A New Mod: Oglala Sioux

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks so much for these comments!

Tauren:
- Treants inferior to Ogres. Yes. Endoperez said this to me as well, and I answered "Well, every low-level summons is inferior to Ogres in terms of gem cost", but I think that is a lame thing to say now. I think I should make them tramplers as well. Or decrease the gem cost? Thanks for your feedback.
- Troops inexpensive as a mounted unit: Yes, that is the "flavor" and raison d'etre of this mod. In my tests, they got spanked by vanilla Ulm and Marignon AI, so I am not worried yet, and had real problems with Abysia and Machaka too. Have you really been able to make a lot of Crazy Horse Riders?
- 6 starting gem income: Unintentional, but unavoidable. It is a toss-up between gem income and capital-only troop-sites.

Cherry: (Starting with the things on which our opinion differs)
- Hm, Cherry, we have COMPELTELY different playing styles. I found myself recruiting Holy Chieftains whenever I could. It is not just Holy 4, *he is the only holy-4 STEALTHY unit in the game*. I do not want to make him cheaper, I want to make him even more expensive -- I dont want dozens of these guys running round. These are the best stealthy preachers in the game, and with a few Crazy Horse bodyguards then can even survive getting caught by patrollers. I personally like the price for my playstyle, or find them too expensive. (Consider Lizard Lord guy for 280.)
- Raiders have stealth 10, Warrior Chieftains stealth 0. Raiders are the only commander with higher stealth (besides the Holy Chieftain at 5), they are "designed" to lead raiders in small stealth parties. But perhaps I should make the Warrior Chieftain more expensive (rather than the Raider less so)? As it is now, my Raiders survive patrolling parties MUCH better than my War-Chiefs set to stealthy preaching.
- Crazy Horse Riders *DO* have etheralness, but ok, I suppose that is not enough. I did NOT want to give them any features which could be got by a blessing (such as Beserk), since these are the only holy units, as I wrote in my Readme, hence the lack thereof. But I see your point. Would you also accept slightly cheaper (65) or 1 better attack and/or both? Otherwise, yes, I could give them beserk-2, if this does make sense.

(Things I agree with
- Graphics -- yes!! I wish....
- Edit the Jade Emperor .... yeah, of course! Doh! Good idea, thanks!
- Hunting Bow Nerf -- ok. I never really bought so many Hunters, because the times I tested I never really had the Resources for them. I think I will increase the Resources on the hunter too.
- Foot Hunter Sucking: Ok. I didnt make many of these guys either. Cheaper ok? Ambidexterity... ok.
- I cannot find a way to add Magic Resistance to items, hence I dispatched with any Items which did such. Am I missing something?

THANKS TONS!!!

[The_Tauren13]

tinkthank said:
- Treants inferior to Ogres. Yes. Endoperez said this to me as well, and I answered "Well, every low-level summons is inferior to Ogres in terms of gem cost", but I think that is a lame thing to say now. I think I should make them tramplers as well. Or decrease the gem cost? Thanks for your feedback.

The reason I compared them to vine ogres is that the 2N2H guys who summon them can also make vine ogres really easily. I think if you made the treants more like Dark Vines, that is, gave them like 126 HP, they would be usefull tankers for your archers.

tinkthank said:
- Troops inexpensive as a mounted unit: Yes, that is the "flavor" and raison d'etre of this mod. In my tests, they got spanked by vanilla Ulm and Marignon AI, so I am not worried yet, and had real problems with Abysia and Machaka too. Have you really been able to make a lot of Crazy Horse Riders?

Well, with 200 tax at the beggining, you can build 3-4 per turn. I took a F9A5 Phoenix, and wow, with the starting troops as backup, they could rip level 9 indies to pieces.



Here's some more thoughts:

• I cant say I found much use for the Elucidator of Traditions. I would prefer the Warrior Chieftan in almost every aspect. Everyone else, however, I found had a specific use. Well done!
  
  Some of the troops have a base protection of 1. Why? Theyre just humans, arent they?
  
  The Master of Dream-Visions has no forge penalty. With a fully random pick, you can really have him forge most of what you need, making the nation not really all that bad at forging.

[Scott Hebert]

As an aside, tinkthank, if you can give me the stats for your commanders, I'll 'run them through' the mill I've got going...

[Saber Cherry]

tinkthank said:
- Hm, Cherry, we have COMPELTELY different playing styles.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that too That's ok, if there is a playing style that uses the units I would not consider using, then they are probably fine!

- Raiders have stealth 10, Warrior Chieftains stealth 0. Raiders are the only commander with higher stealth (besides the Holy Chieftain at 5), they are "designed" to lead raiders in small stealth parties. But perhaps I should make the Warrior Chieftain more expensive (rather than the Raider less so)?

Hmmm, yeah. Holy-2, sacred, stealthy, mounted, leadership 50, encumbrance 3, precision 12, 2 attacks and a longbow, Standard +8 make them similar to a Centaur Hierophant (80g).

- Crazy Horse Riders *DO* have etheralness, but ok, I suppose that is not enough. I did NOT want to give them any features which could be got by a blessing (such as Beserk), since these are the only holy units, as I wrote in my Readme, hence the lack thereof. But I see your point. Would you also accept slightly cheaper (65) or 1 better attack and/or both? Otherwise, yes, I could give them beserk-2, if this does make sense.

I'm not saying they're too good or not good enough; they seem about right. Rather, they are described as being "THE melee unit" but have nothing specifically melee about them. Why not give them a shortbow instead of a longbow, or precision 10, or remove the bow altogether and give them a special spear with 2x attacks (and only 2 damage, perhaps), or give Raiders 13 attack so that Crazies at least have a better melee attack than other units? Right now, I would strongly consider keeping Crazies at the rear and giving them a fire-9 bless (for awesome flaming longbow arrows), virtually immune to harm because they are really far away from the enemy and ethereal. But that sort of defeats their designed purpose, right?

- Hunting Bow Nerf -- ok. I never really bought so many Hunters, because the times I tested I never really had the Resources for them. I think I will increase the Resources on the hunter too.

Try buying a bunch... I was considering taking a screenshot of a huge Living Ermorian army advancing, right at the instant the green poison drop appeared on their icons, but decided not to. Those guys are - wow

- Foot Hunter Sucking: Ok. I didnt make many of these guys either. Cheaper ok? Ambidexterity... ok.

And 2 weapons + shield is a no-no You could add ambidextrity and remove shield, or just remove the dagger and let them keep the shield (and maybe make the spear poisoned).

- I cannot find a way to add Magic Resistance to items, hence I dispatched with any Items which did such. Am I missing something?

Yeah... you can't add MR to items. Basically, I was making a purely aesthetic suggestion, where you make a helmet:

#newweapon 250
#name "Talisman of Ancestral Spirits and Puppy Tails"
#type 4
#prot 0
#def 0
#enc 0
#end

...and give it to all the units. That way, even though you can't tell by right-clicking on the item name, the units seem less like super-humans with MR 11 and more like humans with MR 10 that are getting +1 MR from a magical talisman. Technically, nothing changes, since you hard-code 11 MR into the units either way (or 12 for units with magic war paint). But it's just a suggestion that has nothing to do with balance or gameplay.

THANKS TONS!!!

You're welcome =)

[tinkthank]

OK great stuff here, thank you.

Tauren: Yes, you are right. I dont want to go overboard, but I have decreased the cost of Treants by one and increased their hitpoints by 14. Maybe that is not enough, I will have to test more, I just dont want them too "über".
I have used an Elucidator often as a cheap preacher; he is much better in boosting Dominion than the Warrior Chieftan. (Now that the WC costs more (see below), I think it is a good deal too.) Maybe it is a matter of style; I use him a lot because I play the Preacher in a lot of games and try to keep my candles up higher than anyone else.
The Master of Dream Penalties cannot forge any decent Elemental equipment whatsoever, and he will need proper picks to be able to forge anything non-astral and non-nature, and (especially for the Nature) he is expensive for that. I agree that I do use him when I can, but I often cannot, so I dont really see a need for changing here, but I will change in the future, if need be, surely. I noticed I had to forge most with Mot4Ds and MM.

Scott, what stats do you need? You can grab everything you need from the .dm file, right?

OK, Cherry, what you are saying makes sense, I took another look and tried to do some testing, but was unable to complete due to my need to test YOUR mod ... ;-)

But here is what I have done so far:
- Increased price of Warrior Chieftan by 5
- Decreased Hunting Bow to Weak Poison -- I hope this will do
- Increased recources of Hunter by 2
- Made the foothunter only 15 gold, he lost his spear
- As indicated above, improved the Treant cost/HP ratio

Cherry, a fire blessing will NOT give you flaming arrows, it ONLY works on melee weapons.
I have not yet figured out what to do, but will probably go with your suggestion in giving Crazies shortbows, or limit their ammo supply more (to 8 or so).

THANKS VERY MUCH!!!