[eMod] Gnilbert Mod v0.75: Elemental Disciples, Magic Staves, Death Wargs, Demon mounts, special talents

Thank you for all the feedback! This will be my last post for a few days - I'm headed to DragonCon! 

** You can get version 0.75 HERE.


You must start a new game if you want these changes to take effect.

This is an update to the earlier versions (0.5-0.7). It includes the following content:

Sovereign (Fire/Earth/Air/Water/Unholy) Mana Talents 
    I added these 20 point talents to allow me to test out other elements of the mod and decided to leave them in for those who want to use them. They may or may not be "balanced." Each of these talents allows your sovereign to "act like" a shard of the appropriate element.

Leadership Talents / Training
    The idea here is that your leader (or a champion, if he buys the training from the items shop), can direct other units in combat to greater effect. During Sov creation, they are available as 4 talents: Bold, Brilliant, Daring and Inspiring Leader. They are based on Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Charisma respectively. In the items shop, they are available as items with "Tactics" instead of "Leader."
** Ver 0.75: I fixed these to properly give the unit a 5% bonus to Attack or Defense for each 1 point your key stat is above 10.
** Ver 0.75: The items are now available to buy in the item shop.


Special training for units
[added in ver 0.7]
    These "items" you can add to units in the designer allow you to give them special abilities.
- Herbalist training: Gives the unit a healing ability that scales with its unit size
- Assassin training: Give the unit a short ranged damage/weaken ability based on Attack

Elemental Vestments.
    These are the robes worn by those little people who stand around all day and stare at your shards. In game terms, I've provided 4 robes that represent the "profession" of Fire, Earth, Air, or Water "Priest/Monk/Cleric/Fanboy." They provide the unit (which can be your Sovereign) with a "Blessing of X" (tactical) ability that scales in power with the number of shards (of that element) you control.
  The robes provide 2 Essence to the unit, and the blessings cost 1 mana per cast. They target a single friendly unit at any distance, and currently last 2 turns.
* Ver 0.6: Added these robes for females as well.
* Ver 0.6: Vestments now unlock in the items shop and for unit training when you learn "Shard Harvesting" for your race 
** Ver 0.7: (Oops!) I added a cost to these items so you can actually buy them in the shops!


Fire Vestments granted spell: Target unit gains +5 Attack per Fire Shard
Earth Vestments granted spell: Target unit gains +5 Defense and + 3 attack per Earth Shard
Water Vestments granted spell: Target unit gains +5 Health Regen per Water Shard
Air Vestments granted spell: Target unit gains +15% Dodge chance per Air Shard

Magical Combat Staves
    I hate giving my wizard lord a bow or sword to make him effective in combat. I want him to feel cool right from the get-go. To this end, I added 5 magical staves, each that gives the wielder a (tactical) ranged, INT based attack that costs 2 mana and +3 Essence. The effects of each scale based on the number of shards of the appropriate element you control. Your sovereign can pick one when he's created, but you can only train units with them when you control at least one shard of the appropriate element type. (The Death staff is currently an exception to this)
* Ver 0.6: These staves now unlock in the items shop and for unit training when you learn "Shard Harvesting" for your race 
 ** Ver 0.7: The attacks now cast 2 mana. I struggled with whether they were overpowered, but finally realized that putting magic damage the way I think it should be into the existing system probably wasn't the best idea. Regardless, I doubt they'll stay unbalanced past SD's first update.


Fire Staff: 50% INT damage, +25% per Fire Shard
Earth Staff: 30% INT damage +25% per Earth Shard, -5 Defense
Water Staff: 30% INT damage +25% per Water Shard, CombatSpeed set to 1 for 1 turn
Air Staff: 30% INT damage +25% per Air Shard, 60% chance to lose next turn
Death Staff: 30% INT Life Steal +25% per any Shard
** Ver 0.75: The Death staff actually works again now, and it's tied to "Unholy Mana." Read more on that below
** Ver 0.75: I corrected the bug with the slow effect on the Water staff. Thanks Heavenfall!

Unholy Mana / Temples
[Added in ver 0.75]
   
I've added a new type of mana, Unholy Mana. It's actual implementation is... creative. You generate this mana from a sovereign talent or by building "Unholy Temple" improvements in your cities. Right now, they're dirt cheap for testing. They don't do much... other than give your Death Staff (above) a 10% bonus to damage for each temple built... oh, and they allow you to recruit "Death Wargs." That might be important. I'll be doing a balancing pass on these in the next version.

Unbalanced / In Progress Odds and Ends
** Ver 0.75: I went ahead and included my "Wall of Earth" city spell, but it's not actually tied to any spellbook. It will create a wall of stone around your city, replacing any existing wall. I figured I'd leave adding it to the spellbook as an exercise for anyone who wanted to preview it before I get enough Wall of X spells together to justify creating a new spellbook for them.
** Ver 0.75: Skath mounts for the sovereign. Yep - it turns out that they use the Warg skeleton, so I went ahead and included my test run of a Skath mount. It's not balanced, but it's neat.

Please let me know about any gross errors you find in the mod!
Also, if anyone wants to submit better flavor text, I'll be happy to shuffle it all in.

Happy modding,
Gnilbert

9,032 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top

This is some really cool stuff!  Thanks for putting it together.

k1

Reply #3 Top

Gniiiiiiiiiilbert you make me question my sexual orientation.

Reply #4 Top

This looks great.  I'll download it this evening and test it out.  One thing, though, you should include "compatble with version x.xx" in your description.  :)

Remember the mages in MoM that were tied to Wizard's Tower building?  I was wondering if that could be done.  It would seem that you could give them 4 mana, have thier spell cost 1 point, which would effectively model the "ammuntion" limitation that was imposed in the game.  I was thinking it would be cool to use the original particle effect from Flame Dart.  Thoughts?

Maybe I'll try to create my own mod.  Haha.

Reply #5 Top

Nice, will be downloaded when I get home. Thx for the great work!

Reply #6 Top

fun mod! That said, I think you need to make Skaths cost resources. Sometimes I get them in the "premade" unit section and they are very very very cheap.

 

Try to figure out a way to make them Sov only, raise their cost to absurd levels to artificially make it Sov-only thru the creation screen, or balance it and attach a reasonable cost to it to make "Skath cavalry"