[eWIP] Legendary Sovereigns (pre-alpha)

Legendary Sovereigns

Professions and Talents

This mod is currently under production.  More information to follow.

 

Synopsis

In Legendary Heroes and Fallen Enchantress, creating one's own Sovereign to potentially unite all Kingdoms and Empires under a single banner is an exciting and enduring part of the game.  Choosing traits, professions, starting equipment, etc. should be an enriching experience to the player which ought to have both strategic and role-playing implications during the course of a game.  To me, this process as it is implemented in the vanilla version of the game is underwhelming as the different professions and traits seem to have little impact on the game itself, often falling short in either the strategic or role-playing (or both) aspects of the game in its current state.

Legendary Sovereigns attempts to modify the existing Professions and Traits of FE:LH to increase differentiation between the two and also to provide a deeper strategic and role-playing experience for the player.  An intended side-effect of the changes is that Sovereigns will be degrees more powerful than a hired hero champion, and will have a direct impact on strategic and tactical decisions made throughout the course of a game.

Professions.  In LS professions determine the Sovereigns governing ability.  Each profession grants two abilities, from any two of three groups - Empire, Stationed, or Army.  For instance if you choose the Mystic profession the player's Sovereign will gain +3 Mana per turn (Empire) and +50% Mana per turn for the city in which he or she is stationed (Stationed).

Talents.  The talents in LS will be altered to be innate abilities for the Sovereign herself.  Many of the current (in FE:LH) professions will be moved into the Trait category, the current talents will be reviewed and either kept, altered, or eliminated.  New Talents will also be developed.

It should be noted that this mod will result in different balance issues with the main game, and may or may not alter the difficulty of the game.

 Profession  Empire Bonus  Stationed Bonus  Army Bonus
       
 Armorer  -25% Labor From Equipment Training Cost  +50% Trained Unit Armor  
 Blacksmith  -33% Unit Training Metal Cost  +2 Production per Metal  
 Elementalist  +25% Elemental Shard Bonus    +33 Resist all Elemental attacks
 Enchanter  -50% Unit Training Crystal Cost  +2 Production per Crystal  
 Gemologist  +50% Crystal  +4 Gildar per Crystal  
 General    +1 Trained Unit Level  +3 Initiative
 Governor  +25% Growth  -10% Unrest  
 High Priest    +3 Growth  +2 Tactical Health Regeneration
 Mason  +1 Production per Material  -25% Building Production Time  
 Merchant  -25% Unit Upgrade Cost  +1 Gildar per Grain and Material  
 Mystic  +3 Mana  +50% Mana  
 Scholar  +1 Research  +50% Research  
 Sergeant    +3 HP per Trained Unit  +10 Accuracy
 Sorcerer    +1 Production per Mana  +25% Elemental Damage
 Tactician    +25% Swarm Bonus for Trained Units  +1 Moves
 Tax Collector  +100% Gildar from Taxes  +50% Gildar  
 Troubadour  +1 Fame; +10 Fame per Quest  -100% Production Penalty from Unrest  
 Tutor    +1 Research per 50 population  +10% Experience
 Warlord  -25% Unit Training Time    +10% Attack
       
18,410 views 18 replies
Reply #1 Top

Very interesting.

I've always been a big proponent of a very powerful sovereign - albeit I also liked the really old concept of being able to give up that power to make others/cities stronger.

The stationed benefits are very nice, at least makes it a short term benefit to keep a sov rooted.    I still think in most cases it will be more beneficial to have him leading armies.  At least in this case it would be more of a decision. 

 

Reply #2 Top


Keeping my eyes on this one. Looks really promising. Let us know when you are ready to have the complete package tested for balance.

Reply #3 Top

Subscribing... 

Reply #4 Top

I like this. A lot. Keep it up!

Reply #5 Top

Cool, I definitely think there could be more done to raise sovereigns up a level from other champions, and this looks like it's heading in the right direction.

One concern I would have is whether AI would make good use of the "stay at home" abilities, as I tend to see the sovs out wandering about.

Reply #6 Top

Status update:

Complete:

  • Professions are now completely coded. 
  • Vanilla sovereigns have been assigned new professions.

In process:

  • Creating new UnitStats to differentiate between weapon damage-types and armor protection types.  This implementation is not like the FE system of weapon vs armor types, rather these UnitStats will allow me to add more detailed specialization of weapons and armor through talents and traits.  For instance I could make a talent called Swashbuckler that adds +20% damage with swords, which will only be applied if the unit attacks with a weapon which deals "Sword" damage.
  • Applying these unit stats to current items

To do:

  • Rework the Talent pool at Sovereign creation
  • Probably will redefine some current Traits to bring in line with new Talents
  • Bring this mod in line with other mods like Children of Storm by Heavenfall and Demons and Wizards by abob101.
  • Also thinking about adding Encumbrance and Weight Capacity back into the mix.

The mod is still pre-alpha, meaning I'm not ready to release it to the public.  An alpha version will be released once I have worked the Talents over to an acceptable (completely subjective) degree.

Reply #7 Top

Here's how I've applied these new Professions to the existing Sovereigns:

  • Relias: Troubadour
  • Carrodus: General
  • Ceresa: Mystic
  • Irane: Sergeant
  • Karavox: Sorcerer
  • Kulan: Scholar
  • Magnar: Elementalist
  • Markinn: Blacksmith
  • Procipinee: Enchanter
  • Verga: Warlord

 

I'm not married to these decisions by any means; I'm absolutely open to suggestions here.  I picked these based on any and all background material I have seen.  The biggest leap in my opinion is Relias as a Troubadour, but to fit his background to what I would consider a 'profession' both in game mechanic terms and absolute definition terms has been a challenge.

Reply #8 Top

Interesting, kepeing an eye on this one.

Reply #9 Top

Looking very interesting. I agree that the Sovereigns choice of specialization doesn't feel like it has much impact on anything but the early game. I hope you don't mind but I have some suggestions for name changes, just since they felt a bit odd for the leader of a nation. Then again I guess the setting allows for a Sovereign that comes from just about any background.

Blacksmith -> Master Smith

Gemologist -> Lapidary or Jeweler

Mason -> Architect

Sergeant -> Commander

Tax Collector -> Treasurer

Troubadour -> Minstrel

Tutor -> Chancellor

Reply #10 Top

Quoting Wauthan, reply 9

Looking very interesting. I agree that the Sovereigns choice of specialization doesn't feel like it has much impact on anything but the early game. I hope you don't mind but I have some suggestions for name changes, just since they felt a bit odd for the leader of a nation. Then again I guess the setting allows for a Sovereign that comes from just about any background.

Blacksmith -> Master Smith

Gemologist -> Lapidary or Jeweler

Mason -> Architect

Sergeant -> Commander

Tax Collector -> Treasurer


Troubadour -> Minstrel

Tutor -> Chancellor

Great ideas.  I will think on them and most likely implement at least a few of them.

Reply #11 Top

This is very interesting to me, but curious that it seems to be more ambitious than I would have expected.

The change to sovs/profs/background seems to make sense.  The unitstats and weights/encumberence pieces seems to be quite ambitious and seem to be quite a bit more work that would delay a useable product.  

Selfishly looking forward to the sovereign portion of it :)

Reply #12 Top

 

Also, just from the post above - is there any way to simulate talent growth? Blacksmith turns into Master Smith over the course of time/levels

i.e armorer level 1-10, +50% trained unit armor.   Level 11+ = +100% trained unit armor.  

Probably not necessary since most bonuses are %'s, but if possible could go the way of additional benefits at higher levels. 

Reply #13 Top

Quoting jutetrea, reply 11
The change to sovs/profs/background seems to make sense. The unitstats and weights/encumberence pieces seems to be quite ambitious and seem to be quite a bit more work that would delay a useable product.

The unitstats are used to create more specialization in the Talent pool.  It's a pretty simple change actually, and will open up a lot of options at Sovereign creation.  The encumbrance issue is ambitious, and is definitely on the back burner as far as implementation goes.  It's merely a mechanic that I personally like from FE (I think it was grossly under-used and was discarded prematurely) that could add a bit more depth to the game.  We'll see if I have time for implementing that one or not, because it will take a lot of work to get it right.

Reply #14 Top

Quoting jutetrea, reply 12

 

Also, just from the post above - is there any way to simulate talent growth? Blacksmith turns into Master Smith over the course of time/levels

i.e armorer level 1-10, +50% trained unit armor.   Level 11+ = +100% trained unit armor.  

Probably not necessary since most bonuses are %'s, but if possible could go the way of additional benefits at higher levels. 

One way this could be done is to make the bonus tied to the Sovereign's level.  I'm not sure if this is necessary, like you said, because the bonuses are naturally going to increase as you research new armor anyway.

Reply #15 Top

Like the idea of your work here.  For the Tax Collector, I would personally add an unrest penalty.  Nobody likes the Tax Man knocking on their door =P

Reply #16 Top

Request in the same sense as this mod:

My mental image of a sovereign isn't of a 20hp level 1 'nothing' who picks a profession after reaching level 2 by beating on a bear cub.    Its always bugged me.

I can mod my sovereign to be more powerful by adding in mods such as this (better talents/professions), adding additional customization points via elemtnaldefs and making items/mounts available during custom Sov creation.   Then you have a cheat and need to jack up the world and AI difficulty to compensate.  Its rarely "right".

I usually start off my Sov with at minimum some basic gear - leather armor, a real weapon (8-15 attack), a base shield and a horse/warg/spider depending on flavor.

Then I usually have 8 or 10 customization points - enough to get a path or 2, and some flavor talents.

 

At one point I created new pseudo factions mirroring the existing factions to give them some additional benefits and modified their sovs - but it was too much of a pain to create all the unit types and the factions floundered.  

Curious how tough it would be to just jack all the existing sovereigns up a bit and provide them with some basic equipment - problem is that when they do an update it can overwrite any base file you update which is a pain.

Think I'm going to retry that tonight.

Reply #17 Top

Quoting jutetrea, reply 16
At one point I created new pseudo factions mirroring the existing factions to give them some additional benefits and modified their sovs - but it was too much of a pain to create all the unit types and the factions floundered.  

Curious how tough it would be to just jack all the existing sovereigns up a bit and provide them with some basic equipment - problem is that when they do an update it can overwrite any base file you update which is a pain

If you look at the Children of Storm mod, there is a folder with files to remove the stock sovereigns. (They're basically duplicates with the sovereign flags unset.) You could then freely create custom sovereigns for the stock factions with the same display names that won't be overwritten by patches.

Reply #18 Top

Quoting jeffqyzt2, reply 17


Quoting jutetrea, reply 16At one point I created new pseudo factions mirroring the existing factions to give them some additional benefits and modified their sovs - but it was too much of a pain to create all the unit types and the factions floundered.  

Curious how tough it would be to just jack all the existing sovereigns up a bit and provide them with some basic equipment - problem is that when they do an update it can overwrite any base file you update which is a pain

If you look at the Children of Storm mod, there is a folder with files to remove the stock sovereigns. (They're basically duplicates with the sovereign flags unset.) You could then freely create custom sovereigns for the stock factions with the same display names that won't be overwritten by patches.

 

Cool, thanks