Warhammer: Tzeentch warhost Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Hi!

I decided to make a horribly high jump in the versions, because the mod's, in truth, mostly done! While I still feel a bit claustrophobic about the versioning stuff, it's highly likely I won't be making a hundred updates before this is "done", so this made a whole lot of sense to me in the end. As for what this mod is about, I said this in the other place:

"As for what this mod is about, it's basically a warhost of the Chaos God Tzeentch from Warhammer Fantasy. Tzeentch is the Changer of Ways, the Great Conspirator, the Architect of Fate. He's the Chaos God of scheming, change, ambition, magic/sorcery and such things. THE Sorcerer of all the Chaos Gods. And, as you might guess by now, this warhost follows him. For more information, click here."

The specialty of this Warhost is that it has absolutely no one capable of using Holy magic. No sacreds. In fact, making a Tzeentch commander of any kind a prophet is ill advised if you want holy levels. While they technically have access to Divine magic through indies, the Warhost gets the Blessings as their own Astralized versions. Yes, that means they have a version of Blessing and Divine Blessing that work on all units, but their requirements are... Well, high. For instance, the lower Blessing has a 2 gem requirement and AOE 1, no MR resists however. The Divine Blessing equivalent requires 4 gems and MR resists it easily and is on research level 4. This is because the followers of the Changer of Ways use sorcery, not some sort of "divine magic".

Here's a preview picture:

And here's the actual mod (now at Version 0.91): Clicky!

***
Changes in Version 0.91:

- The mod now has EXTRA ITEMS! I doubt they're going to be super useful, but they're there. So, they're like this:

*Staff of Change, which is a "battle" staff. Only daemons can wield it. Probably only good for anti-thug/anti-SC commanders, truth to be told.

*Chaos Armor, which is an itemized version of the Chaos Armor worn by many human followers of Tzeentch. It's cursed, so it can't be taken off. Neruz from Dom4goons gave it its gold rim, chest armor face and the blue colors.

*Runestone of Sorcery, which is basically a clam of pearls that the warhost can make without too many problems.

*Wand of Whimsy, which is a silly magical wand that, among other things, gives the user the #magicpower ability (so you lose power in a land of drain!).

- Changes to #chaosrec of Beastmen, so their buy cost is closer to other of the recruitables while in high turmoil.

- Added #stealthy to a lot of Beastmen units (all, except the Tzaanbull and Minotaurs).

- Altered the mod's ingame icon a bit.

- Added sounds and types (#slash etc.) to some weapons that lacked them. Some weapons might still lack a proper attack type, however.

*** New weapon ID taken: 739 ***

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Changes in Version 0.90:

* Jumped over a lot of versions because the mod is pretty much feature complete to give it less of an alpha feel. It was Sombre's idea! *

- One pixel change to the Minotaur's and the Tzaanbull's regular sprites. That one extra pixel in their necks was driving me crazy!

- Changed Gor's weapon to a Club. Since that's what it is. Also, there was a typo in the Gor's description that I found, so I fixed that, too.

- Added Bray-Shaman, which is a Beastman mage. Gives access to N and D to the Warhost, but is, as usual for Beastman units here, slow to recruit and expensive. But still, possibility for three nature and couple of D can't be all bad. Or being able to make those N an S requiring bracelets.

- Increased the prices of the Sorcerers ever so slightly.

- The Daemon Prince summoning now summons either a Daemon Prince with a trident or one with a halberd, as it was supposed to! Yay for 4.04!

- I decided the names and descriptions of the old Chaos Undivided spells were boring, so I changed those to be more in line with Tzeentchy magic lore. I even added an extra evocation.

*** New unit ID taken: 4833 , new #montag taken: 60006 , spell slot taken well before: 180 ***

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Changes in Version 0.12:

* Again lots of Sombre's ideas. If I broke anything (I found a few things just before release), plees say so! *

- Added a foreignrec version of the Cultist, making it more costly and added slowrec. Also brought the regular Cultist's price a lil bit higher.

- Halved the price of Chaos Furies. They're useless lil buggers anyway.

- Added a Daemon Prince summon. I added two, but apparently you can't #montag commanders. So, how am I supposed to make multi-commander summons if this doesn't work, eh?! So, right now you can only summon the Daemon Prince with the Halberd.

- The Exalted Sorcerer now has a magic sceptre, for extra differentiation from the regular Sorcerer.

- Lowered mage efficiency of summoning Daemons. Sameish price, less oomph per cast!

- Removed Indigo Flame, which was a remnant of Chaos Undivided. It was weird.

- The Holy spells went away with the exception of the Blessing copies. Apparently they were sort of useless.

- Ethereal on Daemons is now Invulnerable, since they're not supposed to walk through walls and stuff.

- Some changes to descriptions (for instance, Aekold and Galrauch got extra historical information in their descs).

- Gave the magical attacks magic resists with difficulty tag, so they can now be MR resisted. They apparently were way too awesome.

- Added Tzaangor, an elite Beastman footsoldier unit.

- Added Wargor, which is basically a commander Tzaangor. So he's the chief.

- Added Gor, which is a very "basic" Beastman unit.

- Added Ungor, which is the weakest Beastman unit.

** New unit IDs taken by the mod: 4826 - 4832 **

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Changes in Version 0.11:

- Added the Daemon Prince, a new Pretender God option. I don't know if it's any good (or too good) with its current stats, but it's in. The
sprite might see changes later on, since I'm not 100% sure about certain aspects of it.

- Added Vilitch the Curseling, the last Hero. Vilitch prayed to Tzeentch and his prayers were answered... In a very Tzeentchy fashion. The addition of the Daemon Prince and Vilitch means everything I originally intended to add to the mod have been added, so, whee! Vilitch's brother's (the big guy) sprite is based on a sprite by Sombre!

- Added two forest recruits, the Tzaanbull which is a Doombull marked by Tzeentch, and Minotaurs of Tzeentch which follow said Tzaanbulls. The Tzaanbull is a commander with Growing Fury as a onebattlespell, so look out with your mages! Both are pretty darn slow to recruit and aren't super cheap since they aren't extremely happy about working with you and your human followers. These two mark the addition of the first two Beastmen units into the mod. I might add more, given time.

- Alterations to the Lord of Change's sprite. Now it looks a bit more... Lord of Change-y. I'd hope.

- Minor alterations to the helmets of Warriors, Chosen and Exalted Champ (for instance, I gave new horns to the Chosen and the Exalted Champ).

- The Holy malus works now, but it's really wasteful. I'm afraid I'm running out of commands on some units. It'd be nice if Illwinter fixed these darn things.

** New unit IDs taken by the mod: 4806, 4823-4825, weapon IDs: 737-738 **

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Changes in Version 0.10:

*This update is, well, mostly full of Sombre's ideas (with one idea from Flypaper thrown in). Oh, and apparently holy malus is bugged, so you CAN have a proper Prophet. Figures. I'll try to find a fix for it next update. *

- Chosen reclimits dropped to 3. So now you actually feel the reclimit.

- Changed Pretender choices. Now they make even less sense!

- Turmoil discounts to everything sans Sorcerers. Increases to "regular" prices, so turmoil's extra nice now.

- Sombre altered the Chaos Knight and Standard Bearer sprites. They look nicer now!

- Slight adjustments to Marauder HP and str. Apparently they hit the gym.

- Added the Warhound, Forsaken and Forsaken Champion (uses the old Champion sprite by Deathjester, which looked sufficiently different from the norm to warrant this) as wasteland recruitment options. Reclimits are at 8 for both units (Warhound + Forsaken).

- As a result, a new sprite for the Champion was required, and now there's one.

- Cultist got himself a dagger.

- Removed Marauder Chieftain + Horseman from foreignrec, added reclimits to the Marauders still around (made extra IDs so the fort ones are unaffected). Obviously the earlier situation could've been rather OP. This was Flypaper's idea, fanks!

*** The mod now uses 4 more unit IDs: 4819-4822 ***

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Changes in Version 0.09:

- I didn't originally intend to release this this early since there's only two things now, but I decided to quickly "MC" the nation. So it should be compatible with MC nations in the Excel file now, thus allowing testing against other Warhammer nations. ** Note that I don't guarantee constant compliance with MC, because this nation isn't properly in the system. And probably won't be for quite some time. **

* Slots used: unitslots 4330-4350 , 4800-4818 * nationslot 120 * armor slots 449-450 * weaponslots 724-736 * siteslots 1842-1844 *

*** Note that this ID change breaks compatibility of the mod with the earlier versions, which means you can't play old games with this one! ***

- Added another Hero. Cyspeth the Champion, who is Melekh the Changer's very much mutated son. Now all that's left is Vilitch... Bleah, that sprite is TRU HORROR.

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Changes in version 0.08:

- Gave all the Marauders some sort of spikey stuff and beards so they'd look at least a little less civilized.

- Altered the Horrors' sprites ever-so-slightly. They had dangly things that were unbecoming!

- Changed #reclimits of the Chosen to 5 on both, so you can now recruit 5 of each. Since it FINALLY WORKS, YAY!

- Added the Changebringer... Which is essentially a Flamer on a Disc. It's speedier! And as a result, can bring toasties faster to the battlefield!

- Added Melekh the Changer, who is yet another Lord of Tzeentchy Hero (SenorOcho helped me with the sprite aplenty! Thanks for that!). I have started to consider adding his son as a Hero, too, now...

- Added second paths to a bunch of summons (and other spells).

- The Champ to Lord line had pretty incredible HP, I lowered it some. Sure, the Lord of Tzeentch should have more HP than a Sorcerer Lord, but not almost twice as much!

Oh, and now the mod spells should work! I tried one myself and it did work, so there you go!

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Changes in version 0.07:

- Added Egrimm van Horstmann, a new hero who sits upon the Chaos Dragon Baudros. If Egrimm is killed, Baudros will be freed and won't stick around after the battle, so look out.

- Added a new multihero called Chosen Lord of Tzeentch, who is... Well, a Lord of Tzeentch with more oomph. Trampling size 5 flying chariot with S for personal spells, need I say more? It was Sombre's idea!

- Added a Herald of Tzeentch, a new summon. It's a weak mage and everything. Brings some Horrors into battle, too! Sorry Sombre, I'll have to add that bigger one hand later on, I just couldn't get the strength to do it right now!

- Added the Flamer of Tzeentch (sprite by Deathjester! Thanks for that!). It's a better ranged shooter than the Pink Horror. But it has a heat aura, so better not put them among your regular guys! They should have a bunch of oomph, but they also cost a bunch!

- Put the Chaos Furies in Pink Horrors' place as the lowest Daemon in the research line (and put them even lower), made Pink Horrors require more research and more gems to summon. Gave them also a crappier version of the old Chaos Fire for the added difficulty (and less HP due to two forms). Also weakened the Chaos Furies because they just were way too strong for the worst lil daemons you can think of. I should probably drop their gem cost way down, though! 8 might now be too much.

- Changed the names of summonings to be more "direct", because there are more than three summons now. I didn't feel like adding "Somewhat mediocre summoning of Tzeentch" and stuff, so I just made it "Summon [units/commander]" instead.

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Changes in version 0.06 (not that you probably saw the earlier versions, but anyway):

- Played around with autocalc, which basically means I ended up tinkering a bit with the prices.

- Toned down magic resistances. I thought they were getting a bit out of hand.

- I made a mess with #mors because they were right beside #mrs, so I looked at them too, and probably lowered them a little here and there. Not everywhere, however!

- And I lowered the HPs of the higher Sorcerers. 30 was a bit much.

- Added Galrauch the First of the Chaos Dragons, who is a new hero for the nation. Look out, he's a bit crazy! Sombre helped me with the wings for the sprite!

There you go, hope someone finds this fun to play! Oh, and bug, balance etc. reports are more than welcome!

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

How do you claim Thrones without H3/an Prophet? Only with the god?

That's easy! Prophet an indie. And then you can make temples with great ease, too, for an army of H1 priests if you thus want. Someone told me though that the Prophet doesn't even need H3 to claim Thrones, so there's that. You CAN make anything in the mod a Prophet, it's just not going to get any holy levels.

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

With WAR shutting down I'm glad you've allowed me to continue playing as the Raven Host! Looks good!

It's not exactly the Raven Host, since their leader, as I remember, is a "mere" Champion. Here you can get Chaos Lords and stuff!

Buut you're welcome either way!

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

I love tzeentch so im having a glance at this now, some nice little sprites and i quite like the flag, only balance suggestion i could make so far is that the battleaxe chosen have very low encumbrance for someone in super heavy armour and that having 3 survival skills AND sailing might be a liiiitle bit over the top (if thematically appropriate). Either way they look like a fun little nation especially with the holy magic absense. Im guessing that means all their commanders just have an innate -3 to holy paths?

Innate -5 to holy paths, actually, because it was the supposed max. Even though apparently -7 works, too. So the modding manual seems to not know everything. Shucks!

As for the enc on the Chosen with the battle axe, well... He has the same basic enc as the other Chosen, who gets extra enc from his shield, reaching an enc of 5 there (which is one less than on the Warriors of Tzeentch). He isn't sacred (so full upkeep, bless only by astral magic etc.), cap only, reclimited, no shield and he's still a Chosen. I thought those'd balance it out? Actual playtests would make sure of it. So far personally I've mostly used the shield + sword Chosens, who seem rather good, at least fighting indies. But they're expensive, cap only and you can get only 10 of them (both Chosens combined until Illwinter updates Dom4 so I can switch back to 5 + 5 Chosens rather than 10 of either). It sucks though that Chaos Armo(u)r is supposed to be magically light while very protective, too. That sort of means that followers of Chaos wearing Chaos Armor shouldn't get very encumbered, at least, by their armor. I think the enc 2 from it works well to denote that. Makes the armor not super heavy, but also not super light.

Also, I'm not afraid to admit that the three (or two) survivals on many units and commanders + the Marauder Chieftain with sailing are a knee-jerk reaction to the extremely slow movement system in Dominions 4. While they're also thematic, they wouldn't have been added if I hadn't gotten real annoyed by that. Chaos Undivided for Dom3, which I also worked on, didn't have them because the movement mechanic was less restrictive (but restrictive enough; I liked it well enough to have everyone be affected by it). But, Chaos is often supposed to be a raiding force, and MM2 turning into MM1 in most places just bogs things down, and makes everything slow. Not very raidy of Tzeentch's forces, that. I limited their extent so that they aren't completely silly, however; note how the true mages lack survivals, so to utilize battle magic beyond astral in fight, you still are bogged down by Dom4 movement restrictions. That Marauder Chief is only going to ferry those troops into raiding or into the front lines, he isn't going to win the war for you on his own.

But, yes, I totally see where you're coming from. It's just a question whether the upsides are matched well enough by the downsides to make it "even", really!

Wonderful Mod!!! I liked the Warhammer Mods for Dom3....and now.....Yieppppeeee!!!!

One question: Is it intended that the sorcerers and champions have such a long lifespan? I think they are still humans...even if warped....

Edited by: Legion69

Oh, they're warped humans that have been gifted with "immortality" in the fluff, I thought (well, I THOUGHT I read about it, but I could've been confused), which is why they have such long lifespans. It's the kind of "immortality" where you can't die out of old age very easily as long as you keep working towards your eventual Daemonhood or Spawn of Chaos-dom.

And as such, most known Champs, Sorcerers and whatnots have been known to die violent deaths on the battlefield, not due to "oh dammit my research into EVIL of EVILS isn't complete and I'm dying out of old age here!"

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

Tzeentch-cultist wrote: Oh, they're warped humans that have been gifted with "immortality" in the fluff, I thought (well, I THOUGHT I read about it, but I could've been confused), which is why they have such long lifespans. It's the kind of "immortality" where you can't die out of old age very easily as long as you keep working towards your eventual Daemonhood or Spawn of Chaos-dom.

And as such, most known Champs, Sorcerers and whatnots have been known to die violent deaths on the battlefield, not due to "oh dammit my research into EVIL of EVILS isn't complete and I'm dying out of old age here!"

Ok...so shall it be .....

I can definately sympathise with the knee jerk reaction against the new movement system it is pretty crippling. And i guess the cost in terms of gold and resources does counter out how good the chosen are on paper and they're limited recruitment.

Next version should bring another Hero, called Egrimm van Horstmann who rides a Chaos Dragon called Baudros. I have managed to somewhat make the dragon, but not van Horstmann himself (the first try I made of him looked like a tall dwarf, so it was a no go). Like so:

But hopefully, it'll get done!

Also, another sprite maker, Deathjester, should be making that Flamer of Tzeentch, so hopefully there'll be 2 new units for the next update!

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

Wow, that's beautiful! Really loving the models, save maybe for the chaos spawn. Can't help but feel that he's looking a bit too orderly and managed.

Hah, models! Sprites. Letting Warhammer get the best of me here.

Edited by: Metrark

I've started on the flamer.. so yes!

Btw, nice dragon!

My spellcasters aren't casting the astral "blessing" buffs even though I have astral gems on the commanders and specifically script the spells. I haven't seen them cast any "fires" spells either even though, again, the spells are researched and the commanders are loaded with gems. Do I have something set wrong? All other mods are off.

Nope, you're doing nothing wrong. Only thing that's wrong is that there's apparently a bug in Dominions 4 v. 4.01 where your casters won't cast ANYTHING modded in a fight. The battle AI won't, ever, choose a modded spell, even if you've scripted it (oddly enough, modded spells worked at least in some of the beta versions; I remember having my mages throw the modded Blessing around in parts of the beta). A somewhat big oversight if you ask me, I even reported it and it hasn't been colored green, which can mean a few things (okay, I'm simplifying, but this is how it feels): 1) it was fixed already before I made my report, 2) it's being ignored, 3) they don't know how to fix it. Hopefully 1st is right!

First there were those beta bugs that made mod nations sorta silly to play (3 gems from every modded gem part of a site no matter what you had put, those buggy fire spells and modded forged items didn't work), now there are release version bugs that aren't much better (on top of the battle spell bug, you can't play mod games in direct connect games at least). I really, really hope they get these mod things to work 100% soon.

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

By the way sensori, it would be nice to have slightly longer descriptions for the modded spells. That you'd have at least an indication of what all those tzeentch blessings and others buffs.

Right now it's quite terse, something like " this gives tzeentch blessing to all units". The term blessing is a quite ambiguous, as it's generally used for the pretender blessing for holy units. So the player has really no idea of what it will do, except that it's a buff.

Myeh, I guess I could, but that was all the pompous Chaos stuff I could handle at the time!

Chaos tends to be fairly in love with itself, true

Does the bug also prevent the spell from firing off out of an item? It would be cool to see this mod (and any other with national combat spells) the way it was meant to be played.

Well, I haven't actually added any modded items in the mod as of yet, because the units (heroes, summons and stuff) come in first in my mind. So I really don't know. It, however, doesn't stop Galrauch from using his "MR resist or die" multicolor breath!

Oh, oh, because Deathjester's making a Flamer, I decided to start working on a Herald of Tzeentch. Sure, it's not the most awesome thing ever, but more summons! Like so:

EDIT: Managed to cause massive scratchy damage to my monitor, but hey, I've also gotten somewhere with my Egrimm dilemma!

Now he fits! And now he's animated, too! IS DONE!

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

I'm somewhat of a noob to Warhammer 40k are there any units that are capable of seducing enemies? I beleive Tzeeneetch is the god of lust or something like that. So i think seduction powers would be amusing.

What do you mean by massive scratchy damage in your latest post?

Edited by: Kromgar

No, Tzeentch is the Dark God of Change, Sorcery, plotting and such. He's the Changer of Ways, the Great Conspirator, the Great Mutator, the Great Sorcerer etc.

You're thinking of Slaanesh, the Prince of Excess. He's the god of lust, hedonism and such things.

It means what it says. I was trying to help someone with their computer, and managed to scratch my own monitor's screen in the process, causing a line of dead pixels. You should never help people with delicate stuff when you're tired, have a head ache and are feeling bad in general. And I knew that, and I said I'd rather do it once I didn't feel that way, but... --

EDIT: Also, this is Warhammer Fantasy, not 40K, as you might expect. This ain't Sci-Fi, this is fantasy!

EDIT2: Also, another set of sprites. This'll be the second multihero for the nation, a Chosen Lord of Tzeentch. It was Sombre's idea!

Edited by: Tzeentch-cultist

Bumped for new version

Thanks for the bump, gothefungus. Looks like the thread's gotten as much attention as it can already, though. Boohoo, my poor mod! /cry