Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Splint]

+O+O+DEUS VULT, INFIDELS+O+O+

Hello and welcome! Here you'll find the Version 1 of the Crusaders, here under the name of the Vanteans, a nation I created a long time ago.
This mod as more or less been "release ready" for more than a month and a half now, and at 2AM, I've decided to finally release it.

The Vanteans are intended to play as something of a mix of humans and dwarves, with a slight hint of necromancy. They are human sized and possess magic user-lite castes, all geared around destroying the undead and evil creatures and providing minor buffs to allies or themselves in some cases.

There are no unique graphics. I have neither the inclination nor the means to provide them or use them in this instance.

CASTES

The majority of castes are military ones, consisting of Armsmen, Knights, Templars, Paladins, and Mages. The two non-military castes are the Commoner and Priest/Priestess.

Armsmen: A general combat unit, with greatly reduced ability to learn non-combat skills, but they can still tend fields and do other work in a pinch. They lack any buffs, and have no particularly strong affinity with any one weapon, but in general are better marksmen and archers than the other combat castes simply by virtue of thier lack of specialization.

Knight: A tougher generalist unit, also packing a minor self-buff to use in combat. They are an even better choice than Armsmen for combat, but are even worse at everything else.

Templar: Specialized in Swords and Axes, and being prone to rage and fearless, these guys are straight damage dealing zealots. They outright refuse to learn non-military skills.

Paladin: Specialized in Maces and Hammers, and packing undead crumbling powers. Unlike Templars, they can still do non-military skills, but are very bad at them, even compared to Knights - with the exception of practicing medicine.

Mage: The most destructive caste, fire-weilding, telekinetic mages can temporarily paralyze or destroy the ribs of targets (inflicting terrible, painful infection in the process,) pelt them with hard light bolts, or burn them (and everything else) down with fire balls. Strongly advise not fielding these men and women too extensively in forested environs. Turns out they aren't as flame-resistant as I thought they were and the last two I fielded personally burned down a quarter of my embark because some ravens spooked them.

Commoner: The most common caste, they handle most of the non-military affairs, and sort of suck at most combat skills with three exceptions: The axe, spear, and crossbow, the traditional weapons of the peasant levy.

Priesthood: Priests and Nuns handle medical duties and administrative roles for a Citidel. Like Paladins, they have a fondness for blunt weapons (viewing them as less messy since with the exception of teeth, they seldom remove anything.) They can also crumble single undead and buff the recuperation rate of allies around them.

Hallowed Warrior: A special case, as they aren't a caste but a combat unit and full civ member built from armor and magic, souls of departed warriors called back to action in these dark times.

BUILDINGS

For buildings, the Vanteans currently have mostly things added by my utility mod, which you can find linked in my sig, and the mod's OP. This is by necessity, as I envision them as building citidels that reach high, and reach out, and mass construction material production eases that significantly. They do however have a few unique ones.

Master Smithy - Produces flavor gear and ostensibly better equipment, always from steel. They also produce lead and platinum-cored maces and hammers. Much of this gear is taken from Grimlocke's mod, linked in the credits on the OP, using his generous permissions.

Reliquary - Produces the Hallowed Warrior, a full civ member unit who exists as a venerable soul summoned into a suit of armor to defend the citidel and smite its enemies once more. If you get your hands on some of that oh-so-precious adamantine, you can even make individual units stop aging here.

Shrine of Sacred Oaths - Allows elevating of natural-born Knights to the rank of Templar, Commoners to Knights (maybe, I can't remember if I implemented that,) and clergymen/women to Paladin.

Recruitment Station - Maintains a small portal to home, allowing requisition of armor and weapons in partial sets for coin, as well as turning commoners and vanilla humans to Armsmen.


OTHER MODS

This version is built with ZM5's mods Lands of Duality and What Lurks Below in mind, and indeed ZM5 did 99% of the creature work (I only did very minor adjustments to descriptions, skill rates, and other minor, piddling shit.) As such, they come pre-packed into this as well.

Due to the Reliquary's reliance on DF Hack, that's also in of course.

As a minor thing, the Vanteans can also make barrles of drinking water when needed. This is treated as a drink, but imparts no benefits besides preventing death by deyhdration.

They also currently have Tanks, giant tortoises packing heavy artillery peices attached to them, and Resean War Hounds, a meaner, larger, and generally nastier breed of dog - some of which can grow to be large enough to ride.

NOTE ABOUT MONOTHEISM AND THE TRASH INCINERATOR

fis-sentient-butcher must be run per session in a given save. Otherwise dead sapients can't be incinerated properly. Additionally, the trash incinerator takes *anything* considered a bodypart - including wool, bones, and other useful unprocessed materials. Forbid those materials before setting your trash burners loose.

If anyone in your fort worships a megabeast, do NOT use the monotheism script, as it may assign that megabeast and worship of it will never fill, necessiting the use of Fillneeds.

GOING FORWARD

They'll be rebranded as a more generically-named Crusaders and reworked from the ground up, to be more vanilla friendly, add new materials, rework the unique workshops, and take out the dependence on ZM's modpacks.

CREDITS
ZM5 - For doing most of the creature work, and for the two mod packs (Lands of Duality and What Lurks Below) this mod was originally built to contend with to a degree.
thefriendlyhacker - For being a very patient teacher in getting the DF hack crap arrayed to properly produce the hallowed warriors and apply reaction triggers.
Grimlocke - Many of the master smithy items are from his mod.
Hugo the Dwarf - For spot-checking raws for errors. Good dude for that. Caught a good chunk of miscellaneous minor fuck-ups in reactions.

The download can be found here, and remember my friends...
+++ALL CRUSADES ARE JUST+++

[Splint]

To-Do List

Sunshards -  Rough gems that seed the land, or created from gold and rock crystals, plus maybe some third catalytic reagent.

Solar Steel (placeholder name) - A superior form of steel created from steel and sunshards. Intended to be a flat upgrade and if possible, deals greater damage to undead creatures.

Rework castes - I feel like I need to rework them significantly. I'm open to suggestions here.

Rework magic - I'd like to make the mages more versatile.

Remove ZM5 modpack dependency - This is entirely to reduce the overall amount of stuff, and allow it to be more friendly to other minor mod inclusions, such as Kazoo's Furrier mod.

New minons, war beasts - Once again, I'm open to suggestions since otherwise they only have Hallowed Warriors, turtles, and mean-spirited dogs.

Rework workshops - While I like the base I have to work from, I want to expand it a bit, maybe lean on Masterwork's shop system to a degree for an idea of what to do in terms of getting stuff you may not have in abundance locally.

Additional plants - compared to ZM's packs, these'd be much smaller inclusions, meant to incentivize going to more dangerous places (deep underground or savage biomes for example,) and give them some moderately unique resources. Again, open to ideas here.

Graphics - This would probably require some poor damned generous soul to make them something so they visually play nice with with the more visual graphic packs. I personally have found I have neither the time nor the means, since the "biggest" graphics size is too small for me to get the desired look I want.

[Splint]

[Post reserved for development, but I doubt I'll need it.]

[brolol.404]

This is really cool. What are the caste chances? I assume it's possible to get a fort with all mages or all templars? Also I assume that [edit: some (mages, templars, etc)] vanteans are born into their caste and cant change?

[Splint]

This is really cool. What are the caste chances? I assume it's possible to get a fort with all mages or all templars? Also I assume that [edit: some (mages, templars, etc)] vanteans are born into their caste and cant change?

Commoners, Armsmen, and Clergy are the most common castes. You'll have more of them (especially commoners and armsmen) than any other. However, the others aren't so uncommon as to not be seen with some regularity (last time I played them I had a bunch of knights, three templars, a paladin, and two mages as migrants from the first year and a half for instance.) I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but that should give you a rough idea.

Transformations are a limit from the game, at least last I checked. There's nothing stopping you from turning a migrant knight or someone born as one into a templar or paladin, but a commoner you raise to a knight can't do the same cause that'd require multiple transformations. Unless that was changed and I just didn't know about it or reaction trigger can serve as a workaround and nobody told me, it's a limitation of the game. I think you'd have to turn them back into their base caste to transform them again, which wouldn't make sense.

EDIT: I've edited the OP to include two bits of information I left out - The Shrine of Sacred Oaths uses a special single-use tool made with adamantine to allow you to make individual units immune to death-by-ageing, and it turns out mages are not in fact resistant to heat, fireballs just aren't likely to set their users on fire unless they're right near whatever they hit.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Add hashish and assassins.

[GarlicBread]

Well if you were still using the same mechanice to use castes you could probably do a Mount & blade style system where you have a basic unit with upgrade paths (though simple since we are only limited by 1 iteration)

ie
T0 Serf - all around general labor unit- very bad at crafting and combat
  T1 Craftsman - Serf specialised in crafts, most important in metalsmithing, but bad/disabled at general labor and bad at combat
  T1 Yeoman/militia - Serf given basic military training to use crossbows, spear and the axe, also make for good huntin'
  T1 Labourer - Serfs developed skills through a lifetime of hardship generally better at farming and general labors and tougher then regular serfs. Bonus to unarmed stats from the experience of many a brawl

T0 Noble - Sons of those privileged whether through bloodline or wealth - good charisma stats, generally refuse to do general labors, ok at traditional "noble" weapons, can take noble positions
 T1 Knight - Training specialising in heavy armor and shields, can quickly learn any offensive weapon
 T1 Scholar/Philosopher - Training specialising in doctoring and intellectual skills and charisma instead, terrible at combat, good at keeping populace happy and alive

T0 Clergymen - those who have renounced their former stations and recieved extensive religious training. can perform basic labour and take the bookeeper position
 T1 Priest - good charisma bonuses and have support buffs (happy thought, ignore pain, reduce fatigue)
 T1 Mage - using esoteric knowledge and always walking the fine line between orthodoxy and heresy Mages arent well-liked but have great offensive utility (your choice of offensive wizardry here, but
 generally make people unhappy so try to seperate these from your general populace)

just as an idea, the vast majority of your migrants should be tier 0 with most of them being commoners, some nobles and a few clergyman. You can then further restrict certain promotions by requiring certain items or crafting upgrade tokens from stuff at the appropriate workshop

[Splint]

Well if you were still using the same mechanice to use castes you could probably do a Mount & blade style system where you have a basic unit with upgrade paths (though simple since we are only limited by 1 iteration)

ie
T0 Serf - all around general labor unit- very bad at crafting and combat
  T1 Craftsman - Serf specialised in crafts, most important in metalsmithing, but bad/disabled at general labor and bad at combat
  T1 Yeoman/militia - Serf given basic military training to use crossbows, spear and the axe, also make for good huntin'
  T1 Labourer - Serfs developed skills through a lifetime of hardship generally better at farming and general labors and tougher then regular serfs. Bonus to unarmed stats from the experience of many a brawl

T0 Noble - Sons of those privileged whether through bloodline or wealth - good charisma stats, generally refuse to do general labors, ok at traditional "noble" weapons, can take noble positions
 T1 Knight - Training specialising in heavy armor and shields, can quickly learn any offensive weapon
 T1 Scholar/Philosopher - Training specialising in doctoring and intellectual skills and charisma instead, terrible at combat, good at keeping populace happy and alive

T0 Clergymen - those who have renounced their former stations and recieved extensive religious training. can perform basic labour and take the bookeeper position
 T1 Priest - good charisma bonuses and have support buffs (happy thought, ignore pain, reduce fatigue)
 T1 Mage - using esoteric knowledge and always walking the fine line between orthodoxy and heresy Mages arent well-liked but have great offensive utility (your choice of offensive wizardry here, but
 generally make people unhappy so try to seperate these from your general populace)

just as an idea, the vast majority of your migrants should be tier 0 with most of them being commoners, some nobles and a few clergyman. You can then further restrict certain promotions by requiring certain items or crafting upgrade tokens from stuff at the appropriate workshop

It's not a bad thought, been meaning to rework this to remove  material dependencies from other mods.

[ArchimedesWojak]

are going to make this compatible with the most recent version

[Splint]

I can see about it, since there's very minor but apparent interest.

[evangaline]

I've played with this mod a week or two ago, and I must admit that the mages are my favorite part of this mod by far. Yes, they burned my entire wood and food supply when an undead eagle flew over my wall. And sure, they accidentally killed the entire wounded military squad by setting the battlefield on fire. But you've gotta love they way it looks.

I like the flavour of the mod, I love the way you've focused on convenienance of crafting of mod-specific items (in the master smithy). I've unfortunately been unable to build the sacred reliquary since I had no gold on the map, but the concept seems cool.

The best thing about this mod is the integration of the harder dungeon levels and the stronger surface monsters mods though. Most of my units are significantly stronger than my usual army in vanilla dwarf fortress. This is why I really appriciate the stronger monsters.

The one bit of feedback I have is that it's a major pain in the ass to discover what kind of vantean (mage, commoner, paladin, etc.) your people are. I need my mages in the army, and not as a hunter burning down my precious everything.

Also I'd personally love to have the option to turn people into mages. I love them.

Lastly, I'm not sure if the holy spells do anything. I've seen them used against both undead and goblins, and I cannot tell if they are doing anything.

Overall, I had a great time playing with the vanteans

[Splint]

First off, glad you liked the mod! There seemed to be little interest when it first came out, probably since I had such a clunky time of implementing things.

The issue of figuring out who is what has always been a bit of a pain in the ass with multi-caste races (I'm particularly fond of ZM5's Ardanians and Light Worshippers who have loads of castes as well and it's clunky as shit to organize them,) so assuming I ever get around to it I'm probably gonna implement that simpler system GarlicBread came up with or a variation of it. Or make them lean more on the mages or something, I dunno.

To combat lack of materials, I'll probably add in some reactions to buy precious metals and sell some equipment for coin in case you have no suitable coinage metals on-map.

As to the holy spells, most of them are either self-buffs, or provide buffs to less tangible stats, or against certain creatures actively weakens them (sapping strength, spatial sense, or whatever, generally making it harder for the target to defend itself rather than destroying them outright.)

As to the reliquary, all you really missed out on if memory serves is the Hallowed Warriors, who are meant to serve as your anti-cosmic horror units since falling into rivers/cavern lakes, deadly blood and gas won't hurt them.

That being said, if you (or anyone else for that matter) has any ideas on how to handle these fellas going forward, I'm all ears.