Fall Further - The Original Thread

[NikNaks]

Ah, so the same body as the Follower, with a new head. Gotcha.

 

[Slvynn]

Ah, so the same body as the Follower, with a new head. Gotcha.

well , not same body....... the follower is different....

The unit should look pretty like this full body illustration. May be same body but different texture. And - very important - staff should be there always.... (current follower body have staff at occasions as i know

As said, Kadh unit should have same look as that full body illustration color sketch.

 

[NikNaks]

Can you recommend any animations that would make him always hold the staff? Do you want him to hit his enemies with it?

 

[Slvynn]

Can you recommend any animations that would make him always hold the staff? Do you want him to hit his enemies with it?

He should point it on enemies.. no physical attack, just pointing and chanting like prohet does when do some action....

 

[NikNaks]

Hm, I'm not sure if there's an animation that does that...
Maybe I could remove the gunblast from an infantry unit and use that...

 

[Vehem]

Hm, I'm not sure if there's an animation that does that...
Maybe I could remove the gunblast from an infantry unit and use that...

I think he meant just the Great Prophet animations - which whilst lacking combat anims, do work well enough for most of the higher-mage units in the game already.

Failing that, the Chinese Spearman would also work well - it's the same as the one used for the Monks already.

 

[Slvynn]

I got new comp , installed Corel Painter X and will start LH - im off from unitmaking - i leave it to you both , so far list is:

Worker
Warrior
Settler
^ those can be standard ones though recolored middleeast worker from bts works well

Champion - based on ottoman swordsman model from VD

Psion (Vehem) recoloring Nullstone Golem
Kadh, Sifrii (evil djinn upgrade, ex-psion art) (NiksNaks)
few more plannar creatures according Vehem's decision

 

[Slvynn]

Ok some little update - i started my probing testing strokes in Painter - i'll be using head art and will be basing on it for Kadh LH.
It will include torso and staff though and some part of portal in background.

 

[Vehem]

Kahd just made his first proper grab for power. I decided that for the first test game he'd be rushing for Strength of Will and choosing to serve Mammon - it definitely worked

Started off sandwiched between Daracaat and Hannah, though Daracaat had declared war on Hannah before Turn 100 and I jumped in to grab an outlying city of hers near my border. Daracaat got stalemated by Hannah's capital (Combat5 Archers on a hill, with walls) and that war bumbled on for another 100 turns or so.

Meanwhile I built up the "summoning" infrastructure - Libraries, Meditation Halls, Mage Guilds, The Great Library... and researched as quickly as I could toward Strength of Will. Around turn 250, Daracaat decided he was going to attack me instead of Hannah (my cities were only really defended by Gnoslings, Thades and Warriors). Unluckily for him I'd recently completed the Strength of Will research and switched to Mammon worship. I had enough infrastructure to support 2 Psions (which arrived within about 12 turns of each other), and had another 2 Arch-mage candidates that also took Mind3. The SoD (Stack of Domination) intercepted Daracaats attack force and stole all the Brutes. The Brutes then fought off his Huntsmen, and the stack marched on toward his border cities.

Dominating the defenders is excellent fun, though after taking one city, both my Psions lost their ability to cast Domination (resisted) on the second. I chose to disband them and hoped for a quick return of fresh ones, but luck wasn't with me there and it took about 25 turns to get one back. By the time I'd finished the Archos off, the second still hadn't returned. The remaining ArchMagi and their attendant Brute horde were sufficient to roll over the rest of Daracaat's cities - one of the ArchMagi retired to rule his capital after losing Domination. The attack was much slower for the period where I only had one Domination caster left, but the dozen or so dominated units were (just) enough to blitz the cities that were left.

===

Short version - aggressively dominating with Mammon-Kahdi is a viable and fun tactic, especially against a warmonger like Daracaat

===

Later on I tried a similar tactic against Hannah, but the Psions were killed very early on (they don't hide like Arcane units, so they quite often find their way to the top of the defender's list - design choice) and then the rest of the stack was defeated by her own stack of doom. Kahd himself was a little disappointing, as he failed his very first domination attempt and had to wait a while to get the ability back. That was more poor luck than an issue with his design however. In most circumstances an Arch-mage Hero with Mind1-3 from the start is going to be a very useful thing to own.

===

I've also come to the conclusion that the Kahdi don't really need Champions at all, so they're being cut - which makes them rely upon their gate creatures in the early game, and the path-specific strengths in the later game. For Oghma followers, that basically means using the Gate Creatues and making sure their affinity is sufficient to keep them as strong as the opponent's troops. Their version of Kahd starts with Metamagic3 and a random selection of spheres/levels from the other "good" spheres.

The path specific strengths are;

• Oghma-Kahdi have a 50% bonus to the maximum number of creatures supported and generate them three times as quickly as Mammon-Kahdi
• For Mammon-Kahdi, the main part of your "physical armies" is likely to be dominated troops from your enemies - only Mammon-Kahdi ever get Psions and their version of Kahd also starts with Mind3

 

[Wyrmhero]

The SoD (Stack of Domination)

Try that with liches as well. 10 Dominations/turn

 

[Slvynn]

mmm mammon path kadh making death node and make all those advisors liches for even more power ! sounds nasty and fits very well..

awesome report Vehem !!

did you added all tower mechanics, and are paths balanced? there were also ideas to put for mamon path +1 happy per mind mana in capital (this also makes him God King civic fitting well), and upgrade version of djinns, while for oghma tower replacement.
For Oghma path - There shld me more bonus as well - may be some oghma UB that boosts resereach? (Tower of Insight - + 1 beaker per Sage in city +10% resereach, not wonder, hi hammer cost)

Also did you implemented starting resereach civ bonus? Did you made Ambitious trait?

Did you made affinity for Kadh? Seems to be most balanced to give him affinity in both cases.

About Kadh losing domination :
The odss of resisting spell is based on caster and target levels comparsion. Caster level compared to target level for domination sucess odds - and its same mechanics (may be bit modified) as str to str odds. Player just never should try to dominate with "fresh" Kadh, and need to give him to grow abit - after lvl 7-8 you can go and domininate almost anyone at 99.99%.

 

[Vehem]

mmm mammon path kadh making death node and make all those advisors liches for even more power ! sounds nasty and fits very well..

awesome report Vehem !!

did you added all tower mechanics, and are paths balanced? there were also ideas to put for mamon path +1 happy per mind mana in capital (this also makes him God King civic fitting well), and upgrade version of djinns, while for oghma tower replacement.
For Oghma path - There shld me more bonus as well - may be some oghma UB that boosts resereach? (Tower of Insight - + 1 beaker per Sage in city +10% resereach, not wonder, hi hammer cost)

Also did you implemented starting resereach civ bonus? Did you made Ambitious trait?

Did you made affinity for Kadh? Seems to be most balanced to give him affinity in both cases.

Ambitious trait is done - "Reduced Level Requirements for Arcane units (Level 3 for Mages, 5 for Arch-Mages), Grants "Ambition" promotion to Arcane units (25% extra experience from combat).

Most of the other ideas didn't make the cut. The Oghma side does still need something to make it feel a more viable option, but that's still to be decided upon. It actually is a decent choice when you take everything into account - it just doesn't *look* as good by comparison (Psions look very good afterall).

 

[Slvynn]

yeah advisors + liches = 8 dominations
psions = 2 dominations
kadh = 4 dominations per turn (twincast, staff (enchantment from palace), mind 3 from build - very easy to get)
============
14 dominations per turn - SoD Insane edition V 1.0


Oghma should have something to balance for sure... those unique buidlings with boosting resereach + towr easy to accomplish + some another stuff.

no matter that advistors have their own rich list of starting promos so they ver yflexble and can use alot of opther usefull spells w/o having proper nodes.

About ambitious - seems not enough , race have 1 hero and no religion ..... ambitious should add + resereach (like barbarian trait substracts)

 

[Wyrmhero]

advisors + liches = 8 dominations
psions = 2 dominations
kadh = 4 dominations per turn (twincast, staff (enchantment from palace),

Twincast doesn't cast spells twice: It summons twice the number of units by summoning spells.

 

[Slvynn]

Twincast doesn't cast spells twice: It summons twice the number of units by summoning spells.

yeah but then its good for Oghma Kadh - mass node spam for affinity will make good with djinns (need alot of nodes though)

so we are at 12 dominations, but thats already good.

 

[xienwolf]

Vehem: I hereby order you to go use my new MODCOMP and work miraculous wonders with it!




Seriously though, I held back from saying anything about my current project since I wasn't sure if it would work or not, but you will most certainly find it to be the perfect fit for the Kahdi. Now you can very easily make them VERY different depending on the direction that the player follows by changing out all of the Unique Units for the Civ based on that choice.

 

[Vehem]

Vehem: I hereby order you to go use my new MODCOMP and work miraculous wonders with it!




Seriously though, I held back from saying anything about my current project since I wasn't sure if it would work or not, but you will most certainly find it to be the perfect fit for the Kahdi. Now you can very easily make them VERY different depending on the direction that the player follows by changing out all of the Unique Units for the Civ based on that choice.

Looks like some very nice work - if it were the start of the project I'd certainly be able to find a use for it... As it stands, everything works pretty well already. Just tidying up a few minor issues (for example - when you research "Strength of Will" you get a popup with flavour text explaining the realization that Kahd has made - that currently gets sent to all players in multiplayer) and waiting on the leaderhead art from Slyvnn.

If I revisit the way they work however, it does look like something that could come in very handy.

==

In the meantime, I'm actually implementing the first part of the "Civ-specific citysets". What this means is that a Dwarven city will look very different to an Orc city, and so on. The art I'm using currently comes from Dragonia II and was made by Woodelf, Winddelay and Darque.

In the "first part", the cities will be "All-Era", meaning that they don't change style for changed religion. The civ-style overrules the religion-style. The improvements may still change (haven't decided whether to prevent that or not yet), but the buildings themselves will remain the same.

In the "second part" (which won't be for the 030 release - I doubt there'll be time before then), I intend to adapt each city-artstyle to reflect the religions as well. As such, you'd have a "Dwarven-Veil" city or a "Dwarven-Runes" city. The religion versions will probably be more subtle than the current religion-building changes, but hopefully still easily distinguishable.

===

EDIT: Hyborem presiding over Dis
EDIT2: Non-human City sets - group shot

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

brilliant! cant wait for those civ specific cities! thats one thing thats always bugged me about FfH

 

[Vehem]

Lanun "Coastal-set" - based on "Mediterranean". Palace texture has been redone to match the cityset.

 

[TheJopa]

Nice city art. I'd suggest that you use some palms from Nochtli city and add them to Lanun - they are supposed to be pirates-of-the-Caribbean like, I think.