@Aezeal:
I thought you didn't want size 1 dwarfsprites?
The Zepath mod with many dwarf sprites that I'm using is still available on the Dom2 forum. As for Underheim, it will be released
when... it's... ready.
@KO:
No worries, no golems in this mod. Ideas saved for later.
@Edratman:
Siegetowers eh? It's a nice idea. I worked up a watchtower (which shot crossbows) for the kobolds in Urdheim, but my biggest hurdle was the lack of size due to the 128 pixel limit, and what happens when you get routed... the tower rotates and tries to escape(!), even though it's immobile. That can be fixed by giving it a special morale, but still was pretty amusing. So the question you want to consider, is the siegetower big enough? (Some of the forts have giant walls.)
The second problem is when you have more than one. It looks real wierd, since units (particularly units of the same type) are rarely spaced out in a formation of normal battle lines, and having several towers next to each other (siege or watch tower) looks pretty horrible. I went around this problem using it as a tier 2 province commander ensuring uniqueness, but still... the result was still somewhat clunky and awkward and I axed the unit.
For you to avoid this problem, you'll need to make the unit which transforms into a siege tower kind of rare. Either making it a ritual summon which costs some decent amount of gems, or a cap-only commander when you have other cap-only commanders who you desperately want all the time.
While it's true historically that siegetowers were built on-site and only for their prospective target, I'd advise against it. There is no method to remove units. So either you do make it a oneway trip, which leaves you a permanent siegetower sitting there, which means you'd pretty much have to give it no upkeep in tower form. Or you make the siege engineer be able to changeshape both ways, and just make him expensive in engineer and tower form (to reflect the costs of building and maintaining such a tower in active use).
Your last problem is, how strange or abstract the siege mechanics work in Dominions. A siegetower is supposed to get your units to a wall, fight defenders on a wall, and capture the walls, and then open the gates, letting in the rest of your army. The siegetower unit would do none of those things, just have a strong siegebonus. The towers of a fort that's being stormed still fires at you, which means the walls haven't been captured, but the gate is somehow open.
The most realistic unit that could be made considering the Dom siege situation, is a battering ram. It breaks open the gates. That's how it's supposed to work, and that's how it would work in game. (One can assume that as part of the abstraction that IS what is going on. There ARE battering rams all over the place, built and then destroyed for each siege.) After all KO isn't actually opposed to siege weapons, he did have them in COE. Ballistas, catapults, and even trebuchets were quite common in my dwarf armies. I think his complaint was one of scale. The inability to bestow the awesome size on a siege weapon, due to the 128 pixel limit.
Now if none of these problems feel insurmountable for you, then great, I'd love to see the results. Unique things like that tend to add a lot of flavor to nations. I'm somewhat opposed to adding siegetowers to Underheim, since they don't really need it. I even considered battering rams early on, but it would just be redundant with the miners and mine foremans, and I was unsatisfied with my sprite results.
I'll be revisiting the siege construct idea in my next mod.
Re: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings
Hybrid Mode
