Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail

[Burnsaber]

Thread moved. See more info about the mod here. (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=50&st=0#entry117152)

[Ballbarian]

Thanks Burnsaber! The sprites look great. :)

[Trumanator]

YES!!!!!! DLed now. Can't wait for the updates!

Small personal thing- The nation description seems to have a few odd turns of phrase and wording. I'll just copy-paste below with what I think might be better wordings. Hope you don't mind, just trying to help!

"The glorious nation of Bretonnia rose like an immortal Phoenix from the ruins of Maverni. The first King, Gilles of Bastogne, and a few of his closest knights almost singlehandedly drove out the Ermorian legionnaires with a strength and courage that had never been witnessed on the face of the earth. Since that day, Bretonnia has been constantly expanding. Their well-organized feudal system keeps unrest to a minimum and their brave knights are well known for their skill and courage. The mysterious Grail, an artefact of unknown origin, allows the bravest of them to tap directly into the power of the awakening god. Recently, the waters of the sacred lake have been stirring. Monsters are on the move, harassing peasants. Sacred visions from the mysterious Damsels call for the mustering of all brave knights of Bretonnia. The petty squabbles of the nobles over their fiefs have now ended, and the whole nation is now united and determined to fight for the cause of the awakening god."

[Burnsaber]

Thanks Burnsaber! The sprites look great. :)

Thanks for the compliment. I took extra care for quality, since being pretty is one of the main selling points of Bretonnia in WHFB. Judging from downloads, it's working here too.

I really enjoyed doing the graphics. Drawing heraldy is just so easy and fun. When I have all the time in the world, I might quickly whip up an additional "skin" for the nation with different heraldy and color schemes.


YES!!!!!! DLed now. Can't wait for the updates!


Well, to be fair, there probably won't be too many updates other than balance changes for a while. I have CPCS, Holy War & UWGEM to update, There's that metal nation too.


Hope you don't mind, just trying to help!


No I don't mind. I appreciate all help on the grammar & readability section.

Also, I'd like to remind that I'm lacking in Knight names. I have 71 at the moment, but I'd be more comfortable with 100 names. So if anyone has any suggestions for Frankish Knight names, I'm all ears. Suffixes are also good (Like "Sir Frank the Mighty").

[Stavis_L]

Also, I'd like to remind that I'm lacking in Knight names. I have 71 at the moment, but I'd be more comfortable with 100 names. So if anyone has any suggestions for Frankish Knight names, I'm all ears. Suffixes are also good (Like "Sir Frank the Mighty").


I'll just throw this out there; I assume you've already tried a Google search on "Frankish names"? Because that returns a whole slew of historical and genealogical references (not to mention baby naming lists :smirk: )

In case you haven't, here's a few likely looking ones from the first page of results:
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/french.shtml
http://www.geocities.com/mariamnephilemon/names/medievalnames/franks.html
http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/Europe-Medieval/Franks.htm
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24316

[Burnsaber]

I'll just throw this out there; I assume you've already tried a Google search on "Frankish names"? Because that returns a whole slew of historical and genealogical references (not to mention baby naming lists :smirk: )



Yeah I did (lots of those are already implemented), but apparently managed to miss the "Build your own Frankish name" thing. Apparently the adal- prefix means "noble" Then thre is a small list of second elements. Apparently -ger menas "lance". Thus Sir Adalger has a name meaning a "Noble Lance"

Thaks, I'm sure to have lots of fun with this.

[Trumanator]

[QUOTE=Burnsaber;703617]
Thus Sir Adalger has a name meaning a "Noble Lance"
/QUOTE]

Sooooo many double meanings... ;)

[analytic_kernel]

Just had a chance to fire up the mod, and it looks really good.

I did notice a couple of minor things:
(1) "outrider" not capitalized in name of Yeoman Outrider.
(2) The Duke is a magic being. Is this intentional?

[rdonj]

2) Yes. The grail knights are also magical. By drinking from the grail the knights are made into something that's not quite human anymore. This is represented by making them magic beings.


Excellent work on the mod burnsaber. And you got it out so quickly, I'm impressed. A few things. One of the commanders, dukes I believe, has in their flavor text something about attracting courtiers? But they don't :( Are you going to mod that in at some point? If not I think it would be better to remove that line because it gives the impression that they do, considering everything else works as advertised. Also I think your morale values are almost too directly based on warhammer values compared to the other warhammer mods. For example, compare Temple Guards with Grail Knights. Temple Guard have 18 morale to a Grail Knight's 14, despite Grail Knights being immune to psychology and having the same leadership. If anything I think Grail Knights should have even higher morale than temple guard on account of their special rule. I think the bretonnian knights have less morale in general than they probably should have as far as normal dominions nations go. It would also be nice if knights errant could have a somewhat lower resource cost in comparison to knights of the realm to represent their being easier to muster, but this is probably just a pipe dream (I would be in favor of them having the same gold cost as KotR). And I'm not sure how you feel about this but personally I think pegasus knights should be even more expensive (80+ gold), but also have a second hoof attack.

[Burnsaber]

analytic_kernel, thanks for the typo report, added to the fix list.

2) Yes. The grail knights are also magical. By drinking from the grail the knights are made into something that's not quite human anymore. This is represented by making them magic beings.


:up: Hit the nail right on the head there.

Gamleplay wise, it also allows me to restrict the guys who can lead them. +thematicness!


Excellent work on the mod burnsaber. And you got it out so quickly, I'm impressed.


Thanks. I had a lot of days off, because seniors started to come back from their summer vacations in my job.


One of the commanders, dukes I believe, has in their flavor text something about attracting courtiers? But they don't :( Are you going to mod that in at some point? If not I think it would be better to remove that line because it gives the impression that they do, considering everything else works as advertised.


Yeah, I need to polish up the description a bit. It's a part of the explanation why they have so high resource cost. It goes a bit like this.

1) Duke is called to war and he of course comes, but he has lands to manage and needs a Steward.
2) Courtiers start pestering the Duke, seeing a shot of finally owning some land (even for a short while, unless should something happen to the Duke....), wasting his time and resources.
3) Dukes absolutely hate this mess, but it has to be done, because they need their steward to be at least somewhat trustworthy. (knights do not really think highly of Courtiers, just recruit some and see their "nicknames").


Also I think your morale values are almost too directly based on warhammer values compared to the other warhammer mods. For example, compare Temple Guards with Grail Knights. Temple Guard have 18 morale to a Grail Knight's 14, despite Grail Knights being immune to psychology and having the same leadership. If anything I think Grail Knights should have even higher morale than temple guard on account of their special rule.


Hmm. Kinda true. I'll probably up the morale to 16, the standard effect should take care of the rest. Added to the fix list



I think the bretonnian knights have less morale in general than they probably should have as far as normal dominions nations go.


They all have the small standard bonus. Sure the effect is pretty small, but when you stack a lot of them on top of one other..

The nobles are much more courageous when in presence of other Nobles. I mean, think of the ridicule in the courts should the word spread that you fled from an battlefield! You might even lose your fief!



It would also be nice if knights errant could have a somewhat lower resource cost in comparison to knights of the realm to represent their being easier to muster, but this is probably just a pipe dream (I would be in favor of them having the same gold cost as KotR).


Well, I rather like it the way it is now. Most people might prefer KotR's, but there are times when you just absolutely need as many lances on the field as possible (like against giants, who can damage even on shield hits, negleting the skill difference).

Besides, you can summon them from the Errantry War spell, so that makes them more common too.


And I'm not sure how you feel about this but personally I think pegasus knights should be even more expensive (80+ gold), but also have a second hoof attack.

Don't know. At least in my testing I always went for Grail Knights when I had the gold. A cost increase would just make the difference just too much.

Perhaps I should lift the "cap only" status from them, but limit them otherwise (high res cost?)

[rdonj]

Hit the nail right on the head there.

Gamleplay wise, it also allows me to restrict the guys who can lead them. +thematicness!

Yeah, grail knights should NOT be lead by anything other than damsels, dukes, and grail heroes.



You're right, I wasn't factoring in the standard bonus. So you can ignore what I said about the knight's morale... I think making the knights errant cheaper on resources would be slightly more thematic, but I agree that it's not necessary, and the errantry war spell will help a lot with the thematic feel of knights errant.

Making pegasus knights not cap-only seems like a good idea. They're should be rare, but if you have to choose between them and grail knights I think they're going to be a little too rare. Using high resources to keep their numbers down is probably a necessity though to keep the player from massing them.

[Sombre]

Keep in mind that Lizardmen have a special extra dice when rolling leadership tests in warhammer. It equates to roughly +2 leadership. So the Temple Guard are virtually the hardest unit to break in warhammer.

I gave maneaters and flagellants morale 30 in dom3 because morale 30 is a special value which best represents the 'immune to psychology' rule. I think Grail Knights should probably have morale 30 also. They'll still rout when the army decides to (they can't abandon the lesser humans to die), but they'll never be chased off by fear etc.

[Burnsaber]

I gave maneaters and flagellants morale 30 in dom3 because morale 30 is a special value which best represents the 'immune to psychology' rule. I think Grail Knights should probably have morale 30 also. They'll still rout when the army decides to (they can't abandon the lesser humans to die), but they'll never be chased off by fear etc.

Huh. I was under the impression that giving unit morale 30 made it mindless. But yeah, mor 30 sounds good. Fixed the fix list

[rdonj]

50 morale is where you get mindlessness, 30 is just really stubborn.

[analytic_kernel]

2) Yes. The grail knights are also magical. By drinking from the grail the knights are made into something that's not quite human anymore. This is represented by making them magic beings.

:up: Hit the nail right on the head there.
Gamleplay wise, it also allows me to restrict the guys who can lead them. +thematicness!


Fair enough. I had actually overlooked the fact that Grail Knights are also magic beings, and so I thought the tag on the Duke was a copy-and-paste-related artifact. My discomfort with the tag was related to the fact that they could take double damage from weapons with #dt_magic. But, I guess if they're "not quite human", then it's a moot point.

[Sombre]

Burn - do you still want me to go through the dm and smooth the descriptive text out a bit?

It would be easiest if I could do it in the dm and then just pass it to you.

[Burnsaber]

My discomfort with the tag was related to the fact that they could take double damage from weapons with #dt_magic. But, I guess if they're "not quite human", then it's a moot point.



Yeah, the vulnerability to anti-magic gear was also intented feature. Dukes and Grail Knights are very strong for national, non-capital recruits, they need some sort of 'achilles heel' for opponent to abuse. If you look at their stats, you'll notice that there is no way those guys could be human (all stats +14!), so it also explains their superhuman abilities.

Burn - do you still want me to go through the dm and smooth the descriptive text out a bit?

It would be easiest if I could do it in the dm and then just pass it to you.

If you have the time, it would be nice. I'm a bit baffled by the Duke description for example, how could I make it more clear that the obscene resource cost is actually based on the Steward problem?

I'm also not too sure if I managed to explain the Feudal hierarchy clearly enough. Peasants -> KotR's -> Lords -> Dukes -> King. Or do I even really need to hammer it through?

[Humakty]

Very nice sprites, congrats !

I spotted both heroic weapons were length 0, isn't it supposed to be 2 for the sword and 4 for the lance ? I'm also wondering why breton lances deal only 8 damage, as opposed to the 16 damage of the regular lance.

In the fluff, aren't the peasants using hereditary longbows inspired from their elven neighbours's ones ? But maybe I'm mistaken on this one.

I find the ressource cost really high for a cap only sacred (grail knights). Overall their cavalry seems like nothing to write home about (more so compared to cbm varieties), I much prefer marignon/man/ulm one.

Playing them, the only easy solution seems to be going heavy on the thugs, or prod 3.

[Sombre]

Er, their cavalry absolutely ruins marig or ulm's cavalry.

[Humakty]

*some clicks later,having understood the lance trick*(and compared vanilla resource costs !) : huh, well, I guess the half an hour editing limit will shout out loud to the world how much of a "insert favorite" I am. And I don't know for the fluff, but maybe longbows aren't required...

And really the graphics are cOOl !

[Burnsaber]

I spotted both heroic weapons were length 0, isn't it supposed to be 2 for the sword and 4 for the lance ?

Yeah, you're right. Will be fixed for the next version.


I'm also wondering why breton lances deal only 8 damage, as opposed to the 16 damage of the regular lance.


The Breton Heavy Lance allows for strenght, unlike normal lance. So it's basically 18-20 damage (depending on the knight in question) and allows the damage to be boosted by Earth Might/ Virtue of Nobility


In the fluff, aren't the peasants using hereditary longbows inspired from their elven neighbours's ones ? But maybe I'm mistaken on this one.


Yeah, the Bowmen use longbows in WRFB, but it doesn't translate well to dominions 3. No matter how weak I make them, longbows are just that awesome that they'd overshadow the Knights by a wide margin. Bretonnia is a nation of Knights, not of peasant bowmen hiding behind yeomen arrow cathers.


I find the ressource cost really high for a cap only sacred (grail knights).


Well, they deserve it. Defense 18 + prot 20 + awe makes them practically invincible to regular troops. 2 of them with some peasant bowmen can easily conquer most independent provinces. Without bless. Don't forget the Grail Virtues, too. And the unrest reduction.


Overall their cavalry seems like nothing to write home about (more so compared to cbm varieties), I much prefer marignon/man/ulm one.


It' pretty easy to miss, but the Knights have "Destrier Hoof" that's basically boosted version of CBM "Warhorse Hoof". Also even Knight Errants boast armor equal to Knights of the Chalice/MA Man Knights. The jump from prot 17 to 20 is huge, making sure that most human spears can't afflict your precious knights even with lucky rolls. It also makes them suprisingly resilient to crossbows.

[rdonj]

I am wondering, does anyone else feel like footed knights errant/KotR are just overdressed chaff? Maybe it's just trying to use them according to your rules of conduct vs the AI, but they seem to be basically equivalent to yeomen in staying power, and yeomen do more damage so are arguably more useful. With their encumbrance and lack of killing power it's very easy to wear them down. So I wonder how possible it would be for them to be equipped with a two handed weapon instead. This would give them more of a niche in the army, and I think be thematically justifiable. Alternatively, could I tempt you into giving them tower shields? It wouldn't really solve their problem, but I think it makes sense to arm them differently when on foot to their armament on horseback.

[Burnsaber]

I am wondering, does anyone else feel like footed knights errant/KotR are just overdressed chaff? Maybe it's just trying to use them according to your rules of conduct vs the AI, but they seem to be basically equivalent to yeomen in staying power, and yeomen do more damage so are arguably more useful. With their encumbrance and lack of killing power it's very easy to wear them down. So I wonder how possible it would be for them to be equipped with a two handed weapon instead. This would give them more of a niche in the army, and I think be thematically justifiable. Alternatively, could I tempt you into giving them tower shields? It wouldn't really solve their problem, but I think it makes sense to arm them differently when on foot to their armament on horseback.

Yeah, footed Knights aren't even in WRFP roster, I just needed some noble troops that weren't mounted to balance the summons of the Knight Commanders.

I'll probably give them stronger physical stats than rest of the Knights. Perhaps even encumberance 2. Different equipment isn't out of the question either, but it would require me to new graphics and remove the heraldic shields.

One option would be to give them bigger standard (the peasants can relate better to footed knights).

[Noble713]

Tried running the mod with other Warhammer mods and Dom3 kept crashing. Turns out Bretonnia shares several #newsites with Chaos Undivided 0.55:

790 and 791

Chaos also uses 792 and 793.

[Burnsaber]

Tried running the mod with other Warhammer mods and Dom3 kept crashing. Turns out Bretonnia shares several #newsites with Chaos Undivided 0.55:

790 and 791

Chaos also uses 792 and 793.

*slams forehead*

Right, forgot to check against Chaos. Added to fix list

[Trumanator]

Not sure where to go with this, but its a bit difficult to use the Dukes as PD raiding thugs when its so difficult to bless them. Thematically I suppose they can't have holy magic, but if they can only be maximized in battle that kind of hurts. The main issue is that its difficult to minimize their enc problem when they can neither bless themselves nor wear boots of the messenger.

[Burnsaber]

Not sure where to go with this, but its a bit difficult to use the Dukes as PD raiding thugs when its so difficult to bless them. Thematically I suppose they can't have holy magic, but if they can only be maximized in battle that kind of hurts. The main issue is that its difficult to minimize their enc problem when they can neither bless themselves nor wear boots of the messenger.


At the start of development, Dukes blessed themselves at the start of battle, but I changed it for thematic/gameplay reasons. Dukes are important men, leaders of armies and lords of huge fiefs. The thought of them going to battlefield solo is sort of proposterous. Also they were a bit too good with auto-bless at 200 gold (I really don't want to make them more expensive, it will only make them look worse when compared against Maidens). 200 gold might be a tad too cheap for a unit that can raid pd with minimal equipment (vine shield + frost brand is usually enough).

But you are right about that it might be annoying, forcing you to accompany them with maidens or indy priests. I'll have to ponder on this, I might make them auto-bless again (with a slight gold cost increase), just to reduce the micro.

Also, for any encumberance problems, see Girdle of Might. It's double good for Grail Heroes, since it also boosts their strenght, making the "Heroic Lance" even more heroic (one-shotting elephants is fun!).

[Burnsaber]

OK, I'm going to update bretonnia next, it might take a while since I want to make the "King" hero for this update and I have big plans for his graphic, it will take time to make right.

But anyways, if anyone has a beef with the nation, now would be good time to speak up so that I can fix it for the next update. Below is the list of things I'm already determined to change.


- "outrider" not capitalized in name of Yeoman Outrider.
- morale boost for Grail Knights to 30
- remove autosummons from noble knight commanders
- KotR to hp 12 to bring "in line" with MA Mar/man knights
- add lenght to "Heroic" weapons
- make compactible with the chaos mod
- better stats for footed knights
- Trumanators nation description
- Pegasus knights to recruit everywhere, with slight increse inresource cos

[Ruefiesty]

I'm looking forward to the update!
I can't wait for the King

[Burnsaber]

Update is on the works, here is the King Graphic as a teaser, I'm also curious about what you people think about the color scheme. I went with purple, because that is the colour of royalty.

http://xs942.xs.to/xs942/09354/bretonnian_king_1592.png

For his gameplay stats, we'll, let's just say that he will the most wanted non-magic hero in all of dom3-verse.

[rdonj]

Definitely curious to see what he'll be like! One question though, shouldn't his banner and shield be purple as well?

[Sombre]

I think currently the rider is a bit too eclipsed by the griffon/shield.

[Burnsaber]

Definitely curious to see what he'll be like! One question though, shouldn't his banner and shield be purple as well?

Doesn't work, because then the purple and gold shield would "drown" into the purple and gold barding.

I think currently the rider is a bit too eclipsed by the griffon/shield.

Hmm. Looking at it from an new angle, I can see your point. I lowered his shield down and made it a bit less shiny. Changed pic below with a new hero, The Black Knight.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/29/bretonnianking1.png

[Ruefiesty]

Hmm. Looking at it from an new angle, I can see your point. I lowered his shield down and made it a bit less shiny. Changed pic below with a new hero, The Black Knight.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/29/bretonnianking1.png

I am liking the Black Knight he's looking good. I think the thigh is a bit big but the angle your pushing it at is kinda a hard one to adjust. On a second thought with the King the shield I would think would be down just one more pixel but its much better with it dropped as you've done. Very impressed.

[Trumanator]

Do you think that you could drop the foot knights' enc a bit perhaps? Or at least give them some two handed weapons, since as rdonj has posted already, there is essentially no reason to recruit them instead of Yeoman or mounted knights.

[Burnsaber]

Do you think that you could drop the foot knights' enc a bit perhaps? Or at least give them some two handed weapons, since as rdonj has posted already, there is essentially no reason to recruit them instead of Yeoman or mounted knights.

Yeah, I'm going to give them -1 Enc and +1 Str in the next update. If they still suck after that, I'll probably give them 2-handed weapons or reduce their encumberance further by a custom "Wooden Kite Shield" shield with only 1 encumberance, but lower stats all around)

[Trumanator]

On the plus side, at least Brettonia is in a good position to cast relief.

[Burnsaber]

OK, mod updated.

List of changes from 0.6 to 0.8


- Improved graphic for Pegasus Knights and Grail Knights
- 2 new heroes, The King and The Black Knight
- Removed autosummons, but powered other summons.
- Morale boosted for Grail Knights to 30
- KotR to hp 12 to bring "in line" with MA Mar/man knights
- Better stats for footed knights (+1 str, -1 enc)
- Added lenght to "Heroic" weapons
- Made Questing Knights into no-leaders
- Pegasus knights to recruit everywhere, with slight increse in resource cost.
- Made compactible with the chaos mod
- Added Trumanator's fixed nation description
- More Knight names (104 different names now)
- Improved grammar in descriptions
- Footed KotR got castledef and patrolbonus
- Hounour Guard of Knight Commanders changed for thematic reasons. Lord gets now 1 mounted KoTR. Marquis and Duke get 2 Mounted KoTR's. Gold costs raised to compensate.
- Starting Commander changed to Lord.


I'm intending to put this mod to a MP game soon, so I'm especially intrested in toughts and suggestions on that front.

[Calchet]

Seems like a neat mod, and I'll be sure to use it alongside the other Warhammer nations.

Simply looking at the graphics, I find most of the units look very good - especially most of the the mounted ones, where I think you've done a wonderful job.
That said, I feel the king looks a bit... bland, compared to his tabletop incarnation, as well as the other units - even the knights errant look flashier to me.

I imagine it's likely the default dom3 Gryphon's fault, coupled with the single-colour heraldry - but, rather than merely complaining, I figured I'd try to translate the tabletop model into a sprite, to see how that went, and I'm quite satisfied with the result. In addition to using it for my own pleasure, I figure I might as well share it with the rest of you, as well as giving Burnsaber the option of putting it in the mod, should he desire. The sprite itself is in the public domain and may be used however you desire.

[Burnsaber]

I must admit, that griffon looks absolutely wonderful. I tried to draw my own griffon, but it sucked pretty hard, so I defaulted to the Dom3 one. Do you mind if use a edited version of your King in the next update?

[Radio_Star]

You might look at changing up the battle auto-summons, especially on the Marquis. I was able to consistently get almost 30 provinces by the end of year one without an awake pretender in addition to making at least 3+ additional forts. Standard tactic was a small number of supporting units (10-15 or so cheap chaff) slightly back from 2 Marquis who were pushed all the way forward set to hold a turn, attack. It's a cheap enough force to facilitate early castle spam (and thus even more Marquis) while still expanding at breakneck speeds. I'd suggest switching the battle summon to something more along the lines of 1 knight and 3-5 chaff troopers, though even this may allow the same tactic.






Note: Tests run on milkshake, misfortune-3 order-3 pretender. Poorest result was 23 provinces and 3 forts(inc. start) with 1 building by the end of year one. Best result was 32 provinces and 4 forts with 3 building. Average was 27 provinces and 3 forts with 3 building. All builds did 0 research in year one.

[Trumanator]

Far easier to simply recruit a duke every turn. He'll solo most provinces easily. However, I prefer to recruit 2 grail knights and a maiden every turn except the first, which is a duke. Every other turn I send out 4 knights and a maiden. That way, my expansion is good, but I still get a little research done. Crazy expansion w/no research is just asking for a ganking.

[Radio_Star]

Far easier to simply recruit a duke every turn. He'll solo most provinces easily. However, I prefer to recruit 2 grail knights and a maiden every turn except the first, which is a duke. Every other turn I send out 4 knights and a maiden. That way, my expansion is good, but I still get a little research done. Crazy expansion w/no research is just asking for a ganking.

I ran some tests with Dukes to similar results, but preferred the chaff generation on Marquis for utility. It's a trade either way, but in both cases the battle summons should be toned down. You can take your foot off of the gas in your initial expansion to recruit some mages and ramp up the research, but Bretonnia's in a great position to rapidly make up an early research deficit.

[Trumanator]

Dukes have chaff generation too, and the chaff is better in any case. Re: the battle summons though, at least in the Duke's case i'm not sure how much of a difference it makes. Plus, even if Bretonnia is going to kick *** in the early game, they have a definite lack of late game power.

[Burnsaber]

Alrighty, quick balance update due to the very scary and unintented Hinnom (pre-fix) level expansion! Many thanks for the Radio Star for the report. Now the Lord, Marquis and Duke all have a honour guard of 1 mounted KoTR. I dropped gold costs slightly to compensate.

In my testing with the v0.81, Radio Star's expansion strat still works, but the expansion parties have to stop to summon more chaff after 2-3 provinces or put the Marquis at an considerable risk (basically you either have to put the Marquis or the chaff in the harm's way). Also, sometimes the expansion party is utterly humiliated when the honour guard KoTR's fall to lucky hits. Ichtyids and their nets suck, by the way.

As for the late game, you should remember that this nation is no MA man. You have solid shot an magic access of A4W4N4E2S2 which allows for a lot of nasty stuff. The problem is just how to capitalize strong magic with sucky research.

[rdonj]

Haha, I've been immortalized in the mod. Awesome :D

[Burnsaber]

Haha, I've been immortalized in the mod. Awesome :D

Yeah, I wanted to honour my supporters in some other way than mentioning name in the .readme file. I take it that you don't mind? Hopefully Sir Rond of R'donj didn't die a horrible death on the battlefield :D.

[rdonj]

Nope, I don't mind :). I will have to start thugging out all the ronds I find. So far I haven't lost any... I'll have to make sure their deaths are all glorious.

[Radio_Star]

After mulling over the nation a bit, the lack of astral (or, more precisely, astral counters) would probably be the death of Bretonnia.

Even though you get a neat little MR booster for your sacreds, the arcane bolts, oppositions, arcane dominations and, more to the point, mind hunts and magic duels would be absolutely brutal.

[Burnsaber]

After mulling over the nation a bit, the lack of astral (or, more precisely, astral counters) would probably be the death of Bretonnia.

Even though you get a neat little MR booster for your sacreds, the arcane bolts, oppositions, arcane dominations and, more to the point, mind hunts and magic duels would be absolutely brutal.

Yeah, your astral access is pretty minor (not counting heroes, both mage heroes have S3), but enough to feeblemind Mind Hunters with some S1 Grail Maidens.

Arcane Bolts and oppositions are painful, but are not impossible to counter, you just need decoys with high size and hp to make the enemy mages target them over your Grail Knights. Elementals are good (Bottle of Living Water is good for this purpose), as are Crushers, Wooden Constructs, Fall Bears and Summer Lions. All have high size(over 3) and have more hp that Grail Knights, Dukes, Grail Heroes or Damsels.

As for the battlefield wide "screw magic units" counters, things are a bit more difficult. Astral bless helps, as does casting antimagic or the Virtue of Purity. What I'd suggest is to just bench the magical units if the opponent shows astral mages able to casts those high S spells. You can thug out Marquis instead of Dukes and just use hordes of Errants instead of Grail Knights. Just remember to accomapnay the army with some Damsels equipped with mr boost items. With their high mr, they will be nearly immune to the "negates-easily" BF spells, but their presence will make the opponent cast those scripted BF spells, essentially wasting him mage turns, fatigue and gems.

But you are right, one of the main weaknessess of Bretonnia is its predictability. You can't just focus on Dukes or Grail Knights and expect the opponent to roll over, mix it up a little. This is just one reason why astral pretender is good for Breton.

[Joelz]

Just thought to drop by and inform you that Bretonnia conflicts with the Ogre Kingdom mod.

When running both mods simultaneously the "Destrier hoof" is replaced by "Sky giant Bone" and the "The Black Knight" has his weapon set to "Heavy Chains".
Also most of the Bretonnian males have more ogre like names like "Stump Bonebelly" or "Choppa Balfug" etc.

Otherwise nothing bad to say about the mods. Keep up the good work :D

[Burnsaber]

Just thought to drop by and inform you that Bretonnia conflicts with the Ogre Kingdom mod.

When running both mods simultaneously the "Destrier hoof" is replaced by "Sky giant Bone" and the "The Black Knight" has his weapon set to "Heavy Chains".
Also most of the Bretonnian males have more ogre like names like "Stump Bonebelly" or "Choppa Balfug" etc.

Otherwise nothing bad to say about the mods. Keep up the good work :D

Brainfart on my part about the weapons, forgot to check for clashes after adding new weapons for the heroes.

As for the names, I can't believe that Sombre too got the idea of overwriting Bogarus names for his nation! Damn that man and his juicy brainpower! And I was thinking that I'd be especially clever.

I'll upload a fixed version soon.

[Burnsaber]

Fixed version uploaded.

[Radio_Star]

Er. Downloaded fix and still got the sky giant bone. Deleted the mod and reinstalled from .82.zip and still got the error.

Edit: I also get a no such spell crash bug if I load CBM after Bretonnia. Is it intended to be CBM compatible?

[llamabeast]

I also got the CBM error. It seems to depend on the load order.

I've been playing with this mod a lot this weekend and enjoying it very much. Thanks, Burnsaber.

I think the "Summon allies" and bodyguards of the different commanders are a bit messed up - or, in any case, they certainly don't match the descriptions.

[Radio_Star]

OK, mod updated.

List of changes from 0.6 to 0.8


- Removed autosummons, but powered other summons.


I'm intending to put this mod to a MP game soon, so I'm especially intrested in toughts and suggestions on that front.

Autosummons are still present, albeit at (I think) a reduced frequency. Is this WAD?

[Burnsaber]

Er. Downloaded fix and still got the sky giant bone. Deleted the mod and reinstalled from .82.zip and still got the error.


Hmm. when taking a closer look, it seems that Sombre has forgotten to update the "this mod takes following slots" summary in the Ogre .dm file(which I was using as a reference point for clash avoiding). But when I actually took a look at the code, it seems the actual weapon numbers roach deep in to Brettonnia territory. :eek:

I'll probably have to renumber all weapons, and it will take some time. I can promise to whip something up for the next weekend. But I have some good news. Today I had a spare hour or so and got inspired, so I made a pic for Green Knight (I actually got so into drawing him that I almost was late from work!), I might be able to wiggle him in to the next update. The redrawn King will likely have to wait, thought.


Edit: I also get a no such spell crash bug if I load CBM after Bretonnia. Is it intended to be CBM compatible?

Yeah, of course. The error is probably cause of the tinkering I did with Bogarus national spells to give the commanders battlesummons. You just need to load CBM first. I added a warning about that in the first post.



I've been playing with this mod a lot this weekend and enjoying it very much. Thanks, Burnsaber.

I think the "Summon allies" and bodyguards of the different commanders are a bit messed up - or, in any case, they certainly don't match the descriptions.

Yeah, sorry, They've been under a *lot* of changes lately, the descriptions probably are laggin behind a bit. I also could make it a bit more clear which parts hint at domsummons.



Autosummons are still present, albeit at (I think) a reduced frequency. Is this WAD?

Yeah, WAD, they're domsummons. You get those guys when in high dominion (a'k'a when you have high control over the population in a province). This will be made more clearer in the descriptions in the next version.

[Radio_Star]

Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.:doh:

Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.

First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.

I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.

As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description. The odds of you taking the enchantress awake are pretty small, but whether you take her dormant or imprisoned will depend on your ...



Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia. Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3. Now the hard stuff! In ascending order of debateability (it's a word because I say so, darn it):



Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.

Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....



Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.

The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....



Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.

What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?

The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.

Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.

How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.

Granted, this is all pretty theoretical. If you think the answer is to gather up some knights and lay the above buffs on them, go prod. 3.



Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless. Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.

Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.

Marquis vs Lords. Thugwise, they're pretty comparable. They've got the same bodyguard and the stat difference isn't enormous. The chaff generation on a Marquis is infinitely superior. Basic men at arms are just awful. Paying 50% more per commander can add up, but there's also the opportunity cost since you can only snag one per turn. If you're going prod. 3 and using Marquis and Lords more for thuggery than chaff generation, Lords are the way to go. You will of course want Marquis if you're shorting prod. and using commanders to generate troops. All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.

Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.



Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things? Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy? Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?

Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!

[Burnsaber]

Thanks very much, Radio Star, I'm honored.

Your timing couldn't have been any better, I was just to about upload a new version when I read your stragedy post and decided to sneak in some balance changes.

I'll give a more in-depth response tomorrow. In the mean time, enjoy the new version:

Changes from 0.82 to 0.83


- Now combactible with Ogre Kingdoms (no, really, it is!)
- Description fixes
- Added a new spell to call forth the Green Knight
- Mounted KoTR's a bit more expensive, Mounted Errant is now a bit cheaper
- Footed KotR slightly cheaper
- Decreased resource cost for Halberdiers
- Lady of the Lake is now S1W1 instead of N1W1A1

[Burnsaber]

Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.:doh:


Your facepalm was in vain, for you were not the who made the error. I added that after reading your post about the issue. So unless you can see into the future, you shouldn't worry about it.


Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.


I hope that we can get some discussion going. I'm not sure how to play Bretonnia myself.


First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.


Yeah I agree about that Earth bless, you also need hammers for the thugging you're going to do. But about taking E9? I'm not so sure about that. Your guys already have great prot, and boosting strenghts only works for a point. No matter how much prot you have the word "AN" will spell doom for you. E9 is an expensive bless and I'm not sure if you get the full bang for your buck here.


I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.


Yeah, you need astral and earth. Trusting to get lucky randoms with Damsels isn't that great stragedy.


As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description.


fixed in 0.83, thanks for reporting.


Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia.


Amen to that brother. Only scale I've taken everytime is Order.


Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3.


Not sure I agree on misfortune 3, that's some serious bad mojo right there. Your fortune teller action isn't that good, I would take it as a minor bonus, not as an stragedy. T'ien C'hi this nation ain't. Perhaps for SP, since you can restart if your lab/temple burns on turn 2 or 3 (especially crippling for Breton), but for MPI never go over misfortune 2 and even then the constant barbarian and knight attacks are annoying.


Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.


Agreed, I often take death 1 or 2 with Breton, since your mages are quite young. But I can see the allure of the Growth scale considering your (quite clever) taxing stragedy. It's all good thought, since it's quite thematic. Bretonnian Knights are known for their courage and skill, not for their empathy towards the peasants.



Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....

Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.

The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....


Magic is a bit of no-brainer (and thematic, Bretonnia is the land of magical knights and monsters after all). I can't see a situation where you'd need 120 points so bad that you'd go from +1 research to -1. Not with your 220gp damsels.


Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.


Grail Knights are support troops, not a stragedy in themselves (although they work well for expansion). A force composed of just Grail Knights, although powerful, is easily counterable. But when you mix them up with peasants and regular knights, setting the Grail Knights at the back and buffing them up with flight, they show their true might. They take the heat off from your frontline troops and now-lanceless knights and can occansionally stumble and kill something important in the backlines while flying around.



What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?

The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.

Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.

How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.


The way to kill things with breton recruitables is Lances. But since they are one-shot only, you need to aim them. Flight is great for sparkling your knights around the battlefield to bypass your opponents frontline lance-suckers. Since Breton lances allow for str damage, casting earth might (with a gem) will make the knights doubly scary. The way for knights to keep killing troops after the lance strike is exhausted is to outfatigue the enemy. With two attacks per guy,the knights should be able to score more critical hits on average. Spells like Sleep, Dessication, Numbness, Stellar Cascades and Orb Lighting spam allows you to fatigue the enemy quickly.

But taking low or prot and drowning your foes in men-at-arms freespanwn, supported by relief and casters, sounds also intresting. If you have a high E god, he could support this strat by casting "Curse of Stones", allowing your men-at-arms to actually kill something though critical hits. Doesn't Quaqmire increase encumberance too? Sleep Clouds from high N damsels could also exhaust the opposing troops.

But I think the question isn't about either-or. You can have both Knights and men-at-arms to use their abilities to the fullest. The chaff take the hits while the Knights kill stuff.


Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless.


The KoTR's (both footed and mounted) decrease unrest by 1 point each point in the province where they are. So they can theoretically actually make you money.


Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.


in 0.83 I made the Errants slightly cheper and KotR's slight more expensive. The increase and decrease was just 2 gold but makes the gold difference larger. Knight Errants are perfect for expansion and other situations where you just need lances, NOW. They're also good to wield against giant nations, since the Giants can damage your knights on shield hits, basically reducing your def to 10 something. Losing a Errantas is a lot more painless than losing a KotR.


Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.


Just a warning, this strat won't likely work in MP. High province count, low army count, high income and no research in graph will make you an absolutely uningnoreable rush target.


All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.


Unfotunately you can only mod the summons in instances of 1,2 or 5.


Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.


I reduced their res cost in 0.83, they now cost 10 resources.


Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things?


There is one way to kill things that does not necessarily take any killing at all. Make the enemy flee into nothingness, abusing their lack of courage and honor to decimate them. Your remote attacks and flying Grail thugs can easily take all retreat routes froman advancing army. Then use a force of N2 or higher maidens and Damsels to spam Panic and forcing them to retreat, into your provinces :D


Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy?


Certainly, I could see this working. See the castle stragedy quide for LA Man in the main thread, intrestring read.


Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?


Tough one. It's getting quite late here, so I can't ponder on this further. Perhaps some one else has some ideas?


Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!

Yeah, we need more discussion. just because I made the mod doens't mean that I have all (or even the best anwsers) to stragedy questions.

[Sombre]

Strategy. Sorry.

[Burnsaber]

Strategy. Sorry.

Don't be sorry, for all is fair in love and grammar. The more I humiliate myself with my poor spelling, the more inclined I will be to take extra precautions to avoid it.

So let's talk strategy folks.

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, so i've decided to take a look at this. I'm going to be posting piecemeal simply because its easier to comment and not have ginormous posts.

So lets start with a first blush glance at pretender strategies.

There's absolutely no need for an awake SC. Your researchers are expensive though, so early research would be good. Your sacreds could benefit from a rainbow bless or some particular deep blesses (E9 or F9 in particular). Rainbow for magic diversity (particular good E, S, and any D or F) is also a possibility.

So, we're looking at a single deep bless with good scales, or a rainbow with good scales, or an awake researcher or rainbow.

Recommended Chasses:
Female Titan - great research chassis, probably even better than the Great Sage for pure research. Eventual light SC capability.

Great Sage - researcher + rainbow (diversity/bless). Native access to S and F (CBM) a plus - F gives you fire arrows for those abundant archers.

Lady of the Lake - 100% heal afflictions means you don't need to forge the chalice for tartarians. Take her with E4N4D2 at a minimum (E for forging, N4D2 to summon Lamia Queens for a good Tart caster). S4 also recommended. Imprisoned its plausible to get decent scales and a good rainbow bless.

Enchantress - 1 pearl/turn is great. Pretty good researcher + rainbow, and great for solidifying some stronger E + S.

Mother of Rivers - A niche choice - take her awake with a few more points in water (W4 bless probably) and good scales for great early thugs due to abundant water income. (6w/trn is pretty amazing). More than W6 not recommended.

Cyclops - Great E9 bless chassis. Probably imprisoned for scales since you don't need the awake SC.

Phoenix - Good F9 bless chassis and can cast flaming arrows for you. Also has good air to get you started on air boosters (rather than waiting for an A4 on randoms).

Mother of Springs - Good pure scales choice, needs a little dom/magic improvement
Sacred Fountain - Good pure scales choice, doesn't need any other points spent on it.

Scales:
O3 - mandatory. Seriously.

Production - no less than 0 (otherwise you'll have a hard time affording your great commander choices at the start). Up to 3 recommended.

Temperature - with access to water magic there's nothing wrong with cold scales. Recommend C1 or C3 as optimal.

Growth/Death - cash + cash growth? What's not to love. Death scales are acceptable if you need the points, but its sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Luck/Misfortune - You have fortune tellers, and probably need points, so Mf2 seems logical, and Mf3 might even be survivable.

Magic - Drain 2 is acceptable (your researchers are not especially efficient, but they aren't going to get killed by it). Magic is of course better, if you can find the points.

Dominion:
Cheap temples + hard to mass sacreds = low dominion is ok. Dom 4 is probably playable, Dom 5 is certainly acceptable, and more than Dom 6 is overkill.

Some builds:
The Rainbow Blesser:
Lady of the Lake, Imprisoned, Dom5 F4W4E4S4D2N4 O3Pr3C1Mf3Dr2. Options - adjust Cold/Mf/Dr to taste, you just need 6 negative scales here. Rainbow bless mostly for thugs, but also benefits use of sacreds for great early expansion and as parts of larger armies later. Also great for Tartarians later.

Research Monkey:
Female Titan, awake, Dom4 S5N3 O3Pr3C3Gr2Mf2Mg1. Options - sack growth scales to remove misfortune (imho, not worth it to improve temperature because +3% income +pop growth >> -5% income in the not-too-long term). 36RP/trn with great scales (incl +1 for Mg1).

Pure Scales:
Fountain, imprisoned, Dom4 S3 O3Pr3Gr3Lk3Mg3. Options - get some more astral by giving up Mg3 (Mg1 is perfectly good) or taking some cold scales. C1 is practically free, and C3 is still a pretty good deal.

Big Bless:
Cyclops, imprisoned, Dom4 E9 O3Pr3C3Gr3Mg1. Options - Drop 2 scales for E10 and Dom5, which is great for your mages as a bless, and not a terrible upgrade for your knights. Also, more dominion. Probably not better enough to make it worthwhile.

Turbo-Bless - for those people who salivate at the idea of excessively blessed units.
Enchantress Imprisoned Dom5 F9A1E9S2 O3C3Mf2Dr2 - Options: Can take Pr scales in return for Death scales. Has many flaws, but what do you want from something as crazy as an F9E9 bless. (Note, the druid chassis will work at the same price, but with N2 instead of S2, no A1, and no s/trn.)

Geez, that was a ginormous post anyway. Whoops...

[Trumanator]

Honestly, I think an F bless is actually fairly suboptimal, particularly the full 9 bless. If you need magic weapons you can use the grail heroes. If you want a big bless, E9 N? seems like the best option to me. 1 regen might seem small, but when you combine it with the awe and 20+ prot, it increases survivability significantly, and really cuts down on the afflictions. Also, I really hate to go imprisoned if you took E on your pretender, since you're going to want hammers badly for mass thuggery.

Note- Just because the LotL has 100 heal doesn't mean she can heal tarts. Only the chalice and GoH can do that, as they're undead.

[Squirrelloid]

Note- Just because the LotL has 100 heal doesn't mean she can heal tarts. Only the chalice and GoH can do that, as they're undead.

Really? I'm not doubting you, but how is GoH healing them any more thematic than someone with the healer skill? Gifting health to the undead? Really?

Also, the Lady of the Lake's flavor text says she *has* the chalice. She should certainly work like she does or the text should be changed.

[Squirrelloid]

So, the grail hero theory wasn't working especially well for me for a couple of reasons. (1) Grail heroes success rates weren't as stellar as i hoped. I took crippling injuries occasionally to really silly things, and lost to indies i probably shouldn't have. I'll try it again, but thus far not impressed by them naked. (2) It eats the commander buy from the capitol every turn until you get a new fortress up. Seriously uncool.

Works really well for expansion: ~20 archers + ~equal numbers of men at arms kills many independents surprisingly well, especially if you do something really weird like put your lord right behind your troops (yeah, not way at the back, weird) and use his banner to reinforce morale (or just have a KotR or two around). And your casualties tend to be purely men at arms, which a lord can replace, so you can field supply at least your first army. And yes, that's right, your starting army + a handful of archers can expand. Crazy.

After that you're going to want to use indie commanders as your troops leader, because the goal here is to free up that valuable commander buy in your capitol for researchers. Especially that juicy 10RP cap-only mage that you want to start buying every turn ASAP. When those indie commanders burn out their army's expansion pretender, they should build a fortress. *Now* you have somewhere to recruit those Bretonnian Lords and Grail Heroes and whatnot you want.

"I still can't use all my cash" - buy Grail Knights (you have some sort of bless, right?), KotR (and sprinkle them around - if Burnsaber is right, and i haven't checked - every 2 let you increase the tax level 1 step with no unrest! Sold!) Also, it would be useful to know if they provide the benefit the turn you buy them, because that way you could do clever things like instantly bump your capitol taxes to 110% without patrolling, and just buy 2 KotR.

Edit: I am a little disappointed the archers don't have longbows. I mean, their precision sucks, and it should, but in WH they have longbows.

[Trumanator]

I'm not really buying into the Grail Hero expansion either, I'm just saying that in the extremely rare circumstances you need magic weapons, they can do the job 90% of the time. Everything else, I pretty much agree with you, though I hadn't thought of sprinkling Kotr around to up income.

As far as GoH and tarts go, well, thematic or not thats the mechanic, and I don't _think_ you can mod the LotL to actually have the chalice, however cool that would be.

[Squirrelloid]

wow, that's quite the typo i made, and i can't understand how i did that.

In: "When those indie commanders burn out their army's expansion pretender", replace 'pretender' with 'potential'. Oops.

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, the magnitude of their unrest reduction seems to be different than what burnsaber is advocating. Taxing at 120% with ~10 KotR present (and no patrolling) i'm at a steady state 2 unrest. Based on burnsaber's statement, 4 should be able to keep 120% taxation at 0 unrest.

[Radio_Star]

What settings are you using for expansion tests with the Heroes?

[Squirrelloid]

Indies 5? I try not to touch defaults except for renaming.

[rdonj]

I plan on commenting some day, but have not had much time for testing lately :( Between overlords and tourmaline I am using up a lot of brainpower these days. In fact I have had time for nothing but those two games today. And I am still playing around with my first bretonnia game, since I have this compulsion to not stop playing until I've gotten it "finished". My victory is assured, but there are still things I want to try out.

Then I will actually get to play around with optimum strategies, build orders, and expansion phases.

[Radio_Star]

On indies 5 I've been able to get 30+ spread out provinces with heroes in one year and I can reliably bring down somewhere in the low 20s with a more centered and balanced expansion strat. Part of the key is probably the first fort. First fort MUST start at turn 3 at the latest.

[Burnsaber]

Thanks for the all of you for contributions to the discussion. It's a shame that I don't have the time to give appropiate respond to each point, but I'll try to pick up the things I need to address.

About the pretenders in general, I'd highly recomment taking some death if your pretender has nature magic. Lamia Quuens are perfect for this nation to diverse into death and minor blood magic.


Edit: I am a little disappointed the archers don't have longbows. I mean, their precision sucks, and it should, but in WH they have longbows.

Yeah, I know. But longbows in dominions are seriously awesome. No matter how low I make their prec, the longbows will overshadow the knights by a wide margin. This would result in rather unthematic 90% Longbow armies with some yeomen arrow catchers.

Ok, the magnitude of their unrest reduction seems to be different than what burnsaber is advocating. Taxing at 120% with ~10 KotR present (and no patrolling) i'm at a steady state 2 unrest. Based on burnsaber's statement, 4 should be able to keep 120% taxation at 0 unrest.

Hmm, this might be a bug, I'll look into it. Perhaps the #incunrest -1 command dosn't work on non-commanders? I deem that reather unlikely, considering that it's just the like unrest increasing aspect of Panganean satyr sneaks, expect in reserve.

On indies 5 I've been able to get 30+ spread out provinces with heroes in one year and I can reliably bring down somewhere in the low 20s with a more centered and balanced expansion strat. Part of the key is probably the first fort. First fort MUST start at turn 3 at the latest.

I'll have to try out this Hero expansion strat. Sounds intresting.

[Squirrelloid]

On indies 5 I've been able to get 30+ spread out provinces with heroes in one year and I can reliably bring down somewhere in the low 20s with a more centered and balanced expansion strat. Part of the key is probably the first fort. First fort MUST start at turn 3 at the latest.

Wait, do you try to expand blind with your starting army? Or do you put a fort up right next to your capitol? I can't see putting a fortress up before turn 4 *ever*, because you don't want to drain resources from your capitol.

[Radio_Star]

I drop the 1st fort right next to the cap. I'm not an enormous fan of Grail Knights, so robbing resources from the capitol when the trade is faster expansion is worth it to me. To be competitive, there's just so much you're going to have to do so fast with this nation. You've gotta blitz out and grab turf while throwing up forts like mad to deter opposition and crank out more thugs, all the while you're racing against the clock to establish a secure base and make the switch to mage/research production and adding a couple massively expensive labs. With so much to do so fast, squeezing the most out of every possible turn seems vital, even to the point of robbing resources from your cap.

[Trumanator]

Just a small tip: If you're going to use grail knights and maidens to expand, try making thaum your first research target. Site searching is always useful, but the main reason I say this is that thaum 1 has the spell numbness, which all your maidens can cast. Its precision 100, aoe1, so you can't hit your grail knights, and it will fatigue the opposing troops. However, its real value is in the fact that it will keep your maidens from stupidly rushing into melee if the combat goes longer than 6 or 7 rounds.

[Burnsaber]

Just a small tip: If you're going to use grail knights and maidens to expand, try making thaum your first research target. Site searching is always useful, but the main reason I say this is that thaum 1 has the spell numbness, which all your maidens can cast. Its precision 100, aoe1, so you can't hit your grail knights, and it will fatigue the opposing troops. However, its real value is in the fact that it will keep your maidens from stupidly rushing into melee if the combat goes longer than 6 or 7 rounds.

"Numbness" is alteration 2 and requires W2 to cast. You are likely thinking of "Dessication" spell, which is thaumathurgy 1 and requires only water 1 to cast.

[Trumanator]

err, yeah, my bad

[llamabeast]

Can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this mod Burn. It's absolutely top stuff.

[Burnsaber]

Can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this mod Burn. It's absolutely top stuff.

I'm very glad to hear that. You just wait for the Dwarfs. They will rock your socks to the next millenia.

Mind if I use this quote for advertisement purposes?

Here is some stuff from the Sing of the Hammer game thread, thought that it might be better to discuss these things here.


Some Bretonnia things, and a bug:

1) Is it deliberate that the questing knight leader has leadership zero? It's really aggravating, being as he comes with troops and produces troops every turn. I always have to recruit a Bretonnian Lord just to tag along with him and bring his troops.



Yeah, he's a bit unfinished at the moment. He was poorleader in 0.6 but it still proved a bit too good as a commander in the early game (basically you could build Knights and summons these to lead them, allowing for 100% maiden/damsel recruit rate in capitol). In retrospect, I should've just let them be as they were.



2) I'd like to request a minor sprite change to the questing knight commanders, so I can recognise them from their troops on the battlefield.


Well, this would be a consistency issue then. You see, I could give a different graphic to the Q.Knight commander you get from "Call of the Quest", but the commanders you get from "Errantry War" and "Virtue of the Quest" would be just a GoR'd basic Questing Kinght, which might raise some confusion.


3) I don't understand why Virtue of the Quest is both harder to cast and to research than Errantry war. I mean basically, it's just Errantry War + free cloud trapeze, right? I can see maybe it is worth a little research to get the option of that convenience (though it is rather niche), but if I ever manage to get an S3 damsel the chances of me using her for that are almost zero. Short version: I suggest it should be S2. Or even S1.


Hmm, quite true. I'm just trying make a nice and logical procression of the "Quest" spells, but I haven't made the top spell "Grail Crusade" (requiring S4!) at thaum 9. I'll probably boost the spell to summon some Grail Knights or a Grail Hero too in the next version. Grail Crusade will be like the "Virtue of the Quest", but also summon 100! Pilgrims.

[Burnsaber]

Also, in a completely unrelated topic, how are people liking the Green Knight summon? It's a quite new mechanic (basically unique battle summon) and I'd be intrested in hearing what people think about it. Is it worth going for?

[HahnHolio]

Also, in a completely unrelated topic, how are people liking the Green Knight summon? It's a quite new mechanic (basically unique battle summon) and I'd be intrested in hearing what people think about it. Is it worth going for?

i think its pretty cool!

gives some more flavor to the nation ... and its nicely done too ^^

[Deathjester]

This is a superb mod. I'm really liking it, the graphics, the mechanics (so far, have not finished a game or tried all the new spells) and the heroes (the black knight is very nicely done).

I do have to second the annoyance of questing knight being noleader.

[Burnsaber]

This is a superb mod. I'm really liking it, the graphics, the mechanics (so far, have not finished a game or tried all the new spells) and the heroes (the black knight is very nicely done).


Thanks, always glad to hear that I'm doing something right. Also glad to hear that I managed to nail the Black Knight without a hitch, writing his description took ages.


I do have to second the annoyance of questing knight being noleader.

Yeah, I'll make a new version of Bretonnia (0.9 likely) after I update dwarfs to 0.8. Should take 2 or 3 weeks, perhaps more if I actually start working on one of my numereous side projects in my "to-do list" (like, shading tutorial and/or general modding guide).

The new version will contain some minor fixes, improved sprite for the King hero and something extra (perhaps the "Grail Crusade" spell or the Beastmaster hero).

[kianduatha]

After playing against the other Warhammer nations with Dwarves, I noticed that I got absolutely raped by high Brettonian province defense. Looking at the .dm, do they really get(among other things) 1.5 mounted knights of the realm per point after 20? I suddenly don't feel nearly so bad about Dwarf province defense.

[Burnsaber]

After playing against the other Warhammer nations with Dwarves, I noticed that I got absolutely raped by high Brettonian province defense. Looking at the .dm, do they really get(among other things) 1.5 mounted knights of the realm per point after 20? I suddenly don't feel nearly so bad about Dwarf province defense.

Yeah, intentional. It represents the fact that the "infastructure" of the province is so well developed that Knights of the Realm have been assigned to rule it as feudal lords. It can really suprise an unprepared opponent, especially if you go for decisive battle in bretonnian soil.

But like we all know, buying 20+ pd everywhere is just waste of gold. And there are ways to bypass the KotR's in high bretonnian pd (like flying fear/awe thug charging in the first turn), since the frontline is compased of sucky men-at-arms, the suckers will surround the guy, preventing the knights from getting hits in and everything gets scared of the fear aura and run away.

[HoneyBadger]

Beautiful graphics and nicely thematic.

[Trumanator]

But like we all know, buying 20+ pd everywhere is just waste of gold.

Actually, something like 30-40 pd chased off a blue dragon with BoW. No dom 9, but with CBM's change to 20 prot he was killing everything else I threw him at.

[rdonj]

Yeah, but there's a time and a place for that much PD. You just can't afford to plop that much PD down in every province. Not unless you're playing with insane amounts of gold, anyway.

[Trumanator]

Llamabeast does have the gold to do so. Once I'm dead in Sign I'll go into greater detail re: my thoughts on Brettonia and Skaven. For now though, suffice it to say that free troops+unrest reducing commanders+good scales+good 20+ pd=lots of pd wherever you need it.

[llamabeast]

I have had sufficient gold by virtue of not recruiting any mages all game though.

It is certainly quirkily tough PD, but for the moment I like it. It is an interesting and fun feature of the nation. It might be possible to abuse though, I'm not sure.

[Redeyes]

I have had sufficient gold by virtue of not recruiting any mages all game though.

How could you manage doing that?

[Burnsaber]

It is certainly quirkily tough PD, but for the moment I like it. It is an interesting and fun feature of the nation. It might be possible to abuse though, I'm not sure.

I'll wait for Trumanator's big pos before deciding, but the mounted KotR gain could be reduced to 1x per point of PD.

[llamabeast]

Redeyes: For most of the game so far I had two provinces and was fighting for survival. It's not a good strategy.

[Burnsaber]

Okay, my next move in the modding front is to get this mod updated. So if any of you have any suggestions, this would be a great time to share them so that I can squeeze them to the version 0.9.

Here's a list of changes I'm already committed to doing:

- Check if the KotR unrest reduction is bugged, if so, take action (probably by incresing the patrolbonus)
- Outrider to 0 gold (like in Sombre's mods)
- Fix the black pixel in the Battle Pilgrim sprite
- Make Q.Knights poorleader again
- Improved "Call of the Quest", likely by making it summon a few Grail Knights.
- New King sprite, based on Calchet's excellent alternate King sprite
- Something extra. Beastmaster hero, perhaps?
- Put spells at the bottom of the .dm file -> improved llamascript compactibility?
- Mounted KotR gain to 1x per point for 20+ PD.

[Redeyes]

Redeyes: For most of the game so far I had two provinces and was fighting for survival. It's not a good strategy.

I totally agree, the only nation I have done so with some success was as MA ermor - but not really, because I still bought mages but used them all for reanimating. I figured Bretonia might be similar :happy:

[Foodstamp]

Over the past week or so I have been in a King Arthurish mood. Watched Excalibur and King Arthur with the wife because she had never seen either one. Anyway, I want to give this mod a spin but I have a few questions before I try it out.

Will I face any problems integrating this mod with my uber mod I use? It's no problem for me to change IDs to make sure units, items and even the nation do not overlap.

I thought I read somewhere in this thread that you added spells that overlap another nation's spells. Which spells are overwritten, why are they overwritten and what would I lose by disabling the spells if they cannot be moved to the modding range of spells?

How playable is this mod in it's current state? I've noticed a lot of modders now they never actually put a 1.0 next to their mods. Is this nearly a 1.0 version that will only see minor changes in the future or is this a mod that will undergo many updates and changes, making it look completely different than it does now? The reason I ask this is if the mod gets radically changed from now until a 1.0, I don't want to do a lot of leg work updating a modified version of it.

Thanks again for your efforts, I especially love your spriting :).

[Burnsaber]

New version!

Changelist form 0.83 to 0.9
- Outrider to 0 gold (like in Sombre's mods)
- Fixed the black pixel in the Battle Pilgrim sprite
- Made Q.Knights poorleader again
- Removed "Call of the Quest", included "Grail Crusade"
- New King sprite (with special thanks to Calchet)
- New Hero: Beastmaster

This version is pretty final, I have no plans for further additions. I'm keeping the 0.9 version number to have some "room" for balance updates. I'm saving up the 1.0 version number for absolutely finished product.

As for the KotR unrest bug, I tested it and found out that there is no bug. The unrest reduction works fine, it is just calculated *before* the unrest from taxes is added. So, basically, Kotr and the Knight Commanders can keep unrest at a certain level, even if the taxation is high. Which is pretty cool, since it's quite thematic (sure the peasants complain, but won't rise against their masters). It's also a good gameplay balance factor that you don't get full use of the province you overtax (since the unrest reduces resources).

I'd also like to ask if there is any intrest for EA and/or LA version of the nation. Just scouting up what might be ahead after Rockon is completed..

EA Bretonnia would likely be less techy (knights have poorer armor, Pegasii haven't been bred yet for war and Destriers haven't been perfected yet) but more "heroic" (better stats on knight commanders, Grail knight recruitable everywhere, Q.Knights Cap only). Peasants would also be a bit more expensive, but have higher morale (the Virtue of Empathy is still alive and the noble knights treat the peasants better). Also Damsels would be even more powerful in S/E, but Maidens would be even weaker.

LA Bretonnia would be a lot darker (as per the era), drawing from the curse of Mousillon and the legend of the false lady and the bloody grail. Grail Knights aren't recruitable anymore, but are repalced by black knights. Damsels would be a lot weaker, but Maidens would get B/D picks due to the influences of the bloody lady. Peasants would be dirt cheap, but have even weaker morale and suffer from misformations (start with afflictions). Knight commander would not decrease unrest anymore (and have poorer stats, due fall of heroism), but have high patrol bonus to allow for a bit more cruel way to keep taxes high. Breeding has gone farther and Dukes now ride Griffons and trade their awe for fear. Heroes aren't recruits anymore, but summons. Basically it's a sort of fallen Bretonnia that might get its glory back with summons (if you take a pretender for it).




Will I face any problems integrating this mod with my uber mod I use? It's no problem for me to change IDs to make sure units, items and even the nation do not overlap.


Should work fine. Just be careful with the numereous autosummon spells, it's pretty easy for them to go haywire if you forget to change their #damage value :D.


I thought I read somewhere in this thread that you added spells that overlap another nation's spells. Which spells are overwritten, why are they overwritten and what would I lose by disabling the spells if they cannot be moved to the modding range of spells?


Yeah, the nation overwrites about 10 LA Bogarus national summoning spells and uses a name slot normally reserved for Bogarus. Justification = I really care more about saving 10 spell slots than single age compactibility with a nation I really don't fancy that much.

If you remove the overwritten spells, the Knight Commanders won't autosummon troops in battle.

Also, you should note that this mod should be listed last in your mod, since it seems to produce mystical crashes when it is loaded before certain mods (like CBM).



How playable is this mod in it's current state? I've noticed a lot of modders now they never actually put a 1.0 next to their mods. Is this nearly a 1.0 version that will only see minor changes in the future or is this a mod that will undergo many updates and changes, making it look completely different than it does now? The reason I ask this is if the mod gets radically changed from now until a 1.0, I don't want to do a lot of leg work updating a modified version of it.


This mod is now quite finished. I have no planned content additions, just balance changes (you know, gold costs and stuff).

[llamabeast]

Hmm, not quite sure about the EA and LA versions. I quite liked the idea that Marverni was EA Bretonnia. The LA one seems to refer to some stuff I don't know, so it's hard to judge.

What I would like more would be another Warhammer nation. How about some elves? We are very short of elves.

But really, everything you turn out is pretty awesome and the point is to have fun, so make what you fancy!

[Foodstamp]

Thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a go later this week :).

[SlipperyJim]

New version!

Changelist form 0.83 to 0.9
- Outrider to 0 gold (like in Sombre's mods)
- Fixed the black pixel in the Battle Pilgrim sprite
- Made Q.Knights poorleader again
- Removed "Call of the Quest", included "Grail Crusade"
- New King sprite (with special thanks to Calchet)
- New Hero: Beastmaster


This mod looks awesome, and I'm trying it for my very next game. My copy of Dom3 had been gathering dust for a while, but it's time to get back into it!

Minor quibble:
#hero1 2776 -- Fay Enchantress
#hero2 2777 -- The Last Druid
#hero3 2778 -- The King
#hero4 2780 -- The Black Knight
Those entries are all of the heroes that I see. Should the Beastmaster be added somewhere, perhaps as a multihero?

[Burnsaber]

This mod looks awesome, and I'm trying it for my very next game. My copy of Dom3 had been gathering dust for a while, but it's time to get back into it!

Minor quibble:
#hero1 2776 -- Fay Enchantress
#hero2 2777 -- The Last Druid
#hero3 2778 -- The King
#hero4 2780 -- The Black Knight
Those entries are all of the heroes that I see. Should the Beastmaster be added somewhere, perhaps as a multihero?

Thanks. Uploaded a new version to fix the issue. (this is why I don't jump to v1.00 right away!)

[Stavis_L]

Whoops, was hoping to get this in before your next update. Anyway, here are some typos / changes to awkward wordings. Line numbers are from the 0.90 version, so they may be off by a few vs. 0.91:


169 - "Sword of an Tyrant" --> "Sword of a Tyrant" or "Tyrant's Sword"
209 - "They've usually given no training" --> "They're usually given no training"
238 - "basic chain armours" --> "basic chain armour" (n.b. most of the vanilla game uses Americanized "armor" spelling)
Also - shouldn't description match the actual equipment (ring mail armor?) which is *not* chain?
267 - "fool to trust the line for them" --> "fool to trust the line to them" or "fool to trust them to hold a line"
326 - "by actually surviving few combats" --> "by actually surviving a few combats"
AND "Although the word 'Elite Peasant' has the same meaning to Bretonnian Lord as the word 'Large Rat'" -->
"Although the phrase 'Elite Peasant' has the same meaning to a Bretonnian Lord as the phrase 'Large Rat'"
AND "more skilled than a regular men-at-arms" --> "more skilled than a regular man-at-arms"
356 - "But, like most successful warlords know" --> "But, as most successful warlords know"
AND "yeomen to these crucial tasks" --> "yeomen to perform these crucial tasks"
389 - "there really isn't many options" --> "there really aren't many options"
AND "Knight Errants" --> "Knights Errant"
424 - "eldest son and leaving the younger sons" --> "eldest son, leaving the younger sons"
AND "there really isn't many options" --> "there really aren't many options"
AND "Knight Errants" --> "Knights Errant"
454 - "benefit from an decreased unrest" --> "benefit from decreased unrest"
491 - "benefit from an decreased unrest" --> "benefit from decreased unrest"
AND "some of the fief granted" --> "some of the fiefs granted"
524 - "and ever longer to breed them" --> "and even longer to breed them"
AND "can be seen far" --> "can be seen from afar" or "can be seen from a great distance"
561 - "something more than man, almost celestial beings" --> "something more than man, almost a celestial being"
AND "with a force Grail Knights benefit from a higher taxation" --> "with a force of Grail Knights to benefit
from a higher taxation" or "with a force of Grail Knights to be taxed more heavily"
630 - "Many peasants who wish to see the world outside their home sometimes go into a pilgrimage" --> "Peasants who wish
to see the world outside their home sometimes go on a pilgrimage" or "Many peasants who wish to see the world outside
their home go on a pilgrimage"
661 - "But, like most successful warlords know" --> "But, as most successful warlords know"
AND "yeomen to these crucial tasks" --> "yeomen to perform these crucial tasks"
699 - "eldest son and leaving the younger sons" --> "eldest son, leaving the younger sons"
AND "there really isn't many options" --> "there really aren't many options"
AND "sending the most cunning of them to espionage missions" --> "sending the most cunning of them upon espionage
missions"
729 - "sometimes get anough men to wield the remaining as bowmen" --> "sometimes enlist enough men to field the remainder
as bowmen"
AND "They are ride" --> "They ride"
768 - "'Marquis' is a honorary title" --> "'Marquis' is an honorary title"
AND "Their combat skills and military knowledge is widely respected" --> "Their skill in combat and military
knowledge is widely respected"
AND "often have a standing force peasants" --> "often have a standing force of peasants"
AND "Knight Errants" --> "Knights Errant"
850 - "They feel like that they can't rest" --> "They feel that they can't rest"
AND "lack the administrating skills" --> "lack the administration skills"
959 - "Damsels have been there" --> "Damsels have been around" or "Damsels have existed" or "Damsels have been present" (this one is grammatical but a bit too informal)
AND "it is rumoured if they are human at all" --> "it is questioned whether they are human at all" or "it is
rumoured that they are not even human at all" or just "it is rumoured that they are not even human"
1001 - "you just request, it has to be" --> "you just request; it has to be"
1038 - "Battle Pilgrim considers his" --> "The Battle Pilgrim considers his"
AND "those who survive few battles are tough" --> "those who survive a few battles are tough"
1107 - "fighting side to side" --> "fighting side by side"
AND "as an mysterious figure in bretonnian folklore" --> "as a mysterious figure in Bretonnian folklore"
AND "watch over questing knights and appearing before the best of them" --> "watch over questing knights and
appears before the best of them"
1153 - "lake, expect when granting" --> "lake, except when granting"
AND "For long she has waited for the ascension wars" --> "She has long awaited the Ascension Wars"
AND "on top of an unicorn" --> "on top of a unicorn" or "atop a unicorn" or "astride a unicorn"
1305 - "then a immensely tall" --> "then an immensely tall"
AND "until was finally granted a sip from a grail by an mysterious" --> "until he was finally granted a sip from the Grail by a mysterious"
AND "reached an respectable age" --> "reached a respectable age"
1344 - "For their excellence" --> "Their excellence"
AND "bretonnian" --> "Bretonnian"
1376 - "lived their use as a breeding stock" --> "lived out their usefulness as breeding stock"
AND "agressive" -->"aggressive"
1407 - "Beastamsters" --> "Beastmasters"
AND "living in capture" --> "living in captivity"
AND "lived through their use as a breeding stock" --> "lived out their usefulness as breeding stock"
1574 - "Knight Errants" --> "Knights Errant"
1608 - "unoptimal" --> "suboptimal"
1641 - "you just request, it has to be earned" --> "you just request; it has to be earned"
AND "to go to a quest" --> "to go upon a quest" or "to embark upon a quest
1661 - "in this state of hightened awareness, he will appear" --> "in this state of heightened awareness, she will
appear"
1680 - "anwser" --> "answer"
1741 - "Bastonge" --> "Bastogne"
1782 - "Bastonge" --> "Bastogne"
AND "strenght" --> "strength"
1823 - "Bastonge" --> "Bastogne"
AND "he was no fool to do" --> "he was no fool to do so"
AND "strike with swift and precise" --> "strike swiftly and with precision"
1867 - "abjuration" --> "conjuration" (abjuration renounces or banishes something)
AND "an mysterious figure" --> "a mysterious figure"
AND "bretonnian" --> "Bretonnian"
2000 - "like an Phoenix" --> "like a Phoenix"
AND "Maverni" --> "Marverni"

Hope you get a chance to plug these in; the mod looks great :)

[Burnsaber]

Hope you get a chance to plug these in; the mod looks great :)

Thanks, you are quite awesome. Expect to see v0.92 before weekend.

[Burnsaber]

Okay new version. Hopefully this will be stable one.

I also went ahead and made "Bretonnian Secrets"-file, much like the one I made for dwarfs. It is "hidden" in the graphic folder and explains many of the hidden mechanics of Bretonnia in gameplay terms.

[HoneyBadger]

Burnsaber, you've done an impressive job in bringing the English language to medieval Britain.

:angel:

[Burnsaber]

Burnsaber, you've done an impressive job in bringing the English language to medieval Britain.

:angel:

Eh, Stavis L did all the work. I just implemented it.

[SlipperyJim]

Heh. I just got Sir Rond of R'donj as a Questing Knight. Naturally, he's my newest Prophet. :)

(Of course, considering the high mortality rate of my prophets, that might not be a good thing....)

[rdonj]

:D

At least he has a better chance as a prophet than as a random plebe. Maybe.

[Burnsaber]

Heh. There are many more contributor names. "Sir Rond of R'donj" is just the most obvious of them.

[SlipperyJim]

I'm sorry to tell you, but Sir Rond died in battle. Many of my prophets meet such a fate, especially the Bretonnians. Unlike other prophets, the Bretonnians insist on charging into the fray, often ahead of their own troops.

Sir Rond is merely the latest example. He spurred his mighty steed into battle with a mob of ill-mannered barbarians. Sadly, their warhammers managed to knock Sir Rond off of his horse and pound him into tomato paste. Alas, valiant warrior, he met his end too soon....

My newest prophet is Sir Burnsaber the Industrious, a Marquis. I hope that he will last just a little bit longer than the late, lamented Sir Rond.

[Burnsaber]

Alrighty, Trumanator gave some feedback in the "Sign of the Hammer" game. I decided to mreply to that stuff in this thread so that other people can comment on it.


Brettonia: While of course llamabeast will have the best overall view of things, I will still make a few observations. First, freespawn archers are perhaps a bit much, particularly against Skaven. Second, having what amounts to an income and resource independent recruitment is a difficult thing to balance. It might have been interesting to see how they might have done had llama been able to recruit damsels in his cap every turn for a respectable research.

Yeah, I can see how the peasant (note however that the archers aren't freespawn, expect as a very rare Lord domsummon) spam could have decimated you since you were playing with a nation that has really sucky recruitable troops, allowing Breton to overwhelm you. However there are many factors at stake here, like Llamabeasts sucky start, lack of gold and so forth. Ultimately, his peasant spam was a sub-optimal stragedy and he lost. I'm not really concerned about a clearly losing stragedy being very unbalancing.

Although you have a point about the summons being a bit problematic. You can easily concentrate on the spam in the beginning and simply overwhelm one player by literally drowning them in chaff. But I really can't see it working in the long-term, it's bit like double blessing EA Oceania in that aspect. You might win in the early game but you will simply be decimated in mid/late game when the chaff doesn't serve any purpose expect cost upkeep and make your armies more vulnerable to "flee kills" with their weak morale.

However, I'd be really intrested to hear more opinions on the matter (which is the balance of the peasant summons in MP).

[SlipperyJim]

Burnsaber:

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but what would you think about bumping the Knights Errant up from their current "poorleader" status (10 troops) to "okleader" (40 troops)? I'm finally starting to play around with Errantry War, and it's bugging me that my commanders can't lead all of their own troops after the combat is over.

[Burnsaber]

Burnsaber:

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but what would you think about bumping the Knights Errant up from their current "poorleader" status (10 troops) to "okleader" (40 troops)? I'm finally starting to play around with Errantry War, and it's bugging me that my commanders can't lead all of their own troops after the combat is over.

IIRC, only the footed KE should have poorleader. The mounted one should be okleader. I'll look into it soon.

[HoneyBadger]

I had the thought, particularly about Brettonia, but also in general for independent knights, etc, that mounted knights might possibly get the ability to dismount, via an application of Shapechange.

[rdonj]

You could do this, but given that it would be an incomprehensibly poor decision I don't think I would ever use said command. Dismounted knights just build too much fatigue too quickly. You would need to give them more gear than a mounted knight just to keep their fatigue levels from growing too much.

[SlipperyJim]

I agree with rdonj. Dismounted knights would be possible, certainly -- but not practical. In addition to the Fatigue Factor, there's also the point that lance charges are a big part of why knights are so deadly. The lance charge is even more important for Bretonnia, because the Bretonnian lances have been upgraded over the "standard" lance. Why on Earth would I want to give up my lance charge?

There's also the Mobility Problem. Knights on foot are S-L-O-W. Yuck. I'd much rather keep them on horseback so they can run down fleeing opponents. :D

Lastly, there's a thematicness (is that a word?) problem. Knights on foot are just elite heavy infantry. Yawn.... Dom3 already has a lot of elite heavy infantry. Anyway, Ulm does it better. ;)

[SlipperyJim]

IIRC, only the footed KE should have poorleader. The mounted one should be okleader. I'll look into it soon.

I just checked the code, and the mounted Knight Errant is a poorleader. No big deal ... I can make the change myself. Thanks for responding, and thanks for making such a fun mod!

[Sombre]

One thing I noticed in the sign of the hammer game was that Bretonnia is HARD AS NAILS to siege. I'm not sure if this was intended, but with their freespawning of troops I couldn't get anywhere near cracking their walls, even with my own freespawn as Tomb Kings. This doesn't really fit with Bretonnia imo. I mean I get that forts are huge for them and maybe that they should have more of them, but unlike Dwarfs for instance, they shouldn't be so great at digging in behind the walls. I mean they're an agricultural society.

One thing you could try is making peasant level Breton troops animals. That's certainly how the nobles see them anyway.

[Foodstamp]

I finally had a chance to modify this mod to make it fit into my super mod and work well with Bogarus.

This mod is a lot of fun. I like the farsummons and the units. The graphics are really nice.

One thing I noticed is that the few mages you do have are very powerful. I think this is supposed to be offset by the high lab costs? Very early in the game a point is reached where the more expensive lab is a trivial matter using standard settings. I play with a gold modifier that is roughly about half the standard, so it did have an effect on my game.

Even though the mages are very powerful, really they are not much different than Tien Chi's mages, so I wouldn't mess with them.

Overall the mod seems fairly balanced to me. Powerful in the early game, evening out later on.

One more thing I noticed is there are several typos in the descriptions. I didn't make note of any specific one, but many of the descriptions I read had misspelled words.

[Burnsaber]

One thing I noticed in the sign of the hammer game was that Bretonnia is HARD AS NAILS to siege. I'm not sure if this was intended, but with their freespawning of troops I couldn't get anywhere near cracking their walls, even with my own freespawn as Tomb Kings. This doesn't really fit with Bretonnia imo. I mean I get that forts are huge for them and maybe that they should have more of them, but unlike Dwarfs for instance, they shouldn't be so great at digging in behind the walls. I mean they're an agricultural society.

One thing you could try is making peasant level Breton troops animals. That's certainly how the nobles see them anyway.

Hmm. That's a real problem. First, I'll take a look at their castles and see if I can give them castles that have ridiciliously poor supply and defence values. This should make using freespawn for castle protections hard.

That animal thing would look kind of odd, and make the peasants suspectible to animal awe, but it is an option if I can't tune the castles.



One thing I noticed is that the few mages you do have are very powerful. I think this is supposed to be offset by the high lab costs?


Yeah, Grail Damsels are very powerful, mostly for thematic reasons. Grail Maidens are sort of necessary evil you have to recruit for research, they have poor combat paths and are very expensive researchers.

The high lab cost is mostly to make it hard for Breton to get good research going (afterall, they are quite backwards nation).


One more thing I noticed is there are several typos in the descriptions. I didn't make note of any specific one, but many of the descriptions I read had misspelled words.

Hmm, and I just implemented Stavis's typo fixes. Could you please elaborate?

[Sombre]

I don't think the fort defence and supply values will make that much difference, the issue is more they're getting free wall repairers spawned within the castle as an economy entirely apart from castles and territory.

I'm thinking of taking freespawn out of skaven in most cases even, because this whole spawn economy just causes too many problems. I'll leave them with spells and allow giant rats to be spawned though.

[Fantomen]

@foodstamp: Couldn't the problem be related to you playing an undead nation? I mean undead suck at seiging, right?

[Sombre]

I think you meant to reply to me.

The answer is it doesn't matter what the sieging unit is, whether undead or mindless or whatever. That only matters when repairing walls.

See this thread for the full formula courtesy of lch:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37875

[Sombre]

Burnsaber - I forgot that the #animal tag does not factor in the siege formula, so there would be no point making peasants animals.

[Foodstamp]

Burnsaber:

I will do even better. I will try to list as many as I can find for you.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the corrections I suggest may not apply because of the minor differences in English in Europe.

Mounted Yeoman:
dishonourable ---> dishonorable
Labour --> Labor
manoeuvres ----> maneuvers
Armour ---> Armor

Knight Errant(2756):
Labour --> labor
vigour --> vigor
colourful --> colorful

Grammar: The are out to make a name for themselves, hoping to be granted a fief for their bravery. (The should be They)


Knight Errant (2757):
Honour --> Honor
Same grammar error as Knight Errant

Pegasus Knight:
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Brettonian Pegasus
Same as Pegasus Knight

Yeoman Outrider:
Maneuvers is spelled wrong again


Brettonian Lord:
anough --> enough

Marquis:
neighbour --> neighbor
Knight Errants ---> Knights Errant

Grail Hero:
Pegasii --> pegasi


Grail Maiden:
Magics ---> Magic


Grail Damsel:
Rumour --> Rumor
splendour --> splendor

Lady of the Lake:
Channelling --> Channeling

The Green Knight:
Bastonge --> Bastogne (Unless Bastonge is the proper name in WH?)


The Last Druid:
which allowed him to fend of the Ermorian invaders and build the Kingdom of Bretonnia. (of should be off)

Beastmaster (Should this be Beast Master?):
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Battle Gryphon:
agression --> aggression

Grail Crusade:
judgement --> judgment

Ride the Winds:
suprise --> surprise

Virtue of Nobility:
swordarm --> sword arm

Mist:
Bastonge --> Bastogne

Nation Description:
artefact --> artifact



Those are the ones I have found with a quick glance. I did not list the words that had extra Us like honour etc beyond the first instance because they may be intentional UK spellings.

Also I noticed the scout costs 0 gold. I changed it to 20. Was that intentional, maybe a CBM thing?

I hope that helps!

[llamabeast]

I think #animal does count doesn't it, at least for sieging if not repairing? I remember learning that it counted and realising my years of using Call of the Winds for sieging had been futile.

[Sombre]

All those listed below are British English spellings. Not 'errors'.


Mounted Yeoman:
dishonourable ---> dishonorable
Labour --> Labor
manoeuvres ----> maneuvers
Armour ---> Armor

Knight Errant(2756):
Labour --> labor
vigour --> vigor
colourful --> colorful

Knight Errant (2757):
Honour --> Honor

Yeoman Outrider:
Maneuvers is spelled wrong again

Marquis:
neighbour --> neighbor

Grail Damsel:
Rumour --> Rumor
splendour --> splendor

Lady of the Lake:
Channelling --> Channeling

Grail Crusade:
judgement --> judgment

Nation Description:
artefact --> artifact

[Sombre]

I think #animal does count doesn't it, at least for sieging if not repairing? I remember learning that it counted and realising my years of using Call of the Winds for sieging had been futile.

Nope, not according to lch. He has been in the code - see the thread I linked to above.

Call of the winds does suck for sieging, but not because they are animals. It's because the small hawks have an intrinsic -1 to their siege score. The entire call of winds has a siege strength of 6. The equivalent of 6 str 10 militia. Note this only applies to sieging - they are great at defending a siege.

[llamabeast]

Where does the -1 come from?

[Sombre]

It's some sort of siegemalus flag I think - lch described it in the thread as an attribute of the unit.

But as I understand it, it's only coincidental with #animal and no other animals actually have it. So the birds were specifically made rubbish at sieging. The great hawk leading them sieges normally for example, despite also being an animal.

[Foodstamp]

All those listed below are British English spellings. Not 'errors'.


Mounted Yeoman:
dishonourable ---> dishonorable
Labour --> Labor
manoeuvres ----> maneuvers
Armour ---> Armor

Knight Errant(2756):
Labour --> labor
vigour --> vigor
colourful --> colorful

Knight Errant (2757):
Honour --> Honor

Yeoman Outrider:
Maneuvers is spelled wrong again

Marquis:
neighbour --> neighbor

Grail Damsel:
Rumour --> Rumor
splendour --> splendor

Lady of the Lake:
Channelling --> Channeling

Grail Crusade:
judgement --> judgment

Nation Description:
artefact --> artifact

ALL of them? I knew most of them were, but some look really wrong like artefact, channelling, manoeuvres. The spellings just look very bizarre to me.

[Burnsaber]

Mounted Yeoman:
Armour ---> Armor

Knight Errant(2756):

Grammar: The are out to make a name for themselves, hoping to be granted a fief for their bravery. (The should be They)


Knight Errant (2757):

Same grammar error as Knight Errant

Pegasus Knight:
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Brettonian Pegasus
Same as Pegasus Knight

Brettonian Lord:
anough --> enough

Marquis:
Knight Errants ---> Knights Errant

Grail Hero:
Pegasii --> pegasi

Grail Maiden:
Magics ---> Magic


The Green Knight:
Bastonge --> Bastogne

The Last Druid:
which allowed him to fend of the Ermorian invaders and build the Kingdom of Bretonnia. (of should be off)

Beastmaster (Should this be Beast Master?):
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Battle Gryphon:
agression --> aggression


Ride the Winds:
suprise --> surprise

Virtue of Nobility:
swordarm --> sword arm

Mist:
Bastonge --> Bastogne



Thanks, I picked up those which are not based on the UK/US spelling differences. I wrote descriptions on a word with British language settings, so it fixed always suggested english spellings. I kind of like it, as a sort of reference to the Arthurian myths.

Although I'll keep an eye out for "Armour", since dom3 uses the american spelling for that.


Also I noticed the scout costs 0 gold. I changed it to 20. Was that intentional, maybe a CBM thing?


I did to make it consistent with Sombre's WH mods. On about 99% of cases, recruiting a scout from casle is a absolute waste of a commander slot, so I agree with Sombre's view on that national scouts should just cost 0 gold.


I hope that helps!

That was a big help. Thanks a lot.


And about the siege/freespawn problem, I brainstormed some solutions. Opinions are welcome:

1) Make the freespawn cost more upkeep (by making them summon different units that the basic recruitable peasants).
2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.
3) Change the troops to domsummons -> the sieger can preach to get the freespawn in control.

Any of these changes could also be added with the castle change.

[Foodstamp]

I am glad I could help. I really like the UK spellings for this mod, I just wanted to make sure it was intentional.

[Stavis_L]

Also I noticed the scout costs 0 gold. I changed it to 20. Was that intentional, maybe a CBM thing?


I did to make it consistent with Sombre's WH mods. On about 99% of cases, recruiting a scout from casle is a absolute waste of a commander slot, so I agree with Sombre's view on that national scouts should just cost 0 gold.



The impact is that even if you're gold limited, you would *always* recruit a scout from each castle that you would otherwise be unable to recruit from. As long as it's consistent across nations, it's not a problem, but otherwise, it's an advantage (even if a limited one.)

Zero upkeep scout units could then be used e.g. to cheaply break into blood via the scout hunting technique (vs. the upkeep on however many scouts you normally devote to such a task.) They'd also be great fever fetish hosts. Or anything else that just needs a unit with available slots as cheaply as possible.

As you point out, most of the time you'd still rather have a mage or commander unit, but it's something to consider.

[Sombre]

And about the siege/freespawn problem, I brainstormed some solutions. Opinions are welcome:

1) Make the freespawn cost more upkeep (by making them summon different units that the basic recruitable peasants).
2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.
3) Change the troops to domsummons -> the sieger can preach to get the freespawn in control.

Any of these changes could also be added with the castle change.

1) This doesn't really remove the problem and it would arguably add another level of annoyance because you'd be getting gold draining chaff whether you liked it or not and might even have to specifically suicide them to keep upkeep down. You know, when they aren't preventing sieges from working. They are still generated for free and still bypass the siege-stops-recruitment mechanic.

2) You mean summon allies? This doesn't change the siege situation since the besieged will have nothing better to do than summon dudes. Generally speaking I'm in favour of summon allies over freespawn though, because summon allies is never annoying - you have a choice about it. Even if it is technically worse.

3) The problem with domsummon is that on domsummon2 you still gets LOADS of dudes with high dom (basically you'll sit your domsummon commanders in your cap) while on domsummon20 you get so few it's a bit pointless (unless they're pretty powerful units like bat demons, vampires etc)

My advice would be to remove or otherwise heavily scale back the non recruitment creation of these units. When I started with the skaven I used a lot of summon allies and freespawn etc and over time I've realised it generally just causes more trouble than it's worth and creates a bizarre second economy based on hoarding commanders. If you look at the vanilla game it's really limited in application - cap only wolfherds for example. I suspect because of the warping effect it has on the game.

I think it's probably ok as a main feature of some nations, but bretonnia doesn't exactly feel like one of those to me.

[Sombre]

The impact is that even if you're gold limited, you would *always* recruit a scout from each castle that you would otherwise be unable to recruit from. As long as it's consistent across nations, it's not a problem, but otherwise, it's an advantage (even if a limited one.)


A very limited advantage. How often do you not build a commander? At which point in the game? How useful are a handful of scouts at that point in the game?

People recruit indy scouts whenever possible, but that's because they don't take a commander slot. Even with scouts costing nothing (or 1 as I costed them) it makes no difference to whether you build an indy scout or not. Like you said, people will scout up only when they have no gold or are trying to save every last scrap of gold (even at the cost of a commander slot for a turn). This doesn't happen very often and hence I think you'll still see very few scouts.


Zero upkeep scout units could then be used e.g. to cheaply break into blood via the scout hunting technique (vs. the upkeep on however many scouts you normally devote to such a task.) They'd also be great fever fetish hosts. Or anything else that just needs a unit with available slots as cheaply as possible.

Indy scouts are way better for all of these things because they don't take a commander slot. You therefore have them in large enough numbers for the blood hunting without disrupting your main strat (no way scout blood hunting in anyone's main strat). It's true they're infinitely cheaper than indy scouts, but they have a far, far greater opportunity cost for the vast majority of the game. They are also inherently fewer in number.


Edit: It should also be noted one reason I made commanders 1 gold in my mods is that I play exclusively on NI maps where the commander slot is even more precious.

[llamabeast]

2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.

I would have thought that might work reasonably well. I think that would be a sufficient change to make my "Recruit 3 marquis every turn and churn out freespawn like crazy" strategy pointless. It would be a shame to lose the freespawn altogether because you have done a good job of making it actually tempting to recruit commanders who aren't mages. Very few nations manage this and I think it is good.

NB I think both Burnsaber and I are using "freespawn" to mean "Summon Allies", somewhat incorrectly I realise.

PS Thanks for the hawk info Sombre, that's interesting.

[rdonj]

2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.

I would have thought that might work reasonably well. I think that would be a sufficient change to make my "Recruit 3 marquis every turn and churn out freespawn like crazy" strategy pointless. It would be a shame to lose the freespawn altogether because you have done a good job of making it actually tempting to recruit commanders who aren't mages. Very few nations manage this and I think it is good.

NB I think both Burnsaber and I are using "freespawn" to mean "Summon Allies", somewhat incorrectly I realise.

PS Thanks for the hawk info Sombre, that's interesting.

Yeah, I think scaling back the numbers like that and forcing you to use the summon allies command is probably sufficient to make it fair, while still being useful. I don't think you need to worry about the price of leather men at arms though... 6 gold is pretty cheap as it is, that's already lower than almost anything in dom 3. They're plenty usable as chaff. Not as good as skavenslaves, but what is?

[Sombre]

Am I missing something, or does this mod conflict with CBM 1.6 on weapon slots 715-721?

[Burnsaber]

Am I missing something, or does this mod conflict with CBM 1.6 on weapon slots 715-721?

Could be. Version 0.95 (it will be 1.00 when I can be 100% sure that the summon spawn is on a balanced level) is coming up in few days, I'll be sure to take a look in this conflict too.

[Burnsaber]

New version with no conflicts with CBM.

[rdonj]

Excellent.

[Burnsaber]

Now that TheEarlyDays is ending, I'm likely going to start a new game to give Bretonnia a new chance at MP glory. If anyone of you is writing a guide or just wants to play the nation in the game, send a PM to me reserve the nation.

(The game will likely start around 24th day)

[Sombre]

Bugs!

#newweapon 735
#name "Sword from the Lake"
#rcost 0
#att 3
#def 3
#len 2
#dmg 13
#dt_holy
#armorpiercing
#magic
#secondaryeffectalways 649 -- Heroic Blade
#end

The 649 should be 733.


#weapon 718 -- Heroic Blade

This is for the grail hero - it should be 733.

[nordlys]

Is this mod going to be eventually compatible with Bogarus?

[Burnsaber]

Is this mod going to be eventually compatible with Bogarus?

No.

The nation needs those 10 spell slots and it needs them bad. If I did not write over those Bogarus spells, it would seriously limit its compactibility in mod nation games. 28 spell slots would be a whopping 20% of the total allowed amount of modded spells.


On other news, I'll come back at this mod after UWGIM is updated. The biggest (and likely only) change will be to model the summonings of the Lord, Marquis, and Duke after the "Slann + Temple Guard" example set by Sombre in Itza. Basically they will then only give troops when you recruit them.

[rdonj]

Just posting to note a few things I realized a while back about this nation. Not really balance comments here!

1) Grail Maidens are perfect dragon master casters... basically every n3 maiden can cast become spam either wyverns or ice drakes without boosters. The e randoms of course can do cave drakes, though those would always require at least one booster. This is a really good way to use air and water gems if you don't have Call of the Lake or Ride the Winds, and could be worth using later depending on what you need at the time.

2) Grail Maidens are also very similar to Oreiads, and can do most of what they can do. Which means you can consider using them as cloud trapezing thugs. Coupled with spells like Errantry War and Ride the Winds along with recruit everywhere pegasus knights, this nation has some serious raiding potential. Maidens are definitely not as good at this as Oreiads though, so you need to be a bit more careful when using them.

3) An awake or dormant mother of rivers could be a really awesome pretender for bretonnia. You can then summon (relatively) huge amounts of grail knights using your boosted W income. Grail knights don't really need a bless to be effective, but you can relatively easily get a decent one with this chassis (up to w9 dormant without being too painful). Actually in light of this as an available pretender, I am having a lot of trouble seeing why I would ever use the lady of the lake. The lady seems like a really niche pretender in her present form... anyone else feel a bit more generously about her?