slowly that I generally have to give up watching any battle in which they are cast. Mainly (a) though. On the other hand I think Cloud of Death makes sense under water as it could be seen as a purely mystical cloud.

The thing is that "Poison Cloud" is castable in UW in vanilla. If this magical cloud of poison can stay "concentrated" on a specific area for a certain time before dispersing to the enviroment, other clouds should too. Their function is pretty much the same, the only difference is the inclusion of "Mist" in the title. The thing is, I don't see why a W/E mage couldn't make a certain area of water corrosive by applicating the "Rust Mist" spell. The poor name choice of the spell is just semantics. I could easily change the name to "Rust Cloud" and it wouldn't change a thing.

I also feel Cold Bolt, Cold Blast and Slime don't feel right, as they appear to have momentum and you'd expect them to get stopped in their tracks underwater. However I can see why you've included them and I think it's probably fine.

I also agree that Falling Frosts doesn't feel right, but reckon that on balance it is probably okay and again it is useful to include for gameplay. At least there is consistency that, admittedly surprisingly, all the cold evocations work underwater.

Yeah, my logic here is the same. It's pure frost damage, a magical drop in temperature. Friction and momentum do not matter here, as the spells clearly do no physical damage. That's why "Ice Strike" is still not castable underwater.

If there were no shortage of spell slots I would be tempted to make alternative versions of Cold Bolt, Cold Blast, Slime and Falling Frosts which were underwater-only, had exactly the same effects, but had different graphics and descriptions which were more consistent with being underwater. However the lack of spell slots means this probably isn't worthwhile.

Well, I could just edit the vanilla spells to have different graphical effects. "Slime" for example could just have a explosion of goo happen at the target and we could skip the missile graphic. People would notice that for sure, but probably not care. (it would just make the battle run faster)

Sombre

April 21st, 2010, 07:50 AM

Actually falling frost is demonstrably physical in nature, since those caught in the aoe get to make a def check to avoid any damage. This is distinct from falling fire or acid rain.

Sombre

April 21st, 2010, 07:52 AM

Also while my new computer means no slowdown for me no matter how many clouds are cast in a battle, I sympathise with llama having been in that situation myself. It quickly makes battles unwatchable on older PCs.

Would it be possible to change the graphics of the cloud to make them less resource intensive? A lower density cloud effect for instance.

Burnsaber

April 21st, 2010, 01:09 PM

Actually falling frost is demonstrably physical in nature, since those caught in the aoe get to make a def check to avoid any damage. This is distinct from falling fire or acid rain.

Hmm. Kind of true I suppose. Never thought of it from that angle. It's just the fact that when a mage casts it underwater, the following effect does not really "look" or "feel" like it doesn't belong. You could say that my limit on making a spell castable is if it feels right. Sort of like if your opponent casted the spell, would you scream out "BS! He can't do that!"? If that happens, I'm not getting the effect I'm looking for.

On the other hand, water magic sort of sucking underwater just does not feel right. I think I could make "Falling Frost" not castable UW, but make "Water Strike" better and harder to cast since W1 mages can now spam "cold bolt/blast/slime" so they have something to cast. To be short, we could make "water strike" into a powerful mid-game UW water combat spell.

Also while my new computer means no slowdown for me no matter how many clouds are cast in a battle, I sympathise with llama having been in that situation myself. It quickly makes battles unwatchable on older PCs.

Would it be possible to change the graphics of the cloud to make them less resource intensive? A lower density cloud effect for instance.

I think it could in the intrests of this mod to fiddle with some spell effects (mostly the "mist" cloud spells) to make them "look right" UW. I don't think that it should be up to this mod to do something about "fire cloud" and the like. I don't want to "feature creep" this mod. Perhaps CBM or the community sprite mod?

Actually, one probably just could add the code for the new effects themselves to the bottom of their copy of CBM. It's just a graphical change, so it won't "activate" any cheating alarms or the like. Anyways, this stuff is sort of a tangent and could use its own thread if any further discussion is needed.

In other news, I had a very boring lecture today and got into thinking of one aspect of UW nations that I have forgot to tackle. Prentenders.
Underwater pretenders, to be more precise. Anyone who has played a underwater knows this problem. Most of them just suck and their problems can be directly traced to a single point in all of them.

They give water magic. Water magic on pretender is just useless for a underwater nation and you are using precious desgin points on stuff that you don't want. Must be the reason why the liches/ghost king are the most popular underwater pretenders. The root of the problem is that the water magic on these pretenders is pretty thematic and thus CBM cannot really touch the issue. See the title of this mod? Underwater GAMEPLAY improvement mod, we are not so constrained here.

Of course I want to keep stuff as thematic as possible, but I kind of think of the issue like this. If all of the *thematic* pretenders are useless just because of their thematicness, players are forced to use the unthematic ones. Since we are talking about pretenders here, what point is to them to be thematic if no one is going to see them in-game? My orginal idea was just to give them new modded pretenders, but that would be lame. I'd rather just make the already thematic options better than add new "super-pretenders" to replace the old ones.

Here is some quick brainstorming to get some discussion going:

Son of the Sea (All UW Nations) -> This guy is hopeless. He'd be perfect a pretender.. for a *land* nation. He has nothing that a UW nation could want. Just more of that "so usefull" water magic. His mere concept is unsalvageable since no other path really make sense for so "sea" focused dude. Thus his change could be most drastic. I'd rewrite his unitname and description to make him the "Lord of Storms", sort of like angry Poseidon who raises storms to devour sailors and to mess with Odysseys. The bringing units underwater could be explained as him saving some guys that strike him fancy (when he feels like it). That would allow us to change his magic to "A2W1" which would give much more of a niche. Or perhaps A1W1 "base" and give him a land shape with +1 air and his water shape could have +1 water.

Dagon (Atlantis) -> More water magic? Ugh. I'd just make him E1W1 and perhaps increase path cost to 60. One option also is to just make him magicless and decrease his base cost.

Draikana (R'lyeh + Atlantis) -> She has SC potential but those paths are pretty ugly. Lich/Ghost King is just a better choice for a SC that diversifies to death, which leaves her with no real niche. As an underwater witch, perhaps she could be W1D1N1 with perhaps somewhat higher path cost? We could also just scrap the water magic alltogether, it's not that necessary of her theme. She is a titaness cursed with a hideous form (= death magic) which allows her to breathe underwater. Don't really see where the water magic comes into play. So another choice would be to make her just have D as base and lower her path cost to 30 or 20 to make her more attractive next to a Lich.

Old Man of the Sea (Oceania)-> Yet again, more water magic. Might have some SC potential, but once again the Liches/GK are a better choice for the diversification SC niche. I'd give him some lordship over the sea winds and let him be A1W1S1 base. He'd then be a sort of rainbow/diversification/semi-SC all-rounder for pretty cheap. Oceania could appreciate the chance to get their hands on those air boosters.

Lord of the Waves (Oceania) -> Base E is nice. I guess he is sort of supposed to be more of a SC than the "Old Man of the Sea" with his higher base stats, but it's not enough to make him better compared to him. It's simple: Astral >> Earth and the man can just take earth himself with his lower pathcost. The lord could perhaps get air magic too (wind makes waves after all). One option is that he could get the "Wave Trident" as a base weapon. That would certainly be thematic.

Digress

April 21st, 2010, 09:45 PM

Do you not think falling frost might make it more difficult to get underwater against an underwater nation ?

You will now face, potentially, massed falling frost hitting everything that isn't undead.

Burnsaber

April 26th, 2010, 05:35 AM

Okay, a new version of the global mod and released the national version.

Changes in the global mod:
- UW pretenders made better
- Falling Frost no longer castable UW
- "Water Strike" was made better (number of effects 1+ so that it is a lot better on high W mages)

kianduatha

April 26th, 2010, 03:25 PM

It looks like the national version doesn't have Coral Hauberk/Basalt Armor encumbrance changes in it, if you meant to still include those.

Also the Wave Breaker on the Lord of the Waves doesn't seem to be enough of a 'fix' for him...it doesn't onebattlespell or anything, he just hits stuff a bunch of times and you really shouldn't be putting him in combat without at least a shield or something...and a Wave Breaker is two-handed.

Burnsaber

April 26th, 2010, 04:05 PM

It looks like the national version doesn't have Coral Hauberk/Basalt Armor encumbrance changes in it, if you meant to still include those.

:doh:

Forgot add the changes from my test mod to the actual version.

I'll do a quickfix tomorrow for that. As for the Lord of the Waves, I'll try to figure something out.

Burnsaber

April 27th, 2010, 12:26 PM

Okay, quickfix for the coral armor. Updated both the global and national version as I also did some more work on pretenders. Nerid, Dagon and the Great Seer of the Deeps now also benefit from changes. Didn't boost Lord of the Waves that much, just slightly boosted stats and he got a "Crown" armor. I'd like to start careful first with these pretender changes, since I'm piling this stuff on already boosted CBM pretenders.

kianduatha

April 27th, 2010, 03:01 PM

Mmm, I love the new Dagon--early game SC like a Wyrm(not quite as good of course) but has full slots for later. You have plenty of room for scales and a few magic paths to make him terrifying, too.

Incidentally the Coral Hauberk change makes Triton Troopers actually recruitable for UW combat, especially vs someone like R'lyeh. And Shark Knights are downright scary! I actually really like it, because things like Coral Guards for EA Atlantis suddenly have a niche as 19 prot badasses.

EA Oceania has this weird thing going on where it gets two different mermage recruits from its underwater castles right now. Also MA Atlantis has Atlantean Light Infantry recruited from coastal forts when presumably Reef Warriors should be able to be recruited.

Burnsaber

April 28th, 2010, 11:59 AM

EA Oceania has this weird thing going on where it gets two different mermage recruits from its underwater castles right now. Also MA Atlantis has Atlantean Light Infantry recruited from coastal forts when presumably Reef Warriors should be able to be recruited.

Hmm. I removed all traces of the coastal recruitment stuff, but this might be some sort of clash with the recruitment changes of CBM. I'll look into it. Just to be sure, you didn't have UWGIM global + national enabled together or national + CBM both enabled?

kianduatha

April 28th, 2010, 01:12 PM

I had the national one and All Ages enabled, so I just double checked with nothing but UWGIM national and it's still doing it.

By the way, are there any plans to fix Trident Knights for the mod still?

Globu

April 28th, 2010, 02:22 PM

Hey Burnsaber, a couple of things.

CBM has that typo "#selectnation31" -- you may want to fix that in your version of it.

And in regard to this:

Hmm. I removed all traces of the coastal recruitment stuff, but this might be some sort of clash with the recruitment changes of CBM.

I don't think you have -- at least not for Oceania as of v0.91. The code that does all that seems to still be in there:

-Turtle chief copy

#newmonster 2875
#copyspr 1293
#copystats 1293
#watershape 2875
#landshape 2874
#gcost 30
#end

#newmonster 2874
#copystats 1294
#copyspr 1294
#watershape 2875
#landshape 2874
#gcost 30
#end

-Turtle Chief -> Mermage
-Sea
#selectmonster 1293
#copystats 1415
#copyspr 1415
#magicskill 2 2
#magicskill 6 1
#end
-Land
#selectmonster 1294
#copystats 1416
#copyspr 1416
#magicskill 2 2
#magicskill 6 1
#custommagic 9984 100
#end

[ . . . . ]

#selectnation 48
#clearrec
#addrecunit 1056
#addrecunit 1046
#addrecunit 1291
#addrecunit 1048
#addrecunit 1041
#addrecunit 1043
#addrecunit 1045
#addrecunit 1408
#addreccom 1050
#addreccom 2875
#addreccom 1052
#addreccom 1054
#addreccom 1696
#addreccom 1293
#addreccom 1040
#addreccom 1038
#end

I had removed all this stuff in my own version of CBM long ago and forgotten about it, since I found it screws up Oceania's PD by providing it with a gimped, magic-less mermage. Now that I've been messing around and know a bit more about Dom3 modding, I realize it's probably a matter of the PD 2nd commander not being reassigned to the new unit ID or something, but as it, it does cause that problem. (See attached screenshot.)