[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by VedalkenBear

A few observations so far.
The mages seem fair... except that I think that the Necromancer is going to the inevitable prophet who (since Undead) should get the Unholy Priest Reanimation Perk that will make the early game much easier.

Anyway, these are my impressions so far.

I'm not too concerned about that, really. If you want to keep your necromancer prophet at home, reanimating 4-5 undead per turn, I think that's a perfectly legitimate choice. Especially considering that he is your only priest capable of casting sermon of courage.

All units have Disease cloud... but are not immune to them. While they all recuperate, and thus can get rid of the disease, this means that random units won't heal from a battle per normal, and the ability to use mercs is incredibly curtailed.

I know this sounds sort of strange, but that was basically what I wanted to go after. One thing to remember is that since every unit has regeneration in battle, being diseased will not prevent them from regenerating those hitpoints during combat. Since most battles end with one side fleeing for a few turns afterwards, 95% of your units will be healed to full (The regen is 30% of their hitpoints so they only need approx three full rounds to heal no matter their life total) even if they are diseased. You also run into funny situations where some of your units are walking around missing body parts like flaggies, which I think simulates the whole "organic attackers" nicely.

The only real concern I had about this modeling was the mages, or the SCs. If you lose a limb to the disease, you're going to drop the item that was in that slot. This could be incredibly frustrating, so in the end I might drop the cloud off of the commanders to reduce micromanagement of them, if nothing else.

What's the rationale for giving the nation a 10-gem income? I see nothing so deficient so as to justify this.

Are Clams meant to provide an Astral income?

I need to do a survey of the other MA nations to figure out what regular gem income is. I didn't mean to give them something over the top. I thought I had picked out some MA nation at random and matched gem income with them, but I clearly need to go back'n'look.

Astral is actually, thematically, suppose to come from the Allspawn directly. When I add that pretender in it'll have the ability to generate gems per-turn.

Notably this isn't the only nation with access to astral that doesn't have any starting income in it, and I intended that to be the "weakest" path.

Re: the units, most of them have not enough strengths to counter their weaknesses. I like the sole missile troop (I didn't realize that they did poison damage at first), though perhaps giving them a bit more longevity might be better than the current design. I haven't tested the sacred trampler, but the cost is prohibitive for any sort of early game strategy. I assume it doesn't shrink like its pictured water elemental?

I know the tramplers are expensive, but you should really try them with a W9/N9 bless. I think they're pretty broken as they're currently priced, despite the expense. That bless also goes nicely with the Faceless Lords. And no, they don't shrink!

I'm glad you like the Boomer. They're my favorite unit by far. Did you know they slime enemy commanders as well as poison? I think attack/damage values may be a little too low across the board, making it difficult to do damage. My thought process was that I wanted Lodum players to have to rely on attrition more than anything else to get the job done. The disease cloud should help them take out strong, expensive units in the long run, and make fighting Lodum an expensive prospect all around.

The best commander seems to be... the incredibly cheap assassin? 40g (IIRC) for an Assassin with Fear, full slots IIRC, regeneration, and diseases the target if he gets in melee range for a turn without a save?

Assassins are probably the /least/ used commanders in Multiplayer, outside of assassination spells like earth attack and disease demon. My thought that it would be interesting if you could create a truly fearsome assassin. One that would really make your opponent fear for the safety of his mages. Given the relative power of Lodum's mages, I think that the difficulty of the choice between recruiting an assassin and not is a legitimate one. They could probably be a touch more expensive, but at the end of the day, I do want to see spamming these bad boys as an strategic option, so I can't imagine their price going over 100gp.

The best 'normal' unit seems to be, ironically, the 10g/14res guy, who is why you need to take Productivity with this nation, it seems. 12Prot, regenerating 6hp/turn, and with a pretty good Broadsword attack, he's at least worth the cost. I think the missile unit (mentioned above) is pretty overpriced for a 'fire and forget' use that then charge into melee and are in serious danger of dying.

I really want to make sloth an attractive option for Lodum, with productivity giving you the ability to raise huge armies quickly. That said, they do need /some/ resource sink amongst their available options. The masses were designed to be arrow catchers, and the classic "heavy infantry". I think if I cut back on their strategic move by 1 it would increase the opportunity cost of including them in an army.


Did you try playing around with the Smokestacks at all? I made them specifically slower than any other of Lodum's units because I wanted them to hang behind and stay out of meele, which is not only thematic, but practical.