Mod: Alugra, City of Wonders v1.06 - Stable version

[Burnsaber]

Thread Moved.

[archaeolept]

i'd be rather worried that any cheap national gift of reason will be hard to balance... I take it that it works on normal summons as well?

[Zylithan]

sounds interesting. I'd help, but I'm afraid that my advice is worth nothing, with 0 mp games under my belt. But I have thought a race with more random magic and low level variety could be interesting...

[Burnsaber]

archaeolept said:
i'd be rather worried that any cheap national gift of reason will be hard to balance... I take it that it works on normal summons as well?

Yes, but there is a complication. The GoR uses astral gems (note; the best gems ever) -> Your mages suck -> You need to GoR your troops to get more mages, especially in the early game -> it costs astral gems -> you'll have few astral gems to spare to the amazing things you could do with them = lame.

Besides, is really *that* more poweful that your Tartarians cost 10 death and 5 astral instead of 10 death and 20 nature?

Zylithan said:
sounds interesting. I'd help, but I'm afraid that my advice is worth nothing, with 0 mp games under my belt. But I have thought a race with more random magic and low level variety could be interesting...

Don't worry about balance when playing then. Just focus on the question number 3. Is it fun to play?

[Burnsaber]

The next version, 0.2, will include:
(The units whose placeholder graphs can be seen in EA will be done first)

-Logo
-Flag
-Thug graphics
-Gambler graphics
-Watchman graphics
-Multihero (About him, let's just say that I'll be using the Kappa sprite as a base. Gowabunga, dudes! )

Well, has anyone tried it out? Even if you just skimmed through the units, don't be afraid to tell your opinion.

Also, one more question to those who have tried the mod:
Did it bother you much that the graphs were placeholders? I'm just curious since I'm thinking just leaving the current Master graphic as it is. It's just too damn perfect for the job. I really don't know what to add to it.

About the national heroes, I'm looking for some suggestions regarding to the missing two. So far, I have idealized these;
- The multihero I already mentioned.
- "Captain Alugra", the captain of the watch with indestructable shield
- Maker of Villains (since Maker of Heroes is also in EA, I couldn't resist the power of the Pun. And yes, he will be the Hero maker's evil identical twin.)

So I've got room for two more. Since this nation is so much tilted towards Order/Misfortune (high gold cost, low res units), I'm thinking of making the Heroes really good and numereous to encourage taking some Luck scale.

P.S: I couldn't find the Valkyrie sprite along the sprites KO released in the "Sprites: Request to Devs"- thread. I went them through 3 times and found only despair. Is there any other way I could find it?

[Humakty]

I looked at them, and even GoR at least 1 of each gifted, just to have a precise idea. Having access to many paths and forgers compensate, I think, the cost in astral gems.
I'll maybe playtest them as I want to test the new map eight gates, and never play capitol centric factions on my usual 400+ maps. It is true that access to air/astral inders the capitol centric flaw.
Why is this faction tilted toward misfortune ? Isn't sloth the scale to take ? As you have access to many paths, fortune could bring you the gems needed to start remote site search.
The faction seems pretty complete, and I guess the graphics are good as they are, would you dress like a superheroe if you had superpowers ? Imagine all an army dressed like them, their ennemies have to take a morale check against 20, or spend 3 turns laugthing.
You should change the graphics for those who use a common indep graph (ie : workers), as it could be confusing if you recruit some of them.

[Zylithan]

I didn't try them yet... I'm super busy in rl, but would check them out if things calm down later. i'd vote for new graphics, but i havent even looked at it.

[Burnsaber]

Humakty said:
Why is this faction tilted toward misfortune ? Isn't sloth the scale to take ? As you have access to many paths, fortune could bring you the gems needed to start remote site search.
The faction seems pretty complete, and I guess the graphics are good as they are, would you dress like a superheroe if you had superpowers ? Imagine all an army dressed like them, their ennemies have to take a morale check against 20, or spend 3 turns laugthing.

This nation is tilted towars misfortune becuase it is tilted towards Order. High Gold cost units = Order. And everyone takes some Misfortune with his Order.

I'm distinguishing the gifted from other units by making them wear differently colored capes.

Workers = No cape, just blue overalls. (they're already quite distinquished enough)
Smith = Orangish cape.
Watchmen = Red
Gambler = Dark Green
Sailor = Blue
Villain = Purple
Manifest = Light Blue
Preacher = Black/ Dark Red

I'm not ready to tacle the Worker yet. I need to find his sprite first. Couldn't find it on the database. I better ask about those "missing" sprites in another thread.

To Zylithan;
Have no sweat about it. I mean, you're not *forced* to play it or anything.

[Maraxus]

I've looked at the dm file.

One thing I'd suggest:

I don't know if it works (some special effects don't work with some effects), but
#spec 16
should say, that only magic beings are effected by a spell. You might want to aply that to your "The Power Within" spell (if it really works)

[Burnsaber]

Maraxus said:
I've looked at the dm file.

One thing I'd suggest:

I don't know if it works (some special effects don't work with some effects), but
#spec 16
should say, that only magic beings are effected by a spell. You might want to aply that to your "The Power Within" spell (if it really works)

Yes, I knew of that possibility too. It's a thematic decision to not do it that way. Even if I specced it to affect only Magic units, it would still work for Living Statues, Gargoyles and whatnot.

I really can't think of any reason why the Masters would be able to train a Living Statue, but not a Tartarian. Besides, I find the mental image of a 5-feet tall master giving martial arts lessons to a 60-feet tall undead giant extremely funny.

I really haven't used the Tartarian stragedy on a large scale, so I can't say this for sure, but I really think that it won't matter much if your tartarians cost 10 death/5 astral instead of 10death/20nature. Your maximum death capacity is D3 on a villain (if you get lucky), which is not enough for economic tartarian summon (all of the Tartarian summoners would need: Skull Staff, Skullface, Ring of Sorcery, Ring of Wizardy). So you'd need to summon the D4 lichs, which cost death gems and research on enchanment path and it still wouldn't be too economical (even the Liches would need Skull Staff, Skullface, Ring of Sorcery), good luck finding those astral gems for Rings of Sorcery when you need to GoR like a madman to have the mage-power a late-game nation needs. So you're mostly restricted on Tartarizing with your Pretender, which anyone can do. You just do it a dat cheaper.

Yeah, I could make it affect only magic units and put it in the description "that it only works for gifted", but that would be lying, and I'm not too hots on that.