Endgame Diversity Mod - v1.2 released

[Squirrelloid]

Kheldron, you got me all excited about a big showdown for this Inversions turn! And then... nothing! I'll tell you where you can put that Kraken!

[Kheldron]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Kheldron, you got me all excited about a big showdown for this Inversions turn! And then... nothing! I'll tell you where you can put that Kraken!

At the time I wrote that I was going to try to break that siege then realized you had more than 50% chance to put my kraken where you suggest with your southern reinforcements. I'll come back when I have better control of his final destination

[LDiCesare]

I've used them to great effect, but I have not tried to take them underwater. Are your statements based on how the unit performs in general or *only* how it performs underwater?

My statements are based on how they are worthless underwater and therefore spending water gems on these instead of something worth going under the waves is questionable at best.
Sure, on land they are great. But many other summons are great on land too, and not necessarily as expensive.
If you play a land-only game, they are certainly good.
If there are underwater nations, then you should not waste water gems on them imo.

[nosre]

Hi. I'm pretty new to this game and therefore play mostly single player, and "Endgame Diversity Mod" showing up all the time in my EA games is pretty annoying. Is there any way to disable the nation? I love the actual units.

Thanks

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by nosre

Hi. I'm pretty new to this game and therefore play mostly single player, and "Endgame Diversity Mod" showing up all the time in my EA games is pretty annoying. Is there any way to disable the nation? I love the actual units.

Thanks

Open the mod in a text editor, then delete this part:

#selectnation 93 -- Dud nation used to give non-pretenders to as a pretender chassis.
#end

#selectnation 92
#era 1
#clearnation
#clearsites
#startfort 4
#name "Endgame Diversity Mod"
#epithet "Testing Nation"
#descr "A nation with all the Endgame Diversity Mod summons available as recruitables."
#summary "May be useful for testing the summons without having to build up powerful magic to summon them."
#brief "Nation able to recruit the Endgame Diversity Mod summons."
#addreccom 2985 -- Roc
#addreccom 2951 -- Grendelkin
#addreccom 2952 -- Treant
#addreccom 2956 -- True Firebird
#addreccom 2957 -- Zmey
#addreccom 2963 -- Ember Lord
#addreccom 2964 -- Great Kraken
#addreccom 2965 -- Shishi (Male)
#addreccom 2966 -- Shishi (Female)
#addreccom 2967 -- Asynja
#addreccom 2968 -- Wild Ettin
#addreccom 2969 -- Mechanical Giant
#addreccom 2970 -- Wendigo
#addreccom 2984 -- Cyclops
#startcom 2970 - Give a wendigo and a grendelkin as starting commanders.
#startscout 2951
#end

[Aethyr]

There are probaly other ways, but I always just select the nations that I will be playing against and avoid any having "random" nations. Hope this helps.

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, having played with various versions at this point, some thoughts:

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

Rocs in their current incarnation are basically useless except as gatecleavers. And they're more expensive than gate cleavers. Nor are they really more mobile than gate cleavers, since a gatecleaver can 'teleport' through a lab to a unit much farther away than 5 provinces. Strongly recommend re-instituting A3.

Haven't been notably impressed with Shishi, but i don't think i've seen them used well yet. I have seen a lot of them, but they mostly just died =)

Ember Lords are pretty awesome, but I'm not convinced they're overpowered yet. Hard to use frequently because of cost.

The firebird definitely needs to be no earlier than Conj 6, auto-casting solar brilliance is really powerful. I might move it to conj 7.

No opinion on summons which require nature gems - N is too valuable to use for them for any nation i've used with EDM summons.

Older cyclops version was much better (E4 + random), as it actually allows access to E5 rituals with boots, which gives you a real reason to summon them. The newer version is far less useful, and not really worth the 30e in most circumstances. If you can't get more E than a Troll King, its simply not worth it, since the King is so much easier to summon (path requirement wise).

I don't remember when Asynja changed. The version that was used in CPF3 seemed perfectly useful.

None of these really reduce the demand for tarts, because tarts are still the best way to get magic diversity. Undoing the nerfs which stop the new summons from being useful for magic diversity is necessary, and even then tarts are still the best access to diverse magic. May need some other summons purely focused on providing magic diversity to actually compete.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

+1. I tthink they're a waste of water gems right now.

Haven't been notably impressed with Shishi, but i don't think i've seen them used well yet. I have seen a lot of them, but they mostly just died =)

They seem to make good raiders.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Grendelkin did not need to be nerfed. Without magic they aren't good for much beyond anti-thug/SC duty or army assistance. The rather high strength they started with (45) was the only thing that made them interesting at all - nerfing this has reduced any desire on my part to summon them.

I think combining high attack, damage and HP in one unit is a bad idea. The key nerf they received wasn't the strength drop but the 4 point drop in attack skill. I think that was crucial in order to give anti-SC thugs a chance against them.

I support the drop in strength as well, but really they still do a lot of damage. And I can't think of any SC with more HP. And since they don't have undead/demon/magic being tags you can't use damage multiplying weapons against them the way you can most SCs.

Sure, they aren't great operating solo since they have no built-in resistances or magic to buff with. But used in conjunction with an army, or just some mages to buff them, I think they can take out SCs and anti-SC thugs handily and handle troops fairly effectively as well.

OTOH, I wouldn't have a problem with giving them things like CR 50 or poor amphibian but, especially in the latter case, I don't think llamabeast likes the idea thematically.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

No opinion on summons which require nature gems - N is too valuable to use for them for any nation i've used with EDM summons.

This has been my experience as well. I like treants but I'd rather use my N gems to forge gear for other SCs/thugs and fuel globals. Not sure what to do about that, though, other than lowering their cost.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Older cyclops version was much better (E4 + random), as it actually allows access to E5 rituals with boots, which gives you a real reason to summon them. The newer version is far less useful, and not really worth the 30e in most circumstances. If you can't get more E than a Troll King, its simply not worth it, since the King is so much easier to summon (path requirement wise).

I agree that the old cyclops was much better. I seem to recall there was some concern about them overshadowing the elemental royalty? Rather than downgrade them to match the elemental royalty I'd prefer to see their old paths return and boost the elemental royalty.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I don't remember when Asynja changed. The version that was used in CPF3 seemed perfectly useful.

I'm very interested to hear feedback on this change. The Asynja isn't a great SC chassis but with glamour she can pick and choose her fights.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

None of these really reduce the demand for tarts, because tarts are still the best way to get magic diversity. Undoing the nerfs which stop the new summons from being useful for magic diversity is necessary, and even then tarts are still the best access to diverse magic. May need some other summons purely focused on providing magic diversity to actually compete.

I agree. It doesn't have to have the all-in-one magic diversity/SC potential of tarts but there does need to be a way to get that kind of late game magic diversity, other than through tarts.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Valerius

I think combining high attack, damage and HP in one unit is a bad idea. The key nerf they received wasn't the strength drop but the 4 point drop in attack skill. I think that was crucial in order to give anti-SC thugs a chance against them.

I support the drop in strength as well, but really they still do a lot of damage. And I can't think of any SC with more HP. And since they don't have undead/demon/magic being tags you can't use damage multiplying weapons against them the way you can most SCs.

Sure, they aren't great operating solo since they have no built-in resistances or magic to buff with. But used in conjunction with an army, or just some mages to buff them, I think they can take out SCs and anti-SC thugs handily and handle troops fairly effectively as well.

OTOH, I wouldn't have a problem with giving them things like CR 50 or poor amphibian but, especially in the latter case, I don't think llamabeast likes the idea thematically.

Here's the thing. You shouldn't be able to (easily) kill them with thugs. That's the wrong counter. They should be the undisputed kings of straight-up melee combat.

Vulnerabilities that (should) work:
Dropping a meteor on them (GftH)
soul slay, enslave mind, charm, etc...
Insufficient gear slots - basically, they can't achieve immunity to every element. So if they go with FR100 and CR100, hit them with lightning or poison.

So the appropriate nerf is to their MR if a nerf is necessary, say down to 15 or 16 base. Like with most vulnerabilities, gear can help, but they will be limited in just how high that MR can get, and are giving up other gear options to load up on MR gear.

Absolutely no on CR.

Absolutely yes on poor amphibian. I don't understand why they didn't have it to start with.

That said, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest they are actually overpowered. Hell, I'm doubtful they could even take an army by themself. Too many vulnerabilities. I mean, yeah, if you take a bunch of Pillar of Fire spamming mages against an FR100 grendelkin as your mage support you deserve what you get. But if you bring the right magic attacks to the battlefield, the grendelkin is going to die to concerted magic barrage. Hell, a Grendelkin without CR100 is going to die horribly to *numbness* spam if there's an army to follow it up. Or rigor mortis + grip of winter vs. a skelly spam army. Etc...

Basically, the 'kills absolutely any thug or SC it runs into, but dies horribly to armies' is an absolutely essential niche, because it forces people to continue to field armies. Making it vulnerable to thugs is entirely the wrong design decision.