Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

That's very true. I was hoping that the high point cost and very low hp would allow such a Pretender to be used as the center of a different than vanilla strategy, rather than just increasing the power of the nation overmuch.

Maybe if the Living Curse were immobile? That would help protect against bless rushes in the early game, but delay the darkness power from becoming a major boost until Teleportation spells become accessible.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Hi. I've been using this nation in the TigerCat MP game, and have been very happy with it.

The new patch have removed all magic paths from my recruitable mages and priests though. Hope llamabeast can rework this soon. Thanks!

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I loved the concept, mod design, graphics, national spells, and variety of pretenders for each type of strategy. My favorite pretender is the First King rainbow mage. Thank you llamabeast!

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Have to say llama I love this nation, I really enjoy the whole "CHARGE!" thing I have at first, then ('cause I suck) lose like 30% of my army, but hey no worries, get to work prune priest guys, magic me up some more walking fly camper vans, anyway just writting to say I really liked them, and I don't know if you did the sprites, but they're really good.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yesterday I was playing the Tomb Kings and I realized something about them... most of their commanders and summons aren't undead, which means that they're affected by darkness. I had the Avatar hero in an army hit with darkness and he lost 7 attack skill to it. Likewise I had quite a few precision 3 tomb kings in there. I don't remember for sure if that's with the newest version or not, but I think so.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Thanks very much for the nice comments guys! Very much appreciated. The graphics are indeed mine and I spent many many (happy) hours on them, so I'm glad if people like them.

Good spot on the darkness issue rdonj. I will make sure to fix that in the next version, which will come in the not too distant future. I'm also planning to make the summons a little cheaper (I think at the moment they're only rarely summoned, which is a great pity) and make fewer of them require much-needed death gems. The asp archers' poison is going to become MR-negates so they are more feasible to counter. I may make the Buried recruitable-everywhere, because I like them and I don't like that a sacred strategy always ends up revolving around the asp archers (although they are cool).

I may also try to squeeze a couple more heroes in.

Someone said in a PM to me that they thought the Immortals were underpowered, being as they're really hard to mass. I just thought I'd mention that in a duel I fought against Sombre they were quite awesome. I managed to get about 20, and with a dual-bless combined with immortality they were amazing.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Oh, rdonj, when you said you had the Avatar hero, was that the Horus one with the flaming weapon? How do you like him?

Has anyone summoned any of the ordinary Ushabti Avatars? Are they good? I was hoping they'd be good.

Any comments about the other summons?

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yes, it was the Horus one. I loved him, he's amazing. 120 hp, sacred, high prot even without equipment and some battle magic. Wow. I almost wonder if he might be too strong, but whatever the case his existence is a very strong argument for a luck scale. I also happened to have the tomb scorpion hero in that game. This mod has great heroes.

I like the idea of having the Buried recruitable everywhere because I never used them before and it makes them a lot more interesting as a bless chassis. If only this was an early age mod, they'd be the perfect counter to niefel giants....

I don't really think Asp Archers are overpowered, I compared them to sauromatia's androphag archers and they have same same precision, less health, the same bow, a bit more prot and are sacred for 5 more gold and resources each (and a temple). So they're a little harder to mass and only a little better if you don't have a decent death blessing. But I guess I haven't really seen how effective they are against other players so I could be a bit off the mark here.

I don't think the Immortals are underpowered. They're decent, solid units. And relatively cheap. I just wish there was a higher level spell to summon 2 or 3 at a time for the same gem cost per immortal. Possibly with a higher path requirement so not all of your tomb kings could cast it. The only thing I'm curious about with them is I'm pretty sure they have only 14 or 15 magic resist, and it seems that with all the powerful enchantments animating them that their mr should be higher than the base mr for the nation. Especially when tomb guard and buried have 16.

I haven't had a chance to summon the Ushabti Avatar yet. I even designed my pretender to be able to do it right off the bat but I didn't get enough research before I won my last game.

I suppose the Anubites are probably overpriced in comparison to Immortals as the main benefit is that you can use them everywhere and not feel like you're wasting their potential. Not too much though, as the Anubites are quite decent. I can't really say much about the other summons as I haven't used them recently.

Just as a general comment, it seems really weird that the asp archers are one of the highest prot units in the list.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yeah the immortals were a total pain in my Ogre *** during that duel. Most of the fighting was around his cap and we were both very short of gold, so having to fight the same really tough troops with more and more experience time and time again was not a whole lot of fun. The asp archers were far worse though - I just couldn't work out any counter to them. That's sort of an ogre thing though - plus my scraplaunchers were being ultra retarded and never seemed to actually aim at the right stuff.

Sorry I dropped out there btw llama. At first I put if off, then I forgot about it, then the computer with that copy of dom3 was out of action. Now I don't have the file any more.

We should play some more in the future, though it's 2-0 so far :[

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I really, really like the tomb scorpions. Great graphics, great for a Pretender, with the high Prot.

I'm a little surprised you didn't include the Bone Giant, though, as some sort of high priced recruitable. They'd be great to bulk up an army with, without worrying about losing a hero. I mean, as tough as these guys are on the offense, they are FRAGILE.

I didn't get a chance to try out Horus or the majority of the summons. but they look great!

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

A quick thought about the general ogreish lack of a counter to Asp Archers. I don't think it would be too unreasonable to give the ogres partial poison resistance. Largely because of the fluff for butchers and slaughtermasters, but I think if they rate 100 poison resist regular ogres could maybe rate 50? Not sure how much that would've helped though.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Partial poison res never seems to work properly for me. I agree you could arguably give Ogres some poison res, but I don't want to make them too strong. I'll think about it though.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I think the poison damage units suffer is some percentual part of the original damage they took, and resistance lowers that initial amount. The effect ends up looking as if the resistance helps you overcome poison faster than another unit, relatively speaking. That, or I totally misremember the whole thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I was just wondering is the scorpion hero supposed to have no magic or priest ability? In the description it sounds like it should.

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I think the idea may be that the mage's (mage/priest?) power all goes towards running the scorpion construct, so he doesn't have anything left?

Re: Nation Mod - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

He definitely does have magic, I just checked. I suspect this has to do with the current bug where if you have more than one mod running units start to have their magic paths stripped. It's new to this patch, and apparently it is going to be fixed next patch.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Right, at long last, I've made an update (available from the first post). The overall objectives are to make the Tomb Kings a nation which makes heavy use of summons, which was always how it was intended, and also to fix issues like the Asp Archers being overpowered, and most commanders being unable to see in the dark. The changes are:

- You now get 5 anubites for 8 gems, rather than only 3 anubites.
- Anubites cost earth gems instead of death gems, which are always too valuable to spend.
- Anubite protection lowered from 18 to 16 - they are meant to be offensive units, and should not be able to hold a line too well.
- Servants of Horus buffed - higher hp (12->16), and reinvig 4 (the blessing of Horus).
- Servants of Horus only cost 8 gems for 4, rather than 10 gems.
- The Bone Scorpion now costs 18 gems, down from 20
- The poison on the arrows from Asp Archers is now mr-negates
- Asp archers now cost 16 gold instead of 17.
- Buried are no longer capital only, allowing non-archer based bless strategies
- Almost all non-undead units now have darkvision (the Servants of Horus being the exception).

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Awesome Mod this is!!!

i love Warhammer based thingys ... but:

i have the problem that none of the specific spells show up in the spell lists under research!?

i play on pargannos map by llama, if that yould be an issue.

thanks in advance

HahnHolio

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Hmm, they should do. I just checked, and they do for me. They are in Conjuration (starting at level 3) and Enchantment (starting at Level 0 with Summon Immortal).

The map shouldn't make any difference. Nor should using other mods in fact, but you could turn any others off just for a test.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

ya, omg, i am dumb ...
i did not patch after the install ^^
was still running without any patch.
after patching, everything is fine ...

sorry for being lamo :)

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

:) no worries.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I'm in a game right now where I'm enjoying a good deal of success with 9w/9s blessed buried and mad amounts of summons. Buried sorcerors almost seem like the primary battle mages, as everything you get is immune to poison and sulphur haze is a pretty useful low level spell for them. I'm trying to produce astral fire-casting tomb kings but that has been slow going due to needing huge numbers of earth gems for summons and not having a very large income of them. And most of them having at most one astral.

I'm a bit worried about the bone scorpions. Sacred, high health, high prot tramplers with fear. Ouch. I think the fear may be just a little bit too much on top of everything else. I actually had 4 of them absorb crossbow fire from about 40 ulmish crossbowmen (and who knows how many short bows) and take maybe 20 damage... granted they're not cheap, but they're definitely worth it. It's a good thing most of the summons are in enchantment, tomb kings with the well of misery would be nasty.

The Undying didn't seem to be working on them though. Does regeneration work on things that are burning? If not that would explain it. Also, do you happen to know if soul slay works on lifeless/undead things?

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Great feedback, thanks rdonj.

Yeah, strong blesses seem to work quite nicely with the Buried. I think the tower shield gives them a sufficiently good defense that the W9 bless makes them pretty hard to kill.

Buried sorcerors are meant to be the main battle mages, since their paths make them quite effective in battle. I was intending, though, that the player would end up with a lot of priests, because of the divine spells. What kind of balance do you end up with? Do you find the divine spells useful?

Why do you want astral fires-casting Tomb Kings, and why do earth gems matter for them?

Bone scorpions - interesting. They are meant to be nastily powerful, but maybe I ended up underpricing them. And they should at least be killable with some effort. I'll have a play with them at some point.

I'd thought The Undying did work on bone scorpions. If not I don't know why not. I'd thought of using The Undying on powerful undead as a sneaky perk of the Tomb Kings. Casting it on Tartarians would be great.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

At the moment, I'm building up buried and commanders for 3 turns and sending them out, most of the time it's 2 buried and a high priest, but in some of my forts I do 3 high priests. Earlier on I built more priests but the game is a ways in now and I have tons of them running around. I find the divine spells very useful, particularly Resilience as it brings buried from 4 to 13 prot, which is really useful. The Undying isn't really that useful on the troops but it's quite a bit better on Tomb Kings, scorpions and ushabti, especially for a nation with no native nature magic. Heal the dead is a bit hard to rely on as you can only script so far, and the ai would rather just cast revive dead when the scripting runs out. Strength of the Tomb has been bugging me though, the MR negates tag on it has made it pretty pointless to cast since almost every unit I have has 18+ MR when blessed.

I just like astral fire, it has a large aoe, does lots of an damage, plus with the high magic resistance on everything I'm using it's not very likely to do much friendly fire. Earth gems were a problem because I had an earth gem income of 7 for most of the game and I need to forge starshine skullcaps and crystal coins to be able to cast it since I've only gotten one tomb king so far with natural astral as high as 2. So it was tough trying to do that while summoning ushabti/anubites.

I'm pretty sure it does work, they do get the regeneration buff, it just wasn't healing the only scorpion that had taken damage in that battle and I think it was because it was on fire. I've seen it work on the other units, so I don't see why it wouldn't. Undying Tartarians would be rather nice. I don't think I'm going to get to play with them in this game though, I'm too close to winning. Maybe next time I'll focus less on enchantment.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Well, both Resilience and Strength of the Tomb have the MR-negates tag. I guess maybe SotT is less useful simply because the strength boost is less powerful, but having said that I think that for units like Buried, +4 to strength makes quite a big difference.

The best way to get the healing spell working is just to have two or three acolytes in every battle. The healing spell is pretty much the only thing they can cast, and they do so reliably. I'd be interested to know if you find them effective, but my own thought was that they were quite an asset in battle. That's a good thing because otherwise they're fairly useless.

Glad to hear you have quite a lot of priests running around. They are meant to be a priest-based nation.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Well, both Resilience and Strength of the Tomb have the MR-negates tag. I guess maybe SotT is less useful simply because the strength boost is less powerful, but having said that I think that for units like Buried, +4 to strength makes quite a big difference.

The best way to get the healing spell working is just to have two or three acolytes in every battle. The healing spell is pretty much the only thing they can cast, and they do so reliably. I'd be interested to know if you find them effective, but my own thought was that they were quite an asset in battle. That's a good thing because otherwise they're fairly useless.

Glad to hear you have quite a lot of priests running around. They are meant to be a priest-based nation.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I didn't realize resilience was MR negates also, for some reason it seems to be successfully cast much more frequently. Maybe just because I usually don't have priests casting strength of the tombs on the first round of combat. I would find it very strange if one didn't have many priests running around, I'm pretty sure they're the most efficient researchers and they can cast several useful battlefield spells. I will try to incorporate more of the lower level priests when I play in the future to try and get more healing going on. I'm sure it would be very useful when fighting archer-heavy armies.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Well, in the process of running a test game I proved conclusively to myself that the bone scorpions don't benefit from the undying, for some reason. Annoying, that.

The acolytes did prove rather useful though :)

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

For the sheer joy of experimentation I just threw a regen bless on the buried and looked to see what that would do... when I got them blessed, the icon didn't show up and sure enough it didn't actually cause them to regenerate. I looked up the Regeneration spell and it specifically states it doesn't work on lifeless beings. So I don't know if it's possible to make them regenerate at all. I'm not 100% convinced healing works either, because I've seen heal spells hit and not do anything. I had a bone scorpion that may have gotten 1 hp from a heal, but then a second heal landed directly on it and did nothing.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I have this horrible feeling a healing spell has to be AN to work properly, because healing is just like damage but with a different tag.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I think there may be a conflict between Tomb Kings and the latest Conceptual Rebalance because my Asp Archers end up not having their special asp bows when I play with Conceptual Rebalance enabled. :doh:

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Are you sure? I have a game up with CBM v1.03 running and my archers have their asp bows. Maybe my version of cbm is outdated?

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

It's entirely possible that it is something else. The only mods I was running were the latest CBM, the Mythology mod, and Tomb Kings.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Unless Tomb Kings is specifically designed to avoid conflict with those other mods, then you have your answer.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Yeah, it's probably Mytheology.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Well there's my problem right there. I guess if I have to sacrifice one of the two (Mythology vs CBM) I'll happily drop Mythology.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

With regard to the regeneration issues earlier - it does work on all units apart from the scorpion. It turns out the scorpion doesn't get it because it's lifeless. I might consider changing that, but actually it might be quite good to leave it in as a weakness, the scorpion being beastily powerful and all.

The healing definitely works. But like all "damage" it fluctuates wildly. Some hits won't work, some will heal a lot.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Alright, thanks for looking into it llama. I don't think it's a problem the scorpion can't regenerate as long as everything else can. They are definitely quite good as is.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Should the Tomb Kings really be lifeless? They're not really magically animated constructs, and I would really like to have regenerating tomb kings right about now :P

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Now that the game is pretty much over, I wanted to mention something that's been bugging me about tomb king randoms. They are almost too random. It's very hard to get more than 1 in astral, earth, and air, which makes it very hard to get boosters, site search, etc in those paths without having them on your god. And I am not sure that playing without a good bless is a very good idea for nehekara. In the warhammerama game I got exactly 1 tomb king with 2 earth, but it was a bit too late unfortunately, I just didn't have the earth income to do anything with it. But what really killed me was not getting a single king with more than 1 astral. It's pretty tough expanding your magic diversity with them... at least when you're stuck fighting in 12 or so provinces for the entirety of your existence, involved in ridiculously bloody and devastating wars :P

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

You started it by being edible. Well, semi edible.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

There is that small detail. I'm still getting used to this whole multiplayer thing. It's a bit like playing chess to sp's risk. And my chess-fu was just not jiving there.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Hmm, I'll have a think about the paths. I think they're fairly normal for MA though. I was thinking of Marignon when choosing them. They've got similar diversity to Marignon, but unlike Marignon they have at least some chance of getting level 2 in the rare paths, and they're really quite powerful in death, whereas Marignon have lower level astral with their fire. However, Marignon does have the big advantage of communions.

On the other hand, you could argue that being as they're so expensive, it'd be nice to have a bit more chance of getting a third decent path. Earth in particular seems thematic. Hmm.

You reckon they need a bless? I'm not sure how I feel about that. They are super-holy oriented, so it's not unreasonable. I always think it's a shame when the sacreds supercede all the other units a nation has though (as happened in this game with the Lizardmen - I only built Temple Guard after the first few turns). Do you have any thoughts on that?

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Well, you might be able to play decently without a bless, it's just very hard. Your units are pretty resource-expensive for what they're worth, and of course normal gold costs. And then they need several priests with each army to cast holy spells to keep your units alive. And your units are vulnerable to banish, dust to dust, and wither bones, the last one especially deadly to you. Their high mr is a bit of a mixed blessing since it makes the holy spells less effective. But they're much more useful on normal units than the astral blessed sacreds I had in our game.

Anyway, your early magic research is going to be hurt a lot from having to use so many priests early on, or you're going to have to take production.

It's possible you could do without a bless but it would make a lot of units much weaker.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Okay, interesting. Well, I've just been working on improving the buffing spells, and I've made them much better. The trouble I was having was that there is no "MR negates with difficulty" - you can only have MR negates, or MR negates easily, and they give too low a success rate on the buffs. But I had a cunning idea, such that by using #nextspell, each casting of Resilience and Strength of Tomb actually casts it three times. This gives a pretty good success rate - one or two ordinary priests are enough to fully buff a small army. I've also slightly improved the healing spell. I've found that non-sacred troops are now plenty powerful enough to make effective raiding parties. Reasonable prot and high defence gives them good staying power, and enemy troops get tired in prolonged combat. A group of 10 or so Tomb Guards were easily able to fend off some indy knights.

What do you think of the Anubites and Servants of Horus? The idea was that you could use them, alongside the Watchers, to create non-undead armies if the enemy was using a lot of Wither Bones. Maybe I need to make them even cheaper?

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

That does sound like a decent way to get around the mr problem. You may or may not have noticed that I had almost completely stopped trying to use the holy spells there, because they had such a low success rate I could hardly get any of them to stick even when I had plenty of high priests. But having the holy spells work more consistently would go a long way in improving them so that they wouldn't need a bless as much.

The servants of horus and anubites aren't bad. I certainly had a hard time getting many in warhammerama but I had a pretty awful gem income for everything other than death. Making armies of them would be hard though without a pretty robust income. They could maybe use being a little cheaper, I wouldn't make them too much cheaper though. Hmm, anubites have to be repaired in a lab though iirc, so that does make a good argument for making them pretty cheap. Ushabti are almost definitely overcosted at 16 gems for one, but they are admittedly fairly powerful for when you get them, especially with a good bless.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I'm considering raising the cost of Immortals to 3 death gems apiece, being as they're right pests to fight if they have a strong bless. You could still get at least 20 by turn 20, which is a potent defensive force. Thoughts?

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Sounds okay. The biggest cost is still the mage-time, as you only get one at a time.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

Psh, by the time you had to fight them, pests is about all they were.... But no, increasing their price is fine. As Ich said, the mage time is by far the biggest price, as it requires an expensive tomb king sitting there endlessly raising them one at a time. And the amount you can get at 1 gem a piece is perhaps a bit silly.

Re: Nation - Tomb Kings - Released!
 

I know I'm about to play these guys soon, but I have a hard time imagining the sacred troops costing 3 death gems apiece. I'm sure they were great in that duel against Sombre, but you were fighting in your own dominion, and in a small battle which means you could bring them to the front lines again and again very quickly. I think in a moderate to large game the fact that you'd have to shuffle them out of their tombs each time they died and drag them back to the front lines severely hinder their usefulness.

Not to mind the fact that it's extremely difficult to guarantee fighting in your own dominion unless you've got blood sacrifice, or are on the defensive, and I don't think you win large MP games by defending.

I think it would be important to think about how much you're getting for the gems you put in.

20 immortal troops = 40 gems and 20 turns of summoning by 420 GP mages
20 immortal troops = 60 gems and 20 turns of summoning by 420 GP mages

Or I could buy 6 skull mentors with 6 turns of forging. Or I could summon multiple bane lords with fewer turns.

20 troops really doesn't seem like a lot to me for 60 gems. To amass an army of 100 of them would cost 300 gems. D: That's a lot of Tarts, and other basically better units.

Jazzepi