Caelum Booster Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Caelum appears to be regarded as a weak nation mostly because of their poor troops. I made this quick and simple mod which improves their troop lineup.

Changes include:
- Encumberance reduced to 3 for Spire Horners and Caelians, Raptors have enc of 2
- A number of small stat tweaks. All melee troops have at least human baseline stats. Non-raptorian elites buffed a wee bit.
- Replaced Ice Lances with a new weapon which is identical but gets the charge bonus. The raptor with leather jumpsuit and a stick got a Light Lance instead.
- Units which have a Ice Blade/Sword instead of Ice Lance got the Kick attack as a bonus. Tempest Warriors and Storm Guard have both the Ice Lance and Kick
- Both archer units have Composite Bows instead of Short Bows
- All Raptors have darkvision 50 and all Raptor troops are Stealthy. The mages are not Stealthy except for the EA Harab Seraph

Dowload link

The troops have now a bit more of a glass cannon feel than being just plain bad. Generaly the Ice Lance troops can now deliver a powerful first strike and the Sword/Kick troops can turn low-prot units with short weapons into bloody pulp. Composite Bows might be almost too good for the early age. Friendly fire is probably even more of an issue with the better bows.

I gave the Raptors darkvision and Stealthy in order to open up some new ways to use them. I don't know if these changes are fully justified but there is a precedent for Stealthy Raptors and darkvision opens up all kinds of Darkness shenanigans.

Some of the units might have a bit too much of bang for buck now. EA Tempest Warriors and the non-leatherboy Raptors are actually mighty decent at capping indies but suffer against massed infantry with long weapons or decent protection.

This is only a very early fist version and I plan to continue working on this unless everyone feels like this is total crud. So all kinds of suggestions are welcome. If I missed an unit point it out.

I didn't do anything to the commanders or mages because I don't really know what, if anything, should be done. I don't know if Caelians really need three types of mages with just 1 pick in the path. I'm thinking of giving Ice and Iron Crafters a random pick and a small resource bonus and increase their price accordingly. They get the Spire Horn Seraph for the cheap 1 pick mage. But if people feel like the Crafters are OK I won't touch them.

LA Caelum would probably benefit from Harab Elders being either cap only or slow to recruit and not both. LA Harab Seraph could maybe be 1A 1E 1D and the random. EA Harab Seems...not really good at anything so I made him a Stealth ferry for now. I don't know if MA High Seraphs having Death as a random is thematicaly aproriate. I don't know if Storm Generals hanging around with Raptors is very thematic either.

I don't know what is the general concensus on Caelum's sacreds. Would they need a boost or perhaps some more interesting abilities?

This mod doesn't do anything to the heroes yet.

If I keep working on this I'd like to add a couple of new units or replace some of the duller stickdudes with more interesting troops. I'd like to give these new units a bit more Persian touch than just generic units but I don't have much any concrete ideas yet.

So, anyone?

Did anyone check this out?

I really like it!
I have been making a similar mod aimed at improving ME Caelum for my personal use, and it is almost identical to yours which was a huge surprise!
I do feel though that the creation of a new weapon was unnecessary, you could simply edit the original Ice Lance and add the #charge trait. The stealthy and darkvision changes are a little strange, but as you've written, there has been precedent to it.
As for the addition to the base troops:
I feel that composite bows are perfectly logical! It states in their lore that Caelians are proficient archers and that should factor in with their weapons technology even in EA.
On the addition of the kick attacks, It feels a little strange initially, but fairly reasonable after awhile if one considers these Caelians soldiers to use their wings to hop up and deliver a kick afterwards.

DariusFF wrote: I really like it!
I have been making a similar mod aimed at improving ME Caelum for my personal use, and it is almost identical to yours which was a huge surprise!
I do feel though that the creation of a new weapon was unnecessary, you could simply edit the original Ice Lance and add the #charge trait.

The ice lance is also used by some LA Atlantis troops, so unless you create a duplicate one they'll get the charge attack as well.

Thanks for the feedback. The new Ice Lance was indded necessary to avoid problems with LA Atlantis whose troops also use Ice Lances. I came up with the Kick when I was thinking of a thematic way to improve the troops with sword and shield. I figured out that since the Caelians fly some of them could be trained to kick their enemies when they swoop down to attack. It also puts the two different types of infantry into two different niches. Tempest Warriors have both Lance and Kick because they are a very elite unit. And I just love the mental image of a winged man kicking in the head of some poor unhelmeted fool.

I'll upload a bit newer version with some magic changes. Most notably Ice and Iron Crafters get a 20% AEW random and LA Harab Seraphs 1A 1E 1D as base magic + the random.

I've been also thinking about giving Mammoths bows because if you looke closely the driver has a bow. Historicaly war elephants were sometimes manned with archers so it makes sens too.

Well, a couple of thoughts come to mind concerning the bows. One of the big themes of the transition from age to age is the advancement of technology, most commonly shown by access to better (or at least heavier) weapons and armor. In the EA, short bows are effective since shields are rare and armor is light. By the LA, short bows get laughed off by just about everyone and you have to be a truly backwards nation (like Mictlan or Patala) to not have access to crossbows. So what if the EA archery stayed the same (shortbows held by high accuracy archers), the middle era got access to composite bows, and those burly, metal-loving raptors started bringing crossbows to the fight? All eras can still have the weapons of the previous eras because there are times when you'd want to recruit short bows over composite bows (flaming arrows, cost-effectiveness vs shieldless, low armor troops like barbarians or maenads or something) and times when you'd recruit composite bows over crossbows (e.g. higher rate of fire can let you win "fire archer" archery battles vs. crossbowmen).

Also, you need to be careful changing the ice weapons because LA Atlantis uses them too, and LA Atlantis is a melee juggernaut that doesn't need any buffs to their ability to kick ass in close quarters. Making new weapons is the smart way to do things.

baumgarm wrote: Well, a couple of thoughts come to mind concerning the bows. One of the big themes of the transition from age to age is the advancement of technology, most commonly shown by access to better (or at least heavier) weapons and armor. In the EA, short bows are effective since shields are rare and armor is light. By the LA, short bows get laughed off by just about everyone and you have to be a truly backwards nation (like Mictlan or Patala) to not have access to crossbows. So what if the EA archery stayed the same (shortbows held by high accuracy archers), the middle era got access to composite bows, and those burly, metal-loving raptors started bringing crossbows to the fight? All eras can still have the weapons of the previous eras because there are times when you'd want to recruit short bows over composite bows (flaming arrows, cost-effectiveness vs shieldless, low armor troops like barbarians or maenads or something) and times when you'd recruit composite bows over crossbows (e.g. higher rate of fire can let you win "fire archer" archery battles vs. crossbowmen).

I was thinking about keeping the shorbows in EA but having composites from MA onwards. I will think about implementing your idea. I could keep Spire Horn Archers the shortbow troops. I'm not sure about Raptor x-bows. It's not that they would be too good if costed properly. I don't know if the crossbow loading would work during the flight. But of course they could just land. Hmm. I'll consider it. I'm not a graphics modder and someone else would have to make the sprite for me.

Does anyone have any ideas what, if anything, I should do with Raptors, especialy their leather armored spearman which is a dull and poor troop. I've been thinking of giving it a bow or a net and making it a sort of a multirole gimmick unit. I've been thinking about a very heavily armored Raptor "catapracht" for LA who would have a regular lance and a sword + kick as a shock troop. It would be the closest thing to representing the persian heavy cavalry. I've been thinking about replacing the Caelian Light Infantry with a troop inspired by the persian immortals. They would be armed with both a composite bow and a ice blade and an ice shield and would have relatively heavy armor. They could be used for counter-archery and frontline ranged combat.

Also, you need to be careful changing the ice weapons because LA Atlantis uses them too, and LA Atlantis is a melee juggernaut that doesn't need any buffs to their ability to kick ass in close quarters. Making new weapons is the smart way to do things.

Yeah, I've been extremely carefull about that.

Give the leather raptors javelins. They won't be superbuffed, I don't think, but it'll make for an interesting difference.

I've done a similar mod, but gave them all a unique AOE fear weapon.
Indiedb.com

New version is up

Changes:
- Ice and Iron Crafters have a 20% EAW random to make them less boring.
- LA Harab Seraph has 1A 1E 1D and the WAED random. He is also 5 years younger to make him start as not old. E2 is easy to boost to E3 which has a plethora
of usefull spells. I think the Harabs are fine now since there are no complete dead end combos here anymore.
- Raven Guard did not have darkvision 50, fixed
- Raptor w/stick and leather armor was given javelins. Thanks for the idea sum1won. I'd need some new graphics for this now.

- Caelian base action points to 10/12 depending on weapons loadout and stuff. They had tiny AP and thus couldn't do fire & keep distance tactics and I was wondering why the lances were so underwhelming after everything. Now skirmishers skirmish and ice lances can skewer heavy-ish units with a good roll. I'm not sure how ap and flying interact and if there are undesirable effects like caelians not fatiguing in combat or something I'll revert this one.

- Mammoths come with 2xComposite Bows - the rider appeared to be using one, allows some hold&attack shenanigans now. Cost is 26 resources now.

- Mammoth, Raptor and Raptorian Warrior got new descriptions. I'll most likely change more of the descriptions at some point.

Any feedback is welcome. In the future I would like to add LA Raptor crossbows at least but I'd need graphics for it. I will also most likely give the EA Caelum shortbows and the Composites come on in later.

I think you should put less a resource cost on the iceclad and ice armor in general. Caelians are considerably less chunky in physique and would probably have more knowledge in making ice armor compared to the late Atlantians. You could also add ice arrow properties to the blizzard archers since they're supposed to be the Caelian elite archers but currently they just have better armor.

Edited by: amuys

amuys wrote: I think you should put less a resource cost on the iceclad and ice armor in general. Caelians are considerably less chunky in physique and would probably have more knowledge in making ice armor compared to the late Atlantians. You could also add ice arrow properties to the blizzard archers since they're supposed to be the Caelian elite archers but currently they just have better armor.

What would you think to be a good resource cost for the ice armored troops? I guess Storm Guard and Iceclads are the really problematic ones. Did the LA Atlantians have as high resource costs on their Ice Hauberk units? I'm wondering if it's some kind of rsize thing that is making Iceclads so expensive.

I have nothing against the Ice Arrow idea but don't custom missile weapons still break Flaming Arrows? Not that Caelum really has much access to it anyway. I'm considering it. It sure would make Blizzard Warriors feel different from the regular Spire Horn Archer.

I've also been thinking of overhauling the PD. Either make the melee troops of some heavier variety, or make it just archers or just melee units so the PD won't kill half of itself with friendly fire on round 1 of combat.

42 resources as it is right now for the iceclad is insane. Both LA Atalntis's heavy Ice Guard and LA Agartha's super heavy Blindfighter is 37 are comparison. Prices of resources should just be chopped down heavily.

Custom weapon are not supposed to break flaming arrow now.

I think the troop for EA and MA should be crap, while LA should get average troop (I.E. better than now :p). EA and especially MA are magiocracy, you should rely on your mages not on your troop (which may mean improving them indeed :p). The main exception in my opinion being that the blizzard general as a decentish thug could be interesting.

For my personal use, I changed the Caelian's ice armor to be only +1 resource cost compared to its equivalent normal armor.
My reasoning is that magical ice = plate in quality, just harder to create due to the magical process.

As for the AP changes, I'd suggest just a blanket 10 AP / 4 enc for all winged troops.
It would fit with the flavor text that caelians are clumsy on the ground without being such a disadvantage compared to vanilla's 9 AP / 5 enc.

For the random chance for an increase in magic path on the crafters, I think that its a great addition! Fits the lore of a magocracy.
I like the addition of bows to the mammoths, but the sprite only shows one caelian riding so perhaps drop the bows to only 1.

amuys wrote: 42 resources as it is right now for the iceclad is insane. Both LA Atalntis's heavy Ice Guard and LA Agartha's super heavy Blindfighter is 37 are comparison. Prices of resources should just be chopped down heavily.

OK, I will use those as some kind of a reference point.

Ohlmann wrote: Custom weapon are not supposed to break flaming arrow now.

That's great to know.

I think the troop for EA and MA should be crap, while LA should get average troop (I.E. better than now :p). EA and especially MA are magiocracy, you should rely on your mages not on your troop (which may mean improving them indeed :p). The main exception in my opinion being that the blizzard general as a decentish thug could be interesting.

Well, I've been aiming to give Caelum kind of average troops for all the ages. I want to smoothen the expansion against independents. Make troops actually worthwhile not being overly good but also having some unique capabilities which flying gives to them.

I boosted the magics for LA Caelum because I think they are generaly considered the weakest magic-wise. I've been thinking if something should be done about EA and MA. I guess they mostly suffer from having very fixed magic. Then again majority of nations have quite diverse magic. There's only a couple of nations focused extensively on a single type of magic. I don't know if I want to diversify the Caelian magic too much. EA could thematicaly perhaps use some wider magic since they were closer to the Yazatas and Spentas and Spentas have their magic all over the place. I would like to give them access to their summons though but slapping some Astral on a nation has been kinda done. From a purely functional perspective Caelian Seraphs are fine battlemages and I gave Harabs picks where they would be potentialy usefull under certain conditions. So from a functional POV their mages are fine now I think.

DariusFF wrote: For my personal use, I changed the Caelian's ice armor to be only +1 resource cost compared to its equivalent normal armor.
My reasoning is that magical ice = plate in quality, just harder to create due to the magical process.

I will have to check the resource costs tomorrow.

As for the AP changes, I'd suggest just a blanket 10 AP / 4 enc for all winged troops.
It would fit with the flavor text that caelians are clumsy on the ground without being such a disadvantage compared to vanilla's 9 AP / 5 enc.

I think they had mostly a base incumberance of 4. If people generaly feel that 10AP 4ENC is good I'll do it. I changed the AP mostly to allow for fire & keep distance orders which were not really working with their very low AP.

For the random chance for an increase in magic path on the crafters, I think that its a great addition! Fits the lore of a magocracy.

That's good to hear. I felt they were really dull to recruit especialy since Caelum has Spire Horn Seraph as the cheap 1 pick mage.

I like the addition of bows to the mammoths, but the sprite only shows one caelian riding so perhaps drop the bows to only 1.

I could drop it to 1. I felt that 2 were more worthwhile. 6 mammoths shoots like 12 archers and could actual thin out some light troops before the charge. This change was just based on an ancient sprite. That little guy has been toting that bow without using it since the turn of the millenium and I think IW will probably do a completely new sprite at some point. I might remove it then unless they give them ranged weapons unless bow-mammoths somehow feel really thematic and good. I like them for now.

If anyone here has any artistic talents and is interesting in lending out a hand I would really apreciate a couple of sprites. I would at least need the Raptor crossbow.

Individual8580 wrote:
Well, I've been aiming to give Caelum kind of average troops for all the ages. I want to smoothen the expansion against independents. Make troops actually worthwhile not being overly good but also having some unique capabilities which flying gives to them.

I boosted the magics for LA Caelum because I think they are generaly considered the weakest magic-wise.

The main problem of that is that you end up with 3 nations who are the same, since they all have the same troop quality and mage quality, which is already a problem that Caelum have to start with.

If you want to really go crazy with EA Caelum, you could remove the summon Yazada spell for them (leave them in for MA and LA) and make the Yazadas cap recruitable. After all, TNN has their Tuatha and Kailasa their Yavanas.

Ohlmann wrote:

Individual8580 wrote:
Well, I've been aiming to give Caelum kind of average troops for all the ages. I want to smoothen the expansion against independents. Make troops actually worthwhile not being overly good but also having some unique capabilities which flying gives to them.

I boosted the magics for LA Caelum because I think they are generaly considered the weakest magic-wise.

The main problem of that is that you end up with 3 nations who are the same, since they all have the same troop quality and mage quality, which is already a problem that Caelum have to start with.

I think having toilet-tier troops is simply an unfun letdown of a design choice, if it ever was a conscious one. It eventualy gets to the point where you could have just made Caelum have Seraphs + a collection of random indy troops because that's what you're going to be recruiting. Right now EA, MA and LA Caelum perform differently with MA being the weakest troop-wise and EA perhaps the best since heavy armor is not yet around. LA Caelum has difficulties with heavy armor but is otherwise decent enough at capping indies for my taste. Some nations stay relatively similar, similar unit types get recycled within and between nations and so on. Caelum is now about as distinct as Mictlan between the eras which is not much but at least something.

What I would like to really do is to scrap some of the most generic troops of each era and give something more soulfull and usefull in it's own niche to each era. Maybe Harabs shouldn't have any ice tech or Caelians fighting for them but instead have a couple new, fresh troop. And so on.

As for the mages I'm willing to listen to any suggestions. I'm especialy interesting in hearing if Caelum should have a better access to Astral. The D random on High Seraphs really bothers me too. Afterall they drove out the Harabs for necromancy.

amuys wrote: If you want to really go crazy with EA Caelum, you could remove the summon Yazada spell for them (leave them in for MA and LA) and make the Yazadas cap recruitable. After all, TNN has their Tuatha and Kailasa their Yavanas.

I'll have to check their stats. I don't really remember much anything about them. It would fit thematicaly though.

Perhaps have the Seraphines get access to astral, it would work fairly well considering astral as the 'heavenly' aspect of magic.
I'd also heavily recommend the addition of yazads as recruitables for EA caelum, it would differentiate EA from the other ages, plus fit fairly well with lore.

Edited by: DariusFF

Random thought, I'm not a Caelum player but I think this might be an interesting boost to the nation: find a way to justify Tax Collector ability on one of their top commanders, that might let them conquer a province deep in enemy territory and immediately get profits from it.
(For those who forget: 'Tax collector' means the commander lets you get income from the province even if not connected to a fort)

Basically I'm saying it would synergize with flying and flavour could be something about expansionism and trying to create enclaves deep in enemy territory by exploiting their superior mobility.

Also, since they're all about ice...what about ice golems in the Construction/Enchantment school?

Edited by: TheZonk

I'd personally be conservative in balance changes to Caelum, as they do already have alot going for them. Magic weapons, flying MM3 on most national troops/commanders, major resists, and strong magic (esp. MA, though not so much LA). Crap troops (before battlefield buffs like Stygian Rain/Fog Warriors etc. make their melee troops invaluable) balance them out.

Looking into this, I would largely suggest some more conservative buffs. First, I would recommend giving Ice/Iron Crafters the 10 resource boni that Master Smiths have. A small change, but entirely thematic given their role, and balancewise gives MA/LA Caelum an opportunity to more readily use their resource intensive troops (EA Caelum has far more reasonable resource:gold ratios for their troops). I'd even remove the 1 gem forge bonus on them for that change, as you're already massing Crafters as your lab rats. In addition to keeping the across-the board AP/Encum changes to Caelum's units that you've implemented, you can more readily mass your best troops (which is still fairly meh with just those changes regularly, but they scale with time due to magic weapons and perform well enough as raiders/skirmishers). Upping short to composite bows is also a good change, and giving LA crossbows for Raptors is also a well-rounded suggestion as well. Reducing the Age on High Seraphs/Harab Elders would also help, given they are already STR.

On the randoms that you gave crafters, perhaps a W/E random for Ice Crafters and A/E for Iron Crafters, but by giving Ice Crafters an A random h;ance, you render Spire Horn Seraphs obsolescent (their A guarantees you a quill forger), unless you give them another niche. I would much rather prefer just leaving their magic the same and giving them the resource boni, to be honest.

I would also advocate lowering the access requirement (Conj-2/3 instead of 5, say) and efficiency of Yazatas (down to, say, 2 pearls per Yazatas), while giving Eagle Kings either guaranteed S or an additional S random (say 50%). If you want to go hog-wild, you COULD make Yazatas cap-only STR units, but I wouldn't recommend it.

For LA Caelum, making Harab Elders STR recruit-everywhere like High Seraphs would also go a long way already, and giving the LA seraph a corpse man construction boni would be interesting (I'd be semi-interested in testing a corpse man construct route for LA Caelum's early game).

But I'll be testing this out. I'm leery of the Charge/kick changes, however, though it may end up to be fine.

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

I completely agree that a resource bonus would be a great addition to the crafters and would be a perfect fit thematically to their flavor text.
The question is though: Does anyone know the command for it?
I've been looking at the mod manual and for some reason, the resource bonus for smiths is nowhere to be found!

Edited by: DariusFF

All troops are pretty good with fog warriors and stygian rains, Stannis and both those buffs are rather high in research. Caelians being repelled easily is a problem though due to their low strength. Having cool abilities doesn't really mean anything if your default stats and cost are in the gutter. Harassing is also not as good as it was due to the fact formations have been implemented and movement is different. I'd advocate Yazadas because if there are recruitable units that have awe, glamour, and fireshield already in the Early Age; Why not Yazadas?

Edited by: amuys

DariusFF wrote: I completely agree that a resource bonus would be a great addition to the crafters and would be a perfect fit thematically to their flavor text.
The question is though: Does anyone know the command for it?
I've been looking at the mod manual and for some reason, the resource bonus for smiths is nowhere to be found!

Just checked and you are correct.

In which case, I would recommend copying the Master Smith's stats and rewriting the other stats in the interim (remove the drain immunity as well). It was the way WH got Halt Heretic onto Raterik when that command wasn't available.

amuys wrote: All troops are pretty good with fog warriors and stygian rains, Stannis and both those buffs are rather high in research. Caelians being repelled easily is a problem though due to their low strength. Having cool abilities doesn't really mean anything if your default stats and cost are in the gutter. Harassing is also not as good as it was due to the fact formations have been implemented and movement is different.

I was citing examples of alts/enchs that are popped by Caelum's melee weapons (Mistform is popped by magic weapons, as well). Stygian Rain in particular gives the buff to all troops on the battlefield, not just yours, which makes it difficult to use (it is ignored by magic weapons, which makes it a viable anti-mundane buff for Caelum/LA Atlantis), and renders Mistform/Body Ethereal/Stygian Skin/Invulnerability thugging buffs useless. Caelum also does have fairly strong research all told, with MA/LA primary lab rats (Crafters) being cheaper after auto-calc, and easy access to quills, and only needing a lab to work it.

You are correct about the base stats (and I do agree that repel is a major issue), but conservative buffs for Caelum would be prudent. I would agree about normalizing the highest resource costs (Iceclad is ridic; compare it to Black Steel on Ulm), coupling it with a resource boni on Crafters is enough to help mass the high resource Caelian troops (and Caelian troops in general), and also incentivizes sloth as an attractive option for pretender points (now that Caelum no longer gets free temp movement points). Dealing with repel, I'd probably advocate for a +1 morale on Caelian troops for balance purposes (and can be explained by their ease of retreating, so they're more willing to stay in battle longer knowing they can guarantee an escape usually).

Also, interestingly enough, the Wingless for MA Caelum have Ice Studded Armor (like Blizzard Warriors) but no Ice Protection! Either they should have full leather armor (-2 resources, -1 prot, -1 enc), leather hauberk (-4 resources, -2 prot, +1 def), or ice protection (1) to make them consistent. I'd go with either giving them hauberks (and thus making them more readily massable, as the only relatively decent size 2 infantry for Caelum), or the Ice Protection.

EDIT: Main argument against recruitable Yazatas is that they'd have to have a gold cost (which means upkeep for an otherwise upkeep-free summon). It's a minor quibble, ofc.

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

#ressources allow you to add ressource to the province the commander is in.

It work on unit as well as commander by the way.

You could put Yazatas as recruitable in the cap with a stiff limit like 1/turn, while still being costless.