Vampire counts

actualy 1 core Undead is weaker than 1 comparable core model of another army but when looking at Units of same cost ether one can win if the non-Undead is not immune to fear.

so my proposal is look at what fear +% Str is and give Zombies and Skeletons the same -% str for being weak, that makes them = to normal core but aginst Fear Immune they are at a disadvantage. of course they should also be slow (in WH they can't make a march move unless they are close to a Vampire or Necromance, that = half speed and all Undead have this even Dire Wolves and Ghouls and Calvary tho Undead can still charge so they do get full speed if that last bit of movement means they end up in melee with another unit. only way I see to implement their lack of speed in non-combat is to slow their speed on roads.) (tho technicaly speeds on roads for fast Units represent not haveing to manuver around obsticals in their way and for 1 move units is that they actualy use a waggon or something while on the road. like railroads in non-mod means the unit is rideing in a train not really walking on the train track. so their slow speed probably would be best to say just that they get -50% movement if they normaly have 1 move -35% movement if they normaly have 2 moves and - 25% movement if they normaly have 3 moves this way when they get +1 to move nothing happens but if they get +2 then they move 1 more space.)

IDK how it can be done without makeing movement to much of a disadvantage but Undead non-spellcasters and non-Vampires are slower when not ending a move in combat unless a spell made them move like liveing units that 1 turn.

Giving a fear effect to every single undead faction unit is really really boring, and detracts from the one that is really terrifying.

It also means that their entire army gets crushed by anything immune to fear.
A strength penalty works better.

I still think you're confusing tactical and strategic movement. While undead might be slow on a battlefield (though, are they really slower than dwarves?), they're not necessarily slower in a strategic sense, because they never get tired or have to sleep or eat. They might not move as fast, but they can keep moving 24 hours per day.

A simple alternative; simply remove the ability for undead units to get the Musician promotion; they can't force march, and nature/terrain promotions - they can't get double moves in any terrain. Thus, mindless undead are forced to only ever be able to move 1 tile at a time, while living units can move further away with appropriate promotions.

Ahriman said:

Giving a fear effect to every single undead faction unit is really really boring, and detracts from the one that is really terrifying.

It also means that their entire army gets crushed by anything immune to fear.
A strength penalty works better.

I still think you're confusing tactical and strategic movement. While undead might be slow on a battlefield (though, are they really slower than dwarves?), they're not necessarily slower in a strategic sense, because they never get tired or have to sleep or eat. They might not move as fast, but they can keep moving 24 hours per day.

A simple alternative; simply remove the ability for undead units to get the Musician promotion; they can't force march, and nature/terrain promotions - they can't get double moves in any terrain. Thus, mindless undead are forced to only ever be able to move 1 tile at a time, while living units can move further away with appropriate promotions.

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Zombies and Skeletons move 4" and can't march so they only go 8" with the necro spell or if within 12" of the general or 6" of a Vampire. (Dwarfs move 3" but can march for 6" without being close to a hero or having a spell cast on them so Dwarfs are faster than Undead if the Undead are to far away from a Vamp.)

all Vampire Counts Units Cause Fear the truly terrifying ones cause Terror and Fear. all Vampire Counts units also are Immune to Phycology including Fear and Terror.

I think the best way to deal with movement is just say their is a necro with each unit (you can't see the Necro and it only has the spell to make Undead move as fast as living units, but it would also mean a Vampire can Bloodkiss a Undead unit changing the Necro in the unit into a Vampire. almost every Skeleton or Zombie unit on the tabletop when people build their army they tend to add a Necro or Vamp to it anyways. probably because the movement thing is a major problem in WH Vampire Counts armys.)

and ya if I play with Undead and the opponent plays mostly Fear Immune then I tend to lose badly. it's the drawback of playing Undead.

all Vampire Counts Units Cause Fear the truly terrifying ones cause Terror and Fear

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All vampire counts units cause fear in the tabletop game.
That cause fear (as I understand it) has an affect on morale checks.
There is no morale in a strategic level mod.
So our cause fear and terror abilities are different to those from the tabletop game, and don't need to be applied to every unit in the mod.
There are always some changes in a mod adaptation of another system; we want to keep the flavor (that undead are scary) which I think we do, but we don't have to keep all the mechanics identical.

Oh, and yeah, undead units will be immune to mind effects (charm, fear, terror, etc.)

and ya if I play with Undead and the opponent plays mostly Fear Immune then I tend to lose badly. it's the drawback of playing Undead.

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Which is really really bad game design (like the hates/fears mechanics).

about immune to fear dominance over Undead:

but that's where the Heros Vamps and Necros come in necros and Vamps replenish the weak undead and Heros and Vamps are stronger than the Heros of the other army so they can take on the Immune to Fears while the replenshed troops while loseing more than winning take on the straglers.

all Undead should have the Fear promotion only the core should have a -% beacause they are weaker so the speacal and rare are better than non-immune to fear by a little fear +% and = to Immune to Fear and the Heros/Charictors have Fear and are more powerful on top of it making them more alot more powerfull to not immune to fear and a little more powerfull than immune to fear.

basically against non Immune doing good but against Immune Core is dead rare and special are holding but outnumbered so die without help and Heros/charictors are doing most the work. (balancing it out)

against a army of all Fear Immune Undead are just dead but Fear Immune should be a speacial or rare trait meaning even tho all my units will lose some str against some units they won't against all except against other Undead civs but they also lose their str + for fear also so it balances against them.

in tabletop if fighting against the undead you want to bring as many fear immune as you can. for civ it is sorta a build your army against what civ strategy you know they are strong Calvary then have as many anti Calvary as you can in your stack. if they are strong Melee have as many anti Melee as you can. if they are Undead have as much fear Immune as you can. the all undead cause Fear and weak aginst fear Immunes is the Undead thing of corse the undead make more Undead quicker and there heros (I'm talking high charictors like Necromancers, Vampire Counts, Vampire Lords and Wight Kings) take on anything the core has problems with.

also every Wight that is:
Wight King
Grave Guard
Black Knights
should start with the FFH enchanted Blade promotion. but with weapon class equip able gear should make the promotion not count when equipped because you can't be using your weapon and another. to fix this might have to just start each of them with a Wight Blade (enchanted blade) gear that only Wights can equip and when they equip a different weapon they just Carrie or drop the Wight Blade. basically all the Wight Blade does is count as a magickal weapon and has Killing blow rule very useful when fighting Ethereal or other things that only can be damaged by magick. (could just take 1/2 or more of their str and call it magick damage instead. but they lose it when they equip other weapons tho other equip able weapons should be magickal themselves.)

about Ethereal. Spirit hosts are Ethereal so maybe they can have very low Str but only get effected by magick damage. to balance have them balance their total Str just to magick damage str of that lvl of unit.

Ethereal things only do magick damage and are only effected by magick damage. (yes this is another big drawback when you're talking about how things can get 100% magick resistance but I think you should only be able to get 80% magick resistance on a mod off WH and Ethereal things shouldn't be able to have only 20%.)

Spirit hosts are Ethereal so maybe they can have very low Str but only get effected by magick damage

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I thought about this before.
The problem is, if a unit is genuinely only affected by magic damage, that means they will win every combat against every unit that does not have any magic damage, even if that unit were strength 30. And most units (particularly those constructed the aI) will not have any magic damage, so such an "ethereal" unit would be far, far too strong; it would be able to destroy a regiment of knights or a steam tank or whatever without being touched.

I thought that instead the best way to implement this was just to make the unit immortal.

An alternative would be make make them ~strength 1 units with 90% immunity to physical damage. Thus, they would be effectively strength 10 vs physical units, but would have even odds or would lose to any units with magic damage.

Yet another way would be to make them immune to physical damage, but give them a damage cap (like BTS siege units) so that they can never fully destroy another unit.

Definitely before we implemented anything like this though, we would have to fix elemental resistances; currently they are bugged I think and don't work at all.

str 0 +5 Death 50% Immune to Physical damage sounds good because they can be broken in combat even tho they didn't take damage and as Undead if broken in combat they lose 1 helth per point they was broken by. at 5 str total they won't auto lose to all spells. (5 based on FFH fireball and meteor 1 fireball can't kill them by itself but 1 meteor can.)

maybe str 1 +4 Death if 0 str would cause the AI problems.

maybe str 1 +4 Death if 0 str would cause the AI problems.

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That seems reasonable. If we can get resistances working properly.

the only reason to limit Spirit Hosts in a mod that has magick resistances is so the AI doesn't kill itself by makeing to many. (the player should be able to understand they are specalist unitits that wouldn't make for a good core army.)

I wonder how it would be coded if you have a Vampire that casted Wind of Death that killed a unit therefore supposed to summon a Spirit Host if you already have the max Spirit Hosts you supposed to be able to have by national limit.

same with Summon Fell Bat because that should be a national limit on build able also.

maybe when Necromancy spells are fixed by only checking how many that individual spellcaster summoned it won't count what he summoned as part of the limit. I think with that fix if anyone summons anything even other civs not just Undead if that mage dies all his summons wherever they may be dies.
(this is the closest thing to the Undead slowly dieing when their general dies that I can think of yet be simple and not game breaking when your hero is lost.)

the only reason to limit Spirit Hosts in a mod that has magick resistances is so the AI doesn't kill itself by makeing to many. (the player should be able to understand they are specalist unitits that wouldn't make for a good core army.)

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The spirit host would have a national limit like every other highly specialised/elite unit in the mod, probably a fairly small one.

Spells are powerful enough as they are, its not worth adding extra abilities on top of them; its defnitely not worth creating affects from a given spell that only work for some factions.
And its not possible to have the same spell have different effects depending on the type of unit that casts it (though you could create a new spell that was accessible to different types of units).

I think with that fix if anyone summons anything even other civs not just Undead if that mage dies all his summons wherever they may be dies.

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Most summoned units aren't permanent, they expire automatically (mostly after 1 turn) so this isn't really necessary.

I would like to say everything I mention about Vampire Counts are just possibilitys for flavor and I would be happy if all I actually got was normal troops that had the look and names of undead units but had nothing else different. (That was what I was looking for when I stumbled across this mod.)

Hey, ideas are fine. I added your reinterpretation of the spirit host into the design document because I think it works better, so don't think you don't have any impact.

Unfortunately many of your ideas while interesting don't fit in terribly well into the civ engine or this mod's design, and can tend to be unnecessarily complex.

ya it is hard to show the flavor of Undead core being so weak and Undead uniques being strong.

but I have to say agin all Vampire counts units in WH cause fear or fear and terror and are immune to phsy.

core speacal and rare because they are truly Undead and are mostly braindead so charm doesn't work or terror.

Vampires because they are Vampires and they are so powerfull that mind tricks don't work on them.

Necromancers because they summon truly undead at any time and hang around Vampires (they are more charmed by the vampires than by any charm spell casted at them) and it's hard to Terrorfy someone that summons fear causing units and that lives with Terrifying things to begin with.

Zombie Dragon because it is a Dragon and Undead (all Dragons cause Terror)

(not sure if giants cause terror or just fear. they are huge and should at least cause fear.)

Ghouls by my definition are not true Undead but they cause fear because they hang around Undead and are canables they are immune because they are mostly insane.

Bats by my definition are not true undead but they cause fear because of how many there are and are immune to Phsy because they are animal inteligence (maybe not immune to Terror and they can be captured by recon with promotion.)

Fell Bats are by my definition deamon spawn so they cause fear and are immune to Phsy.

necromancers should cost about 2 times as much as another mage and master Necromancers 3 times as mutch as another archmage. (remember you're not only getting a spellcaster you are getting all the summons he can permenatly summon. and with Necromancy that's alot of units for 1 unit.) Vampires should also cost more but that was already a given since they are like junior heros to begin with.

I haven't seen wild wolves in this mod (tho I only played it once on 1.3) but if there is then Vampire Counts that catch a wolf should be able to upgrade it to a Dire Wolf.

There are wolves and dire wolves in the mod.

basically my ideas on Vampire Counts for this mod is make the limited units as unbalanced as they are in WH (also at higher cost) and take the balancing out on the unlimited units (also at lower cost).

also to balance you could limit the limited units more like:

max 8 Necromancers
max 3 Master Necromancers

about 80% of what others get sounds fair. (if I was the modder even tho the siege wasn't + I would still limit Vampire Counts to 4.)

(in WH Vampire Counts have no siege weapons but I do see the need in this mod for them to have a few. them being even more limited on them can be another thing that balances Necromancy spells and Vampires.)

basically my ideas on Vampire Counts for this mod is make the limited units as unbalanced as they are in WH (also at higher cost) and take the balancing out on the unlimited units (also at lower cost).

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This really tends to fundamentally fail in a civ mod, because unlike in tabletop you aren't forced to the same extent to rely on core units. If core units are too weak while specialist units are too strong, people will only ever bother building the specialist units. Making the weak core units have higher hammer costs only exacerbates this further.

We want mechanics that encourage undead to play like they do in the tabletop game; there are still large armies of weak undead to use as meatshields, with a few powerful characters (like vampires).

This is what the Eternal Army mechanic does. The units aren't so weak that they aren't worth building, and the rising from the dead means that even if you suffer heavy losses, you will still have them around on the battlefield.
And the time it takes for ressurected units to advance from the capital to the frontlines slows the rate of advance of an undead army.

I still feel that the vampire factions will play better with only vampire units as necromancer spellcasters. If they can get both necromancy casting vampires AND standalone necromancers, they will have too many spellcasters relative to other factions (they shouldn't have more mages than High Elves or Dark Elves, who have the 10/6/4 unit caps). Maybe just a tier1 necromancer (who can be upgraded to a nechrarch vampire).

1 tier Necro sounds good because if most the Vamp powers are turned into Necromancy spells then a Necro even if a Master Necro shouldn't be over chanaling 2 to show that they don't have accses to alot of the cool powers.

(I think it should go.)

Necromancer (Hedge Wizard UU limit) won't get actual Necromancy spells till they are researched.

Master Necromancer (Mage UU limit)

Vampire Count (Archmage UU limit)

then Vampire Lord (but may have to remove Master necro make Count Mage UU and Lord Archmage UU)

about core and non core I was saying:

core cost less than normal core.

non-core cost more than normal non-core.

my play style would be slowly make non-core while making a hoard of cannon fodder core. for play you still want alot of cover for your good units because it will be hader to replace them so you will use the weak but cheap core to soften up what you're attacking because after the attack you don't want your good unit to be to wounded and a easy target for counter attack. (make the non-core so costly you really feel it when you lose a Count or Lord.)