Upcoming mod: Conquest of Ulysium Thread - Conquest of Elysium 3

This is now the discussion thread for the Conquest of Elyisum 3 Mod Conquest of Ulyisum. You can download it here

Don't expect anything to be balanced. Expect crashes, overpowered units, underpowered units and general stupidity and nonsense overall. If you like the mod and something disturbs you, give me notice and I'll fix it soon as I'm at it. There are no ritual descriptions yet (only affects Bai Ze). They'll be added later.

Overview of the made changes:
Generic:

• Most ranged units are weaker.
• Most non-magic leaders now all have a special ability
• Many classes now have access to "body guards" to counter assassins
• new unit: The Light Cavalry. It's a front rank unit, that is capable of flanking other units. This is simulated by giving it a "strike anywhere"/2 turns ranged attack. It's a good laugh, because the weapon with those properties available now is the "boulder". So right now it's throwing boulders .
• A dark knight was added to be recruited by a few classes
• heroes stronger and can be upgraded twice to become super-heroes
• Mound King may now raise the dead and rarely visits evil classes (-> more undead in Elyisum YEAH!)
• longdead archers + slingers added
• new lvl2 mages: Blood Mage, Ice Mage, Black Magus, Charlatan, Foul Mage, Horror Master, Master Warden
• new lvl1 mages: Ice Mage Apprentices, Blood Sacrifice Acolytes, Wardens, Spirit Evocers, Mad Scholars, Iron Arcanysts, Aspiring Wizards, Black Magus Apprentices, Dark Priests, Gold Arcanysts, Infernal Mages, Chosen Ones, Jugglers, Leaders of the Pack, Mad Scholars, Silver Arcanysts, Sun Guides
• frontrank units have ca. 20% more hp

Class specific changes:

1. Bakemono :

• New unit: Tsumuji Kaze. A small and fragile Bakemono that is fast like the wind and thus hard to hit. It's basically a weasel, that became a Bakemono and transformed into a claw-whirlwind. When it dies the winds are released from it and the blades scatter, slightly hurting everything in the front rows. Those are units to be used with your immortals, if you are planning to die. In small numbers they can take down many enemies. And they can take down many of your Bakemonos, too, if you're not careful enough. (I really don't want to know, what the ai does with them)
• New unit: Bai Ze. A wise leader that knows-it-all. He's able to find those Bakemono sleeping in items/animals and awaken them. (In other words he does have weak enchanting powers, that cost iron and will give you animated objects: tsukumogami (generic flying objects), dancing swords, gargoyles, statues, armors,iron ant, iron fly, iron scorpion, iron spider.

2. Baron:

• able to recruit knights now
• able to recruit immobile castle guards now
• tower guards have arbalests

3. Barbarian

• Amazons are stronger
• Priestesses now gather gems and each gets her own special summoning
• Jade Priestess may summon Velociraptors & the Tyrannosaurus
• Crystal Priestess may summon Light Spirits & the Holy Hawk
• Garnet Priestess may summon Everburning Ancestors
• Onyx Priestess may summon Vengeance Warriors and Ancient Amazon Queen

4. Burgmeister

• New unit: The Hoburg Dragonslayer. This is basically a Pike, that is so large and heavy it has to be carried by 6 Hoburgs. It helps Hoburg to kill ... well Dragons. And other big things (with heavy armor) of course but it's too expensive to use it heavily.
• new unit: War Boar. The Hoburg have a great weapon. It's their weed. This Monster Boar was roaming the wilds freely once but now he's addicted to hoburg weed. After trying to utilize the boar for weed farming (it destroyed more than it helped) they finally manned it with 6 Hoburg Crossbows and sent it to war.
• new unit: hoburg keeper. A cheap but strong soldier, that is immobile and thus only useful as a citadel defender

5. Demonologist

• standard recruits removed
• imps are stealthed now! You start with an imp commander in addition to your Summoners
• new unit: initiate. Your brand new meatshield.
• new unit: Soul Reaper is a dual-axe wielding berserk, who doesn't like armor, because it slows down the bloodletting (sounds reasonable to me). He starts weak and is rather expensive, but grows more powerful with every strike he does (he has lifedrain!).
• new unit: Infernal Acolytes are weak casters of Infernal Magic
• sometimes visited by bandits/slingers, goblilns and ogres looking for a master

6.Druid

• Gets an animal trainer recruit that spawns "Charmed Animals".
• Druid and Elder Druids also spawn animals
• May hire "Leaders of the Pack", who call wolves in battle to aid the Druid

7.Dwarf Queen

• I nerfed dwarf workers. They hit harder like swordsmen? Not in Ulysium! I improved "Dwarves" in exchange.
• new summonings for elder rune smith: they may now construct Rim/Furnace Catapults and the "Arrow Volley" from gems & gold (upgrading a catapult / ballista not possible atm)

8. Enchanter

• Golems now hit a lot harder/more often, some gained stunning AoE damage
• Enchanter's Apprentice (0.3/turn), Enchanter(0.75/turn) and Great Enchanter(2/turn) now autospawn terracotta soldiers
• Must rely on a very wide variety of merceneries no more basic recruits

9. High Cultist

• Freespawn are stronger and leave horrormarks
• all deep ones also bite
• standard recruits removed
• new unit: Degenerate is a weak fighter (who guessed that). A mutated human that is too weak and too stupid to be chosen by the Deep Ones. He's not useful anymore so he's sent to the frontline.
• new unit: Evolved is a stronger fighter (wow another surprise). These are mutated humans that grew claws tentacles and longer teeth and (from a deep one's point of view) now look a lot better. They leave horrormarks!
• new unit: Chosen Ones have minor magic powers. They have been blessed by the Deeps, but they were not talented enough to be Culitsts, so they serve the army now.
• new unit: "Horror Master" summons horrors in battle and leaves horror marks

10. High Priestess

• It's good to be respected: in order to gain the favor of Ba'al "Ba'alite Fanatics" will gather in the brand new "Temple of Ba'al" to join the Djihad.. When your temple is destroyed -> no more fanatics!!!
• may hire Blood Sacrifice Acolytes

11, Necromancer

• Noone likes the Necromancer: You'll have to build an army made of Goblins, Ogres and some desperate Bandits, because some people are concerned you actually raise the dead. Whiners! At least the Dark Knights treat you with respect.
• rarely a Wraith Commander appears to lead your troops

12. Pale One

• I felt like the Pale ones were too weak. They're stronger now. And you'll get a lot more of the big ones, if you can afford them.

13. Priest King

• Slaves are autospawned now. I don't like it thematically, but it's a lot easier now to play PK. (will be removed after the next patch)

14. Senator

• You get many, many mages now. MANY (They still cost money). In groups! (they are no leaders). Who needs archers, when he has mages? The senator's army is a lot more colourful now
• wardens + master wardens are a great boost to the senator's army and often availabe
• retiarius + gladiator made stronger and moved to front rank

15.Troll King

• forest trolls are leaders now
• trolls are your regular recruits now
• giants appear more often
• carrion stalkers, beasts and manikins no longer stupid, but weaker.
• goblins removed (there will be a new class the "Goblin Kaiser") -> no more archers!!
• troll pit starts with a Cursed Troll Funghus, that spawns carrion stalkers

16. Warlock

• Champions of "Element" are now lvl 2 casters.
• new unit: Burning Blade. These are elite soldiers that have some skill in Pyromancy and are now able to wield a fire brand, although staring in the fire all day hasn't done their eyes anything good. Because of the heat they don't wear armor and are often the first to fall on the battlefield. If they actually manage to hit something, the damage is huge.
• new unit: Storm Rider. These are elite bow wielding ... riders. They command the storms and their arrows will fly farther and faster, than the ones of regular archers.
• new unit: "Gaia's Boon Warrior". An "elite" soldier, that spent most of his life swimming in blessed waters. That made him very durable and he's able to give those powers to allies fighting near him, too. Only problem: He seems to have missed some lessons in weapon training.
• new unit: Adamant Warrior. They're very durable and sometimes buff their combatants
• new unit: Bladewind. A dual-sword wielding, but unarmored fighter, who's protetcted by the winds
• new casters: pyromants, hydromants, geomants

17. Witch

• The early summons are more of a power now. That also means summoning with "low amounts" is more risky.
• Witch starts with a Raven Familiar Commander (stealthed, flying, noleader) now
• Witch may sometimes hire additional Raven Familiar commanders
• Androphag Spearman and Cavalry now have Poison Spears, but slightly less hp than other inf/cav
• Witchers and Master Witchers can be hired frequently
• completely new summon tree: "Lay a deadly Trap", that summons a deadly troop of immobiles. It's expensive, but enemies stupid enough to step on it will regret it

I'm interested in feedback on the changes I made.

• Is there something you like, dislike or would like to see in a different way?
• Do you have a good idea, what could be added to the mod?
• A hint for a useful tweak?

Please tell me, what you think.

Greetings,
ulius

Edited by: ulius4

Great writeup ulius.
I'd like to see lots of things in different ways, but I think that doesn't imply you need to change anything - it's great that way, actually, because I can always make my own mod (as soon as modding actually works reasonably well), and when I get bored with my own changes, I can switch to playing with yours for a while.
I'll definately check your mod out once you release.

Cheers
Marco

Just my humble opinion:
THANK YOU for explaining that this isnt a "fix" mod or implying it should become the standard mod players should shift to

That said, this does look like an interesting mod. A lot of thought and work went into it. As a change-of-game it might be fun to play.

One "tweak" I might suggest, to avoid the early death that some AIs suffer from at lower levels, you might add a Guardian or Totem or some other immobile defender to each nation. (a monolith? statue? a fountain?)

Edited by: gp1628

gp1628 wrote: Just my humble opinion:
THANK YOU for explaining that this isnt a "fix" mod
and thank you for not implying it should become the standard mod that all players should shift to or newbies should start with.

That's nice of you to say. My variant of the game is just a little different from vanilla. It's definitely not better (but it's better for me) That relates to what MarcoK said, too. I hope I'm giving others some ideas and a few interesting playthroughs. The vanilla game is great the way it is and I don't want to make it smaller than it is.

gp1628 wrote:
That said, this does look like an interesting mod. A lot of thought and work went into it. As a change-of-game it might be fun to play.

One "tweak" I might suggest, to avoid the early death that some AIs suffer from, you might add a Guardian or Totem or some other immobile defender to each nation. (a monolith? statue? a fountain?)

Thanks for your suggestion. I won't do it though . At least not for every class. I added the "Temple of Ba'al" to the High Priestess, because it fits great. I could think of something similiar for the Baron ("Castle Guards") or whatever . But that would destroy the roguelike nature of the game and I like it the way it is.
On the other hand: If something fits thematically I'd happily add it. Do you have a more specific suggestion about a guardian unit with a theme?

MarcoK wrote: Great writeup ulius.
I'd like to see lots of things in different ways, but I think that doesn't imply you need to change anything - it's great that way, actually, because I can always make my own mod (as soon as modding actually works reasonably well), and when I get bored with my own changes, I can switch to playing with yours for a while.
I'll definately check your mod out once you release.

Cheers
Marco

I'm interested to see, what you'll do, too. Maybe we can inspire each other?

Edited by: ulius4

Hmmm... Id have to think on that. Maybe others can come up with things.
According to my latest tests the most frequent early death is Druid, followed by Troll King.

A monolith (standing stone) might fit both.
Particularly Druid.

Troll in the Troll Pit? giant fungus?

Giant fungus is in . Thx for the suggestion! The Troll pit will also be an automatic Troll Forest!

The Druid hut will spawn stupid animals soon. The druid himself will spawn them, as soon as this works correcty.

Edited by: ulius4

Neat ideas - thanks for sharing! I really like some of them (weakening missiles (I'd make them less accurate if possible), and interesting new units like flanking light cavalry, and the funny dragon slayer team), though there are some things I wouldn't prefer to do .

I'd give Romans slinger recruits rather than giving them all slings.

For heroes, I'd like more variety and interesting abilities, without over-doing it, and making (all?) heroes also be trainers doesn't sound that appropriate. If you can add more, I'd do that and have each one have interesting abilities that can be used in different ways (e.g. Luck, Stealth, Fast speed...)

I don't know that dwarf workers need nerfing - they have two-handed mining picks - those should hurt, but they might be less accurate than usual weapons, if that's possible (probably not). I like the suggestion made in the Dwarf suggestion thread about giving the Councillors rune swords (not necessarily more damage, but Magic so there is something you can recruit that can hurt invulnerables etc.) Also some use for gems that doesn't need iron is good, because you can tend to end up with more opals or rubies than you have iron to use them with to make armor, and dwarves need some way to deal with large monsters. Artillery is a good idea, though I don't think I'd personally do cannons.

PvK wrote: Neat ideas - thanks for sharing! I really like some of them (weakening missiles (I'd make them less accurate if possible), and interesting new units like flanking light cavalry, and the funny dragon slayer team)

Welcome!

PvK wrote:
I'd give Romans slinger recruits rather than giving them all slings.

noted, thx for telling. I wanted to see how it plays out first. The reason why it might be a good idea to do it the way I did it, is that it helps the AI. The AI sometimes fails to mix stacks effectively.

PvK wrote:
For heroes, I'd like more variety and interesting abilities, without over-doing it, and making (all?) heroes also be trainers doesn't sound that appropriate. If you can add more, I'd do that and have each one have interesting abilities that can be used in different ways (e.g. Luck, Stealth, Fast speed...)

Good idea! Will do.

PvK wrote:
I don't know that dwarf workers need nerfing - they have two-handed mining picks - those should hurt, but they might be less accurate than usual weapons, if that's possible (probably not).

I disliked the fact the dwarves were useless. I wanted make it more of a mind game: "Do I upgrade those useless workers? Or do I risk it and safe for the more expensive units?" So what I wanted to do is make dwarves cheaper and better. But I had to nerf dwarf workers, because otherwise there wouldn't be need for dwarves. So I'll stay with it for now, because it improves the early game for me.

PvK wrote:
Artillery is a good idea, though I don't think I'd personally do cannons.

Yeah, what would you do? I haven't made any sprites yet, so I could change this easily. What would you like better? And why?
I've also been thinking about including an Arbalest gem-upgrade in the future. What would you think of that?

Thank you very much for your feedback, PvK, it helped a lot.

edit: added the rune sword

Edited by: ulius4

First: "Me *heart* ULYSIUM ", but hmm, the barbarians upgraded with some female power? why stop there?

Onyx
they are heavy. definitly iron loving. Give the Pristress/Sorceres summoning abilities that consume Iron. I think "Iron Totem" and "Amazon Iron Spirit", the latter compares to the ancestral Spirits (mayby make it use Herbs and Iron to summon), but this Ghost still wears its heavy armor!

Crystal
They seem to have a high and noble tone, something angelic.A Huge gold and herb offering to summon an Angelic Ancestor? Or a Host of Angels. Additionally as a higher summoning, craft an "Crysal Altar/Totem" which autospawn lesser angelic beings and is an immobile defender. Perhaps giving them a frosty theme, i don't know the complete spell list for Crystal Magic.

Garnet
Those like it HOT. Everburning Ancestor (they burn their dead, figure), including a variant breathing fire on enemy ranks. Everburning Totem, which makes invading a Barbarian Camp a really stupid idea. Burn, baby, BURN.

Jade
Friends with snakes and the mean lizards. Did you plan on making them poison immune? This clan should have some right of passage like drinking (ans surviving) a bowl of fresh milked Venom. Summonings may or may not Include Snakes, big Snakes, even bigger Snakes, Snakelike Ancestors (I think gorgon-like) and the mandatory Snake-Totem littered with their scaly friends.

Another option is to enable the amazons to gather gems and use them for the summoning together with herbs. Defeats my idea of making them use Iron.

Edited by: haihappen

haihappen wrote: First: "Me *heart* ULYSIUM ", but hmm, the barbarians upgraded with some female power? why stop there?

Onyx
they are heavy. definitly iron loving. Give the Pristress/Sorceres summoning abilities that consume Iron. I think "Iron Totem" and "Amazon Iron Spirit", the latter compares to the ancestral Spirits (mayby make it use Herbs and Iron to summon), but this Ghost still wears its heavy armor!

Crystal
They seem to have a high and noble tone, something angelic.A Huge gold and herb offering to summon an "Ancestral" Angel (Commander, comes with a host of lesser angels)?
Additionally as a lesser summoning, craft an "Crysal Altar/Totem" which autospawn lesser angelic beings and is an immobile defender.

Garnet
Those like it HOT. Everburning Ancestor (they burn their dead, figure), including a variant breathing fire on enemy ranks. Everburning Totem, which makes invading a Barbarian Camp a really stupid idea. Burn, baby, BURN.

Jade
Friends with snakes and the mean lizards. Did you plan on making them poison immune? This clan should have some right of passage like drinking (ans surviving) a bowl of fresh milked Venom. Summonings may or may not Include Snakes, big Snakes, even bigger Snakes, Snakelike Ancestors (I think gorgon-like) and the mandatory Snake-Totem littered with their scaly friends.

Another option is to enable the amazons to gather gems and use them for the summoning together with herbs. Defeats my idea of making them use Iron.

Wow, I have no idea, if I will ever do any of those, but I'll do those awesome ideas definitely, lol . I like the angels the most. I hope you're not disappointed, when I instead use them for the Priest King for now. I was missing something more special for him and your idea of altars that spawn lesser, holy "angelic beings" is too good to be ignored. I hope that's ok for you .

For the Barbarians I'd like to stay more on the gold/herb route, so I could do the gorgons and the "everburning ancestor" (yay! definitely), especially the latter! But if I did that for the Garnet Sorceress and Jade Sorceress, I'd have to do something for each of the Amazons, of course . And the Priestresses will get each get something special, too. (Maybe I'll give the summoning to the Priestress and leave the Sorceress with casting?)

Edited by: ulius4

ulius4 wrote:
Wow, I have no idea, if I will ever do any of those, but awesome ideas they are definitely, lol . I like the angels the most. I hope you're not disappointed, when I instead use them for the Priest King for now. I was missing something more special for him and your idea of altars that spawn lesser, holy "angelic beings" is too good to be ignored.

Not Disappointed. The altars/totems was for them to fit into the "Wild Tribe People" Theme.
You don't have to name them Angels. A Crystal Amazon Ancestor with wings of crystal (figure), accompanied with uncounted murders of white crows...
Also, Angel implies holiness, which is definitely NOT the way this should go.

ulius4 wrote:
I hope that's ok for you .

definitly.

ulius4 wrote:
But if I did that for the Garnet Sorceress, I'd have to do something for each of the Amazons, of course .

Why not^^ Or are you hitting that arbitrary mark of 1000 new monsters yet?
If would not suck as an artist, i would try to make some of the images...
but essentially, maximum of 3 special units per tribe would be enough, the rest can be done with simple modding.

Jade:
minor summon: snakes, serpent
medium summon: Snake-Ancestor (with either Claw/bite or Bow/Bite), Altar of Snakes (auto-summons snakes)
high end summon: Venom-Priestess (The Gorgon-like one, Poison Bow and Spells and anything)

Onyx: (this are the ones i have a lack of ideas with...)
minor summon: ? (Animated Armor?)
medium summon: Steel-Ancestor (a LOT of weapons), Altar of Steel (Production Bonus?)
high end summon: Juggernaut (an ancestor fused with a construct, siege? perhaps reuse a colossus image) This defies the "female tone" of the amazons...

Crystal: (ths one gives them a more "People of the Sky" approach)
minor summon: murder of white crows, holy hawk (copy hawk familiar)
medium summon: Sky-Ancestor (winged people, crystal swords, reminds me of cealium in Dom3), Crystal Altar (auto-summons white crow)
high end summon: Crystal Goddess (Crystal Wings, a bow that never misses and fires 3 times, and so on...)

Garnet: (the easy ones)
minor summon: small fire elemental, fire elemental (or call them "Hearth fires")
medium summon: Everburning Ancestor (Fire aura ftw), Everburning banefire (Altar)
high end summon: Volcano Queen (Liquid Lava Lady...)

I don't think the amazons "need" a high end summon. The ancestors could be minor summons and the minor summons "trinket summons" and auto-spawns.
I will see if i can cook up something on my own and shoot it to you.

In practice, I don't find Dwarves to be a useless upgrade of Workers, but I agree with your point that it would be good if it were a harder choice more often of which to recruit. The axe/shield Dwarves can be pretty good with their Armor 1, especially defending with a +1, since they have armor 1 and shields, but I could see giving them another point of health, and/or another point of damage with their axes. They'd still be inferior to Warriors since Warriors can get improved armor, though you might want to give vanilla Warriors also a +1 health and/or damage to match. Workers are very fragile so I don't see them needing to be nerfed.

I don't like dwarf cannon just because it seems anachronistic or at least a thematic variant. Rune Arbalest and Rune Ballista would be obvious possibilities, or Rune Axe Ballista or other terms for lower tech engines: Rune Mangonel, Rune Onager, Rune Catapult, Rune Scorpion, etc. Dwarf Dragonslayers/Wyrmslayers could have poison immunity. A master smith could have Forge Doom Axe for 100+ Opals or so, upgrading one troop to a guy (or creating a non-leader hero) with a rune axe that does Decay.

For the extra heroes, you might want to put that in its own compatible mod that could be used by itself or with other mods.

*Bam*: preview released in first post.

PvK wrote: In practice, I don't find Dwarves to be a useless upgrade of Workers, but I agree with your point that it would be good if it were a harder choice more often of which to recruit. The axe/shield Dwarves can be pretty good with their Armor 1, especially defending with a +1, since they have armor 1 and shields, but I could see giving them another point of health, and/or another point of damage with their axes. They'd still be inferior to Warriors since Warriors can get improved armor, though you might want to give vanilla Warriors also a +1 health and/or damage to match. Workers are very fragile so I don't see them needing to be nerfed.

Dwarves already gained +1 hp in my mod and I left Warriors the way they are. The huge advantage of them is their upgrade, so they don't need a boost imo. At least I felt never like they were too weak.

PvK wrote:
I don't like dwarf cannon just because it seems anachronistic or at least a thematic variant. Rune Arbalest and Rune Ballista would be obvious possibilities, or Rune Axe Ballista or other terms for lower tech engines: Rune Mangonel, Rune Onager, Rune Catapult, Rune Scorpion, etc. Dwarf Dragonslayers/Wyrmslayers could have poison immunity. A master smith could have Forge Doom Axe for 100+ Opals or so, upgrading one troop to a guy (or creating a non-leader hero) with a rune axe that does Decay.

You've convinced me, that it doesn't fit. I'll change it to something else, thanks for the hint . I might come back to you later about the dwarven units, because it's impossible to upgrade units atm via mod tools, so there's not much I can do.

You're right that Dwarf Warriors are mainly good because they can be upgraded to much better things, but they also cost 50% more iron than warriors, and by comparison they have an axe, no shield, and 1 more health. They'd seem pretty jippy to me if they couldn't be upgraded, and it seems like it'd make more sense compared to Dwarves and Workers if they were another notch or two better than they are. Not vital, though.

Dwarfen Warriors are your classy "Heavy Hitter" and with one point in armor not frail like others. But this one does, even if not upgraded,make a decent defender of rather valuable sites which are not capable of having a Dvala, like Towns, coal mines and the like. That is if you are rather short on Iron and Gems. If you are REALLY short on iron, your best pick is the "normal" Dwarf, due to his shield and armor. You get what you pay for.

ulius4 wrote: 16. Warlock

• Champions of "Element" are now lvl 2 casters. I was always angry, when I summoned one (WHAT? ANOTHER ONE?). Now, I'll be more happy.

i wrote a mod doing that, also replacing the Broad sword of the Champion of Waves/Mountain with a frost brand/Stone Sword. Could not do so for the Storm Chamion because i could not find an appropriate weapon (guess i have to wait till weapon modding is implemented, thinking lighting spear and drop the lance charge).
Also i added a 10% chance for a 1 unit recruitment of "Wave/Flame/Mountain/Storm Knight" which are essentially slightly weaker champions. They also lack the spell attack and are front row.
Estimated cost per unit 25 gold 10 iron.
I will test the mod a bit then post it in the Mod Forum.

hey haihappen. Good idea with the weapons. And the elemental Knights sound cool, too.
Why don't you use "Tempest" for the Champion of Storms? It's a shock sword!

About the dwarf warriors: I want Dwarves to generally be a little better than Dwarf Warriors relative to their price. That will make them useful all the time. When I include machine upgrades, there'll be more of decision dwarves/guards + machines vs standard rune warriors+arbalests to give you a little more options.

Edited by: ulius4

ulius wrote: hey haihappen. Good idea with the weapons. And the elemental Knights sound cool, too.

Why don't you use "Tempest" for the Champion of Storms? It's a shock sword!

Tempest may be too powerful. i am more in favor of getting rid of the lance, giving him a (lightning) spear and a ranged "Lightning strike" attack.
Also the Tempest is a magical weapon therfore i cannot modify the dice, only the damage bonus (or that is what i came to believe).

as for the mod sounding cool:
Warlock, Elemental Knight Mod

haihappen wrote:

ulius wrote: hey haihappen. Good idea with the weapons. And the elemental Knights sound cool, too.

Why don't you use "Tempest" for the Champion of Storms? It's a shock sword!

Tempest may be too powerful. i am more in favor of getting rid of the lance, giving him a (lightning) spear and a ranged "Lightning strike" attack.
Also the Tempest is a magical weapon therfore i cannot modify the dice, only the damage bonus (or that is what i came to believe).

as for the mod sounding cool:
Warlock, Elemental Knight Mod

Sweeet.

Regarding the weapon-bonus: This is only a cosmetic thing. 1d10(-3) is exactly the same as 1d7 according to the manual (but it looks weird). The thing you can't change right now is the shock damage, but that should be ok compared to fire/frost brand.

concerning the mod file:
since there IS a mod command enabling the upgrade of commanders (see Indiedb.com ), please make it a habit to define the advanced variant after the original (unless the offset can be negative... have to check on that one)

Edited by: haihappen

what lines/unit are you concerned about? the only masteries i defined are heroes.
In other words: I don't get what you want me to do. Is there something I defined in a problematic way (and why?), or was this more of a general advice?

Edited by: ulius4

The "Ice Mage" for example. If you want to make the Ice mage apprentice upgradeable to a full ice mage, the commend "mastery " enables that.
Another example are the Amazon High Priestesses, they are defined way off from the normal Priestesses, this is no problem, but makes the mastery command look awkward.
Look also: Witcher -> Master Witcher
I also saw several entries of Initiates, Acolytes and several Mages which where commanders in vanilla are now units, for example Bakemono Shaman/Witch doctor.
While this is a nice touch, degrading them to unworthy solders instead of leaders, it kinda worries me to have them be put there... less commanders to fight over precious special resources^^

Fairly certain the game doesn't support upgrading regular units to commanders; certainly not in the current state at least. Maybe an 'upgrade'-type spell like the Dwarf gem upgrades could do something like that, but I don't think we've got flexible enough rituals to do such a thing yet.

That said, it should be trivial to test whether or not you can define a negative offset for the mastery command; even if you can't, I'd imagine that it'd be a lot less dev work to change the mastery command to allow a negative offset then to add 'upgrade' type rituals that transform regular units into commanders.

haihappen wrote: The "Ice Mage" for example. If you want to make the Ice mage apprentice upgradeable to a full ice mage, the commend "mastery " enables that.
Another example are the Amazon High Priestesses, they are defined way off from the normal Priestesses, this is no problem, but makes the mastery command look awkward.
Look also: Witcher -> Master Witcher
I also saw several entries of Initiates, Acolytes and several Mages which where commanders in vanilla are now units, for example Bakemono Shaman/Witch doctor.
While this is a nice touch, degrading them to unworthy solders instead of leaders, it kinda worries me to have them be put there... less commanders to fight over precious special resources^^

Ah ok. I never thought those could be upgraded. Hmm. With them being units it's impossible to upgrade them anyway. And yes lvl 1 mages are ususally units now . I'm trying hard to find uses for the captain, but I'm still not buying him =).
I'll update the modfile and rearrange everything a bit.

Edited by: ulius4

I know Im being picky but saying the game doesnt support something is misleading.
Technically that would be that MOD doesnt support, because the game does support it with MAP commands.
You can add an event that will provide a unit, update a unit into another unit, provide or update a site, etc etc.

I didn't know about the map commands gp1628 . I haven't looked at them yet.