Warhammer Fantasy Battles Mod Brainstorm Thread

Arexack_heretic · Dec 11, 2006

Don't forget: they don't have archers either.

Just alot of rats and some big deadly things.

And:
yeah. It is really annoying when, having plodded all the way to the other side of the tabletop under a constant barrage of arrows, their elite unit with uber-general kills of your warlord and the whole army turns tail. :mad:

Pestilens has created most of the deadly plagues in the WH world.
OK and then half the skaven died because of it too...slight oversight.

I don't think of the main clans as religious institutions.
They are just powerfull clans that have taken one aspect of the horned one to an extreme.
(I did try out a mod with them as religions and their spread represented their influence)
I think buildings for clans are ok, but not acolytes and priests, well maybe for pestilens. Other than that GreySeers are the voice of the Horned rat.
In Skaveblight all clans have their private quarter, but outside most lairs are held by a single major clan and their vasal clans.

We need to think about it some more.

-acolytes can infiltrate a city, spread the influence of the horned rat. negating walls.
-priests can hide units near them. and cast skaven spells.
-High Priests can ride a doombell that negates city defence bonus and can destroy enemy artillery.
-The temple of the hornedRat can toll it's bells in discord and inundate (become jungle/swamp) an area anywhere in LOS of a skaven unit. This destroys any improvements on the tiles.
Area of effect is...9squares? or a city-area?

The ultimate Skryre weapon would be the light-magic tunneling device that is quite likely to blow up, destroying the HRtemple and many buildings in other cities as well. As a bonus all affected cities will be connected with tunnels.
possible?

Masada · Dec 11, 2006

New thought... Some religious buildings are not for religous purposes as such...

Which may sound odd... but alot of these bonuses are not religous by nature. Well we wouldnt see them as religous umm things to do... Skaven, Chaos, Darkelves is what they do religous or just an excuse for doing bad things... Now in my experience alot of people dont seem to see Chaos as a religion just a sort of evil league. Chaos is a religion the tribes of Chaos may not errect Gothic Churches or other great religous edifaces to the gods... but then chaos isnt exactly known for building cities or building much at all, most of the tribes of chaos live in yurts and whatnot, they dont have time to build that sort of thing let alone the infastructure, need or materials to do it... they live a nomadic lifestyle that involves the occasional foray to attack for slaves or wealth whom so ever they wish and most of the time they sorta kill each other (which alot of people dont seem to understand.. there is no great Chaos brotherhood, there are a bunch of tribes with grudges, large amounts of wealth taken from other people, different gods and different factions which combine to make some rather nasty tribal, clan, family or people wars...). The tribes of Chaos live, eat and breathe chaos from morning to night simple. The gods can make all sorts of things happen, stigma, demonic possesion or just being the chaos gods. These people live with there gods all the time and now and then the gods take notice of someone or something... and do things to that person which the people consider a good thing. Which may infact be a good thing for a people who fight constantly and whose life expectancy would be rather low. But let me tell you this... Chaos warriors must be rare in the Old World, i dont see the Tribes of Chaos mining the ore to make the weapons/armour and even in lets say the empire that sort of armour is very expensive (full plate) that it is owned only by the Knightly Orders and by Greatswords who are the personal guards of an elector. Maintaining that sort of thing is hard as well, i dont see the Tribes of Chaos with great founderies and the best they probably have is a moveable blacksmith... now people might say but the Chaos dwarves make them and repair them (but then in some texts the chaos gods give them out... and bind them to the person forever...), i say yeah they do... but the Chaos wastes are huge.. there must be some sort of complex trade network for the suits and the parts to be shipped on. Well if the merchant lived that long which i doubt there are not any roads or paths in the wastes and the groups tend to move around alot... so these expensive, maintance heavy, heavy and very rare suits of armour cannot be equipped to a large amount of the population. So Chaos warriors must be rare.. with that in mind what makes up the armies of chaos... demons? nope difficult to bring into the world and costly to keep in it and to summon (no one wants to sell there soul...) Maurder Horsemen... maybe but horses are expensive and hard to maintain (most horses cannot live only on grass they need grain, grass just doesnt cut it.. some ponies can live on just grass but only for a short time before they start to waste... so either chaos has ponies (which i doubt) or they have horses who feed on grass and grain which makes it that much harder to keep alive in what is a dead land... with evil grass)... so what makes up a chaos horde chaos knights? of course not combine the 2 problems above and add in warhorses (which are about the nastiest thing on 4 legs to keep going...) so whats the winner? Maurders... simple they are cheap to field but they have little or no armour and no one fields them in the tabletop game... the tabletop game isnt always right players choose there composition from a list they dont aim for accuracy on the field (as an empire player 90% of all empire armies have the same or similar compisitions... a unit of speas/halbreds/swords with full command and the griffin standard (that is about the most it vaires), a hellblaster, 1 or 2 cannons, a unit of knights inner circle with full command etc) Maurders you say but there infantry... well i would imagine they would be infantry till about the moment they go into battle, horses are more expensive than men, so they dismount just before battle (Mauraders are dragoons at least i would imagine they are) the man+sword+armour probably doesnt=the horse in value. Using standard dragoon tactics you have a third of your men as horse handlers and the other two thirds do the work.. that way you can leave quickly and you save your horses if you die... simply speaking much the same can be said of most civs... the empire would have a 100 free company/archers to every Knight would have 10 cannon to a hellblaster and 10 Knights to a cannon etc... its a pyramind shape with a very steep top.. there is only one Emperor and 12 Elector counts... there can only really be 12 Units/Companies of Greatswords and maybe 5-10 smaller groups of Greatswords for the Burgeonmeisters of the various cities... there are only 10-12 Squadrons of Reiksguard Knights (a cavalry squadron being between 25-50 Horsemen normally, they got smaller as time went on...) of which half are fielded as the foot Reiksguard the personal guards and retainers of the Emperor.. (but all Reiksguard Knights are templars of Sigmar).

All the special weapons are exactly that special weapons they should be rare... a single chaos Knight according to canon may well be a couple of hundred years old having fought all that time... so it wouldnt be impossible to imagine him cutting his way through a fair amount of Skaven slaves.. with the slaves having no way to really stop him... i dont even think it would be possible unless he was out numbered on the order of a thousand or so.. what are they going to do against a man on a warhorse in full barding (complete with glowing eyes) with full plate armour with a good idea about how to kill stuff and gods that take an interest in what hes doing...

(For those who relate to 40k better... a space marine is how tall? 8-10 foot tall, with very dense very large bones, with a plate across his rib cage, a second heart, second set of lungs, an agent that clots blood really fast, ears that can filter out sounds which the marine can specify, a gun that shoots bullets the size of my hand that explode on contact and shred a target, power armour which is stronger than concrete, a knife that can cut through concrete... oh and there is only normally 3000 per chapter (at the most) and there are only about a hundred chapters... compared to a couple of billion guardsmen... i would hesitate to say but i wouldnt be surprised to say there might be a million guardsmen and PDF per Spacemarine... Space marines are made for hitting hard and doing the most damage (Space Marines are heroes with songs and stuff made about individual space marines), and the imperuim is a million inhabbited worlds (Tau space is a dot that needs to magnified to be able to be seen) so they are spread pretty thin...)

I would like to see the mod reflect that... of course i dont think that is going to happen... but at least bring it to table top level

And yes using some formulas it is possible to work out the theoretical numbers of aspects of a military and the theoretical population/support needed to support that military

Skaven

The Horned Rat is skaven... though he created them and thats how he is... i dont really care skaven are not my bowl of chips... played so far to date.. Empire, Wood elves (not the new ones... i prefer the old list), Lizardmen, Kislev (along time ago when i was really young), Dogs of war (along time ago), Chaos (current list), Darkelves (for a bit current list) and i have gamed with every other list at one time or another doing this and that... those are the armies i have played/collected (well been given)

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 11, 2006

I edited the Horned Rat SR in my last post with some of the changes mentioned by AH.

i think that the light-magic tunneling device should be the Skaven Civ Unique wonder. im sure its possible, we would have to wait for olleus to say yay or nay though. could be intersting

EDIT: @ masada: im sorry, was there a point to that loooong paragraph, and reference to 40K? :crazyeye:

we've already tried formulas, and no, they didnt work.

Masada · Dec 11, 2006

Thats an army that can be really different... most human armies are just that human they have similar units... etc

Skaven, Skaven are different

They are religious institutions but not like humans are used to seeing... they dont take it to the extreme... Skaven are like that the 4 clans just concentrate on one of those ideals if you will...

@AH i dont have an uber general... and i dont use arrows... cannon balls+hell blaster shots+handguns+Hochland long rifles tend to deal with things rather nicely... and yeah it is comic when Skaven turn tail and run... but then every army has its problems...

I dont even know if tunnels are possible... it wouldnt be impossible i think to destroy buildings in each city... but that would be code heavy... and swamp jungle change... that would hard... so very hard....

@PL Controllers... just make it you need X units of controllers and if you dont have enough enter massive finicial strain... (simple to code i think...) and it solves the problem well without having to much complexity...

You can do cargo stuff just make it like magic and consider it a spell... with enslave... that doesnt die... i think you can do it...

Norsca has werewolves... well wolven people who are wolfish as such.... not a great deal is coming to my memory about it...

The Blood Cult is cool... so thats for Lahima?... it doesnt fit with any thing else really...

(any comments on my above post the really long one would be good

)

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 11, 2006

Actually masada, i think jungle swamp change would be relatively simple. make the Temple of the Horned Rat spawn a 'spell' unit every 3 turns, which has unlimited range and can terraform the land to swamp/ jungle accordingly. just borow some code from FfH

it may the the sleep deprivation, but i didnt undertand what you said about contollers, sorry, can you explain?

Well, perhaps we should save werewolves for the Norsca civ. i dont see shamanesses turning into giant wolves personally

yeh, i was aiming for lahmia with the Blood Cult, and also Sylvania, but to a lesser extent.

like i said before: was there any point to that long post :crazyeye:

it may be the sleep deprivation but...

Masada · Dec 11, 2006

okay to the temple...

im a bit sleep deprived ive sorta forgotten what i meant...

what formulas? how did u calculate the ratios and the figures? (im talking about using some mathmatical formulas to guess if you will the a rough composition of the population/military/composition of the military/finicial costs of maintaining that military

but what formulas did you use? and why wouldnt they work? there pretty simple to do...

EDIT: @ masada: im sorry, was there a point to that loooong paragraph, and reference to 40K? that must be how tired i am i missed that... ummm ere ummm ere....

There are mentions of werewolves in Ind and Norsca... but i only talked about Norsca so im confused...

I can now see what you were aiming for with the blood cult.. it is more lahima like

Arexack_heretic · Dec 11, 2006

hehe. I agree with you about the clans Masada.

And for the special weapons: in the unit_class lists a maximum number can be entered for each type.
However: when I was trying to make a skaven unit list, I considdered some things:
-1- Other armies can have an unlimited number of archers, catapults, cannon.

-2- Skaven need some way to counter this.
(Throwing ten units of skavenslaves against one unit of archers is not going to help the skaven much and will give the archer too much experience.)

-3- the skaven special weapons are for softening up opponents and make THEM run away in terror for a change.
Hence support units. this will give the core-unit of clanrats support fire in defence and attack.
-poison wind will ignore do X collateral damage 75% enemy, 25% self.
-warpfire will negate defencebonusses and cause firedamage.
-assasin will try to attack the most powerfull unit or hero and kill him or damage the unit. (firststrike)

-Jezzails will have a powerfull ranged sniper ability. not really carried as supportunits, rather deployed behind the lines.
-plaguecencers...not sure but cause mayhem all round. can only be carried by plaguemonks.

-ScreamingBell...should be carried like a supportweapon, gives the whole stack frenzy can destroy walls and has +300% vs siegeweapons. (the riding GreySeer will function as leader and also give leadership bonus.)

Spoiler :

whooo!

edit: oh yeah this was about special unit formulae. we have some restrictions on the 'Elite' units...but as I stated at the start one can build infinate cannon, while on-tabletop one could at most field 2 or 3 in a standard army.

Oh yeah and:
I don't relish the way beastmen are the core of chaos in the ancient times. The core should be human marsuders/thugs, the beastmen would be attracted to a society open to them, but a society need to be based on humans to start with. They are also pretty powerfull for ancient units.

Arexack_heretic · Dec 11, 2006

On another topic:

Goblinoids.
(wolves and boars will replace horses. not however the resource...maybe we could change that around: horses are food, pigs are horses...game is wolves, sheep is game?)
okay the important point:

It might be good to differentiate between a
goblin dominated society
an ork dominated society
and hobgoblins.

Lets give ork units a high upkeep. this means they will not dominate when the civic is not 'the horde'.
If civic is the horde, buildings are more expensive to build. thus goblin shamans cannot use higher level spells.
maybe some goblin units can only be built under other than 'the horde' civics?

I'm not sure how to handle the eastern hobgoblins...

--------------------------------------------
x>Z^~T+*/\|LN

In other words: I have arrived in the tech tree at Dwarven runes.
I need some ideas, as the variety of runes is immense.

First off:
'Runesmithing' could allow the building of dwarven Magic Items (but which?).
'Runes of Power' tech could then allow the unit Runelord+Anvil.

There are so many runes and types of artefact, I cannot make a choice.
Weapon, talismanic, armour, banner, engineering runes all have a host of representatives.
Best way to represent this multitude, could be through hero-promotions, but thats a load of work. (and I'm not doing it)

At least one that could be available for any unit is the Rune of Valaya or Warding or Sanctuary all of which give additional disspelling power.

Also it might be good to have some powerfull runes, that confer some larger effect. such as on an entire city.

I'm not really Dwarf-savvy, so help me out.

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 11, 2006

We used formulas to try to convert the WH unit stats into the Civ Strength / movement / First Strikes stats. it worked to an extent, but they were far too unbalanced.

Please dont get into unit stats at the moment guys. Ploe spent AGES, entering all the units and stats into the game, and he would NOT be happy if we started changing that. (unless of course you volenteered to do it, and also if it was better, but i think there is no point.)
so, can we please stay away from unit stats at the moment?

@AH: were those Pestilens / Eshin /Skyre etc religions proposed as alternatives to the skaven religon above? they're good ideas, but im not sure what you were aiming at. :blush:

personally, i think those would be better to use as tech upgrades for the Skaven Civ. i dont think the Clans should interfere with the Horned Rat too much.

About the dwarf Runes:
ive got one of the old Magic books for WH, and its got a section on Dwarf Runes.
there are 5 grouping of Runes:
Weapon runes
Armour Runes
Runes of Protection
Engineering Runes
Talismanic Runes
so id say make a new tech for each of these, same as with the winds of magic, but with Runes.

next, id say choose 6 runes from each list, that most capture the Dwarven charcteristics. for example:

Spoiler :

then rules apply to the number of runes usable / unit.
units can only have 1 master rune and one other normal rune.
Units can otherwise combine 3 normal runes from any section, but cannot have multiple runes on the same item ie, cannot have 2 runes on its armour, or 2 runes on its sword, unless specified.

im not dwarf savvy either, i was just translating from a WH book

Arexack_heretic · Dec 11, 2006

Yeah I know, I got a PDF of the same armybook.
It's too much IMO.

Yeah pestilens
They are just a second set of altars.
more a 'unit building-requirement' thing.

They give additional culture/money whatever, but also added unrest....
(when pestilens first returned there was a great civil war)
Pestilens and Seers are the same SR (DC-HR).
Still, Pestillens keep to themselves and everybody is fine with that.
They ARE plagueridden afterall.

Maybe they would need the warpstone brazier-altar then both the pit and the temple of bells....Im confused myself. not all the buildings and units are religious.

SR's do affect each other right?
Or is it just the CR's that have negative coexistence boni?

Arexack_heretic · Dec 11, 2006

Spoiler :

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 11, 2006

s l e e p ??? whats that ?

well, considering the Runes is the dwarven form of magic, it should be the equivilent in power to magic, so that there is no major penalty for the dwarves not having mages. perhaps we could reduce it to 4 runes per set or something.

if we give the Horned rat several possible sets of temples and priests, it could get very confusing for players. im still inclined to use what use stated earlier on Pestilens / Eshin /Skyre etc in the Skaven civ, as civ unique buildings and units.

yes, SR cause unhappyness if they are 2 competing SR, unless stated otherwise.

CR also create unhappyness if they are competing, but SR more so.

Masada · Dec 11, 2006

@PL when i talk about mathmatical formulas i dont mean changing the stats... this game has great economy of scale allready. I want to work out the limits to having units (steamtanks and what not for my own enjoyment.. i do like to a see a balanced (real) army on the tabletop with a mix of units not just a few (good) units)

Otherwise ignore me on this for a bit

On the Skaven Question

I agree not having Archers, Knights (cavarly for that matter), Skaven do have acess to some siege weapons (but they are more AP weapons)

I agree with you throwing units away is silly... (and it happens..) thats why i proposed having units that ignore city defense and terrain defense.. wall are not that useful against a foe who can burrow under them. Or having units that get a large bonus to attacking cities (Poison gas is great for clearing defenders of walls)

sorry to say this but Skaven shooting in any form has never really caused anything in my army to run (hard to do 25% casulties in a turn of shooting) others cringe in the Skaven shooting phase so oh well... i agree though Skaven shooting doesnt win the game it is used to soften up units before you charge. And it might reduce the need to plow 10 units into a single archer...

@AH Orcs cant really be high maintance.. they sorta dont need much to breed or fight... i think they should be locked on WAAAGHHHH (the Horde) all the time because Orcs cannot do much else...

Your right we need to show a difference between Orcs, Goblins and Hobgoblins...

Hobgoblins are the Mongols/Horsemen (well Wolfmen) of the Warhammer world.. they dont even field infantry.. (maybe they fight as dragoons) simply speaking they roam around doing stuff...

@PL (Not dwarf savy here either...)

(Skaven are making my head hurt...)

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 12, 2006

so is everyone happy with the 'Dark Children' SR? if so we can move on to 'Chaos Gods.'

@ masada: i agree with everything you said in your last post

.

i understand what you meant by formula now

sorry about that

i agree that the rarety of units is important for WH. i might just leave it to you to think of a method, then we can ddiscusse it later. right now, id like to finish the basis for Religion.

Masada · Dec 14, 2006

Fair enough... method in my mind already :lol:

Running a series of calculations now (good old computer doing all the leg work)

I wont unveil my findings till after the religions are done

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 16, 2006

well, seeing as no one has any complaints sbout the 'Dark Children' SR im going to move on to the Chaos Cults.

Spoiler :

Masada · Dec 16, 2006

@PL

Will chaos units have enslave?

Do you think 80 turns is a bit excessive? or is that just me?

Nurgle:

Turning defeated enemy units into nurglings on a 20% chance is good, fits fairly well with the way Nurgle works. Would be hard to have Nurgle spreading plauges etc... and this does show what the consequences of figh
ting nurgle are...

Tzeentch:

Is good, having units able to cast spells is a great idea, limiting it to one is good. And it is good that Tzeentchen "priests" can cast more spells which fit with the canon.

Khorne:

Is good, the bloodletter ability fits really well. Khorne priests cant cast spell

which is great and they get a strength bonus to offset that perfect.

Slaanesh:

The special ability is allright (not quite the best (but thats me speaking). But Slaanesh worshippers tend to be fairly handy with spells.. i dont know, 1,1,2 might be a bit weak (for the amount of spells they can know).

Chaos Undivided:

Is exactly what it should be... however would it be possible to make the units of the Slaanesh, Khorne,Tzeentch and Nurgle more expensive to build in this religion? maybe giving the base faiths +25% build time to units and building?

Chaos undivided is actually on reflection damm good... heres what i would do... build warriors (whatever is the weakest chaos units) after i have built and altar sac them for the pop use the extra pop to whip religous buildings into existance, Slaanesh altar first... whip a bunch of Slaanesh demons into being then declare war enslave, enslave, pump out warriors sack them and whip units... oh and priest there empire out from under them... spys+religion=good

I dont know if that might be a little to good... you could crank out a fairly large army fairly quickly...

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 17, 2006

yes, i was planning on giving all Acolytes, priests and high priests in the whole CR the enslave ability.

for those uber-deamons, i was thinking that they would be like heroes for that religion, (making them a world unit, meaning only 1 can be in existance at any one time) and would be extreamely strong, it would also give the civ inscentive to stay Chaos so they can get those units. (plus you ned to build those monuments first to be able to build the rest of the temples etc, and by the time 80 turns comes around, the religion should be farely advanced, making it more believable that a greater Deamon would spawn.

i think Nurgle was the easyest to come up withideas for the special promotion

im glad you like it

im also glad you like Tzeentch and Khorne

about Slaanesh: they were actually the hardest to think of a slave sacrificing ability, and i agree, that it isnt very good. perhaps just make it the same as the other SR and give units in the city with a slaanesh altar the "Gift of slaanesh", and instead of producing a slave, they just make the same unit change to your civ?

EDIT: no, that would be way too powerful.

i might also change the spells to 1, 2, 3 for the acolyte, priest and high priest respectively.

i think the +25% build time to units and building of other SR in cities with chaos undivided is a good idea, which would make it not overly powerful.
i was aiming to make it possible to build a big army quickly. that is, after all, what chaos is

one huge, endless, army...

Masada · Dec 17, 2006

@PH... Chaos as a civ would have to be pretty unique... because all chaos is, is a horde...

Problem 1 with "normal civs"

1. Chaos doesnt build cities...
2. Most chaos tribes are nomads
3. Chaos really doesnt build a great deal..
4. The Hordes of Chaos are made up of a bunch of tribes who have spent 99% of the time fighting each other... (the other 1% is the time they have spent under the Everchosen... etc not very long in the scheme of things)
5. They have access to massive amounts of warriors (not soldiers)
6. There population must be massive...
7. They live in a fairly fertile area (Chaos god assisted i would imagine)
8. The Chaos wastes are massive... utterly huge...
9. They worship sub gods, minor aspects of the chaos gods... they do not directly worship Slaanesh etc they worship a part of Slaanesh.. etc
10. There are 4 major gods and an unknown number of minor aspects, demon princes, greater demons (really just a facet of there patron gods.. but even they have worshippers...) and other Chaos dieties etc
11. They fight all time, now some might say there are just 4 factions... corresponding to the 4 major chaos gods... well i would say no Chaos gods want strong worshippers, demons etc not weak ones go figure, they dont mind if you fight your fellow worshipper, Blood spilt for Khorne is still blood spilt no matter whos blood it is.. etc
12. There is no brotherhood of chaos they hate each other, inside Tribes you have conflict, inside Clans you have conflict, inside Families you have conflict, inside Villages, Yurts whatever you have conflict... The chaos tribes are the MongolsX10^25 in terms of nastiness... they Mongols did some nasty stuff like killing 10% of the world population... but there was reason for it... Chaos is alot worse than that... (Mongols wernt such a bad people to live under if you surrrendered your city and never screwed with them... they had common sense and a keen sense of how best to rule the stuff they had taken over)

Come up with a civ that best exemplfies that... i dare you Psychic_Llamas

(Those are helpful suggestions... if even some of them can be represented ingame great

)

Psychic_Llamas · Dec 18, 2006

1. 2. 3. there is no way to get around chaos being nomadic. so just assume that some smart chaos worshipper suggested that they settle down in one spot.
4. but what happens under Archaon? we dont know, because its still going, and archaon is the leader of Chaos in the game. (plus he united the 4 major sects.)
5. i was hoping that Chaos would have heaps of really cheap, relatively weak deamons, and warriors etc, and then some, very few, uber tough ones, which could represent the masses of gibbering beasties.
6. i agree, which is why i gave the Chaos undivided SR the ability to Sac deamons to gain pop.
7.i disagree. why is it called "The Chaos Wastes"? explain that, i dare you

8. i agree, but that is relatively irrelavent in this game.
9. 10. 11yes, but we are only representing the 4 major dieties here.
12. slavery anyone?

dare accepted

see above.

we actually havent gotten arround to doing any major Chaos design work yet, hopefully that will be one of the next civs we work on, but untill then, all ideas we come up with for chaos will be put to the side for later use

about the SR, i need help with ideas for Slaanesh. i dont like any of the special abilities they get, and cant think of any better ones

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