Kislev army list

I'd just go with Priests of Ursun, and gift them with magical resistance and resistance to a stack they are in, because they must be good to routinely beat chaos back with only the Tsarina as a mage (or give them the option of training up Kislevite mages, since all Kislevite children with magical ability are taken immediately to the Empire before the the Demons get to them and cause problems.. ie massive craters, they often come back home to join the fight).
 
Masada, thanks for the feedback. Changed some stuff in the thread.
When you get a chance, maybe you can add something to some of the other design threads:

Estalia/Tilea/Arabay/Cathay/Nippon/Skaven
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290972

Empire/Brettonnia/Greenskins/Wood elves/chaos
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=292016

Dwarves
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=291330

Sylvania/Lamia
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=291659

Khemri.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293441

Disagree on Boyar Regiment Knight: Replace with Winged Lancers (they are Knights, not light cavalry)

Boyars are knights, basically; they're lords with the best in equipment and the heaviest armor (drawn from both history and armybooks). Or are you saying that winged lancers are knights?

Kislevite armies do not use bows on foot
I felt it weird giving kislev powerful foot archers, but people insisted that they have good offensive archers. I don't know the canon well-enough either way.

A note on Kislevite magic, they don’t have any, the only magic caster aside from Imperial Wizards visiting is the Tsarina herself (and she is powerful enough to call up a storm which can freeze a whole army to death if she gets annoyed, she is also the only ice mage I know of).

This is drawn from the armylists in some of the files I linked to, and interest/balance reasons. They get access only to ice and some beast magic, both of which are fairly thematic.

Ursun Priests should be the stand in for casters
There are designs for priests/religious UUs in the religion thread.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290986&page=3
 
perhaps then it would be better to make the kislev salvation priest uus like a mage replacement with some stronger than average priest spells and no ice magic as such. then give both leaders the magic resistance trait (making the tzarina the MOST magical leader in the mod, arcane summoning AND magic resistance WOW, although then her other traits would be useless... may need to rethink that then)
 
Winged Lancers are Knights, they are slightly lighter than most Old World heavy cavalry, but they are directly comparable to most Elven heavy cavarly and most non-old world stuff.

The reasons why they don't have mages are as follows:

Kislevites are hate magic,
They kill any children who have the gift if they can't find an Imperial Battlemage to hand them over to (they are all sent to the Empire to train),
Because being that far North makes anyone not trained liable to possessed by a demon or just to go kaboom,
Magic is also chaotic by nature and the Kislevites will not be told or believe anything different they might appreciate Imperial Battlemages (and they're own returning Mage-Kin) but they never trust them.

I would just beef up the Priests of Ursun and give them Priests of Taal as well since they have both (and lots of both). And the Tsarina is one of the most powerful and unique spellcasters in the Old World (there is only 1 icemage).
 
I'd much rather just give them ice mages and beast shamans like currently implemented. These are taken from the armylists from the GW site linked in the first post. Its fun, its balanced, and its in flavor.
 
yeh but ahriman remember that that army list is fan made, what masada is talking about is canon. (hes an avid kislev/empire nutter)

i would also love ice magic, but do you not agree that powerful priest replacement is more differentiating than just another breed of magic?
 
(I'm still in mourning over GW killing of Kislev as a proper army...) and i've washed my hands of the Estalia, Tilea, Araby, Cathay, and Nippon I don't have the daring to go non-canon :p
 
they might appreciate Imperial Battlemages (and they're own returning Mage-Kin)

So... they do in fact have returning mage-kin who they appreciate and use, even if they don't *like* them? Its fine for Kislev magic units to be feared and hated by the populace in general (I'll wager the Sylvanian magic units are also feared and hated by the populace in general.... and so are imperial witch-hunters) but that doesn't mean they won't use them.

i would also love ice magic, but do you not agree that powerful priest replacement is more differentiating than just another breed of magic?

Eh.... not really. In particular, Kislev is going to be lame faction without as good tech as the Empire AND without any magic. What is it they have that is extra, if they can't research magic techs? Dwarves are magicless, but will get powerful gromrilarmor and high-tech units. Every other faction in this game gets magic. Kislev will be lame without any, and needs the techs to spend beakers on.

And Kislev doesnt' seem flavorwise to be a particularly religious tech, so it would feel weird for them to have better religious units than the Empire or Estalia.

But we could go that way. You could remove the Master of Ice tech, give a handful of ice spells to the Tzarina hero, and maybe create a new religious tech that gives them some high priest-type unit that has beast magic. Basically, just take the shaman unit I suggested and rename it an Ursun high priest. That way works well, because they still have to research up to lore of beasts to be able to get the promotions.
 
Why don't you allow the building of the tzarina as an extremely powerful Hero mage unit (things like autokill targeted spells, gift invisibility, maybe terraforming)? That way, they still don't have "true" mages, but there is a reason to play as the Kislev. Then, you could either get rid of mages/priests, or even better, keep them but weaken them a lot (leave them with buffing spells only, maybe?). That way, the uniqueness of the Kislev is that they have one megamage supported by weak mages hired from outside their lands and weakly magical priests. Even better, give the weak Kislev mages Hidden Nationality...
 
The Tzarina is just another hero, she shouldn't be radically more powerful than the heroes of other factions. It would be pretty ridiculous to see the Tzarina tossing around Malekith or Finubar like twigs.

Autokilling spells are also going to be far too strong, particularly if they can effect heroes and high level units that you've spent ages developing.
 
Why don't you allow the building of the tzarina as an extremely powerful Hero mage unit

you read my mind ;)

supported by weak mages hired from outside their lands and weakly magical priests

:hmm: mercenary wizards? not too sure.

EDIT:

The Tzarina is just another hero, she shouldn't be radically more powerful than the heroes of other factions.

yep, she will be balanced with the others.
 
Couple of things, one Mages don't last up North, Chaos gets to them, the Kislevites are the ones who face Chaos again and again, Erengrad has been levelled about a half dozen times, Kislev has had chaos at its gates about half a dozen times since foundation (and Kislev is a good thousand and a half years younger than the Empire), Praag has been levelled completely and warped with Chaos magic twice for fun (so bad that bodies stuck out of the magically warped walls, and not a single defender got out) not to mention the constant magically inspired horrors that waltz around Kislev all the time.

Yes they fear and loathe magic intensely and kill those who they can't give over to Imperial Battlemages, but they are not bloody stupid enough to commit suicide by turning away help. Whenever Kislev is in trouble the Dwarves send help, not because they like them all that much (they are fond of the Kislevites because they can drink), but because if Kislev fell the Dwarves up North would be facing Chaos every day, at the moment they face them over second day. Likewise the Imperial Schools send Mages, but only for short times, because they have a habit of being demonically possessed etc apparently they don’t last more than a month or two out by the border which is right on troll country, and you can see the Chaos wastes from there (big evil looking clouds etc).

So in short, they hate Chaos, they hate magic because it's from chaos, but they are not stupid. There was a joke in an old Kislevite book about what happened to mages who went up there for to long, the Kislevites killed them because they turned to the other side, apparently being that far North makes it almost impossible to control oneself, and there are constant little niggling voices in your head (demons). So yes they might find mages helpful, but there are never enough of them and with insanity, demons speaking into your head and all sorts of fun just around the corner if one uses even an iota of power its isn’t worth the trouble.

Why do you think Imperial armies like to fight only as far north as Kislev? Heck Techlis complained about being that far north and he was only at the gates of Kislev.


Dwarves work fine without magic, so why can't a slightly tweaked Kislev work without it?
 
so far im liking the idea of having:

-Magic resistance trait,
-Merenary wizards with the mercenary tech (merc wiz's should be cheap, get random spell promos, and perhaps have a turn duration)
-pretty decent Ulric and Taal priest UUs
-strong defender units, speedy heavy cavalry, relatively mobile army.
-steal the tundra/snow affinity effect from the Illians in FfH (+2 food from snow)
-good defencive building UBs
-relatively powerful archmage hero with a unique range of Ice spells (maybe 3 or 4 strong ice spells)
-strong affinity with bears
 
Couple of things, one Mages don't last up North, Chaos gets to them

That's probably true for college-trained Winds-of-magic users, which is why rather than college/Winds mages Kislev was to get elementalists, like those from araby, cathay, nippon and ind. I assumed that this magic worked in an entirely different way, and was less vulnerable to succumbing to chaos (I had though that chaos was somehow intrinsicly linked to the winds of magic).

Dwarves work fine without magic, so why can't a slightly tweaked Kislev work without it?

Because dwarves get other stuff; good high-tech units, gunpowder units and excellent armor and runemagic.

Kislev can work fine without magic, but they need something else, both to have something to research and to have something powerful. As it stands if you take out magic, their only high-end units are beastmasters, the war wagon, and weakened knights.
 
The Tsarina is very powerful, she managed to whip up a storm big enough to stop the armies of Chaos for two weeks ;)

The Winds of Magic are just what blows down from the Wastes they are Chaotic, all mages do is purify them enough so they don't have there brains blown out the back of their skulls. Elemental magic is exactly the same, if not the same, canon made no distinction between them if anything Elemental Magic is derived from the winds but by another vector, both pose exactly the same problems. Don't forget Imperial Battlemages didn't exist before Magnus the Pious asked Techlis to train him some to help in the wars against Chaos (the Empire is 8000 odd years old, and Magnus was only around 1500 years or so ago, I have the dates written down somewhere, before Magnus mages were massacared because they posed such a large threat even in the comparitively un-chaotic Empire).

I'll get to thinking, it wouldnt be to hard to give Kislev a magic resistance (they used to ages upon ages ago from memory), and a few other choice mechanics.
 
-Magic resistance trait,

I don't think this really makes sense... they're still just normal humans. It makes sense for dwarves, but not so much for just nomadic humans. You don't have to like or believe in magic for it to affect you. A fireball still burns you.

-Merenary wizards with the mercenary tech (merc wiz's should be cheap, get random spell promos, and perhaps have a turn duration)

Sure, though you should probably also give these units to Tilea (king of mercs) and they should probably have another tech requirement - maybe mercenary contracts and winds of magic, or mercenary contracts and literacy or education. Have them start with 2 random level 1 spell promotions (from the elemental or wind magics) and channeling 1.

-pretty decent Ulric and Taal priest UUs

Sure. Why don't you give them some beast and/or life magic spells?

-strong defender units, speedy heavy cavalry, relatively mobile army.

I think these are mostly fine in the existing army list. You could give one of their leaders the Horselord trait if you like.
-steal the tundra/snow affinity effect from the Illians in FfH (+2 food from snow)

I think Illian snow is going to be like hell terrain in some sense. Snow != tundra or ice (current terrain types). Besides, not even Kislev can really get any food in these areas.
You could give them +1 food from tundra pretty harmlessly, which would capture the flavor of what you're after.

-good defencive building UBs

Really? This feels out of flavor; slavic russians in wooden forts hardly have better defenses than dwarves or the empire building mighty stone fortresses.
You could give them a cheap palisade building which gave bonus defenses.
Defenses are still thoroughly messed up in this mod; many defensive buildings just don't work atm. Its unclear exactly how its supposed to work, but I think it should function like FFH, where all defensive buildings stack and they all stack with cultural defences, rather than in vanilla civ where defenses are pretty useless because they don't stack with cultural defense (it only takes whichever id higher).

-relatively powerful archmage hero with a unique range of Ice spells (maybe 3 or 4 strong ice spells)

Sure.

-strong affinity with bears

Implemented how? Thats part of why I like a beast-magicy shaman unit with some of the bear-oriented spells.

Remember that you can still use the existing spells and techs without necessarily thinking of them as still being winds magic in the same sense as mages.
So you could take away hedgewizards and such, but allow them to research winds of magic and lore of beasts tech in order to be able to build some units and get beast spells. You could have a priest unit that requires Lore of Beasts tech and priesthood tech, that can cast some beasty spells. Call it a priest for fluff purposes, even if it uses the same promotions in theory as a mage.

Elemental magic is exactly the same, if not the same, canon made no distinction between them

Ok. But we can still use the existing techs and spell promotions to replicate the idea of a priest with supernatural beast/nature powers, even if these aren't actually magic in the same sense as used by other factions.
 
After reading the new posts, I still think merc (i.e. Hidden Nationality) mages would be cool - but give them Crazed while you're at it. Assuming you guys don't allow the Kislev access to Loyalty (or the Warhammer equivalent), that means every Kislev mage is a time bomb waiting to happen. That way, you could even give Kislev mages some random promotions on creation (like Mobius Witches from FFH), showing that they are trained already - and then just disallow the Kislev access to magic techs at all, just let them get Mages at Mercenary Contracts.
 
Its interesting, but personally I hate the FFH-style crazed promotions. Having units you have invested resources and time in go barbarian "just because" isn't much fun.

I wouldn't make them hidden nationality. They're just going to get insta-killed that way by whoever you have open borders with, and they won't be protected by other units.
 
I guess you're right about the Hidden Nationality part, it's not really applicable.

As for being Crazed, it would do some things that seem very lore-appropriate: it would make the Kislev eschew Mages unless they're actively at war and it would make the Kislev not worry too much about preserving their Mage's lives (except for the Hero chick). Promotions are free, so there's no time investment. I'd make them relatively cheap, but I'd apply the mechanic that the pony mercs have and charge 1 Gold per turn per Mage - so it's a low resource cost, but a long-term expense if you were trying to save up a bunch of Mages.

Thus, the Kislev would have two general alternatives when it comes to magic (plus, of couse, the Hero lady): high-risk, but relatively powerful, foreign Mages and dependable, but weaker, local Priests.
 
Sounds pretty workable. I like it. Make the mages fairly cheap in hammer costs and leave them only at channeling 1 and level 1 spells.

*edit*
First post updated.
 
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