Svartalfar Mod

great work sureshot! sorry that i didnt help you with the units. i actually would have created some more units, but i thought it would be better to wait with that until the svartalfar are fleshed out in shadow, so i can design some stuff that fits the context. And seeing the effect of a svartalfar "army" on your screenshot, i am really looking forward to get my hands on the design work ;) .... unfortunately "fire" is next :P but your stuff is great, so waiting wont be hard :)
 
Well since I like Svartalfar I'm surely gonna try this mod. Some things I would like to comment even before though:

- Why changing Svartalfar's mana from Chaos to Death ? I didn't find anything in their background justifying this choice.
- Why an extra hero ?
- Wouldn't it be better Aggressive trait + free first strike ?

About Calabim:

- I'd also change their Law mana, seeing at how that is much better suited for Good civs (for example Law Bringer). I'd give Calabim: Death, Body and Spirit.

About Terraforming:

I think terraforming is one of the features of FFH that makes the human player much overpowered compared to the AI, especially when you play a map such as Highlands, which IMHO is the best for this mod. The reason is simply that the AI doesn't do terraforming, does the introduction of this automated units help with this ? If so, then I'd list this as their best feature ;)
 
I seem to recall Svartalfar being typed as assassins and necromancers, so thats why I gave them death mana (the reason they or no other civ starts with death is said to be the negative diplomacy modifiers, but i haven't found those to be game breaking).

The AI should be able to use the terraforming (you can automate your own workers and they do the job perfectly) but I've yet to see the AI's use them, so there might be AI code that would have to be tampered with to get it to work.

The reason for the extra hero was because I didn't realize they had a hero until recently, and I wanted a female hero for them.

I chose Raiders because it's my preference over Aggressive, and for the time being its a placeholder trait.

As for the Calabim and Law, there are such things are Lawful Evil and I've heard it debated before so I felt it fit better than Earth (Body was definately staying because Haste just suits vampires so well).
 
ok , have yet to play this but i thought i should put in my 2 copper...

1 - i play calabim ALOT and i love most of what ya did , however i have to ask ... is giving the hunter vamparism a bit much? before the vampire was T3 and a maceman UU. now your allowing vamparism at a T2 unit. just seems scarey to me even if it requires a tech thats basically needed anyway for food and gold.

2 - you completely obsoleted teh original vampires. given a choice i would take assasins and shadows in a heartbeat over the basic vamp.

3 - thank you for the death mana , makes soo much mroe sense then earth. personally i dont think i ever cast an earth spell whne playing calabim. and as for law mana ... i cant think of how much it would change the game if calabim lost the unyeilding order spell... its what allows them to function in late game.

thanks for the good work ...
 
Well, Svartalfar in FFH have their own background (you can check Wiki or the thread Design: Civilizations), and I don't see assassins and necromancers in it. Their starting mana are Enchantment, Nature and Mind (not Chaos as I wrongly recalled). The first 2 make perfectly sense, I would only eventually change the third to Chaos but not to Death (I don't think the negative modifier can be a reason not to include Death as starting mana).

About Calabim, yeah there's Lawful Evil, but mana in FFH isn't exactly a trait, what I meant is that Law has mostly useless spells for Calabim, the only really good one for them is Unyielding Order.


PS: btw Sureshot, is it possible to have only the Svartalfar mod without all the rest ?
 
theyre compartmentalized but it would involve removing things from several areas, i might try that later

about manas, they're fairly easy to change (just edit the BuildingsInfos xml file and search for svartalfar and you'll find it quickly enough), the ones offered make sense to me and play out well.
 
yes I changed Svartalfar's mana back to original and removed the Tremor and Tsunami changes and that's all :D
Thanks for your work I was really looking forward to new graphics for this civ. !
 
daladinn said:
ok , have yet to play this but i thought i should put in my 2 copper...

1 - i play calabim ALOT and i love most of what ya did , however i have to ask ... is giving the hunter vamparism a bit much? before the vampire was T3 and a maceman UU. now your allowing vamparism at a T2 unit. just seems scarey to me even if it requires a tech thats basically needed anyway for food and gold.

2 - you completely obsoleted teh original vampires. given a choice i would take assasins and shadows in a heartbeat over the basic vamp.

3 - thank you for the death mana , makes soo much mroe sense then earth. personally i dont think i ever cast an earth spell whne playing calabim. and as for law mana ... i cant think of how much it would change the game if calabim lost the unyeilding order spell... its what allows them to function in late game.

thanks for the good work ...
ya, though i must say i found the original vampires fairly obsolete before, since going for losha and then brujahs seemed a better course.

i actually wanted vampirism earlier, because most games i just never made it to feudalism before i was bored. having to get code of laws and tracking for a tier 2 unit is quite a long time tho, especially if you compare it to normal hunters (basically about 4.3 times the beaker cost, making them a 3rd tier unit practically, think its about the cost of just getting assassins). but about early vampirism, its not as powerful early on, when your cities are only size 10 youre only getting about 6xp a pop, not like in the late game when youd normally get vampirism and already have size 30 cities giving you 26xp a pop.

i considered moving vampires to iron working, because feudalism just takes forever.
 
lets try this perspective with calabim ...

having hunters with vampirism now totally opens the door for going leaves (previously i avoided religion due to opportunity costs). now having gotten leaves and your base archers to protect you , you can pick up code of laws and the ever popular aristocracy (i could not live without it anyway). now i can move toward getting my hunters then gaurdian of nature.

what this allows me to do is give vampirism to my heros that i get as well as having larger cities due to GoN. almost obsoletes needing archmages/liches for unyeilding order.
 
i actually prefer to stay agriculture over GoN with calabim as leaves, so you can get population faster (GoN may raise the happycap, but the population comes slower when you do reach it, and agriculture with the ancient forest extra food means you can grow fairly big even with unhappiness, then you just eat the unhappy people)

lots of xp seems good, but you start running out of good promotions after 82xp i find, so it tends not to be too great for heroes (they need to be level 6 just to get vampirism, so all you're really doing is fast tracking them from 26xp to 82xp, which they wouldve gotten anyways, and then after that its filler).

where vampirism really shines is in casters, since they gain xp automatically, so you can farm out a bunch to get them to level 6, then get them all the promotions they need for spells once they're vampires.

but about your other points, archer of leaves aren't worth it, too expensive, and you can do much better by rushing for hunters with a normal civ and then rushing your enemies with them. taking the long route to calabim hunters (which also have -50% city strength on attacking and defending) won't win you the game unless you wouldve won without them.
 
do you tend to do warfare to pick up the city raider promos? typically i am looking at combat 1-5 , move +1 , city raider 1-3 , shock 1-2 , and then if i need the archer and calvary i get them. then woodsman has served me well also.

i was viewing archer of leaves as a stop over honestly. up until now i was running agricultrure and aristocracy as core calabim civics. often i would try and get a forge built so i could make a great engineer and OO and pop the tower in my biggest food city. but alot of that is long run aproaches which i had to do as calabim. also a big thing for me was the council (nothing like losha as a hidden unit)

overall , i guess i just have to play with the new setup , hehe
 
btw, Svartalfar Scout has got only 1 movement point, is this intended ?
 
Are any other of the new added unique units different from the standard version (except of course first strike and Elf promotion)?
 
yes, other than the ones i said already, i made horse archers for dark elves 6 strength (mentioned that previously but not in this thread), banshees (lich for dark elves) have 7 strength, and dark elf assassin starts with the forest stealth promotion.
 
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