Endgame Diversity Mod - v1.2 released

[llamabeast]

http://www.llamaserver.net/diversityPreview.gif

March 2011: Version 1.2 released. Assuming no bugs have been introduced, this is a stable version and no changes are anticipated for some time. I'll leave version 1.1 available for people who may need it to sub into old games etc. Note that EDM 1.2 is integrated into CBM 1.83, so this mod should only now be needed for games using no CBM or earlier versions of CBM.

Changelog for version 1.2:

- 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.

Changelog for version 1.1 (stable version):

- Reduced Roc's gem cost to 18 (25) (no longer that powerful since its magic was reduced to A2 in the last version).
- Increased Roc's patrol bonus to 60 (50) (eagle-eyed!).
- Reduced Kraken's research level to 6 (7) (so it can actually be helpful in underwater wars, which tend to be over by the truly late game).
- Increased Firebird's research level to 6 (5) (don't want people annihilating Ermor with the little bird *too* early).
- Moved all weapon numbers into the 900s (800s), to make it easier for Sombre to make combo mods. Let's hope I didn't make a mistake!

Changelog for version 1.04:

- Reduced Roc's magic to A2 (was A3). This is to control access to powerful air magic for non-air nations - summonable A3 opened up Air too much.
- Roc stat changes: shock resistance 100 (was 175), defence 14 (11), precision 16 (12) (eyes of a bird of prey after all), patrol 50 (40), siege bonus 40 (30), hp 80 (70).
- Reduced Grendelkin's strength to 38 (was 45), purely on thematic grounds; he remains easily the strongest creature in the game (apart from the Maker of Ruins).
- Shishi attack reduced to 12 (15 with quickness), a reduction of 5.
- Kraken goes to 180 hitpoints (140), 20 strength (18).
- 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.
- Rooted treants are no longer immobile. They still have map move zero, but can move very slowly in battle. This is to prevent aggravating situations/tactics like teleporting an oracle to fight an attacking treant, so that the treant dies from the turn limit (unable to walk to the oracle).
- Treants gained mapmove 2 in forests.
- Updated treant description to add clarity to forest bonuses.
- Zmey strength brought back to 24 (28), firebreath is first weapon (hence always fires; a buff), tail got -4 to attack (makes big difference to repel).
- Fixed issue zzcat spotted with Zmey, whereby the 2-headed form had itself as a #firstshape and would therefore gradually heal afflictions.
- Updated spell list (below and at the top of the mod code).

Changelog for version 1.03:

- Incorporated pyg's changes to give compatibility with CBM.
- Summon Roc reduced to research level 6 (was 7), since his use is rather niche
- Cost of ettin reduced to 18 gems.
- Description of ettin slightly changed to explain they are the strongest of their kind.
- Most of ettin's stats slightly improved.
- Firebird is Conjuration 5 (was 6)
- I would like to highlight that the Firebird actually brings good events as well as preventing bad ones (this is not a change)
- Modified description for final wendigo state to indicate that it will grow no more.
- Wendigo cost reduced to 24 gems (was 30) and researchlevel to 6 (was 7) on account of the time it takes to become useful.
- Wendigo's size stat actually now changes over time (starts at 2, increases to 6).
- Cost of mechanical giant reduced to 16 gems (was 25).
- Large stat boosts for Zmey: protection 22 (was 18) strength 28 (24) attack 18 (14) def 14 (12) fire breath damage 14 (10), all forms +20 hit points
- Zmey gained a tail attack, which is effective for parrying
- Zmey is Conjuration 6 (was 7), 35 gems (was 30)
- Asynja renamed to Awakened Asynja to avoid confusion with the pretender. Additionally her description has been modified a bit to fit with the name.
- Asynja gained glamour and stealth.
- Asynja randoms changed to 210% AEDB.
- Ember Lord lost 100% ED random (just has 10% FED now).
- Cyclops: Magic changed to E3F1 (was E3 + myriad randoms).
- Changed cyclops name ("Granite Cyclops") and description to distinguish it from the pretender
- Changed cyclops stats: higher att, def, prec, prot, slightly lower hp
- Cyclops only needs E5 and 30 gems to summon now (was E6 and 35 gems)
- Cyclops is now less "purple" following numerous purpleness complaints
- Grendelkin's attack reduced from 16 to 12
- Shishis got +1 to attack
- All treant forms got +20 hp


Original post:

Here at very long last is my long-muttered-about Endgame Diversity Mod.

The purpose of the mod is to give a greater range of choices in the lategame. Hopefully, no longer must even Tir na n'Og aim to get death magic and Tartarians. Instead they can battle Ermor's Tartarians with Treants and Aesir, while the Abysians unleash the power of the Ember Lords, and Atlantis fields great krakens from the the deeps.

This mod adds 13 new summon spells to the game. Four of the resulting summons are modified versions of base game pretenders or monsters, while the other nine are original. They are quite variable in power level. The unique True Firebird is quite feeble in itself, but situationally may be very powerful. The Grendelkin is probably the strongest creature in the game physically, but has no magic. The Wendigo starts off weak but eventually becomes formidable. The Ember Lord is probably the most powerful.

The thing I am most uncertain of is the costing for the summons. I am fairly satisfied with their stats for the most part (though comments are welcome). However, I really struggled to choose the research level, path requirements and gem costs, so input there would be very welcome. Until I have had a chance to process such feedback, this should probably be considered a beta version.

The spells added are (updated for v1.1):

"Quest for the Firebird" - F4, Conjuration 6, 20 gems
"Summon Zmey" - F4, Conjuration 6, 35 gems
"Awaken Ember Lord" - F6, Conjuration 9, 60 gems
"Summon Shishis" - A4 - Conjuration 6, 30 gems
"Summon Roc" - A4 - Conjuration 6, 18 gems
"Awaken Aesir" - A5 - Conjuration 8, 35 gems
"Mechanical Giant" - E5 - Construction 7, 16 gems
"Awaken Cyclops" - E5 - Conjuration 8, 30 gems
"Great Kraken" - W4 - Enchantment 6, 30 gems
"Call Grendelkin" - W3E3 - Enchantment 8, 40 gems
"Curse of the Wendigo" - W3D3 - Thaumaturgy 6, 24 gems
"Wild Ettin"- N3E2 - Enchantment 7, 18 gems
"Awaken Treant" - N5 - Enchantment 8, 40 gems

I have added an additional nation in EA, called "Endgame Diversity Mod, Testing Nation". It is able to recruit all of the new units. The idea is that it will be easily possible to see the stats and magic randoms of the new creatures without having to do lots and lots of research. However, if you enjoy surprises, don't look at the testing nation and wait till you summon the creature!

I hope people enjoy the mod, and look forward to some comments!

[Trumanator]

Good god how shall I repay you?! :O

[Globu]

Wow! Looks great!

I'm inserting it into my ongoing late SP games now to try 'em out. Will give feedback from that perspective.

[Alpine Joe]

Wow. This is a really excellent mod and I look forward to playing many games using it. Thank you for this.

[Ironhawk]

Looks interesting! I'll try it out when i get a chance. The end game could surely use more diversity.

[rdonj]

I'm most concerned about the grendelkin right now, actually. With their stats and full slots, those are downright dangerous little monsters. Not that the path combination is terribly common... what can actually summon these other than patala's naga mages?

[kianduatha]

I'm most concerned about the grendelkin right now, actually. With their stats and full slots, those are downright dangerous little monsters. Not that the path combination is terribly common... what can actually summon these other than patala's naga mages?

the first two Atlantises, EA Agartha, Patala, and amusingly enough Jomon.

[LumenPlacidum]

Wow, I'll really have to go over the top to get a balrog sprite to beat that one when I do them for my next mod...

[Raiel]

I'm most concerned about the grendelkin right now, actually. With their stats and full slots, those are downright dangerous little monsters. Not that the path combination is terribly common... what can actually summon these other than patala's naga mages?

Quite a few nations with the readily available W boosters. Any E2W1 mage with a boot-slot will be able to do so with construction-6 completed. They might need to be tamed a little. (On the other hand, leaving them unchanged may see more nations striving for the elemental staves.)

Great work all around, Llamabeast.

I do wonder if maybe the Wild Ettin should be made slightly cheaper - he's quite vulnerable to swarming with low def and prot, as well as a low MR. Bringing him up to par with most of the other summons will require a significant gem/time investment - and nature gems typically have many other uses. I suspect that without equipment on either side, three Sleepers (CBM cost) would make short work of him, but I haven't tested it. Finally, summoning him has a cross-path requirement.

I wouldn't be against the Shishis having 0-enc (since they auto-cast quickness and have limited slots), but I understand that there's an undead/construct theme going for most such units.

I feel the Firebird could auto-cast Phoenix Pyre without tipping him out of balance. I instinctively related him to the phoenix mentally, so if that doesn't fit his theme please pretend I didn't post that last sentence.

Amusingly enough, I was least impressed by the units modelled after pretenders. (This is not a criticism - your custom work just impressed me that much.)

[Jarkko]

Nice work!

I am not entirely sure the price on the Wild Ettin and Tree-ants is fine. Compare for example the price of Tree-ant to summoning a tarrasque and GoRin that, or the price of summoning a couple Sleepers compared to the price of the Ettin.

[Sombre]

Huzzah!

I vote for more pretender style units going in as generic lategame summons. I would like to see titans for instance, for air.

[Gandalf Parker]

It could be a way to actually SEE dragons in a game (the pretender versions) if they were offered as late-game summons.

[BigDaddy]

I have long thought that summon Shedu would be a great spell.

He isn't the greatest pretender, with questionable end game value, so maybe level 3 or 4 and 12 gems.

[Gandalf Parker]

I wonder if Unique affects gods? Hmmm.. wouldnt do what I want though. Something where a unit could be summoned but ONLY if it isnt a pretender in the game. Id love to see some of them as summons or heroes. Kindof a "well no one bought the idea of me being a pretender so here I am offering myself to your cause".

[LDiCesare]

Looks interesting, but it will need playtesting. I like the Zmey. Funny bugger. The treants look interesting too and an alternative to tartatians. The true firebird is really situational as you said.
I haven't looked the Asynja or cyclops yet.
I'm dubious about the mechanical soldier. He's cheap, but I don't think he's going to be very durable if he doesn't heal. Unless MA Agartha can heal them?

[Sombre]

Anyone can heal them in a lab.

[BigDaddy]

I GoR'd a Lumber Construct and it worked just fine (made of wood, 70hp, all slots). But, yes, you'll occasionally need to choose between going on or going to a lab, and it can't build a lab without being empowered.

[Frozen Lama]

I would like to vote to change the name of the wendigo to the winedigo. obviously it is a creature that is much better after being aged to perfection

[Sombre]

Unfortunately lumber construct, in cbm at least, is toast against anyone with even a bit of astral.

[BigDaddy]

You can work around it, with the right equipment, plus you can get it nice and early (lvl 4 and lvl 3 spells one of which is IN construction).

[Amonchakad]

I've taken just a quick look at this for now, but it looks *great*. Awesome job, llama!

Just a small suggestion that came to my mind: perhaps modify the description of fully grown wendigos to specify that they are completely grown, so the player is aware of that and won't wait for them to grow any bigger:)

[Stavis_L]

Is the wendigo supposed to actually change in size during the form progression? The hitpoints increase, but the size doesn't appear to increase (it starts at size 6 per the Son of the Fallen it's copystatted from, and stays that way.)

[LDiCesare]

Balance ideas:
I think treants are too strong right now. Considering treelords are just one research level below (Ench 7, I'm using CBM), I think treants are too strong. Treelords are more expensive (40 vs 35), slightly easier to research (Ench 7 vs Ench 8), can't move, are better N mages but you already have good N mages to summon them in the first place, can't move, have terrible att/def, less attacks, can't move but can summon lots of vine ogres and the like. They also have 2 pitiful misc slots vs. the treant's many. I can't see why anyone would spend 40 gems summoning an immobile tree when he could wait a bit more and summon a treant. Of course, ench 7/8 is a big step, but I'd rather have the treant Ench 9 so they don't totally obsolete the treelords. Maybe the comparison between lords and ants is flawed because, apart from being trees, they have very different gameplay, but I think it's valid.

Same remark for the Asynja and Cyclops: They're Conj 8. Why research Conj 9 + Thau 4 for tartarians? Tarts are harder to summon, slightly less expensive, often riddled with feeblemind, afflicted like noone else, can't even heal properly, burn down your temples, pillage the province you just teleported them into, and are pretty random. Asynja and cyclops just obsolete tartarians rather than replace them. The only good thing left for tarts is their 0 enc. which frees some slots. But then cyclops don't really need the body slot, so rainbow armors are almost a given for them (mr + reinvig, don't care much about protection).

Ember lords are cool but the base attack may be slightly exaggerated? I mean they get a bonus from fire magic, and heat power means they're going to be even better in warm places.

Grendelkins are ok, but I wonder whether they should be poor amphibians? It would make sense thematically. They aren't spell casters, so can't auto-buff, so I think given the paths needed and the price they are probably one of the most balanced high level summons.

[llamabeast]

Thanks for all the comments everyone, and for the kind compliments.

rdonj: I'd be interested if you still reckon the grendelkin is overpowered after playtesting. He's undoubtedly ridiculously fearsome, but then again he has no magic. Is he really better than a Tartarian? I could be persuaded to make him more expensive, but probably not to make him weaker. I want them to be the kind of thing where you think "Oh, no, my opponent's got a grendelkin! How on earth am I going to take him down?", but where the opponent has had to make some effort to get there. Same for the Ember Lord. So maybe he should be more expensive. Opinions welcome.

Raiel: Wild Ettin being cheaper - seems sensible actually. I wouldn't mind if they became common, they're not desperately powerful without kit. Maybe 18 gems or something. The shishis were originally 0 enc, but I got rid of it on thematic grounds in the end - I wanted to emphasise that they're not really statues, they are living spirits which just happen to be aligned to air and made of stone. I don't think the firebird should have phoenix pyre - he just happens to look like a phoenix. The Russian myth was very bright and very lucky, but not immortal.

Jarkko: I can't understand your comment unfortunately. Are you saying they should be cheaper or more expensive?

Gandalf: Yes, dragons would be cool. It was that thought that led me to put the Zmey in actually, since I thought it would be a bit less generic than just sticking the other dragons in. I'm not sure whether I really want to add many more units though. I mean, at a stroke we've gone from just Tartarians to quite a few choices, it might be a bit much to have too many more choices in. Or at least, let's see how MP goes with these choices first. Though it would be very exciting to have all sorts of weird, wonderful and powerful beasties around in the late game, fighting each other.

LDiCesare: The trouble with the Shedu is I think it looks funny.

Gandalf again: I think that thing with #unique would probably work actually.

LDiCesare again: It'll be interesting to see what people do with the Mechanical Giant. On the one hand he's kind of feeble in some ways. On the other hand he has high protection and immunity to all elements, so you're free to use his other slots quite creatively. I think they may never be true SCs but I bet people can make very nasty thugs out of them.

Frozen Lama: Good suggestion.

Amonchakad: Good thought.

Stavis_L: Well spotted! That's the first bug report. Doubtless they'll be countless more. Yes, he's meant to start at size 2 and increase to size 6.

LDiCesare: This is a helpful post, thanks.

I think comparing the Treant to the Treelord is not quite right, because the Treelord is absolutely awful. I think the better approach would be: are nature nations going to be overpowered versus death nations now? Will Tartarians be able to kill these Treants? I think the Treant is still probably weaker than a decent Tartarian, but I could be wrong.

Do you really think the Asnyja and Cyclops are better than Tartarians? Maybe I've inflated how powerful Tartarians are in my head. I actually thought the Asynja and Cyclops were a bit underwhelming. I certainly don't want to obsolete Tartarians. Tartarians should still be basically the most powerful SCs in the game, with the possible exception of Ember Lords and Grendelkin (I hope those three are roughly equal in power).

I'll have a look at the Ember Lord's attack.

Grendelkin were originally poor amphibians. But I imagine them living a Gollum-like life - they're in the dark, crouching in pools, always in the water - but they can't actually breathe in the sea.

[llamabeast]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the Roc? It is possible that he is a bit useless. But then I tried to give him some interesting stuff - A3, map move 5, big bonuses to patrol and sieging. So I am optimistic that he may be effective in some niches. He can definitely take PD down.

[rdonj]

Llamabeast: I don't think grendelkin are as good as tartarians, no. They are not as versatile or do as much for you. BUT I think that, given their stats, it seems likely that your average grendelkin with a holy scourge and maybe some other minor gear should be able to wreck 90% of all tartarians. Naked they're already good enough to kill anything resembling a reasonable level of PD. Geared they should be some of the best SC-killers in the game, despite their lack of magic. I haven't really gotten a chance to play with them much yet, aside from knocking over some independent provinces in a test game. But I can easily see them shining.

The Asynja and Cyclops are nowhere near tartarians in ability. They're capable SCs, but they have nothing on tartarians for either magic or power level. They will definitely not render tartarians obsolete.

I agree on the treelord treant comparison. Treelords suck, they serve almost no actual purpose in the game. Treants are designed to actually be useful, so of course they are better than treelords :). I also agree that treants are weaker than tartarians, though they do certainly have potential.

The ember lord may have a really high base attack, but right now it's not nearly as good as it looks like. He's losing 7 of it from lack of ambidexterity with his length 5 whip and length 2 maw. He does have a lot of attack skill though, enough so that nothing is really safe from him if that malus goes away. He's pretty comparable to tartarians I'd say, with some nice built in abilities that pretty well justify his expense. Not as good magically still, but a very good option nonetheless.

The mechanical giant is kind of meh imo. They're more or less fine... except for their magic resistance. You would have to completely load them down in mr gear for them to be usable at the current price, or else you are just asking to have them controlled away. They're also constructs, so there are plenty of nasty effects to choose from when trying to deal with them. All in all I think these are just overpriced. I think they would be better off priced similarly to the shishi (which are supremely cool by the way).

I also think the wendigo could use a bit of a price decrease, given that it takes time for it to come into power. How much of one I'm not sure. Maybe try 25 gems?

The roc is kind of an interesting one. It doesn't have great stats, but it should be enough for most PD raiding. It should also be able to kill thugs reasonably between high damage adn multiple attacks. And the siege and patrol bonuses give them useful things to do when they're not raiding. I can definitely see them being very useful. The true firebird is definitely the most niche summon. Solar brilliance can be nice, but hard to use and other than that the firebird is not that interesting in battle.

[Trumanator]

I would think that the maw attack on the bal.. I mean Ember Lord should be #bonus? Mostly I agree with rdonj though, except that he forgot that the wendigo is obviously intended to be the winedigo.

[Frozen Lama]

based on preliminary looks, the roc seems like he is pretty good. since he's only 25 gems, and A gems at that, he is a pretty cost effective raider and hits where you don't expect him

[Raiel]

based on preliminary looks, the roc seems like he is pretty good. since he's only 25 gems, and A gems at that, he is a pretty cost effective raider and hits where you don't expect him

I'm really unsure whether or not I agree with this... the Roc does a lot of things well (patrolling, seiging, un-kitted raiding), but he'll rarely be purchased to fill all of those roles, right? So in effect, you might be paying 25 gems just to get that siege bonus or a raider.

In vanilla, this would be fine, but when we compare the Roc to the Aesir, well... I'll just be saving up another 10 gems before I spend them, thanks.

If the price was about half that of the Aesir it would feel like a tougher descision. Alternatively, Conjuration 5 would make that a moot point for a few turns - it would instead be a matter of weighing immediate needs against the future advantage an SC like the Aesir will bring.

[LumenPlacidum]

A question, purely thematic in nature: Why doesn't the Aesir have glamour?

[Jarkko]

Jarkko: I can't understand your comment unfortunately. Are you saying they should be cheaper or more expensive?
I think they are too expensive :) You already mentioned you think the Ettin should be lowered in price, good :)

Regarding the tree-ants vs Tarrasque. Tarrasque is 25 gems, plus if you GoR him the price is 40 gems. Exactly the same price as the tree-ant. The tree-ant has magic, true, but he is prolly going to use that to buff so he gets some of the buffs the Tarrasque has for free. The tree-ant has more slots, but I am not quite sure *what* he should be equipped with; you won't use him as a combat-mage, as you'll have better mages to be able to summon a tree-ant (the possible two water randoms aren't really going to make a difference, are they?) while in pure melee mash-up you'd be way smarter to summon a Tarrasque (and give him an AMA and a burning pearl), and if you want a lab-mage you'd be much smarter to summon a tree-lord (unless the idea is that the tree-ant can summon a naiad who can then start summoning naiad warriors). In all, to me it seems the tree-ant is way too expensive for what it can do, compared with the other options nature has (and I think the tarrasque and tree-lord are overpriced as is, its just that I feel the tree-ant is an even worse deal than those two :eek:).

[Trumanator]

You really think that a unit that has innate vineshield, regen, and reinvig combined with 2 arms, 2 misc, and feet slots is weaker than a tarrasque?

[Jarkko]

You really think that a unit that has innate vineshield, regen, and reinvig combined with 2 arms, 2 misc, and feet slots is weaker than a tarrasque?

I honestly do. Out of curiosity, where and with what equipment do you see the tree-ant would be better than a GoRed tarrasque (and I would like to repeat, I consider a GoRed tarrasque a total waste of gems) with an AMA and a Burning Pearl? Against a skelly spam perhaps (as the skellies are immune to poison and fear of a tarrasque), but that is not what I envision one would use an end-game summon against. Or maybe against tartarians, but for the price of one tree-ant you will get swamped by tartarians. I honestly don't see why I would ever want to spend 40 gems (plus the items) on a tree-ant.

[llamabeast]

Trumanator: The maw attack should be #bonus, you're right.

Raiel: I'm concerned that you're right. I was going to make the Roc cheaper, but then I thought that he is, after all, an A3 mage. If I make him much cheaper then people will just summon hordes of Rocs for Thunderstrike spam.

I think making him easier to research may be a good idea.

LumenPlacidum: Interesting question. The basegame Asynja doesn't have glamour either. Maybe because she's so big? I'd be wary of adding it - it might make her much more powerful. But I could do if people thought it would be interesting.

Jarkko: Have you tried using the Treant rooted? A good approach is to give him "Change shape" as a first battle command. The rooted form is tougher, has boosted magic paths and has innate reinvig and regeneration. He can then cast Personal Regeneration, and becomes extremely hard to take down. Other possible buffs include:

Strength of Gaia or whatever it's called
Summon Earthpower
Quickness
Barkskin (a bit marginal)
Mossbody

Once rooted and with some of these cast, the Treant is easily an army killer, even without any kit. Now I don't have much experience with Tarrasques, but I reckon the Treant is probably quite a bit stronger.

[Jarkko]

Strength of Gaia or whatever it's called
Summon Earthpower
Quickness
Barkskin (a bit marginal)
Mossbody

Strength of Gaia also gives Barkskin, so no use casting it twice. However, would you seriously consider making the ent even *more* vulnerable to fire than he already is for a massive boost of +1 prot?

Well, it certainly has to be tested, but I seriously doubt he is even close to being worth the humongous cost of 40 gems. Notice, I would love to be proven wrong :)

[llamabeast]

Good point about barkskin and Strength of Gaia. What kind of a n00b would suggest casting barkskin? :o

[llamabeast]

Also rdonj, I appear to have somehow failed to reply to your very useful post. I'll try to do so later (at work at the moment!).

[BigDaddy]

If you manage to get the gift of kurgi, a lot of those wastes of gems are quite nice. Ther's other artifacts like that to, such as amon hotep.

[llamabeast]

Don't understand sorry, BigDaddy - can you clarify?

[BigDaddy]

If you get the gift of kurgi, you can put it on non-casters and get all their buffs any random summoned unit, like an iron dragon, which seems reasonable since you got the artifact. You might consider it a waste, in some ways, because you don't need the flying power of the gift.

The hotep makes your unit invulnerable and it think boosts its MR, so if it has 2 misc slots (a normal dragons slots), even, you can add 2 elemental invulnerabilities.

The gift of kurgi makes them ethereal, so you want to put it on something with high protection to start with. It gives a bunch of other crap too. There's an off chance that some end-game summons might be considered too strong with certain combos or artifacts, but you might be better off waiting to have someone exploit them or just test them for fun while you're playing.

My brother, though, said of the VQ (in Dom2), when he was invading, "The VQ can do whatever she wants." So, I think sometimes that's just how SCs are.

My point, was simply that certain artifacts can be used to diversify your SC portfolio.

[Humakty]

I still don't understand half of it. Sorry. :)

[BigDaddy]

I was simply saying that when determining the value of an SC chassis, the items you have on hand are important to consider... especially with artifacts that give you novel powers in unusual slots.

[pyg]

This is probably expected but I'd like to point out that this mod is incompatible with CBM. In particular Claws of ShiShi and Warhorse Hoof use the same #weapon 710. There are probably others. Anyway, use a mod combining script when playing these together.

[Jarkko]

BigDaddy, in a MP game you can't really count on getting artifacts. In SP games, sure, but if in a MP one bases the strategy (or value of units/summons) on the use artifacts, there might be problems ahead (such as "Ooops, about six other players already got to Constr 8 before me").

[llamabeast]

Ack, well spotted pyg. I will certainly fix that for the next version.

[BigDaddy]

BigDaddy, in a MP game you can't really count on getting artifacts. In SP games, sure, but if in a MP one bases the strategy (or value of units/summons) on the use artifacts, there might be problems ahead (such as "Ooops, about six other players already got to Constr 8 before me").

Well, I believe I said, if you get. Maybe I should have been more clear than 'if'.

[Gandalf Parker]

Gandalf again: I think that thing with #unique would probably work actually.

Id really like to know if that works if someone knows how to best test it.

I could even see some fun with a mod that makes all pretenders available as summons if they are not used by players in the game. Might be a nice treasure trove to add nation-specific summons.

Such as; Pangaea getting late-game summons of Carrion Dragon and Lord of the Wild (but only if it doesnt match their pretender choice).

[Sombre]

You can work around it, with the right equipment, plus you can get it nice and early (lvl 4 and lvl 3 spells one of which is IN construction).

I don't see how. Arcane bolt doesn't miss and is decent AN damage. Magic dudes = dead vs astral.

[Micah]

Isn't arcane bolt a missile spell? Those are pretty easy to shut down.

[Burnsaber]

He probably meant "Opposition" which is prec 100.

[Micah]

Opposition doesn't do damage though, and can be MR resisted, plus I think it takes S3 to cast and has short range. Not incredibly hard to pull off, but it's not "any astral at all will kill you dead" either.

[BigDaddy]

arcane bolt is pretty stiff, it has decent ranger (35) and an10+ and and 3 prec. 2 paths and 20 fatigue. So a 1s mage could cast it 5 times with 5pearls. It's level 1 evo, which is something most people could have by then. Opposition is lvl 6 enchantment, which is probably later.

With arcane bolt though, you're probably talking about specifically sending someone to kill the thing while you're still using conventional armies... and needing more than one guy (probably) and pearls (most likely). And that spells pain in the butt guy all up in my stuff. He'd be most useful if you surprised them and crippled his forces. He'd probably be fine with a horror helm and some black steel stuff. I'll admit, however, that I only made him on SP, and used him more decked out... but, he was using horror helm and blacksteel. I gave him a brand though.

[Sombre]

Isn't arcane bolt a missile spell? Those are pretty easy to shut down.

I do mean arcane bolt not opposition. I don't think it counts as a missile (you're thinking storm?), I could be wrong though. Haven't seen air shield have any effect on it.

If arcane bolt fails, there's always control of course, but frankly arcane bolt is the main thing that makes S nutty good against magic beings in cbm. Obviously it's not an instant I win button, but being AN, long range and extremely accurate and cheap, easy to research, it's an awesome counter right up there with the very best in the game, imo. Of course if it does have missile limitations, that's interesting and changes it a great deal.

[Stavis_L]

Four of the resulting summons are modified versions of base game pretenders or monsters...

Currently you're using nation slot 93 to get around the issue of copystatting pretenders. I wonder (haven't tried) if you could use nation 23 (independents) or 24/25 (special monsters) to avoid consuming a nation slot?

[Sombre]

arcane bolt is pretty stiff, it has decent ranger (35) and an10+ and and 3 prec. 2 paths and 20 fatigue. So a 1s mage could cast it 5 times with 5pearls. It's level 1 evo, which is something most people could have by then. Opposition is lvl 6 enchantment, which is probably later.

With arcane bolt though, you're probably talking about specifically sending someone to kill the thing while you're still using conventional armies... and needing more than one guy (probably) and pearls (most likely). And that spells pain in the butt guy all up in my stuff. He'd be most useful if you surprised them and crippled his forces. He'd probably be fine with a horror helm and some black steel stuff. I'll admit, however, that I only made him on SP, and used him more decked out... but, he was using horror helm and blacksteel. I gave him a brand though.

No, it's 22+AN damage and 10 precision in cbm.

'It's something people will probably have by then' is a strange thing to say. GoR + research to get the magic being, versus a super low level spell that they'll have anyway because they'll have gone for arcane probe. No 'probably' about it. If it's midgame and you use a magic thug against them, they can research it in a turn if they haven't.

If you send S2 mages to cast arcane bolt and the magic being isn't there, they'll switch to numerous other awesome spells against the regular army no matter what's scripted. It isn't like stellar cascades paralyze and mind burn suck against regular troops.

I don't think magic thugs should even be considered against astral nations tbh.

[mehrunes_dagon]

I don't think magic thugs should even be considered against astral nations tbh.

And how many astral bolts are needed to kill Ember lord who has 160 health? And if he wears lead shield and anti-magic amulet?

[Graeme Dice]

And how many astral bolts are needed to kill Ember lord who has 160 health? And if he wears lead shield and anti-magic amulet?

About 8 if he doesn't have a shield. More than that if he does. It's 20+ armor negating damage that doesn't require a MR roll.

[kianduatha]

The main problem with Arcane Bolt is that shields can parry it--a guy with a Shield of Gleaming Gold is effectively immune to the things. On the other hand, it's not MR-negates so it'll hit regardless of their antimagic amulets and so on.

[Graeme Dice]

That's also why nether bolt sometimes seems to be more reliable than nether darts.

[Sombre]

Are you sure it can be parried? Because while I haven't tested it, anecdotally it doesn't seem like it can be.

[Illuminated One]

I think all no aoe spells without 100 prec can be parried. At least they often fail to do anything.

[kianduatha]

I did some fast testing--I gave a Mechanical Giant two shields (parry 9 and 11)and threw a good ~40 arcane bolts at him point-blank. Not a one hit.

Even with just his baseline shield it took a good 10 arcane bolts to bring down the Mechanical Giant, between the spell missing(despite high precision and low range) and shield parry.

All that said...I still probably won't use Mechanical Giants unless I'm like playing Ulm.

[BigDaddy]

There you go, lumber construct very early, but expensive for what you get, thug SC thing. Maybe not SC in the traditional sense...

[Aethyr]

Llama, great job! I'm looking forward to testing these in MP soon. :)

[LDiCesare]

I made a small experiment and had a cyclops+aesir nation vs. a tartarian nation. Cyclops come out faster, which may allow to get artefacts earlier on the way but their price is such that they don't get spammed as tartarians are. Of course, GoR has a price, and takes some time, but naked (non blind) tartarians can be pretty strong. When I got 1 fully kitted cycops killed before being able to buff himself by 3 tartarian monsters who flew upon him from afar, I realised my initial assessment was certainly wrong.
So I'd say the 35 gems cost looks quite balanced, although it may in fact be a bit expensive considering earth gems can be used to forge all kinds of good stuff.
The aesir is probably more affordable given air gems aren't all that useful imo, and she comes with a nice armor.

[Adept]

This looks way OP. not for me. Nice use of the balrog miniature though.

[Raiel]

This looks way OP. not for me. Nice use of the balrog miniature though.

Do you mind expounding upon the reasons behind this assessment?

Many members of this gaming community want an endgame alternative to spamming Tartarians, and it would be ideal for a mod such as this to achieve (something akin to) universal acceptance...

[Zeldor]

llamabeast:

I hope you release fixed version compatible with CBM soon, so we can test it in MP :)

[Zeldor]

So Treant has forestshape? But only +20hp and +2strength in a forest?

[Jack_Trowell]

From what I see in the mod file, he also gain stealth, and its immobile form is better

[pyg]

llamabeast:

I hope you release fixed version compatible with CBM soon, so we can test it in MP :)

Here is a quick fix for CBM compatibility (#newweapons are 800-813). Please use llamabeasts's official version in the first post after he fixes it.

[llamabeast]

Hello everyone!

Apologies for my silence - real life suddenly got busy again! I will probably not have time for an update for a week or two (which is ridiculous as it would only take an hour, but there we are). When I do I will post some extensive reaction to comments here, modify some summoning costs and replicate pyg's CBM fix (thanks for that by the way).

Thanks very much for the feedback, it will be very helpful. LDiCesare, your comment about actually getting the different units fighting each other was great - if anyone else has similar experiences they would be really helpful. In fact any comments will be helpful, and certainly very carefully read (quiet as I have been, I've read this thread through several times - I often read it on my sparkly new iPhone, from which I can not face typing replies).

[nordlys]

The monster slots seem to heavily overlap with the Avernum mod (unless I edited it earlier not to overlap with something else :)

What we need is some public table for extension modders, tracking the availability of slot resources so the mods would eventually be compatible without extensive editing on end user's part.

[Frozen Lama]

See Gregstrom's mod compatibility index. he's put a lot of work into that kind of thing.

[nordlys]

Something like that, yes, but going from numbers rather than mods (i.e. something for modders to guide themselves by rather than for end users). Like, #newmonster table: 2500 - free, 2501 - free, 2502 - taken by mod X, 2503 - taken by mod X AND mod Y, etc.

[Gregstrom]

Feel free to take a good look at the Compatibility Index and start typing, then.

[Sombre]

I have a spreadsheet that does that for my own mods and some others.

[Loren]

1) The Ember Lord is too big. His image causes the selection target to be way too big when you try to select him from a bunch of commanders.

2) I don't know if it's a conflict or a bug: I put as many EA races as possible on a large map (SP game)--and one of my opponents was named "Endgame Diversity Mod". I never saw him, though--he was dead before I got there.

[Gregstrom]

2) is no bug - it's described in the OP.

[Rytek]

While playing with this mod I noticed that Heavy Calvary and Knights have been given a Shishi claw attack. This was in a MA game im running. The Shishi claw is dam 2 X2 vs demons with 2 attacks and counts as magical.

[Graeme Dice]

Are you using Pyg's quick fix version? That will be required not to have overlapping attacks.

[militarist]

Is there any information about these summons? How to know their magic paths? Could someone post it here?

[Graeme Dice]

The early era nation called "Endgame Diversity Mod" included with the mod shows all of the magic paths for the units as recruitable commanders.

[grimogre]

http://www.llamaserver.net/diversityPreview.gif

Here at very long last is my long-muttered-about Endgame Diversity Mod.

The purpose of the mod is to give a greater range of choices in the lategame. Hopefully, no longer must even Tir na n'Og aim to get death magic and Tartarians. Instead they can battle Ermor's Tartarians with Treants and Aesir, while the Abysians unleash the power of the Ember Lords, and Atlantis fields great krakens from the the deeps.

This mod adds 13 new summon spells to the game. Four of the resulting summons are modified versions of base game pretenders or monsters, while the other nine are original. They are quite variable in power level. The unique True Firebird is quite feeble in itself, but situationally may be very powerful. The Grendelkin is probably the strongest creature in the game physically, but has no magic. The Wendigo starts off weak but eventually becomes formidable. The Ember Lord is probably the most powerful.

The thing I am most uncertain of is the costing for the summons. I am fairly satisfied with their stats for the most part (though comments are welcome). However, I really struggled to choose the research level, path requirements and gem costs, so input there would be very welcome. Until I have had a chance to process such feedback, this should probably be considered a beta version.

The spells added are:

"Quest for the Firebird" - F4, Conj 6, 20 gems
"Awaken Zmey" - F4, Conjuration 7, 30 gems
"Awaken Ember Lord" - F6, Conjuration 9, 60 gems
"Summon Shishis" - A4 - Conjuration 6, 30 gems
"Summon Roc" - A4 - Conjuration 7, 25 gems
"Awaken Aesir" - A5 - Conjuration 8, 35 gems
"Mechanical Giant" - E5 - Construction 7, 25 gems
"Awaken Cyclops" - E6 - Conjuration 8, 35 gems
"Great Kraken" - W4 - Enchantment 7, 30 gems
"Call Grendelkin" - W3E3 - Enchantment 8, 40 gems
"Curse of the Wendigo" - W3D3 - Thaumaturgy 7, 35 gems
"Wild Ettin"- N3E2 - Enchantment 7, 25 gems
"Awaken Treant" - N5 - Enchantment 8, 40 gems

I have added an additional nation in EA, called "Endgame Diversity Mod, Testing Nation". It is able to recruit all of the new units. The idea is that it will be easily possible to see the stats and magic randoms of the new creatures without having to do lots and lots of research. However, if you enjoy surprises, don't look at the testing nation and wait till you summon the creature!

I hope people enjoy the mod, and look forward to some comments!

A mod that's hard to live without.

[Globu]

I had a thought that it might be a good idea to separate the sample nation into a separate .dm, to avoid the sample nation being unintentionally included in random-nation picks (unless I'm mistaken and that won't occur for some reason).

[Frozen Lama]

I do not believe that llamabeast ever updated the .zip file in the OP. so use pyg's fix on page 8 of the thread.

llama- please update! thanks

[militarist]

Is there any list of monsters for this mod with all stats, including magic levels?

[Sombre]

The early era nation called "Endgame Diversity Mod" included with the mod shows all of the magic paths for the units as recruitable commanders.

militarist: Read the thread next time.

[Lingchih]

I finally tried it out tonite using the built in nation with the recruitable SCs. Wow, what a blast. It's really nicely done Llama. And it's so fun to crank the AI up to max, and still just beat the stuffing out of them.

I geared all my SCs out, using the Debug mod. I think by the time you get most of these, you would be gearing them out pretty well anyway. I think the Ember Lord is probably my favorite. Great sprite, nice paths, full slots. Nice Aoe fire. What's not to like. Truly a Balrog.

Second fave would be the Grendelkin. Sure, no magic, but with the right gear it's still a very good SC. The attack skill is good from the start. I wouldn't send one out late game without gear though.

I like the Treant, but it took me a while to figure out why the change shape command wasn't doing anything. I thought it was bugged. Ahh... he's rooting when he changes shape, got it now. And indeed, he becomes quite powerful rooted. Nice slots... he's all that the Treelord should have been.

The Zmey is one of the coolest looking sprites, but I got mine wounded quite a lot going it alone. Low Protection and the lack of magic makes him like a Dragon with no magic. Impressive, but vulnerable. Anyway, I put three Spirit Helms on him, with bracers, regen ring and luck ammy, and now he's all set to kill and maim like crazy.

The Wendigo is probably the coolest idea of the whole mod. Mine got super powerful, but maybe it was in part due to the fact that I made him my prophet. And yeah, I noticed the size bug, but I guess that's already been covered. Very cool idea though... you just have to keep him moving, so he doesn't eat everyone, much like Hinnom. I guess some growth scale would tame that.

I didn't try out the Pretender units. I already know them pretty well. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to use the True Firebird, though a +50 fortune teller is nothing to scoff at. The Shishi's as well, I'm not sure how to use, though they look like awesome castle defenders.

As for costs, I'll let you guys figure that out. I'm not really good at judging that sort of thing.

PS: Now I just need to find an MP game where I can actually use these guys.

[Meglobob]

Well done on this mod Llamabeast, its exactly what the end game needed, more diversity.

[BigDaddy]

I'll probably ask for this if I play another MP. It looks like it give all the nations a more domestic place to go.

[Aethyr]

I agree, it's one of the best things thats happened in a long time.

[Ragnarok-X]

I dont see the use behind the Phoenix and the spell that summons those 2 large air-bears. Phoenix isnt immortal, has only 19 HP or what and costs 20 firegems ?

[Zeldor]

Firebird autocasts Solar Brilliance and has 50% fortune teller.

Shishis have anti-undead/demon attacks and can cloud trapeze.

[llamabeast]

Yep, thanks Zeldor. Ragnarok, all your questions are answered if you just read the descriptions.

In addition to what Zeldor said, the Firebird also has the brings-good-luck attribute from one of the pretenders, so it actually brings good events as well as preventing bad ones. This attribute doesn't have an icon, so I guess people may not realise it's doing it.

Also, they are not air bears. They are air lions, at worst. I find they're quite vicious once they've cast mistform, and they're super fast both in battle and on the strategic map.

Also also, I've pretty much finished an update. No new content or anything, but some beneficial tweaks I think. Should be released tomorrow or Sunday morning at the latest.

[rdonj]

I dont see the use behind the Phoenix and the spell that summons those 2 large air-bears. Phoenix isnt immortal, has only 19 HP or what and costs 20 firegems ?

The shishis are super cool, both as raiders and as anti-demon SC thugs.

[WraithLord]

Can we have a few unique vampire "super" lords?- Like the forefathers of the vampire race, the pure bloods etc.

Also some lovercraftian ubber monster summons for R'lyeh might be nice.

[Soyweiser]

Also some lovercraftian ubber monster summons for R'lyeh might be nice.
You could steal Ubbo-Sathla (a sort of uber shoggoth, creates more smaller spawn) and Cthulhu from Mytheology.

And a unique kain like supervamp would be nice.

[WraithLord]

Nice suggestions :)

[llamabeast]

No vampires or Lovecraftian things from me, since (a) I don't really fancy doing them, and (b) I think D and S already have plenty of late game options so they wouldn't be filling quite such a niche. However, I would always encourage people to have a go at making something they fancy seeing!

[LDiCesare]

Hopefully, I should be able to provide MP Grendelkin feedback soon.

[llamabeast]

Ooh cool!

Hope he lays the smack down on your opponents.

[Ragnarok-X]

Emberlord = Balrog ?

[Globu]

It's sort of been mentioned a few times. See:

Here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=734396&highlight=balrog#post734396),
here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=735292&highlight=balrog#post735292),
here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=735319&highlight=balrog#post735319),
and here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=742609&highlight=balrog#post742609).

[Ragnarok-X]

So it is a bad thing if you post without reading the thread like 3 others did ?

[Zeldor]

llamabeast:

I will put some of your summons into use soon too, in few days probably :)

[yandav]

Hopefully, I should be able to provide MP Grendelkin feedback soon.

I hope you won't :p (Je suis david sur l'autre forum)

[Wrana]

An idea - appeared some time ago. In a description of the General of the West it's said that the previous Pantokrator made an immortal body for him so that he wouldn't be slain again. Is there a possibility that a new Pretender will manage to duplicate this work for his own ends? ;) I mean something like Earth/Astral? spell, Enchantment 8-9, making a new body similar to the said General, with some Earth magic and possibly 1-2 randoms. Unfortunately current modding commands don't allow transformations of existing commanders so it will actually be a summon, but I think that according to background text Enchantment would be more thematic.

[Juffos]

A good idea, especially because there aren't currently any earth-astral thug/sc chassises?

[Digress]

Golems ?

[Wrana]

Golems ?
Sorry, maybe then this should be done by some other path(s). Still, I'd say that Earth is probably a good base for such a spell.

[llamabeast]

Okay, so some discussion on this mod has been happening on the other forum. Rather than split the discussion between two threads, I've decided to try pasting the comments here. Hopefully the people frequenting that forum won't feel too aggravated at having to post here (those who are allowed to of course). It's quite possible I would be better to just move this thread there, but we will give this a go.

I think the cyclops adds a lot more than another SC to the game. He is great E acess, at a price less than an earth king. I'm not saying that it is necessarily bad, but it makes all those nations without E acess except for their E9 pretender have solid, inexpensive earth acess. plus he has feet slots.

Also, he feels like he makes Earth King's a little obsolete since, although they are harder to summon, they have more E magic, better slots, and of course are cheaper and non-unique.

not sure if its bad or good, but it adds more than just endgame SC options.

I have to say these seem like really good points, I agree less earth magic on the cyclops would probably be good.

IMO same comment can be applyed to Asynja. For a price of 2 air boosters, you can buy an A4 mage or a cloud trapezing RoS spammer with 95 HP/18 MR/full slots. It's way too cheap by any means.

I personally don't think the game needs an cheap, non-unique RoSer with tons of hp. It will make many human nations' late game extremely boring.

Damn, my sarcasm filter just blew out.

[llamabeast]

Thanks for the (pasted) comments guys.

Firstly, I gave the Cyclops and Asynja powerful magic largely on thematic grounds, and to make them viable alternatives to Tartarians. The fact of the matter is I haven't played the end game for a year or so, and shockingly enough have never fully explored the full potential of Tartarians. Er, I guess you could argue that makes me a bad person to make this mod! In any case it makes such feedback very valuable.

With regard to the cyclops - options are:
- Reduce his Earth magic by 1
- Make him more expensive
- Make him harder to summon
- Increase the magic of the Elemental Royalty by 1 (I have long thought this should be done anyway, but perhaps it's outside the scope of this mod?)

Similar options apply to the Asynja. Maybe I could reduce or eliminate her access to Earth magic, so she can't cast Rain of Stones? Seems to me a straight air mage is not such a threat.

Also, forgive my failing memory, but isn't high earth and air access quite common on Tartarians? I would like Earth and Air summons to be better for those paths than death summons.

Finally, I'm considering adding glamour to the Asynja, if I can. Does that sound monstrously overpowered?

I have a new version pretty much done, but it can wait for some additional feedback, so now is an excellent time for people to offer their thoughts. Thanks!

PS Gregstrom, I didn't understand your post. Maybe I am displaying tragic incomprehension, but who is being sarcastic?

[Gregstrom]

I'm pretty sure zztop^H^H^Hcat was being sarcastic. As you rightly comment, one flavour of Tartarian Cyclops has E3A2 - it's a very popular choice for GoR and RoS spam as a result. 1 time in 4 35 Air gems gets you a RoS caster (A2E2 and non-0 enc isn't enough for RoS spamming) with half the hits and none of the resistances of a Tartarian. IMO, that is probably sarcasm. Commenting that you sometimes get A4 this way when you can guarantee yourself A4 by spending 25 Air gems added to that impression.

Asynja and Cyclops (also a great candidate for RoS spam) both have the advantage of reliability over Tarts, and I'm not sure how that balances out. You're always getting a usable commander and caster, even though neither one is guaranteed to cast RoS out of the box. Perhaps the Cyclops having a reasonable chance of E5 is a little much, but I think it's too soon to be sure. There are so many other uses for 35 E gems that some nations will probably prefer to run a Tart factory until they can GoR an E4 Tart cyclops instead.

[Valerius]

Hi, llama. First off, thanks very much for this mod.

As far as the cyclops goes, what about a 50% chance of an additional E, 25% chance of A, and 25-50% chance of F? This reduces their abilities in E magic, but even more importantly reduces the chance of the powerful AE combo. The only tart guaranteed that combination is one of the two cyclops - but you've only got a 1 in 7 chance of getting him. You could get that path combo on another chassis but it might not have full slots.

You could do something similar with the Asynja. Maybe a 50% chance of an additional A, 25% chance of E, and another 10% chance of AEB? I'd be hesitant to give her glamour, though. I think that stealth is a powerful ability on an SC, glamour even more so. It would probably be better to get more reports from games using the diversity mod before doing this.

As far as pricing goes, I can see it going a little higher on the price of both of the units in question but since the goal of the mod is to have viable alternatives to tarts I think they have to be cost effective. If the prices on the diversity mod summons get too high, I think people will still feel the Chalice/GoH and tart combo are too good to consider other options (I think it's ok if tarts are still the most cost effective option - as long as the alternatives are close enough to be worth considering).

As regards elemental royalty, you could add to their magic paths (I think a random would be better than another point in the path they already have) but it might also be worth considering giving them better summon ally abilities or something along those lines. Or maybe a useful onebattlespell that might even be outside their magic paths. I think something like that would make them still worth summoning even with comparable SC/spellcasting chassis available. And I don't think it's outside the scope of the mod at all - heck, you could also make treelord's worthwhile at the same time.

On another note, I'll be very interested to see what people have to say about the Grendelkin. My first impression was the same as rdonj's from earlier in the thread. No magic, but incredible stats...

[Wrana]

I agree that the problem is that these summons outshine Elemental Royalty too much. I'd say the problem is the same with Emberlords (especially!) and Ents. As a way to fix I think that making Asynja's magic more random is probably quite good. Considering Cyclops I am not sure that Air magic is really thematic for him. Maybe make Fire/Earth random? Glamour for Asynja, while thematic, makes her actually better than ASynja Pretender - I don't think that's as it should be.
Considering fix of Elemental Royalty, I' d agree with Valerius that some thematic #onebattlespell can go a long way here. Another possibility is, of course, gem generation...

[Gregstrom]

Why not just cut the cost of Elemental Royalty by 10 gems? Although I do like the #onebattlespell idea...

[zzcat]

I'm pretty sure zztop^H^H^Hcat was being sarcastic. As you rightly comment, one flavour of Tartarian Cyclops has E3A2 - it's a very popular choice for GoR and RoS spam as a result. 1 time in 4 35 Air gems gets you a RoS caster (A2E2 and non-0 enc isn't enough for RoS spamming) with half the hits and none of the resistances of a Tartarian. IMO, that is probably sarcasm. Commenting that you sometimes get A4 this way when you can guarantee yourself A4 by spending 25 Air gems added to that impression.

Asynja and Cyclops (also a great candidate for RoS spam) both have the advantage of reliability over Tarts, and I'm not sure how that balances out. You're always getting a usable commander and caster, even though neither one is guaranteed to cast RoS out of the box. Perhaps the Cyclops having a reasonable chance of E5 is a little much, but I think it's too soon to be sure. There are so many other uses for 35 E gems that some nations will probably prefer to run a Tart factory until they can GoR an E4 Tart cyclops instead.

As Valerius's point out, you have only 1/7 chance to get a E3A2 Tartarian Cyclops per cast, 4 times in 5 you need extra 15N to GoR them(so 27 gems in total), and you have to have GoH or the chalice to make them usable. With earth boots 3 in 4 asynjas will be RoS caster, the other can cloud trapeze then cast fog warriors and wrathful skies w/o any equipment. IMO it affects end game even more than cyclops do.

[rdonj]

Just for fun, I've got a grendelkin picture. Hardly ideal gear, really... this one exists to kill armies of 100+ warhammer ogres. As you can probably tell, it hasn't quite gotten that far yet. My ideal anti-sc would have quickness, probably dual swords of swiftness or anti-undead weaponry, and an insane attack skill. That's an e9n4 shroud it's wearing by the way, and it has 36 regen a turn. If you have anything resembling a decent bless, a shroud makes a lot of sense to slap onto one of those. Imagine one with W9/Fx/Nx :)

Also, I am all for boosting the elemental royalties, moreso than I'm behind nerfing the end game diversity summons. Although I think taking air away from the cyclops makes sense. I would leave the royalties still more expensive. They should be good enough to be a prize though to have now. I kind of like the idea of making them generate gems, but that would probably make them hoarded too much. Giving them #onebattlespells seems like a much better idea, since they'd have to be used more aggressively. They could also potentially receive hp boosts.

I would have no problem with them having things like earthquake, living earths, storm... not sure what to do with pedoseion. Blood rain?

[kianduatha]

If they're doing #onebattlespells, I'm seeing definitely one guy casting Curse of Stones, one Heat from Hell, the aquatic Water one Friendly Currents, the amphibious one Rain/Quagmire(both!). More quality-of-life spells than anything else. Also Pedoseion should #onebattlespell Iron Bane, ugh.

[Gregstrom]

As Valerius's point out, you have only 1/7 chance to get a E3A2 Tartarian Cyclops per cast, 4 times in 5 you need extra 15N to GoR them(so 27 gems in total), and you have to have GoH or the chalice to make them usable. With earth boots 3 in 4 asynjas will be RoS caster, the other can cloud trapeze then cast fog warriors and wrathful skies w/o any equipment. IMO it affects end game even more than cyclops do.


Tartarians are spammed - sooner or later you will get a usable Cyclops, and you get a lot of other useful stuff along the way. As I said, the advantage Asynja gets is reliability - most casts will get you a unit that can do a low-fi impression of a Tart Cyclops. It costs more, and isn't quite as accessible as Tartarians. If you think you aren't paying enough of a price for that reliability, fine. What should you be paying instead?

[Jack_Trowell]

Why not remove magic from the cyclops (and keep a low cost), with high natural prot and all slots, fire resist and fear, it would still be a very good SC chassis, without stepping on the toes of the cyclops pretender nor tartarians.

By the way, I think Tartarians should cost more, but this is another problem.

If you really wants the cyclops summon to keep some magic, just E2 (with maybe a 10% random E1/F1) would be enough for summon earth power and some other buffs, and it would keep the troll kings from being obsolete.

[rdonj]

I don't really think removing the earth magic from the cyclops is necessary. Sure, maybe cutting it down a bit as you suggested later could work But there's also no real reason to get rid of it, so far as I can tell. I don't think stepping on the toes of tartarians is a big issue for this mod, either. The entire point is to allow more endgame options than you currently have with tartarians. Having a strong earth mage doesn't even really step on the toes of tartarians, and it's thematic for a cyclops to have e anyway. Even so, I would care to wager that the cyclops is not nearly as good as a tartarian anyway, even though it still costs more.

I also don't see why it would be a problem to make the cyclops just out and out better than troll kings. Cyclops have much higher requirements in basically all ways, troll kings are more of a midgame spell as opposed to the cyclops late game. As far as I'm concerned there's no reason they can't be to the troll king as tartarians are to bane lords.

[Gandalf Parker]

It would affect the use of the mod if it adds things to the game, or if it changes things in the game.
Solo players tend to be all for mods that add to the game. MP players for mods that "fix" things in the game.

[Fantomen]

I've tried out the mechanical giant now in MP. It makes for a quite nice thug, but it could be a tad cheaper. 20 earth gems would be more ok I think.

I used it with boots of quickness, dual frost brands, ethereal robe and flying carpet. Then I gave him some mechanical men as bodyguards. Made for a really nice flying raiding party.

Also great as a battlefeild thug/blocker with just quickness boots and two good weapons. Nice to combine with mixed elemental evocations and fatigue spells. I was LA Caelum so used them with lightning, freezing mist and rigor mortis.

Overall I think the Mechanical giant is well balanced and fills a niche yet unoccupied, but as I said slightly too expensive. Good work.

[Wrana]

Solo players tend to be all for mods that add to the game. MP players for mods that "fix" things in the game.
Well, it seems that Warhammer mods are quite popular in MP, too. And even in SP I prefer to have alternative to Tartarian spamming. So it looks like both parts of your statement are at least overgeneralized. ;)

[DonCorazon]

Hmm...I just loaded this mod for an SP game and noticed one of the random nations is called Endgame Diversity Mod...

[Valerius]

It's just so you can easily test the summons by recruiting them.

[Ironhawk]

Too lazy to paste content. Heres my thoughts on EDV...

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=61&st=0&#entry411362

[Calahan]

Hmm...I just loaded this mod for an SP game and noticed one of the random nations is called Endgame Diversity Mod...
It's just so you can easily test the summons by recruiting them.
Valerius, I think you'll find llamabeast created the Endgame Diversity Nation just so he can finally win a MP game ;)

[Digress]

Valerius, I think you'll find llamabeast created the Endgame Diversity Nation just so he can finally win a MP game ;)

No need to be nasty - I know fact that he has won at least two MP games.

[llamabeast]

No, Calahan's right though - anyone fancy an Endgame Diversity Test Nation vs Kailasa duel? I think it is fairly likely that I may win because of Kailasa's poor PD.

PS Much more than 2! :D

[llamabeast]

Also, thanks very much everyone for all the feedback. It's very helpful and I will mull over it carefully - apologies for not replying directly to the points raised.

Tomorrow I will have a lovely free day and am planning to work on the new version, so if anyone has any additional comments now would be the time to make them. Thanks!

[Valerius]

Hmm...I just loaded this mod for an SP game and noticed one of the random nations is called Endgame Diversity Mod...
It's just so you can easily test the summons by recruiting them.
Valerius, I think you'll find llamabeast created the Endgame Diversity Nation just so he can finally win a MP game ;)

Don't underestimate his Awe +4. Throws people off their game. :)

[Wrana]

Too lazy to paste content. Heres my thoughts on EDV...

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=61&st=0&#entry411362

Generally agree with these points except I'm not sure about whether Ents should be here at all. If they are good, they make Tree Lords obsolete, if they aren't good, they are useless. I'd think more about some Were(bear?) thugs with some magic, full slots and built-in regeneration...

[rdonj]

Too lazy to paste content. Heres my thoughts on EDV...

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=61&st=0&#entry411362

Generally agree with these points except I'm not sure about whether Ents should be here at all. If they are good, they make Tree Lords obsolete, if they aren't good, they are useless. I'd think more about some Were(bear?) thugs with some magic, full slots and built-in regeneration...

My counter to this, is why do we care about treelords anyway? They suck. They can't move, don't get you any higher magic than you had access to anyway, and don't even give you much crosspath magic. The best thing I can say about them is that there's only three of them, so if you really want a specific one, you have a good chance of getting it quickly. But seriously, the treelords are lame. The best use of them I can think of is to cast faery trod to move units around. I also don't see how were(bear) thugs would be functionally any different than treants. They would be a powerful nature summon with theoretically very similar magic paths that totally eclipsed the treelords and made them even more useless than they already are. I guess the biggest difference is that werebears would get full slots ;)


Random thought: I find the idea of a Weretree completely hilarious.

[Valerius]

My counter to this, is why do we care about treelords anyway? They suck. They can't move, don't get you any higher magic than you had access to anyway, and don't even give you much crosspath magic. The best thing I can say about them is that there's only three of them, so if you really want a specific one, you have a good chance of getting it quickly. But seriously, the treelords are lame. The best use of them I can think of is to cast faery trod to move units around.

Yeah, treelords are just sad. Rather than worrying about the Diversity summons overshadowing them I'd much prefer boosting treelords just as we talked earlier about boosting the elemental royalty. As a starting point what about mapmove of at least 1 and #onebattlespell of Gaia's Blessing and maybe improving their magic? That way, their role isn't thug/SC duty but battlefield support.

[Wrana]

My counter to this, is why do we care about treelords anyway? They suck. They can't move, don't get you any higher magic than you had access to anyway, and don't even give you much crosspath magic. The best thing I can say about them is that there's only three of them, so if you really want a specific one, you have a good chance of getting it quickly. But seriously, the treelords are lame. The best use of them I can think of is to cast faery trod to move units around. I also don't see how were(bear) thugs would be functionally any different than treants. They would be a powerful nature summon with theoretically very similar magic paths that totally eclipsed the treelords and made them even more useless than they already are. I guess the biggest difference is that werebears would get full slots ;)

By the way, Treelords can't make use of Faery Trod - they are "too immobile"! %) And yes, werebears would have free slots and some mobility.
Also agree that Treelords should be boosted similarly to elemental royalty. #onebattlespell seems to be a good way.

[llamabeast]

Hooray! New version released. Please see the first post for details.

Many thanks to everyone again for all the feedback. I went through it very carefully when making the update (I made notes!). Hope people enjoy the new version.

[Valerius]

Thanks, llama. Would it make sense to give the .dm file a different name than the first version since several games are in progress with the .9 release?

[Aethyr]

Also, is this release compatible with CBM? IIRC, the last version needed a fix. Thanks Llama for your hard work on this wonderful mod.

[llamabeast]

Valerius - good idea. I've swapped the attachment for a new one where the .dm file has a different name.

Aethyr - I believe it is compatible with CBM, yes. I based the new version on Pyg's fixed version (where the fixes were to make it compatible with CBM). Haven't checked in detail though (but Pyg is the kind of guy who I expect probably would have checked in detail).

[llamabeast]

Er, another new version - this time v1.01. I had intended to increase the Roc's research level back to 6, but had forgotten before release v1.0. I think summoning mages should always take a reasonable level of research.

[zzcat]

Well, I found a major bug. The one-headed zmey(monster id 2960) has #secondshape 2960 so it's practically unkillable. So does 2961 and 2962, both of them will turn to 2960 when get killed and respawn themsleves again and again.:(

btw, It seems the spell list in start of .dm file is out of date...

[NooBliss]

Arent these Shishi a little bit too perfect? For 30 gems, you get two very, very tough thugs with 6 attacks (effectively), at attack skill 20, 20 protection, cloud trapeze, mistform/mirror image, 3 misc slots, two immunities, 18 magic resistance, morale 30, 50 hp.

Sounds like RRrRRrRrrRAWR. All of your thugs are belong to us now.

[llamabeast]

zzcat: Well spotted, thanks. I've tried to fix it up, but don't have a copy of dom3 with me (away till Sunday), so I'd appreciate it if you could check I've done it correctly. The set of #firstshapes and #secondshapes for the zmey is a bit bewildering.

NooBliss: Well other people have told me they're too weak. On the other hand your poke did make me reconsider the changes I'd made in v1.01, and I think increasing the MR to 18 was an error; it's back to 16 now. Bear in mind that while they do have 3 misc slots they are missing all the other slots, and in fact are still quite killable by mortal troops.

[NooBliss]

I remember reading something about Shishi killing fully equipped Raksharajas, please correct me if I'm wrong. For just 15 air, I wouldnt call that 'too weak'.

They only have 3 misc slots, true. But its almost like they have all the items built-in. 3 magical attacks per round and a base atack score of 17 - roughly an equivalent of a magical two-hander. Quite comparable to wave breaker, I think. Protection 20 and two immunities - thats better than most armors and helms can give, with zero encumberance as a bonus. Always quickened means they have built-in boots of speed.
You cant customise them much, thats the problem. Still, thats a fully equipped (except misc slots) thug who can cast cloud trapeze, mirror image and mistform for just 15 air gems, summoned in pairs to save mage-time. I dont mind, really, I am looking forward to using them myself. But they shine so much, they eclipse most other summons. Dont you agree?

Oh, by the way. In SP I just killed about 60 Sauromatian Cataphracts and 30 androphag archers with one male Shishi, equipped with a pendant of luck and a girdle of might. Looks like mortal troops cant kill Shishis - they make absolutely great thugs, almost SCs in my opinion.

[zzcat]

@Llamabeast: v1.02 seems OK. But it may still be a problem that #2962 has #firstshape 2962. Not tested yet but IMO it may cause unwanted curing of afflictions after battle. In addition, I think 3-headed zmey should have 6 eyes and 2-headed should have 4:)

[zzcat]

Oh, by the way. In SP I just killed about 60 Sauromatian Cataphracts and 30 androphag archers with one male Shishi, equipped with a pendant of luck and a girdle of might. Looks like mortal troops cant kill Shishis - they make absolutely great thugs, almost SCs in my opinion.

You can equip a banelord with frost brand and shield of gleaming gold with same gem cost. It will have much better survivability against high damage units like barbarians and crossbowmen. And it can beat shishi 1 on 1.(shishi: 20damage*6, 20 prot, 55hp vs banelord: 35 damage, 21 prot plus shield bonus, 42hp)

[llamabeast]

zzcat: Well spotted, thanks very much. I've had a new attempt but again would really appreciate it if you checked it as I reordered the different shapes, which definitely introduces some increased bungling possibility.

[NooBliss]

Sorry, but no.

Shishi have three slots for a reason. One for luck, one for girdle of might, one for ring of cold resistance. With a hammer, its still very, very cheap for a cloud trapezing thug. Cheaper than a bane lord with sword and shield, by the way.

And such shishi has both higher survivability because of mirror image/luck, mistform and air shield (against aforementioned crossbowmen), and it rips bane lord with frostbrand/shield to shreds. I have checked it, out of curiosity. Furthermore, shishi can cloud trapeze to catch the bane lord.
That was one of my concerns, actually. Shishi make bane lords obsolete.

P.S.
Forgot to mention - it was a male shishi, without "smite evil" effect.

[Aethyr]

Noobliss you make some good points, but I do not entirely agree. The whole point is to provide some diversity/alternatives for nations that do not have death/blood, and provide some alternatives once the Elemental Royalty have been summoned. The Shishi is conj6, why should it be weaker than the bane lord? Why should the bane lord be used as the measuring stick at all? It is more valid to compare the Shishi to the AQ.

[NooBliss]

Air magic has some of the strongest evocations, thus its summons were weaker. But even if we are to buff them, why would a conjuration 6 summon for mere 15 gems be so much better than a bane lord?
Give air nations a summon that is better than death/blood summons, and what do death/blood nations have for them? :) I just think this alternative is too strong. I am going to play a game with this mod now, as a death nation. And I am fully going to take air for my pretender, and pray for air sites. Because until I can get tartarians, death doesnt even come close to the Shishis.

[Aethyr]

Again, you make some good points. The quesion is (and I'm saying I agree entirely yet ;)) what do you suggest shoud be the proper power level and/or gem cost?

[Dimaz]

40 hp, 40 gems IMHO.

[rdonj]

So tartarians should cost 100+ gems then? And banelords should cost 45? Okay :D

[Dimaz]

40 for pair. It's 20 for 1.

[Graeme Dice]

That was one of my concerns, actually. Shishi make bane lords obsolete.

This isn't really a problem. They are higher research level and more expensive. If they aren't at least as good as banelords, then nobody would bother using them.

[Aethyr]

Makes sense.

[NooBliss]

2 Rdonj:
I stated my opinion that Shishi are too strong compared to current summons, particularily making mid-game death and blood summons obsolete. How does it mean that existing summons have to be made more expensive? I dont understand.

2 Graeme Dice:

>> This isn't really a problem. They are higher research level and more expensive. If >> they aren't at least as good as banelords, then nobody would bother using them.

Eh? They are just one level higher, and they are actually cheaper. Please consider that bane lords need further equipment to solo anything, while shishi need little to none. They arent 'at least as good as banelords' now, they outshine them without even trying.

.... Ok, maybe I just dont know everything about MP. Is there any other summon for 25 gems (including item cost) who can cloud trapeze and solo 50+ heavy cavalry or easily annihilate equipped undead/demonic thugs?

[rdonj]

2 Rdonj:
I stated my opinion that Shishi are too strong compared to current summons, particularily making mid-game death and blood summons obsolete. How does it mean that existing summons have to be made more expensive? I dont understand.

2 Graeme Dice:

>> This isn't really a problem. They are higher research level and more expensive. If >> they aren't at least as good as banelords, then nobody would bother using them.

Eh? They are just one level higher, and they are actually cheaper. Please consider that bane lords need further equipment to solo anything, while shishi need little to none. They arent 'at least as good as banelords' now, they outshine them without even trying.

.... Ok, maybe I just dont know everything about MP. Is there any other summon for 25 gems (including item cost) who can cloud trapeze and solo 50+ heavy cavalry or easily annihilate equipped undead/demonic thugs?

I was just replying to Dimaz

[Aethyr]

@ Noobliss: No, your questions are valid. However, I think one also has to consider that you need 4A to summon the shishi, and air, unlike ofther paths, has no buffs tha can get you from lv3 to lv4.

[Graeme Dice]

The banelord you described is outfitted to kill province defense and troops without mage support. He shouldn't expect to be able to survive against anything that's designed to kill tough targets. And really, nations like Caelum need something to do against cold and lightning immune thugs, and _something_ to spend air gems on that's worthwhile.

Killing 50 unsupported heavy cavalry is doable by just about any worthwhile thug chassis for similar or less cost than the Shishi you've outlined. A Skratti or Vanjarl for example. Death cannot be the only path that has useful summoned commanders, or else everybody needs to use death magic. This means that it is going to be a less powerful path, but that really seems to be the point of this mod - to bring the elemental paths into better balance.

[NooBliss]

Skratti and Vanjarl arent summoned. They are national commanders, who can kill decent armies with equipment. Please, name a summoned thug who can do the same for ~25 gems, including item cost.

Now, _something_ for Caelum doesnt have to be _that_ powerful. By the way, please tell me how would you outfit a banelord to fight Shishi. Because Shishi, you see, can kill both banelord and mortal armies without changing gear. As a harder task, please try to outfit a Raksharaja or Dakini to fight Shishi. :)

Death only has ony really really great SC chassis, afaik, and that's tartarians. So I kinda agree that its a good idea to give other endgame chassises. But Shishi isnt an endgame summon, its a mid-game summon. And Death has nothing comparable, not even remotely, because Bane lords will be eaten by Shishis. Literally.

Ah anyway. I can adjust to this mod, not a problem - taking a God with A4 is ok. Just... take a look at them, how they perform in the games to come. I have a feeling Shishi will be a wunderwaffe; employ them or lose to them.

[llamabeast]

Well if you are right, then clearly it would have to be changed. But so far noone else has reacted in that way to them, and I have heard no reports of them being successfully used in any of the MP games using this mod (and some reports of them being used unsuccessfully). A number of very experienced players seem content with their balance - I think I am happy to see how they get on for a bit. They are of course meant to be effective rather than mediocre things. I also always think that dom3 is full of "overpowered" things that balance out since there are so many of them. Anyway, I will keep an eye on future reactions to them.

Sorry not to write more, I'm using my phone.

[Squirrelloid]

I wouldn't counter Shishi with thugs. At MR 16 I'd blast them with mindhunts (they'd die pretty easily to pen+5 mindhunts, even with an AMA). And I'd use battlefield magic to kill them.

MR 16 is pretty weak sauce for a thug, so as long as you can make penetration boosters, I'd be tossing the following at them: Soul Slay, Enslave Mind, Charm, Control, Disintegrate, Blindness, Paralyze.

Not MR dependent:
You can tie them down with prison of fire, tangle vines, vine arrow, earth meld. You can sleep cloud them or use rigor mortis to make them rack up fatigue. You can blast them with evocations (banefire, magma eruption, gift of the heavens). You can cut their effectiveness in half with darkness. You can Drain Life them. I could probably go on - that's just off the top of my head.

[Graeme Dice]

Why would you try to use the specific things Shishi counter best, which is undead and demons to fight them? Use something that isn't that. Use actual armies, which have magic support from multiple commanders, and not raiding parties, which don't.

[zzcat]

Hmm, I forgot femaile shishi's bite deals extra damage to both undeads and demons:(.

I agree mind hunt may be the best way to deal with a shishi. But I think anti-thug thugs can be effective too. Considering its low damage output per hit(20, or 23 with gridle of might) and 16 MR, anyone with decent armor and a eye shield can blind it at turn 1 or 2, or you can just kill it with a troll king wielding moon blade. Shishis can neither fly nor cast returning as golems so it's not so hard to catch them.

@llamabeast: Unfortunately I omited the 2-headed forms yesterday and it seems the #firstshape bug applies to #2959 too. Anyway I have checked all Zmeys' code again and I'm pretty sure there is no other bug within it...

[Fantomen]

I'll be trying out shishis in MP in a few turns, I'm very curious about them. It's a super cool idea.

I wouldn't worry that it should make Bane lords obselete. It's a totally different kind of summon. And it's not like everyone will have A4 anyway. If it is too powerful is another thing, but I'm not convinced about that.

[Dimaz]

Well, Shishi effectively removes mid-game thugging with solo Raksharajas/Dakinis as a strategy (if available, of course). For lg Raksharajas have too few HP anyway and can be killed in many ways, but in mg trapezing solo-demon killers are their doom.

[Dimaz]

BTW limiting Lanka is not necessarily the bad thing as it's powerful enough; however there should be some counters to it available. My 40g/40hp idea is to make them actually killable by trapezing LfL Dakinis or with less Leech casts as melee against them is suicide.

[Fantomen]

Well, Shishi effectively removes mid-game thugging with solo Raksharajas/Dakinis as a strategy (if available, of course). For lg Raksharajas have too few HP anyway and can be killed in many ways, but in mg trapezing solo-demon killers are their doom.

Only against nations with air researching conjuration. There will be many natons that will not have shishis. Surely no strategy should be of universal use? Swarms of recruitable thugs will always be useful midgame, shishis or not. And 30 air gems isn't peanuts, air focused nations always have to few air gems. I see your point but I don't think it will stand true to testing.

[zzcat]

Well, Shishi effectively removes mid-game thugging with solo Raksharajas/Dakinis as a strategy (if available, of course). For lg Raksharajas have too few HP anyway and can be killed in many ways, but in mg trapezing solo-demon killers are their doom.

Shishi can't fly so some PD can make it busy when you are casting spells like hand of death, life for life etc. Considering your opponent need 30A to get a single demon killer and air gems are much more valuable than blood slaves, perhaps it's not so bad...

Edit: And if you expected to meet shishis, just sneak some sandhyabalas into the province with Raksharajas/Dakinis. They will eat shishis for breakfast with their moon blade.

[LDiCesare]

I'm gutted. Tried a grendelkin to see him die because he moved like a snail, never managed to reach the opponent. Ok, this was underwater, but still. Total waste of gems. Although he was listed at AP2/6, he never moved more than 2 paces on the grid at any time. So... died of turn-limit. I don't know if it's jsut me being unable to fight underwater. Still, a 3/8 bane lord in the same situation moved 4 squares per turn on the grid, so I'd expect at least 3 moves. I have no idea how water movement is computed, though, but as it is, Grendelkin is worthless underwater, which I think is unthematic..

[NooBliss]

>> Considering your opponent need 30A to get a single demon killer and air gems are much more valuable than blood slaves, perhaps it's not so bad..

30A fetch you TWO demon killers, who are also cloud-trapezing raiders in their own right, who dont really need much equipment to be effective, and are a counter to other raiders.
As for assassins with moonblades against the Shishi... did you try it? :) I think this assassin will die in one round.

[zzcat]

>> Considering your opponent need 30A to get a single demon killer and air gems are much more valuable than blood slaves, perhaps it's not so bad..

30A fetch you TWO demon killers, who are also cloud-trapezing raiders in their own right, who dont really need much equipment to be effective, and are a counter to other raiders.
As for assassins with moonblades against the Shishi... did you try it? :) I think this assassin will die in one round.

I think you confused sandhyabala and samanishada. You can summon 3 sandhyabalas with 20 blood slaves. They have 30 hp, 16 att and 56 damage per hit against magic beings.

[Wrana]

About Shishi: maybe the problem is Prot 20? ;)

[Calahan]

I did a little bit of testing of the Shishi, and think they do seem a little bit OP for just 30A gems a pair. Not massively OP by any means, but maybe just enough so that it can be noticed :) Since a magic phase raiding thug that's good to go out of the box for 15A seems a little bit cheap to me. Especially as other good magic phase raiders in the game need a bit more investment (even Sidhe Lords tend to need at least a 10gem shield and 5gem weapon. And a good bless as well to raid effectively). Not even Golems (the other general go-to magic phase raider) can raid without equipment. And they cost 30 Astral.

I think either the cost should be upped to 40A for the pair (as others have suggested), or de-buff them a bit. Perhaps remove the quickness (goes against the description though), or just knock a few points off protection (3-5). Again as some have suggested.

Or, maybe think about removing the magic paths altogether and reducing the cost to 20A for the pair. Think they'd still have a use at that price without the magic, as they can still border raid with Lychan amulet and Girdle. Plus still be a great help taking out Thugs or low end SC's (and bonus v evil) due to the six attacks.

For me, the main issue with them right now is that they are good to go out of the box, and you don't have the logistical hassle of needing to change equipment depending on whether you are raiding or taking down Thugs/SC's. As the Shishi's are good to go against either at any time. Which is not the case for most other thugs in the game, as they usually need to be specially equipped depending on what they are going up against.

[Squirrelloid]

For 30a I would hope it would outperform an EK in combat. As it is, an ungeared EK is probably only slightly worse. Give the EK a 3a+3e gem armor (silver hauberk) and the EK is better. And he scales up better because he has full gear slots.

I, for one, think 30a is worth more than 400g + 6 gems. ymmv. Now, you do get 2 shishi, but you're going to need AMAs for both and probably other gear, they can't be blessed, etc... The EK is going to need half the miscellaneous gear, and doesn't really need any other gear improvements for basic raiding purposes (needs a weapon upgrade for anti-thug duties).

(Note that the shishi pairs aren't each worth 15 gems. The one with the anti-UD attacks is clearly better).

[Calahan]

For 30a I would hope it would outperform an EK in combat. As it is, an ungeared EK is probably only slightly worse. Give the EK a 3a+3e gem armor (silver hauberk) and the EK is better. And he scales up better because he has full gear slots.

I, for one, think 30a is worth more than 400g + 6 gems. ymmv. Now, you do get 2 shishi, but you're going to need AMAs for both and probably other gear, they can't be blessed, etc... The EK is going to need half the miscellaneous gear, and doesn't really need any other gear improvements for basic raiding purposes (needs a weapon upgrade for anti-thug duties).

(Note that the shishi pairs aren't each worth 15 gems. The one with the anti-UD attacks is clearly better).
The Eagle King is not a very good example IMO, as Eagle Kings are one of the best recruitable commanders in the game. It's the same as saying you expect a 30/40 gem mid-game summon to be better than a Nief Jarl or Ashdod Adon etc. And Eagle Kings are almost certain to need a shield for raiding.

So I for one would be mortified if a mid-game summon that cost just 15 gems (2 for 30 in the Shishi case) could give you a unit that is as good, or nearly as good, as the best nation specific capital only commanders. Regardless of whether the summoned creature needed more equipment or not.


Maybe a universal solution then is to make Eagle Kings (and the cap only commanders of all nations) into a general summon so that every nation can share in the wealth :D

[Squirrelloid]

See, I see national commanders that strictly dominate just about any summons up until tartarians or elemental royalty to be a serious balance problem, because it means you can get something better for gold than other nations can get with gems.

[Calahan]

See, I see national commanders that strictly dominate just about any summons up until tartarians or elemental royalty to be a serious balance problem, because it means you can get something better for gold than other nations can get with gems.
For me it depends entirely on the nation. As nations such as EA Caelum or EA Atlantis for example, only has its great capital only commanders, the rest of the nations arsenal is pretty much sub-par and forgettable. Or indeed laughable.

So if you allow any other nation in the game to simply by-pass/replicate these national uber cap commander advantages via (too) cheaply priced summons. (especially if they're early/mid game summons. Say levels 4-6) Then at least IMO, you may well as a consequence be weakening several nations by taking away their only real advantage over other nations. While at the same time those 'other nations' may easily still get to keep all their trump cards that can't be replicated easily. Or even replicated at all. Uber bless units, blood access, high pathed Death/Astral mages etc.

If you're looking for more balance between nations, then how about modding a spell that summons 10 top rate scared units for 10 gems of any type, so as to counter the likes of Mictlan and Lanka etc. Or 10 sacred giants for 10 gems. And while you're at it, easy access to blood hunters at Conj1 from any magic path :)


I often think the quest to find perfect balance between all nations is a foolish one, as there are just too many nations and too many possible combinations in the game. This is not a game like Dune 2 with just 3 nations. So as long as mods like CBM continue to attempt to fix broken things (like never used summons, nerf obviously OP nations like Hinnom, help obviously UP nations like EA/MA Agartha etc), then I think it's doing a great job. But if it goes too far down the line of attempting to balance all nations by making sudden substantial changes to the game, then I think it might have taken too big a step in the wrong direction. Everyone has their own opinion on this of course :)

[Graeme Dice]

The Eagle King is not a very good example IMO, as Eagle Kings are one of the best recruitable commanders in the game. It's the same as saying you expect a 30/40 gem mid-game summon to be better than a Nief Jarl or Ashdod Adon etc. And Eagle Kings are almost certain to need a shield for raiding.

Considering the relative availability of gems and gold under default settings, I'd expect a 400-500 gold commander should be evenly matched by about a 10 gem summon for proper balance.

[Debaser8]

Ten gems being equivalent to 500 gold commanders would mean a repricing of all existing summons though, which would majorly effect balance and game play, for good or ill.

[Zeldor]

Well, standard price in MP is 20-30 gold per gem, if there are any trades happening.

Shishis should be mobile, so they need A2. They are not so great really. Their attacks are good only against undead and demons really. And how many thugs like that do you have? Who except Lanka? Or some blood summons, which are probably way underpriced [really, Dakini for 55B? if we want to make Shishis more expensive, Dakinis should cost 100B or more]. Currently Shishi cannot even touch properly geared and scripted thug [mistform + mirror image + ethereality + luck + other staff]. They cannot even reliably get through fear+awe and many many other stuff. They need gear to survive frost brand. And they have not many means to survive anyt other thug gear. And they cannot take hits well. And they are totally useless against normal armies.

[NooBliss]

Shishi cannot touch a properly geared thug? Zeldor, I understand that I dont know much about all this stuff etc, but when I tried equipping Dakinis and Raksharajas, they were almost insta-killed by the Shishi. Actually, nearly all mid-game summoned thugs I could think about were helpless against Shishi.

Could you please specify, what items do Raksharajas and Dakini need to kill a semi-naked Shishi?

Also, Shishi have morale 30. I guess you didnt give a proper thought to your remark about them not being able to hit awe/fear protected thugs, did you. Same goes for etherealty, as all 6 attacks are magical. Or did Llama change Shishi somehow, buffing them in the last version of this mod?

[rdonj]

Yes, actually he did. Read the first post. They didn't used to have magical attacks for one thing.

[Wrana]

Another possibility for Shshs fix would be to give them Encumbrance 1-2 (as many other magic beings, including elemental Royalty) instead of 0.

[ano]

All elemental kings\queens have enc 0?

[NooBliss]

They already have enc. 1, at least in the version I've downloaded. It's not a solution because simple girdle of might gives them enough reinvigoration while buffing their damage at the same time. With 3 misc slots, girdle of might is a no-brainer for Shishi. (Against medium amounts of PD or single thugs, they dont even need it because they are damn fast killers).
To be honest, I'm not sure they actually 'need' quickness or Air magic. Did Llama intend to create a summon that will automatically kill all other mid-game thugs via cloud trapezing, or just something reasonably good for 15 air gems?

My idea is to strip them of their commander status, maybe giving them flight to compensate. And make them get Air 2 after player casts Gift of reason on them, a-la tartarians.
Or just strip them of magic and give them flight instead.
Or strip them of quickness, since all their attacks are magical now.

A good summon doesn't have to be insanely good. :)

[Calahan]

Another possibility for Shshs fix would be to give them Encumbrance 1-2
Shishi's do currently have an encumbrance of 1. (unless my version of the mod got corrupted during download)


Edit: Ninjad by the NooBliss :)

[llamabeast]

Sorry, can only post briefly, since at work. But a correction: Shishis have not changed since the original version, except for gaining +1 to attack (as in the first post). Version 1.01 did show that Shishis had gained magic attacks, since I thought I had missed out the magicness in the original version, but in fact I hadn't and so no change was made.

Also, as Calahan says, they have enc 1.

Zeldor's argument is hard to follow (although I was hoping he was right), since as NooBliss points out Shishis are immune to Fear, Awe and Ethereality, and cancel Mistform in one hit (and always did). Mirror image and luck are of course effective against them.

It remains the case that Shishis can very easily be killed, by e.g. the many methods that Squirreloid pointed out. However, those methods apply to most thugs; I think a little more thought is needed to work out whether the Shishis are out of line. I didn't intend to create an overpowered monster, no.

One tempting option is to remove the A2 and give them #onebattlespell Mistform. This will actually slightly improve them in battle (no fatigue from casting Mistform) but will remove the Cloud Trapeze option. I am not particularly wedded to the idea of them being able to Cloud Trapeze, although it is quite thematic.

[Zeldor]

Don't remove cloud trapeze, it's the whole point of Shishis - to be able to counter enemy thugs. Even if they are not reliable at that.

In Lunar Sea male shishi is bugges, so only one attack, so almost useless in counter-raiding.

[Calahan]

I did intend to create an overpowered monster, no.
The English language is great on times, such as when two words written in the wrong order can completely reverse the meaning of a sentence ;)


@ llama - I'd personally go for either removing the magic paths on the Shishi as you say (flying or auto Mistform are both fine as well. Flying would be my preference I think, though unthematic maybe? re: "runs like the wind"). Or keep the A2 and nerf them slightly. Don't think the latter will take much personally, as just dropping the quickness (for example) would do the job.

Also, doubt Mirror Image would last long as a defence against Shishi's, as with six attacks per round one is bound to hit home in the first few rounds of battle. And their effective attack of 20 ensures a high defence won't help much in keeping the mirror image up either.

This quickness is a large part of the problem for me, as 6 magic attacks at a value of 20 per round is just too much in my books (which will become 21 after the 1st fight). Strength+Damage is 20 as well (23 with Girdle), which is not the biggest total ever, but with so many hits being scored quite a few will count when factoring in the DRN. Plus x2 against evil things makes it 40 (46 with Girdle), giving easy potential damage of well over 100 per round, and that's probably without needing good rolls or poor protection. That's not just a counter to demons, that an outright massacre with that damage output. All for just 15 Air gems!

If dropping the quickness is too unthematic, then maybe drop the attack value a lot (at least 6+). As then you might be forced to kit Shishi's out especially to fight Thugs/SC's with attack boosting items, rather than being able to give them the same equally as effective Girdle+AMA for every single situation they find themselves in. Giving players some actual strategic decisions to make about equipping commanders is always a good thing IMO.


@ Zeldor - Sounds like you've been MP testing some random form of Shishi that got neutered at the vets :)

[Valerius]

If dropping the quickness is too unthematic, then maybe drop the attack value a lot (at least 6+).

I agree. Another option, if you want to keep the quickness, would be to combine a drop in attack value with only giving them one claw attack for a total of 4 attacks/round.

As then you might be forced to kit Shishi's out especially to fight Thugs/SC's with attack boosting items, rather than being able to give them the same equally as effective Girdle+AMA for every single situation they find themselves in. Giving players some actual strategic decisions to make about equipping commanders is always a good thing IMO.

Definitely. Generally speaking, I think units that have high HP/strength should not have great attack/defense scores and vice versa. It's strange to be defending tarts but it's worth noting that they and most of the elemental royalty don't have high attack scores. So I was happy to see the drop in attack scores for Grendelkin and Ember Lords (though I think the Ember Lord needs a further decrease).

[Wrana]

I agree. Another option, if you want to keep the quickness, would be to combine a drop in attack value with only giving them one claw attack for a total of 4 attacks/round.

Especially as most normal monsters have just 1 claw attack regardless (tigers, lions, etc.). 2 claws are usually domain of things considered unusually quick or skilled (some higher demons mostly iirc). So these 2 claws should replace quickness, not be combined with it. Or - quickness & 1 claw attack as base...

[Zeldor]

Has anyone really used Shishis though? It's very situational summon. I don't think it's OP. It may be good, but only against undead and demon thugs, which are not so common really. Has anyone used Shishi against smth normal? Werewolf thugs? Ri's? Sidhe Lords? I'm really curious.

[Squirrelloid]

Siddhe Lords with mirror image should make shishis pretty sad. Hitting near 30 defense isn't too hard, and once you stack mirror image on that even 6 attacks isn't going to be a sure thing.

[Valerius]

Fair question. I'll run some tests later. My guess is that the glamour thugs' best bet is an eye shield (have the Shishi's flurry of attacks work against it) combined with bumping up protection as high as possible.

I actually think a Skratti will defeat the Shishi, maybe even easily. Skratti have the HP to weather some damage and can dish out a lot of it themselves.

[zzcat]

Anyone noticed rocs have 175% SR? It seems a bug because #coldres replace the base creature's CR as intended but #shockres stack with the base creature's SR. Another issue is rocs inherit #iceprot 1 from storm guard, so they are less effective in hot provinces.

IMO the new zmey is somewhat overpowered. With 18 att, 28 str and 7 attacks BEFORE quickened, it can kill almost anything w/o ethereal in 1 round(mistform and mirror image will be negated by fire breath). 3 forms make it (partly)immune to soul slay, GfH and other save or die spells. And don't like shishis, it's nether magicbeing nor undead/demon so can't be countered by special weapons, 260 hp in total and 22 prot make it extremely hard to kill. I prefer to bring it back to previous stat but increase its HP and make fire breath its primary weapon. In my test, 3 bites can clear a square most of the time so other weapons will not get used. Swaping the order of fire breath and bites will increase its effeciency vs armies dramatically.

[Valerius]

Ok, I ran some tests and here are the results.

First Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Eye Shield, Dragon Helmet, Rainbow Armor, Bracers, Pendant of Luck
Script: Bless, Barkskin, Mistform, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Pendant of Luck
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi killed
battle 2 - Shishi routed
battle 3 - Shishi routed


Second Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Dragon Helmet, Rainbow Armor, Bracers, Pendant of Luck
Script: Bless, Barkskin, Mistform, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Pendant of Luck
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, Flight, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi routed
battle 2 - Shishi killed
battle 3 - Shishi routed


Third Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Dragon Helmet, Rainbow Armor, Bracers, Pendant of Luck
Script: Bless, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Pendant of Luck
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Sidhe lord killed
battle 2 - Sidhe lord killed
battle 3 - Shishi killed

The one win for the Sidhe Lord was very lucky - he was down to 1 HP but managed to survive and all of a sudden started scoring hits on the Shishi. The lesson here is that without barkskin the Sidhe Lords protection is too low.


Fourth Test

Skratti
Equipment: Sword of Swiftness, Eye Shield, Horned Helmet, Green Dragon Scale Mail, Boots of the Messenger, Pendant of Luck
Script: Quicken self, hold, hold, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Pendant of Luck
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi killed
battle 2 - Shishi killed
battle 3 - Shishi killed

No surprise on these results. General pattern was that the Shishi scores some hits but soon enough the Skratti kills it.


If anyone wants to run their own tests on Shishi's or other diversity summons I've attached a saved game and the mod I used for testing. The mod is a CBM 1.6 base, with changes made for the ThreeFort game (the relevant one being that most spells are level 0), Diversity mod added with summons costing 1 gem, and several globals and wish set to cost 1 N gem so you can easily summon and equip units.

Edit: Shishi's, Sidhe Lords and Skratti are positioned on the left of the map, ready for battle.

[Squirrelloid]

Why mistform? It absorbs only one hit before popping because both sides have magic weapons.

[NooBliss]

Now give that shishi a ring of frost resistance against frost brand for a change. :)

[Valerius]

Now give that shishi a ring of frost resistance against frost brand for a change. :)

Sure, here are the results.

Fifth Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Eye Shield, Dragon Helmet, Rainbow Armor, Bracers, Pendant of Luck
Script: Bless, Barkskin, Mistform, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Ring of CR
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi killed
battle 2 - Shishi killed
battle 3 - Shishi killed

This is where the Shishi's limited slots become a real disadvantage since I gave up the Pendant of Luck in order to get Cold Resistance. Note that in two out of three of the above battles the Shishi was blinded relatively quickly, despite still having the AoMR.

[Valerius]

Why mistform? It absorbs only one hit before popping because both sides have magic weapons.

True, and I have sometimes gone without it when facing troops with magic weapons. But in a 1 vs. 1 situation I'd be inclined to use it. 15 HP doesn't leave much margin for error and mistform can save you from that first hit that the RNG rolls huge damage for. So it was more for the benefit of the Sidhe Lord than the Shishi.

The other thing is of course that I have both parties waiting 5 rounds before attacking and attacking without fatigue. I did try a test where I had the Shishi cast Flight and immediately attack. This disrupted the Sidhe Lord/Tuatha's (not sure which it was) buff routine and caused damage several times but the Shishi still lost. I was kind of surprised at that.

[NooBliss]

And what's the bless for these sidhe lords? Judging by bracers, its heavy earth bless + something else.

I wonder how would they fare without heavy blessing; imho Eriu cant really afford a heavy bless strategy with such a limited magic on nationals. Same goes for MA Vanheim - at least I think so.

[Gregstrom]

As far as blesses for Eriu go, read this (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37996). For that matter, E9/Xx works pretty well for Vanir too.

[NooBliss]

Since nobody managed to win with Eriu using this guide nor this bless yet, I guess having no endgame magic paths doesnt pay off around turn 60 or so after all. :)
I have no doubt it works like a charm on Sidhe Lords tho.

[Squirrelloid]

Eriu has issues. I don't think anyone would contest that.

[llamabeast]

Thanks very much everyone for the comments, and thanks especially Valerius for the tests. It looks like the Shishi is still eminently killable, but perhaps it is true that he is applicable in an overly wide range of situations without any modification to his kit, given the low cost.

Okay, my current inclination is to reduce the Shishi attack by, say, 6. Possibly by 8 if it was considered necessary.

The alternative is to reduce their magic to A1 and give them #onebattlespell Mistform. Of course I could do both - maybe they should be cheaper then?

They weren't originally intended to be cloud trapeze assassins. I wanted them to be very flexible and mobile army support, able to take on a chunk of enemy troops (especially demons) as a valuable part of an army. Obviously they are also suited to raiding, which is fine. Of course, you can't really control what people use things for.

I quite like them having 6 attacks. It makes them into a really flurry-of-blows army killer. I could reduce this but it would not be my preferred option.

zzcat: I can see why you think the Zmey is overpowered, but I don't think he is. I did quite a lot of tests against a mundane army of Man knights, without mage support. Before I added the tail (which provides repel), the zmey (with current stats) was always killed, after killing maybe 6-10 knights. I want the Zmey to be a MONSTER - it should be the scariest animal-type monster in the entire game, hence it should be able to take on large numbers of mortal troops (I don't think it will ever compete with a true SC with full slots). The previous incarnation was always killed almost immediately after killing hardly anyone.

However, I would not be averse to reducing the attack on the tail by a couple of points (makes a surprisingly large difference), or to increasing the cost a little. I should perhaps do some tests against an army with mage support. My feeling is that the Zmey would still be killed, but at least he now provides some threat, as desired.

[Dimaz]

I wanted them to be very flexible and mobile army support, able to take on a chunk of enemy troops (especially demons) as a valuable part of an army
So far in Lunar Sea they were successful at stopping demonic solo raiders (and lightning attack raiders) while going down quickly faced with groups of ordinary demons (I think the absense of shield plays huge part here). So it seems they can't fill your initial idea currently, as both their stats and Trapeze possibility suggests to use them as anti-raiders, while sending them on demonic armies is not very effective.
But in the new role they are amazingly effective, cutting down entire strategy for Lanka (sure, solo Raksharajas can be killed in a number of ways, but this seems to be one of the cheapest and most effective one).

[Squirrelloid]

Lanka is overpowered anyway, I'm not going to cry if their raiders have a relatively cheap counter...

[Dimaz]

I'm not going to cry either as I'm playing Lanka for the first time there, made tons of wrong decisions but still think I have pretty good position and clearly see that Lanka is one of the strongest EA nations. However, I think that in Dom every counter should have another counter, and for Shishi, trapezing LfL casters looks almost like no-brainer (as Shishi themselves against demon thugs), except that they have more HP than one LfL cast removes. Which means, with luck pendant you should cast it at least 3 times to get reliable result (better 4). That's why I suggested 40 hp instead of 50. As for the gems cost, well, I think 40 is more appropriate, but it's hard for me to find obvious reasons why 40 and not 30 and not 35. Just my impression of their effectiveness in our game.

[zzcat]

zzcat: I can see why you think the Zmey is overpowered, but I don't think he is. I did quite a lot of tests against a mundane army of Man knights, without mage support. Before I added the tail (which provides repel), the zmey (with current stats) was always killed, after killing maybe 6-10 knights. I want the Zmey to be a MONSTER - it should be the scariest animal-type monster in the entire game, hence it should be able to take on large numbers of mortal troops (I don't think it will ever compete with a true SC with full slots). The previous incarnation was always killed almost immediately after killing hardly anyone.

However, I would not be averse to reducing the attack on the tail by a couple of points (makes a surprisingly large difference), or to increasing the cost a little. I should perhaps do some tests against an army with mage support. My feeling is that the Zmey would still be killed, but at least he now provides some threat, as desired.

Have you equiped them? In my test a zmey with body ethereal/lucky pendant/girdle of might/Lycanthropos' Amulet is virtually unkillable for regular troops w/o mage support. In attachment I used a nerfed version of Zmey(with old stat but more hp and tail and making fire breath its primary attack) but it still routed 100 knights quite easily and killed half of them.

[Valerius]

Since nobody managed to win with Eriu using this guide nor this bless yet, I guess having no endgame magic paths doesnt pay off around turn 60 or so after all. :)
I have no doubt it works like a charm on Sidhe Lords tho.

Well keep in mind it doesn't have to be an absolute thing: you can get an E9N4 bless and still have magic diversity if you choose something like an Arch Druid (in CBM). Vanheim is a different situation and the idea of skipping a bless is quite possible with troops like Skinshifters and Einheres and access to blood magic. Alternate approaches are certainly possible but I'd recommend at least an E4N4 bless. All your mages are sacred and even if you don't think a major bless worthwhile Sidhe Lords are your best recruit everywhere mage and thugging is what they're designed for.

Having said that, I ran a test with the Sidhe Lord not casting bless. I had to swap out some of the equipment; Black Steel Plate to help with protection and an Amulet of Reinvigoration in the now open slot where the Bracers were. I actually tried to really help the Shishi with this test: the Sidhe Lord used a Vine Shield instead of an Eye Shield, the Shishi cast flight, and the Sidhe Lord didn't have even minor regeneration.

Sixth Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Dragon Helmet, Black Steel Plate, Amulet of Resilience, Pendant of Luck
Script: Barkskin, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Ring of CR
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, Flight, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi routed
battle 2 - Sidhe Lord routed
battle 3 - Shishi routed

[llamabeast]

Okay, I am going to reduce the attack of the Shishi by either 6 or 8. Place your votes now.

zzcat, I think you are right - I will nerf the Zmey somewhat, although he will finish closer to his new power level than his old (which was quite useless). I will incorporate the shapechange fixes you noticed, and put the firebreath first as suggested. I'll also fix the shishi's 175 SR while I'm at it.

I think I may increase the cost of the Grendelkin from 40 to 50 gems.

I'm saying all this because I've run out of time to actually do it tonight, and won't get a chance for a few days, so there is some opportunity for people to comment on the proposed changes.

I would also really appreciate it if people had a look at the other summons to see if there are any other concerns. I would like the next version to stand for some time as I think it's best if things don't change too much (how is anyone ever meant to learn tactics if things change all the time?).

I've noticed that comments come thick and fast in response to bold claims by people. Hence I make these bold claims:

ASYNJA IS OP, HOW ARE YOU MEANT TO CATCH A GLAMOUR SC?

WENDIGO IS SLOW TO GROW AND CONSEQUENTLY USELESS

NO USE CAN BE FOUND FOR THE STUPID ROC

TREANT IS TOO SLOW AND IS WORSE THAN MONKEY PD

GRENDELKIN CANNOT BE KILLED

[Gregstrom]

I vote to reduce Shishi attack by 6.

[Zeldor]

I still think that Shishis are not OP at all, as Valerius tests show. I wouldn't complain if there were a bit weaker vs undead/demons and stronger than now against normal stuff. I almost lost one to some markata PD + B1 mages last turn :P And you can always drop on them with proper gear and they cannot even run away really...

[Squirrelloid]

I disagree on any lowering of Shishi attack before we get some real data. Valerius's data is the best we have and points to there being no real problem.

Also, a fricking air mage who is summonable with air gems is a godsend for magic diversifying off a pretender. Rocs are fricking awesome - they aren't for air powers, they're for nations diversifying into air. Its like saying Kokythiads are useless because its a WD mage that requires WD to summon - NO.

Edit:
Zzzcat: Llama's point is a Zmey should kill arbitrarily large armies if the armies don't have mage support. The fact that they actually do so is not a problem. Ie, 'virtually unkillable for normal troops without mage support' is what they're supposed to be. WAD.

[rdonj]

Okay, I am going to reduce the attack of the Shishi by either 6 or 8. Place your votes now.

zzcat, I think you are right - I will nerf the Zmey somewhat, although he will finish closer to his new power level than his old (which was quite useless). I will incorporate the shapechange fixes you noticed, and put the firebreath first as suggested. I'll also fix the shishi's 175 SR while I'm at it.

I think I may increase the cost of the Grendelkin from 40 to 50 gems.

I'm saying all this because I've run out of time to actually do it tonight, and won't get a chance for a few days, so there is some opportunity for people to comment on the proposed changes.

I would also really appreciate it if people had a look at the other summons to see if there are any other concerns. I would like the next version to stand for some time as I think it's best if things don't change too much (how is anyone ever meant to learn tactics if things change all the time?).

I've noticed that comments come thick and fast in response to bold claims by people. Hence I make these bold claims:

ASYNJA IS OP, HOW ARE YOU MEANT TO CATCH A GLAMOUR SC?

WENDIGO IS SLOW TO GROW AND CONSEQUENTLY USELESS

NO USE CAN BE FOUND FOR THE STUPID ROC

TREANT IS TOO SLOW AND IS WORSE THAN MONKEY PD

GRENDELKIN CANNOT BE KILLED

I guess if you are going to reduce the attack skill of shishis, 6 is probably the maximum that is doable (otherwise they will be not much use against demon thugs/SCs, and I like that they have a niche there). 8 definitely seems excessive, even with 6 attacks to whittle defense down. EDIT: I've just realized shishi currently have 17 attack skill. I remembered reading that they had 20. My vote is thus changed to not lowering the attack skill to below 14.

I think Asynja should probably be left alone for a bit. They are a bit frail as SCs, and though stealth+glamour means it's really hard to catch one, right now in MP games it's looking like they may be sidelined a bit as SCs and end up more as casters.

The wendigo right now is in an interesting spot, as an SC available with only 6 in a school. They take a while to grow, but they are still useful before fully grown and while it's a bit painful to have to wait for them, you can have a decent number of them before other people have access to real SCs. I think these need more testing before changes are made to them.

Rocs provide access to air magic, as squirrel said, and that definitely makes them not useless! Especially with the siege bonus 30, they should be excellent army support midgame casting fog warriors/wrathful skies/etc in battle, and helping break down walls on the strategic map. The patrol bonus could also be useful in certain situations, though it's not really what I'd buy them for. More of a useful bonus. They are also certainly usable as light raiders earlier on, and counter raiders, which should be able to kill lower end thugs. By the way it is these with the 175 shock resist, not shishis.

I think the Treant needs to lose the rooted form, but have the rooted bonuses transferred to the walking form. It is more cool presently in my opinion, but it would be much more usable with this change. Having to root to be an effective fighter could lead to some verious silly scenarios, like the treant trying to rout but not being able to move, so it dies even if it could kill what's attacking it. Also it should probably gain a little AP, or possibly instead 1 more mapmove. One or the other IMO.

Grendelkin are awesome but don't have great skill and have no magic or resists. They're definitely killable, it is just very hard. They could maybe lose some strength. Go down by 10 or so. They should be very killable by armies though, and it's hard for them to catch SCs. I'd like to see people use these more before they're changed too much :)

[rdonj]

Since nobody managed to win with Eriu using this guide nor this bless yet, I guess having no endgame magic paths doesnt pay off around turn 60 or so after all. :)
I have no doubt it works like a charm on Sidhe Lords tho.

Well keep in mind it doesn't have to be an absolute thing: you can get an E9N4 bless and still have magic diversity if you choose something like an Arch Druid (in CBM). Vanheim is a different situation and the idea of skipping a bless is quite possible with troops like Skinshifters and Einheres and access to blood magic. Alternate approaches are certainly possible but I'd recommend at least an E4N4 bless. All your mages are sacred and even if you don't think a major bless worthwhile Sidhe Lords are your best recruit everywhere mage and thugging is what they're designed for.

Having said that, I ran a test with the Sidhe Lord not casting bless. I had to swap out some of the equipment; Black Steel Plate to help with protection and an Amulet of Reinvigoration in the now open slot where the Bracers were. I actually tried to really help the Shishi with this test: the Sidhe Lord used a Vine Shield instead of an Eye Shield, the Shishi cast flight, and the Sidhe Lord didn't have even minor regeneration.

Sixth Test

Sidhe Lord
Equipment: Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Dragon Helmet, Black Steel Plate, Amulet of Resilience, Pendant of Luck
Script: Barkskin, Mistform, hold, hold, hold, attack
vs.
Female Shishi
Equipment: Girdle of Might, AoMR, Ring of CR
Script: Mirror Image, Mistform, Flight, hold, hold, attack

battle 1 - Shishi routed
battle 2 - Sidhe Lord routed
battle 3 - Shishi routed

By the way, sidhe thugs should never be going up against shishi without an ideal weapon at minimum, because they just plain have no need not to. They can't be jumped on by the shishi, but they can return the favor easily. So all these tests where the sidhe were using frost brands were really suboptimal. Something like a sword of sharpness would make much more sense for these tests.

[Calahan]

EDIT: I've just realized shishi currently have 17 attack skill. I remembered reading that they had 20.
Shishi's have an effective attack skill of 20, as they gain +3 from quickness the moment they enter battle. This isn't factored in to the base value of 17 attack you see displayed outside of battles.

[rdonj]

/headdesk!

I guess you've gotten me back, calahan, after all those times I've taunted you. But I will have my revenge!

[Valerius]

By the way, sidhe thugs should never be going up against shishi without an ideal weapon at minimum, because they just plain have no need not to. They can't be jumped on by the shishi, but they can return the favor easily. So all these tests where the sidhe were using frost brands were really suboptimal. Something like a sword of sharpness would make much more sense for these tests.

Well, it's not that bad. The frost brand does 16 damage, the sword of sharpness 8. With the Sidhe Lords strength of 13 and the Shishi's protection of 20 that's an 11 point difference for the sword of sharpness and a 9 point difference for the frost brand. When you factor in the 3 point advantage in attack of the frost brand I think it comes out ahead. I also think there's a value in having the weapon with an AOE attack in case you unexpectedly need to deal with a crowd or just want to immediately move on to the next fight without having to change equipment. Having said that, a Fire Brand would beat both the Frost Brand and Sword of Sharpness handily - the only drawback being that with this build you won't be able to equip a CR 50+ item so that you can get to CR 100 with elemental fortitude.

But you bring up a good point that these aren't real in-game situations. The Sidhe Lords can choose when to fight and when to sneak away. The Shishi's will have to deal with a counterattack. And I think this is when their limited slots come into play since you won't be able to cover both MR and elemental weaknesses.

[rdonj]

Hmm, you have a point also. I should have said an axe of sharpness, or possibly an axe of hate. I would definitely have gone with fire brand, but was trying to stick to national paths. A fire brand equipped sidhe would easily carve its way through a shishi. Anyway I suppose the initial tests weren't so bad, in retrospect!

[zzcat]

Zzzcat: Llama's point is a Zmey should kill arbitrarily large armies if the armies don't have mage support. The fact that they actually do so is not a problem. Ie, 'virtually unkillable for normal troops without mage support' is what they're supposed to be. WAD.

My concern is with 28 str and 7 attacks it is not only an amry cleaner but also an awesome SC killer. They can tear most SC apart in round 1 if you buff them with quickness/strength of giants/wpn of sharpness and let them attack large monster. Anyway I agree with llama that they don't need too many nerfs. Just lower their strength to ~22 and reduce def/prot slightly maybe enough for them.

[Valerius]

I would definitely have gone with fire brand, but was trying to stick to national paths.

No, you're right about that. I was trying to do the same: the Skratti's equipment was all stuff Jotun could forge but I bent the rules a bit on the Sidhe Lord by giving him the Luck Pendant (I usually try to give them one but of course need indies to forge them). Anyway, the Fire Brand came to mind when I was thinking about multi-purpose weapons.

[Aethyr]

Valerius, thank you for sharing the results of your tests.

I was expecting that there would be more discussion on the impact of the mod on various nations, and the degree to which some nations may benefit more than others. What do folks think about this? Does the mod significantly alter the balance of power between nations?

Please note, I'm not suggesting that anything should be changed in an attempt to "balance" power (I like the mod as it is).

[zzcat]

ASYNJA IS OP, HOW ARE YOU MEANT TO CATCH A GLAMOUR SC?

Worse than a golem scripted with returning? I don't think so...

NO USE CAN BE FOUND FOR THE STUPID ROC

I personally dislike rocs since they provide a cheap and reliable way to fog warriors for non-air nations. IMO reducing their path to A2 and giving them more defensive ability(awe?) is the way to go.

TREANT IS TOO SLOW AND IS WORSE THAN MONKEY PD
Fully agree with Rdonj. A mapmove 1 SC who can't retreat in battlefield is a sitting duck for your opponents.

[Fantomen]

Regarding nation balance. This mod greatly boosts air nations like Caelum and earth nations (Ulm, Agartha) Who now gets viable midgame thugs in the shishi and mechanical giant.

I can see a whole MA ulm strategy based on mechanical giant + forge bonus. And a similar one with MA agartha with mechanichal giant leading squads of statues.

The Caelums can just summon as many shishis as possible and send them against anything with lightning resistance.

I tried the treeant. I find it very cool actually, though it might be a bit hard to leverage. It can root and cast bone melter, mossbody and foul vapors, which is some pretty damn cool and underused spells. I think it should be given increased map move in forests. The built in vine shield effect and reinvig makes it possible to weild dual weapons and cast personal quickness. You can get good resistances with items + elemental fortitude, extra reinvig from earthpower, staying power from personal regeneration (24hp regen when rooted!). I really see a lot of cool possibilities. Flying carpets come to mind for these (just imagine a anthropomorphic tree on a flying carpet)

[Calahan]

During my tests with the Shishi, I found the burning pearl helped a fair bit when attacking against high defence. Better than luck quite often. (no point negating half of the hits against you if you still can't hit yourself)


Plus it's not just about a one-on-one match-up, as you have to consider what would actually happen during a game. As in that scenario the PD comes into the equation. Since if you have a Shishi in the field and expect it to be ambushed, paying just 60g for 10PD often either interrupts the attacking Shishi killer during buffing, or provides other targets for the Shishi killer to focus on, meaning the Shishi has a number of free hits. And of course the attacks by the PD help lower the defence of the Shishi killer.


Either way I think lowering the attack value on the Shishi by 6 will achieve the desired result for now. As 17 really is at the top end of natural attack scores, and that's without adding the +3 from quickness and +1 from experience (which they'd likely get from their first raid).

The attack value of the Shishi really is critical IMO, as whatever value it is will automatically go through a big force multiplier because of the six attacks. And any extra attack points the Shishi gets from any source is going to be boosted comparatively more for the Shishi than for other units, because of this force multiplier.


Giving the Shishi a natural attack value of 11 (14 in battle) = Good idea in my book.

/headdesk!

I guess you've gotten me back, calahan, after all those times I've taunted you. But I will have my revenge!
You know where to find me rdonj. So you're welcome to try whenever you're ready :)

[llamabeast]

The Treant retreat problem is a very good point, thanks for pointing it out. Concerns:

1) When brought close to death a Treant can't retreat. Not desperately worried about this.

2) At the turn limit if the Treant isn't killing fast enough, it will try to retreat at zero speed and just sit there for 25 turns before disappearing.

3) Most serious: If a player sees a Treant coming, they will plant something immobile in its path (e.g. that Earth/Astral holy summon). The resulting battle will be a draw and the Treant will die.

Possible solutions:

a) Give the immobile form a #secondshape of a damaged mobile form. So when brought close to death the Treant will uproot and run away. This is thematically pleasing, but only solves the first and least concerning of the problems.

b) Give the rooted form a very slow walking speed (e.g. two or three squares). This is slightly unthematic but could be justified. Probably solves most problems? The rooted form would still be immobile on the map, which hardly matters but is thematically pleasing.

c) Abolish the rooted form as suggested, applying the rooted stats to the non-rooted form. I don't want to do this as I like the rooting thing. However I guess it would be preferable to the current situation.

Also on the subject of the Roc, it is true that I've created an easy Fog Warriors caster, which is a more powerful addition than intended. I think that, with regret, I will therefore reduce it to A2 unless people can think of any other solution. Ideas for compensatory buffs gratefully received. Awe is an option I guess, not desperately thematic but possibly justifiable (most beautiful bird in the WORLD).

[Zeldor]

Roc is nice sieger with an option to cast some army buffs, so he should stay like that, otherwise everyone will use Asynjas only.

[Squirrelloid]

I don't see why Rocs are a problem. Why should the go-to air caster summon be a *nature* spell? So its a fog warriors caster. That's fine.

No one complains the Troll King is a good AoG platform...

I'd like to see more caster summons for paths that are required to summon them (fire notably has no midgame commander summon which is a fire caster).

Water has a few, death has a few, astral has one, earth has one, nature has one, air and fire didn't. Now air does. I don't see the problem.

Re: Treants - i prefer the slow movement speed option. Even treelords have a combat move of 2 iirc.

[rdonj]

Well, the treant already only has 6 ap, so it can only move three squares as it is. I guess you could make it move even slower when rooted....

[Valerius]

I think more than any of the paths represented in the Diversity mod, air nations experience a "get something, lose something" reaction. You get thugs and SCs, you lose in the fact that a path that was among the more difficult to branch into is now easy to enter.

Whether that is good or bad is a matter of opinion but the difficulty of entering air magic was a relative advantage for A nations and if easier access to air is given to everyone I think the same should be done for other paths. As Squirrelloid mentioned, fire is one of them. Something along the lines of a Conj. 6, F2/3 unit that only requires a single path to summon would be good.

I think astral is another candidate for this. The current options all involve some combination of getting lucky with randoms, having dual paths for summoning or spending a huge amount of gems. I'm talking about something simple: a single path summon where you spend x number of gems and get a guaranteed S mage. Doesn't have to be thug or SC, just a mage. But I realize astral is not a focus of the Diversity mod so this may not be the place to add such a unit.

Regarding the Roc, the value of gems is effected by the nation you're playing. For a non-air nation A gems don't have a high value; for an A nation they are very important to fuel cloud trapezing. N gems on the other hand would be valuable to the non-air nation, especially under the Diversity mod where you'll have more thugs/SCs to equip. Keeping this in mind when comparing the Faery Queen at Conj. 8 with the Roc at Conj. 6 I'd say for a non-air nation (the ones who will be summoning Rocs) I'd usually go for the Roc, even with both available (there's plenty of other ways to get N magic) since both the absolute, and even more so the relative, cost to me of the A gems would be less than the N gems. The Asynja is another matter; for only 10 gems more I get a reasonable chance of A3, full slots, possibly other magic paths and glamour (the last of which I think will prove to be a problem). So she does overshadow the Roc. OTOH the Granite Cyclops overshadows the Troll King (though not by as much).

Having said all that, I think reducing the Roc's A magic to level 2 would hurt them too much. What about leaving them at A3 but moving them to Conj. 7? In order to try to keep them as an option even after the Asynja becomes available they could get a further boost to siege bonus or map move.

[Sajuuk]

Did anyone think that Asynja is a method too convenient to access to blood? For a difficult level of summon air queens and the gems cost equel to a lamia queen(not to mention that for most nations,N gems are more useful than A gems), you have a greater chance to get a blood mage, much easier than lamia queen or tarts.

And if not lucky to get blood, she is still a great SC and raider(or caster of rain of stone)that almost can't be hunted down——golems with returning are good raiders, but they need enemy attack to return, they have poor statistic that hardly competent as SC hunter, and enemy could set a trap with S mage to duel them upon their arrival as I have done before, any success is a great loss to the enemy.

So maybe cut down the Blood random chance of Asynja, and increase the spell requirement and cost will be better ?

As SC, though cyclops have a statistic even better that the pretender version, they are not shining like Asynja. But as a E mage, no doubt they have overshadowed troll kings. So why not gurantee it as SC rather than mage? Like change its path to E2F1?(EF)1 or even(EFAD)1?

Ember Lords are pretty powerful, although without capacity of deep strike make it less versatile comparing tarts. But shouldn't such powerful beings unique? Not one, but.... several or even a dozen different Ember Lords? That will be funny,but maybe too hard,though.....

Some say treant will be easily killed by immobile enemy, so I'd say, it is quite unwise for a sneak sc to attack a province without sneak—— sneak into target province,make sure there's no dangerous enemy, then turn into rooted form, and he will attack that province next turn. As for tree lord, I don't think a caster could have overlap with a sc exept their themes. But combine tree lord and treant into one kind of creature sounds interesting~~

Roc seems better be used as a cheap A3 mage, if not, lower A and plus some random might be an alternate.

Shishi seems interesting, and has been debated alot, but I'd say I can hardly connect this stone-hard air spirit with the stone lion decorated at the gate of some Chinese traditional buildings:D

Great Krakens are great, but B2 random at first seems useless since no one can cast blood magic beneath the wave and great kraken are not amphibian. But on a second thought, since there is amulet of fish exist, kraken became a quite handy access to blood even better than Asynja.....S2 kraken are excellent raiders, but they are also a convenient access to astral for non-astral nation like oceania, maybe too convenient since it only need W4 and 30 gems? Oh, by the way, in vanilla, no one can access death path if he do not already have it or through blood, yet in this mod, we have Ember Lord, Asynja and Great Kraken to access death via fire, air or water, I'm not sure if it is wise enough.....

grendelkin seems powerful enough yet not overpowered, but it seems a little unconvincible that a mere monster can be much stronger and tougher than titans and demons......

Some say zmey are too powerful against SCs, then why not reduce its attack so that it can be effective against troops yet hard to hit a SC?

Ettin and mechanical giant are not so exiting since they are either not very powerful or have critical flaws. But they are really cheap, so still worth using.

I didn't see any special usefulness or uselessness on fire bird and wendigo, they fit their desingh well,though "any" fire nation may be able to completely negate the strategy of undead/dark vision/demon plus darkness, too easy maybe?

That's all I can imagine, hope it will be useful^^

[Squirrelloid]

Did anyone think that Asynja is a method too convenient to access to blood? For a difficult level of summon air queens and the gems cost equel to a lamia queen(not to mention that for most nations,N gems are more useful than A gems), you have a greater chance to get a blood mage, much easier than lamia queen or tarts.

Lamia Queens are only 15n. This mod assumes CBM for balance purposes.

And you're going to build up tarts anyway if you're summoning tarts, so the cost of tarts is not the relevant factor here - you'll just get blood mages automatically as a consequence of building up your tart forces. Indeed, if you focus your GoR uses on tarts with decent random paths (Monstra, titans), I think you'll get more blood mages from tarts than Asynja. Certainly you'll get better blood mages.

Why is blood magic such a big deal anyway? Its the easiest magic path to get into... If you want blood mages, you can use scouts to hunt up 50+ slaves well before you can cast an Asynja and empower your own blood mages.


As SC, though cyclops have a statistic even better that the pretender version, they are not shining like Asynja. But as a E mage, no doubt they have overshadowed troll kings. So why not gurantee it as SC rather than mage? Like change its path to E2F1?(EF)1 or even(EFAD)1?

Who cares if it overshadows teh troll king. It should. It comes what, 3 research levels later? No one complains that Liches are better death mages than wraithlords of moundkings...


Great Krakens are great, but B2 random at first seems useless since no one can cast blood magic beneath the wave and great kraken are not amphibian.

Ok, i'll agree B2 as a random on a Kraken is kind of weird.

[Sajuuk]

Oh，I forgot cbm make lamia queen cheaper, then the only disadvantage of lamia queen will be its N5D1 summon requirement. But you are right, though Asynja become the easiest way to access to blood, it's not break(but I never have the gut to start blood economy from scout...). Yet I insist that a SC with deep strike, stealth, glamour and more hp deserve at least same cost of an air queen.

Demi-lich overshadow wraith lord and mound fiend? of course not. Wraith lord can be a immortal thug or a SC, and mound fiend can reanimate or cast some national magic such as ashdod's. Demilich can perform non of above action, they are just superior death mages. So what about cyclops and troll king? cyclops are cheaper than troll king, can be a better sc than troll king, and have better path than troll king. Troll king's only advantage is his court, yet I'm afraid they are not worth 25E or more. Beside, cyclops make earth kings much less useful, too.

[LDiCesare]

GRENDELKIN CANNOT BE KILLED
False.
I had one killed, despite being kitted, etc. because it just crawled underwater and got stuck first with some mermen, second with ice encasings. When he routed due to turn limit, he wasn't fast enough to actually get out of the battlefield and eventually died. My bane lords fared much better...
I still say grendelkin needs amphibious.
Did people actually use it in MP before saying it's overpowered?

[Graeme Dice]

So what about cyclops and troll king? cyclops are cheaper than troll king, can be a better sc than troll king, and have better path than troll king. Troll king's only advantage is his court, yet I'm afraid they are not worth 25E or more. Beside, cyclops make earth kings much less useful, too.

The troll king's court also only requires three earth to cast, compared to six earth for the cyclops. Six earth is hard to reach without both a ring of wizardry and a staff of elemental mastery. Three earth is reachable by anyone with earth two.

Making the unique summons less useful is part of the point. Personally, I'd make them all non-unique if I could do it so that there isn't such a race to get the very large power boost from being the first to reach their research levels. Of course, I'd also make the global spell limit moddable so that a 24 person game isn't stuck with the same total number of global spells as a 2 person game.

[Squirrelloid]

Did people actually use it in MP before saying it's overpowered?

Why limit that comment to just Grendelkin? It applies to virtually every complaint in this thread. The mod has been used in like 4 MP games, none of which is using its current form. People just have this strong 'OMG' reaction, because they're comparing them to the wrong things or just don't understand the mechanics or can't be bothered to actually playtest. I mean, some of these are meant to be alternatives to *tartarians*, they need to be pretty amazing.

Anyone comparing Cyclops, Asynja, Grendelkin, and Emberlords (and probably a few others) to anything but Tartarians is comparing them to the wrong things. Your analysis is worthless because you've missed the point. Asynja's being 'easy blood access?' Oh for the love of pete, you're at Conjuration ~8, seriously, whatever, totally irrelevant. Stop failing to see the forest for the trees.

And anyone complaining about overpowered without actually playing games, especially MP games, with them is just whining. Stop that.

Llama, can I ask you hold off on making any changes until you hear back from real MP games how things actually worked?

[Zeldor]

llamabeast:

You are making chaotic changes, based on I don't know what. You should stick with your ideas and do changes based on how you see things + just on reliable data. My data is not very reliable and quite specific [which I explained on IRC], the best thing you have is Valerius stats. And you have almost no data about other summons.

[Valerius]

Llama, I agree with you that it's a good idea to have a stable release and not change things too frequently. It's also tempting to make changes now before games start using the newest release. But the games that began with the first release of the mod are now reaching the point where feedback on the in-game performance of these units is arriving. Of course it's just fragments at the moment. The fact that a certain unit excels against another unit or that a given summon doesn't do well in certain situations is only a partial picture. It will take more time to see what the overall performance of these summons in a variety of situations is. And even more importantly, to see if the Diversity summons are a viable alternative to tarts. So I think it's worth holding off on making changes for now and using the feedback from the current games to create the stable release you mentioned.

[Aethyr]

Llama, I absolutely concur with Squirrell, Zeldor, and Valerius. I'm in FastBlitz3 now, and I hope to have some feedback for you soon. ;)

[Sajuuk]

I absolutely agree that only by real test in MP can we make a true conclusion on those summons, especially creatures like shishi or zmey——creature that can tear down fully equiped thugs alone with their nature weapon are pretty unfamiliar to all of us, thus a quick judgement usually proven wrong.

But cyclops and asynja are another case: They are classic SC template with full slot, just comparing them with other SC, either general summons like elemental royalty or national summons like angels, and a pre-conclusion can be made without too much error.

After all, this mod is to provide an alterate to tarts, not to replace all other summons.

[rdonj]

For the record, I still don't think it matters if a cyclops is just *better* than a troll king. They are used for very different things, and the troll soldiers *can* be very useful. Especially as soul vortex batteries :P Further, tarts have ridiculous magic paths and can already easily beat troll kings as earth mages.

[LDiCesare]

I tested them again, and my conclusion is:
Grendelkin are worthless.
Yes, worthless. A waste of gems.
For hardly more gems, I can get a sea troll king with his retinue. He's able to pack some punch underwater. Grendelkin underwater suck. Why do they cost that many WATER gems then?
They're a waste of gems. I'd rather use water gems to summon stuff that can be used underwater.
Either give them amphibious or make them require anything but water gems to summon.
Right now I have found in my MP game 2 units to be better than grendelkin: Bane lords (yes, seriously) and sea troll kings.

[kianduatha]

Soo, you're saying that Grendelkin should be full amphibians?

I do admit, my first foray into using a Grendelkin in an actual MP game resulted in tragedy. That's much more the fault of the RNG than anything else, though. Anything can be charmed if some lucky Pan gets off a successful Charm against 21MR.

[llamabeast]

Sorry you've had no luck with the Grendelkin LDiCesare. The thing is they're not amphibious, and that's deliberate. They may live in wet caves, but they can't breathe underwater (think Gollum).

I agree that there are situations (underwater combat) where a Troll King is a better buy. However I'm also reasonably confident that there are some situations (e.g. if you want a land SC) where a Grendelkin is a better buy - so, things have different niches, which is good.

If you want to use water gems to summon underwater power, have you tried the kraken?