[Avarchillion]

Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen.

well, the assassins have a nice little poison crossbow that shoots bolts that erupt into a poison cloud on impact. this cloud hits up to two enemies and is rather tough to deal with. i thought that they were somewhat imbalanced.

The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold.

hm, good point. i do not want to make them stronger, so should i lower their price?

I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger.

well, as a futurama fan i just could not resist the finglonger. :-D

Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP.

well, sry that´s because i always hate it if my provinces get overrun because i am fighting somewhere else. i just looooove good defence. that´s why i balanced the ghoul guardians to do exactly that: guard.
i tried a lot of differend armor and weapon classes with this unit but settled on this configuration. i could tweak the weapon though.

The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities.

well again, he should be more of a legend than a real unit. if you keep him in your lands he will destroy those too.

I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame.

thats the way i wanted the balance to be. on one hand the vampires are very powerful, on the other hand they truly are a twoedged sword. i once had rasputin at 70 shattered soul wich was ab bit too much. ;-)

One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3.

ok thanks, i will try that.

The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging.

that is exactly why i balanced them as i did. ;-)

The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here.

yes "the awakend" is the name out of the malkavian book. he has a rather modest shattered soul and is a great commander for all kinds of troops. the crazed monster is a very good assassin even though he is unpredictable.
the crazed monster has a incredibly powerful shapechange abillity that transforms him into a true killing machine, but again he is unpredictable.

Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those?

the swallow whole abillity was more for show. a thing like the vohzd should be able to swallow a small unit, shouldn´t he? ;-)

Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere.

well, i can tweak them a bit. the malkavians might deal with the cappadocians but still they aren´t them and might have to study a bit to summon the wraiths.

Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous.

the lupins are a problem no doubt. its just difficult to intergrate them without them loosing some of their advantage over the average vampire. in the vampire the masquerade world a lupin can take out a lot of vampires on his own. i once put their regeneration abillity down and they stared to die like flies.

Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves.

yes i know, i still have no real clue how to remedy that without making them completly useless.

This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting.

absolutly and i thank you for your review of my mod.

i will work on the balancing. ;-)

Perhaps at 9 Blood you could Ritual Summon one of three or four Antediluvians, a 3rd Generation vampire, the direct descendant of Malkav. Maybe they could eat other vampires, even commanders as fuel?

i do not dare to put real antediluvians into the mod. the waking of even one of them would mean the start of gehenna if you remember. ;-)

and yes i have been thinking about putting some other vampire clans into mods, but i haven´t found the time.

avarchillion