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[Culise]

Dheathig: Giant communions.  Everything higher than Astrologers are 2TR.  Giants are tough and strong as sin, but difficult to stack due to their size.  Good sacreds.  Both Astral and Death domains, the former of which is just nasty, and the latter of which will grant some of the best summoned path diversification outside of Blood in the late game.

Aralpakbad: Cheaper mages have a shot at 5 paths (1/8 chance) and a bare minimum of 1, including good communion stack potential due to shared paths.  Lots of blasty-spark stuff.  Massive amounts of H3s running around.  Tremendous mobility.

Oy vey, but it's the mobility that clinches it for me; the ability to drop a defended communion stack three provinces behind the borders at will just scares me.  Sorry, USEC, but I'm going to have to say nay to Aralpakbad. 

[USEC_OFFICER]

It's okay, I don't mind. Besides, I'm not going to complain about having troops that won't fall over in a stiff breeze. Abyssinians are much more tanky than Aralpakbad's birdmen, and they resist fire too. Which is going to be hilarious when my Astrologers start throwing around Falling Fires like mad. _{I still really want to yell CAW CAW though. That mobility...}

[Delta Foxtrot]

So we just need Boksi to make his ban, and then I presume some of you want to fanfic your own descriptions. Once I receive those I can gen and edit the nations into one mod I think. I'll post the download link when I'm done and create the game on llamaserver. I expect this to start rolling some time next week.

[E. Albright]

When you gen the mod, are you going to list the seeds in the order of the draft? I.e. [Samarir,Lissasa,Darmekot,???,Dheathig,etc.]? I ask mostly because if we know it'll make it easier for you to cut-n-paste fluff en masse (so long as you trust us not to pull fast ones and change something beyond #descr and #name ) because graphic tags in a mod are order-dependent (e.g., Illen last -> #spr1 "nationgen_B12410//109-illen/unit_3xxx_a.tga" vs. Illen first -> #spr1 "nationgen_B12410//100-illen/unit_3xxx_a.tga").

[Bluerobin]

Yeah, immediately after I picked Midmatia I realized that makepearls does something different from what I thought it did. It still definitely has a lot of potential as a nation, I'd just rather have picked something else. Oh well, time to get practicing my blood economy again!

Edit: Hmm testing out my hydras and after taking some damage instead of losing a head one of them suddenly morphed into a scout. The scout had 60-something HP, so it was definitely the hydra, there was just something... really wrong. I checked the mod and it literally just copies the normal hydra as far as I could tell (and it looked fine in the mod inspector) so I have no idea what's wrong. The Midmatia I'm testing should be fairly normal because all I did was gen the normal Castle of the Sun except with 10 nations, then plugged it into the Dom4 mods folder.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Huh, weird. I haven't looked at the Hydras in the game for obvious reasons so I don't know what advise to offer. Besides try another nation with Hydras to see if the effect replicates.

Also, I just realized that since we get to change the description of our units _{and their names too, but outside of differentiating the units with identical names we probably shouldn't touch them} and pick the name/form of our pretender, we have an excellent oppertunity to fit them into our nation. So instead of being vague we can say "So-and-So smited the evildoers of the land and everybody flocked to his religion." Or something like that. You know what I'm trying to say.

...

And of course now I have to think of a way to use this knowledge in a ceative way.

[E. Albright]

_{and their names too, but outside of differentiating the units with identical names we probably shouldn't touch them}

I was actually going to get kinda aggressive with this. There's pretty much three areas where NationGen produces distinctive names: elites, sacred/sacred commanders, and above all mages. To a limited degree, priests also get renamed, and to a very, very limited degree, line units get small amounts of consideration based on equipment. However, priests will always just be a generic title (albeit one drawn from a broad pool), plus possibly a tier adjective. Very pointedly, mundane commander and scout/spy/assassin units all pick from pools of 10 or 15 total (I wanna say 4 for mediocre commanders, 4 for good commanders, and literally just scout/spy/assassin for the other three).

My plan for Illen was to take the 5 "Illenese Infantry" and the 7 other slightly more varied normal units and give them more flavorful and distinctive names (mostly breaking things down along human/lizard lines). Priests would get a modifying clause (derived from the nation's random flavor text) to make my Initiates, Priests, and High Priests distinct from everyone else's. Mundane commanders would be massaged in keeping with any changes to the units they're derived from. Elites, sacreds, and mages would be unchanged (name-wise, anyway; fluff text is another story). Heroes would get extremely distinct, no-way-you-should-mistake-this-for-a-normal-commander titles.

As long as everything remains fairly distinct and clear, and no unit-casualty-report-mixing shenanigans are performed, renaming basic units and basic commanders (and branding priests, even if they're not actually entirely renamed) will probably make things more flavorful while reducing ambiguity, not increasing it.

Edit: Hmm testing out my hydras and after taking some damage instead of losing a head one of them suddenly morphed into a scout. The scout had 60-something HP, so it was definitely the hydra, there was just something... really wrong.

Fun. I'll have a look.

[tompliss]

The thing about Hydras is especially weird as (for the nations where I checked them), They still had their normal wounded shapes and HP caps. :/

Oh, about names and descriptions and stuff :
I think we should state the special things about our units that may not be in their icons and stuff :
In my banned nation, my sacred units had a werewolf wounded shape. This alone boosted their usefulness to a point where I built a pretender specifically for them (a F6B4 Moloch, for bonus atk and damage both to the normal and the werewolf forms).
In my real nation, I have a False-army tag on many mages (works as the items that makes the enemy believe there are more units). It's something you can see in the Inspector, but nowhere else.
I think we should have a little sentence in the end of the units descriptions for those who have something like that (wounded/dying shape, special abilities without icons, etc...).

[E. Albright]

Oh, about names and descriptions and stuff :
I think we should state the special things about our units that may not be in their icons and stuff :

I wholeheartedly agree. I will e.g. include verbiage in my sacreds' description indicating that they have a dyingshape of "minor fire elemental", albeit in a somewhat more poetic manner than that.


Okay, so. Hydras. Grr. Hydras are special, and NG isn't acknowledging that. I'll have to see about fixing that in the source. In the mean time, a manual fix is very, very easy. Here's what you should do for now, and what you'll need to do in the final version of the mod to ensure they work right:

Open your .dm file for the mod in a text editor. Search for "Graveyard of Desire". It should take you to something like this:

--- Sites for nation 10X: Midmatia
#newsite 1XXX
#level 0
#rarity 5
#path 0
#name "Graveyard of Desire"
#homecom 3XXX --- Arch Drowned Pyromancer
#homemon 3XXX ---UNNAMED
#gems 0 2
#gems 2 1
#gems 5 2
#end

This is the definition of one of your capital sites, and UNNAMED is the offending Hydra. All of the XXXs are numbers that'll vary based on what other nations were generated before yours in your particular mod. All you need to do is change "#homemon 3XXX ---UNNAMED" to "#homemon 1831 ---UNNAMED" and you'll be fine - unit id 3XXX is just a copy of unit id 1831, so this way you'll recruit Hydras instead of copies-of-Hydras. You won't be able to customize their descriptions or change their names, but OTOH when they take damage they'll transform into unit 1832, not unit 3XXX+1, which just so happens to be your national scout...

(Sorry if that was overly simplistic or pedantic; I don't know how familiar you are with .dm files.)

[Delta Foxtrot]

I have very little experience with .dm's, so go with as patronizing tone as you like. And yes, I guess I should gen the nations in order of the OP list.

[Boksi]

Alright, sorry for the delay, but I'm putting the lid on #115 - Tejayapur. I can deal with S/N mages far better than S/E, even if Dousheim does have Hoburg crossbowmen.

[E. Albright]

For the ease of anyone in the peanut gallery:

Spoiler: Final seed sequence (click to show/hide)

1915996464,-2030585232,1272001673,-1046901389,-1110514849,-1321438450,-1325886096,1368426708,709637613

Spoiler: Basic nation overviews (click to show/hide)

Nation 100: Samarir
-----------------------------------
Race: Caelians, prefers Cold scale +2.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Elite destroyer. Sacred light infantry.
Magic: Air, Death and Blood. Weak Nature.
Priests: Strong.

Nation 101: Lissasa
-----------------------------------
Race: Lizards, some Humans, prefers Heat scale +3.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Archers and Archers. Chariots. Sacred heavy ranger.
Magic: Air and Death. Weak Water, Earth and Blood.
Priests: Strong, can reanimate the dead.

Nation 102: Darmerkot
-----------------------------------
Race: Apes.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Archers. Elite sniper. Sacred heavy ranger.
Magic: Fire and Astral. Weak Nature and Blood.
Priests: Moderate.

Nation 103: Dousheim
-----------------------------------
Race: Humans, some Hoburgs.
Military: Heavy infantry. Crossbowmen and Archers. Chariots. Sacred light infantry.
Magic: Astral and Nature. Weak Water.
Priests: Moderate.

Nation 104: Dheathig
-----------------------------------
Race: Fomorians, some Abysians, prefers Heat scale +1.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Sacred heavy infantry.
Magic: Fire, Air, Astral and Death.
Priests: Moderate.

Nation 105: Midmatia
-----------------------------------
Race: Humans.
Military: Heavy infantry. Archers. Sacred heavy infantry.
Magic: Water, Earth and Blood. Weak Fire and Death.
Priests: Moderate, can perform blood sacrifices.

Nation 106: Agor
-----------------------------------
Race: Humans, prefers Cold scale +1.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Archers. Chariots. Elite wolfkin. Sacred light ranger.
Magic: Air, Death and Nature. Weak Fire and Earth.
Priests: Weak, can reanimate the dead.

Nation 107: Shangrila
-----------------------------------
Race: Agarthans, some Abysians.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Rock Throwers. Sacred Abysian heavy scorpion cavalry.
Magic: Air, Earth and Astral. Weak Blood.
Priests: Moderate.

Nation 108: Illen
-----------------------------------
Race: Humans, some Lizards, prefers Heat scale +1.
Military: Light infantry and heavy infantry. Archers and Crossbowmen. Chariots. Sacred light ranger.
Magic: Fire. Weak Nature. National mages are not affected by Drain scale.
Priests: Strong, can perform blood sacrifices.

Now all that's left to do is generating some fluff, manually fixing one or two NationGen bugs, submitting pretenders, and killing each other.

[Delta Foxtrot]

You forgot Karlito's Samarir from your post.

[Bluerobin]

I just realized how confused my nation's residents must all be.

"Welcome to Midmatia, Era of the Terrestrial. Our mages are quite good at water, earth, and blood magic, so of course they are given the designation 'Pyromancer'. Only those who sacrifice a portion of their innate magic to the realm of the dead truly live up to the name, though."

...Actually that last bit is pretty decent.

Edit: Ok, so writing lore is actually turning out to be really fun. USEC's idea of directly incorporating the pretender is turning out nicely as well!

Edit2: This is also the most work I've ever put into developing a strategy ahead of time, which is weird given the context of the game. I doubt it'll have much of an impact on how well I do, but it's a fun exercise for me at least.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I switched the throne requirement to  8/15 (level 1's) and HoF to 15. Please review the OP for game settings and let me know if anything bugs you.
I prefer 8/15 because I feel that's a decent compromise between 5/9 (H3 throneblitz!) and 11/20 (sloggity slogslog). If anyone has play experience or compelling theorycraft to convince me otherwise, by all means convince me. I'm easy.

Also I'm repeating myself but make sure you have the latest version of Peliwyr.