New Mod - C'tis - The Ermorian Inquisition

[Blitz]

As it became apparent that the Thaumaturgs had gone too far, the last of the necromancers and their followers fled into the swamps of C'tis and into the hands of the lizards. It was there that the Inquisition caught up with them, and a great trial was held in the last year of the Pantokrator's reign. The Thaumaturgs were found guilty of unleashing a scourge on the world, and excecuted by their own Praetorian Guardsmen. The inquisitors, riding a wave of popular support with the lizard people, quickly took advantage and overthrew the lizard kings, installing their own faith. Now these powerful astral priests command the combined might of the lizards and the remenants of Ermor in a struggle against the Ashen Empire.

Features:

Lizard Infantry, no missile weapons, cavalry, or sacreds
Elite, expensive legionares (20g for a standard principe)
Converted Praetorian Guard, plate infantry with flambeau and old age

Friar
High Priest (HH)
Powerful Inqusitors (SSSHHH)
Shamen
Weakened Marshmasters (pending balancing)
6 unique national heroes (all humanoid, but reasonably powerful)

I'm determined to have this nation not feel overpowered so game balance is important. A few balance notes...

1) Sacreds are hard to balance, so I may or may not include one in the mod. The Slayers tore everything to shreds with a flambeau and W9 bless, so I scrapped that idea. This is mainly a mod for playing vs the AI, perhaps in a later scenario vs an AI ermor opponent.

2) I'm having some trouble coming up with a suitable replacement for the marshmaster. Principes and the slayer (essentially a praetorian guard wielding a flambeau) are strictly better than anything the lizards can throw out there, and the astral inquisitor is obviously far superior to the Lizard King... which leaves the problem of giving this nation suitable magical diversity in their recruitable mage. The Marshmaster had DDWNN? for 6 total paths, and I wonder how hard I have to nerf it to compensate for giving this Nation a SSSHHH recruitable. I'll probably take a point off the heat dominion, and that plus losing Miasma might make a WWNN? Marshmaster viable. Of course this gives easy access to clams... Though those certianly aren't what they were in Dom2.

3) Strong random heroes are fun, so those should be included also in balance consideration. Nothing like Ashen Empire's Wraith Lord or Jotunheim's Neifel Jarl hero, but probably 3 mage and 3 hero commanders that are thematic to the mod.

One last thing. I have no artistic skills whatsoever, so I will probably steal sprites from other factions and commanders. IMO the art team on Dom3 did a great job and I can't imagime improving on it anyway.

[Sombre]

Sounds good. Is this going to be a new nation or will it replace the LA Ctis? (or is it MA?)

I wouldn't worry overly about some abusive tactics that the player can use with various units (such as powerful sacreds) - you can make them expensive but if people want to use tactics that the AI is entirely unable to counter then there's really no point in trying to stop them - they're only cheating themselves of a challenge.

Don't worry too much about a lack of new sprites - the nation is set firmly in the dom3 world (a good choice, especially for a first mod) and a lot of the feel of a nation stems from descriptions and capabilities anyway.

[Blitz]

It's a replacement for the LA Ctis, and I'm just giving it a quick beta-test. The principes, even at 20g instead of 15g were strictly better than anything Ctis could field, and I instead settled for giving the existing Ctis heavy infantry a javelin and scrapping the very powerful legionary altogether. Before, there was very little Ctis in the armies outside of the Marshmaster replacement, as the priests were human, and the Legionaires were clearly the best choice for basic infantry. Now the national troops are mainly Ctis with a smattering of human slayers. I'd like to develop another human-based national that will augment the basicl lizard infantry, but not having strong missile weapons or flankers is something of a staple of Ctis and I don't want to completely remove that weakness. The strength of this nation is in it's priests.

Friar - 60g, Stealthy
1x Holy

Theologist - 140g, Old, Sacred
2x Holy, 1x Astral, 7 research points

Ermorian Inquisitor - 290g, Old, Sacred
3x Holy, 3x Astral, Inquisitor

All three are very powerful, and you definately notice them on the battlefield.