Mod: Ulm Reborn v.1.7b - Updated 14th June 2009

[llamabeast]

Well, you could have 30% E 30 % S then. I just personally like having separate randoms, because then there's at least some small chance of getting a really specially good one.

Yeah, I'm not sure about communion, I guess there's no strong reason to discourage it - I guess it depends on the flavour Sombre's going for with the nation.

Personally I tend to think that the mind-manipulating aspects of strong astral magic make it feel a bit evil.

[Sombre]

What should the cost of the white acolyte be?

They currently are buildable anywhere, have ES110% magic and a research bonus of 1. This gives them a general research level of 4. They are also priests H1 but they do not spawn penitent. They are physically weak, but not suffering from immediate oldage, have a mapmove of 1 etc. Obviously they are drain immune. They can't lead any soldiers.

I have them at 140 gold currently.

[llamabeast]

I'm not the best at balance, but I'd either give them a bit more research (a further +2 even), or make them quite a bit cheaper (say 100). I'm just thinking about Sauromatian Enaries (Sauromatia being the nation I've played the most) - 150 gold gives you much more good stuff (S1D2N1). Similarly Marignon witch hunters are good (F2S1H1) for 150 gold, and Mothers of Avalon are A1N2 for 130 gold (they're the other nations I've played recently).

On balance, I think I'd go for either a research bonus of +2 and cost of say 100, or even a research bonus of +3 and cost maybe 130. I think with a total research of just 4 they wouldn't be very tempting to recruit. If they were my main researchers I would cry (but then I obviously like high research scores because I always take magic scales).

[Sombre]

Well they aren't there to be your main picks - that's the white priests. The point of the White Acolytes is giving you drain immune researchers you can build outside of your cap. If you're just building one WP a turn then you're not going to be picking up that much speed on the research race. If you have WAs churned out by other forts (several forts are a good idea - this is Ulm we're talking about) then you're going to get the research moving at pace.

They're also sacred, which makes them cost efficient researchers. But I take your point. I'll drop their cost to 100 and keep them at +1 research for the average of 4RP.

Also, 0.9 is now out, so refer to the main post for the download ;]

[llamabeast]

Hi Sombre,

I had a quick look at the new version - I'm excited to try it, but haven't really had any time yet. Quick comments, because if I was a sensible person I would be in bed (got up ridiculously early this morning):
- I really like the white acolyte. I see you managed to find a good sprite as well.
- I really like the Emergent too! Clearly I'm particularly fond of things I was involved in discussing. I think he adds extra punch and flavour to the anchorites though, and they're a favourite unit of mine now. They have got quite low attack though - is that deliberate? No reason why not, just wondering.
- Your writing is exceptional. The quality of the mod is really impressive.
- I had something else interesting to say too, but I've forgotten it. Hopefully it'll come back to me.

Also, a separate issue - did you know that everything on linux is case sensitive? That means that if you give the name of a unit graphic (e.g. Troll Shaman.tga), and the real name has a character in a different case (Troll shaman.tga), the mod crashes. I've been meaning to mention this for a while - it's come up because the windows half of my computer has died, so I'm playing on linux now. Anyway, I can't remember if I had to fix Ulm Reborn, but I definitely had to do a few fixes to get Vaettiheim working (which I also looked at briefly and which is also awesome!).

[llamabeast]

Oh, I just found this quote by Endo:

As Johan said earlier, there is a typo (actually several) in the modding manual for itemslots, the precalculated values at the end are wrong. If you examine his protection more closely, you'll notice that his head protection is just 12, as if his protection was halved. To fix this, you should use #itemslots 31878 instead of 32006. In general, to fix this problem you have to decrease #itemslots value of all units that are affected by the halved head protection bug by 128.

Perhaps this'd fix the Hoch-Hammer's head protection bug?

[llamabeast]

Oh, I've remembered my other small comment - I think it would be good if Ulm had the Virtue as a pretender. Seems thematic.