Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Ooo, cheap sacred archers, that makes a death blessing effective!!

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

OOh, very nice, you modders know how to seduce me.
BUT, I wanna : at least a pretender, the 12 WH mods missing AND an undead poney. The last one is of utmost importance.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

I agree, an undead pony pretender

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Yes, I think we can all agree 12 warhammer undead pony pretender nations are needed.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Yep, with nice colored ribbons in their pelt.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

You're all crazy.

Hmm - pretender - for some reason doing a pretender never even crossed my mind. And I didn't think about adding specific standard pretenders to the nation either. Weird.

Things for the next version then I think. I will have to have a think about pretenders, suggestions welcome. The first ever Tomb King might be a good one.

Juzza - yes, I haven't tried it much, but I think a D9 blessing might work pretty well with the Asp Archers. I have been experimenting more with Buried and a E9/W9 blessing, which makes them pretty hard to kill (especially if you manage to get Resilience on all of them).

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

The summons that I assume are meant to be commanders(Ushabiti Avatar, Servant of Set, maybe Tomb Scorpion?) are not. The summons are all quite nice, although a little pricey if you don't have a fairly big bless for them.

The tomb swarm is very powerful(1 casting can pretty reliably take out level 5-7 indies) but also lots of fun. What's with the MR Negates tag on the spell?

The semi-immortal tomb kings are very nice but, due to the fact that they require upkeep, I don't think it's worth using them to call infantry unless you really need them and can't recruit them.

The national troops are nice, although tomb chariots might be a little pricey due to how fragile they are.

For a nation that seems fairly magic focused their non-capitol magic seems pretty poor. The nation is very similar magically to LA Ctis(although Tomb Kings have better summons), except that Ctis gets 240 gold, sacred, non-capitol banefire casters.

I'm guessing this nations is mostly built around getting a good bless and using its sacred summons due to its so-so magic elsewhere?

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

No, actually they're quite sane. You just don't know pop culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGLENEEVYc

(Disclaimer: The comment proabably wasn't a reference to his, but in the internet, you can find arguments for ANY case)

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Very nice mod

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Shovah - thanks for the comments - very helpful. It's really nice to have someone looking at it in such depth already.

Oops, that was a bit of a cockup. I'll fix that shortly...

Hmm, interesting that you think they're pricey. Balancing is tricky, and I guess I was scared of making them overpowered.
Immortals: These are expensive, because giving immortal sacreds seemed like asking for trouble. I think 1 death gem each would be too cheap, and they are powerful with a strong bless, so I guess these can't really change. Unless I made them 2 for 3 death gems - I suppose the time invested in summoning them is currently pretty serious.
Scorpion: I was just scared that they would be too powerful, what with trampling, high protection and fear. Have you tried giving them a support posse of priests to buff them and keep them healed? One can easily take down a small army even without a bless.
Ushabti: I think I was comparing them to Crushers, which cost 15 (Ushabtis cost 20). They do much more damage than Crushers, and are sacred, but they are a bit easier to take down. Maybe I should cheapen them a bit - national summons are often better than normal summons after all. What do you think - 18? 16?
Anubites and Servants of Horus: What did you think of these? They are quite potent but I found it hard to judge the price. They need to be a fair deal because they will be crucial if fighting an enemy who has potent counters to undead.
Usahbti Avatar: These guys are Tartarian-powerful I think, so I figured 35 gems was reasonable (not much more than 10 death + 20 nature for GoRed Tartarian). What do you reckon?

Sounds like another cockup! Thanks. Glad you think it's fun. Once again it was a bit hard to balance. I think against other players it will not be too strong. If they don't expect it it will be, but they are quite easy to kill off with magic and banishment.

Yeah, the raising of infantry is meant to be very much a secondary ability of the kings and priests (you know the priests can do it right?). I didn't want to make another Ermor. Generally you are better researching with them. It's a really useful ability when sieging though. You can continually grow your army in the field.

Okay, I'll think about that. I always think chariots are quite devastating so I was loathe to underprice them. I will compare to other nations' chariots again.

Hmm okay. The sorcerors were deliberately expensive to encourage recruitment of priests, which are meant to be the nation's focus. High priests can of course skelespam and shadow blast, although they are not as good in battle as the sorcerors, who are mean with Phoenix Power and Aim, followed by Sulphur Haze or Falling Fires. But perhaps you're right that I've ended up making them excessively overpriced. I'll consider the prices again. You're right that they should certainly be magically quite strong.

Hmm, well not really, I wanted them to be all-rounders. Obviously they have a good range of sacreds but a bless shouldn't be essential for them.

What would you think of:

Buried Sorceror: 220 -> 190
High Priest: 260 -> 220

I think the High Priest is definitely overpriced, since they are pretty key and should be a fairly standard unit to recruit.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

I think the priests are fine, considering sacred units have their upkeep halved, but a possible decrease in the sorceror wouldn't go astray.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Okay, I am about to release a mini-update, with the following changes:

- Fixed commander summons
- Made thematic vanilla pretenders available
- Chariot: 45 gold -> 40 gold
- Ancient Champion: 50 gold -> 40 gold
- Buried sorceror: 220 gold -> 180 gold
- Acolyte: 40 gold -> 35 gold (having seen Man's monk)
- Tomb Priest: 120 gold -> 100 gold
- High Priest: 260 gold -> 210 gold and an extra +1 research bonus
- Tomb King: 450 gold -> 420 gold
- Ushabti: 20 gems -> 16 gems
- Bone scorpion: 22 gems -> 20 gems

This is quite extensive I guess, but I wonder if I had lost perspective by playing so many SP games with them. Comparing again to a nation like Marignon it did seem like everything was overpriced. Also I remembered that national summons should probably be noticeably better value than normal ones. It's possible I've overdone it but I think prices are probably more in line with the vanilla nations now.

A change I'm still considering is changing the Immortal summon so it summons two at once. Any opinions?

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Actually the new version will be a little while yet...

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Just released v0.81 (attached to the first post).

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Looks very good. Thinking about what you've said, the new prices for the summons sounds about right (I wouldn't say 18 protection is terribly high since the scorpions can;t wear armour and don't benefit too much from protection buff spells).
The price reduction on the commanders helps, although I will always be annoyed by nations without good non-capitol mages(TK ones are fine, but not great).

I didn't look at them much but both the anubites and the servants of horus(iirc) seemed to be fairly similar to alot of regular troops(ie: not much better).

Will playtest more later.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Cool, will be interested to hear your thoughts.

I might be getting a bit confused (have only looked at Tomb Kings for ages now), but I reckon the Buried Sorcerors are pretty good for non-cap mages. In battle they are quite vicious.

Also the Anubites and Servants of Horus I found to be very effective. The Servants of Horus are probably less good normally, but specialise in killing undead and demons. They are also meant to be slow defensive troops on the battlefield, whereas the Anubites are meant to be offensive and punch through the enemy lines. Once again though, I've only played against the AI for ages, and that can make you think things are more powerful than they are. I do want them to be strong summons.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

hey um, all chariots have a natural protection of at least 5, I think it'd be fair to include this nations chariots in with 5 natural.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

That's interesting, I'll look into it. It certainly would help their survivability.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

I actually don't have much detailed feedback to give here llama, but I promise I will in the future. I just wanted to say that as a first mod nation this is outstanding work and I know this is going into rotation as one of my SP game nations. I will certainly make a CBM version of it in the future, if that's ok with you.

You've gone the same sort of route Zepath went when doing a warhammer nation, changing quite a bit of stuff and writing it into Dom3 storylines. You've stuck a bit closer to the source material than Zepath did, but you've clearly moved further away than I have (though I have deviated from source material on a few fronts myself, it is necessary to an extent). That's not a bad thing at all, because the feel of the Tomb Kings is still there.

So one thumb up, second thumb sure to be elevated when I stop being distracted by other stuff and play them some more :]

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Yep, feel free to make a CBM version. I'd be interested if you let me know what changes you're going to make when you get round to it though. I'm still not very clear on what the differences tend to be between the normal and the CBM versions of nations.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Basically most mods are balanced according to vanilla units and spells. So if they have a guy with the basic 10 10 10 10 etc stats he'll cost 10 gold, regardless of equipment. The summons will be balanced against vanilla summons (theoretically) etc.

All I do is balance these things against the CBM altered versions. So a guy with 10 10 10 stats but crappy equipment might be 9 or 8 gold instead of 10, heavy cavalry cost less resources and have the CBM warhorse hoof weapon instead of just hoof, while light cavalry all get hoof added, summons are compared with the summons of similar type and cost in CBM,...

I also do general balancing, Sylvania CBM for instance is pretty much nerfed from the vanilla version, because the vanilla one was, imo, overpowered. A CBM version of Urdheim (the kobolds and dragons) would similarly nerf some stuff, try to bring it in line with the balance of the base CBM nations.

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Have just uploaded v0.82. Changes:

- Two national pretenders added - the Gilded Scorpion and the First King.
- Two new heroes added - the Warrior King and the Avatar of Horus.
- Chariots' natural protection set to 5 in line with all other chariots in the game. This is a big boost, so their price has been put back to 45 (from 40).

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

Quick question. I was playing the mod earlier and in one of my battles where I had nehekaran cavalry, archers, and death 9 blessed asp archers all firing into a mass of skaven I occasionally saw negative numbers pop up for damage. Can anyone tell me what's going on there?

Re: Tomb Kings mod released!
 

You were hitting a unit and forcing it into its second form, causing it to 'gain' hp. Probably slaves, possibly a warpfire thrower but I doubt it.

Same thing happens with jaguar warriors, hydras, skinshifters, spider riders, war lobsters etc.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Just noticed your mod and played a bit with it. Wow, its really really nice. Thanks!

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

That actually makes perfect sense. Thanks for clearing that up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Yeah, it was either slaves or jaguar warriors. They really love those two units.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Skaven love Jaguar Warriors?

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Apparently. Practically every single army I fought in that game had 20+ jaguar warriors.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Are you sure they didn't have jaguar tribe warriors? There's a pretty huge difference.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

This thread is going off topic. I must remember you all we were talking about issuing a petition which would render obligatory the use of undead pony pretenders(with ribbons) to all civs in all ages.
So you clearly see the sexual preferences of skavens and jaguar warriors has nothing to do with this thread.
Don't thank me for this precision, I'm used to be usefull all the time.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I can't remember the specific names, just the ordinary independent slingers and warriors that you see. So probably what you said.

More on topic with the thread I feel it would be fun and thematic for there to be tomb kings only global spells? My tomb swarms never got to attack anything because they kept getting summoned at my mages' feet. Having a global version of that instead would be nice.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Unfortunately modding global spells as you describe isn't possible. It's interesting you say that the tomb swarms weren't helpful to you though. They were tricky to balance, so I left them powerful but made them slow and be summoned at the mage's feet. In the right circumstances they are very powerful, e.g. against knights or even some SCs. I guess if yours never got to fight it was because you were winning the battles quickly and convincingly.

Did you have any other thoughts or comments about the mod?

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Oh, I thought they were supposed to act differently because in the spell description it said that the spell could be cast at up to 25 range. I was just fighting a skaven AI so yeah... they usually routed a few turns before the swarms could get to them due to asp archer fire.

Hmm. Well, the army seems pretty thematically accurate, which is always a plus. At first I was a little put off by the lack of armor available to their troops, but it does make sense and I don't think they really need it that much.... I'm not sure if it's just me, but for some reason the priest spells seemed to give the game fairly large lag spikes, even in small engagements. I didn't get to play around much with the summons since I spent a lot of the game summoning immortals that I never used >_> They seemed pretty nasty though. While I was playing the PD seemed like it was a bit too strong against the AI, but then again, they were skaven and weren't throwing very tough troops at me for the most part. So it probably wouldn't be nearly so overpowered on nations with shields.

You did a really nice job on the graphics. Everything looks so dead and egyptian. I especially like the chariots and the tomb guard http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And maybe two immortals could be summoned at a time....

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

The AI is godawful with the Skaven, just so you know. Skaven need combined arms to win, using their chaffy troops in conjunction with battlemages, warmachines etc. AI just tosses chaff at you and builds awful skaven PD.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yeah. I've only seen 2 warpfire throwers in two games against them. Tons of battlemages though. Towards the end they had a screaming bell casting wither bones and plenty of warlock engineers with dust to dust, so at least that's something.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I was just wondering if anyone had played this recently, and had any comments. I've been neglecting it a little, but am up for adding stuff again now. I'm actually really keen to play Tomb Kings in MP as well - might organise it soon (once some of my 5(!) current games finish).

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I've been playing and enjoying Tomb Kings. I'm kind of busy this week (and I got distracted last week by the patch / bogarus), but I think I'm going to get back to it, and do a short review of it either next week or the weekend after. Hope that helps.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Cool, that would be very helpful.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I had an idea for a Pretender: Living Curse.
immortal, dom 2, 1 death, 1 blood, 80 points for new path.
Fear 0 (plus bonus for death), 1 hp, att 25, def 15, prot 0. 1 attack-range 1 touch causes curse, decay, and weakness.
Casts Darkness at the beginning of battles. Causes unrest. Etherial, Flying, Stealth 25. move 3 battlemove 30. Blind. No slots. Cost: 125.

Shaped like a living cloud of darkness with a crimson center.

Description:
"For thousands of years the souls of unquiet dead have stood guard over the treasures of the Tomb Kings. That has been their only purpose, their only salvation and path to Paradise. That purpose has become their religion, and from the strength of their unending vigilance a malevolent entity has arisen. A cloud of sacred hatred and holy greed which has, over the centuries, gained a malevolent sentience, and now, out of a will to possess the very world around it, seeks to become a god. Death flies on swift wings!"

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Make it domstr 2, prot 0, and price it at 125.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Done and done.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

1hp, prot 0? Militia would kill it in seconds, even if it is ethereal.

I'm not sure I get it anyway. I await the description.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

That's why you have to protect it. The Darkness is the real core ability, the rest is just thematic. Besides, you're forgetting about Dominion hp boost-keep it high.

It's really no different than running a Crone or other low hp rainbow mage.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Aha, I've just remembered that Tomb Kings are undead! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Okay yep, Darkness is super powerful then. I would worry it was too powerful, in fact.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Description up

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yeah, especially while the BE bug is around where a fleeing caster's enchantment stays up in the battle permanently.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I'm really enjoying these guys, they play a lot differently than "normal" undead in the game, especially with the holy spells and heroes. The Pretender is just awesome, and the artwork ofcourse is beautiful.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Cool, glad to hear you're enjoying it HoneyBadger. Which pretender are you using?

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

The Golden Scorpion guy. I gave him lots of Earth and Death, to maximize SC potential, but I haven't come up with what I'd consider an "ideal" build yet.
I'm not used to playing undead nations, so I'm still familiarizing myself with what magic paths are good and bad for them, and for Tomb Kings in particular.

By the way-did you give any thought to my "living curse" Pretender idea? I hadn't fully grasped that these guys are mostly based on the Warhammer nation when I suggested it, so I don't know how thematic you'd consider such a Pretender chassis to be, but I've read up on Tomb Kings now, and they do apparently have something atleast vaguely familiar to what I had in mind, in the form of the Casket of Souls.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Ah cool, glad you like the Gilded Scorpion. I was quite pleased with him.

The living curse sounded pretty cool, but I was concerned that Darkness would probably be overpowered. I mean, the TK are a huge advantage in any fight under Darkness, but normally they'd have to go to considerable lengths to research it. Having it from the beginning would be very powerful.