Joe's Better Caelum MA Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Hello there. I've improved another faction with unit tweaks and the like. It does alter some units in other eras so turn it off if you arnt playing in MA and/or dont want those improvements. Here is the link to the file Drive.google.com

This mod WILL change Caelum nations in other eras so if you want to play in Early or Late turn this mod off!!

Updated 1.02 :: tweaked some unit costs, gave the Caelum Seraph spell caster possibility of A2 or W2.
Updated 1.04 :: finished up the descriptions..tweaked beastmaster/taskmaster traits on various leaders
Update 1.1 :: Some units now generate gold to offset a high upkeep

Lots of little improvements. MA didnt have a death so I gave them a bad boy angel with death and fire. The ice crafter got more diverse spell schools. I added yetis and flying dogs for flavor that are limited recruitment and gave certain commanders the beastmaster skill. Storm General got some magic mostly for self buffs. I treid to get rid of redundant units by giving each unit different weapon layout. Took archers out of PD and replaced them with the flying dogs.

Lemme know what you guys think..pls write something since I cant see how many people viewed this thread

-Joe

Edited by: Fenryder

Be closer to source material, the zoroastrist and persian empire. Your presentation look so much full of bad idea (yeti, flying dog, the death angel, more pick on icecrafter, etc ...) that I don't even want to try it ; since I won't try it, I won't say if it's the presentation or the ideas who are truly bad, but you may want to know it look way too random and directionless.

It apply to every mod you have done yet. At the fifth one and given I personally prefer to receive bad feedback from my mod than no feedback, I hope this will help you (or at least, not desesperate you too much)

I'm writing my own story with these Caelum friend. The direction is improved game play for any faction improvement. If the source material spoke to me perhaps I'd share your orthodoxy but I dont see enough source material to justify holding gameplay hostage.

The dogs are mostly for unit diversity and fun (and somethign to replace arhcers on PD, who kill more friendly than foes and cause routing) but I've written a small storyline for the Yeti being a population pressed into building the Caelum ice fortresses as people light enough to fly might want to avoid hard objects and heavy lifting. Death magic exists in EA and LA version of Caelum and the high seraph has it in MA so nothing new there.. Dark Artists are just remnants of the Herab clan really that the devs left out here for some reason. Its not like I'm giving them nature magic. Also units like the dark artist, alldog yeti etc are limited recruitment or slow recruitment, so it still makes sense to use the original caelum units to fill out the bulk of your forces.

Edited by: Fenryder

Here are my reactions to individual changes

I actually think adding Yetis was a pretty good idea. Now that yetis are a part of the vanilla game, it's nice to think about where they might be hanging out, and they fill an obvious hole in the Caelian lineup in a quirky and flavorful fashion. I think that they should be restricted to mountains, or mountains + the capitol, for the flavor and balance. Also, I would give the Seraphine Taskmaster rather than Beastmaster.

I don't understand what it going on with the Dark Artist. My personal preference would be to have no recruitable Harab units in the middle era, but having a few survivors from the purge stick around is plausible, and explains how and why the raptors come back in LA. However, your flavor-text implies that the survivors are small in number and held under close watch. That implies capitol-only, to me. Also, I do not understand why they have fire and blood magic. They don't use either of those in the LA, so why do they have them in MA?

Looking at the other commanders, I don't understand why Storm General is a mage now. That seems totally unnecessary. Also, Ice Crafters are now essentially worthless and should be reverted to vanilla. The Alldog unit is inappropriate on several levels. Obviously, it's a joke unit, and should be left out of a mod intended for the public. But if you're keeping them, you ought to remove the patrol bonus. Flying troops don't need an explicit patrol bonus because they already get one inherently. You've copied over the patrol bonus from the other winged dog, the Russian Simargl, but that bonus was there to give some impact to a unit that is summoned one at a time. Caelum does not need to be able to build 100 patrol stregnth for about 100 gold and 8 resources. Also, if they're regular dogs that happen to have wings, they should be undisciplined like other animals. If they're intelligent, their description should say so.

It's difficult for me to evaluate it as a balance mod (I assume that's what you mean by "gameplay improvement") without knowing anything about what nations your groups plays and what balance point you're aiming at. However, my instinct is that you've gone overboard on the magic. By my count you've increased total path access by 4: 2 points in fire, 1 in death and 1 in earth. I'm ignoring the blood as negligible, but even so that's a huge boost to any nation. "Everything but nature" is an unusual amount of diversity for MA, especially in a culture which is supposedly isolated and traditionalist. But if this is the diversity benchmark you want to bring everyone up to, then I guess you can just do that.

If you do want to add a little bit of diversity, I recommend scrapping the Dark Artist and giving us a Yeti Shaman. That would flesh out the yeti lore a bit, and give you an interesting limitation that only some of your magic is available with flying. Yetis could bring in death or nature, whichever you feel Caelum wants.

Thanks for the feedback. The yetis should be mountain/capt only..thats a good idea. The Dark artists are there to provide diversity and flavor, fire blood and death being a "hellish" counter to the angelic vistage of the rest of the caelum. Can you elaborate on how Ice Crafter are worthless? They are the best leaders for leading yetis and they get the forge bonus which is a huge gem savor plus they now have access to even more craftable items with the added spell school. They get taskmaster to show they work with the yeti while Seraphine gets beastmaster to include leadership bonus' with all living things, not just the yeti. I've added two animal type units and angelic beings should be able to work better with animals that mundanes. Storm General got lvl 1 magic to let it self buff for thuggery. I wasnt aware of the patrol bonus for flying critters and your right that would be overkill. The alldog is there to give the Caelum a low cost unit for diversity but its difficult to find a cold climate unit that fits. Winter wolves might but without wings they'd be a burden and I cant see the Caelum ferrying their dogs around..so whatever it was going to be needed wings. Simargl fit perfectly and was "fun". They are trained and intelligent so I need to update the description for that. Yeti shaman might work but I dont know if there is a sprite in game for it. Also I dont like giving nations access to spell schools they dont already have. Death and Fire come from the Harab..nature really doesnt strike me as a school of magic these guys would work with and I dont want to give them access to everything. At the start of the game anyone can just empower a unit with 1-2 lvls of any school so its not a huge growth in power to be giving them these shallow magics but it does give more choices to the player which I like.

Edited by: Fenryder

Notes:
Harab have access to earth, not fire, and definitely not blood.
Diversity is hugely important. There is an immense difference between being able to empower one unit - for gems you don't get normally (making those gems very expensive) - and every recruitable having crosspath access. I'm not sure why you think that 1-2 access in a new path isn't a boost, but it is an immense power boost.
Caelum aren't angelic in the christian sense, but in the zorastarian sense. Giving "hellish" powers to harabs doesn't make any sense. They aren't angels as you are thinking of them- perhaps you should do some reading on zorastarianism and try to cleave a little closer to the root concept before colonizing it with christian overtones?
Nobody is saying that you should add nature. They are saying that you've given access to every school but nature, which is extremely useful.
The mod feels like you just threw a bunch of things at it. Some kind of chaff makes sense balancewise for caelum, but there is no need to give them flying.

Edited by: sum1won

"The mod feels like you just threw a bunch of things at it" Well ya I did...I said what can I do with my meager modding ability which will make this faction as interesting as Eagle Kings. Then I worked in some lore cause I do feel lore is pretty important. Lore for my Caelum..not orthodoxy to Illwinters vision.

I had thought the Harab had fire at one point but it looks like I was wrong. Eagle kings have it but I'd rather stick with it being a harab thing. I'm not familiar with Zorastrainism. My take on the caelum is a race of angelleic beings ala Steven Brusts book "to Reign in Hell". Nature is overused, especially in early crafting which is one reason I left it out. I felt the need to give the chaff flying otherwise it will have difficulty fitting into Caelum society and accessing their ice palaces. And the flying dog sprites were underutilized buried in the summoning tree for one faction as they were. Way to cute to be left there.

Edited by: Fenryder

A unit with a craft bonus is basically a gem generator with some limitations. As long as you actually use the unit to forge something every turn, it's effectively creating 1 or 2 gems. It's more interesting and more balanced than a straight gem generator because your income in actual gems limits how many crafters you can exploit, and because the limitations on what you can spend it on get you to buy things you otherwise might not.

If you want crafters to be an important strategic asset, you need a lot of them. One Ice Crafter slaving away in the capitol is no better than happening to find another magic site that makes 1 water gem. A 1-gem bonus on an expensive, slow-recruit mage, is simply not going to add up to the point where your enemy players will notice it. The traditional ice crafter was able to be massed in whatever quantity desired, allowing you to generate 5+ gems worth of savings per turn while spamming water bracelets, bottles of living water, or frost brands.

Also, you need to consider the opportunity cost involved in using your big mage for crafting. Your modified Ice Crafter may save you 1 gem every turn, but he also eats 17 gold worth of upkeep. In many cases, 1 gem is not substantially better than 17 gold, so you're not actually getting any economic advantage. The traditional Ice Crafter, on the other hand, can turn 3 gold into 1 water gem every turn.

Eek upkeep! I didnt consider upkeep at all..I'll have to look at that. Is it only the gcost that effects upkeep? I'm not sure how my changes to the crafter would make upkeep significantly different from what it was before..

Edited by: Fenryder

1. Upkeep is gcost/15, or gcost/30 for sacred units. Another way to think about it is that the traditional ice crafter gives you the option to trade 7RP for 1 gem, while the re-envisioned ice crafter trades 11RP for one gem.