Abysia, Age and Death: a suggestion

[Meglobob]

I have been playing around with MA Abysia and all there mages have old age, even the demonbred is old 50% of the time. Late winter is a terrible month for this nation.

I think Chris makes some good points. Ma Abysia has to take growth which is very unthematic for this nation. Death scale upto 3 should be treated as death 0 with regards to age for Abysia. All other effects remain the same, this means blood hunting will have diminishing returns the longer the game goes on still and they will still be more effected by old age than virtually any other nation, instead of totally crippled, should they take death 3 now.

I would also like to see demonbreds and warlock apprentices taken out of the old age range all together. The demon part of the demonbred should enable them to not be old as soon as you recruit them and as for warlock apprentices, do any actually become warlocks? Most of mine die/feebleminded/mute etc... from old age long before they become warlocks.

Also well I am moaning, shouldn't the warlock apprentice be recruitable at every castle? Or made so...

[Sombre]

I'd be happier if they just had a few more non old mages. Like the apprentice level mages and demonbreds were never old (not even close). This might tempt some people to take a bit of death. Death 3 is a bit extreme, but being able to take 1 or 2, or simply not take growth would be nice for them.

[Jazzepi]

Meglobob said:
I have been playing around with MA Abysia and all there mages have old age, even the demonbred is old 50% of the time. Late winter is a terrible month for this nation.

I think Chris makes some good points. Ma Abysia has to take growth which is very unthematic for this nation. Death scale upto 3 should be treated as death 0 with regards to age for Abysia. All other effects remain the same, this means blood hunting will have diminishing returns the longer the game goes on still and they will still be more effected by old age than virtually any other nation, instead of totally crippled, should they take death 3 now.

I would also like to see demonbreds and warlock apprentices taken out of the old age range all together. The demon part of the demonbred should enable them to not be old as soon as you recruit them and as for warlock apprentices, do any actually become warlocks? Most of mine die/feebleminded/mute etc... from old age long before they become warlocks.

Also well I am moaning, shouldn't the warlock apprentice be recruitable at every castle? Or made so...

Sorry, I was speaking from experience playing EA Abysia.

I do think they need more non-capital mages. I can't believe you can only recruit the S/B mage, demonbred, AND your anointed from the capital. It's a very frustrating bottleneck. I think the anointed should be the only capital only.

Jazzepi

[DrPraetorious]

Or give them national spells to compensate.

Personally, I think new national spells are the best way to fiddle with national mechanics in this way.

A national version of wight mage that cost fire gems - and Abysia gets some other unit # out of the deal that is more thematic (and perhaps not undead.) I can't mod this myself, since I can't change what Wight Mage gets on a national basis.
A fire version of Transformation would also work; again, maybe a different list of unit ids. Can't do this either.

Stuff I can mod myself:
* 1 Fire Gem to reduce your age by 5 years, Abysia only. Could have side-effects like T'ien Ch'i internal alchemy.
* Fire-based Mummification. This would only help for units in the HoF.

[DigitalSin]

Another interesting idea would be to give them something like "Reborn in Fire", something along the lines of turning it into a younger, more powerful mage for a moderate cost.