Some suggestions/bugs/whatever-comes-to-my-mind for warhammer

[Nelia Hawk]

hi everyone,
i just played a round with this mod and wrote down some stuff that might need some work on... (maybe not)

first i want to say that the idea to make a warhammer fantasy mod is great. i always wanted a good warhammer fantasy game and this mod could be what i was searching for. atleast this mod comes close enough. i didnt like that "real" warhammer fantasy game that once came out.

i played a game with the settings below shown in an attachment as darkelf.
atleast up untill turn 168... then i took a look at the worldmap... and wow its great... and big... and i thought that it will take forever to finish this game... so i took a break and am writeing this now...


so heres the list:


1)
i started the game with the german language settings and no text appeard. changed it to english and it worked.
i read here in the forums that theres no work on other languages atm and just english avaiable atm.
but as suggestion:
cant you make the english text avaiable even if the language setting is not english?
like i have it on french or german and it shows the english text and not no text atall.
i guess you just would have to copy the english text files and rename them from i.e. englishtext.dat to germantext.dat so even if the settings are german it shows the english text. (i think its better so see english text then no text atall. already feared that its a bug or some other things went wrong.)


2)
leaders:
somehow, morathi is a raider (who i think normally acts behind the screens) and malekith not?
maybe change it that malekith doesnt have the arcane trait (i think morathi is way more skilled in magic then him) but has the raider traid too.

and maybe a 3rd leader as helebron would be nice?
maybe with a bonus to khainite units? (combat 1, for executioners, witchelves, assasins)
raider and... hmm... what could she get too....
maybe something like... a bonus if you sacrifice a slave in your towns... i.e. +50% slave ..... or just +25% slave and +25% faster slave improvement building.... as lore it could be said the slaves fear her kainites that she leads cruelty or somethign like that....


3)
i was quite surprised as i saw that i could build swordsman... atleast this is not possible in the tabletop game. and i thought that there should have been the raiders, but i later saw in the civelopedia that raiders are in too but avaiable later.
i guess i have to stop thinking too hard with the armybooks of the tabletop game. so everything is ok...
but, why do swordsman get a firststrike? i guess firststrike is more for spears,archers (and tabletop firstrike units), i guess swordsman should more get a bonus because they have a shield. like 10% chance to ignore enemy firststrike... or a bonus against archers 10%.


4)
i had an event that swawns greenskins near me... but i couldnt see them... i think i even moved a unit on that field... i first thought its a bug and they didnt appear... but one turn later they "suddenly" appeared... i think they were hidden somehow so i think theres no problem there.... gonna check it if it should happen again.


5)
somehow it looks a bit weird when spearman are fortifying... holding the spear like a staff before their chest... i think some animation to soint the spear to the outside would be more fitting... like some hedgehog formation thing...


6)
there need to be more options to "use" slaves...
there was another topic where someone suggested these slave pit buildings with 3 upgrade versions... doesnt sound that bad... but maybe slaves could be used for other stuff too.
like...

-sacrefice them for a +1 bonus for 10 turns.... (ok i guess that slave pit building would to that...)

-maybe sell them... for 10-30 gold... in towns

-or eat them if you play as ork or goblins or lizardman (?) like +1 food for the town.
ok i guess there could be a building like the slave pit too for orcs... like ... a butchers house? with 3 upgrades... (upgrades are if you use a slave on that city again like great leaders are building buildings)
goblin knifer +1 and +1
ork butcher +2 and +2
warlords cook +3 and +3
eat could be used after combat like the "canibalism promotion" to heal units... maybe heals 25% or 50% of the stack?

-or fight them... as an option for units if slaves are in the stack... +1-3 exp and some 10-50% dammage to the unit...

-free them... for all the good races like empire... maybe a bonus to diplomatic? like that minigame in FFH2
maybe 0,5 point diplo bonus per freed slave for 10-20 turns? something like that?


7)
archers should be able to kill units with ranged attacks... not just wound them... but i guess the siege mechanic is used there....
(hmm never tryed if archers just dammage one unit or a whole stack... but i guess it could be just one unit...)

atleast i found it quite weird as i shot ranged with one archer unit on these spawning greenskins dammageing them (what was it -10%?) and the next archer unit shot all their arrows at them and didnt kill one damn goblin? (did no dammage) atleast let them dammage the enemy for another -10%.... so that it is not limited to the maximum lifedammage archers can deal (just down to 90%) but instead let them deal maximum 10% dammage of the enemy stack or 10% of the archers as dammage.

i guess ranged combat would be best if the archers could somehow make a combat just with firststrikes. so the combat ends after both sides used their firststrikes.
so an archer with 2 firststrikes against an archer with 1 could dammage the other 2 times and the other once.. and then the fight ends... (like no melee combat after the arrows like it is when you move your unit on the enemy one)

there could be the problem of "nonranged units with firststrike" doing firststrikes in ranged combat.
maybe some promotion for all ranged units could be used there... (some "ranged attack" promotion that cant be "gained" for i.e. spearman) this promotion would allow to use the units firststrikes in ranged combat.
so two archers fighting eachother can shot their arrows (they have the promotion)
but spearman would have 0 firststrikes in an ranged combat.
so archers with more firststrikes can fire more volleys of arrows... in ranged combat.
no idea if this is possible.
even cannons yould fire back then...
(maybe cannons cant use their firststrikes in close combat? (never seen a cannon in the mod...) like the tabletop "stand and shoot" ability... cannons dont have it... archers do)

with this even dragons could use their "breath weapon" in ranged combat. (never seen a dragon... just saw a black darkelf dragon in the civelopedia...)
so this dragon could use maybe this +5 death dammage as ranged attack dammage? (atleast to use the 19 of the dragon would be too much for ranged attack...the 19 is more brute strengh i guess... so these extra +5 death could be used as breath weapon)
maybe even add a "breath weapon" promotion to monsters (dragons, hydra) that allow ranged attacks with the range 1 field (just next to the unit) with the strengh of that bonus dammage (+5death at that dragon... maybe +3fire at a hydra or whatever...)


8)
slave horde unit.
it might be good to add a slave horde unit to the game?...
atleast with all the slavery the darkelves do they can get quite alot slaves... and no move them around could be troubblesome (maybe i am just too lazy haha, atleast theres the group function already in the game... so this is just an suggestion)

how to get this unit:
2 slaves are on the same field.
click "create slave horde" button on one slave.
this slave is removed and added to the other one...
so you could add all your slaves to one unit ... a slave horde...

it could be used with promotions.
both slaves get removed and a slave horde unit spawns with the promotion "2 slaves"
if another gets added it gets the "3 slaves" promotion... etc.... maybe up to "10 slaves"

on the other hand... this might mess up alot... like the experience for each slave.... if they get removed and recreated ...etc... no idea if the game can "memory" removed unit experiences (but then... slaves cant get exp or?)

so maybe some "slavery master" unit could be added...
(all slaves should reduce from 2 to 1... they dont want to do anything... and its difficult to move them around.... (workers are ok with move 2))

this "slavery master" could be like this:
2
2 (foot) or 3 (horses...maybe its like some cages moved around by horses. imagine circus animal cages.... things...)
cargo 5 (just slaves)
bonus:
50% chance to get 2x slaves when capturing a worker or settler
maybe a 50% bonus against worker and settler. so the AI uses these against them to get 2x slaves... (no idea if it can use them properly... but i read somewhere that the AI uses units against others if they have some bonus against these... no idea if this could work...) (i guess worker and settlers need to be an own unittype then? like archer, beast, animal... maybe like support? empire developement unit? something...)


uhh... where was i? 9)
Dark Covenant:
why does it have the requirement "palace"? (ok maybe because other buldings like this use it too)
somehow it doesnt make sense (atleast with darkelves). if i remember correctly each town (tower) was more or less dedicated to something. (dont remember what town name was dedicated to what)
tower1= capital
tower2= base of the mages
tower3= base of the khainites
tower4= base of tamed monsters
tower5= base of slaves
tower6= base of sea raiders

something like that....
so it would just make sense if you could place your "mage base tower" to another town and dont HAVE to build it at the palace. (maybe even require another town... that it cant be build at the palace...)
i guess it was called national wonders? where every town can just have 2 from (atleast in FFH2 i think it was like that...)
so maybe make them national wonders like:
-palace
-dark covenant (mages)
-bestial masters (some building that gives bonus to hydra, harpys, dragons, reptiles(?))
-temple of khaine (something with bonus to khainite units.)
-......

so (atleast with darkelves) you have to specialize each city. ok it would require that you have like 8 citys to get each building done... but i guess it would fit in the lore of the darkelves like this. (they did it too).


10)
fizzeling magic...
i guess something like the miscast table in the tabletop will be added later? i think nothing like that is in the mod atm?
i like that you added this fizzeling.... and some nice bad effects later could be fun.
like: from getting a higher mage promotion (good) to "worst case" (err.. bad... realy bad... so bad you cant even think of it...)


11)
some magic doesnt make sense...
as you see in the attachments i havent played that far ... and i just could use the lowest mages (adepts)...
but:
beast magic to darkelves? i guess you added that because they can "tame beasts" somehow...
maybe you could go a bit more into the tabletop here?
with darkelves: dark, death, shadow, fire, metal spells
ok all 5 would be a bit much i guess... and i think the magic area is not final and will get soem more changes later.

i was quite surprised to spawn a doombolt... but its ok the way it is i guess... atleast the AI need to use it somehow too.
maybe add some 10% chance for enemy units to get some "chilled" promotion with the chillwind spell... thats a bit more like the tabletop... maybe -1 and no firststrikes avaiable if chilled? (+ that 10% damage that is in the spell)

12)
doombolt (or magic in general):
maybe if the doombolt gets exp (i guess through killing an enemy unit) this exp gets transfered to the caster before the doombolt vanishes.
so a method for casters to get exp "through their way of combat".

might be inbalanceing in some way?... dont know...
atleast i guess if every sucessful cast gains +1exp it might be inbalanced? because of spells you "just cast" every turn...
but it might be balanced if the "get exp over time" gets reduced (not removed completely, atleast they study over time. maybe even a bonus if they stay in the town? its easyer to study in town then outside) and with the bad magic fizzle effects it could be risky to "just cast a spell every turn to get your exp up"... some mages might survive this (and be great casters then) .... others might explode after some turns of chaneling magic and miscasting.


13)
2 ways of playing:

1st: the default warhammer "rules",
that would be like you make it atm. the evil cant be the good ones... etc... limits to religion. etc.

2nd: the free play,
its more like FFH2... you can play your race liek you want to. if you want to play some empire summoning the chaosgods... do it.
if the darkelves want to pray to sigma... fine.
this would be without "rules set in stone" like i have read it somewhere in a topic. where you can do what you want.
maybe as option in the gamecreation screen.

dont know if this causes a heavy mess if i.e. empire prays to chaos or darkelves are allowed to pray to sigmar...
atleast something liek this works in FFH2..


14)
fear and terror...
ya i know you work on it...
atleast i would like it if its somehow like it its in the tabletop game.
maybe i should read that other topic again....if i can find it again...
i had some ideas for this...but lost them atm...


15)
spells casting.
maybe there should be some requirement for casting... like: you cant cast with 0 movement, or you use 1 movement while casting.
i dont realy remember why i wrote this down.... maybe it would confuse the AI....
maybe i got that thought as i played FFH2 and could cast haste with 0 to get +1 ... move a field... and cast it again with another mage....maybe it was something like that... that i didnt like somehow... i dunno...
or that you cant run around and concentrate on casting.... no idea... maybe i remember it later why i wrote this down.


16)
warpgates:
grr... should have made this topic as i had this in my mind too...
i was reading some other topics about the chaos and this "win the game" if you build some chaos gate... and chaos demons... spawning...
i guess i will read that topic again too later to get back what ideas i had for this...

atleast i think all 4 gods of chaos should be in the game!
not "just" the bloodthirster.
if you want to pray primary (more then 2/3 are temples of nurgle? havent played chaos-ish, so i dont know how this works)to the nurgle god then you should be able to create mostly nurgle demos and summon the nurgle greater demon.

addon for slaves... "throw them in a nurgle warpgate" or "sacrefice for nurgle god"... with some bonus to nurgle or 10% chance to get a nurgle lesser-demon...
hmm an idea: if you capture a hero of i.e. the empire, some "sigmar lord" hero and throw them in a warpgate you could summon a greater demon. or something like this.

17)
babarians:
ok i had "Rageing babarians" turned on in my game... and it was quite .... more annoying then difficult to handle all the babarians that came from the "north (snow) and south (jungle)"
somehow it was a bit boreing too... just barbarians... not even some animals (south)... i think once i say a barbarian spear or sword unit... out of like 100 warriors...
ok i guess it would be less without that "rageing babarians" option.... but atleast a bit more variety could be nice... way more animals... maybe some mutated ones... or lesser demons... ok if noone works for the chaos gods there are not much demons i guess...
and i was not quite long playing so maybe these come later...
but , maybe a 1% chance to get some rampageing dragon or pegasus could be a little challenge sometimes. (i remember a topic, i guess it was FFH2, where some dragon captured one of a players city and he couldnt get him away anymore... (early game)... ok i guess it "pissed him off" that he has to deal with such a strong unit... but i would say its quite challengeing and "something new", "not another wave of barbarians"....)

and i noticed that they seem to attack always the nearest town... as i builded the most north east one, the barbarians stopped attacking the other north one and just atacked the new town...
dont know how good the AI is with barbarians... but atleast i would say that if 100 warriors failed to get through your defense ring... you should try somethign else. (like not throwing just single units against me... i had some problems as once 4 or 6 units attacking me at the same time... ok it was just coincidence that they moved so that they happened to be at me at the same time... at that moment i might have lost that defence line if my first mages were not arriveing that moment)


18)
some general ideas i just got while writeing this...

-monster tamer unit:
this one has a 20% (something) chance to build the improvement to tame monsters. (ya i know just use the workers....) so tameing monsters could get challengeing... might even spawn a barbarian monster if failed... (btw if failed.. the tamer is dead...)

-20% chance to spawn a barbarian monster on the "monster tiles" (breeding grounds, aerie) at start of the game... maybe even attacking units that are 1 field near it... (defending its home) maybe 50% chance... maybe a 10% chance to attack a unit 2-3 fields away. (rampage, hungry for food...)
(something like that so its not that predictable (it just attacks units 1 field away... so the player just moves 2 fields away and is save... i guess the AI has problems with thinking like that?) so a little randomizer with 2-3 fields away)
maybe if this barbarian killed a unit (or attacks 2-3 times till a stack is dead) is not hungry anymore and doesnt attack again for .... 5-20 turns... (random)...
you could "feed" (move to) it some slaves if its a rampageing dragon in your terretory....

-maybe the dark elf worker should have a diffrent gfx... more alinged to the other darkelves... with black hair.

-cant find the hydra or witchelves.... (maybe they get avaiable later ingame... but i cant even find some civelopedia entry...)

-more witchelves:
should have frenzy... but with some options to get that "5% chance to become barbarian" off.... maybe if helebron is leader. or other khainites are in the same stack. and its off in towns...


19)
heroes?
like playable unique chars (avaiable once!):
malekith
morathi
helebron
shadowblade
malus darkblade
lokhir fellheart

general heroes:
as darkelves the tabletop: Master, Dreadlord, Death Hag.

can be build more then once, maybe some limit like national wonders... just 1 hero can be created for each town you own. you own 5 towns? then you could build 2 masters and 3 death hags... or 4 masters... 1 dreadlord...
maybe some limit to commanders (dreadlord) so you dont have more dreadlords then masters.
atleast mages are already regular units....


maybe the leader cant be killed forever. i.e. if you are malekith as leader and malekith the hero unit "dies" he is "just beaten" and "respawns" or can be rebuild after some turns....

or
if the leader is dead he is dead for good and you lose the leader bonus.

or
if a hero is "killed" he is not killed but he is captured by the enemy.
(this could be fun)
i.e.
malekith gets beaten by some high elves. (he gets the "captured" promotion" and the enemy controls him)
these highelves move him away from the front to some town or some field where him can be "guarded better". (i already see an AI problem here)
the darkelves lose their leader bonuses while he is captured.
and the enemy could get soem bonus... like some "golden age" like stuff as long as he is captured. some little bonus for everything... +10% all towns, +2 in all towns... +2 in the town the captured hero is in.

the captured hero could be seen all the time by the darkelves (they have a vision on him. just his tile not whats around him.

that golden age bonus would just apply if an enemy leader is captured. if an other unique hero is captured there could just be a +2 in the town he is in.

normal heroes (dreadlord, master, death hag) would just die if beaten in combat.

-----------------------------------------------

this could be quite some fun, there could be an "win the game" option too. like: capture 50% of all leaders and have them stationed in your towns. (if there are 10 players you have to capture 5 leaders)
(no idea if 50% is ok.. or maybe 75%? i guess 100% would be too much....)
thinking about limiting it to the palace... that you have to have all leaders at your palace...
but it could be problematic if the enemy captures that town? dont know. atleast the +2 bonus could be used in other towns too... so might not limit it to your palace so you can store them everywhere.

how to get the AI to use this is another question....
if a unique hero is captured, they might be used like "great specialists" to move them back to a town. and then used to build a building "leader cage" something... like the slaves idea above.

there would be an option to "deconstruct" that building to get the captured leader back. so you could move it to another town if needed. (might not make that possible... could be fun if he HAS to stay in that town then....)

if you capture the town you get your leader back (still with captured promotion) and you have to move him back to the captial to get rid of that captured promotion.

captured promotion:
movement reduced to 1
strengh reduced to 1
cant attack, cant defend.
cant use any abilitys.
if its the unit of your leader, the race loses the leader bonus.
(something like that)

ok enough on heroes... for now
------------------------------------

20)
couldron of blood unit:
it will be like like a strong chariot. 8(tabletop death hag), 2, 0-1 or 0-2 firststrikes (tabletop crew) maybe something like that. (maybe 1 poison or/and 1 death damage)
"khainite" promotion.
some national limit (like just 3 or 5 can be built)
unit in the same stack get the "blessings of khaine" promotion.

"blessings of khaine" unit gets:
+1 death dammage (tabletop death blow)
+0-1 firststrike (tabletop firststrike)
+20% change to get 10% less dammage... (something... tabletop wardsave... its difficult... some -10% bonus for the enemy in combat could be used? like +10% strengh the other way around... like if you attack over a river.) so 20% chance that the enemy attacking a unit with this promotion gets a -10% strengh bonus.

if the blessings are avaiable for all darkelves... maybe khainite units could get even another bonus of +1death dammage and +0-1 firststrike

if that would be too much for khainites... make the blessing just avaiable for khainites (problem with AI to concentrate their 3-5 blood couldrons on stacks with khainite units) or no extra bonus for khainites... (that would be so not-tabletop-ish)

OR...
this couldron of blood could be another national wonder building, like that dark covenant. (i guess that would be less problematic for the AI)
that allows the production of death hags (hero). and gives some bonus... and some free specialist? or bonus of slaves are "used" here.... or some exp bonus to created witchelves? or some free witchelves that respawn here when killed?

oh HERE it could give the "blessings of khaine" promotion to created units. what about that?

so maybe:
Couldton of Blood
national wonder (limit 1)
-+1 in all towns (?), +2 in that town.
-allows production of death hags. (if some type of heroes will be ingame)
-units created here get the "blessings of khaine" promotion. (+1 death damage +0-1 firststrikes +20% change to get 10% less dammage)

something like that?

-----------------------------------------

21)
wheres the hydra?
i mean... atleast ALL units that are in the tabletop game should be in this mod produceable...

22)
warpstone resource fields:
if a unit moves on that field it mutates.

23)
i would like it if atleast all tabletop races would be "playable" first. and other races like IND will be worked on after the main races are ok.
actually i like it that there are that many "other" races in this mod!

24)
and i like the unit limits.
that you can just build 3 assasins, 5 sorceress... etc....
so there wont be 100 dragons later... but instead a more realistic army like 40 warriors, 20 archers, 30 cavalry, 5 mages, 4 heroes, 1 dragon...

25)
something i found as i browsed randomly the civelopedia:
ignited promotion ("you are burning" i guess)
why does that fire do more dammage in enemy terretory then in friendly terretory?
wouldnt that flame burn you the same amout and doesnt matter where you are atm?
(ok it could matter on what terrain you stand on ... like -4% in snow, -6% in tunrda, -15% in desert)



argh... i guess this is enough for now...

 

[Nelia Hawk]

ah missed some pics...

first: are the settings i used... (i guess its not that interesting hehe)
2nd: somehow a dead doombolt reduces influence.... is this wanted?
3rd: archers doing no dammage with the ranged attack... (see number 7 in the post above)
4th: the little bit i conquered... (not interesting too i guess....) i felt a little lonely, noone is around exept millions of barbarians comeing from the jungle south-east and snow north-east... but thats the map .... i might try some random map later.
5th: the elven workers with blonde hair and the darkelves above with black hair... (see number 18 above)

erm and the savegame ... (not interesting too haha)



26)
hmm something else... cant see a bonus from repeater crossbows... compared to the normal crossbows... but i guess i need to explore that a bit more... just seen them in the civelopedia... but i guess theres more behind it... like crossbows are limit 10 and repeater replace these militia archers...

27)
oh wheres the repeater bolt thrower?

(i think adding more firststrikes is not the same as "repeater" in the tabletop or? or atleast diffrent in civ)

28)
how good could equipment be added in civ? (i guess its difficult)
like... repeater handbows for the raiders (i guess that could be added with a promotion... that they can shot one field... but promotion is not the same as equipment... but i guess the closes we get in civ or?)
like adding alot of these magical items in the tabletop-game for heroes.
or adding a shield option to spearman.
or an armory building building diffrent armor that can be used by diffrent units... (i guess this would be hell... with the AI)

maybe i should check how you managed to get standard bearers and musicans in the mod....

 

[Ahriman]

Big list of stuff! Nice. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
A few caveats before going through the list;
a) I'm design/balance/playtest, not coding, so I don't know all the technical stuff
b) I'm not an expert on Warhammer fluff.
c) Psychic Llamas is project lead (henceforth PL).
d) I'm the anti-feature creep nazi and resident idea rejecter. So don't feel bad if I don't like 90% of what you have - I'm like that to everyone

1. Yeah, its English only atm, I'm not sure how much of a pain it is to get it to work for people with other languages installed. Its not a high priority, given how many other features/changes there are we want to get implemented.

2. I think the idea was to make Malekith more of a Might hero and Morathi more of a magic hero, hence only malekith getting Raiders. Also, Raiders is a strong strait and arcane a fairly weak trait, so there are some balance issues (Dark elves are currently very overpowered).
But I'm ok with whatever PL prefers fluffwise here.

2 leaders per faction is really plenty though, particularly given the big range of factions included. IIRC only Tilea has 3 leaders, and we could definitely take one of them out.

There are some changes to the slave system we're thinking about implementing particularly for Dark elves where slaves can be settled like great leaders.

3. The first strikes on melee units and such are all getting ripped out, and most of the units are getting some pretty significant changes to encourage combined arms more, so swords/axe/whatever are good vs melee, spears are good vs shock cav and chariots, shock cav are good vs archers, etc. etc.. The first strikes are a remnant of an old system that tried to model tabletop stats more explicitly using first strikes in place of agility and such.

4. There are lots of events like this. The idea is to give you a turn or two of warning, particularly for the larger spawns. So you can rush some units to the area to try to fend off the invaders. So, working as intended.

5. Noted, but cosmetic issues like this are waaaay down the priority ladder

6. Like I said, we're looking into a few more slave options.
There are no such thing as "good" races in Warhammer, and plenty of Lawful ones would still have no problem with slavery (and whats the difference between a slave and a serf really?).

7. Its very deliberate that there are big damage caps on how much damage you can do with ranged attacks. This is a big balance concern. If you can wipe units out (or severely weaken them) with bombardment, then the AI becomes a pushover and the game is just artillery stacks wandering around blasting everything into the ground.
In real warfare and tabletop, archers and field siege were always primarily support, they never really did most of the damage, they are there to soften up the foe for the infantry.
So yeah, low level archers have a 90% damage cap (though a second archer can damage a second defender down to 90% strength), some high level archers have a 15% cap, low level siege have 15% or 20% and I think some high level siege have 25%. And there are spells that have similar effects.
Its important to realize that a 20% reduction in base strength makes a HUGE difference in combat odds.

Many of the changes you suggest would make archers far too strong. We're going to leave them as defensive units with some first strikes, minor bombardment, and city/hills defense bonuses. And its much better to leave most combat happening in the normal civ combat engine, which the AI understands to some extent.

8. Just form your slaves into groups, there are already tools here that reduce micromanagement.

9. I'm relatively indifferent about whether or not the Tower has to be built in the capital or not, but giving it the Palace requirement is a good way of forcing the AI to make sure that it builds the thing in a decent city.
You can specialize your cities how you choose with what structures you build in them, I don't think we need to hard-code this or move it into Wonders.

10. Most backfire type effects aren't really very fun, having the spell not work is annoying enough. We'll probably have some nastier backfire effects for WAAAGH! magic though, but these mages will be more disposable rather than requiring careful shepherding over time.

11. Beast magic is there because they center around Monsters so much. But I am indifferent about most of the elven magic access.
Chillwind is powerful enough as it is (maybe too powerful). I like the idea of redesigning it as a minor curse rather than a damage spell, leave the damage to doombolt.
-1 moves is very powerful given that nearly all units in the game only *have* 1 move. Dark and High Elves are different in this regard. Movement reductions can also be problematic for the AI; when it has a big stack of guys its moving, even if only a couple of them get frozen by a spell effect, it will tend to still leave the entire stack unmoving so as not to leave stragglers.
Maybe some other effect? Any ideas?

12. Casters already slowly gain free XP over time through the Channeling promotion. This is sufficient, and represents the xp they get from study and spellcasting, and there will also probably be some passive xp gain from some buildings. It would also be very hard to code XP gain linking the doom bolt to the specific caster, not really worth it.

Gotta run for a meeting, will continue later!

 

[Nelia Hawk]

2. I think the idea was to make Malekith more of a Might hero and Morathi more of a magic hero, hence only malekith getting Raiders. Also, Raiders is a strong strait and arcane a fairly weak trait, so there are some balance issues (Dark elves are currently very overpowered).
But I'm ok with whatever PL prefers fluffwise here.

2)
actually as you can see in the screens below, malekith does NOT have raider trait.
what i suggested was:

malekith:
aggressive, raider(here is arcane atm), seafarring

morathi:
from arcane, charismatic, raider
to
arcane (changed stats), charismatic, and something else then raider.... maybe some bonus to khainite units? (doenst fit 100% fluff wise... but as replacement of helebron)

if arcane is too weak as you said maybe change it to:
the free promotion
and that darkelf casters can cast two spells each turn? (might be heavyly inbalanceing?)

atleast the darkelves in the tabletop have a spell to get more energy dices... so a way to cast more or stronger spells might be ok?
or.... 25% more damage/duration/etc with spells?
and/or 25% less chance to fizzle? (but i guess that would be more for a lizard slan)

and if raider is too strong it could be changed to something like:
25% more from pillageing (instead of 100%)
+1 gold for each killed enemy
10% chance to get a slave from killed unit.

but this might be too strong too?

10. Most backfire type effects aren't really very fun, having the spell not work is annoying enough. We'll probably have some nastier backfire effects for WAAAGH! magic though, but these mages will be more disposable rather than requiring careful shepherding over time.

10)
hmm atleast i think it would be ok to add some miscasts to the mod...
maybe not everytime (as you said fizzeling is already bad) but maybe a 1-5% chance to get something bad from a miscast list.

or a miscast list with different chances to happen... so if you fizzle there is a 50% chance that something happenes:
like
30% chance that the caster loses 50-100% strength
15% chance that the casters strengh get reduced by 1
15% chance to get a negative magic promotion (like all spells -20%dammage/duration/etc)
10% chance to get mutated
10% chance to get a "good magic trait"
6% chance to spawn babarian lesser-demons
3% chance that the whole stack is removed
1% chance that the whole stack and everything in 1 field range is removed (includeing improvements and towns) and replaced with "chaos land" and some medium demons appear, one big demon if a town got destroyed.

whatever... there can be alot different things that can happen... but the very bad ones would have a very low chance to happen (1-10%)
and stuff that mostly happenes is not "that bad" like loseing health... getting cursed..
poisioned... some bad thing that is not very serious.

11. Beast magic is there because they center around Monsters so much. But I am indifferent about most of the elven magic access.
Chillwind is powerful enough as it is (maybe too powerful). I like the idea of redesigning it as a minor curse rather than a damage spell, leave the damage to doombolt.
-1 moves is very powerful given that nearly all units in the game only *have* 1 move. Dark and High Elves are different in this regard. Movement reductions can also be problematic for the AI; when it has a big stack of guys its moving, even if only a couple of them get frozen by a spell effect, it will tend to still leave the entire stack unmoving so as not to leave stragglers.
Maybe some other effect? Any ideas?

11)
in the tabletop chillwind does a bit less damage then doombolt and ranged units cant fire...
so maybe... some 5% damage to all units. (if i remember it does damage to all stacks surrounding?) 5% to all might not be overpowered? dont know... as you said above with the archers that -10% is already quite strong. so chillwind would do less damage then archers but to all around you. so you could still shot them to -10% with archers.

and archers, siege units (ranged in general, but i think horsearchers are mount and not counted as archer...) should be limited in ranged attacks...
maybe... they cant use ranged attacks? (range reduced to 0)
or firststrikes get reduced (to 1, to 0 or 50% less, or 1 less)
or -5 or 10% strength....

or if you want to be able to use that chilled promotion for all unit-types, maybe:
-chillwind does 5% damage
10%(or 25or 50 no idea) chance to get chilled promotion:
that could be:
-5% strength
-firststrike reduced to 1

dont know what combination would be too strong and what too weak...


29)
creation_wh_flavoured error.
can be seen in the attached screenshots.

i found that .py file in the privare maps folder... and it doesnt seem to have a big error in the lines (1,52,110), i guess someone else wants this .py file and theres something wrong somewher else....

i still can create a map with the "warhammer_flavour" setting... but that map is quite... you see it below in the screenshots...


30)
might change "sea dragon cloak" from +40% to archers to +20%
and might add a 5-10% chance to get a slave from a killed unit.


-----------------------------------------------------------
btw is there anything where i should keep my eyes open...?
i mean it might be redundant if i post some changes to units here (like number 30) and you already have changed the units all over...
or is there anything else where i can help a bit?
i dont have any civ modding experience... i guess some programming would be the stuff that i might could do the most...(but i think i would have to read alot about that in some mod helps if i want to do this) ... and i am not so skilled in fluff texts, or designeing units, or textures, i think...

atleast if theres something where i can help getting this mod forward, maybe i can help somewhere.

 

[Ahriman]

Meeting successful. With high probability I will have a job post-graduation, and will continue to be supplied with delicious alternating current and internet connectivity.

13. This is again a deliberate design decision. We're trying to do a different thing from FFH.
In FFH, each of the teams are really pretty similar, with only a couple of special units and buildings, but you can play them differently by picking different religions, and every game can have a different mix of players/religions.
With Warhammer, we're going for something different; we're hard-coding a lot of the civ-specific features, but trying to make the various civs play much more differently from each other. You'll see this as we continue to make the civ-specific units more and more different from each other. At the moment they're still all pretty similar, but that will change.
Each religion will also have its own units and issues, and some will be stronger or weaker than others; and many religious units will be civ-specific (eg battlepriests of sigmar).
Factions are balanced overall, so dwarves will have weaker religious stuff than other races, but other things to compensate (mostly kickass infantry, siege weapons and fortifications). This means that balance would be messed up if you let anyone adopt any religion.
Also, religions are tied into faction mechanics directly; elves and dwarves start with their religion from the get go, whereas other civs require several techs for a religion. Chaos religion will cause havoc (occasional unrest and the like) in cities that are not owned by chaos civs.

So, basically, a free-form mode would be a design nightmare and a PITA to code.

14. Yeah, fear and terror are getting reworked slightly. Fear will be a combat strength modifier against units not immune, terror will be a defensive weapon causing some attacks to fail. Both will be fairly limited to units with supernatural fear effects.
Tabletop mechanics don't work well because there is no real morale in the civ combat engine.

15. Early builds of FFH2 had spellcasting not possible if the unit had moved and they took up its movement. It was a bad idea, the AI couldn't handle it at all. I don't see an issue here.
Haste in FFH still only can give 1 bonus movement point, so there aren't really any gains from casting it multiple times. I think what you're referring to is that you could move into a 2-3 movement cost tile, then cast haste, and still move out of it, even with only 2 moves. I think this was removed in Fall Further, whose code-base we may be moving to.

16. 4 super-powerful greater chaos demons would be too powerful. Just a single demon prince is enough, like other factions can get a single dragon or whatever.
The 4 temples will be build requirements for the 4 different chaos demons that we will have; so a nurgle temple is a requirement for a plaguebearer, etc.

17. Don't play this mod with raging barbarians. Particularly with all the barbarian spawning events.
There are lots of events in this mod (including dragon spawns) that will create interesting beasties.
Nothing like that in FFH, I think you were thinking of this forum.
We're not really AI coders, so barb AI will probably be left as is.

18. I don't see any need for your monster-tamer. I think hunters and rangers can build the breeding grounds and aerie improvements anyway, at least they used to be able to.
There are already events that can spawn nasty creatures from breeding grounds.

Art resources are very lacking atm. If you're skilled at unit creation, we could definitely use the help.

I *think* witchelves are in now - at the advanced smithing tech, as a pikemen replacement?
Hydras not in atm.

19. Yes, heroes are planned but not yet implemented. Heroes will be specific named characters, not generic lords. Probably 2 heroes per faction. Each will have a unique piece of equipment.
More than 2 heroes and they start becoming too commonplace. They should be rare and special, you shouldn't be able to make up armies of heroes.
Capturable heroes sounds confusing, hard for the AI to understand, and somewhat out of character; if most races captured some great hero of an enemy they were fighting, they'd just kill them.

20. We had a few discussions about a Caulrdon of Blood but never came to any particular conclusions. Probably as a wonder only buildable by dark elves. Not sure what it should do.
+1 death strength would be *very* powerful.
Will consider some of these.

21. Most units will make it in eventually, but inter-faction balance becomes an issue. Some factions are much more detailed in the tabletop game, but we don't want those factions somehow getting too many units. There is an intention to put the hydras in (and I think PL wants basically everything from tabletop in), but there is an issue particularly with dark elves that they are just Good At Everything. Every faction needs to have some kind of weakness to balance their strengths, particuarly high and dark elves that get the very powerful 2 move infantry. Dwarves are slow and lack cavalry, greenskins lack many of the high tech and education stuff, chaos are quite vulnerable to cavalry, etc.
High Elves have a food income penalty that slows their growth a LOT, but dark elves don't really have anything yet. Maybe upping their military production penalty will be enough.

22. We'd prefer to keep mutation to the actual mutation magic (like some skaven and Tzeentch spells) to make them more unique. We're going to change the list of available mutations (add a bunch with more warhammer flavor, like extra arms, fiery breath, mutant strength, etc. etc.)

23. Glad you like it. There are intentions for getting every faction up and more playable, there are lots of unit design threads around. I don't know much about hindu mythology so Ind will be a little trickier.

24. Yeah, thats the idea; make the special units more special and force most of a big army to still be core units.

25. Never noticed this, will investigate.


This mod has influence-driven warfare. Winning a battle increases your influence over the tile, losing a battle decreases your influence. It would be good if we could exempt summons from this, but I don't know if thats easily codeable.
Archery limitation by design, bombardment is already very powerful. And if archers could bombard lots you wouldn't need siege weapons.
Dark Elves are incredibly boring on the Warhammer World map, as are High Elves. This is somewhat inevitable given the structure of the world. Play them on a random map, or try an Old World civ.

26. There is going to be some balance tinkering with dark elf units; currently the repeaters come early and are way too powerful. But yes, the fact that they replace militia archers rather than xbowmen is a part of their design.

27. Dark Elves will get bolt-throwers. Eagle claw vs bolt-thrower vs repeater bolt-thrower will probably all be identical, just different names/and graphics.

28. There will be some hero equipment, but anything else just won't get handled well by the AI. There have been suggestions in past for equipment promotions for normal units, but these really don't work. Fall Further has them now and they don't really add anything there. People need to get out of the tabletop mindset and think more about how to use the civ engine rather than fighting it.

Standard bearers and musicians are selectable promotions.

Again, thanks very much for all the feedback! And don't take negative comments personally, I have to try to protect the mod tight and simple; its already pretty huge, and we don't want it overwhlemed by feature-creep. Its very important that the AI actually be able to use all the features present, so that it actually constitutes a serious threat (atm its a pushover).

 

[Ahriman]

malekith:
aggressive, raider, seafarring

morathi:
from arcane, charismatic, raider

These sound fine. There's no real gain for separating "khainite" units out.

2 spells per turn is way too powerful.
A free promotion, faster xp gain and double speed of various buildings is plenty.
Dark (and High) elves already have much better magic than other factions because of the lower tech requirements for their mages. These are getting tweaked in general with some tech tree changes, but their level 1 mages are far superior to the wimpy hedgemages/warlocks, and their level 2 and level 3 mages come at least 1 tech earlier (and the Wonders for them are cheaper). Plus, they're generalists and can learn from lots of schools, whereas most other mages are fixed into a single area of access.

Raider trait will have auto-pillaging like in Fall Further (unit with raider trait automatically pillages any tile it walks into of any civ you're at war with).

3% chance that the whole stack is removed
1% chance that the whole stack and everything in 1 field range is removed (includeing improvements and towns) and replaced with "chaos land" and some medium demons appear, one big demon if a town got destroyed.

Many of these don't seem fun, and if either of these happened to me I would probably immediately uninstall the mod in disgust. Random chances of hugely nasty things happening is not fun design. You don't want to encourage players to just reload their game because of a bad random die-roll.

Yeah, the flavor start settings are busted atm.

Hmm. We could have chill wind do 5% damage, and add a "Chillwind" promotion to all your units in the stack that gave a +15% strength bonus vs missile units and missile cavalry units, and wore off with 100% chance at the end of turn.

Yeah, the sea-dragon cloak is massively overpowered. Its there for flavor, it should be a 5% bonus, maybe 10% max. An oversight.

If you could do unit art that would be a huge help
Otherwise, not sure.

Basically, there are lots of things that are changing atm; as of ~today PL is getting back into modding the accumulated changes from the last few months where he's been too busy to have time for modding.

We're redoing the core units, changing the tech tree, and changing the structures. And hopefully getting a lot more of the civ-specific units implemented.
Playtest, suggestions and bug-hunting will be much more useful once we have versions out with some of this. Thanks for the offer!

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

this looks like invaluable feedack! i just skimmed but im going to read propperly and reply now

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

1) This never actually occured to me, but yes it is possible to do and quite easy. juts time consuming

2) Malekith is a reknown extremely powerful sorcerer, morathi is as well but i see your point here. I thought raiders was a racial trait, if its not it should be. I did consider Hellebron as a third leader choice but decided against it because i have a another leader planned that will be avliable to Dark and Highelves, who gets to choose his alignment. but he was kinda a surprise lol

3) the first strike you saw was a racial benefit from the elven promotion. this is going to be fixed soon. this was a bug though because it should have been a CHANCE for a first strike . most civs get a racial promotion which differentiats their units slightly. and yes, considering the scope of the Civ engine its impossible to represent the tabletop game perfectly and weve had to add in basic swordmen and suh where there were none for balance purposes.

4) thats one of the many 'Uprising' events. the delay beween the event andthe units actually appearing is meant to give players a chance to respond to warnings of enemy uprisings within your borders. its meant to make the mod more dangerous

5) i agree here but its not a high priority at the moment. i might start a thread for graphial issues so i can come back and find a consise list of issues when we get around to sorting them out.

6) pretty much all those ideas for slaves will be implemented soon. but i must admit the freeing option for good civs is a brilliant idea. i could see them settling as cottages instantly at the cost of sacrificing he unit, or joining a city. (not with the slavery civic obviously, only if you capture enemy slaves.)

7) Ahriman covered this perfectly.

8) a slave gang type unit could be an interesting idea, combining several slaves together could give them increased work rate promtions and such and maybe a spell to sepparate them. but i wouldnt make the number joinable any more than say 3.

9) it an interesting concept to have city specialization as Darkelves but i think it would screw the AI over quite a bit. the reason (as Ahriama said) i to make the AI build the mage thing in a good place. both the woodelves Tower of th Eternal Wood and Highelves White Tower equivients have the same requirement, and neither of these are in the capital i nthe fluff

10) yes some naty side effects will be added later, but nothing too dramatic because losing your level 12 archmage to a fizzled spell is realy not fun. itll be something like area damage or promotions that weaken casting for a set duration etc. but no unit deaths.

11) Most spells arent set in stone yet. i like your ideas about chillwind and might change it to be a minor curse and have less damage.

i gotta run! ill finish going through this when i have more time

awsome feedback though thanks!

 

[Ahriman]

3) Actually no, militia swordsmen and some other melee units currently still have a hard-coded first strike in them. The combat system changes get rid of a lot of the excess first strikes.

 

[Nelia Hawk]

finaly found a bit more time to play another game.

while i played the game i noticed several little "bugs". i think most are known already, but i still list them here.




31)
i enabled these pythonexeption messages.. i thought it could be helpfull if an error occured somewhere.
but while playing one game, every turn this fear exeption error appeared... and somehow it was too annoying to click it away everyturn... so i disabled these python exeptions again...
but that fear error can be seen in a screenshot below.
i guess the error is known, and fear will be changed later. so i guess it wont appear in the next patch or when fear gets updated.

some button somewhere to "disable repeative errors" or "dont show this error again" is not possible with these python error messages or?


32)
theres alot missing text... ya its no big problem... i think most of these will be filled in the next patch already...
i still add some screenshots where it appeared... maybe you find some missing text that you didnt know about yet.


33)
in the civelopedia of "ancient lore" theres two times the same tech in the "leads to area"
can be seen on one screenshot below.


34)
once there was an event with a waystone and i could dedicate it to someone to et some bonus.
maybe there could be an option to dedicate it to soem chaos god too (if you have the research/religion/whatever for that chaosgod).

event can be seen in a screenshot below too.


35)
while playing my "story game" i noticed that, workers with move 3 (2+1) seem too quick... maybe reduce worker speed to 1?
might not be that problematic... just felt that they move quite fast somehow...


36)
kraken event.
i liked it that the kraken was blokadeing my town, but it already stopped after one turn... it would have been quite a challenge to get that kraken away there with strengh 2 ships...
maybe that kraken could have blokaded some more turns and moved away then to blockade another town for some turns...


37)
great bazaar text is wrong... no free spaecialist from a plantation (i think, atleast this is not written in the special abilitys, just in the history description text)


38)
somehow i could build the suiddocks in a town that wasnt at the coast.
little idea: suiddocks just changeing water tiles range from 2 to 3. not all tiles.

 

[Nelia Hawk]

hiho... heres a little gameplay story....
i thought i play another game and while playing i write down some of the most interesting parts... as i think the developers dont have much time to play hundrets of games themself...

in the beginning its a bit boring i guess. its more a list of what happened the first lines.
but a bit later it somehow developed an own story. how these druchii were liveing and whats happening as some unexpected events appeared...
and slowly i wrote more a story then a game report.... i linked research that i finished to the story and even played a bit the story instead of "most efficient civ". as example: i settled a great sage to the newest most southern city, because i could use it in the story. instead of settleing the sage in a city where he can be most usefull.

in the end its more like a story.
maybe you enjoy the reading... maybe you dont.. as i havent spend that much time to write a good story. i just made a story with what happened in the game.

for some events i made screenshots that can be found in the attachments below. i will write in the story when theres a screen in the attachments to look at. (so you dont spoiler yourself what will happen in the story. and just watch the screens of whats happening atm.)


i even attach some savegames if anyone wants to replay some parts of it. (turn 50,100,150)
or want to continue to play the story themself (the last save is added too).


the settings of the game were:

player= darkelves.
computer:
-highelves
-woodelves
-empire
-sylvania
-kurgan tribes

gamespeed: quick. (i dont have that much time to play slow games. so i chosed quick to get something done)

aditional settings:
mapsize: standart
map type: terra

special settings:
agressive AI. (its warhammer.... so i want more battles and not much happy diplomating)



here it goes....:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

the area around my start position:


around turn 50:
settled karond kar to secure the land way to the capital.


guess if i can fortify that town well there wouldnt be much problems with enemy land armys.
building lots of workers to improve the land... somehow i fear with all the removed forest (building farms) my production gets quite low. so i keep some forests for lumbermills... as there are not that many hills in the area.

to the east is the empire:


and somewhere at the southern coast the kurgan tribes



turn 94:
wanted to secure the aerie with har ganeth. but cant too late so i settled between 3 rescources with might be ok.
maybe i settle two more towns north of naggarond, but it might be bad with all the tundra. and one more west of har ganeth near the coast.
seen some highelf swordsman, kurgan axeman and imperial spearman and got reminded that i only have warriors still. might concentrate to atleast 2 archers each town soon and change the free warriors to swordsman then.


turn 101:
health problems in naggarond (damn farms...).
money probs... maybe i should turn some farms to cottages?...

settled har garneth to the south...


i wanted to secure that aerie nest 2 fields to the south west... but it was already in the kurgan terretory... so i settled har ganeth between 3 rescources and a fresh water lake... seems a good position.



turn 103:
changeing to agrarianism civic.. to get a bit more health... (thinking about settleing a town north of nagarond to get health from crabs and fish)


turn 111:
health problems in klarond kar, hmm do i build too many farms?

a little overview... not much happened...

one scout died to the south east... need to build a new one... sending the new one more north east.


turn 115:
crom the conqueror and sigmar at war.

hmm crom has 100 points less then sigmar (266,366), wonder if he can manage the war.

crom settling west of har ganeth... damn i am too slow again.



my scouts found the high elf borders in the faaaaaaaar east.


have slowly 2 archers in every town, but no money to promote the warriors to swordsman. have the feeling everyone has more military then me... like everytime. (remembering the FFH2 game where the lanowar or lysvalv-something (? the "good"elves atleast) had 3 towns and like 30-40 units in each (mostly druid-like ones).

still refuseing all diplomatics from sigmar and kurgan (open borders... ppffff, they wont roam around my land with no reason)

noticed a gor beast "gorilla" and some wolves next to my capital.


settled har garond to the north west to get the fish and crab resources.

naggarond and klarond kar still have health problems...

a little overview:



turn 119:
gathered my spare warriors (4 units) at naggarond (2 archers) and killed the gor-gorilla-beast... lost one warrior ... the most promoted one.


turn 120:
the warrior unit that killed the gor-gorilla decided to stick the beast head on a pole to show the trophy around. this unit now has my first standard bearer. (+renameing them to gor-gorilla-slayers.)


turn 124:
scouts found the sylvan borders and some woodelf swordman. got contact with all civilizations now... are we all on one continent? i wonder what is in the eastern 50% of the map... (no i wont take a look with the worldbuilder...)

managed to get the health problems in order... thanks to more buildings like a grannary and herbalist. i guess i wont have problems for a while again as i build some fishing ships too to get the +2 health bonus from the northern fish and crab too in some turns.

my scout wandered around the high elf terretory.... even more to the east.



turn 126:
some nice waystone event with alot different event choices (nice, need more money.).

idea: dedicateing to the chaos gods, if you have the tech.


turn 137:
finally have some fishers fishing for fish and crabs and what happenes.. they disturbed a giant kraken.


and building roads everywhere... lazy workers thinking they have nothing to do anymore? HA, gonna send them to the useless tundras and forests, building useless roads there.


turn 138:
the kraken decided to destroy every tradeship in the sea around hag graef (sea blockade)

i will ask the elder council if theres a way to get rid of that kraken... (tameing it would be fun... but no idea what i could do against a strengh 13 kraken at the moment...)


turn 139:
the report of some elders arrived... they cant decide on a usuable solution. they are more argueing then thinking about the kraken problem, we even found three elders dead in a room after some bigger discussions. a civic advisor suggested that we should build some academies for them so they can study in their own rooms. after some discussions (and one other dead elder and two dead civic advisors) they presented me some blueprints of academies that could improve their research. (philosophy researched)

one elder suggested that we could ask the sages if they know about a solution for that kraken. i approved this and unexpectedly without a dead sage they nominated one of them to "great sage" to lead the rearch and find a clue to handle that kraken... this great sage quickly started to gather several underlings to build the first academy in naggarond, where he is organiseing the research. (free tech astrology. free great sage->build free academy.)

after some weeks reports arrived that the kraken seem to be moveing eastwards...



turn 141:
the great bazar was build in naggarond.


turn 142:
an emisary from warlord koschei twentyfingers arrived... but was executed an hour later in the public near the great bazar.



turn 144:
naggarond celebrates "we love the monarch" day.



turn 146:
a great tower was build in naggarond called "the dark covenant", several people went there to study the magic ways.


turn 148:
some scouts arrived at the great bastion near the sylvanian town "tempelhof" and the barbarian town "assyrian".


the wholesylvanian area below the highelves... you can see the bastion wall...


east of templehof is the woodelf border:

my scouts move to the south...


the first graduated adepts from the dark covenant were walking in the streets of naggarond displaying their magic arts with a lightshow. the rumors of these magic users even quickly reached har ganeth, resulting in celebrations of the "we love the monarch" day.

the sages and the elder council suggested some new warships designs to hunt down the kraken that was seen again near the northern borders. several shipyards were build in karond kar over the next weeks.

 

[Ahriman]

31. Yeah, the fear bug will get fixed, its incredibly annoying atm.
AFAIK, python errors are either on or off; they're only there for bug-hunting purposes, so its useful to have all the errors.
32. Lots of missing text, will get filled eventually, not necessarily in next version, which will focus more on features.
33. Noted. Tech tree is getting some changes, so hopefully we'll fix some things in this.
34. I guess. 6 options are already an awful lot for an event. And don't the leyline waystone things operate very separately from chaos and the warp? I don't know the fluff.
35. IIRC Elven workers have a work rate penalty. So they can get places faster, but build more slowly once they're there.
36. I don't think we really know anything about changing AI code.
If you had ships out there, the kraken would certainly go around munching them.
I think actually though that its better than after a while it wanders off. Its still out there, somewhere, though.
37. Yeah, its a text error, its not supposed to give specialists. Its good enoguh already.
38. Suidocks is getting a redesign, including being a coastal wonder only.

Glad you've enjoyed the mod thus far. I've played the game a fair amount, but not much for a while; it gets almost unplayable because of the AI's damnable tendency to spam watchtowers, and build these over its cottages, which kills its economy, and the AI refusing to build mines, leavnig it with pathetically small armies.
Heathiness is definitely designed to be more of an issue here than in FFH or many other mods.

Also, the Colleges aren't supposed to be buildable by the elven factions; they're supposed to be limited to human factions only; elves can just learn some of the magic techs and promote their own mages with those lines if they like. Its a bug.

 

[Nelia Hawk]

turn 150:
two groups of aspirants from the dark covenant moved out of naggarond and arrived at a hill at the east coast.


turn 151 (IC 1610):
several worker groups who were building roads in the tundra to the east of naggarond came running into the town frightened about something that they cant describe. one of them said: "the snow slowly started to move eastwards. even the clouds were gathering there. then the whole horizont went pitch black and some lights could be seen in the distance. we had no idea what was happening there, but one thing we knew. we have to get away from there as quickly as we can. then we started running and we didnt stop untill we reached the gates of naggarond."

noone knew what exactly was happening on that hill east of naggarond, atleast noone that was liveing on the streets.
the sorcerers in the dark covenant knew what was happening in the east. there was a battle fought that was never seen before anywhere in the borders of the druchii. the two groups of aspirants, trained in the way of dark magic, were sent out to fight the gigant kraken on the east coast. there was such a huge amount of magic cast on that hill that even the sorcerers miles away in the dark covenant in naggarond could feel the magic that were flowing to the eastern hill.

surprised from this unexpected reaction the sorcerers studied these magic waves and one "great sage" sorcerer found out some hidden secrets in what he called "the winds of magic". (researched winds of magic)
what that secret was? we dont know it... he left the dark covenant on the same day as he found out what he found out.
all that was known is that he has build a hut (academy) in har ganeth and is leaving the town every day, moveing to some unknown meteorite crater in the east...


and some empire borders:

somewhere in there the kurgan and empire is fighting...

another overview:



turn 156 (IC 1655):
-reports about battles between the woodelves and some sylvanian armies have been reported (war: orion - carstein)

-the eastern scouts have seen a barbarian village and many unknown animals.

-someone who said he is a great engeneer was building a mysterious building next to the dark covenant. somehow this building seemed to build itsself, atleast it was way quicker build as any other building of that size.



turn 157 (IC 1660):
over the last weeks there were no new reports from the scouts in the east. the last known position was near another barbarian town that they called "khuj", they tryed to find shelter in the town as they were followed by wild animals. and were never seen again.



the great sage from har ganeth returned and was seen as he walked in that new building. the next day a sign was seen on the wall saying "the amethyst order".

a week later some aspirants from the dark covenant were seen as they walked into the amethyst order building, but never seen again.

another week later some people in black robes were going from the amethyst order to the dark covenant.

4 days passed untill three groups left the dark covenant. two of them were dressed in these black robes and the other were mostly aspirants from the dark covenant with two people in black robes. they slowly made their way through naggarond to the eastern gate and left further heading east.

(hehe renamed the aspirants , see screenshot.)



turn 159-160 (IC 1670-1675):
everyone who thought that it cant come worse, was wrong. everyone who thought that all avaiable magic power was used already, was wrong.

i tell you what happened....

the sage who went to the south found a different flow of magic in what he called "the winds of magic". in the south he found rare rocks in the metroid crater that amplified magical powers. he called these rocks "energy stones" and with them he could research that hidden flow of magic that, you could realy say hideing inbetween all the raw magic power.
he found a way to use that magic and he and his friend, who was known as a great engeneer have build the "amethyst order" in naggaroth to train the aspirants in this new way of magic.
many aspirants died in the progress to master this dangerous new magic... so many that the magic itsself was soon called "death magic", as it seems that that is what it can de best, bring death.

after a while methods were found how to reduce the deathrate of the aspirants and with them the training time was increased greatly.

some of these masters of the new death magic were sent to the east to help in the battle.


but what was happening as the death mages started with their castings cant be described to people who cant notice the winds of magic. the magical power that was used in the east was increased to a whole new level, first with the help of the new energy stones and second with the addition of the death magic.

the whole sky went pitch black, vortexes of black magic that went into the dark sky could even be seen in naggarond.


elves that normally cant feel the winds of magic could feel it now in a way that can best be described as a cold wind on your skin.
but the normal citizens had no idea what realy was happening with the winds of magic.

but the mages in the high towers noticed it clearly. the winds of magic that were like a calm flowing river before are now completely different.
streams of death magic were violently forceing their way through that gentle river of raw magic, eastwards to where the hill is.
but that death magic is not flowing just eastwards, it seems that it cant decide where it wants to head. some streams are flowing in circles, some others forward and the next second backwards again, some are even flowing away from the hill.

it could be called "the great chaos" and in that chaotic moving of magical energy the best druchii mages noticed something. something they didnt notice before, like they didnt noticed the death magic in the gentle flow of raw magic.

this was the begining of "the chaos magic". (researched "corruption of chaos")





turn 161 (IC 1680):
suddenly the whole chotic flow of magic disappeared.
the battle in the east was won.


and a week later five groups of people could be seen heading for the east gate of naggarond. two groups with black robes and three with aspirants of the dark covenant.



as these groups made thir way through the town, they were welcomed like heroes. the whole city was previously influenced with some "propaganda" from the dark covenant.

and from this day on the mages were one of the highest respected group in the druchii.

and the hill to the east was known as "casters fury" from now on.



turn 163 (IC 1690):

if you think that this is the end of this story, then you are wrong. actually this was just the first chapter in the great book of "druchii history".

noone knows what will happen in the future, but there are some events happening already that might influence the druchii history in a way that noone can think about at the moment.


meanwhile...

-some mysterious green rocks were found in the hills near har ganeth.
the sage returned to the south and called these rocks "warpstone". but what are these?

-to the south west of har ganeth some people were reporting many big keeps and watchtowers along the kurgan-druchii border.


-a mysterious organization was founded somewhere in druchii terretory... these members call themself "the covenant".


-how will the war between kurgan and the empire go on?

-and what will happen in the war between the woodelves and sylvania?

-and the first war galleons were created... for what will they be used now? as the kraken is dead already...

-what future lies before the gor-gorilla-slayers (swordman now!)?




the end overview map:


and the terretorys roughly painted in...
darkelves to the west.
east of them the red ones is the empire.
south are the kurgan tribes.
the white ones are the high elves.
below them the gray is the sylvania area.
the greens to the far east are the woodelves.
the two towns south east are barbarians.


(to be continued ?)

 

[Nelia Hawk]

decided to add some more overview pictures to the story... but had to cut it in two parts...

i think with the new pics its a bit easyer to imagine what happened...





39)
and i found some weird sound message as i loaded the savegame to make these pics:
it seems it doesnt appear everytime... but i managed to get a pic of it....

if i remember correctly it appeared somehow after i saved for turn 163 and clicked in the message log, but i cant reproduce it....
i think it was some very rare combination that caused this...


see attachment...

 

[orlanth]

Thanks for the AAR / game log, always like reading those. I hope the coming update doesn't cause too many event errors, it should be fine as long as most XML tag names don't change.

Ahriman congrats on the likely job - methinks the macroeconomy needs enough tweaking to keep you in broadband for a long time to come!

 

[Ahriman]

No, no, I'm a micro-economist
The job is looking at climate change adaptation issues. Which should also hopefully keep me employed for a while. Now all I have to do is finish the damn doctorate!

Good to see you're still around - hopefully you and PL will have the time to get into some coding soon?

 

[gunburned]

Great mod soo far I can imagine how great it would be once its finished,
just wondering if your planing on adding wolves, cold ones for other faction's mounted units instead of having horses. I thought it would be a nice idea, and had to add this in just for the thought. Keep up the good work!

 

[Ahriman]

A lot of the art is placeholder. But there are already some wolves for some greenskin mounted units, and IIRC there are already cold ones for the Dark Elf knight.

 

[Nelia Hawk]

Great mod soo far I can imagine how great it would be once its finished,
just wondering if your planing on adding wolves, cold ones for other faction's mounted units instead of having horses. I thought it would be a nice idea, and had to add this in just for the thought. Keep up the good work!

made some screenshots of a few greenskin units (see below in the story), as i just stumbled over some... or they decided to stumble over me...

A lot of the art is placeholder. But there are already some wolves for some greenskin mounted units, and IIRC there are already cold ones for the Dark Elf knight.

actually the cold one riders are still.. er... "cold metal steel horse riders"

i would love to see them with the new "raptor-like" tabletop reptiles.

But there are already some wolves for some greenskin mounted units

nooo... you called the devil... (read the story below )


noticed that some info can be seen in the town but not outside... like:
the war galley info shows "cant enter ocean" in the town building screen.

but outside theres no info of that shown... the only indication is that i just cant move on the ocean tiles


also:
the boar in the boar chariot is a wolf... (might change it to the boar from the mounted unit boarboyz riders)


the chaos chariot is listed under mouted units and not in chariots



and the war boss had some weird info about doing 0% dammage in its info text...
err... and the "orc warboss" was no ork haha. but still a nice leader model.

oh and that war boss had no attack animation...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

turn 163:
here we start again... i dont think i will get some story again like the mages and kraken one above, but i am interested how it will go on.

maybe i should turn up the difficulty one or two more steps... atleast i am already again the first in the points list... but i guess as usual i have way less military then the cpu.
(in these lower difficultys (noble atm) i always notice that the cpu never realy builds much buildings in their towns, but instead has usually 2x or 3x more military units then me.
and because of that i usually lose one or two towns as he overruns me... untill i find a spot where i can block him and attack back as i changed my production to just millitary units.)

maybe i should build more units already... so i dont get overrun as fast as usual.

i dont think the kurgan tribes to the south are building these watchtowers and keeps to prepare a defenceline when they go to war with me...
as ahirman said... it seems more like a bug... it can be seen here... east of the celestrial palace they demolish a village to build a watchtower.


also i noticed that the lightshow that i cast with my mages (who have nothing better to do atm...) reduce the great leader rate by -10%... i think this is not a bug and wanted, but i never would have known it (as there is no info for this in the cast text), if i didnt noticed that my great leader rate is 5% where it should be 15% (temple of the elven gods). i first thought it a bug in the temple... but then i saw the "lightshow building" doing -10%.

i am thinking about turning off the lightshows... maybe i could use these +10% better atm then +1
they already are in some towns... the lightshow with +1 .) doesnt even help there...


oh, and i turned on these python exeptions again... yeah i will get crazy with all these fear errors every turn... but if it helps to just find one unknown error.. its worth it i guess.


thinking about exploreing the west seas with my new war gally... but even this ship cant handle the oceans... i guess it will be delayed untill the elders came up with a more durable ship type.


turn 164:
(masonry researched)
instead of new ship ideas the elders suggested that we should build more military installations and protect our citys if the kurgans realy are prepareing for a war in the south.

i approved this and the construction of barracks and city walls were started in several towns. (i already thought "why can i build the walls?")


the signs of war come quicker then we expected. an ork warboss with an army was seen east of clar karond.


several armies were deployed to fight of this threat.
4 regiments of swordman were already stations in clar karond, one of them is the famous regiment of gor-gorilla-slayers.

a group of three aspirants (two of them in black robes) and one regiment of the new (and still experimental) spearmans shortly arrived from naggarond in clar karond.

as the town still lacks the new invented city walls, the city defences (includeing one aspirant group and two groups of archers) were joined to the rest of the defence army to fight off the greenskin horde.

the army took position on the city side of an nearby river, so the greenskinns would have to leave the nearby forest and cross the river to attack the city.



turn 165:
... grml...



the elders came up with even more blueprints of defence tower like structures, that are similar to the ones on the kurgan borders.

and some equipment to destroy these called catapults.

with the use of several slaves in the town of clar karond some city walls were quickly build, as the greenskin hordes are still not arriveing. maybe we cen build them up in time...



turn 166:
still no signs of the ork warboss and his army.
the last stones of the city wall were placed as some screams and battle sounds reached the ears of the defenders near the eastern river.

a messanger with an arrow in his shoulder ran to the eastern river and told them the bad news.
the ork horde was already in clar karond.
nearly all defences were placed between the eastern river and the city and as noone expected, the ork horde attacked from the north and quickly made their way past the defences into clar karond.


as the defence force reached the northern city area they quickly engaged the rampageing greenskins.
there were quite more then expected: there were alot wolfriders, some wolf chariots and orks rideing big boars. even a gigant spider could be seen defending the war boss.




a group of archers managed to kill alot of the boar rideing orcs as they tried to attack the gor gorilla slayers, who were fighting already with a group of wolfriders and won against them.
the other group of archers attacked several wolf chariots and caused heavy losses so that the remaining chariots fled to the north out of the city gates.
actually the whole greenskin horde decided to flee instead of being killed in the city walls.
once outside the walls they seemed to attack the war boss... as he couldnt manage to lead them to victory.
after some fights inside the ork army, they split up and each group decided to plunder as much as possible, just leaving some destroyed farms behind them.


these scattered greenskin forces were quickly defeated over the next weeks.
the death mages took care of that gigant spider and the swordsman regiments have killed the war boss in a nearby cow farm.




elsewhere:
a weird necromancer did some experiments near a sylvanian town.
and the war between kurgan and the empire ended. they might declare war on me soon... atleast i cant get that feeling away...



---------------------------


actually i think i am more writeing and not playing much...
so i might stop these detailed reports and maybe just go back to bugs and ideas... or maybe some 10 turn sumarys...

 

[Ahriman]

i would love to see them with the new "raptor-like" tabletop reptiles.

Ah, yes. This will happen at some point; probably some modifications of the lizardmen rangers from fall further, who are riding raptors.

The Warboss is a great general/warlord, he's supposed to join one of the units for free xp for the stack.
Though he doesn't yet. BTS 3.19 might help with that.
I think instead we should try to get him to work like the FFH great generals; join him to a unit to give it +1 strength and +1 xp per combat.

Re boars etc, as I've said the art is placeholder for a lot of stuff.

Chaos chariot unit class should get picked up when we shuffle unit classes around; we're splitting mounted into shock cavalry (good vs archers) and missile cavalry (good vs melee). So spears/pikes are good vs shock cavalry, while archers are good vs missile cavalry. Chariots are similar to missile cavalry, but they're better than missile cav vs sword/axe melee, but worse than missile cav vs spear/pike melee.