Legend of the Invincibles

[neltnerb]

I also wanted to say that this is the best campaign I've ever played, definitely on par with many big classics.

On the topic of some minor balance (overall it's so varied due to equipment that I don't think I can comment much) -- I'm finding that even a Reaper (lvl 4 wraith) is massively underpowered relative to all other units. For comparison with Dark Shade:

Reaper with Lucky Farmer's Amulet, Cloak of the Assassin Leader, and Ring of Deathaura:
10-5 baneblade (for some reason without backstab)
9-3 wail (no drain)

Dark Shade with Lucky Farmer's Amulet, Cloak of the Assassin Leader, Ring of Iced Veins, and Dugi's Wrath (claws):
24-4 Dugi's Wrath cold, backstab, backstab, leeches, charge, berserk, slows
9-3 soul sip, arcane drains

I thought maybe with backstab the Reaper would become reasonable, but the assassin cloak didn't convey it. The difference in power level between these units is ridiculous. For comparison to the rest of my units, I think both are underpowered due to inability to carry armor. But at the least, no way at all to upgrade baneblade will keep this my worst unit no matter how much I level it (though I haven't seen the AMLA's yet, so if there are some Reaper AMLA's that make the baneblade a *lot* more powerful, that might balance it out -- weak at low level, but super strong in AMLA's would be reasonable).

[Dugi]

Not working. How far do I have to go back to fix this bug? Before Efraim's last AMLA?

You will have to start a new scenario, then it will start working. Also, it may have skipped several level-ups, so the units might really deserve advancing several times. There was more than one error in the code, so it might need to complete several scenarios till all chaos gets corrected.

On the topic of some minor balance (overall it's so varied due to equipment that I don't think I can comment much) -- I'm finding that even a Reaper is massively underpowered relative to all other units. For comparison with Dark Shade

It wasn't intentional that Dark Shade can use metal claws, because it is as ethereal as Reaper. When I was adding claws to the game, I didn't realise that there is also a unit that has claws and isn't supposed to be able to use this kind of weapon. But, they are somewhat gimped compared to other units because they can't use other gear already. So, in this case I would prefer allowing the creation of baneblade weapon type instead of disallowing Dark Shades to use claws.
Another fact is that they can't use armour, and it might be reasonable to mitigate it with some improved defensive AMLA.

A screenshot of an oncoming feature you might like:

Note: it appears only if you have more than 20 items there, otherwise it would be just annoying.

[Konrad2]

267 items oO
in "Northern Guardian Room" when efraim is killed by the steel Scourge leader, he is saying that mere liches wernt a match after all(something the killer should say)
also there is a typo in intro of 6th chapter
"she no longer crashed into walls, that made her realise that she can see in the dark,..."
it should be "could" instead, because it is past form (i think)

"There was a lot of tables..."
should be "were", because its plural

EDIT: in "Ito the Light" when you killed the demonologist the scenario objectives are shown as
Win: Exit the caves in the north
Lose: exit the caves in the north
if you press ctrl + j afterwards scenario objectives are normal

btw, i was able to beat the scenario leader only on hard, unlike it was intended

[Dugi]

in "Northern Guardian Room" when efraim is killed by the steel Scourge leader, he is saying that mere liches wernt a match after all(something the killer should say)

Strange, the code looks pretty correct.

"she no longer crashed into walls, that made her realise that she can see in the dark,..."
it should be "could" instead, because it is past form (i think)

I agree. Corrected.

"There was a lot of tables..."
should be "were", because its plural

This is hard to tell. The word 'lot' is a normal noun, so 'there was a lot' is fine as it is, and I think that adding some additional properties to the 'lot' should not change it. Changed it to 'there were many tables around', to avoid this problem.

EDIT: in "Ito the Light" when you killed the demonologist the scenario objectives are shown as...

Fixed. Looks like a copying error.

btw, i was able to beat the scenario leader only on hard, unlike it was intended

Weird, he has twice as much gold on hard as on easy, and also has an increased village gold on hard and normal. What was the problem making you unable to complete it on other difficulties?

[Astoria]

"There was a lot of tables..."
should be "were", because its plural

This is hard to tell. The word 'lot' is a normal noun, so 'there was a lot' is fine as it is, and I think that adding some additional properties to the 'lot' should not change it. Changed it to 'there were many tables around', to avoid this problem.

It's 'were'. 'a lot of tables' is plural, and therefore the verb is as well. 'a lot', although it is singular, does not make the noun it describes singular.

[neltnerb]

It wasn't intentional that Dark Shade can use metal claws, because it is as ethereal as Reaper. When I was adding claws to the game, I didn't realise that there is also a unit that has claws and isn't supposed to be able to use this kind of weapon. But, they are somewhat gimped compared to other units because they can't use other gear already. So, in this case I would prefer allowing the creation of baneblade weapon type instead of disallowing Dark Shades to use claws. Another fact is that they can't use armour, and it might be reasonable to mitigate it with some improved defensive AMLA.

So I actually really like (in principle) that wraiths can't use weapons or armor. I don't know if there's a way to extend that to shadows as well, but the roleplayer in me likes that much more.

What about adding special rings, amulets, and cloaks that are very specially targeted at those classes instead? For instance, an "ethereal ring" that can only be worn by ghost based classes which provides benefits on par with having a weapon and having a regular ring.

Ideas

Ethereal Ring
(concept is that it channels dark energy better from the spiritual world)
Chance to get hit decreased by 20%
Sets all damage types to arcane (to make claws "spiritual claws")
Resist arcane -10%
Increase penetration for arcane +20%
Damage increased by 100%
Increases all magical damages by 50%
50% more attacks (both melee and magical)
New weapon special: plague

Cloak of Ethereal Warding
(concept is that it deflects attacking magical energy into an ether realm or something)
Resist arcane +50%
Resist fire +50%
Resist cold +50%
Adsorb (8)

Ethereal Amulet of Death
(concept is that it's a talisman of the ether realm that lets a spirit channel darkness)
Severe Darkness
Hitpoints +8 per level (spirits are pretty lacking on HP)
Regenerates (after all, harming undead in D&D heals them)
Deathaura

Or something along those lines. If it was possible to code them to be only equippable by spirits that would be a great way to balance it out within the roleplaying concepts. I'd also get rid of letting shades use claws, it makes more sense that way.

And I definitely think that some AMLA advancements that give more significant boosts similar to what armor will do would be a great way to help, although it's tough getting such weak units that many XP. But knowing it'd turn them into horrible monsters would be good motivation. It'd be like a mage class, weak to start, but then ridiculously powerful at high levels.

Perhaps for the reaper, for instance, even at level 4 just gaining deathaura and severe darkness automatically would be a good way to do it. It would make that level 4 more like the opposite of a white mage advancement.

[neltnerb]

I should also mention that I did some more testing on the Reaper -- cloaks, rings, and amulets that affect the power of the baneblade are not added on. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but it did not apply to the Shadow classes.

[Dugi]

If I added these, they would make them as good as full gear for other units. But here's the problem with ethereal-units-only items: they will be a must be for them, because they're unmatchable. That will leave no questions about gear for them. To prevent this, I'll have to make more of them, resulting in a big group of items that would be useless to 95% of units. I would prefer either making a new class of weapons, ethereal weapons (shades able to use metal claws is just a bug), that would be equippable only by spiritual entities (ghosts and maybe Monstrosity), that would be pretty good, or to simply make these units better by AMLA, making them very unusual compared to other units (might be tough balancing, though).

Nice idea about deathaura healing allied undead in addition to harming enemy living.

EDIT: I will fix the problem with baneblade not counting as other king of non-spell attack.

[neltnerb]

If I added these, they would make them as good as full gear for other units. But here's the problem with ethereal-units-only items: they will be a must be for them, because they're unmatchable. That will leave no questions about gear for them. To prevent this, I'll have to make more of them, resulting in a big group of items that would be useless to 95% of units.

I wonder if there would be a good set of benefits you could build into rings/amulets/cloaks such that they are in principle helpful to all units, but much, much more helpful to spirits.

Nothing really comes to mind, I'm afraid. Farmer's amulet is a no-brainer to me to give to all spirits given their naturally low HP, but making it so that deathaura heals undead (including the wearer) would be pretty great to balance things out some.

Perhaps it would be sufficient to make the level 4 versions of those units have more of the special attributes that would normally be conveyed by gear as a result of a heightened ability to draw power from the spiritual realm, similar to how white mages going to mage of light gain illuminate and when elf sorcerer goes to sylph it can fly and such.

[Dugi]

I wonder if there would be a good set of benefits you could build into rings/amulets/cloaks such that they are in principle helpful to all units, but much, much more helpful to spirits.

Extra hitpoints and increased resistances (the spirits have normally high resistances, and so adding 20% should improve them a lot, without improving other units much).

Perhaps it would be sufficient to make the level 4 versions of those units have more of the special attributes that would normally be conveyed by gear as a result of a heightened ability to draw power from the spiritual realm, similar to how white mages going to mage of light gain illuminate and when elf sorcerer goes to sylph it can fly and such.

How about making both weapon-damage-improving and spell-improving bonuses improve their damage?

________
General question: I have finished prolonging the advancement paths of the northerners' faction (except nagas, who would be useless in chapter 10 where water and swamp terrains are extremely rare). I used Sovereign as advancement of Warlord, because he appears to be some kind of natural progression. The new Sovereign is stronger. I found a brilliant unused sprite for Orcish Nightblade made by Sleepwalker, so it would be a crime not to use it. I gave the wolf riders a cool new ride. For goblins, I have taken some stuff from Era of Magic, that had a quite developed goblin faction.

How it looks at the moment:

[Konrad2]

@dugi
that "only" refered to "leader" which means i used only leaders to beat the demons

[neltnerb]

Extra hitpoints and increased resistances (the spirits have normally high resistances, and so adding 20% should improve them a lot, without improving other units much).

Oh, I thought percentage increases didn't stack that way. Could have sworn it said so at one point, I must be confused. Is it possible to reach 100% resistance with just the bonuses from equipment?

How about making both weapon-damage-improving and spell-improving bonuses improve their damage?

Seems like a good start. My observation has been that the units are very easy to kill, so I'm not sure that just doing more damage will be enough to balance it. I've also noticed that so many units have high arcane resistance that Reaper's baneblade is incredibly ineffective (50% or higher decrease in damage).

Some random ideas:

Death's Chosen
Concept: Unit is selected as a special avatar of Death, and is rewarded for hurting the living directly by Death.
Function: Improve drain so that counterattacks are more likely to keep the unit alive.
For instance, HP gain equal to or even greater than damage done.
Could be such that only undead units can get the bonus draining since they're Death's minions.
Would need to apply to both magical and melee or else spellcasters will still rip them apart.
Perhaps merges attacks into a single higher power death strike?

Death's Bounty
Concept: Unit is selected as a special avatar of Death, and is rewarded with much higher resistances to arcane.
Function: Increase hitpoints for undead units only (would help skeletons and liches, but make it a fixed amount so that proportionally it helps spirits more), as well as conveys increased resistances as you suggest.

Death's Cloak
Concept: Unit is wearing the cloak of Death herself, and is granted her special powers to avoid detection.
Function: Make the unit invisible at all times (perhaps visible in twilight?), and make it so the unit can disengage from combat and still be invisible. Perhaps also eliminates ambush unless a unit actually moves into the actual square the unit is in. Conveys skirmisher, of course, and gives maybe even full movement back after an attack (but with no additional attacks).

If you made this a special set of items so that having more than one increases bonuses, perhaps this could be done to limit again the benefit to other units? For instance, add plague, arcane penetration, or whirlwind if you have multiple items? Certainly arcane penetration is critical given how high many units have in arcane resistance by default -- a merged attack "death strike" should kill a living unit in a single strike to make sense. And definitely a unit fully equipped in Death's attire would be able to reap as effectively as the exterminator.

(just some random ideas, trying to suggest things that might not require a huge amount of extra coding )

[gooby]

Not working. How far do I have to go back to fix this bug? Before Efraim's last AMLA?

You will have to start a new scenario, then it will start working. Also, it may have skipped several level-ups, so the units might really deserve advancing several times. There was more than one error in the code, so it might need to complete several scenarios till all chaos gets corrected.

Hopefully.

In the savefile I am attaching, verbose Lua errors occur reliably at the end of turn 2 / beginning of turn 3.

[neltnerb]

I noticed this bug with Efraim too (I think a bug, it seems odd that not a single enemy can hit him).

At the very least, it seems like the enemy targeted should be able to hit him, and if anything he should be more vulnerable.

[Niel]

Is there like a list of all possible Lv. 4 classes somewhere?