Warhammer: High Elves, Version 0.42 out!

New release!

Preview of units:




Latest release changes (0,42):

-Made MC compatible (again), except that the nation spot is the same as MC Aurum
-Name change: Ulthuan
-Added brief description

SPRITES
- FIX: Blurry sprite for Dragon Princes/Drake Masters
- FIX: black background on noble attack sprite (alpha channel!)
- FIX: black background on ellyrian reaver attack sprite

BUGS
- FIX: Ambidextrous on the Chariots
- FIX: Drake Master, Noble and Prince AP fixed.
- FIX: Correct encumbrance on noble/prince.
- FIX: Explained Shadow Warrior dodge ability in their description

MECHANICS
- TWEAK: Archmage magic paths, "110 FAS" instead of "100 FAWS"
- TWEAK: Start fortress change: Jeweled City -> Citadel
- TWEAK: Lowered base AP 15->14
- TWEAK: Mage/Archmage given researchbonus 1 (busy reading).
- TWEAK: Guardian and Harbinger given research malus -1 (too busy hunting).
(these two "fix" it so that the mages are the most efficient researchers)
- TWEAK: Mage/Archmage/Stormweaver lose their holy magic and is not sacred any more. Price decreased as per below.
(this also makes the Keeper of the Flame their only priest, giving him a niche except as a thug.)
- NEW: Keeper of the Flame has "Twist Fate" in battle
- NEW armor: Phoenix Armor (slightly less enc/def malus full scale mail) for the Phoenix Guard (High resource cost, 20)
- TWEAK: Phoenix Guard Ceremonial Halberd given resource cost 10 (was 4)
(net increase resource cost 17, price lowered as per below)

SPELLS

- NEW: Ritual: High Magic Dome
- NEW: Ritual: Protective Presence

PRICES
-Phoenix Guard 75->65
-Guardian of Chrace cost 35-> 90
-Sea Guard Captain 120->110
-Harbinger 100->90
-Drake Master 150->130
-Mage 260->230
-Archmage 550->460
-Stormweaver 400->330

Preliminary list for next version:

TWEAKS
- Remove the quickness from the Tiranoc Prince
- Give the Tiranoc Prince a larger standard (game wise, not sprite wise)
- Change current age for units (now they are all around 30 years old, while still having trained for over a hundred years)

UNITS
- NEW UNIT: Repeater Bolt Thrower
- NEW UNIT: Great Eagle of Ulthuan
- NEW HERO: Alith Anar
- NEW HERO: Korhil
- NEW HERO: Caradryan

SPELLS
- NEW: Construction: Build Repeater Bolt Thrower
- NEW: Conjuration: Great Eagle of Ulthuan
- NEW: Evocation: Flames of the Phoenix
- NEW: Alteration: Arrow Attraction


Design Choices below:

Baseline stats:
Hit Points: 8
Size: 2
Attack Skill: 12
Defence Skill: 12
Strength: 10
Protection: 0
Precision: 12
Magic Resistance: 12
Morale: 12
Encumbrance: 3
MapMovement: 2
Action Points: 14

Speed of Asuryan and Martial Prowess � High Elfs get a high attack skill of 12 which feels appropriate given their WS of 4 combined with their ability to always strike first and re-roll misses in WH. Furthermore, their weapons are treated as if they had an extra point of length, to make them strike first more often. this works out so that the spearmen hit often but not hard, while the special troops (WL, SWM hit very hard, as they should). Their defence is also set to 12. The shields are just ordinary shields, not tower shields, to make them slightly more vulnerable to missile fire. Also, their hit points is low, making them skilled, but vulnerable. The Warhammer rule of "High Elves Always Strike First" combined with "Re-roll all misses if your initiative is higher" is quite powerful, but hard to represent - the extra attack skill above will have to cover this.

Long lived � they have a high maxage (2000), essentially making them very resistant to disease and decay.

The Art of Saphery (Magic)
� High Elves magery is reknown as perhaps the strongest in the Warhammer universe. It is extremely versatile, allowing them to choose from all of the magic lores (except the nation unique ones). In Dominions I decided that blood was not something High Elves should be doing, and excluded that from their lineup. Even though they can use shadow and death magic in WH, I've decided to exclude Death as well, for both balance and thematic reasons (no skelly spamming High Elves). I also decided that Elven High Magic is predominantly Astral with Air and Fire on the side, making these paths the strongest paths for the nation.
- Their Cap Only Archmages are very strong mages, and so are the non-cap mages. They both come with very hefty price tags though, making it hard to get many of them, especially if you want to use the elite troops (upkeep issues). You might be pushed into taking Magic scales for this reason, which feels right.
- Their powers of negating magic (bonus for dispelling as well as the national spell �Drain Magic�) is represented in several ways: 1, their troops have good MR. 2, their Archmages onebattlespells �Antimagic�. 3, They (will) have national protection spells, similar to a weak protection of Gaia (like 25% resist vs fire/lightning/cold/poison) with a moderate area effect (not battlefield wide).
- Champions have been given low grade magic. See below.

Troops - comments on troop specific design decisions
Phoenix Guard � I find it hard to represent Ward saves in Dominions, but at the moment they are given a �shield� that has a defence value and 100 prot, combined with small resistances (25%). They are also given Awe, instead of Fear. The reasoning behind this is twofold. One, fear is very powerful and hard to balance. Two, the way fear works in Warhammer (at least 8th edition) is a bit like how Awe works in Dominions.

Shadow warriors � should be somewhat limited in number, but I did not want to make them a summon. They are now recruitable via the Shadow Walker, a leader for them that brings 5-10 shadow warriors with him when recruited.

�Basic troops� � are very skilled, but also expensive. A bit expensive for what they bring really, but that is the case in Warhammer as well, and I wanted that represented here.

�Elite troops� � Are generally Capital Only and expensive but good value for money.

Sacred status � I find it tricky to decide what troops if any should be sacred. I decided that the Phoenix Guard could well be sacred, being the defenders of the shrine of Asuryan, especially since they thematically also should be short in supply. They are also very expensive as a result of the holy status.

Champions � shadow walkers, drake masters, harbingers and so on has a commander unit that has a small magic power. This is for two reasons: It makes thematical sense for the highly magical High Elves (in WH mages are very few in number compared to Dom on a per battle basis) and it makes them more viable to be recruited while not really adding to the power of the nation.

Not included yet

Summons:
Lions
Lion Chariot
Repeater Bolt Thrower
Great Eagle
Dragon
Dragon Mage
Griffon
Prince on Griffon

Heroes:
Tyrion
Teclis
Alith Anar
Caradryan
Korhil

Spells:
Flames of the Phoenix
Arrow attraction (area windguide, not like the WH spell)
Magic Protection/drain magic (small grade resist magic with area)
Fury of Khaine

Download version 0,42 here!

Ooh, very nice. Thoughts so far:

Chariots are way undercoated. They're so, so good. 20 prot, shield, high def and attack. They also need more ambidextrous--right now they have an attack skill of 6.

The armored longbowman needs a helmet or he'll never be used, ever. Who am I kidding, though, he'll never be used anyways because of...

Sea Guard. A bit undercosted due to being basically every troop at once. And size-1 means they're the ultimate arrow catchers, too. They need to be 22, maybe 23 gold, especially compared to the troops from other Warhammer mods.

Spearmen might be too cheap too, if just by a gold or two. They'll certainly thrash most every other infantry around. I did some tests...Spearmen run over equal *numbers* of Ogre Bulls.

Swordsmasters are if anything overcosted. 35 gold, tops, for what you get. They're just too glass-cannon-y to be worth more.

Ellyrian Reavers are a bit overcosted too and might be able to go all the way down to 30 gold.

I like the idea of commanders with auto-quickness. They currently need a cost decrease, though, because most people would just go with the ones which have magic instead.

The Archmages don't quite feel right at 600 gold. They're super-good, but they just don't look like they're quite 600 gold good. Sometimes you get stuff like a F2A1S2W2N2, which is lackluster at best. 500 gold maybe?

Recuperation is kinda odd on them. High elves shouldn't be able to grow back arms and stuff. Having access to healing, sure, but they don't do it on their own.

Firstly, your first sprites look top notch. Great work!

Haven't had a chance to test the mod yet, but here are a few thoughts.

I started planning High Elves a while ago. I was never going to make them so I'm glad you are. The only notes I can find are my plans for the mages' paths. I can't see what paths you've chosen, but just out of interest here were my plans:
- Elven Mage: F2A2S2
- Elven Archmage: F2A2S3E1W1 310% FAEWSN

Looks a bit odd that the Archmage has so many randoms when the mage has none, but that's what I seem to have written down! Anyway I think the main thrust of my thoughts were that High Magic should be mainly Astral, Fire and Air. High Elves should also have reasonable access to Earth, Water and Nature, but they're not their real strengths. I don't think they should have Death or Blood. Looks like you had quite similar thoughts.

- I don't think the Martial Prowess thing will work out nicely - I expect they will be all crowded in in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a good thought though, shame you can't give them a range-2 melee weapon.

- Very long maxage makes sense, but I don't think recuperation makes sense. Maybe they have moderately good Healers instead? But I can't see an isolated High Elf's missing leg growing back, which is what recuperation represents.

All the rest sounds great. I won't comment "great!" on each individual paragraph, but it all sounds very nice. I'm really looking forward to a full graphics version. Maybe this will prompt me to carry on with my nascent Wood Elves mod over christmas.

A third Wood Elves mod?


The TC footmen at least don't look terribly funny size 1. We'll see with the actual sprites, though.

This is high elves, not wood elves. God, get your warhammer fantasy battles armies straight sir. God. Just, God.

You might want to check your own reading skillz thrillbot

Thanks for good feedback. That was what I was hoping for. I have some suggestions on changes, but that will have to wait until after New Year's. There won't be time for modding until then I am afraid. Then, graphics come first for current units, and mechanics as well. When I am (when we are) satisfied with that I will add heroes, summons and spells with graphics one by one.

Thoughts on your thoughts:

Tiranoc Chariots: Given major overhaul for next version. Shield removed. Bows reduced to one bow. They are also given a second shape, reverting into first shape at the end of battle. The second shape is a reduced version of the first. Price increased to 100 gold. I want there to be few of them, but those you field should be very good in the right battle.

Armored longbowman given iron cap.

Spearmen: I suppose the bulls could not hit them? Defence is way better in Dominions than in WH after all. Perhaps they should have slightly worse stats. But compared to other WH nations it feels right..

Swordmasters: Even with the 2 attack Great Swords of Hoeth? Well, I think you may be right. I also want them to be fielded.

Reavers: I agree, but also I do want them to be slightly overcosted, and hence mostly used when they are really called for, if that makes sense.

Sea Guards should be expensive, perhaps slightly too expensive.

Hence, price changes:
• Spearmen 14->16
• Archer 16->18
• Lothern Sea Guard 20->25
• Swordmasters 42->38
• Reavers 35->32

Thoughts?

Archmages: Price reduced to 550. I think the automatic cast of "antimagic" is quite powerful, though, apart from their very strong magic. Remember that the HE have a 10% forge bonus to make use of all those paths too.

Princes: Costs slightly reduced by about 20 gold each.

Recuperation removed and small healing (25) added to mages.



Also, opinions on the Shadow Walker and Shadow Warriors? Useable? do they have a niche?

Phoenix Guard - good? price about right?

Commanders (mages and prince/noble) being able to switch between riding and foot - do you like this or is it not worth the hassle? (I wanted to get the awesome elven steeds in the mod in a way that actually makes them useful, via a good map move)?

Thoughts on your thoughts:

Sprites: Thanks! I am staying very close to their WH counterparts and I like doing sprites (putting a lot of time into each).

Mages: Yes, my thoughts on paths are very similar, except that I "allow" death on them. Here is the mage:
#magicskill 4 1 -astral
#magicskill 0 1 -fire
#magicskill 1 1 -air
#magicskill 8 1 -holy
#custommagic 1920 100 FAWE
#custommagic 14336 100 SDN
#custommagic 10112 50 FEWAN

And archmage:
#magicskill 4 2 -astral
#magicskill 0 1 -fire
#magicskill 1 1 -air
#magicskill 8 2 -holy
#custommagic 1920 200 FAWE
#custommagic 14336 200 SDN
#custommagic 10112 100 FEWAN

I will be doing testing on the Martial Prowess quirk. I thought it looked OK when first testing - we'll see!

Recuperation removed - I agree.

Glad you like it so far - please give me more feedback when more has been added to the mod!

Also - here's hoping you do get going with your Wood Elf mod.

Wait, why are High Elf Sea Guard size 1? High Elves should be size 2 like *every other human-sized warhammer race*. (I'm just going off comments right now, getting to mod itself, but size 1 seems silly. High elves are *taller* than humans).

--------------

Having glanced at mod, yes, size 2 is needed. Size 1 is a huge advantage, and size 1 creatures with good stats could command literally double those prices. And your stats are beyond good. Even the basic spearman has elite warrior stats.

Speaking of stats - attack 13 defense 12 base stats for common spearmen? That's a little ridiculous. Even at size 2 they're likely undercosted.

MA nations typically have a gem income of 5. You should try to limit yourself to that. I don't see any reason for high elves to have more. If they're predominantly astral and fire, give them a gem income of that 3-2. Or 2-2-1 and choose 1 from AWE.

Also, I kind of feel that nature magic is inappropriate for High Elves in general. These aren't wood elves after all. And i think most of the warhammer magic that is 'nature' is limited to nation specific magic. I can check later.

I really don't think any nation should get a construction bonus on a national site. That's just insane.

Check the OP. He wants to replicate their racial bonus to spearmen from the tabletop.

That being said, I agree with you - Shinuyama's size 1 goblin warriors can carve a bloody swathe through pretty much anything just because of their size advantage, and they've got mucky offensive stats. Size 1 elites with long weapons would be... well, hilarious, granted.
Still, they'd probably need to be worth at least thrice the price of an equivalent size 2 fighter and/or be balanced via very high resource costs so that they're consistently outnumbered and surrounded - as they are in the tabletop.

In fact, IIRC that was the rationale behind giving them that additional rank's worth of attacks in the first place - without it their skeletal manpower meant they could either play on an unfavourable morale field, or field units with stupid narrow frontage that couldn't hope to match dice buckets with anyone - which is death when said dice are lone d6s, no matter how jacked your stats are.
Which just goes to show that the balance band-aids of one gaming system don't necessarily make for good ground rules in another .

The Empire (and by extension High Elves since their mages had access to all 8 + High Magic) has a druid-ey college. Amber or Jade, something like that. Incidentally it sucked, at least as of 4th edition. And not just Is-Not-Amethyst suck, which all but one College suffered from, but proper and objective sewer suckage.

Ok, I just played a test game. I hired nothing but mages, commanders, and spearmen. I didn't actually use the mages (gold drain), and built PD30 everywhere (gold drain).

Despite voluntarily sacrficing piles of gold to mages and PD (the latter of which was at least useful, since the PD is incredible), I was able to roll over 8 AI nations, fighting most of them simultaneously, with nothing but massed spearmen. ie, high elf spearmen out-AI the AI. They're insane.

The cap-only mage is kind of a bad buy, but the recruit anywhere mage is amazing. Some nations would trade their cap-only for him in a heartbeat.

IMO, the nation as currently designed is like the best parts of 3 nations smashed together. A nation can't do *everything* well, that's crazy.

I recommend making base stats no better than 11 att/def, maybe less (Dark Elves are more martial than high elves and i was only considering 12s tops, not 13/12), and remove that silly size 1 shenanigans. High Elf spearmen are not supposed to be elite warriors - they're regular troops, 10s would be appropriate even.

I've run some numbers, and the difference between size 1 and size 2 troops in practice(double the attacks plus bonus defense erosion, double the defense) makes it simply impossible to make spearmen size 1 without them being end-all-be-all elite troops of doom.

Also somewhat fundamentally the base stats for the high elf seem a bit off: WS4 statistically is equivalent to attack 11, not 13.

Spearmen getting attack-12 instead of 11 because of the extra rank rule(an extra point of attack statistically representing more attacks being dealt in the first place) seems reasonable and they're not too powerful with it at size 2, defense 11 and 16 gold(which seems about right comparing various point costs across nations).

Archers should definitely get an attack no higher than 11, though.

White Lions properly have Forest Survival but they have no commander to actually lead them through the forest. Sad.

Full-on Antimagic as a #onebattlespell might be a bit much--an aoe 15 or 20 version would probably be fine, though.

Normal High Elven Mages are a bit undercosted due to the research bonus, which seems almost gratuitous given the sheer number of magic paths the guys get. Either a slight price increase(up to 280?) or the removal of that would be appropriate.

I don't think at least for the normal commanders that the horse/not horse forms are worth it unit-slot wise. If you just chose a form for most of them and gave, say, just the mages(or even just the cap-only mage) the choice, that'd be enough flavor-wise.

Did I not comment on the construction bonus magic site? Shoot. Anyways, there's no way to make a national bonus site work. None at all. It's impossible to balance. It needs to go. While you're at it, making them get only 5 gems would be appropriate.

The Shadow Warrior commander currently doesn't get his broad swords, because his code has him get "Elven Broad Sword"s when he should be getting "High Elf Broad Sword"s. Otherwise, the shadow warriors seem nice if just for the raiding. The commanders might be if anything too good as assassins. It needs more testing at least.

Squirreloid,

Thanks for good comments - this is the reason I posted this early version up. Most of my energies went into creating interesting mechanics and balancing the units vs eachother in terms of usefulness and so on. This stuff is what I wanted and needed the community's help with.

Thanks to Kianduatha for testing the size 1 vs size 2 advantage properly. I very much underestimated how powerful that will be. The spearmen/sea guard will have to settle for good attack and long weapons for Martial Prowess/Speed of Asuryan.

Stats: Yes, now having given it a proper think through myself (too much Christmas beer up until now) I realize two things: One, 12 attack skill is MUCH better than 10, and nearing WS 5 when it comes to attack skill. Two, defence skill can't be compared directly to WS in WH since in WH you are generally easy to hit even with high WS (unless it's very high). So, all stats will be modified - the High Elf baseline stats will be 12/11. Remember - Speed of Asuryan means all HE have "Always strikes first" AND crucially, if they have higher initiative, which they have most of the time, "re-rolls all misses". That's pretty damn good, and they should be good at hitting things.

Regarding gem income - why does a nation NEED to have 5 gem income? High Elves are highly magical and could "get away" with having more, say 6 per month. That said, if this really bothers people, I will reduce this. If so, they'll have S2F1A1E1 or S2F2A1.

I disagree with you on the Nature point. They have access to all 8 lores, including Lore of Beasts and Lore of Life. Both are 'nature' predominantly.

Yes, Vaul's anvil will have it's construction bonus removed.

Thanks for running the testgame - the PD will be weaker as a result of stat changes mentioned before. I think the PD should be OK though, the High Elves are "defenders of their ancient lands" and it makes sense that provincial defence should be a strong point. I will nerf it slightly though, to make the numbers a little smaller.

The cap only mages price has been reduced. The research bonus on recruit everywhere mage removed. High Elf mages have to be very good though, anything else would be unthematic. What would be your suggestions, if you think this change is not enough?

Kianduatha,

Yes, thanks for testing - stats will be changed.

White Lions should have a commander indeed, they will get one. The Swordmasters will do without, since they can recruit a noble instead representing that role.

I will look into the option of having a smaller antimagic cast.

Will remove the non horse form for the Noble, since he won't see much use anyway (for the prince, at least the horse/foot can be useful if he is thugged out with boots, or without making use of the mounted defence)

Further changes for the next version:

- Sea Guard/Spearmen Size 1->2.
- Attack/defence generally reduced by about 1 point each across the board, sometimes by 2 points.
- Construction bonus removed from starting site.
- PD nerfed a little bit, numbers slightly reduced.
- research bonus on recruit everywhere mage removed.
- White Lion commander (Guardian) added.
- Fixed weapons on Shadow Walker.
- Foot form for Noble removed.

Because that's the amount of gems every nation that age has, no matter how magical they are. If you don't like that I'm going to have to insist that you also go back and add extra gems to the normal highly magical nations, like Ermor who happens to be sitting on the ajar gate into the underworld, or R'lyeh, with its gate into the void, or Machaka which happens to be out and out ruled by its sorcerers.

All that being highly magical does is give you good mages, not change how magical the current age is.