THE TRENT WAR --- a new campaign!

[Sirlancelot]

RuneMagues:

This unit is, despite our efforts, still severely underpowered. You don't have time enough in Trent to hoard runes all the way down from the beggining to the end, hence their power is very diminished.

I have made the following changes & tests locally in my game:

Leadership -> 1500. Perhaps a bit too much, but it seems the only way to make them any useful at the dps department. It's the leadership cost that pay the wizards for them when they develop their Archmage skill.

Leadership -> 1700. Seems more reasonable for paladins & warriors which have a higher leadership than wizards, probably the best general approach.

However... could it be possible to give the Archmage skill to all classes? That way you (the player), would be the one to choose if develop this unit properly or not, depending on your taste and playstyle.

Destruction talent reloading time:

2 (one les than vanilla, what we have now in current Trent version): The area damage compensates a bit for the poor damage. It can feel OP sometimes, though, because from time to time you can catch three or four units on its way, yet it's not that easy to move the runemage to the perfect position to do so, because this unit is not a dragon or the like (ie: it doesn't fly nor have a large speed)

3 (vanilla): You rely more on the 30% to apply the magical current effect associated to the mage, depending on your number of magic runes.

I rather to choose what to do, so prefer the current reloading time (2)

[raknefne]

Runemage: Let me know what u find out with the tests. Lowering leadership sounds like an idea. The talent u get that lowering the leadership reg. for archmages etc. is now for mage, but can be made for all players. The 3 different talents u get in Sprudne at the monk - depending on your hero type, could be talents all hero types get??? It is possible, I just place them at empty places in the skill tree (different places depending on the hero).
- Alternatively I could have a look in the lua file for Runemage and c if I can increase the rune bonus u get per rune....
- or make them available early like in vanilla.
- make hero leveling faster siince it is a short game. But takes a lot of adjustments for balance.
- give more runes late game

Poison Spit: Adjusted again, again; found out it ALWAYS poisons even at level 1, so in next version Mana is 8-9-10, same 3-4-5 duration and poison each turn as vanilla. Also changed the text. It is not that bad a spell afterall - read some guides that the chance to poison was low, so I adjusted the poison 10-30 to 17-30, but that is actually the damage it does each turn, and it always poisons.

[Sirlancelot]

Originally Posted by raknefne

Runemage: Let me know what u find out with the tests. Lowering leadership sounds like an idea. The talent u get that lowering the leadership reg. for archmages etc. is now for mage, but can be made for all players. The 3 different talents u get in Sprudne at the monk - depending on your hero type, could be talents all hero types get??? It is possible, I just place them at empty places in the skill tree (different places depending on the hero).
- Alternatively I could have a look in the lua file for Runemage and c if I can increase the rune bonus u get per rune....
- or make them available early like in vanilla.
- make hero leveling faster siince it is a short game. But takes a lot of adjustments for balance.
- give more runes late game

I think that this time yes, that's the best solution. The skills are not for free, in fact we could raise a bit their rune cost, because all three are quite useful (but not OP) and fit the three classes properly.

[Axeslammer]

Originally Posted by raknefne

That must be an installation issue or windows or? There has not been such a problem before... have you tried more than 1 time, is it when u start 'NEW GAME' it crashes?

Yep NEW GAME, after selecting Mage, a new name and difficulty and pushing start...it gave a stack error (without a number or message).

I have tried it several times.

Originally Posted by raknefne

Have you been modding in the original game? because my mod loads this first, then overwrite with Trent. If this is the case, then reinstall the original game.

Nope this is a clean install (redsands was on previous pc).

Originally Posted by raknefne

BTW this is a mod based on ORCS ON THE MARSH, if you dont have this installation, you will have problems since the mod overwrites these files but also need the ones I havent touched...

Yep, I have that installed.

Originally Posted by raknefne

hope it helps

Unfortunately it doesn't.

I do have to give you a HUGE compliment though for an excellent campaign so far (Í'm halfway through the second Island) : I love it !

It's so much more dense, difficicult than the original...and I'm constantly in need of troops, that's a new thing for me too.

I love the simple solutions/for timing on quests you've implemented, like gather 15 thornsprouts. Simple, efficient....and extremely elegant : me like

[raknefne]

I'm glad u enjoy it!!! About crash, could it be a antivirus program? Have u tried cleaning for malware etc? I have not heard of this crash before.

About. Runemage: I will add other skills so all can develop it. Could add 1-2 runemages to hire in castle lower TRENT? No leadership lowering? No other changes? I guess I Will keep skill price as vanilla, u need other runes like ur hero to develop it. U get them at the monk.

Awake dragon: playing warrior now. It is a very strong spell. 13 Mana? Was 10. I can use it to level pet. Casting awake dragon then Mana Ball, repeat...

[Sirlancelot]

Originally Posted by raknefne

About. Runemage: I will add other skills so all can develop it. Could add 1-2 runemages to hire in castle lower TRENT? No leadership lowering? No other changes? I guess I Will keep skill price as vanilla, u need other runes like ur hero to develop it. U get them at the monk.

Awake dragon: playing warrior now. It is a very strong spell. 13 Mana? Was 10. I can use it to level pet. Casting awake dragon then Mana Ball, repeat...

Perfect. Hmm, I'm not sure if that's a good idea, you already get a level 5 unit after defeating Bill the Legend in Sprudne Islands. Let it be random.

With the Archmage skill maxed out, Runemage leadership is reduced to 1500. That should be enough, I think. Remember we already set Destruction talent reloading time to 2 (one less than vanilla), and raised their attack +5. I'm using WoTN attack and defense as a reference, though. (+10 attack and +2 defense instead of +5 /+0 (Trent current version) and +0/+0 (Crossworlds vanilla)

From Vigaroe:

Rune Mage (Crossworlds version)
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 15,000
Leadership: 2000
Attack/Defense: 35 / 44
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 450
Damage: 40-55 Magical/Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic
Talents: Destruction (Reload: 2. Does Astral damage to everything in a straight line, with the damage increasing by 10% for each unused Might Rune the player is carrying), Revive (Charge: 1. Heals a single ally stack for 100 HP per Rune Mage in the casting stack, gaining 9% healing power per unused Mind Rune carried by the player. Will resurrect dead units in the stack, and additionally purges all negative effects. Healing power is also bolstered if the Hero has points in Resurrection), Illusion (Reload: 3. Generates a clone of a randomly chosen enemy that is Level 1-3. If there are no such enemies, generates a stack of Angelic Guard instead. Either way, the size of the stack is 500 Leadership, with Magic Runes increasing the Leadership number by 5% per unused one carried by the player)
Abilities: Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Favorite Enemy, High Mage (+1 Morale to Priests, Inquisitors, and Archmages), Runic (50% Magic resist), Runic Armor (Damage increases with unused Might Runes. Health increases with unused Mind Runes. Additionally, the Rune Mage's ranged attack has a chance to inflict a debuff on enemies, the chance of which rises with unused Magic Runes and the exact spell changes based on the number)

Behold! One of the most complicated units in the entire series! (And the new Human unit for Orcs on the March)

Quick aside: strangely, the game doesn't give Rune Mages an explicit Ability to indicate they're a ranged unit, but they nonetheless are. Their effective range is 7, which can be a bit unintuitive due to being an Archmage reskin, but between their above-average Speed and 7 being a plenty good range they usually don't have to worry. Especially since they prefer to contribute with their Talents anyway.

I think the idea of the Rune Mage is very very interesting, but in practice it's burdened by problems. The Rune Mage is fairly opaque to use, for one, but most critical is how it's clearly scaled to only be all that great if you have lots of unused Runes, which is something you should be avoiding if possible. Maybe they're viable in the endgame, when you're running out of Skills to spend your Runes on, but for a long, long time they're just going to be this neat unit that's really questionable to actually use.

Also, they're heinously expensive to hire.

One odd quirk of Destruction is that you inexplicably can't target Gremlins with it, but they nonetheless can be hit by its line of damage.

Regardless, as allies Rune Mages can actually be serviceable just on the basis of spamming Illusion to distract and stall enemies (Note that Illusions summons last until destroyed, and can't be wiped with a Dispel: they're not a Phantom, in spite of the Talent graphic clearly being based on Phantom), with Destruction and so on being a nice bonus. Revive purging negative effects can also be hugely notable in the early-midgame for helping you get Grand Strategy ranks by not only undoing minor casualties but wiping Burn or Poisoning in the process and thus preventing still further casualties. Only Destruction is fairly forgettable without serious Rune backing, truthfully.

As enemies, Rune Mages are... sort of obnoxious in principle, as they get to benefit from Rune scaling effects with the AI shouldering no opportunity cost for this effect, but in practice they're usually not too big a deal. They don't show up very often, they're mostly restricted to the early-midgame (As late-game islands aren't Human-using islands), and the AI just doesn't use them very well. They'll frequently open with a Destruction aimed sub-optimally, they'll aggressively waste their Revive charge much like Paladins waste their Prayer charge, and the AI just doesn't play in a way that emphasizes the utility of summons so Illusion isn't a problem. The only truly problematic thing is that they're a lot more likely to have some moderately serious negative effect attached to their ranged attack than in your hands, and if they ever get around to using it before you kill them that can be really inconvenient, but it doesn't crop up often between their behavior and the fact that it's RNG-based whether they even impose such an effect.

Ultimately the most interesting thing about Rune Mages to me is more conceptual/design-level: they're the first Human unit to be Level 5. They're also the last one, as no later game adds in a new one.

Still, they're kind of a neat idea, even if the actual execution is... odd.

Rune Wizard (WotN version)
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 17,000
Leadership: 2000
Attack/Defense: 45 / 46
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 450
Damage: 50-65 Magical/Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic
Talents: Destruction (Reload: 3. Does 45-65 Astral damage to everything in a straight line, with the damage increasing by 10% for each unused Might Rune the player is carrying, to a maximum of +200%), Phantom (Charge: 1. Generates a clone of a selected unit that is below Level 5. Either way, the size of the stack is 20% of the Health of the targeted stack, with Spirit Runes increasing the Health number by 2% per unused one carried by the player to a maximum of +40% and thus a total of 60% of the targeted stack's Health), Runic Word (Charges: 3. Grants a target unit 2 Runes, distribution of Rune type randomly chosen. Every ten Magic Runes adds another Rune, to a maximum of 2 more)
Abilities: Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Personal Enemy, High Mage (+1 Morale to Priests, Inquisitors, Archmages, and Pyromages), Runic Staff (Range: infinite. Unused Skill Runes provide increasing benefits, up to a maximum of 20 of each type. Might Runes increase base damage by 2 apiece, Spirit Runes increase Health by 10 apiece, and Magic Runes determine the effect that ranged attacks have a 30% chance of inflicting), Runic Armor (Physical resistance increases by 1% per unused Might Rune. Poison and Fire resistances increase by 1% per unused Spirit Rune. Magic and Ice resistance rises 1% per unused Magic Rune)

+10 Attack and +2 Defense, base damage has gone up 10 points, Destruction reloads slower, Phantom is no longer infinitely spammable (But you get to pick what gets summoned!) among other changes, their super-revival Talent has been replaced entirely, and their mechanics regarding unused Skill Runes have been switched up and given hard caps on their effectiveness. Also they cost 2000 more Gold, like they weren't obnoxiously expensive as-is.

The overall result is that Rune Mages no longer feel like they're balanced around the possibility of insanely high bonuses from huge piles of unused Talent Runes, and are actually pretty serviceable even if you have no unused Talent Runes. Two more indirect buffs to them are that Warriors of the North is shockingly generous with Talent Runes in general, and that the Runic Power Might Skill exists to incentive holding on to 20-ish Talent Runes past a certain point anyway. (That is, you already have a general reason to hold onto Talent Runes, and if you're indulging it Rune Mages are incidentally benefiting) A third, more indirect 'buff' is that Skill costs in Warrior of the North trend a bit higher overall, enough so that you're a lot more likely to be completely unable to afford any Skills while still having 10 or so Talent Runes lying around: back in Armored Princess it's a lot easier to spend your Talent Runes down to nothing or nearly nothing.

Those points aside, the way you use and fight them is broadly similar, aside the caveat that they can't be used to reduce/undo casualties. They're just better in player hands and less able to be irritatingly effective in AI hands. (They still get arbitrary Talent Rune boosts, just like Armored Princess, but no longer are enemy Rune Mages getting benefits that a player would pretty much never achieve)

Something worth noting is that unused Might Runes scale up Destruction's strength a little faster overall than they scale up the Rune Mage's base damage. Usually it's more important to pay attention to their respective damage types and mechanical behavior in terms of eg Destruction being a line attack, but occasionally it'll matter: don't get used to either thinking of Destruction as harder-hitting than the base attack on a given target or vice-versa, because it depends on how many Might Runes you're carting around.

While we're on a unit that performs summons of a regular unit type, a point about experience: summons don't interact with experience. If you have a Rune Wizard use Phantom on eg your Level 10 Jarl stack, the resulting Jarl stack will not contribute experience to your Jarls and will not benefit from the 9 levels your actual Jarls have, having the stats of a completely inexperienced unit. This applies to all summons, including enemy summons and non-standard unit types like eg Phoenix. This tends to be offset by the fact that summoners increase how much they summon by leveling, but when it comes to Initiative and Speed considerations it's important to keep in mind that eg a Phantom Jarl will have 3 Speed even though your high-level Jarls have 4 Speed.

Yes, Awake Dragon can be very useful and strong. For the warrior the most of course. And the more powerful you become, the more lethal. You can use it to level up your pet or to wipe out enemies through Fiery Phantoms or Ball of lightning. It becomes clearly OP at the mid and later stages of the game, when Ball of L. kills more than 20%, up to 55% of opponents hit points per hit. The fact that you can have several Balls working at the same time doesn't helps.

Ball of ligthning final stats (when fully developed; Crossworlds version)
Damage: 20%-55%
Shock chance: 50% (+30%)
Rage: 35
Experience: 46
Rest: 2
(Hits: 4 times)

Damage 1 Upgrade: Damage: + [0-5]%, chance of shock: +2%, Rage: +2, Experience: +4
Damage 2 Upgrade: Damage: + [0-7]%, chance of shock: +2%, Rage: +3, Experience: +6
Damage 3 Upgrade: Damage: + [10-15]%, chance of shock: +2%, Rage: +5, Experience: +8 Rest: 2 (Requires Level 26)

I'm not sure what would be the best way to make it less OP, though. Let me think about it.

[raknefne]

You have done a lot of research! ...

Ball of lightning: I have made changes; Fully upgraded it costs 5 Rage more, -5% stack reduce, -5% Shock Chance. It will end up doing 15-50% Damage on stacks. The helm that support this future is removed..
Btw I have reduced rest for Mystic Egg to 1. Works fine, only use it sometimes.

Awake dragon: Changed to 12 Mana and Mana expend 40-25-10% - now it is 30-20-10%. Cost 10000 gold was 1600 in vanilla. Alternatively it could be a 'rare' spell, only rarely found.

Runemages: I think that spending runes to lower leadership for them is costly compared to saving runes for bonus talent. I think we need to adjust their stats instead. 1800 leadership and 10.000 gold. ?

New skills: it will take some testing to add new skills to monk in Sprudne. Instead I suggest, For paladin the skill could be where 'Hi mage/other mage skill is' and 'absolute rage' was but u need to develop all the way to it and u have the two from start. Same principle for other two heroes.

Alchemist bug (still): I notice crashes when using the Alchemist unit. Not fixed yet afterall. I implemented the vanilla Alchemist, and it works just fine, so I just use vanilla bloke.

New Medal 'Pirate Slayer': Works fine, I leveled it to max early in Sprudne, which is ok on Hard, it will be later on easy/normal. I get only 500 leadership afterall, but very helpful and necessary. Really a joy slaughtering pirates now, hehe... the other medals are at level 0-1, I'm level 8 warrior. Been having an easy time with Awaken Dragon in Jerneland, but it is a lot tougher now in Sprudne, losing troops more... np.

[Sirlancelot]

Originally Posted by raknefne

You have done a lot of research! ...

Ball of lightning: I have made changes; Fully upgraded it costs 5 Rage more, -5% stack reduce, -5% Shock Chance. It will end up doing 15-50% Damage on stacks. The helm that support this future is removed..
Btw I have reduced rest for Mystic Egg to 1. Works fine, only use it sometimes.

Awake dragon: Changed to 12 Mana and Mana expend 40-25-10% - now it is 30-20-10%. Cost 10000 gold was 1600 in vanilla. Alternatively it could be a 'rare' spell, only rarely found.

Runemages: I think that spending runes to lower leadership for them is costly compared to saving runes for bonus talent. I think we need to adjust their stats instead. 1800 leadership and 10.000 gold. ?

New skills: it will take some testing to add new skills to monk in Sprudne. Instead I suggest, For paladin the skill could be where 'Hi mage/other mage skill is' and 'absolute rage' was but u need to develop all the way to it and u have the two from start. Same principle for other two heroes.

Alchemist bug (still): I notice crashes when using the Alchemist unit. Not fixed yet afterall. I implemented the vanilla Alchemist, and it works just fine, so I just use vanilla bloke.

Yep, I like to investigate.

Ball of lightning: Fine. Let's see how it goes. It should be a bit less deadly now.

Awake dragon: I'd make it "rare", then. I've beaten vanilla on Impossible with the Warrior without using Awake Dragon until the endgame.

Runemages: You're probably right.

1800 leadership and 10.000 gold seem a good point to start from, then.

New skills:: Hmm. It's a long way until the last skill. I would suggest 1700 leadership cost for runemages, then.

Alchemist bug: I knew they were broken. Vanilla alchemists are not that bad, anyway, so no problem.

[raknefne]

To Axeslammer: I too have had a few crashes with mage lately, never had before. When I start another hero class, no problemo, and if I try the mage later, no problemo,but sometimes it do crash, strange. It must be something relating with a late version, because it is a new phonemen.

To Sirlancelot:
- The 3 skills normally learned at the monk in Sprudne (1 depending on the hero class normally). Now you get your hero class skill as usually, but u can buy the other 2 too, they cost 9 runes more than usual (3 of each) to max.
a) 'Bounter-attack': The Paladin and Mage can learn this, is in the Might tree where Bloodlust was. You have to develop everything before.
b) 'Barchmage': The Paladin and Warrior can learn this, is in the Mage tree where Highermagic was. You have to develop everything before. Only 15% (and not mage's 25%) more troops.
c) 'Boly Armor': The Warrior and Mage can learn this, is in Mind tree where Ressurrection was. You have to develop everything before.

I'm not sure any will have enough runes to develop it in Trent... but think it is too much if player can develop it without the prereq.

The new skills, depending on your hero:

screen_190417_005.bmpscreen_190417_006.bmpscreen_190417_007.bmp
The text error on last pic will be fixed. Not sure about rune price, but to be sure, I increased it by 3x3 of each rune when maxed (1 of each rune each level).

Perhaps make a 60% chance to meet a guy in jerneland that can research the opportunity to use just one of these skills without a prerequisite? Maybe for a price. It should be able to be done even though the skills can be seen from the start. Or it could be the monk in Sprudne after u get your hero class skill ...

Runemage will be 1800 leadership and 9k for now. Awaken Dragon will be rare.

[raknefne]

The Poison Spit spell that were never used in vanilla - partly because the description was wrong so it sounded awful for 10 Mana (at all 3 levels). I fixed the text to what it actually does, quit good actually, since it poisons ALWAYS already from level 1. It is duration 3-4-5 and is still a distortion spell, costs 8-9-10 Mana:

screen_190418_001.bmp
It will get new name, 'Vomit'...

Mage bug: I think I fixed it, seems the problems occur after I added the spell 'Ice Snake' to the spell book. It is now a scroll she has along with a Call of Nature scroll. So mage starts off with only 'Slow' and 'Flaming Arrow' learnt.


To Sirlancelot: Let me hear about comments on the 3 new skills, then I'll upload v1.52. Alchemist are still improved with 4% extra crit and 100 gold cheaper

Thinking of a new campaign... Inspired by a campaign I made for heroes 4 about crazy scientists. I will reuse some maps from Darkside, 10 races and many new creatures thx to Terroin. Also in Crossworld. Perhaps new pet system. Some skills and spells shall be researched. Let's see how it goes.