Fixing Starting Daert / Bagyr

[MattCaspermeyer]

I hear you, but unfortunately, I have not found another way to do it with respect to the constraints I've imposed and I've really been trying, believe me.

Here are all the problems that I've tried to solve with Bagyr with this mod:

• No good units at start and in Tristrem - most Orc troops are very weak compared to Undead / Demon variants, the best troop, Veteran Orcs, does have a chance to have a few more sold in the shop, but the chance is 25%.
• Leadership too low - he'll only have about 400 Leadership @Level 5 by the time he's at the Shelter so at most he can command 2 to 4 level 4 troops depending on their leadership.
• Very low mana - unmodded game he'd have 16 Mana by the time you got to the shelter.
• No shops after Tristrem - no way to get any troops to augment his starting troops after leaving this place until the Shelter and those troops are pretty much no help.
• No spells to aid that path - Slow and Haste do nothing to really help solve this problem.

I've tried to use the following constraints for Bagyr:

• Use only Orc troops
• Use spells / abilities that do not require a lot of Mana and actually are useful in the goal of no loss
• Use Skills that are selectable from runes acquired during level up that aid in achieving no loss

Considering the above, though, this mod fixes a lot of the problems I identified above:

• No good units at start and in Tristrem - gives at least 1 of each level 4 Orc unit as well as at least 2 of each level 3 Orc unit. This gives great variability to your starting lineup.
• Leadership too low - I didn't necessarily fix this issue, but I do provide sufficient troops in the Troll shop to at least maximize 2 out of the 5 troop stacks you decide to use going forward to the shelter.
• Very low mana - the Clay Bowl gives +5 Mana and +6 with Meditation so you should have at least 21 Mana once you get to the Shelter.
• No shops after Tristrem - improved the Troll shop so that you can buy some good stuff before traveling onward that should really help with your predicament.
• No spells to aid that path - Trap does a great job to help Bagyr with using his army / available skills to at least do no loss impossible.

Let's face it, you have to use Diversion, which I know Neoline uses as well and even Daert will pick it, too, but that's really all we got to work with when using the above constraints.

The only other ideas I got are to break one or more of the above constraints. There are probably a number of level 4 units you can add to the shop to help you with going forward: Neutrals such as Assassins, Beholders, and Royal Griffins; Lizards such as Brontors, Choshas, and Highterants; perhaps even Vikings with Valkyrie's. You'd probably also need the Gifts spell since with 16 Mana you could cast it once on one of those troops and you could then use their charged ability 3 more times.

That's about the only other way I think you could give Bagyr a chance - we're really boxed into a corner on this one due to the weakness of the Warrior's Might Tree for the first few skills - not a single one helps, the weakness of the Orc troops in general, and the lack of no spells and Mana.

Let's face it, though, people are going to pick Diversion anyway since it is the only useful path early for pretty much Warrior or Paladin and you have the runes to do it. So I think this funnels our early choices and we'll end up picking it anyway.

That leaves us with changing the Might Tree to give you some good bonuses with the first and second tier skills that are appealing alternatives to the Spirit Tree. Things such as Start Defense from TL might be good if you could get 40% Physical resistance (probably have it last 1 round for each point in it) for a few rounds. I'd go with +10% / 1 round, +20% / 2 rounds, +40% / 3 or 4 rounds for levels 1 through 3. Endurance could possibly be changed to this. Should have enough Runes to get it to level 3 by the time you were Level 5. We could also add 200, 500, and 1000 Leadership to a skill, which would be huge early in the game! Or perhaps you get +100 for each point in the first row of Might Skills. This would encourage you to pick them, the trick though is that you'd only be able to max out 2 out of the 5 stacks after Tristrem from the Troll shop. Although, I guess if you have 1000+ Leadership worth of Spiders / Snakes maybe using the eggs in the Catacombs would be enticing if you could somehow keep those fragile troops from losing a unit. Once again, Physical Resistance during the first couple of rounds might be a really good idea.

See if we can keep these constraints:

• Use only Orc troops
• Use spells / abilities that do not require a lot of Mana and actually are useful in the goal of no loss
• Prefer Might Tree Skills

Try to think of some Might Tree Skill changes that might help Bagyr - that's really the problem we're dealing with here. I think the above unit selection is sufficient, but we really need more than +Attack / +Defense bonuses from the Might Tree otherwise there is no reason to pick any of those skills and we need Bagyr to have a stronger army than Neoline's if we're not going to use the Trapper Medal / Diversion route.

/C\/C\

[ckdamascus]

Honestly, I think the best option is to raise the starting leadership and give Bagyr more units. I think your unit selection was really good given the constraints as it does have all the ingredients necessary.

It's somewhat bizarre that Bagyr gets less leadership than Neoline. Classically, warriors get more leadership and I realize the leadership buff was to make the paladin class more enticing.

I mean if I have to use diversion/traps I guess I have to use them. As a mage, I didn't have to use them but I modified the game to give myself ancient vampires. Even then I don't think I was able to no-loss the shelter guys but I made sure my vampires lived.

Not sure if my 'op' orc army could win with losses. I suppose I could just "eat" the losses. The problem is if I take losses too soon, I might actually have trouble in the Whitehall fight (even with jealousy, it doesn't last that long).

[MattCaspermeyer]

You know I thought about this some more and the easiest way to try out if more leadership would work would be to simply use the "leadership #" and "doublearmy" cheat codes and then try it without going Trapper Medal / Diversion with my mod.

You could also use the "magicbook" cheat to give yourself all the spells and then experiment with spell combos and your units. That's what I did when I was experimenting with Daert's winning spell combos.

It is curious that Bagyr starts with only 200 Leadership (only 20 more than Daert) while Neoline starts with 270. Although it probably wouldn't make much of a difference, I could see Bagyr starting with 250 Leadership instead of 200.

Bagyr's Leadership levelup is 15 per level so starting at 200 + 30 + 45 + 60 + 75, he'd have 410 Leadership @Level 5 (+210). If he started at 250 he'd have 460.

With the -10% Leadership Requirement, Orc Scouts and Shamans are 180, Veteran Orcs 126, Orcs 67.5, Spirit Talkers 45, and Catapults 117. With those Leadership values you could have the following maximum troops (with 460 Leadership):

• Catapult - 3
• Spirit Talker - 10
• Orc - 6
• Veteran Orc - 3
• Orc Scout - 2
• Shaman - 2

Now imagine if he could get another 250 Leadership from somewhere, so now we're at 710:

• Catapult - 6
• Spirit Talker - 15
• Orc - 10
• Veteran Orc - 5
• Orc Scout - 3
• Shaman - 3

And then lastly another -10% Orc Leadership Reduction - Orc Scouts and Shamans are 160, Veteran Orcs 112, Orcs 60, Spirit Talkers 40, and Catapults 104:

• Catapult - 6
• Spirit Talker - 17
• Orc - 11
• Veteran Orc - 6
• Orc Scout - 4
• Shaman - 4

That might be enough to get him there without going Diversion / Trapper. Of course you can only pick 5 out of the 6 armies, but this could be a target number of troops to experiment with.

Perhaps Heroism can add Leadership Reduction bonuses to Orc troops and the Wooden Breastplate could add +150 Leadership and the Orc Warlord Helm + 100.

We then have the last problem of how do we get his army to have these numbers of troops when you get to the Shelter (perhaps a Recruiter type bonus that automatically adds troops like Goblin Shamans and Orc Chieftains in CW). The shop could only be used for maximizing two of those stacks.

I may play around with this in the future, but I've been playing my Deart Phoenix game lately so we'll see...

/C\/C\