New nation - MA Svarogia, Finalized and now renamed!

Svarogia is a new MA nation based on south Slavic mythology and is sort of a cross between EA Marverni and LA Bogarus.

Nation info>

Strengths:
- Good diversity,
- Summonable sacred cavalry, sort of,
- Some unique stealthy troops,
- Several situational, but very devastating summons if used correctly
- Healer mages
- Some mages can predict bad events

Weaknesses:
- Lightly equipped troops,
- Very weak priests, only holy 1,
- Good mages are capital only
- Sacreds are decent, but capital only,
- Banishable mages,

Nation link below>

http://www.llamaserver.net/executor/SvarogiaMC.rar

Just going off your preview artwork, it looks really interesting and well-done! (If a bit disturbing and grisly -- I'm not going to sleep well tonight after seeing that huge eagle horror thingy! But that's a good thing.) Only problem looks like stray junk pixels on some of them, but that stuff's pretty simple to clean up.


I look forward to trying it out.

With minimal cleaning/detailing those sprites would definitely be good enough.

This sort of reminds me of polod lachy - looks like it needs a bit of polish (pardon the pun) but it's an unrepresented mythology and would fit will in the dom3 universe.

I applaud the effort you've taken to get this far!

Yeah, these look really good Executor.

Hey Executor, saw your post on Shrapnel telling about some gnashing of teeth regarding junk pixel removal, and asking for some help. So, if you'll forgive my response here on this forum instead, here's how I do it (caveat: I don't hold myself out as an expert by any means -- I'm something of a stage 2 beginner myself, so what follows is what has worked for me):

Use the Select by Color tool (Shift-O). Set the threshold to 0 (very important), turn anti-aliasing off (also important under certain circumstances) and click on anywhere in the black background. If you have a clean black background. it should form a nice outline around all the actual graphics and there shouldn't be any little islands anywhere else. If not, set your background color to black, highlight those messy areas, and [del]ete them (if you're finding that this deletes them to transparency, right-click on the sprite's main layer in the right panel, then click on Remove Alpha Channel toward the bottom).

Just make sure that the blackground color is flat 0,0,0 black, and make sure that the shadow color is straight 255,0,255, with no bleeding/fuzzy blending at the edges. (Well, actually, there seems to be some wiggle room with the shadow -- it seems to accept 253, 0, 253 --, but might as well keep it consistent.)

This tool can be used for lots of things, and is great for quickly, say, picking up all clothing of the same color for hue-changing or whatever. Though you'll want the threshold at 5-15 for that use -- but might as well keep anti-aliasing off, as it's more trouble than help at this scale.


EDIT: Oh, also, not sure if you meant that you were getting this problem as well, but if you get the black backgrounds not going transparent at all, it's likely because, when you're saving it as a .tga and it still has layers or an alpha channel, you're letting it do it with the default "Merge Visible Layers" option instead of the "Flatten Image" one. Flatten Image is the way to go.

Globu, I didn't notice your response until now, Llama gave me the same advice as you did actually, it was very helpful.
Well, the nation is complete and linked to the OP.

Give it a go if you will and let me know what you think.
Comments are welcome.

Ah, all good then.

Alright, I'm trying it out in an SP game, and first impression is it looks really great! The descriptions are really evocative and show that the nation has a very distinct feel and approach -- I like it very much. (By the way, if you'd like, I'm pretty good with editing and can clean up the phrasing and stuff like that if you'd like.)

Some immediate questions: the berserker axe... why? You know your source material, so I'm sure you chose one axe with two attacks for thematic reasons, but from a game balance/consistency perspective it seems either two axes or some other special might come off better? Might be just me, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to give them a normal axe with 2 attacks. Maybe give a normal dmg 7 axe and add a throwing axe attack, or maybe increase strength one more? I could be totally off base here, though.

However, for the record, I like the axe charge thing and it looks like this guys are going to be pretty fearsome. Will be taking them out for a spin...

The Osenja... the description really suggests either assassin/lure/seduce, but none is there. Intentional?

And finally, the White Vila... just out of curiosity... the description mentions her aegis. Not quite sure what that means... what is it? When I hear that word, I think shield, but that's clearly not the meaning here.

That's all so far. I'll give more feedback as I get into it, but, again, looks great and looks to have a distinct playstyle. Even if it gives me nightmares...

Thank you Globu, I of course welcome any help as a first time moder.

You're probably right about placing the second axe instead. I've considered the throwing axe too. I'll place the second axe when I get enough feedback on the rest.
It's on the to-do list.
The Berserkers are very useful but situational. They have very low defense, low protection and no shield so they die quite easily, but on the other hand they have a rather high attack skill, especially if they go berserk, are faster than regular infantry, better AP and MM, high strength and two attack with a bonus charge attack.
So while they die even to slingers easily, they can still chop giants, elephants and even pretenders to pieces.

As for Osinja, yes, they are supposed to be assassins, it seems I've overlooked that.

As for the White Vila, well, I realize it's a bit confusing but I can't translate the word better. It's "okrilje" in my language and it stands for protection. Aegis is the closest translation I got.
Mythology vice, the Vila wears her "okrilje" and it holds all her magical powers. If she takes it off and loses it, she loses her magical powers and whoever steals it from her can control the Vila.
It's a bit complicating to explain what it actually is as it's not really clothes...
I suppose I should redo the description a bit and change the aegis for the Vila to robes instead.

I would also like to hear some thoughts on the summons. Some of them are probably a bit hard to handle cause of the pop killing effect, and unrest, but I think they can pretty successfully nuke a nations income in a few turns in used properly.

The Vampir summon also worries me a bit (I should probably increase the sprite a bit too as he's size 3 when he shapeshifts) as he has domsummon 2 ability, it may be a bit much?
And the big horrifying blood bird, Navi, could use a boost maybe, tho they can still kick ass if communioned.

Mantle or aura would probably be the best way to describe it.

The Vampir is bugged. It domsummons Mora rather than Talason, which is a bit unfortunate because the upkeep costs really start piling up. Also, the Babica might be a bit more useful if it had movement 2, but that's not really a pressing issue.

Sombre - that's good!

Arr god dammit, I made some last minute changes to the unit ID numbers to place the commanders and troops in the right order.
It should just be a matter of changes the Vampirs #domsummon2 2414 to #domsummon2 2435.

Babica comment noted.

EDIT> Minor fixes made,
- Vampir domsummon corrected,
- Osenja can assassinate,
- Babica map move 2,
- Vila descr corrected a bit.

Sounds like fun units!

Well, if it's something that she can lose and can be stolen, aura is most definitely not it. Mantle or, say, protective shroud?

But then again, why not stick with the original word to convey the uniqueness of it? Maybe put it something along the lines of this?

Their power and strength is hidden in their hair and their okrilje, her mystical [protective shroud, or mantle, or whatever]. If a Vila loses her okrilje, she loses her magic abilities....

Hey Executor,

I have to say I really like this mod, it's very thematically rich and interesting.

I haven't had a proper chance to go through all the summons yet, but here are some comments on the recruitables:

- Firstly, almost all the sprites are really nice, I think you've done an excellent job on them. Particularly all the witchy women are excellent.
- The Raider is a bit funny looking. I think it may be because the source sprite (Bogarus?) is a bit funny looking, but somehow he looks a bit... blurred
- I don't like the Berserker sprite. His arms look very strange, particularly his left arm.
- You just taught me how to do a single-use weapon with the Axe Charge! That is going into EDM.
- The Ancestral Chain Mail seems disappointing. It looks like nice armour, but prot 11 is a bit underwhelming. I haven't done proper comparisons though so maybe it's okay.

- The Runner sprite looks very strange, I think it could do with some reworking.
- What's the Zrek holding (just out of interest)?
- Village Elder and Knez leadership are unusually high (I'd have guessed 40 and 80) - is that deliberate? It's fine if it's meant to be a national strength.
- I don't get the Osenija. She is pretty expensive, and so far as I can see she'll be no use at all as an assassin. She only has a fist. Is she meant to be able to control people or something? Should she be a seducer as well?
- Mora is cool.
- Sudjaja is nice too. Is the sprite just the Baobhan Sidhe sprite? It looks similar but I haven't checked. If it is very similar, could maybe do with a slight recolouring, but I don't think it's important.
- Vestica is cool.
- White Vila is very nice. However I wonder if they will be very vulnerable to magic duel? One option would be to make the Osenja hp 10 if that was thematic, so that they could be used to soak up the magic duels (higher hp will be targeted preferentially).

Just looking at the summon spells:
- Is Todorac a plural word?

Your writing is very evocative and interesting. However there are a fair few typos here and there - it might be a good idea to take Globu up on his proofreading offer, as generally getting a second pair of eyes to look over something is quite effective (and Globu is an efficiency beast!).

I'm looking forward to getting to play with the summons, but right now it is choir time! (I have just joined a choir; I have no singing skill whatever but they are very generous )

Globu, I like that.

The Raider is a Bogarus unit, tho a large part of him was done, redone, cut and pasted which would explain the blur.

Ah, the Berserker sprite irritates me too a bit but for a different reason, I don't like his legs much. I stole the unit from the Vanheim sacreds and drew the left hand myself which is why it's somewhat wonky.

As for the ancestral armor, it's sort of the same as the weightless forgable one, tho I did just figure out something that needs to be changed on the armor, I didn't realize at the time that you add the reinvigoration effect to items by placing a negative enc value which is why I gave the unit reinvigoration instead.
A slight protection increase to the armor might be fine, cause I don't want to make them immune to arrows much. Besides, the sacreds seem to prefer very well under a minor W/E bless, however I'm yet to test how vulnerable they are to arrows.

The Runners hands seems off, didn't catch that earlier.

The zrek is holding, I don't know... Whatever the EA Arco engineer is holding I guess. I should change that dagger to some rod.

The commanders do have an unusually high leadership. I wasn't sure how to make them compete with the Runner as he has leadership too as to lead the stealthy units so you'll certainly always end up recruiting a stealthy MM 3 commander rather than a regular, even old age one, even if he cost a bit less. Not sure how to balance this out.

The Osenja, ahh, I was first going to put beckon on her (cause she is supposed to lure people into death) until I realized it has a complete different effect than what I though. Than I considered putting some enslaving attack (cause she actually enslaves people and they mindlessly follow her into their death), but somehow nothing seemed fit to me, so I ended up with an assassin.
Thematically speaking, the Osenja should be able to shapeshift into different animals. So I could probably still do that, tho I'd love it if you could mod a random second shape. Make several shapes and when the unit get killed a random second shape gets picked.

I'm 70% sure I took that Fomorian morrigan sacred and repainted it to Sudjaja.

Does MD prioritize high path mages? If it does than Sudjajas would soak up the MD.

Todorac is singular.

Yes, I'd assume there are some typos, if only notepad had auto-correct spelling.

I'd be very happy to have Globu go over the mod and share some other modding and GIMP tips!

Choir you say? Not long ago I went with a friend of mine to a choir, audition? Anyway, out of 30ish girls there, she was the only one rejected. That was bloody hilarious, until it somehow became my fault...

First, again, to repeat myself and echo llamabeast, this is really great stuff! Highly thematic, flavorful, interesting. Enjoying it as I go into it playing. I'm playing it on my massive SP map, so if you want I can send savegames later on if you want to see how someone might play it casually.

I'd be happy to go over the descriptions and such.

That said, some observations so far:

Runners: Their description says they are the most prominent berserkers. But they have neither the berserk ability nor the axe charge. This seems inconsistent (and a little bit disappointing). I mean, they do have +1 att and def, it is true, and a dagger along with their axe, but the description suggests a badass stealthy berserker commander who can lead stealthy raiding parties, rather than a good scout who seems to be a different kind of soldier, rather than the best of the berserkers.

Maybe split into two different units -- a runner and a berserker [chief, lord, warleader, whatever is appropriate]? (I'd love to see badass berserker thugs, but that's just me.)

The sprite for the Ossiriand Swordsman: Its feet look awkward. Like, instead of boots or armor, just some pants and skinny or cartoony legs.

Raiders: This one might be just me. As it is, these guys are awesome and enjoyable in play for their niche, but, well, to nitpick about game-mechanic inconsistencies again, shield bash as a second weapon usable every round seems on the borderline there, I'd think. Especially given their description as just common thieves/bandits who are scooped up and conscripted for warfare (something so special and not granted to so many other superhuman units would seem a bit out of reach of common thieves, even in a land where humans must be a bit superhuman to survive). Perhaps a good balance might be to go with how you did the axe charge -- basically a shield charge, making for a nation of hard-hitting m/f's without granting them a perma-dual-wield with their shield. Thematically, it would also make the common thieves appropriately cheaper than the berserker warriors (!).

(But, again, game balance always rules over thematic common sense, of course, and we can always hand-wave such inconsistencies. "Oh, the raiders are more expensive because they are particularly skilled and so require more gold for conscription" and so on.)

However, if you wanted to go with the same power level as they are now, I might suggest thematically changing the Raiders to be another variant of Berserker, instead of "common thieves" better than the berserker, or give them some sort of thematic reason for being so special. But I don't know the mythological/cultural/historical context you're dealing with, so if Slovenia has a legend of thieves/bandits who are also seriously hard-hitting m/fs, ignore this part.

The White Vila's seduce: The CBM standard for basic seduction is now 12, so if you're aiming for that, you may want to up it to 12. But 10 is right on for vanilla.


I'll pipe up more as I go along!