The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

[Aura]

The dwarf miners feel somewhat underpowered. I reckon either take their attack to 6-2 or give them like a 4-1 ranged attack would do it.

[thespaceinvader]

The teleport ability makes them potent though. What I need to do is sort out the Meridian League scout and rebalance from there I think.

[Aura]

The teleport is good, but at the moment they feel too weak to utilise it. In the game I played today even swarms and swarms (think like 30 odd) couldn't take down even one of 5-6 Lv 2s and 3s.

The Scout line seems like the best ranged fighter at the moment too. Maybe something could be changed for that as well (i.e if you add a chariot with a weaker/no ranged attack, or buff up whatever is intended as the main ranged fighter. Is it the Legionary ?).

[thespaceinvader]

I'd prefer an ability the better fitted the flavour, though.

On another note, I'm just going to post in Art Workshop, preliminary work for a chariot, pulled by a new beastie, kind of a cross between a wolf and an oryx, which I need to come up with a name for.

Stats-wise, I'm thinking low-cost, ranged only, fragile, with 8MP. Or high cost with a charge attack - those horns are pointy. Maybe bladed wheels.

And to account for it, I think maybe dropping the scout's price and effectiveness. I fear we might have to lose a line or two, sadly. Maybe we could keep the units, but as levelling options for the level 0s.

[Aura]

I guess if you boost the ranged attack of the main ranged unit (just slightly), and add the chariot, then the Scout line could be axed. That way both the scout and ranged attack roles are refilled.

[thespaceinvader]

Yeah, I know. I'd be sad to axe (groan) the scout, but of all the units it's probably the one which fits least. I wonder about maybe making both miner and scout non-recruitable, but able to level from the appropriate level 0 units. Or keeping them for campaigns.

[Velensk]

I kind of like the idea of keeping the scout as a recruitable unit simply because this faction is so lacking in mobility that the scout is a god-send. Removing the miner as a recruitable unit sounds fine on the condition that it is made considerably more powerful. Teleport may be useful, however it still comes on a very slow unit whose only attack is on the same level as an elvish archers melee attack.

If you are looking to reduce the number of recruits, I would like to propose removing the swimmer, boosting the cutthroats speed (but reducing his damage) and making the harpooner a level 2 alternate for the buccaneer. The level 0 water unit cannot really benefit from the speaker often and from what I've seen is mostly recruited simply because he gets 5mp and is cheap.

I should have some time to start making special abilities today. Could you please compile a list of the special abilities that you need and what they do.

[thespaceinvader]

I certainly could:

Ability: entrench. As steadfast, but if the unit doesn't move for a turn (attacking is OK though), terrain defence goes up by 10% (or whatever we nail it down to during balancing).
Ability: tames. When the attack kills an animal-type unit, or a unit including an animal (like a horse rider, chariot, incendius etc), the animal is switched to the attacker's side, with 1/4 HP. This will require a full set of animal cfgs, which I'm happy to put together, as well as, I believe, a big list of all the animal-using units which must be maintained. Could be complicated.
Special: paralyses. The affected unit cannot attack, defend or move unit the end of its next turn. It can still be attacked, however.
Special: only affects living units. The attack... only affects living units (or alternatively, doesn't affect mechanical or undead units, if that's easier...). As a separate special, because it can apply to multiple different attacks (all the blowgun attacks, the Acolyte's heart-ripper, potentially the Shaman line's ranged).
Ability: spirit summon. The Shaman's ability as it is, but it could do with a dedicated macro so it can have its own name and description, rather than Plague, and its default description which is inaccurate. Possibly also a version for the Elder Shaman which summons Ancestors.

Those are the ones I have definitively nailed down right now. Also needed but less developed are:

An ability for the tracker, related to tracking. I wondered about revealing ambushers, but that would be complicated and not terribly useful in MP.
An ability for the miner. This probably doesn't need to be related to income generation any more, since we have the chariot as a scout, but I think something a bit more flavourful than Teleport would be better. That ability still doesn't quite make sense, given that the unit is still on foot, even if it's in a tunnel.
A replacement for the Incendius line's Marksman - possibly even just a rename of the special- to show that the reason of the accuracy is explosive ammunition.
An ability/weapon special for the Swarmcaller line which lets them heal adjacent, living allies, but only as a result of successful attacks with their swarms. Possibly to incorporate the Swarms special as well, to avoid having long lines of extra specials on the end of the attack.

Also needed is the ability for a unit to choose between AMLAing and levelling into another unit.

Thank you very much =D

[thespaceinvader]

UPDATED. Alpha 0.1.3 released.

* Changes:
* Switch Feral and Savage around, they were in the wrong order
* Fix typo on Skinner name
* Fix typo in Ancestor and Honoured Ancestor names
* Fixed non-flipping halos.
* Add Chariot and War Chariot to Meridian League.
* Fix typo in every unit for the textdomain.
* Cutthroat weapon name.
* Incendius line weapon names.
* Add attack icon for tusk attacks for Incendius line.

Apart, possibly, from adding another recruitable animal to the Untamed, this should be the last unit changes. Now what needs doing is to add all the descriptions (and write the remaining descriptions, but no help needed there thanks). And add the abilities (thanks Velensk), then balance balance balance. And add the Khalifate. And add all the animals. And add the names. The Meridian league will have a Roman flavour taken from one of the current Roman inspired add-ons. The other two will probably just use mainline elf and orc names respectively (though i'd like to add some rules to give some more Aztec-y names to the Untamed).

EDIT: Alpha 0.1.4 released. I realised that despite putting the Chariot and War Chariot in, I hadn't actually wired them to anything. This release fixes that, as well as a few other errors I and others had noticed.

0.1.4: Alpha release
* Changes:
* Added all completed descriptions, and all current special notes.
* Removed some specials, including swarms and drains from Dronecaller.
* Changed Tamer line weapon icons
* Add Chariot to recruit list and to Cadet's levelling tree
* Fix War Chariot's missing wheel

EDIT: I'm going to wait to do any significant balancing until the Khalifate can be introduced, since my balance within this era will react to balancing changes made to them against mainline. Just in case anyone is worried that I don't appear to be reacting to balancing suggestions. I'm noting them down and being aware of them, just not enacting them as yet.

[Velensk]

Err, I made a sort of a mistake. I saw that there was an update for the era and I updated forgetting that to remove the abilities from the folder when I did so I'll have to start over (though to be honest I didn't get far anyway). There is a bug in the update though. Apparently there is a missing closing tag in the war chariots attack animation.

[thespaceinvader]

O blarg. I'll get that fixed and re-upload...

Version 0.1.5 released, only new change being a bugfix.

[nindjo]

hey i found a bug with The Meridian League when i try to get there unit descriptions some of them give error mesages also when i use the harpooner melee attack he changes in one of those tusker canon things

[thespaceinvader]

Thanks very much for the report. I've fixed the image issue, but could you provide specific units which trigger errors in their descriptions? It's probably down to me typo-ing when putting in the special notes.

EDIT: it would appear not. The following units generate errors:

Skinner
Cadet
Swimmer
Cutthroat
Buccaneer
Infernus
Soldier

The only unifying thing I notice about them is dashes/hyphens in the unit descriptions. Could this be the cause?

EDIT: It was, but it was due to the fact that open office auto-replaces dashes with another character, which doesn't encode properly into unit files. I fixed the issue.

[nindjo]

cool i also found the same problem with the serpent if i find any other bugs il report them soon as i kan

[thespaceinvader]

Thanks, I'll fix the serpent right now.