Ageless Era - Current Version: 4.33

[Benignity]

I have a small criticism for my favourite faction - the Windsong.
The Seeker unit has male sounds, but the description (yes, I'm one of those people who read the faction descriptions) says that the Windsong are only made up by women. That would be a small inconsistency, but I did notice it. Obviously that's of very low priority, but I thought it might be worth pointing out.

[Ravana]

Its level 2 has expected sound? If so, then I just change HUMAN_OLD_HIT to HUMAN_FEMALE_HIT.

[Benignity]

Okay, did some testing and yeah, all Seekers undergo a spontaneous sex change. Thank you for the tip; I really appreciate it

EDIT: Oh gosh, I misread and thought you told me to do it myself. (Didn't see the ..."I" just...) So thank you for willing to change that. Although I did manage to change it successfully (and learnt a bit about coding while doing so), so yay for tired reading?

[TheEnclave]

As a new player im happy to see that things are still alive around here

[IPS]

Well, talking now about devling balance at Orocia gameplay and overall gameplay. First of all, Devling Orocia gameplay problems are mainly caused due problems of durability (weaker resistances and only 50% castle defense) even on their higher levels.

Possible solutions to change their balance at Orocia but not alterating their original concepts:
- Most lv0 will left unchanged, except a pair of unit lines.
- Considerations to lv1 and higher levels devlings like 60% castle defense and small resistances buffs to increase their durability by not changing drastically their basic gameplay on PvP matches because they are already a strong faction consdering the swarm of little units they can do by stacking a fast growing army with poor upkeep.

So on this spoiler I can add a long list of balance changes to make them considerably more viable at Orocia but not changing their unique grace of a fast growing army with poor upkeep:

Spoiler:

Little devling rebalance

1.- Devling Cursers, Devling Blasphemists, Devling Offenders, Devling abusers: must have an aditional ranged atack with 2/3 arcane damage in order to be harder to counter. They are the only linebreakers on the faction and for consideration, it's intended that they don't get countered that easy because otherwise faction will colapse.

2.- Devling Offenders: It's needed that this unit performs as good as any other lv2 mage at all cost regardless of anything. Coming from a lv0 unit and then from a lv1 unit they're not commonly seen in PvP except as leader. So, considering all mentionated points is highly recomended to check these points:
a) removing any physical weakness, simple, the aditional cloth on the sprite can justificate this, as well the cloth can remove any cold weakness and even making it to +10% or 20% cold resistant this lv2.
b) Its stats are all fine apart of the weaknesses, and if we consider it could gain a 5-4 arcane ranged magical atack as bonus, this could make this line a notisable faction strength.

3.- Devling abusers: actually this lv3 is somehow weak, but with the previously mentionated buffs this unit can be considerably stronger. Would recomend to check the next points:
a) 10-4 cold magical is a bit too weak, but if we make it into something like 11-4 and then 7-4 arcane ranged magical this unit can become something to consider.
b) probably would be better for balance to make this unit durability more stable, would suggest to neutralize all arcane weakness when reaching lv3 resulting in a strong mage with 6 MP, 60% defense at forest and good resistance to magical atacks.

4.- Devling Flyers: good lv2 scouting unit, maybe a bit too low on health, but it does have 9 MP and fly and has an aceptable hybrid range damage but I find no problems if it did had +1 mele damage/ranged per strike to compensate their problems at durability. For this I would recomend:
a) removing blade weakness, due it has already somehow low health.
b) 1 MP & 50% frozen def due they really fly...
c) decreasin their xp to lv3 because they don't gain something notisably apart of only raw stats improvements. Would sugest from 79 xp to 59 xp (25% less xp)

5.- Devling Attackers: a really fast scouting unit, but with toughtness problems. If we consider the +1 mele/ranged damage this could be a really worth unit to get lv3. For this is recomendable:
a) raise their health to 54, let's make them a bit more tought
b) decreasing maybe their cold and arcane weakness to 10% to make their durability more stable.

6.- Devling Spikers: a good lv1 unit actually, but let's make them a bit stronger with the next sugestions:
a) +10% resistances to blade, impact and fire from their original ones, to make them normal fighters but with weaknesses to cold & arcane.

7.- Devling Staplers: a good lv2 unit with beast damage at one strike, but no ranged and no lv3. Let's make them as a somehow special lv2 considering they have no lv3:
a) similar to spikers, more resistances, but this time +20% to blade, impact and fire, +10% to pierce & arcane. All these from their original resistances. 55 hp seemed a good health amount, so desided to left this unchanged.

8.- Devling Lurker: This actual no lv2 unit isn't viable at all on any kind of long map, this unit needs to be special due not even a lv2 upgarade. Let's sugest something:
a) +10% to all its physical resistances to make them more durable.
b) changing their ranged to 3-3 blade (poison) -maybe marskman- to make them little lv1 assasins!

9.- [Extremely optional]: Giving overgrown soldiers and Chiefs the ability -leadership- at the cost of 15-25% of their health and -1 MP (to 5 MP, due lv2 leadership over mostly lv0 faction) to give leadership to the faction to make it more fun to play on smaller maps.

Coment: when I looked for Overgrown Warrior, I couldn't stop noticing their 60 HP and 6 MP mix wich is really a formidable mix, so that seemed fine to me. If we consider that all overgrowns will have 60% castle defense then they can become into really strong warriors at Orocia.

[Shiki]

In the Era of Myths the devlings received some changes, most lvl 0 became lvl 1.
The cursers kept mostly their values (price, damage, ...), but give more xp on getting killed and cost upkeep.
For the Nailers it's different.
I think due to that changes in the past it needs more looking into it.
If you would like to work on the balance, you are very welcome, I myself lack the gaming experience for it.
Have here a look for comparison:
Devlings in Ageless Era - Devlings in EoM (5.17)
The plan is to include them into Ageless in summer.

Spoiler:

By now I just changed a few things from the list:
- flying devlings are on ice like everywhere else
- all non-flying devlings have 60% castle defense, the lurker line even 70%
About the others, I can barely judge them, but since devlings in EoM changed, please have a look how much they apply.

A few words about
(1):
- a 2/3 arcane attack would be better against opponents with 40% or more coldness resist (assuming they have 0% for arcane). I think there are not many units like that, maybe it's another problem or the attack needs to be stronger?
- how to name it? At the moment of now, cursers attacks are insults. Insults are hardly of a type, but since it is cold behavior they are of type cold.
(1,2,3):
Well, being them now one level higher but still having mostly the same values, there may be much place for changes. For their xp and price (even if not recruitable) too.
(5.5):
I have the impression that the overgrowns are just more attractive than the nailers...
(4,5,6,7)
There is nothing I can say about this. Not so sure about changing resistances among the levels, will do like you think it's best.
(8):
The lvl 1 is a bit stronger (and more expensive) than the mainline thief.
It has a lvl 2 now (values more or less guessed, just added with this release).
There are graphics for a lvl 3 too, but I have no Idea what values to give him. Looks like a devling mage.
I think the lvl 1 is fine, after having an advanement now.
In Oraoia it may still not be a good choice because for backstabbing he would go in dangerous positions. However, it still has the best movetype among all devlings (+10% more than cursers/nailers, +20% more than overgrowns, in about every area).
(9):
Could be.
(10):
There are lvl 4 graphics for both variants of the overgrown too.
In PvP or existing campaigns there may hardly appear a lvl 4 unit, and maybe not Orocia but other addons, like CreepWar.

You can see the sprites in a local multiplayer game through creating them with debug mode or if you remove one # in line 26 & 27 of the file _main.cfg

[IPS]

Well after reading shiki post this what I have to say. Keep in mind this is about EoM (5.17) devlings which are distingably diferent than Ageless ones. Ageless ones are an older version of Devling faction.

Spoiler:

1.- Overall talk about EoM (5.17) Devlings faction

1) Devling vs Ghost
a) Devligns actually have troubles killing units like undead ghosts which are 70% cold resistant. Devling factions are all 20% arcane weak so missing some crucial mele strikes would reheal ghost a lot. Sneaks would be the only counter of devling to ghosts but they're only 4-2 againist ghost (5-2 if at night) and if you're lucky +1 damage from trait. Which means you need of at least 2 or 3 devling sneaks to kill a ghost, thing that costs 24g.
b) devling's only efective ranged againist ghost are Flappers, with a damage limit of 3-3 to ghost. Ghost is 10% fire resistant, thing that is enough to make not possible a 4-3 from flappers due 3.75 x 0.9 = 3.375 which is rounded to 3. Also at day they're only 2-3. To hurt effectively a ghost with flappers you would need at least 2 of them to damage a ghost by something between 6 and 12 (ignoring extreme values of luck or unluck) but this does cost you 30g in total.

Final coment about devling vs ghost: Ghost are extremely strong counters of devlings. Ghost is a unit a unit from default era, which sometimes will been meet at EoM+Default at PvP, casual survivals. The intention is not to make cursers be anti undead or something else, but I remember before when Undead Dark adept were 11-2 cold magical but without an arcane atack, they ended adding to it a secondary arcane atack for versality.

2) devling vs skeleton
Devlings on this time act a lot better againist skeletons than againist to ghost. They have effective overgrowns, they have somehow effective nailers, but lack of a good ranged againist skeletons. But they lack of efective ranged againist them.
a) Flappers underperfom at ranged damage againist skeletons. Skeletons are -20% fire resistant, flappers does to them 3.6 damage at neutral time which is rounded to 4, at Night that amount raises to 4.5 which is rounded to 5 per strike.
Flappers ranged vs Footpad ranged againist skeletons
day: 3-3 vs 5-2
neutral: 4-3 vs 6-2
night: 5-3 vs 7-2

Their ranged damage is equivalent againist skeletons, but footpad has mele impact which makes him a much better counter of skeletons. Also 5-3 isn't that useful over 60% defense target.

b) cursers are 60% inefective againist skeletons because they have 60% cold resistance. With a damage limit of 3.5 againist skeletons during night which is rounded to a final 4-2 ranged.

So after this, we conclude that devlings have to encourage to kill skeletons mainly by mele, thing that on most factions doesn't happen because Knalga can use footpads to siege by ranged and have good counter atacks to skeletons but flappers can deal only a limit of 3.75 damage per strike at night (4 x 1.25 x 0.6 = 3.75) which is rounded to 4. Also Knalgan aliance kills skeletons mostly by mele as well.

3) Devling vs Wose
Wose is another extremely good counter to devlings (ironically) mostly because wose is 40% impact resistant and 60% pierce resistant, so it completely counters Overgrowns and Nailers at once. Only remaining units for efectiveness are Flappers, Sneaks (but too risky) and Cursers. Let's have a better look about any of the cases:
a) Wose are -50% fire resistant. So this means flappers can do an average amount of 4.5 damage per strike at neutral time of day. And 5.625 (4.5 x 1.25= = 5.625) that is rounded up to 6 only at night. Good accurate way to deal 18 of damage with a single flapper but Wose has 52 base health, so you would need of another flapper at least to then finishing it with some mele but mantaining in mind you may take some damage on retaliation.
b) Wose is 0% blade resistant, sneaks can perform all their damage to Wose. Sneaks will oftenly deal 8-2 mele damage at neutral time of day (10-2) at night which is the most damage effective for their lost cost. Seems to be most cost efficent unit to fight wose if well played (and not too unlucky), also in any case, if Sneak takes 1 wose strike at neutral time of day it will probably die, which is EXTREMELY risky.
c) Wose are 10% cold resistant. Not that much a problem, cursers can deal 8-2 at night which is aceptable, but wait 15g unit to only deal 16 damage to wose? a way too cost ineficent.

Final coment:
So viewing the first 2 cases, ading a 66% firepower arcane (or fire) aditional weapon doesn't look like a bad idea againist undead which some of them are very cold resistant. But at the first look seems that cursers underperform a lot next to Dark Adepts by costing only 1 less gold than Dark Adept, but Dark adept has much more solid stats (except of no mele). Lacking of some counters to units like Wose, Ghost and at having no efective ranged againist skeletons, devling faction actually has probelms even dealing with so some units of default factions.

[Khadras]

Hi! With last version of the mod the game crashed without any message when some units upgrades to level 3 or 4.

[Ravana]

Known, it is from stone statues unit line, until next update(summer) try to avoid them. Currently having had unit with stone ability on map is enough to make all advancements have quite high chance to crash.

Though there should have been message in stderr, no need to look in this case as I already know the reason.

[Khadras]

Currently ageless does not use any faction directly from wotg, so please be more specific what units you mean.

From what I have heard wotg has only few factions, though way too large ones. That is not suitable for ageless. Some unit lines might be included as new faction though, if there are suitable ones.

I find that comment especially amusing considering what you said about wotg today

The list of recruits is to big. Please split factions into smaller ones.

You understand me totally wrong. I want to say that are new and polished graphics for some units in WOTG mod, units that in your mod are with old graphics. And in WOTG are with 598 more units than Ageless Era, so i want to ask you kindly to see what are this units and to add them into your mod ordered in faction. WOTG has 2894 units and Ageless Era has 2296. I like to see all WOTG 2894 units arranged in factions, not in few factions with lots of units like in WOTG, but in many factions with normal number of units like in Ageless Era. But Ageless Era has just 2296 units from 2894 units of WOTG.

[Eagle_11]

wotg has so much units because most of them are duplicates. The actual unique unit count is much, much lower.

[Ravana]

I will see if I can create easy way for sorting those units... sounds that much work that it might need faction creation IDE.

Nevertheless, I doubt this will work for images, so there you still need to say where are images you call old.

[Shiki]

IPS, Thanks for the examples, I see that it makes very much sense to add an arcane attack.

[IPS]

Well on this post I will coment about some healers with some "issues" at being or slightly OP or underpowered.

1.- Water Avatar/Water god at Al-Kamija:
It's known that water avatar (lv2) has heal +4 and that Water god can heal up to +8 at lv3. The only problem is that the xp to gain a water god is a way too high, killing with this unit to gain 70 xp (100% xp modifier) is not an easy task with only 8-2 and 10-2 atacks. A possible sugestion is to make Water Avatar heal+6 tier or lowering xp needed to optain a Water god.

2.- Mystic at Dark Blood Aliance
The line works fine at healing, at lv2 looks all fine, but Mystic looks a bit too weak if we consider that Clan Leader needs 100 xp to level up to Mystic. A sugestion would be to lower the required XP to level up him or making Mystic worth of spending 100 xp (100% modifier) for a Clan Leader.

3.- Elder Sage at Welkings
It's known that sages at lv1 are among best healers avalible in lv1, but the problem is that Elder Sage is a bit too weak compared to most healers. It's seen that some healers are 7-4 magical cold likely Clan Leader, 9-3 likely white mage, or so, but Elder Sage is only 6-3 magical cold which is practically lv1 damage. Sugestion is to make his damage more significant and probably giving him a small cold res as a bonus (may be)

4.- Rune Purist vs Arcane rune Splicer
Rune purist brings us an interesting new ability named concentrated that per each sucessful strike the next strike will do +1 damage than the previous and so. Well, the point is that first of all place, let's calculate most probable damage by multiplicating 12x0.7 (average sucesful strikes at 70% out of 12 strikes) which gives us 8.4 (rounded down to 8 ). Which is calculated by an average amount of 36 damage and 45 if you're lucky of landing one more strike.

Now, comparing it to Arcane rune Splicer we get something, he has 2 diferent arcane atack types and an completely bonus fire atack. Both units heal +8, but actually Arcane rune splicer has much better base stats than Rune purist. Also I have no idea how to make Rune purist better balanced due concentrated is a factor I don't know how to handle at all.

5.- Holy Order's Priest
Looking that both of his atack are mele, the only thing I can say is that he's among weak fighting performance healers I've seen. Cleric line looks expensive and weak compared to other healers we've seen, apart that an elvish shaman is much more useful for just 15g than clerics actually are. So for lv1 a considerable reprice would help a lot by making him among most cheap healers (probably 13g tier) and lv2 needs better stats due both of his atacks are mele and are weak.

6.- Clergyman at holy order
It's another lv2 healer with poor fighting performance. 6-4 mele is weak, no ranged as well, looks weak. Something that could make him more useful is to make him more tanky, or improving damage or giving him 6 MP. But I'm sure it's one of most weak healers. Also their lv1 costs 14g and have similar stats than Clerics at holy order, so sounds rasonable the feedback given earlier.

7.- Primevalist Celebrant
Looking at this unit on Primevalist faction, inmediatly noticed that a healing+4 on a faction with many regenerates unit is not helping that much. Still the faction have human lines which can optain benefits from him. His fighting potential is nice and his no lv3 looks fine consdering you give arcane to the faction if optaining him. Not underpowered nor overpowered, this healer is a fine fighter, but I'm thinking that maybe with cures as well would fit better his no lv3 options.

8.- Ukian Seress
The unit looks fine by itself, but the xp to lv3 looks a bit too high, it won't be that hard last hitting with 7-3 ranged, but lookslike she has to suffer more than most healers to can finally heal +8. The unit by itself looks completely fair to me, only complain is her required xp to lv3.

edit: adding more cases
9.- Hierophant, Dark Prophet & Wizards at anakes
The first 2 units in the line, are heal+8 units and the other is the lv3 of the non healing option. All 3 are all somehow weak in damage. Hierophant is much weaker than white mage is, dealing -2 ranged damage per strike and having -20% arcane resistance as well that Dark Prophet is weaker than mage of light. Sugestion for those 2 first one is giving them a small boost of damage and to arcane resistance. Sugesting to make these -20% arcane resistance to 0% for Hierophant maybe for Darkprophet giving him an aura which increases alied Arcane resistance by 30% instead of Light of Mage's illuminates. Wizards are also weaker than most lv3 mages by dealing only 10-4, maybe increasing damage or in another case giving them precision instead of more damage could make them a better lv3; also as something optional giving to Wizards 20% to both cold and fire resistance.

10.- Botanist at Dalefolk
I'm not sure if that unit needs a buff, but by viewing his stats 7-3 arcane poison looks somehow poor for AE standards. Maybe he could be rewarded by something special like "anti poison" seen in Archaic southern orcs by allowing Botanist not losing health by poison, but delaying his posterior heals.

11.- Eventide Alchemists
This case refers of a heals+4 unit. At first sight his stats looks somehow boring, but he's a somehow versatile mele fighter with ranged poison that can poison enemies using ranged atacks. Maybe for this one we can add cures in order to make him a way better than most of simplistic lv1 healers with just heals+4. As well giving him a small but considerable fire resistance of +15% due of working with fire commonly and not sure but giving him +1 mele damage per strike at both weapon to his lv2 and lv3.

12.- Wizard at Aragwaithi
This is the case of a healer with good damage, good healing powers, but a way too low health. 31 hp for a lv2 unit is extremely low, maybe if it had 35 hp as white mages does, would be easier to use. As well that Sorceress has lv2 hp but at being lv3.

13.- Mistral Rime Keeper at Issaelfr
Another case of a good unit suffering a lot to finally gaining heals+8. Only complaits about this healer is the lot of xp this needs to finally heal+8 which could be problematic for survival scenarios.

14.- Sober at highlanders
This is the first case of a unit that doesn't has heal to be listed in the list of healers. But the fact is that this unit has a choice that allows him to heals+8 (yup, extremely curious how a berserker at lv1 can become to a more pacific healer+8 at lv3 if chosen to be this). Its xp are extremely high to reach lv3. Also, at Coldturkey it has inspire which only works for lv0 and lv1, may be this needs to be considered for something better as leadership or just another kind of compesation.

15.- Spirit Jay at Phantom
It's an extremely curious case of a scouting unit that can heal. It has no lv2, so actually its stats are a bit too weak to be no lv2 unit. Probably changing its heals+4 into heals+6 could make of this unit a much more considerable one to own of if looking at Archaic for a possible advancement for it then add a lv2 option to it. Considering that units with no lv2 at AE should be something really special then I see no problems by making this heals+6.

[Ravana]

1) As seen from https://github.com/ProditorMagnus/Agele ... _Water.cfg , once it had 150. But I guess further reduction would be all right.

2) Yes, both Clan Leader and Mystic have quite high xp.

3) I guess it could have more damage

4) Another strike maybe.

5,6,7,8) Agreed.

You can still edit the same post, I will check its link when its time to start implementing changes.


9) Damage part sounds good, resists too. However, I do not want resistance aura or precision there.

10) I guess self-cure would fit there.

11) Sounds good, but not 15%, no need to go into +-5% there.

12) Aragwaithi arent weak, so might need to lower damage if increasing hp.

13) Agreed.

14) Indeed, that unit line has had no attention so far.

15) Agreed.