Share your unit-designs

I have been working for a minor unit pack for each faction, but I'm slow (ok its boring work ;)) so I only got to Ironeer and Trogs, I could upload those.
Disclaimer: The units might not be entirely optimised, I am not trying to make each unit overpowered, rather I am trying to make each unit unique and interesting in its own way, Gilden might field some highly magic resistant mages for example.
Some units are fielded as counters against archers and/or dodging armies, just so the AI will field a few items to counter these strategies.

All the races: https://www.dropbox.com/s/afa8vuwqfhisyht/Units.rar
Edit: These are the units that were added to the AI unit-list, I don't know what effect it will have if you include them now.

You will have to UN-rar the files, and unload the contents into your "Units" folder in your documents.
Edit: You will have to pick the units out of the folders, it doesn't work if they are still in the folders.

These are made using version 1.29frogbuild VANILLA (no mods) of the game, and might cause weird stuff to happen if you have another version
(I think they should work with 1.20 as well, but now you have my warning ^_^)
(I also think they should work with the new 1.29betabuild)

If anyone can compile these items into 1 single file, I would be joyful to hear from you! (I tried, but lost 50% of the units doing it).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Ps. is the descriptions important, didn't get around to that part yet?
Would love to hear what you want to see in unit designs.
(I will probably re-do unit designs for 1.3 if the balance messes up, and/or for Legendary Heroes, just to contribute to all the players out there :))

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Go ahead and add to this. we'll check this out and see what we can include in the game.

Correct me if i am wrong in this but the only way to check out new units is to start a NEW game and get all the tech required to make it show up? Thats why id say we would need at least a bit of info on it here. 

Edit-Wow Kongdej thats a lot of units! nice work.....Ill start a new game asap and check them out!

I was curious, i created a few custom races and wanted to know if there a a way to add some prefixed units to them. I had some ideas for their lore but every time i have to design them from scratch

I design all my units from scratch, I am not sure how to make them hide-able instead of retire-able though, will look into that at some point.
It helps to activate cheats though, and make all research available to you, then you can pre-design all the units you want in one go...
(CTRL+R gives all research, CTRL+M gives enough resources for crystal and iron things to show properly, you have to modify your shortcut to the game with a "- cheat" on the end (without quotation marks))

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Actually, I don't play Altar a lot, so I would love to see some Altar Henchmen designs if anyone had them, preferably some that the AI could use easily!

~ K

We need some more depth in unit designs I think. 

It's pretty obvious what is best most of the time, and your biggest concern is crystal vs iron spending. Double fire/cold +3 and double rings +1 is always the best bet when designing units and you have the crystal. 

I think some more depth regarding initiative, +hp pr lvl (get this away from gilden please) etc. and maybe some armor pr. lvl stuff would give more interesting unit designs.

Its pretty hard for me to design around this idea, my mission with my own packs was give the AI an increased quantity of units to pick from, which is why I think this post is a good idea, and am sad to see extremely few additions in here, since it would be great to have something to give the AI to toy with.

I have played a game or two with my own, not complete, set of bonus designs, and some of the designs makes a great difference to my experience, most notably is the early-game "Spear Militia"...
(Usually this is the time of my first war, which is why I notice it)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Finished my collection of extra units for each race, and updated my original reply to reflect this.
Same link is here for you
https://www.dropbox.com/s/afa8vuwqfhisyht/Units.rar
Edit: These are the units that were added to the AI unit-list, I don't know what effect it will have if you include them now.

Well finished and finished, at least it now have 15 ish new units for each faction. Completed with silly names.
Some of the units are focused on a state in the game where I think the unit designs are lacklustre, most factions have improved Militia (Spear Militia) with the researching of spears, and in addition Armoured Spearmen, and more Mage/Archer designs to draw from, especially Mounted Archers and Mages were lacking.

The units are not meant to be "all out amazing mod", its just a compliment to the current vanilla game, and anyone is free to use them (or misuse them) however they want .

Oh last note, still no Henchmen designs... Because I think Henchmen are boring

Edit: Alternately, you can download from this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/62tdhapyd6iewj8/All%20Factions.rar
In that file the units are not divided by faction and is easier to copy-paste into your units folder (You sadly cannot have units within folders in the unit folder, they will not be detected by the game).
I counted 121 new unit designs total.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Ok cool I'll work on some henchmen. and get them up here. Still playing Altari so thats all I've got at the moment. Everyone else feel free to share your designs

Bumping.

Excellent work Kongdej. I will be adding these units to my next game to see how the AI does with them!  I am testing my weapons balance mod, but all the same traits and weapons exist in my modded version of CoreWeapons.xml and anything that will encourage the AI to utilize units that have sensible trait combinations will help me test my changes. Thanks!

For myself, every game I design a mounted scout with scouting, underdog and finesse using a spear. This unit typically gets a +6 to attack, and can often survive minor scrapes with small wandering monster packs on the far sides of maps. In my mind, it is critical to get a high movement scout unit out as early as possible, before map movement becomes diplomatically impossible. I usually send one in every major direction (so typically 3 total) as soon as I can get horses.

Besides fast moving scouts, there are two other types of units I favor:

1) cheap, low resource (metal, crystal) units for fodder for monster lair cleaning and/or hero assistance early in the game. i.e.   spears, finesse, bloodthirsty, enmity (if being used for cross kingdom/empire war), or spears, finesse, underdog, bloodthirsty (if being used for lair cleaning). These units aren't intended to last forever, but rather to get your champions through that awkward stage where they can't kill 3 mites by themselves.

2) elite, resource be damned, maximum armor + shield + 1 handed weapon (or 2h maul sometimes) with maximum equipment (+attack and + init), mounts, cloaks, and traits. If I'm researched up to plate mail, then you're forced into strength and muscle traits to go along with bloodthirsty. If it's earlier in the game then you are able to take all +damage traits. This unit will be tanking, and living for a long time, so I want to make it worth it's wages.

One of the reasons I found myself modding the CoreAbilities.xml and CoreWeapons.xml was that some choices in the vanilla game are so clearly better than others. Bloodthirsty at the endgame provides +7 attack to a unit wielding a maul, as opposed to other traits like Fury or Spell Resistance which are so clearly inferior. Now when Spell Resistance provides +40 spell resist... all of the sudden there's some tension in choices.

Also... if you name your units "Tarth Cavalry" and "Tarth Greencloaks" it will be very easy to see what units are in the My Documents\My Games\FallenEnchantress\Units folder and find the one you're seeking to edit /view /delete /modify.

Hm thats a good way, I can just edit the names for the folder to include race...
The names were difficult, since I was making all the units in a row, for each faction, and wanted some "better" names... And I suck at names already, so if you are sitting with amazing names and no units, feel free to submit a changed version or poke me

You give those units traits? I find un-traited units are built quicker, and fits better into my production queue at the early game.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

*LOL* For some reason I read: "Still playing Atari..." and wondered how he manages to get the game running.

Got no fancy screenshot. But as has been suggested otherwise Mages with the go first in combat trait can be quite helpful against i. e. Dark Mages.

This trait is special to a fortress building, and I cannot design units with this trait, although its a good idea

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Really would love it if the game would save unit designs in a sub-folder for each nation (i.e. Altar units in an Altar folder). Then we wouldn't have to prefix our names.

Reaaaally good idea!.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I don't want to derail this post (I apologize in advance, don't know where to post this), but I had a possible question/idea that maybe would be an interesting mod/integration into the game in regards to Unit Designs.  I'm probably waaaay too late on this.  Anyway, here goes...

I notice that when the game is played you have an option to log in.  Not sure why.  Anyway I was reading about the unit designs in this thread while thinking about the mod manager and the online option - and the games Spore and Black and White.  Just bear with me keep reading!

I understand the power, creativity and coolness of making your own unit designs:  It makes the game unique, 'yours', adds more flavor to the game and the AI uses it against you in later games.  I love all of that, except actually making the unit designs!  I just don't prefer it, but I would totally love to see other players unit designs. I know that I can probably use the mod manager to install new designs from other's that have posted them, but could this be done in a more seamless, magical way?  After all it is a fantasy game, right?  So let me get back to those games I was talking about.

Spore had this neat mechanic: Create your life form and it gets passively sent to a repository online.  Later on your game is filled with content created by other users, and your life form may be in someone else's game on the other side of the World.  In Black and White, there was an option to pull your email contact names into the game; when you'd hover over the little NPCs in the game you'd see those names.  That was just awesome to see!  

So here it is: What if I could have the option to log in and let Fallen Enchantress bring totally new unit designs in on the fly from other users when I created a new game?  How about for Factions?  Maps? Quests?  Is the game built such that this would be remotely possible as a mod?

Thanks for reading!

Lol, I dunno, I remember in Spore autodownloading penis creatures on a fairly regular basis because of that system lol. On a serious note it would integrate well with one of Brad's ideas (as in likely no where near production, just an idea) that he made on a thread about a player's complaint about the mod system. 

Yep absolutely, great suggestion.

Seriously?  Nahh, I highly doubt you'd get those kind of crap designs from this modding community.  Slim to none.  But I do believe that the mechanic of a background download during world creation would work nicely with Fallen Enchantress.  There's nothing like it in this game genre, and the community might be more motivated to keep the game fresh and exciting by adding more content on the fly.  Maybe there could also be an option to filter out lackluster content based on a community rating system, so the player would only receive better quality work?  Just a thought.

Great thread, just what I needed.

Thanks so much kongdej!  This is fantastic work you have done.  The vanilla designs are pretty lame (sorry Brad) given that:

1.  Customing units is one of FE's strong points and 

2.  Racial diversity is appalling.  I really think unique Race techs and races/units with a high fantasy feel needs to be implemented.

The all humans thing gets a little tiring and I feel like I am playing in medieval Europe as opposed to a fantasy setting which annoys the hell out of me playing a fantasy game. Monsters are great, races not so much.

Oh, I don't know.

It seems like a lot of the good modern fantasy is steering away from highly differentiated races (think Game Of Thrones) in favor of focusing on characters and cultures.

Sharing unit designs in-game via an online sharing mechanic sounds like a great idea. How would this game prevent overwhelming the unit build queue with thousands of designs?