Endgame Diversity Mod - v1.2 released [Archive] - Page 2

llamabeast

June 13th, 2010, 05:01 PM

Okay, version 1.04 is out. See the first post for changelist.

To answer the comments above suggesting waiting for gameplay responses before making further changes: that does indeed make sense. However, I would prefer new games about to start to use a version of the mod which I feel is as good as I can currently make it. It would be very frustrating to have a number of games report back and say "the Zmey is useless" (as it probably was in the first version) or "Treants can easily be screwed over by immobile opponents" when I have already realised this and have the solution.

The only real pure balance changes in this version are -5 to attack to the Shishi (I guess Zeldor won't like this, and NooBliss will think it's too little). I thought about it carefully though. The other changes are either thematic, following additional consideration, or to do with limiting magic diversification.

As Valerius points out in his insightful post (#236), it is sort of an anomaly that it is not easy, given powerful air or fire magic (or astral), to summon new casters in those paths. With A3 the Roc would "correct" this. However I actually really don't want to change this more than necessary - I think it is good and very interesting that the paths vary in how easy it is to get into them. In fact in general I don't really want to encourage diversification, although I can't help doing so a little. I've therefore reduced the Roc's magic to A2. This is quite a nasty nerf for the Roc, and so I've given him some stat boosts to try to help. Similar thinking has led me to change the magic paths on the Kraken considerably (why should water nations gain access to all sorcery paths?).

This version could be considered a "release candidate" for a long-term version of the mod ("v1.1"). If anyone points out any glaring mistakes in the near future I reserve the right to make some fixes, but otherwise I plan to keep the mod the same for some time. This will give time for comments for MP games to accumulate and offer further insight, so that over a rather long time frame there may be another version ("v1.2"). Anyway, basically this version should be fit for MP use and if you start learning about the units as they stand, they're not expected to change much in future.

Since the last version there have been lots of *really* helpful and insightful comments, all of which I have read several times over. Thanks very much everyone for those.

LDiCesare

June 13th, 2010, 05:05 PM

If I want a kraken, I need to start underwater. For a troll king, I don't. Troll kings are more varied than grendelkins, come earlier, generate gems, come with a retinue. After testing, I see no reason to waste gems on grendelkins. I've had more success with a bane lord than with a grendelkin. Grendelkins seem to be made for a niche that I have no use for. After losing my second kitted grendelkin, I'm going for a sea troll. I know that he can reduce the same oppo to pulp with his retinue, i.e. for less gems overall.
Now if I don't want to fight underwater, would I pick a grendelkin? Maybe. But given the paths I chose in my game, I'd already have tartarians in that game if I hadn't tried to go with this beast. So now, should I want a land SC, I'll still research tarts as it's much more efficient and powerful, and not actually longer to research. It'll also free water gems for boots of speed, frost brands, water breathing trinkets and cold resistance items.

Squirrelloid

June 13th, 2010, 06:20 PM

Llama, the Roc is useless at A2. I certainly won't use them. At A3 they were actually useful.

I'm pro-diversification - because otherwise everyone needs to summon tarts for magic diversity. I'm also anti-'the best summonable caster with this path is summoned via a different path'. Making Rocs A2 just removed any real reason to possibly summon them.

Basically, this is a very bad change. I will not update to the most recent release, and will continue to host games with the old one.

(Edit: I also hate to see whiners win. There was zero evidence Rocs were overpowered at A3. And unless it received godly stats (ballpark MR22 Att 20 Def 20 Str30 to make up for lack of full slots) it'll never be worth summoning without useful magical might.)

Zeldor

June 13th, 2010, 07:40 PM

Hmm... I don't think I will ever summon A2 Roc. I'd rather forge gate cleaver if I want forge bonus. For patrol it's too expensive [and I can use Male Shishi]. If I want smth that can trapeze well, I have Shishis. If I want spellcaster, I have Asynja. I see absolutely no use for Roc now.

llamabeast

June 13th, 2010, 07:41 PM

Squirrel, I agree that there is some danger that the Roc will be of little use at A2. Or rather, I expect he will be pretty niche. However I don't feel it's within the scope of the mod to significantly change the paths to gaining access to magic paths - that's the only reason for the change. Nothing to do with it being OP.

It's slightly frustrating, because if I had managed to think properly about path access before making the first versions, the Roc would have been A2 from the start (it's nothing to do with whiners) and probably no-one would have suggested it be A3.

Now I realise you disagree with me about path access, that's fine. You are genuinely more than welcome to integrate a version of the EDM into your squirrel balance mod, and make the roc A3 there.

Aethyr

June 13th, 2010, 07:59 PM

Llama, while I repsect your decision, I'm curious as to why you feel the Roc "opens up air". Afterall, it takes A4 to summon in the first place. What am I missing?

kianduatha

June 13th, 2010, 10:48 PM

I'm just utterly failing to understand the proposed niche for the Kraken. It doesn't do anything for the Water nations, who already had enough power to crush a non-underwater nation going for them in the oceans. And it's aquatic, which means the land nation needs to already have a way to take water provinces and hold them for a few turns...and if you can do that, why on earth do you need a Kraken?

Aethyr, it's that if you have a pretender with A4(a good breakpoint anyways) you can suddenly have other high air casters, where that wasn't possible before. It allows you to project air buffs in multiple places(and without endangering your pretender!) which flatly wasn't possible before.

rdonj

June 14th, 2010, 01:42 AM

I do think the Roc has a very useful and viable niche even with the air magic reduction... they have a lot to offer as support units. I do wish they'd kept the A3 though :P Perhaps a cost reduction might be in order now?

Sajuuk

June 14th, 2010, 03:11 AM

See，Llama hold the same opinion that new path should not be accessed too easy if the game itself doesn't provide so:D Some would say tartarians, but D itself is very hard to access, if you don't have D on national mage or pretender, then the only hope is 10% chance on trible shaman plus some high N or S booster......

I like the change on kraken, it is no longer such a great way to access astral or death that many land nation would like to get an underwater province for it. But it is still a powerful thug, with summon water power, water shield and iron skin, iron will plus some misc item, it will have 20 protection, 21 defence,17*10 attack and 22 mr, with 180 hp. It does not immune to its own poison ink, though. Maybe the only real problem is enchanment 7 would be a little too late....

Roc became a little useless, since we can summon 2 A2 shishi with 30 gems, 15 for each, why summon one A2 roc with 25 Gem? If roc is cheaper than shishi(18 gems maybe,shishis are currently too cheap, 15 gems for a A2 thug...), those nation with only pretender access to A will gladly summon a lot of rocs.

I still insist that asynja is a little too good: with A2, stealth and glamour, she is an excellent SC, raider and sc hunter, yet she has a quite some chance for A4, B2, D2 or E2, capable to take the role as ritual mage or Battlefield enchantment caster, and she only cost you 35 gems, then why would I spend A gems on anything else? So I think increase her cost a little and reduce random pick into one would be better......

Cyclops should be an excellent SC, but 30 gems for E3 mage is also a bargain, so why not change his path into E2F2, so he can still cast many self buff spell plus phoenix pyre but no longer battle enchantment？

Btw，why not add "alive" version of tartarian cyclops into this spell? It can be randomly choose one from E2F2 granite cyclops, E3 smith cyclops or E2A2 lightning cyclops:re:

Dimaz

June 14th, 2010, 09:28 AM

Make Roc A2 + 25%A if A2 and A3 both create problems :) That way getting A3 caster will cost lots of gems.

Squirrelloid

June 14th, 2010, 11:04 AM

Ok, air is already easy to get access: Faerie Queen or Tarts will easily get you A3 casters, if not the occasional A4.

Tarts are pretty trivial to get. You can get there off D1 on your pretender no problem. Its not even hard. Everyone who doesn't get D nationally wants a little death on their pretender anyway.

(d1 + 2 rings -> d3 -> mound king +2 rings -> D5 -> demilich + 2 rings + 1 other booster -> D7. Substitute skullface/skull staff as you get the D to make them to free your rings up for other duties).

If the idea is to provide alternatives to tarts, one of the things the mod must do is make diversification possible without relying on tarts.

And I maintain a Roc will never be worth summoning at *any* price if its only A2. It has absolutely no role to fill. A3 at least makes it a serious air caster. It will never be a good thug without full slots or insane stats. And there's basically nothing worth casting at A2.

Heck, even with A3 the faerie queen is still better because she has hands (for forging more air boosters). The Roc was pretty marginal with A3, imo, at A2 I wouldn't spend 10a on it. Maybe 5, its probably about as useful as Call of the Winds... (And much harder to summon)

But llama, you're dead wrong on diversification, because diversification is already easy. It just requires death/tarts.

Sajuuk

June 14th, 2010, 01:29 PM

zzcat

June 14th, 2010, 01:52 PM

IMO even with more hp and def boost, the new Rocs are still overshadowed by shishi as raiders and anti-thugs. Basically I can't find any way to use them effectively. How about give them #onebattlespell "Storm"? It's very thematic and will make them actually different from other endgame summons.

Another choose is giving them Wrathful Skies and moving the spell to conj8, I personally perfer it to previous one because it's very cool for such an splendid creature:)

Edit: Ninjaed by Sajuuk.

Stavis_L

June 14th, 2010, 02:07 PM

rdonj

June 15th, 2010, 01:01 AM

Actually I liked Dimaz's suggestion.

Squirrel, the roc is easily worth more than 5A :P Even if for NO other reason, wall shakers require a3, and give 15 less siege bonus than the current roc. Sure, that's a bit less with a hammer, but it would still be over 20A for the same amount of siege bonus. And wall shakers don't have nearly the mobility or in battle utility that a roc does. I would much rather use a roc for sieging than a gate cleaver or a wall shaker, because it is less expensive for the amount of siege bonus it supplies.

We really shouldn't be comparing Rocs to Tartarians anyway... Rocs are a conj 6 summon, they clearly are not supposed to be equivalent. It's the Asynja that need to be compared to them, and personally I don't think Asynja are really tartarian level.

Squirrelloid

June 15th, 2010, 10:53 AM

Rdonj: I'm comparing Rocs to Tarts for diversification purposes, because llamabeast brought up diversification. Even at A3, Rocs are still inferior to tarts for diversification for 2 reasons: Rocs require a powerful mage in air to cast (tarts diversify into everything for just a d caster), and they require either starting with A3-4 to cast or summoning a faerie queen to just get started summoning them (or already have tarts). Note that Air is one of the least valuable paths to put on a pretender, whereas death is one of the most commonly splashed pretender paths (and you only need *d1* for tarts, a substantial saving. So for most non-air nations, Rocs aren't even going to be an option until Conj 8 anyway.

Line by line response to Sajuuk coming.

Edit:Rdonj, just how much wall breaking does a roc provide? Because 2 gate cleavers are clearly cheaper since you'll have a hammer for them.

Squirrelloid

June 15th, 2010, 11:12 AM

Ok, air is already easy to get access: Faerie Queen or Tarts will easily get you A3 casters, if not the occasional A4.

Faerie Queen cost 40N, 40! and N gems are very important if you want spam tarts, gift of reason and gift of health will consume tons of N gems.

If you don't need to spam tarts, you won't be burning all those N on them now will you? Since teh goal of the mod is to provide alternatives to tarts, we should start thinking about people actually not using tarts (I know, a strange state of affairs).

That said, Faerie Queens are well-worth the 40n even in a tart world (depending on relative n and d gem income), and have guaranteed access to A3. For all the Roc's vaunted ability to diversify into air with A3, most non-air nations are going to need tarts or faerie queens to even start summoning them. Air is a very low value path for a pretender, and A4 is a significant expense.

I should also note I think tarts are too cheap and GoR is too expensive. But i don't think that's even relevant to this discussion.

Tarts are pretty trivial to get. You can get there off D1 on your pretender no problem. Its not even hard. Everyone who doesn't get D nationally wants a little death on their pretender anyway.

(d1 + 2 rings -> d3 -> mound king +2 rings -> D5 -> demilich + 2 rings + 1 other booster -> D7. Substitute skullface/skull staff as you get the D to make them to free your rings up for other duties).

Is that really "trivial"? If some one start with high bless strategy like W9F9 mictlan or such, he won't have enough point for another new path. In fact, I have rely on wolf tribe shaman to access death for many times.

And yes, with D1, it is possible to get to D7, assume you have enough gems: 30S for ring of sorcery(require const6), 7D for staff, 28D for mound fiend(NOT MOUND　KING!)(require conj7), 30D for demilich(require enchantment8!),and 48S for ring of wizardry or 18D for skullface. Without national D or S mage, how can a nation like eriu or man(or even ma
agartha with D1 but no S)search out enough gems to climb this "tart tree" easily? If you don't have enough N gems or fail to obtain grail or GoH, then D7 is only the beginning of the most annoying part.

Sorry, mound fiend, you knew what I was talking about.

Yes, easy. Heck, you don't even need the lich (although liches are pretty nice), mound fiend + 2 rings + skull face + skullstaff = d7. Or Kokythiad + same. So you can run this off pure construction/conjuration.

You're going to make the rings anyway. You're probably going to make the death boosters anyway. So those aren't actually costs. They just end up getting used here. (this is why i recommend the lich, so you can swap out a ring).

You could also get the rod of +3D, which makes things much easier. And if you're seriously planning on tarts, you're already planning on winning the race to artifacts for the chalice.

Regardless, you have to treat tarts as if the person summoning them has either the Chalice or GoH for balance purposes, because someone will have those, and that's what the person trying to use not tarts is going to be competing against.

But it is perfectly plausible just to spam out tarts and GoR the ones who aren't feebleminded.

I agree with this, alternative diversification method would be nice, but so long it seems llama's intention on this mod is to provide multiple SC other than tarts. Path diversifications are much harder to balance than SC, for "from which path can get which path" is quite a hard decision due to different national recruitable mage diversity.

You can't provide real alternatives to tarts unless you solve for both diversification and SC capability. Its really impossible to treat tarts as just one or the other. By separating the alternative SCs from the alternative summoned mage chasses its already introduced more balanced options. It should stick with that, not backpeddle on summonable mages.

And I maintain a Roc will never be worth summoning at *any* price if its only A2. It has absolutely no role to fill. A3 at least makes it a serious air caster. It will never be a good thug without full slots or insane stats. And there's basically nothing worth casting at A2.

Heck, even with A3 the faerie queen is still better because she has hands (for forging more air boosters). The Roc was pretty marginal with A3, imo, at A2 I wouldn't spend 10a on it. Maybe 5, its probably about as useful as Call of the Winds... (And much harder to summon)

Is that a joke? One D1 zombie stats revenant cost you 9d! In fact, if a A2 roc only cost 5a, one tenth of a air queen, then you may expect to meet a non air nation(with A4 pretender)bring 10 or more roc to spam thunder strike with pretender cast storm, at the beginning of third year, or much earlier if find plenty A site at the early game. Abysia crush their enemy with thunder strike? That can be quite a surprise since no one would expect or react on such strategy:D

How often have you seen someone actually use revenants anyway. Spells that rarely if ever get used are not a good metric for balance. I have seen precisely 0 revenants in MP play. Clearly a powerhouse option... :rolleyes:

A4 pretender, lol. When's the last time you saw that from a non-air nation? 10 rocs is what, 250 air gems? Non-air nation? Year 3? lol.

Not to mention Conj 6 early enough to summon 10 rocs with 1 caster is actually rather hard to do. Most nations would be struggling to have it by middle of year 2. Why don't you try actually doing these things - what you propose is clearly impossible.

Besides, any nation should see the Roc build-up through scouting and prepare against it. If they don't, they deserve to lose.

But llama, you're dead wrong on diversification, because diversification is already easy. It just requires death/tarts.

As I said, tarts strategy require tons of death, nature and astral gems along with high path(especially astral), that is why llama made this mod, to let nation without death nolonger necessary to follow death nation painfully.

S3+ on a pretender is pretty standard for nations without native astral access. Every nation absolutely needs to have a plan for getting a RoS and a RoW. Its an essential part of planning for the endgame. Pretending nations won't have rings is just self-deception.

rdonj

June 15th, 2010, 11:50 AM

Squirrel - he meant at 5 gems a piece.

Squirrelloid

June 15th, 2010, 12:43 PM

Sajuuk

June 15th, 2010, 01:04 PM

For the first part(sorry I'm too lazy to quote:D),I agree that faerie queens are very important, but should not compare with roc, faerie queens are aimed to help those without air to access air, roc cannot compete in this field. Gor too expensive? Yes, 20N(or 15N) seems too expensive, especially for those with grail or goh and trying to gor every possible tarts. Tarts too cheap? Yes, for those with grail or goh, almost every tart can be very very useful. So we can see, only for those nation with goh or grail(maximum 2 if not exchange grail between allies), tarts are too cheap, if you have to summon half dozen before get a usable tart, 10D(or 12D)are not very cheap. Seems reduce or remove the undead healing effect can best weaken tarts, but anyway, llama use this mod to give another answer.

For the second part, yes, their is no argument on what you said, but still this can be a great problem for those nation without high D or S, like Agartha. As for "aiming GOH or grail" part, I'm afraid there might be too many nation aiming for them, you can't expect to be the luckest one. And again, for those trying to spam out tarts and pick out who is not feebleminded, tarts are not really expensive.

For the third part, are you suggesting to give every or most path their version of tarts? Tarts are great, but they have many obstacle, if not give other summon that provide both sc
and diversity with same degree of obstacle, they will ruin the game. So I personally prefer to seperate the SC's role and diversity mage's role, and finish them in turn.

Forth part, well, I use revenant just to show the "cheapest mage" in the game. A4 pretender? Is that really so rare? They might be pretty useful for sauromatia or kailisa in early games. But I mention A4 because the "10 rocs" part. Yes, it is madness to try to get 10 rocs in current version, and I totally agree that in current version roc sucks. It is your "5A for a roc" make this strategy possible, including the A4 pretender. In my opinion, 15-18A for an A2 roc would be acceptable, or 20A for + 25%A suggested by Dimaz. A2 mage can't be "that" cheap, not to mention roc's hp, siege and patrol bonus.

The last part, I personally will never give my pretender less than S4 if have to give him S. If I cannot afford this price, then I'd try my luck on site mage, or even neighbor's luck:D

Anyway, for those nation can't construct RoS or RoW, I'd try to buy one, or try to rely on Djinn, and either way, it will be a great pain to have the ring(and the gems spend on them) ended up on tarts summoning. It's not "impossible", it's just not so "trivial".

Edit: Squirrelloid, seem we give the Roc exactly the same evaluation
:D

Zeldor

June 15th, 2010, 01:29 PM

I agree with Squirrelloid - you should learn more about Dominions and multiplayer :)

Right now EVERYONE that wants to win a game pretty much needs tarts. Both as SCs and spellcasters. You lost the race to Chalice? You can get GoH. This makes 2 nations with healthy tarts. You can't get that too? You wish for Chalice. You can't? Well, you are probably going to lose the game anyway, if you are losing in every category. Or try to borrow it.

And yes, the goal is to give pretty much every path alternative to tarts. So every nation can play differently. Right know EVERYONE must have death. There is still same problem with S [and I hope mind hunts get more expensive].

Roc is more fragile than Gate Cleaver on good guy. And gate cleaver is really good weapon to carry.

rdonj

June 15th, 2010, 01:39 PM

Squirrel - he meant at 5 gems a piece.

I might be prone to slight exaggeration.

I dunno, Rocs felt like they were supposed to be more than mobile wall breakers. I suppose at 15-18a I *might* summon them for that. The thing about wall shakers is they also cast panic - something that you can use to make indie commanders more useful. So I'd probably rate a Roc about the same.

For conj6 and A4 it seems pretty weak though.

Can't say I've noticed ;)

A2 can still cast confusion, thunder ward, gift of flight, false fetters, thunderstrike, shockwave, wind guide, arrow fend, or summon air elementals at a2. Yes, you need an a4 to start, but it'll help tide you over until you can summon Asynjas having an air caster available relatively early in the game. Of course Asynja don't even have guaranteed A3 either. Anyway, many of those spells seem a lot more useful to me than the ability to cast panic. Granted, shishi can also cast all of the same spells, and are cheaper, as well as being better thugs... I would rather have shishis myself, but a Roc seems a much better deal than wall shakers to me.

Edit: Zeldor - I hate gate cleavers, they take earth and earth is much too necessary for other forging when you would consider summoning rocs.

llamabeast

June 15th, 2010, 04:17 PM

Lots to say, but just time for a brief comment.

Firstly, I agree that Rocs as they stand have become overpriced. Perhaps 18 gems. Also I am inclined to bring Krakens down one research level.

No one seems to have commented on the fact that Rocs can be brought up to A4 with two air boosters. Obviously this is expensive, but it is still a way of using an A4 pretender to gain a new Fog Warriors caster, without waiting for Asynjas. Shishis can't do this (no head slot).

In the same way as the suggestion of giving a Roc A2 + 25%A basically makes the A3 more expensive, you could also imagine that you have a choice: either get an A2 Roc for, say, 18 gems, or get an A3 Roc (Roc + Bag of Winds / Winged Helmet) for 35 gems. Seems quite reasonable to me.

Of course a Roc with a single booster (or a Shishi with a booster) could cast Fog Warriors after waiting to cast Summon Storm Power. Said 35 gem Roc is then an astonishingly mobile support caster - with mapmove 5, flying and the ability to cloud trapeze it's probably the most mobile caster in the game. I'm sure it could be pretty handy.

So I have already opened up Air considerably, by including summonable A2 mages. I guess there's no way round that really.

I am a bit disinclined to go for the 25% A3 option as some people have commented that they find randoms on summons a bit annoying / hard to remember. I still have some (most notably the Asynja and the Treant), but I have tried to cut down on them a bit.

One final comment is that I see the Roc being a bit of a niche summon. I can't really see a way around that, and I don't really mind. It's good to include a few obviously good summons (Ember Lords, Grendelkin probably), as well as some more niche ones (Roc, Firebird most obviously).

Sajuuk

June 16th, 2010, 12:33 PM

some people have commented that they find randoms on summons a bit annoying / hard to remember. I still have some (most notably the Asynja and the Treant), but I have tried to cut down on them a bit.

hooray, hail to llama! Treant will be more powerful with N2E1 or N2W1, rooted for N3E2 or N3W2, they can buff themselves with some very useful spells. High N access? Leave it to tree lords:D

But why not give treant Encumbrance 0? For all other flora creature, treelord, vineman or ivy king, they all have Encumbrance 0.....

To Zeldor: You don't get me, I never say it's unnecessary to get tarts, just "some nation have innate disadvantage in getting tarts", either because they need double bless or because they need sc pretender for early survive. Also, with only pretender have s or d or n path, gem income can be a terrible disadvantage, not to mention how "random" whether you can get grail. Yes, tarts are essential for victory, but not fair to every nation, and I just don't like to choose a nation just because it is much easier to win.

By the way, I have played multiplayer for almost three years, not very long, but not a newbie, either, though because of my strange interest in weak nations like ea/ma atlantis or agartha, I only win once, which I didn't use weak nation:doh:

But I have to add a annotation that, though I did wish grail later, I didn't depend on tart to access to new path or multiple SC—— much harder, but possible.

Squirrelloid

June 16th, 2010, 02:10 PM

Sajuuk: A4 pretenders? Pretty rare. Kailasa *might* use one (although I wouldnt). Air is a crappy bless. I would hazard a guess that A9 is more common than A4, because some nations can do cute things with the shock resistance. (MA Mictlan comes to mind).

And the point sort of is to make it unnecessary to get tarts.

Zeldor

June 16th, 2010, 03:04 PM

Sajuuk:

See, that's why you rearely win :) Nations are not balanced. And all must get to tarts pretty much in normal games. Idea behind this mod is to give weaker and non-D non-S nations better fighting chances. And to make it not necessary to rush for tarts and build whole strategies around them. I had over 100 tarts in two of my games. I am sick of that. But I like winning, so I will summon them again, if I have to.

Squirrelloid:

I think that A4 is not so bad thing. It's another thing that pretty much every nation should get. Air boosters, Staff of Storms is quite crucial for some. Of course it's behind getting tarts, good bless, S access...

Squirrelloid

June 16th, 2010, 03:59 PM

I agree A4 has some decent stuff. But its so far down the priority list... I generally opt for nature access and summoning a faerie queen, or just winning the tart lottery (A3 is enough to get started with a RoS).

Sajuuk

June 17th, 2010, 12:11 AM

Zeldor：

Everyone like to win, including me:D I just don't like to win through spam something, should it be tarts or gem generator like clam or blood stone, and that's why I love the possibility given by this mod. But it might still lead to spam, just change from spam one thing to many things, and I still can't win. Well, then so be it, the pleasure of winning is no match to the pain it takes:hurt:

Squirrelloid:

A4 is not a universal choice for pretender, just for some specified purpose, such as "there's A2 mage only cost 5A", or maybe you know that you are going to fight plenty of air nation or archery nation early in the game, maybe plus you can tolerate the points from A3 to A4. 20% air shield are almost totally useless, though.

Squirrelloid

June 17th, 2010, 10:01 AM

Sajuuk: Most pretenders won't have air at all. Its a bad path for a pretender. Those pretenders who do have air will generally have just enough for SCing (A2 for mistform) or will be a bless chassis with A9 for some specialized use.

The only time I could see taking A4 on a pretender is if you had an air nation that didn't get native A4 casters with any regularity. I honestly can't name one off the top of my head...

Graeme Dice

June 17th, 2010, 11:51 AM

Pythium and Midgard are probably the best examples.

Sajuuk

June 17th, 2010, 12:24 PM

MA Mictlan maybe......

Anyway, as I said, A4 on pretender is only a very specified strategy, when I suggest of A4 pretender, it is based on a hypothesis that Roc only cost 5A, and since it will never be so cheap, there's no need to explore the suggestion's further utility:D

thejeff

June 18th, 2010, 07:27 AM

MA Man is another.

Even in those cases it's often better to use Astral on the pretender and use rings to bootstrap Air boosters. Assuming you have A3.

Sajuuk

June 18th, 2010, 09:21 AM

Seems MA Mictlan is the only "air" nation that nomally could only get A2 (and S3 without E so no crystal coin) so have to rely on pretender for air booster and rings

Squirrelloid

June 18th, 2010, 12:01 PM

And MA Mictlan is one of those few nations at all likely to take A9. Possibly also taking S9 and something offensive (F9, B8, something). Of course, it can just trade for a coin, opening up something like F9A9W9 or A9W9B8, but they don't have as good a chassis for those.

(MA Mictlan can do shockwave spam with a high priest and Eagle Warrior bodyguards, the SR from A9 comes in handy in such cases.)

Of course, they can avoid A9 and go with something more typical, like F9W9S9. (I believe they have a 1/40 chance at A3 on a High Priest of the Sky. Alternately, they can pound construction, snag the Tome of High Power, and get to air boosters off that and a RoW.)

Finalgenesis

June 19th, 2010, 08:27 PM

I assume Firebird's luck effect is taken from lady of fortune? I wonder if it stacks, i.e. 3-4 firebird in a province to really ramp up the luck there. Of course this is not exactly a good idea when you have many provinces ...

Squirrelloid

June 19th, 2010, 08:56 PM

firebird is unique, iirc

Finalgenesis

June 19th, 2010, 09:10 PM

Oooo fine (Didn't know that)! Then how about Lady of fortune + firebird?

BlanketThief

June 19th, 2010, 11:49 PM

Lingchih

June 20th, 2010, 06:32 AM

firebird is unique, iirc

Firebird in unique, yes. There can be only one.

Damn good summons though.

Wrana

June 20th, 2010, 02:08 PM

Squirrelloid

June 20th, 2010, 08:10 PM

If you made elemental royalty non-unique, would it just randomly select one every time you summoned one?

Valerius

June 20th, 2010, 09:16 PM

If you made elemental royalty non-unique, would it just randomly select one every time you summoned one?

I'm fairly certain the summon elemental royalty spells check to see if the unit ID exists in the game, so clearing all the stats on the units in question to remove the #unique tag doesn't help.

But you could use #firstshape to get around this by having the summoned royalty transform to another shape, thus freeing up the original unit ID for further summoning.

See this post (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=739155&postcount=64) by Sombre for more info.

Tested it and it works fine. The only thing I'm unsure of is if there are more attempts in a turn to summon a given type of elemental royalty than exist in the game if some will be told that no one answered the spell (because #firstshape hasn't yet been triggered). So more than two attempts to summon a fire king, more than three attempts to summon an air queen, etc.

Finalgenesis

June 20th, 2010, 11:09 PM

Firebird in unique, yes. There can be only one.

Damn good summons though.

Actually, a pity. This makes it just like Elemental Royalty in being the price for the first player reaching needed research instead of a unit usable instead of Tartarians...
:(

It's a good thing firebird isn't all that hot (harhar...har...) considering the cost and compared to other late-game summons and options. I'd take a Zmey or save the gems for crafting any day of the week over a firebird. Though maybe that's because I don't know the full power of a firebird?

So far I only see it as a weak/mobile fire mage, admittedly useful if you have no national access to fire. The luck effect seems useless since it's only applied to the province it's in, considering that you probably have 10+ provinces by the time you can summon it this effect can be dismissed.

What I'm unsure of is that its description seem to imply it auto-cast solar brillance in battle, though I'm not seeing this on the wiki (I should test this...), if so this would be a different matter. Maybe it can even pierce Mandeha's anti-solar darkness effect like forbidden light does hmmmm...

Finally, if its luck effect actually affects crossbreed/ transformation/ void gate summon like luck scales does, I'd be racing for this hot, sexy bird! :D

Aethyr

June 21st, 2010, 02:29 AM

Yes, it does auto-cast solar brillance in battle.

Lingchih

June 21st, 2010, 10:57 PM

Never tried one in battle. They're kind of fragile. I guess if I had an extreme need for auto solar brilliance.

I was commenting on the luck effect. It's quite nice getting a lucky event at I believe a 50% or so rate (at least that's the frequency I was getting them at). I just sat mine in my cap. Nothing bad ever happened there, and every other turn or so a good event.

If it were expensive or hard to research, then no, it probably wouldn't be worth it. But it is cheap and easy to get to (if someone else doesn't get to it first).

Finalgenesis

June 21st, 2010, 11:20 PM

Lingchih

June 21st, 2010, 11:29 PM

It's also fire summon, so it's another bonus for fire-bless nation or national fire mage nations, while being difficult for other nations (I get 1-2 fire at most with rainbow, for rune smasher / awe shield and flame brand usually). Though even if someone else summons it first, casting Zmey with those gems instead is not a bad alternative at all.

I've summoned the firebird before and rarely had events in my cap where the bird is sitting so maybe I underestimated its luck ability abit.

Yeah, I was Abysia in our first EDM test game, InversionsRedux, so it was a no brainer to try out. I had it for a long time, and I did even move it a few times, to see if the luck events followed it, and they did.

For a non-fire nation, might be more of a stretch to go for it. It is even easier to get with this new version now though. I'm starting a new EDM test with the latest version of the mod later this week, so I'll probably be able to test it again.

The Zmey was simply horrible in the first incarnation of the mod, but it looks a lot better now, and I'm anxious to try the new and improved Zmey.

Finalgenesis

June 21st, 2010, 11:59 PM

Interesting, I will have to test firebird more as it sounds like It was more bad luck (lol) on my part resulting in meager luck events.

llamabeast

June 23rd, 2010, 07:22 PM

Okay, I have just uploaded v1.1. There are just a few changes - see the first post for details.

I anticipate this being a long-term version of the mod. Further changes will only be made in response to considerable feedback from MP, and quite conservatively. This is to make it possible for people to form strategies with the summons without having to worry about them constantly altering. Having said that I still *really* appreciate feedback. Apart from anything else, as you may imagine probably the most fun part of making a mod is seeing people discuss your creations! :)

There is of course the chance that I may have to make another version sooner to fix bugs, typos or glaring errors - I am just hoping that most of those will have been caught already.

Finalgenesis

June 25th, 2010, 12:03 AM

[img]
- Significant changes to Kraken magic: has lost linked sorcery random, is now always the same: W3E1B1. I know the blood is odd, but it is a thematic thing that I like, so there.

I am curious, when you say it is thematic for Kraken to have blood magic, what did you have in mind?

I mean, what does kraken have to do with virgins?

Graeme Dice

June 25th, 2010, 12:06 AM

Think Perseus.

Squirrelloid

June 25th, 2010, 02:11 AM

that's not a kraken!

I think the more appropriate mental image is 'think hentai'.

That said, the 'new' kraken is strictly worse than the old one (D2 or S2 Krakens could be awesome).

Finalgenesis

June 25th, 2010, 02:43 AM

I had this in mind when I made the innuendo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife

It's the only thing I can think of that connects a kraken with virgins, thematic indeed!

Corwin

June 26th, 2010, 06:17 PM

Fantomen

June 27th, 2010, 10:03 AM

I think the more appropriate mental image is 'think hentai'.

So that's where it gets thematic? Now what does that tell us about our dear llamabeast?

Anyway, does it work to give the kraken slaves and end your script with rejuvenation under water? In that case the blood ain't that bad. Or as a means to join a reverse communion. How about a few krakens reverse buffed by a starspawn or king of the deep?

Wrana

June 27th, 2010, 10:15 AM

The more appropriate response would be "think AD&D". There, based on some mentions of "Kraken cults" in Cthulhu mythos, krakens were encouraging worship of themselves and accepting blood sacrifices to themselves. As they were supposed to be clever beings, they must have had some real use for all those sacrifices... ;)

Stavis_L

June 27th, 2010, 01:27 PM

Anyway, does it work to give the kraken slaves and end your script with rejuvenation under water? In that case the blood ain't that bad. Or as a means to join a reverse communion. How about a few krakens reverse buffed by a starspawn or king of the deep?

Wouldn't you need some kind of water breathing to keep the blood slaves from drowning?

Fantomen

June 27th, 2010, 07:29 PM

Wouldn't you need some kind of water breathing to keep the blood slaves from drowning?

Doesn't work anyway it seems, all the blood buffs are impossible to cast underwater. So the blood is basically useless exept if you bring them on land using fish ammy. I suppose it could be a way to break into blood but meh. I'm in favor of exchanging it for something else. Death maybe.

Sajuuk

June 27th, 2010, 11:35 PM

The sea monster Perseus kill called Cetus，and kraken is from Norse mythology—— don't be fooled by Hollywood films:D

Reverse communion is an awesome idea in the first glance, since in cbm no blood slave is needed for cast sabbath slave. But it is actually unrealistic at all: Kraken have only blood 1, so a sabbath slave will be 99 fatigue, not to mention this spell cannot be cast underwater....perhaps give it a slave matrix will make this idea into practice.

I have made some test on kraken, and seems a fully buffed kraken can defeat dozens of knight of the deeps without risk of been killed. The only problem is you need quite some meat shield to feed on those KotDs so that they will not shred kraken into pieces before it finish buffing. But it appears to be quite weak against SCs, a sea troll king with frost brand and 24 defence(27 after quicken) and less than 20 protection have roughly 50% chance to kill it, and 50% chance to be rooted rather than killed. If the sea king cast water shield and became 32 defence, then the kraken can not even touch it.

Lingchih

June 29th, 2010, 01:11 AM

The Kraken is not a big deal to me, since I am not following that path in EDM. but yes, it does seem a bit messed up.

Probably the most messed up unit in the EDM. It could be easily fixed by taking off the blood and adding something actually useful.

llamabeast

June 29th, 2010, 03:47 PM

As Corwin pointed out (thanks Corwin!) the version number of v1.1 was still listed within dominions as v1.04. I've fixed that now in the attachment to the first post. The error will not cause any compatibility problems as I understand it - if different players in the same game have the mod with or without the fix then I think they will still be fine.

llamabeast

June 29th, 2010, 03:54 PM

Regarding the kraken: It's not messed up! I specifically said in the changelog that I knew people would think it was odd, but thematically I liked it, "so there". I have not taken account of the blood in the balancing - if it were to be removed the Kraken would just be W3E1, so you shouldn't consider it to be losing out by having the blood. It's a purely thematic bonus.

I like Wrana's quote:

The more appropriate response would be "think AD&D". There, based on some mentions of "Kraken cults" in Cthulhu mythos, krakens were encouraging worship of themselves and accepting blood sacrifices to themselves. As they were supposed to be clever beings, they must have had some real use for all those sacrifices...

These Krakens are very intelligent, and more, they are somewhat alien, and entirely uncaring for humans. If they can empower themselves through pacts with demons at the cost of human innocence, they will not pause for a moment. Of course, their study of the demonic arts is limited in the water (which is why they are only B1). But they have plans to come to the surface, and one day they will.

While the B1 is indeed likely to be fairly useless, I would be surprised if Krakens don't end up seeing a fair bit of use coming to the surface with Amulets of the Fish. Maybe some clever person will find a way to make good use of the B1 (reverse communions seem like a promising option). Or maybe not, in which case never mind.

Oh, finally: Finalgenesis was firmly on the wrong track! Tentacle porn though, seriously: what's that all about?

Finalgenesis

June 29th, 2010, 04:53 PM

It's apparently a historical cultural thing for Japanese, which contains many interesting and overlooked quirks.

For example, did you know that samurai kohei (Juniors) are encouraged to have "intimate" relationships with their seniors? It's not as simple as that but it gets the idea across...

That's only one of many, and one of the milder quirks.

I'll also raise the point that the Kraken <> virgin connection as imagined by the Japanese has more history then Cthulhu.

Seriously, what's a kraken going to do surrounded by virgins on the battlefield? :D Sacrificing them in a bloody frenzy isn't all that much better in my mind, messier in fact!

P.S. I'd go all the way and give kraken seduction.

Numahr

June 30th, 2010, 09:28 AM

Please, can anyone point me at downloadable 1.04 version? I need it to continue a MP game after a computer problem.

Calahan

June 30th, 2010, 09:34 AM

Please, can anyone point me at downloadable 1.04 version? I need it to continue a MP game after a computer problem.
I think these are all the versions of EDM released to date unless I missed one, which is certainly possible. (apart from version 1.1 which is currently attached to the OP)

Edit: Maybe llamabeast will attach these to the OP as well if he spots this post, so that there is a complete mod history easily available for those who need an older version for whatever reason.

Wrana

June 30th, 2010, 12:26 PM

I'll also raise the point that the Kraken <> virgin connection as imagined by the Japanese has more history then Cthulhu.

Nothing has more history than Cthulhu!! :mad: He is eternal! And when The Stars Are Rignt He will awaken and devour you miserable unbelievers!
:D

rdonj

July 1st, 2010, 04:28 PM

That's not really feasible calahan. There's an attachment limit (I believe the limit is 4) that he would quickly run into, unless he wanted to keep the version history for just the last few versions.

chrispedersen

July 2nd, 2010, 08:14 PM

Thoughts:

if you make more endgames units, how about some that are not so geared towards SC or thugs?

Other ideas might be:

Leprechauns: (Gold generators?)
Gem generators:
Magic Path Diversifiers: Ie., Perhaps you could hire masters of the alchemical orders?

Units that DomKill? Perhaps one called The False King, that has powerful dom kill ability.

Also perhaps Hierophants that have significant H scores, and perhaps the ability to heal?

Random thoughts: A wizard that autocasts the spell that summons Carcator.

I'd also like to see a unit based on mossbody...

Wrana

July 3rd, 2010, 10:23 AM

if you make more endgames units, how about some that are not so geared towards SC or thugs?

Other ideas might be:

Leprechauns: (Gold generators?)
Gem generators:
Magic Path Diversifiers: Ie., Perhaps you could hire masters of the alchemical orders?

Units that DomKill? Perhaps one called The False King, that has powerful dom kill ability.

Also perhaps Hierophants that have significant H scores, and perhaps the ability to heal?

I agree with this generally, though current version has some diversification abilities.
But False King is an excellent idea. He may also be a thug, though not an SC, I think.
Hierophants I'm not so sure about: to not make an advantage of nations with good priests negligible, they should be high-research or costly, but this would make them mostly unusable... :(

Calahan

July 4th, 2010, 07:10 AM

That's not really feasible calahan. There's an attachment limit (I believe the limit is 4) that he would quickly run into, unless he wanted to keep the version history for just the last few versions.
True, but the attachment limit can be got around (for example) by having the latest version as a separate attachment for easy download, and put all the other versions in a single .zip file. As long as the .dm files have different names for different versions, archiving them should be fine. At least that way all versions will always be available from the OP.

Don't use mods that often myself, so not sure how other mods deal with previous versions. I know QM tends to create a new thread for each CBM release, but that's probably a special case.

rdonj

July 4th, 2010, 07:20 PM

D'oh. Of course a simple solution like that would escape me.

Yeah, CBM is a special case. Most mods just keep change logs, and change the OP on each new release. CBM is an altogether different beast, generating over 80 pages of discussion across multiple forums. Yikes!

Diabl0658

July 12th, 2010, 11:13 PM

Is the kraken supposed to kill himself with his own poison? Because this is what is happening.

Wrana

July 13th, 2010, 08:46 AM

Is the kraken supposed to kill himself with his own poison? Because this is what is happening.

It happens with kraken Pretender, actually, and the Kraken in this mod is copied from it. So just make Snake ring for your kraken. ;)

kianduatha

July 13th, 2010, 09:32 AM

Yeah, but that costs extra gems and takes up another misc slot(you know, beyond the Amulet of the Fish you already needed).

llamabeast

July 13th, 2010, 04:08 PM

Yep well, I just copied the original kraken pretender, as Wrana says. Presumably it's deliberate that it has some vulnerability to its poison? The correct solution in my opinion is not to give it snake ring, but to give it regeneration.

thejeff

July 14th, 2010, 07:34 AM

I'd like to see that changed for the pretender. It's not much of a limitation, but it's very annoying, especially for early expansion.

And so very unthematic. How can you take a seriously a god who routinely poisons himself?

Gregstrom

July 14th, 2010, 05:09 PM

Digress

July 14th, 2010, 05:19 PM

Why no fortune telling ability for the octopus, sorry, kraken ?

Squirrelloid

July 14th, 2010, 06:02 PM

Why no fortune telling ability for the octopus, sorry, kraken ?

(1) Its not German
(2) Its not an Octopus, its a Squid!

Meglobob

July 14th, 2010, 06:48 PM

Its Welsh, just lives in Germany, thats why its called Paul the pysic squid. Still, obviously all squids/octopus should have fortune teller abilitys because you or I could never predict 7 football results in a row at a world cup.

LDiCesare

July 16th, 2010, 03:31 PM

Ok. I'll ask a silly question about the Kraken.
As far as I understand it, its only role is to make it even harder for land nations to go underwater, isn't it?

I mean, it's easy to summon by water nations. They have tons of water gems, and underwater labs that are easily defended in forts they can build.
How can a land nation summmon one?
First, the land nation must get underwater.
Second, it must build/get a lab there.
Third it must have enough gems and the mages needed.
Krakens are great underwater. They are powerful, regen like hell when given a ring, and have magic paths to help themselves. Only underwater nations can summon them en masse and easily.

In my opinion, the barrier between land and water is the single most annoying feature if Dominions, and krakens just make that worse.
I'd suggest removing them from the mod or providing an amphibious unit that can be summoned only from water and/or one only from land (read Grendelkin).
(But then, I should probably stop playing games with water nations.)

Wrana

July 16th, 2010, 04:13 PM

Well, I'd say the barrier between underwater and land nations is both thematic and interesting to both use and overcome (what I don't like much is how sailing is handled. But so it goes). And getting underwater is quite possible, e.g., through undead thugs & troops. Making krakens isn't easy for land nations, but often possible and sometimes useful. But you can win without them. ;)

llamabeast

July 16th, 2010, 06:12 PM

The barrier between land and water is not an issue I've been interested to address in this mod. If you would like it addressed, I suggest checking out Burnsaber's excellent Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod. As for the kraken, its role is just to add another interesting underwater summon; nothing more, nothing less.

Fantomen

July 17th, 2010, 12:12 PM

I am currently using the great kraken as a means for a land nation (LA caelum) to get a foothold underwater. I think a lot of land nations are going to have spare water gems left simply *because* they aren't water powers, and therefore won't use them much.

Suddenly this pile of water gems become useful when going underwater, just get a watermage, take a water province, cram out some krakens and you have yourself a pretty good start.

LDiCesare

July 17th, 2010, 12:53 PM

I thought I would use water gems for grendelkins. But indeed I should have used them for krakens instead. I just thought the grendelkins were worth something, which I don't think they are.
Water nations will also match your kraken with 2 of their own, so I'm not sure it helps land nations in any way. Troll kings have the good idea of being summonable from land for instance, and seem a better deal until you've got an underwater lab, which can be problematic in itself.

Squirrelloid

July 17th, 2010, 12:58 PM

Krakens were better when they randomed an X2 sorcery, because it could be used for magic diversity. I wouldn't waste gems on the current kraken.

Kheldron

July 17th, 2010, 05:42 PM

Krakens were better when they randomed an X2 sorcery, because it could be used for magic diversity. I wouldn't waste gems on the current kraken.

Well we'll know soon enough if it's a waste won't we? ;)

Lingchih

July 18th, 2010, 05:11 AM

I thought I would use water gems for grendelkins. But indeed I should have used them for krakens instead. I just thought the grendelkins were worth something, which I don't think they are.

Heh, Grendelkins not worth it eh? The single most powerful unit in the mod, and not worth anything?

Sure, if you send them out naked, they get cut up eventually. You don't send them out naked... you send them out fully geared.

Stupid Cesare.

LDiCesare

July 18th, 2010, 11:20 AM

Your supposition that someone would send grendelkins naked anywhere is astounding.
Did you actually use some grendelkins, fully kitted, and use them with success?
I kitted some of them fully, and they performed VERY badly.
I will not waste water gems on them, because water gems are better used on getting underwater, with troll kings for instance.
If I want an SC, I'll stick with Tartarians. They are cheaper and pften have useful magical paths, don't need as much in terms of elemental resistances or reinvigoration, are neither much harder to research nor to cast.

Did you actually use them in some game? Did they perform well? Were they cost-effective? How do you feel that they can't swim? Did you try to send some of them underwater just to see how they crawl down there to the point of being unable to even reach their opponent before routing and dying?

And please don't insult people.

Squirrelloid

July 18th, 2010, 12:33 PM

Kheldron, you got me all excited about a big showdown for this Inversions turn! And then... nothing! I'll tell you where you can put that Kraken!

Aethyr

July 18th, 2010, 03:07 PM

Did you actually use them in some game? Did they perform well? Were they cost-effective? How do you feel that they can't swim? Did you try to send some of them underwater just to see how they crawl down there to the point of being unable to even reach their opponent before routing and dying?

I've used them to great effect, but I have not tried to take them underwater. Are your statements based on how the unit performs in general or *only* how it performs underwater?

Kheldron

July 18th, 2010, 03:46 PM

Kheldron, you got me all excited about a big showdown for this Inversions turn! And then... nothing! I'll tell you where you can put that Kraken!

At the time I wrote that I was going to try to break that siege then realized you had more than 50% chance to put my kraken where you suggest with your southern reinforcements. I'll come back when I have better control of his final destination ;)

LDiCesare

July 18th, 2010, 06:16 PM

I've used them to great effect, but I have not tried to take them underwater. Are your statements based on how the unit performs in general or *only* how it performs underwater?
My statements are based on how they are worthless underwater and therefore spending water gems on these instead of something worth going under the waves is questionable at best.
Sure, on land they are great. But many other summons are great on land too, and not necessarily as expensive.
If you play a land-only game, they are certainly good.
If there are underwater nations, then you should not waste water gems on them imo.

pyg

July 18th, 2010, 06:27 PM

And so very unthematic. How can you take a seriously a god who routinely poisons himself?

People took Socrates seriously, and he only had to poison himself once! If you do it on a monthly basis, it's a guaranteed way to get worshipped as a living deity. :D

I used to poison myself almost daily and managed to attract followers with almost every poisoning, sometimes even more than one at a time. :smirk:

Lingchih

July 19th, 2010, 03:41 AM

And please don't insult people.

"Stupid" is actually a term of endearment that I occasionally use :)

And yes, I was speaking of them on land. They should not go into the water, which is sad. It seems thematic for them. I really wish they had the amphibious tag.

LDiCesare

July 19th, 2010, 10:55 AM

"Stupid" is actually a term of endearment that I occasionally use
Sorry, this was not obvious. A smiley then would have helped.

Yes, they are great on land, but given the water gems cost, I have a real issue about summoning them versus using the water gems for something else.
If underwater is not an issue, then they are great.
If water nations exist, I feel the mod overall makes it even harder to get down there, due to krakens on the one side, which are way easier to spam for water nations than land nations, and grendelkins on the other, which are going to disrupt your spending of water gems towards something that's mostly useless underwater.

nosre

August 27th, 2010, 05:26 PM

Aethyr

August 27th, 2010, 06:46 PM

There are probaly other ways, but I always just select the nations that I will be playing against and avoid any having "random" nations. Hope this helps.

Fantomen

August 28th, 2010, 04:33 AM

Hi. I'm pretty new to this game and therefore play mostly single player, and "Endgame Diversity Mod" showing up all the time in my EA games is pretty annoying. Is there any way to disable the nation? I love the actual units.

Thanks :)

Open the mod in a text editor, then delete this part:
#selectnation 93 -- Dud nation used to give non-pretenders to as a pretender chassis.
#end

#selectnation 92
#era 1
#clearnation
#clearsites
#startfort 4
#name "Endgame Diversity Mod"
#epithet "Testing Nation"
#descr "A nation with all the Endgame Diversity Mod summons available as recruitables."
#summary "May be useful for testing the summons without having to build up powerful magic to summon them."
#brief "Nation able to recruit the Endgame Diversity Mod summons."
#addreccom 2985 -- Roc
#addreccom 2951 -- Grendelkin
#addreccom 2952 -- Treant
#addreccom 2956 -- True Firebird
#addreccom 2957 -- Zmey
#addreccom 2963 -- Ember Lord
#addreccom 2964 -- Great Kraken
#addreccom 2965 -- Shishi (Male)
#addreccom 2966 -- Shishi (Female)
#addreccom 2967 -- Asynja
#addreccom 2968 -- Wild Ettin
#addreccom 2969 -- Mechanical Giant
#addreccom 2970 -- Wendigo
#addreccom 2984 -- Cyclops
#startcom 2970 - Give a wendigo and a grendelkin as starting commanders.
#startscout 2951
#end

Squirrelloid

August 28th, 2010, 07:20 PM

Ok, having played with various versions at this point, some thoughts:

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

Rocs in their current incarnation are basically useless except as gatecleavers. And they're more expensive than gate cleavers. Nor are they really more mobile than gate cleavers, since a gatecleaver can 'teleport' through a lab to a unit much farther away than 5 provinces. Strongly recommend re-instituting A3.

Haven't been notably impressed with Shishi, but i don't think i've seen them used well yet. I have seen a lot of them, but they mostly just died =)

Ember Lords are pretty awesome, but I'm not convinced they're overpowered yet. Hard to use frequently because of cost.

The firebird definitely needs to be no earlier than Conj 6, auto-casting solar brilliance is really powerful. I might move it to conj 7.

No opinion on summons which require nature gems - N is too valuable to use for them for any nation i've used with EDM summons.

Older cyclops version was much better (E4 + random), as it actually allows access to E5 rituals with boots, which gives you a real reason to summon them. The newer version is far less useful, and not really worth the 30e in most circumstances. If you can't get more E than a Troll King, its simply not worth it, since the King is so much easier to summon (path requirement wise).

I don't remember when Asynja changed. The version that was used in CPF3 seemed perfectly useful.

None of these really reduce the demand for tarts, because tarts are still the best way to get magic diversity. Undoing the nerfs which stop the new summons from being useful for magic diversity is necessary, and even then tarts are still the best access to diverse magic. May need some other summons purely focused on providing magic diversity to actually compete.

LDiCesare

August 29th, 2010, 01:19 PM

Fantomen

August 30th, 2010, 04:16 AM

Shishis are nice raiders, I used tham a lot and I think they're nice and balanced. Actually I'm not sure the attack nerf was even warranted.

Also agree on the grendelkin and roc, I think our dear llama was a bit too quick with the nerfbat in general.

Valerius

August 30th, 2010, 05:12 AM

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

I think combining high attack, damage and HP in one unit is a bad idea. The key nerf they received wasn't the strength drop but the 4 point drop in attack skill. I think that was crucial in order to give anti-SC thugs a chance against them.

I support the drop in strength as well, but really they still do a lot of damage. And I can't think of any SC with more HP. And since they don't have undead/demon/magic being tags you can't use damage multiplying weapons against them the way you can most SCs.

Sure, they aren't great operating solo since they have no built-in resistances or magic to buff with. But used in conjunction with an army, or just some mages to buff them, I think they can take out SCs and anti-SC thugs handily and handle troops fairly effectively as well.

OTOH, I wouldn't have a problem with giving them things like CR 50 or poor amphibian but, especially in the latter case, I don't think llamabeast likes the idea thematically.

No opinion on summons which require nature gems - N is too valuable to use for them for any nation i've used with EDM summons.

This has been my experience as well. I like treants but I'd rather use my N gems to forge gear for other SCs/thugs and fuel globals. Not sure what to do about that, though, other than lowering their cost.

Older cyclops version was much better (E4 + random), as it actually allows access to E5 rituals with boots, which gives you a real reason to summon them. The newer version is far less useful, and not really worth the 30e in most circumstances. If you can't get more E than a Troll King, its simply not worth it, since the King is so much easier to summon (path requirement wise).

I agree that the old cyclops was much better. I seem to recall there was some concern about them overshadowing the elemental royalty? Rather than downgrade them to match the elemental royalty I'd prefer to see their old paths return and boost the elemental royalty.

I don't remember when Asynja changed. The version that was used in CPF3 seemed perfectly useful.

I'm very interested to hear feedback on this change. The Asynja isn't a great SC chassis but with glamour she can pick and choose her fights.

None of these really reduce the demand for tarts, because tarts are still the best way to get magic diversity. Undoing the nerfs which stop the new summons from being useful for magic diversity is necessary, and even then tarts are still the best access to diverse magic. May need some other summons purely focused on providing magic diversity to actually compete.

I agree. It doesn't have to have the all-in-one magic diversity/SC potential of tarts but there does need to be a way to get that kind of late game magic diversity, other than through tarts.

Squirrelloid

August 30th, 2010, 10:28 AM

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

I think combining high attack, damage and HP in one unit is a bad idea. The key nerf they received wasn't the strength drop but the 4 point drop in attack skill. I think that was crucial in order to give anti-SC thugs a chance against them.

I support the drop in strength as well, but really they still do a lot of damage. And I can't think of any SC with more HP. And since they don't have undead/demon/magic being tags you can't use damage multiplying weapons against them the way you can most SCs.

Sure, they aren't great operating solo since they have no built-in resistances or magic to buff with. But used in conjunction with an army, or just some mages to buff them, I think they can take out SCs and anti-SC thugs handily and handle troops fairly effectively as well.

OTOH, I wouldn't have a problem with giving them things like CR 50 or poor amphibian but, especially in the latter case, I don't think llamabeast likes the idea thematically.

Here's the thing. You shouldn't be able to (easily) kill them with thugs. That's the wrong counter. They should be the undisputed kings of straight-up melee combat.

Vulnerabilities that (should) work:
Dropping a meteor on them (GftH)
soul slay, enslave mind, charm, etc...
Insufficient gear slots - basically, they can't achieve immunity to every element. So if they go with FR100 and CR100, hit them with lightning or poison.

So the appropriate nerf is to their MR if a nerf is necessary, say down to 15 or 16 base. Like with most vulnerabilities, gear can help, but they will be limited in just how high that MR can get, and are giving up other gear options to load up on MR gear.

Absolutely no on CR.

Absolutely yes on poor amphibian. I don't understand why they didn't have it to start with.

That said, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest they are actually overpowered. Hell, I'm doubtful they could even take an army by themself. Too many vulnerabilities. I mean, yeah, if you take a bunch of Pillar of Fire spamming mages against an FR100 grendelkin as your mage support you deserve what you get. But if you bring the right magic attacks to the battlefield, the grendelkin is going to die to concerted magic barrage. Hell, a Grendelkin without CR100 is going to die horribly to *numbness* spam if there's an army to follow it up. Or rigor mortis + grip of winter vs. a skelly spam army. Etc...

Basically, the 'kills absolutely any thug or SC it runs into, but dies horribly to armies' is an absolutely essential niche, because it forces people to continue to field armies. Making it vulnerable to thugs is entirely the wrong design decision.

Valerius

August 30th, 2010, 05:04 PM

Oh, I don't think they're easy to kill with thugs even with the nerf they received. The strength nerf doesn't matter in this situation since if they hit most thugs will die anyway. The -4 to attack they received gives the thug(s) a chance - but I think that usually they'll die anyway since without a damage multiplying weapon they won't be able to inflict enough damage before the grendelkin connects.

We disagree on whether thugs should have a chance against them. I think they should because by that stage of the game all nations can either recruit or summon some kind of thug - but not all nations can field the S magic needed for most of your suggestions. BTW, I'd rather not nerf their MR since that effectively is just a boost to S nations when they face grendelkin.

As far as grendelkin operating solo, I agree with you that they can't really achieve immunity to everthing and also have decent MR, luck and reinvig. But I think this is a good thing and that they shouldn't be able to do that when operating in a solo capacity.

Where I think they really shine (and what I see as their main purpose) is in providing muscle for armies. In that situation you can equip them with 50% resist gear and have your mages boost them to 100%.

I want mention one other notable thing about them - darkvision 75. Unlike most non-undead/demon SCs they won't be crippled by darkness.

All in all, I think the nerf to grendelkin was reasonable and that they will continue to be used. If it turns out they are being recruited less I think a bit of a pricing adjustment would fix that.

Finalgenesis

September 12th, 2010, 04:02 PM

A question, would mechanical giant receive bonus hp from Agartha golem cult?

Finalgenesis

September 13th, 2010, 08:01 AM

Graeme Dice

September 13th, 2010, 04:15 PM

You can also use the + and - keys to scroll the list of commanders up and down.

Fantomen

September 14th, 2010, 05:30 PM

A question, would mechanical giant receive bonus hp from Agartha golem cult?

Just tested it, the answer is yes. Making it a very viable, and much needed, lightning immune SC for MA Agartha.

Gandalf Parker

September 14th, 2010, 11:17 PM

Wouldnt it be generally more useful to edit the test nation on the distributed zip so that the # on each line is something like -- or ~ ?

I would think that most people want it not to show up. And the ones that do want to use it (please dont delete it) are usually more able to edit the file to replace all the ~ with #. Their editor might even support a mass find/replace action.

Soyweiser

September 15th, 2010, 10:09 AM

Oh also a minor UI bug:

if there are enough commanders in a province where you can scroll the list up and down, and ember lord happens to be on the rightmost column (and not the 1st row), you cannot scroll the list back up above him, the UI registers the click on the ^ arrow as selecting the ember lord. Of course you can just select another province and switch back.

Great mod btw!

This is related to the image size. The image for the ember lord is actually way to big. 256x256 pixels. And the whole box can be selected. Even the transparent parts. (Sadly, this is an implementation problem I think. (I think the size of the image need to be a power of 2)). The Grendelkin should have the same problem.

Fantomen

September 17th, 2010, 08:29 PM

TaoCuathon

September 23rd, 2010, 09:17 PM

i ran this mod with cbm1.6 and it always crashes my game if i try to use a summon.

llamabeast

September 28th, 2010, 06:53 AM

Sounds to me like you haven't got all the images in the right place. You need to extract not only the .dm folder, but all the images, which should be placed in a subdirectory called "diversity" within the mods folder. This should happen automatically if you extracted the zip with directories intact, but being as you're having a problem I guess somehow that didn't happen.

earcaraxe

October 22nd, 2010, 11:06 AM

Kobal2

October 23rd, 2010, 04:11 PM

having tried this mod out now a couple times i say its the best and most imporant mod i ever played with, I would integrate it into CBM, especially seeing that now all games uses both. congratulations!

Heh. Amusingly enough, I reach the opposite opinion from the same ground facts - since most recent games use both without issues, keep them separate. That way, people can enjoy both mods together if they wish to, or vanilla+EDM, or CBM without EDM. All up to the game host & players, their whims and their fancies.
In the words of a Unix sysadmin I used to know : more options good. Fewer options bad.

mehrunes_dagon

November 3rd, 2010, 10:47 AM

I've used previous version of the mod in some SP games. This mod together with sitemod brings a lot of diversity.

But i think something must be changed

I think that treant should only be summonable in forest because ancient trees should only live deep in forest. And maybe Grendelkin should be only found in swamps

I am also very sad that in version 1.1 cyclops are not magically diverse and have no fire skill

In previous version, my enemy would not know if he will will be burnt, thunder-striken, trampled or killed by hand of my cyclop. In version 1.1, thunderstriking by cyclop requires both air bag and staff of storms; none of the cyclops can cast magma eruption; lack of fire shield prevents cyclop from becoming good super-combatant

I suggest that cyclop seen in ver.1.1 be renamed to "granite cyclop" and be summonable everywhere on land; stronger cyclop seen in ver. 1.1 (called "Mountain Cyclop" or "Ancient Cyclop") be summonable in mountains

I hope to see the strong cyclop in next version of the mod. If this does not happen, i will probably fork the mod

TheDemon

December 19th, 2010, 10:08 AM

Any reason why the Zmey is only 50 years old? I was quite surprised when BoT started affecting my Zmeys. Is there a reason thematically or is this an oversight?

llamabeast

December 19th, 2010, 10:41 AM

An oversight, I'm afraid.

DeadlyShoe

December 19th, 2010, 09:49 PM

Please to be changing to 1337 years old.

Makinus

December 20th, 2010, 01:21 PM

How exactly the Wendigo mechanic works? I mean it´s changing stats/size/etc.... would it be possible to use a similar mechanic to allow normal mages to advance to a better/more experienced mage form.... as an example, would it be possible to use the mechanic to make a MA Man Daughter of Avalon to change to a Mother of Avalon after certain number of turns and, afterwards, to a Crone of Avalon?

WraithLord

December 20th, 2010, 01:38 PM

Makinus, that's an amazing idea. Advance via exp, Ala disciples.

llamabeast

December 20th, 2010, 01:41 PM

Technically that would be possible, yes. The way the wendigo works is this: each form of the wendigo is given a shape that it should "revert" to - this is the same as the way Mictlan's were-jaguars revert to jaguar warriors after battle. The reversion process happens at the end of every battle, and at the end of every turn. The trick with the wendigo is that instead of reverting to its original shape, it moves on to a new shape each time.

So, if you were to use this for Daughters of Avalon:
- They would move on one step not only every turn but also every battle, which doesn't really make sense (for the Wendigo this is justified by its consumption of corpses after battle)
- You'd need to use as many unit numbers as the number of turns you want the process to last. e.g. if you want a daughter to turn into a crone after 20 turns, you'll need to use 21 different unit numbers. This is fine for one or two units, but would become prohibitive if you wanted to do it for lots of things.

On the whole, I don't think it's workable except for cases where it's especially thematic. Another cool one would be a dragon's egg which would turn into a hatchling, then a young dragon, then finally a big dragon. Again there would have to be some reason why battle made the dragon grow bigger (eats victims? thrives on combat?)

Edit: WraithLord, that wouldn't be possible.

Makinus

December 20th, 2010, 02:16 PM

The only way to advance from one form to another is in battles? Even so it could work... we could justify Daughter -> Mother as battle experience as the sprites are not too different... but Mother -> Crone is harder to justify (maybe fighting causes early aging to Avalon witches? could be even thematic with the curse that shows up in LA Man).

Another idea would be a ritual that transforms one unit in another (Orc Empire does something like this with the Mawgut), but i´m not certain yet in how to restrict the ritual to only a single type of unit....

Thanks for the answer... i´ll think a little more and see if i find another way....

rdonj

December 20th, 2010, 03:02 PM

No, it changes both turn to turn, and in battle as well. So if it fights it changes twice in one turn.

Executor

December 20th, 2010, 06:00 PM

While this sounds like a good idea, I think it's all that it can remain, just an idea as it seems rather difficult to implement.
If every battle were to change a unit into a forward form, what's to stop someone to attack/retreat just to gain those forms in twice the time?

rcook12a

January 25th, 2011, 03:16 AM

I really want to try this mod. I have it all unziped in the Divirsity folder in the Mod folder, but I've experienced no changes. What am I missing? Went through the whole Mod pdf and don't see anywhere where it says how to actually activate a Mod.
Regards

Jarkko

January 25th, 2011, 03:29 AM

In the main menu of the game, go to Preferences -> Mod Preferences, and activate the mods you want :)

rcook12a

January 25th, 2011, 07:40 AM

Thanks for the quick response Jarkko, Mod Preferences is empty, nada, nothing there and this is the only Mod I was trying to load. I'll delete and unzip again and see what happens.
Regards

llamabeast

January 25th, 2011, 07:53 AM

Uh, it sounds like you're doing everything right, but there are no bugs or anything around this so I'll just go through the details.

Firstly, are you using Windows?

Let's say dominions is in c:\games\dominions3

Find the folder c:\games\dominions3\mods (check the spelling - someone before had a folder called "mod" which didn't work).

Unpack all the stuff from the zip into that folder. So now there should be a file called "diversity_1_1.dm" in the mods folder. That's all you need in order to be able to select the mod from within dominions.

There should also be a folder called "diversity" full of sprites in the same place. You don't need the folder full of sprites in order to be able to select the mod, but when you actually try to use it the game will crash unless the sprites are in the right place.

Let us know how you get on.

Calahan

January 25th, 2011, 08:29 AM

You also need to make sure to exit Dominions, as new mods won't appear on the mod selection list until the game is re-started.

PriestyMan

January 25th, 2011, 05:59 PM

btw, thoughts about zmey:

i know the ember lord is waay better for F gems, but he does take a lot of gear to make his awesomeness optimal. zmey on the other hand need no gear to be fairly cheap raiders. if you want to give them an AMA or something you can, but gearless, they can kill any amount of pd pretty much. also, they're pretty hard to counter-raid and actually kill since they have 3 forms, they cant be killed as fast, and once they lose two heads they usually run away. btw, 1 head is still able to raid as long as the pd isnt like 20. I've used a lot of them, and really like the results so far. of course i have a lot of F gems and not a lot of S and other gems

Calahan

March 17th, 2011, 03:54 PM

Llama, will you be releasing an updated version of EDM as a standalone? (as I know the recent CBM's have seen updates to the EDM section)

llamabeast

March 17th, 2011, 07:46 PM

Yes! Well reminded.

New version is attached to the first post. Here is the changelog:

Moved ID numbers around so mod is compatible with all of the nation mods in Sombre's [MC] Mod Catalogue (see other forum), as well as CBM 1.6.
Roc now has "Roc beak" attack which is armour piercing
Roc gained powerful one-use AOE 1 "Aerial Dive" attack.
Zmey much cheaper: 25 gems (was 35)
Mechanical giant cost increase to 20 gems (16)
Cyclops cost increase to 35 gems (30)
Grendelkin cost decrease to 35 gems (40)
Asynja randoms reduced from 210% AEDB to 160% AEDB
Treant: cost reduced to 30 (40). Research level to 7 (8)
Ettin: Cost reduced to 14 (18). Research level to 5 (7).
Ettins gained 50% shock resistance, cold resistance and poison resistance.
Asynjas gained good Enchanted Sword and Weightless Shield items.
Kraken magic: Previously was W3E1B1 in EDM, W1, 150% WEN in CBM. Now W2B1 + 50% W + 50% E + 50% N in both.
Kraken: Cost 30 gems in EDM, 16 in CBM. Now costs 20.

Sajuuk

March 18th, 2011, 05:01 AM

Thank you llama!
Roc's change are very interesting, I'd eager to see what it can do as thug/anti-sc thug. Perhaps reduce some of its siege&patrol bonus in exchange?

Zmey's price balance is great! Though zmey is a really good raider, it is still inferior to Iron angel with gears of 15 gems, not to mention grendelkin. E gems are precious, but can not be used to mass ember lord later anyway.

But why increase mechanical giant's cost? It's 12 base mr makes it easy prey to spell like disintegrate, opposition or control, I cant help but compare it with marble oracle....

Cyclops should be increased like this, after all, it's a E3 mage. Though I still think that make it E2F1?FE100% would be better.....

Grendelkin....well, we've talked quite a lot about it, I still think it shoul cost 45 as marble oracle in vanilla or 50 as that of a elemental royalty.

Asynjas and Kraken now have one or more 50% picks, isn't it a little luck dependent for a costy summon? Other changes are really good, hopefully ettin and Kraken will be much more common in the battle field

yandav

March 22nd, 2011, 06:14 PM

I played with and against Ember Lords in a few games and I noticed that a massive part of of their opponents became blind. I am looking at the .dm file and I'm wondering whether the line:
"#copystats 1384 -- Solar Disc, to get high heat"
is the reason for this. Maybe the Solar Disc does possess this hidden feature?

Soyweiser

March 22nd, 2011, 06:53 PM

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Solar_Disc

Yep, solar disk has blind attacker.

llamabeast

March 22nd, 2011, 07:09 PM

Gnargh, how have I never noticed this before?

Okay, it's on the bug list. Should be possible to find some kind of way round it.

llamabeast

March 30th, 2011, 05:16 PM

Just updated the mod in the first post to 1.21.

Changes:
- Attacking an Ember Lord no longer causes blindness.
- Rejigged nation ID usage to reduce the chance of conflicts.

aaminoff

July 11th, 2011, 08:26 AM

Is there a document or a web page that lists all of the summonable creatures' stats? I understand I can create a test game with the EDM nation but perhaps someone has done the work for me?

Soyweiser

July 11th, 2011, 10:00 AM

Not really, somebody should really make one on the wiki. Just one page with all the stats.

Stavis_L

July 12th, 2011, 09:35 AM

Is there a document or a web page that lists all of the summonable creatures' stats? I understand I can create a test game with the EDM nation but perhaps someone has done the work for me?

Not really, somebody should really make one on the wiki. Just one page with all the stats.

The "Mod Reports" that Lars was considering adding to his mod editor would be just what you're looking for, I think. You might want to respond in his thread if you're interested:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47560

kasnavada

August 20th, 2011, 09:37 AM

Asynjas and Kraken now have one or more 50% picks, isn't it a little luck dependent for a costy summon?

Having tried, I second this for Asynjas.

I do not really see the point of Asynjas having blood, but then I play mostly Caelum as an Air nation. It's certainly pointless for SC since you do not walk around with slaves. I suspect it might come in handy for air / blood nations like vanheim, that can use them in communions, but with 2 air and no garanteed blood, it's probably better just to use nationals.

What they lack to be cost effective is either garanteed access to 1 earth, or 2 death : access to armor-boosting spells or to soul vortex, and mist-form not dependant on gear. I do think that the combinaison of all three is really unbalanced, and I do not really remember other SC having all those paths.

As a comparison point to give you the reason why I think they are not worth it, I propose Caelum Harab elders.

- Asynjas have lower magic path, but they got a very low chance of getting the same paths (2 air, 1 earth, 2 death).
- research necessary is the exact same (they got at best the exact same path),
- Elders are cap only but are recrutable for 270 gold instead of 35 air gem.
- Asynjas have to more HP (12 times more), but it's insignificant if mistform can be kept up.
- harab elders can be blessed, asynjas can't.
- statwise, the avantage is clearly to the Asynjas. Properly kitted however, stats can be compensated.
- harab flies but the Asynjas is stealthy.

Ok, so... assuming equal access to buffs, the only thing Asynjas got for them is their stats : most important being 2 more MR, more HP (so less dependant on mistform). Asynjas hit more often and stronger but harab can do the "clearing army" job. Other stats are irrelevant as far as army clearing is concerned, as soul vortex will do the job. Stealth and flying both have their use, let's say both are as strong.

But, they do not have the same magic path, basically making army-clearing easier for Harab elders than Asynjas. 3 things can kill harab elders : anti-SC thug / SC (which also kill Asynjas), anti-SC/thugs spells (of which most will also kill Asynjas), flying units killing before buff is done.

So... I kinda wonder what's the point. I can run basically the same analysis with Eagle kings in EA Caelum : they got awe, access from mistform and earth buff out of the box. Fomoria would just use a Fomorian King instead of Aesirs. For those nations, Aesir are kinda niche, if not just outdone, by national units.

What other nations is there around... MA Caelum might use them. Vanheim's got blood, and I do not know about the relative strength of blood summons. LA and MA Man and Eriu ? Even then you might just have a Air 3 Aesir, a path that air nation can usually recruit.

Conclusion : in my opinion, air gems are too important (cloud trapeze) to be wasted on units that might just be high HP versions of your nationals with lower magic path. Mistform takes care of HP difference, and Shishis and Roc already play that role anyway. What I would do is give them at least 2 air 1 earth to them, with a (very) low chance of getting a truly exceptional SC with 2D, something like 2 air / 1 earth / 50% AED, 10%D.

llamabeast

August 22nd, 2011, 08:38 AM

The Asynja seems to get a lot of comments, but half of them discuss how massively OP she is and half say how she is hopelessly weak. It's hard to know what to make of the controversy. I guess the implication is that she's strong situationally - which is exactly what I'd hope for.

Psycho

August 22nd, 2011, 03:31 PM

After having played a bit with this mod, my conclusion is that three summons stand above the rest and warrant nerfing. The three are:

1) Asynja being the only SC that can teleport and go into hiding. It's one thing to have a 15hp thug do it, but quite another to have an 85hp titan capable of destroying entire armies or dealing with enemy SCs do it. I think a price increase is in order.

2) Grendelkin mostly because of the enormous hp value. Huge hp equals huge regeneration, which makes killing a grendelkin quite difficult. I believe that fewer grendelkins should be roaming around and recommend a price increase, especially as water gems have fewer efficient uses than most other types of gems.

3) Shishis are inexpensive units that can raid very effectively with little investment in terms of items. I like these cheap raiders, but perhaps they are too effective? How about increasing their encumbrance to 2.

kasnavada

August 22nd, 2011, 04:08 PM

I guess the implication is that she's strong situationally - which is exactly what I'd hope for.

Either that, or she goes from useless to overpowered depending on the path she got. Asynjas are a 35 gem... gamble. The average price may be right, but... the useless versions are worth about 20, or even less, while the better ones might go to 50. As they are now, gambling your end game on SC which might just be useless is not fun. Especially since air gem have got reliable use.

Psycho

August 22nd, 2011, 06:04 PM

I can't bother to read through 40 pages of this thread. Can someone sum up the reasons why Asynjas would be considered hopelessly weak?

The last poster is far off comparing them to recruitable mages. First of all, more hp makes all the difference. Caelum or Vanheim thugs can be killed with a single shot and thus will rarely be fully equipped as that risks a lot of gems. Secondly, more regen is important as mistform is really only meaningful against pd and conventional armies. A successful magical attack pops it immediately. Other higher stats such as attack and defence are also important, especially for the anti-SC role. Finally, flying cannot be compared to stealth. Stealth is one of the most powerful unit abilities in game, so powerful, in fact, that there is no spell or item that grants it.

kasnavada

August 24th, 2011, 03:14 PM

Can someone sum up the reasons why Asynjas would be considered hopelessly weak?

The main point in my opinion is that if you do not get a variety of paths, it has NOTHING to make it efficient as an SC with equivalent HP, or to help her survive any given situation, except glamour. It does not even get some resistance to an element. So, basically, you need a complete set of item to boost it to do whatever you'd do with another SC (even a cheaper one) for a lesser cost. Depending on what you're setting her to do, a thug with 20 gem worth of equipment might do better for a fraction of the "gemcost".

I do not know why other find them weak, there may be other reasons.

rdonj

August 24th, 2011, 09:10 PM

Psycho - the main argument has been something like: they're too expensive for what they do, they are basically glorified raiders, other things can raid more cheaply, they're not tough enough to use as SCs, they can be mind hunted, and "I'd rather summon shishis." I think most of that conversation was on dom3mods anyway.

Executor

August 26th, 2011, 09:51 AM

Any thug, regardless of gear, is hardly better than an Asynja. Flat out, due to her good stats and base equipment, she is better (and much cheaper) than any equipped thug raiding vice.

Personally, I don't think any of the Asynja paths are useless,
-more air for a glamor unit is always good, and she has a freakish defense as it is
-earth gives options of protection buffs and more reivnigoration
-blood can be used for blood vengeance
-and the death (least useful path imo) can be used as spellcasters, wailing wind

I agree with what rdonj said, shishis are better price vice but that's because they're far too cheap for what you get.
However I wouldn't call Asynjas hopeless or bad in any situation nor are they worse than other SCs. The glamor they have + very high defense, which can also be increased, + a luck pendant makes them extremely hard to hit. Even an SC with quickness and gloves of the gladiator would have a hard time hitting her, that is if he manages to catch the Asynja.
Sure, lack of resistance can be a problem, but it's a problem for anyone.
The only SCs you can really protect from elemental damage are Tartarians anyway.
Same goes for mind hunt.

Basically, a stealthy, teleporting unit, with great stats and great base equipment that can capture 3 provinces in 2 turns and not even be intercepted by anti SCs can hardly be considered underpowered or situational, but that's just me.

rdonj

August 26th, 2011, 02:34 PM

I was just summing up the arguments for why people keep calling the Asynja too weak, personally I'm more in your camp myself :) I've been arguing with them since day 1 that asynja aren't nearly as bad as they think.

WraithLord

August 26th, 2011, 05:33 PM

"...that can capture 3 provinces in 2 turns and not even be intercepted by anti SCs..."

Would you care to explain that bit?

Executor

August 26th, 2011, 06:38 PM

WL, I would have thought that an experienced player such as yourself knew that little trick, but I guess the rabbits been in the hat long enough. ;)

Simple, Asynja is stealthy which allows her to move undetected and sneak out without being caught right?
Now, something that people might know from remote province attack spells such as GR or Horrors is that a stealthy unit set to move will join in on the attack of the province he's moving from if that province is attacked during the magic phase.
So basically an Asynja that is hiding can be set to attack both the province she is in and the province she is moving to if you cast a simple enough spells such as arose hunger for example. :)

WraithLord

August 26th, 2011, 06:47 PM

Nice trick. Didn't know that. I wonder if it's some sort of bug or maybe it's WAD???

To the main point though. I personally think that the good EDM summons are too cheap. Good as in Asynja, Shishis, Grendelkin etc. (with perhaps exception of Tree-ant, Ettin & Kraken which are probably spot on price wise).

Too cheap as in eclipsing regular summons. Not completely but they do marginalize a lot of the vanilla summons that were previously used more often and are now falling short in cost efficiency. I'm talking from experience of what I'm fielding and what my opponents field now and prior to EDM. I do not refer to tarts, EDM did a good job in giving alternatives to them.

EDIT: IMHO the good EDM summons could use a 15-20% cost increase.

Executor

August 30th, 2011, 09:30 AM

On a side note Rooted Treant should probably be made immobile. Rather a small issue but while rooted they can still move 2 provinces if you give them a flying carpet, and that can be a life saver in some large battle where you might need his rooted magic paths to defend, and not wait to shapechange burring the battle.

Psycho

September 1st, 2011, 08:49 PM

The main point in my opinion is that if you do not get a variety of paths, it has NOTHING to make it efficient as an SC with equivalent HP, or to help her survive any given situation, except glamour. It does not even get some resistance to an element. So, basically, you need a complete set of item to boost it to do whatever you'd do with another SC (even a cheaper one) for a lesser cost. Depending on what you're setting her to do, a thug with 20 gem worth of equipment might do better for a fraction of the "gemcost".

I find that even with just A2 for teleportation they are nasty enough and other paths are just a bonus, especially E which lets you get more reinvigoration, protection and opens up a very important spell - rain of stones (with a caster who won't suicide casting it). Fire resistance is easily obtained with the standard fire brand + dragon helmet, cold res can be done with rime hauberk when needed and air resistance cast. More importantly, you should always teleport onto an enemy you've seen, so you will know exactly what equipment you need for that particular situation. A thug with 20 gem cost would be better for simple raiding, but that is not the role for Asynja. I see her primarily as an anti-thug/SC and RoS caster. I am wondering what other SC do you have in mind that can do the same as Asynja and has lower cost.

Psycho - the main argument has been something like: they're too expensive for what they do, they are basically glorified raiders, other things can raid more cheaply, they're not tough enough to use as SCs, they can be mind hunted, and "I'd rather summon shishis." I think most of that conversation was on dom3mods anyway.

They are too expensive for raiders and shishis are indeed better in that role. Though, shishis should be nerfed as well IMO. They can be mind hunted, just as more expensive AQs or any other non-astral mages, I don't see how that is relevant. There are plenty of ways to protect from mind hunts or make them less effective, but this is not the place to elaborate on that. They are not tough enough to use as SCs? I beg to differ, they have high HPs and good attack/defense values, mistform and mirror image. What do people want of their SCs nowadays?

I am glad to see that some experienced players such as Executor, WL and rdonj agree with my qualifications about which EDM summons stand above others and should be toned down a bit.