The Gaming Den

And yeah, those Earth Kingdom Sprites look wicked awesome. Other units to play with for Earth Kingdom include 1312 (bowman), 1257 (ninja), 795 (footman with glaive), 796 (footman with a tower shield and spear), 940 (man in silk robes), 1186 (template for ostrichhorse rider).

-Username17

Can you only do pallete swaps or can you do new sprites

OgreBattle wrote:Can you only do pallete swaps or can you do new sprites

It's a 32x32 targa file. It's a literal new sprite, and any pixels you put in it or don't put in it are shown in the final product.

The thing is: when you do palette swaps and weapon swaps, it fits with the art style a lot better than when you make your own from scratch. Also, palette swaps are way frickin easier and come with their shading already done. So anywhere you can, a palette swap is preferable to new art.

-Username17

The Moon Spirit needs to #Onebattlespell Light of the North Star, and The OCean Spirit needs to #Onebattlespell Rain.

Orion wrote:The Moon Spirit needs to #Onebattlespell Light of the North Star, and The OCean Spirit needs to #Onebattlespell Rain.

If you give the ocean spirit land and water forms then you can have the water form cast #onebattlespell friendly currents (since rain does nothing underwater).

How mobile are the various nation's troops going to be? Sure water tribe and fire nation have sailing commanders coming out their ears, but what about land movement? Will fire nation mostly have map move-1 heavy infantry? What about earth kingdom, who seem to have mostly the same level of armor, but have a habit of wearing jingasa instead of spiky metal helmets? Should Earth Nation have mountain survival on everything? I'd like to reiterate that I think the Water Tribe should have universal map move-2 to help them compensate for their lighter armor.

FrankTrollman wrote:And yeah, I think that Water Tribe people should be genetically higher in defense and MR.

So... are we giving fire tribe nationally superior attack stats? Are we giving Earth Kingdom nationally superior protection (since that's what earth does) ? How about nationally longer life spans (since that's what nature does)?

In a couple days, I'm going to have to spend some major time on funeral and estate stuff, so I might not post as much till next week. Depending on the computer access I've got, I may shift to working on Water soldiers. There's some really easy conversion there I could do with a netbook with no real risk of lower quality. But the Earth Kingdom will be my highest modding priority until I get a playable v.01 done.
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Got a less-armored earthbender template partially converted from a mod nation, I could probably use this as a base for several units. Already made some significant changes to the original unit, but this is a good point to save it so I can go back if I dislike something later.



Here is a flag for the Earth Kingdom. The ring at the top is supposed to be reminiscent of the symbol used on their coins, and the Earthbending symbol is drawn on the banner.



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OgreBattle wrote:Can you only do pallete swaps or can you do new sprites

This is what it looks like if I do a new human sprite from scratch. I have a ways to go.

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Request: Anyone know how I could access the sprites for Conquest of Elysium 3? There's a Giant Ant sprite that I think might serve as a good Canyon Crawler base.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Your basic infantry goes into battle with furs, a leather hood, a mace, and a sling. That is terrible, but at least it doesn't cost a lot of resources. The hunter is more interesting, because Harpoons are awesome.

• Northern Tribe Warrior (Furs, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Warrior (Furs, Leather Hood, Bone Glaive, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Hunter (Furs, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, Stealthy, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Shield, Ice Lance, CR 50%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Bone Glaive, CR 50%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Shield, Mace, Harpoon, CR 50%)
• Bender Infantry (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Blade, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%)
• Bender Infantry (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Lance, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%)
  
  Capital Only
• Northern Tribe Raider (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Lance, Harpoon, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%, Stealthy)

So bone glaives out of every fort on easy to get chaff? I guess an sc immune faction would be...different at least. Also, I'd complain about recruit anywhere aura sacreds, but since they will kill themselves with their aura I won't. I also don't understand why you need to give easily mass produced and very buffable infantry with magic weapons, good shields, and innate elemental resistance more MR and Def. I guess they can be better easily buffable sc shredding supermen.

Commanders:

• Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 50%, Leadership 40)
• Warrior Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 50%, Leadership 80, Sailing)
• Hunter Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, CR 50%, Leadership 40, Stealthy)
• Water Witch (Quarterstaff, Female, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 10, Magic Leadership 10, Healer 30%, S1N2H2R1.1)
• War Bender (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 40, W3H2R1.1, Sailing)
• Ice Crafter (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Quarterstaff, Cold, Castle Defense +25, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 10, W1R0.2, Forge Bonus 25%)
  
  Capital Only
• Raider Captain (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 80, W2, Sailing, Stealthy)
• Spirit Guide (Female, Sacred, CR 50%, S2B1H2R1.1, Fortune Teller 5)

You can expect:
W4N3S3B2

So you get diverse, consistent, and powerful recruit anywhere sacred mages with an array of high paths. A nice stealthy leader to go with those troops (who you really don't lose out on anything by recruiting because he is a mage too), with (of course) sailing on that stealth commander, so you have the stealth mobility of Vanheim, but with sacreds. Not to mention a forge bonus, on a useful forging path, with the benefit of slightly better than average chance at a free chance at discount clams, astral boosters, or blood gear. I look forward to the national spells that will inevitably fill the almost nonexistent holes in their mages strategic and tactical options.

Overall, the faction has a strong military, a powerful mage corps, and no lack of access to strong "end game" paths. In addition it gets some frankly ridiculous asymetric bonuses tacked on to put it far and above most dom3 nations. Almost every troop and commander would be favorably comparable to the troops and commanders from any other faction, (excluding Ashdod) I am assuming that the faction is intended for MA. The nation as conceived is far too strong.

Suggestions:

• Remove bone glaives from non cap, non sacred troops. OR do not implement +MR +def national template.
• Remove cold aura: cold immunity is too strong and otherwise it is counter productive to have. Sacreds could get a second attack or something, but recruit anywhere sacreds with elemental resists and magic weapons is already really good.
• Remove ice crafter: it clutters the faction and steps mightily on caelum's toes. Also, forge bonuses are hard to balance on blood nations.
• I see no reason to give the faction a special national freezing mists, that spell is crazy strong with AoE scaling AN damage, the only thing that holds it back is the difficulty of casting it.

Opened a file and started working on V. 0.1

#newmonster 2740
#name "Earth Kingdom Militia"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaA2.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaA1.tga"
#hp 10
#att 10
#str 10
#gcost 8
#prec 10
#mr 10
#def 10
#enc 3
#prot 0
#mapmove 2
#size 2
#mor 10
#rcost 1
#descr "The militia of the Earth Kingdom is well-armed and better-trained than that of most other nations. They are not exceptional combatants, but their part-time military status makes them cheaper to maintain than career soldiers."
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#weapon 1
#ap 12
#end

#newmonster 2741
#name "Earth Kingdom Militia"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaB1.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaB2.tga"
#hp 10
#str 10
#att 10
#prec 10
#mor 10
#size 2
#mapmove 2
#prot 0
#enc 3
#def 10
#mr 10
#gcost 8
#rcost 1
#descr "The militia of the Earth Kingdom is well-armed and better-trained than that of most other nations. They are not exceptional combatants, but their part-time military status makes them cheaper to maintain than career soldiers."
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#weapon 308
#ap 12
#end

#newmonster 2742
#name "Earth Kingdom Militia"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaC1.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/earthmilitiaC2.tga"
#hp 10
#att 10
#str 10
#gcost 8
#prec 10
#mr 10
#def 10
#enc 3
#prot 0
#mapmove 2
#size 2
#mor 10
#rcost 1
#descr "The militia of the Earth Kingdom is well-armed and better-trained than that of most other nations. They are not exceptional combatants, but their part-time military status makes them cheaper to maintain than career soldiers."
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#weapon 8
#ap 12
#end

#newmonster 2743
#name "Earth Kingdom Soldier"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/earthsoldierA1.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/earthsoldierA2.tga"
#hp 11
#att 11
#prec 10
#gcost 10
#mor 11
#def 11
#str 11
#size 2
#enc 3
#descr "Warriors without the capacity to Earthbend must train hard to be taken seriously by their commanders. The career soldiers of the Earth Kingdom are above-average in skill."
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#weapon 14
#mapmove 2
#ap 12
#prot 0
#mr 10
#rcost 1
#end

#newmonster 2744
#name "Earth Kingdom Soldier"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/earthsoldierB1.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/earthsoldierB2.tga"
#hp 11
#gcost 10
#att 11
#prec 10
#mor 11
#def 11
#str 11
#size 2
#enc 3
#descr "Warriors without the capacity to Earthbend must train hard to be taken seriously by their commanders. The career soldiers of the Earth Kingdom are above-average in skill."
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#armor "shield"
#weapon 1
#mapmove 2
#ap 12
#prot 0
#mr 10
#rcost 1
#end

#newmonster 2745
#name "Earth Kingdom Archer"
#spr1 "./EarthKingdom/eartharcherA1.tga"
#spr2 "./EarthKingdom/eartharcherA2.tga"
#gcost 11
#att 10
#str 10
#mor 10
#armor "scale mail hauberk"
#armor "iron cap"
#weapon 1
#weapon 264
#prot 0
#hp 10
#size 2
#enc 3
#prec 11
#ap 12
#mr 10
#def 10
#rcost 1
#descr "Less well-known than the Earth Kingdom\'s signature boulder hurlers, but still a valuable part of the army, archers are promoted out of the infantry, and they retain the skills and equipment necessary to fight on the front lines."
#end

Akula wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:

Your basic infantry goes into battle with furs, a leather hood, a mace, and a sling. That is terrible, but at least it doesn't cost a lot of resources. The hunter is more interesting, because Harpoons are awesome.

• Northern Tribe Warrior (Furs, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Warrior (Furs, Leather Hood, Bone Glaive, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Hunter (Furs, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, Stealthy, CR 25%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Shield, Ice Lance, CR 50%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Bone Glaive, CR 50%)
• Northern Tribe Soldier (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Shield, Mace, Harpoon, CR 50%)
• Bender Infantry (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Blade, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%)
• Bender Infantry (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Lance, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%)
  
  Capital Only
• Northern Tribe Raider (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap, Ice Aegis, Ice Lance, Harpoon, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%, Stealthy)

So bone glaives out of every fort on easy to get chaff? I guess an sc immune faction would be...different at least. Also, I'd complain about recruit anywhere aura sacreds, but since they will kill themselves with their aura I won't. I also don't understand why you need to give easily mass produced and very buffable infantry with magic weapons, good shields, and innate elemental resistance more MR and Def. I guess they can be better easily buffable sc shredding supermen.

Cold is not the same as Cold Aura. Cold is the attack of the Ao Oni. It is a cold based fatigue attack. It's length 0 and 20 points of AP stun. Bone Glaives are 10 points of damage and are magic, but they have an attack bonus of zero. They ignore etherealness and are quite dangerous to heavily armored thugs, but it's not by itself immunity to SCs. Ordinary Barbarian indies backed up by Weapons of Sharpness are much scarier to SCs.

Commanders:

• Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 50%, Leadership 40)
• Warrior Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Sling, CR 50%, Leadership 80, Sailing)
• Hunter Chief (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, CR 50%, Leadership 40, Stealthy)
• Water Witch (Quarterstaff, Female, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 10, Magic Leadership 10, Healer 30%, S1N2H2R1.1)
• War Bender (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Cold, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 40, W3H2R1.1, Sailing)
• Ice Crafter (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Quarterstaff, Cold, Castle Defense +25, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 10, W1R0.2, Forge Bonus 25%)
  
  Capital Only
• Raider Captain (Full Leather Armor, Leather Hood, Mace, Harpoon, Sacred, CR 50%, Leadership 80, W2, Sailing, Stealthy)
• Spirit Guide (Female, Sacred, CR 50%, S2B1H2R1.1, Fortune Teller 5)

You can expect:
W4N3S3B2

So you get diverse, consistent, and powerful recruit anywhere sacred mages with an array of high paths. A nice stealthy leader to go with those troops (who you really don't lose out on anything by recruiting because he is a mage too), with (of course) sailing on that stealth commander, so you have the stealth mobility of Vanheim, but with sacreds. Not to mention a forge bonus, on a useful forging path, with the benefit of slightly better than average chance at a free chance at discount clams, astral boosters, or blood gear. I look forward to the national spells that will inevitably fill the almost nonexistent holes in their mages strategic and tactical options.

Overall, the faction has a strong military, a powerful mage corps, and no lack of access to strong "end game" paths. In addition it gets some frankly ridiculous asymetric bonuses tacked on to put it far and above most dom3 nations. Almost every troop and commander would be favorably comparable to the troops and commanders from any other faction, (excluding Ashdod) I am assuming that the faction is intended for MA. The nation as conceived is far too strong.

Uh... the army is garbage. Seriously. Their troops wear hoods. That is a 5 protection helmet. You can chase them off with slings. LA Atlantis kicks a lot of ass with those weapons because they are racially superior Atlanteans and wear Ice Armor. These guys don't wear ice armor and don't have natural protection values because they are humans. So instead of going in with a protection of 17, they go in with a protection of 7. Do you not see how this is a huge limitation for the army? Their ranged units are meanwhile also terribad, having Slings instead of something decent - not even regular short bows (which is technology they look up to).

Suggestions:

• Remove bone glaives from non cap, non sacred troops. OR do not implement +MR +def national template.
• Remove cold aura: cold immunity is too strong and otherwise it is counter productive to have. Sacreds could get a second attack or something, but recruit anywhere sacreds with elemental resists and magic weapons is already really good.
• Remove ice crafter: it clutters the faction and steps mightily on caelum's toes. Also, forge bonuses are hard to balance on blood nations.
• I see no reason to give the faction a special national freezing mists, that spell is crazy strong with AoE scaling AN damage, the only thing that holds it back is the difficulty of casting it.

How are forge bonuses hard to balance on Blood Nations? You make a sanguine dousing rod for 3 slaves instead of 5. All the stuff that's really awesome in Blood has the #noforgebonus tag. Seriously: forge bonuses can't reduce the cost of Contracts. Forge bonuses on Blood/Earth nations are pretty awesome, because of the whole "you can also build a hammer and then you make blood stones for half price" thing, but that'll take approximately forever to pay for itself if you have to empower in Earth up from nothing to start.

So in order:

• No. Bone Glaives are not really especially powerful and being regular humans with a Defense and MR of 11 isn't a big deal either.
• They don't have a Cold Aura, what the hell are you talking about?
• Their name is "The Ice Crafters". Of course they have an ice crafter. Forge bonuses are wildly over rated. Wildly.
• I don't actually care one way or the other whether they can cast Freezing Mist, a couple levels of Evocation later they'd switch over to Falling Frost either way.

-Username17

How does this (44, 75, -5) look as a color scheme for officers? The unit is supposed to be a nonbender captain. I sprited this sword and liked it too much to want to let it go to waste.



EDIT:
Oh snap. I just realized the robed bender I posted earlier is a size 3 or 4 unit. Gonna have to find a replacement.

You could use the Jigami (2089).

-Username17

I'll check it out. In the meantime, here's a Dai Li assassin.

Another thought: How different should regular earthbending soldiers look from nonbending soldiers? They still wear armor, and I could simply change uniform colors around a bit, but I'm not sure what exactly to change things to.

Jigami turned out to be very promising. I've made significant changes, and the current state of the Earthbender Soldier sprites seems pretty nice. I drew a new halberd to fit the sprite, and I shamelessly copied sword stances from a Bogarussian guard. After fiddling with the shading a bit, both weapons worked out fairly well, but I'm not sure if I should risk adding arm/leg armor. We could just say the sleeves are flexible to make bending easier.

I tried scaling down the oversize image, and I may have a serviceable master Earthbender sprite now.

So, Frank, I responded to your response in the spoiler, but it is long and minutia oriented and I would like to frame my main point clearly ahead of time. I think that the "Ice Crafters" faction idea you posted is too good, it gets a lot of pretty much everything and access to some really great stuff without a lot to balance it out. I think that the nation should be toned down in some ways from your write up, especially since national spells still need to be added to give the nation more flavor (the spells will almost certainly end up increasing the power of the nation). You have rejected my specific ideas, but I still think the power of the nation as a whole needs to be tweaked downward.

FrankTrollman wrote:Cold is not the same as Cold Aura. Cold is the attack of the Ao Oni. It is a cold based fatigue attack. It's length 0 and 20 points of AP stun. Bone Glaives are 10 points of damage and are magic, but they have an attack bonus of zero. They ignore etherealness and are quite dangerous to heavily armored thugs, but it's not by itself immunity to SCs. Ordinary Barbarian indies backed up by Weapons of Sharpness are much scarier to SCs.

No, bone glaives have a special strength draining effect which you can be forgiven for not noticing because it is on a cap only unit which is at max 10/turn. This faction literally can make as many as they want because their armor costs no resources. What that means is that an SC will get swarmed, ethereal and mistform are no protection, and eventually the SC's offense goes away. Thank you for clarifying cold, and it is exceptionally strong to have it on sacred troops from turn one, that cold effect is one of the only good things about the Yomi military.

Uh... the army is garbage. Seriously. Their troops wear hoods. That is a 5 protection helmet. You can chase them off with slings.

Prot is the easiest stat to buff, the faction has easy access to wooden warriors. Their protection looks more like 15 head 18 body outside of expansion. You are seriously overvaluing base protection.

LA Atlantis kicks a lot of ass with those weapons because they are racially superior Atlanteans and wear Ice Armor. These guys don't wear ice armor and don't have natural protection values because they are humans. So instead of going in with a protection of 17, they go in with a protection of 7. Do you not see how this is a huge limitation for the army?

They have an increased attrition rate while expanding, except they get a unit that does a good impression of a warrior of the five elements in combat, and W5E bless rushes are seriously a thing. Any nation with cheap recruit anywhere sacreds isn't a bad military faction. Honestly, once wooden warriors hits the field having crap armor is meaningless, and indeed even something of an advantage with regards to fatigue.

Their ranged units are meanwhile also terribad, having Slings instead of something decent - not even regular short bows (which is technology they look up to).

Bowmen are the easiest thing to get from indie provinces, not having a decent national archer is a drawback, but in 75% of games it will be mitigated by lion tribe archers or something.

How are forge bonuses hard to balance on Blood Nations?

There are a lot of good things in blood to forge, because blood slaves are simply not as valuable as regular gems. While the best blood items are not able to be forged with a bonus, there are a fair amount of serviceable to good items in there that people use all the time, and it isn't like the nation has a lot of other things to do with the slaves.

No. Bone Glaives are not really especially powerful and being regular humans with a Defense and MR of 11 isn't a big deal either.

You have failed to take into account the special properties of the weapon, having it easily massable everywhere is a mistake.

They don't have a Cold Aura, what the hell are you talking about?

When you write "cold" in your short statline for units I assumed it was shorthand for cold aura and not ripping one of the best (and most obscure) things from another nation. Frankly a faction with a powerful recruit anywhere mage, and great path access, doesn't need a fairly good recruit anywhere sacred.

Their name is "The Ice Crafters". Of course they have an ice crafter. Forge bonuses are wildly over rated. Wildly.

Forge bonuses are really good and I honestly don't know why every mod you have suggested includes at least one forge bonus on par with the ice crafter. Ice crafters can be leveraged to do some great things. And frankly it isn't something the faction needs to be strong at all, their toolset is simply amazing.

I don't actually care one way or the other whether they can cast Freezing Mist, a couple levels of Evocation later they'd switch over to Falling Frost either way.[/list]

The spells have different niches, given that this nation is going to be really good at wearing down elite troops, you would blast mobs with falling frost, and use Freezing mist against non ice immune elites. (Seriously, you don't just shelve armor negating damage that lingers on the battlefield, AN damage is murder incarnate.)

Obviously this is your project and you can do as you like. If you want to code the mod as outlined, I can't stop you, but you are not following your own advice about not throwing everything in a mod nation.

I am not an Avatar expert, so I'm not sure where I should start with Earth Kingdom commanders statwise. The basic military commanders are pretty obvious, but paths and weapons for other stuff aren't really springing to mind.

I have a basic captain, a Dai Li officer, and a high-end earthbender sprited right now. But I'll clearly need to make some more. I think a scout/spy/assassin is certainly in order, possibly using the ninja I posted earlier. In addition, I should make some lower-power mages.

Akula wrote:No, bone glaives have a special strength draining effect which you can be forgiven for not noticing because it is on a cap only unit which is at max 10/turn. This faction literally can make as many as they want because their armor costs no resources. What that means is that an SC will get swarmed, ethereal and mistform are no protection, and eventually the SC's offense goes away. Thank you for clarifying cold, and it is exceptionally strong to have it on sacred troops from turn one, that cold effect is one of the only good things about the Yomi military.

You can actually make more than 10 sacred units a turn. You max out at starting holy 10, but every 5 temples still increases the number of sacred units you can build. Not that you care, because while the bone glaiver guys are cool, strength sap sucks. No one has ever wondered whether they could achieve victory because of Bone Glaives. Ao Onis are garbage, I have no idea what the fuckety fuck you are talking about. Ao Onis are not a high point of the Yomi military machine, they are an example of why the Yomi military machine sucks. It's a length zero attack on a unit with shit armor, the user is going to take a point of damage from a repel attack half the time they use it.

Yes, ethereal and mistform is no protection. Welcome to the awe inspiring military force of... Caelum? We've already seen what happens when you give magic weapons to bullshit troops. It's called Caelum Light Infantry and no one fucking cares. People still come up with super combatants to fight Caelum, they just use different stuff - like AoE attacks and high protection/defense.

You are seriously complaining that the army is overpowered because it mimics the military of some of the weakest troops in the game. That doesn't make any sense. Again and still: LA Atlantis does well with these weapons because they all have 12 hit points and high strength and natural protection and natural amphibiousness and awesome ice armor. These guys don't get those things. They are seriously Mictlan Fucking Warriors! Except that Mictlan Armor is actually better than the crap they are wearing. Mictlan is not powerful because of their Mictlan Warriors, those guys are overpriced at 9 gold each. Mictlan is powerful because Jaguar Warriors will eat your face. Water Tribe's sacred warriors are like Jaguar Warriors except without the second life as a giant man-leopard, which I think is fairly integral to the entire Jaguar Warrior experience.

Akula wrote:Prot is the easiest stat to buff, the faction has easy access to wooden warriors. Their protection looks more like 15 head 18 body outside of expansion. You are seriously overvaluing base protection.

WTF dude. First of all, it's 13 head, because natural and artificial armor do not fully stack. Secondly, your contention is that when people get to Alteration 5 that they'll be able to make one squad at a time have the protection necessary to... shrug off unmodified short bows half the time? That's terrible. Go play Mictlan with just the warriors and come back and tell me how much I'm overvaluing basic protection. Then ruminate on the fact that Mictlan Warriors are actually better equipped than these guys.

They have an increased attrition rate while expanding, except they get a unit that does a good impression of a warrior of the five elements in combat

Warriors of the Five Elements are terrible. Their late-game utility is that you can slip them into battlefield destruction armies because they can achieve elemental immunity after the casting of an elemental resistance spell like Warriors of Muspelheim. So they are a recruitable unit that can add bulk to army killer stacks that want to use niche tactics like Wrathful Skies. That's cool, but it's not good in any early expansion sense.

Any nation with cheap recruit anywhere sacreds isn't a bad military faction.

Bow before the might of... Bogarus? Bandar Log? Marignon has a powerful military, but it is not because they can build Flagellants. It's because they can build move 2 crossbowmen and their Swordsmen come with decent armor and greatswords.

Honestly, once wooden warriors hits the field having crap armor is meaningless, and indeed even something of an advantage with regards to fatigue.

You keep saying this. This is bullshit. How long do Vanara Infantry or Mictlan Warriors stand up in close combat even with Wooden Warriors? Wooden Warriors is much more powerful when cast on units that actually have a protection value than it is cast on troops that are nearly naked.

Bowmen are the easiest thing to get from indie provinces, not having a decent national archer is a drawback, but in 75% of games it will be mitigated by lion tribe archers or something.

At which point you aren't even using your native army. You're complaining about the strength of a national army that you admit is going to be relying upon indies for both its arrow shooters and its arrow catchers whenever it can. That's not the mark of a strong army, that's the mark of a weak army.

There are a lot of good things in blood to forge, because blood slaves are simply not as valuable as regular gems.

You realize that cuts both ways, right? Slaves are not as valuable as gems, therefore the savings aren't as valuable when you get a forge bonus. In fact, since absolute costs are based on your path value, and total savings are based on initial absolute costs - a blood forger saves less real value with their forge bonus than a caster with any other paths of equal level does with the same forge bonus. A blood 2 forger saves you 3 slaves when forging a blood 2 item. An Air 2 forger saves you 3 air gems when forging an air 2 item. Not only are Air 2 items better than Blood 2 items, but the savings of an equal number of air gems is more than the savings of blood slaves.

A forge bonus on a blood caster is by definition the weakest forge bonus it is possible to have. The strongest forge bonus would be whatever gems you think are most valuable (probably Earth gems).

Akula wrote:When you write "cold" in your short statline for units I assumed it was shorthand for cold aura and not ripping one of the best (and most obscure) things from another nation.

Well, maybe you should have noticed that I gave it a weapon number instead of an aura size.

Forge bonuses are really good and I honestly don't know why every mod you have suggested includes at least one forge bonus on par with the ice crafter.

Because the Fire Nation and Water Tribe are known for magic-augmented crafting. The Earth Kingdom is known for basically being rich and backward, and they don't get a Forge bonus.

The spells have different niches, given that this nation is going to be really good at wearing down elite troops

For the last fucking time: they are MICTLAN FUCKING WARRIORS. They aren't good at anything, strength draining glaives or no. Their Troops. Are Bad. That is what a bad unit looks like. At 9 gold they may seriously be over priced. A LA Atlantis Snow Warrior costs 10 gold. That is an awesome unit. Because it has twice the protection (more in cold provinces), twice the cold resistance, more hit points, and is amphibious. And yeah, it hits just as hard and just as often with its ice glaive and ignores etherealness just as hard.

If your nation has incredibly shitty soldiers, it needs incredibly good mages. The comparison point you're looking for is Bogarus. Except that unlike Bogarus their normal troops don't get a whole lot better than the Voi (who I remind you cost 8 gold a piece). Now, compared to Bogarus, their build-anywhere mages are better, but their capital only stuff isn't particularly close to a Starets. But of course, their build-anywhere casters also aren't as good as a High Seraph of MA Caelum, so there's that.

AN damage is murder incarnate

Why? Because it negates Protection, the stat that is the most important stat in the whole fucking game? I thought you said I was over valuing it.

-Username17

I am not saying that the military is overpowered. I am saying that the military is too powerful when you take into consideration the rest of the stuff the mod nation is supposed to get.

This is a nation that will mostly use its recruit anywhere sacreds to expand and fight. And you are just flat wrong about W5Es, with the right bless they are frightening from turn one. These sacreds will be better than you are expecting because you seem to be expecting them to die because they are low protection. That isn't going to happen as much as you think early or during expansion.

Added to this, the national recruits have seriously great weapons. They are low prot and they will die easily in the absence of buff spells, but with those buffs they are actually pretty useful especially against thugs and elite troops. And again you seem to think that they have no uses and you are just wrong.

Then you have great mages too.

And the faction isn't even finished yet, you have talked about adding summons and nation specific spells and such.

While any aspect of this wouldn't lead to a dominant nation on its own, the collective probably will. You seem to believe that somehow a nation that will have solid recruit anywhere sacreds, and great recruit anywhere mages, and a military that actually can pick up the slack with some mage support, is somehow going to collapse under the weight of low protection scores. It will not.

Some points: Caelums military is bad because of two things, size 3 troops and high encumbrance.

Alteration 5 is something that you can bust out in year 2.

Having a lack of good archery isn't great, but you can work around it with tribal indies or like hoburg crossbows, thus lacking a good archer is likely to be less problematic than lacking a guy to stand in front of him. Or a guy that can kill giants. Or other things that this water faction has.

A nation that has the ice aegis shield will not be relying on indie arrow catchers in a meaningful way.

I thanked you for pointing out my mistake with the cold weapon, maybe you should have noticed that part of my post.

Dwarves in dom3 are known for magically augmented crafting, they do not receive a forge bonus.

AN damage is good because it might ignore the armor dice roll, so it is better than having the enemy with 0 prot. AN elemental damage is good because it gets around people that have 50% res (the most a basic troop sees) and some prot, so it only takes one mitigation instead of two.

The most important stat is fatigue. Hands down.

Honestly, what do Warriors of the Five Elements have to do with anything here? They are a lame sacred that has niche late game utility and is not worth building a bless around.

Your fapping to bone glaives is basically insane. Let's consider the most bargain basement SC there is: the mostly equipped Bane Lord. He has a Flaming Sword, a Tangle Shield, Booots of Quickness, a Ring of Regeneration, and a Pendant of Luck. Rar. He cost 42 gems to field and 6 mage turns worth of caster time. How Many basic water tribe soldiers do you think it would take to mob him and bring him down? Keep in mind that those guys also have a cost and that the fire burst on his sword isn't even strength dependent.

Put down a number of troops. We can run tests if you want. This is a basic, entry level province clearing thug. We're not going crazy. No artifacts, no unique devils, no weirdness. Just the basic SC that you keep claiming will get crushed by... guys with leather armor and bone glaives.

Put up or shut up: give me a fucking number.

-Username17

We need some Earth Kingdom commanders. Since the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be wealthy and orderly, I say we make it easy for them to keep down unrest while they overtax (overtaxation works well when combined with high growth scales, which we'd want to encourage Earth Kingdom to have anyway for thematic reasons). Since the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be siege resistant, we'll give most of their commanders a castle defense bonus. Since the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be backwards, I say we make their labs more expensive, but make most of their commanders not require one.

I don't consider this list to be exceptionally GOOD but it is something which we can then discuss and modify into something better. Also, it is interesting, which is, in my opinion, just as important as being competitive.

Recruit-Anywhere:
Earth Kingdom Scout (Full Leather Armor, Leather Cap or Jingasa, Spear, PR 25%, Stealthy, Leadership 0)
+ A standard scout, nothing special

Earth Kingdom Commander (Scale Mail Cuirass, Iron Cap, Broadsword, Boulder, PR 50%, Leadership 40, Castle Defense +5, no initial paths but 100% N)
+ Your basic commander, a lowly earthbender who has basic rock-throwing, supply creating magic that can be recruited without a lab. Improves castle defense like all earth-bending commanders

Ostrich-Horse Commander (Scale Mail Hauberk, Iron Cap, shield, Light Lance, Bite, Boulder, PR 50%, Sacred, Mounted, Leadership 40, Castle Defense +5, H1, no initial paths but 110% N1))
+ Like an Earth Kingdom Commander but on an ostrich-horse, has Holy-1 so he can bless himself and a small number of fellow sacreds

Earth Kingdom Functionary (Imperial Robe, no helmet, Dagger, PR 50%, Leadership 10, Sacred, Decrease Unrest 2, H2)
+ Your mainstay priest, also keeps the people docile while you overtax them

Earthmover (Scale Mail Cuirass, Iron Cap, Broadsword, Boulder, PR 50%, Leadership 10, Castle Defense +10, Siege Bonus +10, N2E1 + 1.1xwhatever the earth kingdom randoms are)
+ Should be relatively cheap for a 4.1 path mage. This will be your main researcher, with some nice castle defense and siege bonuses tossed in

Earth Kingdom General (Scale Mail Cuirass, Iron Cap, Broadsword, Boulder, PR 50%, Castle Defense + 5, Leadership 80, Sacred, H2 + 110% N))
+ High leadership, capable of casting Sermon of Courage as well as having the basic earth-bending magic

Dai Li Commander (Full Leather Armor, Iron Cap, Poison Dagger, Shuriken, Kick, Stealthy, Spy, Patrol bonus, Castle Defense + 10, Sacred, PR 50%, Leadership 10, no initial paths but 110% N)
+ Sneaky bastard who acts similarly to LA Man's judges. I originally wanted him to be an assassin, but someone needs to lead your Dai Li sacreds around and it shouldn't be the Kyoshi.

Capital Only:
Kyoshi Commander (Scale Mail Cuirass, Crown, Katana, PR 50%, Sacred, Stealthy, Leadership 40, H2, should have really good fighting stats, esp. defense)
+ This one's kind of hard because she isn't an earth bender (so no non-divine magic) and she's competing for recruitment against the Earth King. She should have elite combat stats, a cheap price, and really good stealth so her squadron of Kyoshi Warriors can strike deep in enemy territory as needed.

Earth King (Imperial Robe, no helmet, Boulder x 2, Crush (weaponid 90), Leadership 80, PR 50%, Castle Defense +15, Siege Bonus +15, Sacred, N3E2H3 1.1xwhatever the earth kingdom randoms are)
+ This is your capstone mage-priest. Since we're going for a Boomy-esque Earth King, he should be physically imposing but underdressed. Basically, this guy should be able to cast Strength of Gaia and then flip out and crush people with his mighty earth muscles. Of course, you'll usually want him casting spells, but this guy should still be able to go thugging as needed.

While we're at it, let's talk about nations that are "good" and "bad" at magic. There are basically three criteria you can consider:

• How many paths does your faction have access to?
• How good are your faction's researchers?
• How good are your battle mages?

Now let's consider some benchmarks:

• A nation with "poor" magic access has 9 paths. An example is MA Man, with N4A3E1W1 or MA Marignon with F4S3E1A1.
• A nation with "good" magic access has 13 paths. An example is LA R'lyeh with S5W3E2D2N1 or LA Mictlan with W4B3S2N2F2.
• The Northern Water Tribe has W4S3N3B2 - that is 12 paths, and we can call that "good".
  
  Factions can be good or bad in research speed and research cost. We haven't done costs yet, so we can only talk about speed.
• A nation with "fast" researchers researches at 12 RP with their capital-only casters and 8 with their build-anywhere guys. Like Bogarus.
• A nation with "slow" researchers researches at 8 RP with their capital only casters and 5 RP with their build anywhere casters. Like MA Mictlan or MA Man.
• The Northern Water Tribe has capital-only casters who research at 6 RP and build-anywhere mages that also research at 6 RP. That's slow by any definition.
• A nation with "good" battlemages is like LA R'lyeh or MA Caelum: their build-anywhere battlemage comes out of the box with total paths of 6.
• A nation with "poor" battle mages is like MA Man, where their build-anywhere mages have about 3 paths total.
• The Northern Water Tribe has a battlemage who has 4 paths, making them "low middling". But they can have those paths all be Water, so call it "pretty good".

So what you're looking at is Good (but not top tier) path access, poor research, and good battle magic.

What I'd like to see from the Earth Kingdom is probably medium path access, slow research, and middling battle mages. The basic build-anywhere Earth Bender used for battle should be N3E1 with no more than 0.1 randoms.

-Username17

Thanks, Shatner. This is a decent starting point. I don't have anything against making all generic commanders benders, and it would cut down my workload a bit. I have a decent Earthmover sprite already, and I can make others on this list without too much extra work.
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If I wanted to make a "Earth Gauntlet" weapon for Dai Li to use, what kind of stats would be appropriate?

Honestly, you could make the stone gauntlets like the harpoon since it's a one (maybe 2) shot weapon that entangles what it hits, and has a limited range. Whether or not it should add strength to it's damage is up for debate but having it have "range=strength" would work fine. Make 'em magic though.

Cool. Yeah, a magic harpoon sounds about right.

Here's your scout (shorter spear, darker armor) and an experiment in shifting colors for the Earth Mover.