Mod: The Hoburg Kingdom v0.91

[normalphil]

This is a mod that makes a late-era nation of hoburgs that think they're 18th century Prussians.

It uses nation slot 76, weapon slots 860 through 866, unit slots 2110 through 2133, and sites 791, 792, and 793.



------
Version 0.1
No attack sprites, heros, spells, or summons but it's playable and in its balance zone. Seigebonus doesn't work but we all knew that already.


------------

There's actually a story behind this. My favorite Dominions 2 mod (or theme, for that matter) was the Hoburg one. The reason for this is I played a World map SP game of them before it occured to me they were meant to be a joke faction. So standardized armies of 150 Hoburg Crossbows, 100 Vine men and 50 vine Ogres for shock troops swept over the world, overcomming all that opposed them. Between cheap nature mages, vine crowns, thistle maces, winebags, cauldrons, summer-swords, watchtowers, and firblogs, I formed a military machine that conducted itself like clockwork and where it didn't win through standardized combined arms, won through attrition. They outmassed Ashen Empire ermor. The Champions and Burgermeisters became faceless combat-officers, and their leadship constraints resulted in coherent regiments that could be positioned in a battlefield where everything else were "war blobs". It was one of the most satisfying games I ever played, and I made this mod in order to try to recapture some of it.


Commentary:

Chemists -I actually put a fair bit of thought into the chemists. They've got 2 100% Earth-Fire picks and 2 more 10% Earth-Fire picks. If I could have thought of a different name I'd have used it. Their biggest intended strength is you don't actually need to purchase a labratory to recruit them, which is supposed to mean a wide-scale effort of multiple forts cranking these guys out should be both economical and get you some results. Their role is to be battlefield artillery and a cheap substandard default researcher. The way their magic choices break down is this; once you're out of the initial game (where they are Fire Flies/Flying Shards spammers) you /will/ get a mage who can either cast fireball, magma bolt, or earthpower-bladewind. They're solid, cheap, massable, expendable, no frills/wasted points field artillery. The Hoburg Kingdom doesn't get the magic they want, but they've probably got the magic they need. So long as their pretender god can cover their back on a global scale. Because otherwise the Hoburg Kingdom's magical presence is pathetic even for a LA nation.

Handcrossbow - The handcrossbow is supposed to elicet the habit of cavalry carrying a few loaded single-shot pistols with them into battle and discarding them each in turn as they're used, to be picked up after the battle. Stat-wise it's a lance that you're free to give to a non-elite unit. I'm happy with how it's playtested so far. Hussars can die in droves, but they've got a very involed first strike before their lack of offensive staying power becomes descicive. When they charge a unit of knights head on it's something to see. Reminded me of that battle the British Army fought against the Dervishes during the 19th century. I say 'involved' because while damage can be iffy, hogriders pack into a space so much that with 4 attacks available on contact you can be certain that if something is there to be hit, somebody is going to hit it.


Riesengaurde - I wouldn't called the Riesengaurde a super-unit at this point, probably because the oppurtunity for them to shine hasn't come up. They're in there in homage of the Potsdam Giants, and the use I saw for them is keeping tramplers tied up well away from the crossbow squads. Hasn't occurred yet, abnormally tough screening infantry is what I've had the chance to employ them as so far. It's a good sacred pick in and of itself though, I think, and compliments the rest of the faction nicely.


Officer of the Great Kitchen - The faction's super-commander is the Officer of the Great Hoburg Kitchen. It has the Jade Emperor's bad-events blockage trait (33%), is a fair Undead and Magic commander despite being humanoid with no magical ability, and can summon 5 Line Infantry a month. I'm actually extremely content with the unit as is. If that ever changes it's got 4 ways to be adapted- 1) It can be made more expensive. 2) It can swap the Jade Emporer's luck trait with something lesser, like a Soothsayer or Norna (although I'm not certain if the soothsayer always has that ability, and all the other luck units leave the unit with the 'female' trait, which I don't want.) 3)It can lose the 'command anything' ability, and 4) It can summon Landwehr instead of Line Infantry.

[Sombre]

Interesting. I don't have time to try it this moment, but I'll get around to it.

2 points just from looking at the contents of the zip. First the graphics are a bit sparse, as you mention. I know graphics don't make the mod, but with so many mods now out there and so few people willing to give them a chance, I think it's worth polishing them a bit - temporary attack sprites can be very easily made just by repositioning the sprite back or forward a bit, giving it the appearance of movement when it switches sprites.

Secondly the banner 'hoburg alliance' could do with being changed. Firstly to differentiate this from Hoburg Alliance SE, secondly to give more of the prussian, regimented feel.

Looks cool though. It's got quite a few other mods to contend with in the Late Era too. Let's see if the hoburg can take the vaetti in the battle of the little people.

[normalphil]

Version 0.4

All unit sprites done, heroes done, spells and summons done, summon sprites done. Only outstanding issues are making sprites for the 'Soldier-King' hero (it uses the Hussar officer one right now) and balancing.

Uses:
nation slot 76
weapon slots 860, 861, 862
unit slots 2110 through 2131
siteslots 791, 792, 793


commentary:

I have the Officer of the Great Kitchen using the Sauromatian soothsayer's luck ability now instead of the jade emperor's. At some point I'm probably going to change it's unit summon from Line Infantry to Landwehr. I want it to be able to spawn armies, but right now it's like having a 300 gold castle province with 60 resources that you pay upkeep for and build in one turn.

[normalphil]

Battling the Vaetti would be difficult at this point... the start sites straddle. I'll make everything compatable with the other LE mods next. The banner looks an awful lot like the Hoburg SE special edition (and the Flag is just the same graphic, lifted), true, but that's actually on purpose. I'd like this to have the feel of sort of retroactively validating the hoburgs as a vanilla faction (hence the maniacal focus on balancing), and SE is the middle era version of them.

Next on the agenda is the EA. I'm thinking a vine-man faction with the hoburgs as second-fiddle. That or a mini-me Ermor (Social-War italians).

[Teraswaerto]

normalphil said:

There's actually a story behind this. My favorite Dominions 2 mod (or theme, for that matter) was the Hoburg one. The reason for this is I played a World map SP game of them before it occured to me they were meant to be a joke faction.

I'm not sure if you mean the original Illwinter sample mod or my Special Edition, but I don't think either were really meant as a "joke" (know, in case of the SE).

Interesting to see what someone else comes up with concerning hoburgs. I'll take a look a bit later, no time just now.

[normalphil]

Version 0.5

All sprites done, some stat tweaks and resolving of things that were causing glitches. Have a working engineer now by copystat-ing Ulm's one.

[normalphil]

Version 0.6

Cleans up some sprites I wasn't satisfied with, makes appropriate starting age allocations, and adds nation-specific pretender god "Fallen Wizard".

[Sombre]

Ooh, nice. This is way up there on my list of stuff to try now. Late Era is /packed/ with great mods.

[Sombre]

I just gave the mod a very brief whirl and I've got to say I'm very impressed with how it's progressed/progressing. It fits perfectly as a dom3 hoburg nation and is still quirky and interesting in a unique way. Thematically I really like it.

Some things I noted in the five minutes or so I tried ;]

1. The name of the nation should probably be 'hoburg, crossbows and butter' rather than 'kingdom of hoburg, etc' so it fits with the dom3 naming conventions.

2. Similarly I think 'Hogrider Officer' sounds better than 'hoburg hogrider officer' and 'officer of the great kitchen' sounds better than 'officer of the great hoburg kitchen'.

3. The Riesenguard seem too cheap considering they're supposed to be very rare, they're a giant unit for a hoburg race (much like trolls for my vaetti) and they're sacred. Right now even with the steep resource cost I think I'd be relying on them rather than treating them as an expensive and rare option. I haven't tested to see if this is the case, it just feels like they should cost more or not be sacred.

4. The bannerman, as a regular unit, could perhaps do with having a slightly smaller banner graphic. The artwork is very nice, but slightly too big. This is purely personal taste though.

6. I think you should, ala zepath, make a flag that retains the Hoburg Alliance flavour yet shows they have changed. The crop could be a picture on the flag with the top-piece being something new, like a crossbow or something militaristic. You could also stripe the green with grey to show military influence.

Two other things I was just wondering about. Is the starting army too strong? And what does the note about the hogs not charging home mean? They still have the same gore attack as the old ones don't they?

[normalphil]

Sombre said:
I just gave the mod a very brief whirl and I've got to say I'm very impressed with how it's progressed/progressing. It fits perfectly as a dom3 hoburg nation and is still quirky and interesting in a unique way. Thematically I really like it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Sombre said:
Some things I noted in the five minutes or so I tried ;]

1. The name of the nation should probably be 'hoburg, crossbows and butter' rather than 'kingdom of hoburg, etc' so it fits with the dom3 naming conventions.

2. Similarly I think 'Hogrider Officer' sounds better than 'hoburg hogrider officer' and 'officer of the great kitchen' sounds better than 'officer of the great hoburg kitchen'.

I kind of like the overtone of ridiculous pomposity. Three-foot tall people with 10 foot tall names for everything. And Shakos, which is even worse.

Sombre said:
3. The Riesenguard seem too cheap considering they're supposed to be very rare, they're a giant unit for a hoburg race (much like trolls for my vaetti) and they're sacred. Right now even with the steep resource cost I think I'd be relying on them rather than treating them as an expensive and rare option. I haven't tested to see if this is the case, it just feels like they should cost more or not be sacred.

My initial reference point was taking a Jotun Longsword unit, and adding the obligatory +50% gold cost for sacredness. Their stats improved slightly since then (morale, particularly) but I figured it was a decent enough ballpark.

Oddly enough, a good way to make the Riesengarde as rare as rare can be is to improve their armor and equipment- giants take a lot of resources when they're decked out. Right now they've got longswords, Iron Caps, and Plate Hauberks, and that makes them more than 50 resources per. Full Helmets and Full Plate, towershields, Arbelests of their own (although I'd probably give them balistas), and the resource cost gets to the point that it doesn't matter how rich you are, you aren't adding more than 3 of them to your army per month, and that if you had a /good/ starting province placement.

Sombre said:
4. The bannerman, as a regular unit, could perhaps do with having a slightly smaller banner graphic. The artwork is very nice, but slightly too big. This is purely personal taste though.

This is a "we'd play faster if we could" thing. Banner is about as small as I can make it and still look decent. And again with the pomposity.

Sombre said:
6. I think you should, ala zepath, make a flag that retains the Hoburg Alliance flavour yet shows they have changed. The crop could be a picture on the flag with the top-piece being something new, like a crossbow or something militaristic. You could also stripe the green with grey to show military influence.

It's on the to-do list.

Sombre said:
Two other things I was just wondering about. Is the starting army too strong?

Yes.

Sombre said:
And what does the note about the hogs not charging home mean? They still have the same gore attack as the old ones don't they?

I took out their trample, which is admitedly not bloody relevant for a size '2' unit. I suppose I can make a new 'gore' attack with a reduced attack skill, though. I maintain hogs are dangerous, these ones aren't looking to be heros, though.