Expansion Pack: Eriu Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Welcome to the second in my ongoing Expansion Pack series! The goal of these mods is to add a little gameplay diversity to existing factions without dramatically changing them. Also smaller mods help me not burn out.

VERSION 1.0 DOWNLOAD LINK

(full details are in the readme. If Dropbox formats it oddly for you, there's another copy in the game .zip)

New Stuff:
-Recruit Milesian Chariots, Fir Bolg Horn Blowers, Milesian Princes (coastal), and Fir Bolg Wild Men (forest)!
-New pretender chassis: the Dullahan, an Irish headless horseman. His paths are 2D1E, which is a bit odd as Eriu doesn't normally take Death. That's why I've added some incentive in the form of
-Summons! 3D gets you a Pooka, or HorseGoatRabbit. In addition to being ManBearPig's archenemy, he does all sorts of nasty things to the province he's camping out in. 3D1E gets you a Peat Bog Mummy, a lightly nerfed version of the pretender chassis whose magic paths are 1D+200SEBD (linked). He comes with an honour guard of Pict Warriors, who are fairly similar to Unfrozen, but with poison rather than cold auras. If you'd rather not take Death, you can still summon a Clurichaun, which is like a Leprechaun only drunker(!). He's 2E1A, but don't expect to him to cast Rain of Stones and survive given his hobbitesque statline.
-Combat spells: Your bards can cast Song of Great Fortune, an AoE Luck chant that I had to give a gem cost 'cause it was broken as all heck otherwise. Sidhe Champions can spread dat glamour around with Glamourweave, a ranged AoE Mirror Image. Sidhe Lords are more into practical jokes, so they're invited to spam Thunderweave, a ranged AoE... Charged Body? Yes! You too can play the "I just rubbed my feet on a woolen carpet" party game and delight your friends!

Tweaked Old Stuff:
...There's a handful of minor changes. The big changes are recruit-everywhere Bean Sidhes (because duh), and mountain-recruitable Cu Sidhes (restricted to one per turn) to match their description.

Notes:
Balance: This is primarily a "new stuff" mod, and it's more powerful overall than the base faction due to things being (mostly) buffed to improve usability rather than toned down. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in balance feedback, however - I particularly want to know if something's so good it overshadows everything else, or if it's so terrible that no-one will ever go near it.

Compatibility:
-This mod is MC compatible as of the 24 November 2013 spreadsheet update.
-It won't break any other existing official factions.
-Compatibility with mods that rebalance the game wholesale (such as a hypothetical CBM) obviously can't be guaranteed in advance.
-For compatibility with Worthy Heroes, make sure this mod is activated first. If in doubt, deactivate both then reactivate them in order (Expansion Pack: Eriu first, then WH).
-I've added code at the end of the .dm that can make it compatible with Llamabeast's excellent Mobility mod. If you've decided to live life in the fast lane, simply delete the '--' at the start of every line in the section at the end of the .dm to activate it.

Usage: If you want to use any of this in your own mods, go for it! Most of the spritework's Frankensteined anyway.

Other mods in this series:
-Expansion Pack: Sceleria
-Expansion Pack: Blood and Fire

Edited by: gothefungus

Excellent work! I am happy to MC list these expansion packs, provided you err on the side of caution with balance.

Edited by: Sombledon

Hmmm... I always considered Eriu to BE an expansion pack. I loved Allying them with another nation and giving the other nations Erius capital sites on top of their capital sites. Very powerful boost for Man or Ulm

Sombledon wrote: Excellent work! I am happy to MC list these expansion packs, provided you err on the side of caution with balance.

Thanks! I'll do my best.

Balance-wise the main question mark is next to the three combat spells - the effects are pretty splashy! I'll keep playing around with them and probably tweak the AoE sizes and fatigue values, but I'd value any feedback from other people's play experience.

Edited by: gothefungus

Those are great units. If you can do all of them, or all of one age, Id love to setup a solo game icon on my machine that turns them all on. Then I could occassionaly play a game where all of the nations are boosted.

The mod looks interesting - thanks for making it. Hopefully there will be more additions to your expansion pack series.

Nice work. In terms of balance: well, I never saw Eriu as weak to start with, but I'm hardly an elite player, so maybe I'm missing something.

Trying this, looks very nice, went with the national pretender (of course )and looking at ways to get enough Death gems to use the new stuff.

Btw intentional that the pretender only has 40 leadership(the default) for 'regular'troops? Lord seems to imply to me at least 80, even if he's used to leading otherworldy creatures only. Also seems a bit odd he's demon rather than undead but I can also see why you'd do that. He could perhaps be given forest survival, might be vaguely thematic(sidhe lords/top commanders do get that) and help him moving around to search for death sites.

On the other stuff, gotta try more, but it all sounds quite awesome.

Edit: if you want to add some more Death/Water stuff by the way, what about a Fomorian summon? If you could make a spell that summons a single (undead?) Fomorian King-equivalent in a coastal/water province only it might be very flavourful. Though perhaps too strong...

Edited by: TheZonk