Okay, I'm currently working on a new version and it will be likely up in by the next weekend. There will be a lot big changes that I want to announce though.
But I'll start with the new content.
These guys can be summoned through a new Primal Rune "The Rune of Doom" for ench 9. It casts darkness, dooms all opponents and summons six of these of guys to the battlefield.
There will also be a new national spell like the "Ritual of Rebirth" that rebirths the hero as this unit instead of the mummy (this will be especially nasty with dead anvils and runelords which are in the HoF).
Now for the other changes:
Quote:
-Runeguards back to basic shields, reduce enc by 1, lose sacred. Runehammer gets some intresting secondaryeffect (either curse or minor lightning attack) -- explained below
-Fix typoes in nation description, slayer (layer) description, runebearer, basic units (n't)
-Change nation number for llamaserver compactibilty (will fix the "pretender for the wrong age" bug)
-Built-in dwarven hammers for basic Runesmiths (They lose hand slots, but get forgebonus 30), Runelords will retain their slots but get decreased forgebonus to 10. I will boost their randoms to compensate -- explained below
-Lose the curse attack from PD (it's just annoying and unfair for the opponent. It also looks rather inelegant)
-"Slaying" changed to not be a magic weapon (so that there is something you can do to protect yourself against it, besides, Slayers are monster slayers, not ghost hunters)
- "Rune of Grungni" spell completely revamped. It does not boost troops anymore, but gives caster "Summon Earthpower" + "Phoenix Power" effects. (The old version of the Rune of Grungni is quite rebundant, since you have extremely easy access to Legions of Steel anyways)
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Okay, I'm gonna get a lot of slack for this, but Runeguards have to lose their sacred status. It just never made sense for dwarfs to have sacred units besides runesmiths, I just added them because it's sort of excepted out of a nation for there to be sacreds. The problem is that Dwarfs are intended and are balanced on the premise that they'd start off slow, the extremely solid PD and big forgebonuses are very problematic on a nation with good early game. Runeguards are just an so obvious way to counteract this weakeness that it just makes the whole design intention rebundant. It also makes the pretender design boring since you will always just go for Runeguard bless.
Usually I'm just happy if players find intresting ways to play the nation I designed, but I'm calling BS on Runeguards. They just make the nation another bless rusher (a thing that dom3 does *not* need) because they need very special counters from the opponent and you can easily leverage your good PD to easily protect the lands you conquered to prevent the counter-raids. I can't seriosuly nerf them and let them keep their sacred status, because there are just two options here. Either they are useable (and thus be used always) or be too nerfed to function (boring), obvious lose-lose for me. To make long story short they are currently unthematic, no-brainer choice, warp the nations gameplay and pretender design and are annoying for your opponent to deal with.
So I'll make them lose sacred and lower their gold and resource costs based on that. I'll also give them a new niche by adding some nice secondary effect to their Runehammers (either stun, minor lightning damage or curse). If the dwarf expansion or the nation itself is too weak without sacred Runeguards, I'll just do what I should have done in the first place: boost troops.
As for the tweaks to Runesmiths and Runelords, getting big forgebonuses is very abusable and are the current reason for their really poor magic. If I limit the forgebonuses they can achieve, I can boost their magic and make the nation less dependent upon the Anvils.