Mod Kingdom of Angmar - Version 0.52 available

kianduatha · #1 November 24th, 2009, 04:05 PM

Not really any worse than starting with a Prince of Death. The same things that take him out will deal with this guy--and he doesn't fly. If you want to spend 400 design points to help one unit(no sacred recruitabless) that's easily counterable with death, astral or blood...I guess you could go after Eriu! After putting both air and nature magic on your pretender and forging a ring of tamed lightning and snake ring(with no national income in either), you can watch as you lose because you have one thug who can take out province defense, and he has a dozen.

If nothing else...people will realize that your Witch King can only be in one place at once--which means you're dead meat the second you commit yourself against one enemy. You cannot afford to ignore your nationals.

It does make this nation really different from other ones, but it's not any more game-changing as starting near someone who has elephants. If it happens, you grab some counters. End of story. I can't think of a middle-age nation that doesn't have counters within reach, unless you planned from the beginning to go after Eriu.

His purpose is to jumpstart you against indies so you can leverage your inferior nationals and get some momentum for your first war. He's powerful, but not against a prepared foe. He's a ridiculously powerful raider, but not a viable front line.

LumenPlacidum · #2 November 24th, 2009, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kianduatha

...people will realize that your Witch King can only be in one place at once--which means you're dead meat the second you commit yourself against one enemy. You cannot afford to ignore your nationals.

This is precisely the point of him. I didn't want him to be a SC that was phased out quickly against enemies, because aside from lucking into another nazgul (if I have them as heroes, and the others will be less powerful), he's the best you've got by a very wide margin, and the ONLY access to astral (excepting the design of the pretender god). Going for a bless for him would work, but would be completely useless for the rest of the nation since only the national mages are priests and thus are sacred (though I have the nazgul sacred to offer the player that difficult choice), and the cheapest bless to help the mages (earth), is pretty much useless for him, since he's 0 enc. Besides, there's no way to resist Dust to Dust, and it's available super-early.

I want the witch king to be an element of the army that people have to think about dealing with. I don't think he's any more powerful than an awake SC pretender god. Of course, the fact that you could have two of them is a little scary, but that just means that you're going to eat one of your neighbors (though in a 1-on-1, your opponent could specifically counter the concept in their build), which is just like some other powerful early nations. Angmar will have a very strong early game (automatic SC), a pretty weak middle game (poor armies), and a moderate late game (due to having someone with high death and astral).

That said, some of what you're seeing is actually more extreme than you're assuming. His fear is +5 plus death, so +9 to begin with. That darkpower is a very hefty one at +5. He already spreads dominion like a prophet, but I'll be disabling temple spread (Sauron didn't have any temples, really). So, prophetizing him wouldn't actually help that, I think, unless it would increase it to 2 candles per turn. Countering that, though, is that I gave him enough abilities that he doesn't gain heroic abilities (or is that just that he's unique?).

It seems to me that for the effect of having a very strong unique starting commander to be pronounced, that commander should be very very good.

Oh, and the black breath is actually a ranged attack (causing fear and a little paralysis at short range), so he's only got 2 attacks in melee.

If he *needs* to be toned down, then I'll do it, but his strength is very much the difference between this nation and another, and I'll be more willing to drop the efficacy of everything else to keep him very good.