You should include Dwiggs mod and 4.1 in 4.2 so it will be a stand alone mod and easy to install. It's important for new players.

I want Lightning Storm to be exchanged with Ice Storm, the ice storm turn terrain to ice which would be good if you have Ice Age.

Remove Spell Ward, it doesn't work.

Make Hall of Enchantment, Enchanted walls, Forcefield, Farcaster cost mana instead of gold.
Item forge, Teleportation gate and Tower Guard half gold, half mana.

Make extra strike available in item forge.

All units have small blockchance. Adjust it to fit the units size.

Remove Pole Arm from knight, ivory and valkyrie and give them +2 att. Or you could rename the ability to "Pole Arm, Lance".

Seduce rename to Charm.

Draconian growth: Make it grow to only Slither if it's not done yet

Remove "summoned" from all lvl 1-2 except magic servant. Summoned is added automatically when actually summoned, and for example a boar bought from a druid circle should not be summoned. Making them not summoned would allow independent structure guardians to heal after combat, no domain would be needed for healing.

Give all lvl 4 summons Magic Immunity at gold medal. This will make them immune to Control and Banish Summon.

Hell hound: Change alignment from neutral to none
Throw spear: Medium range
Bombard: Extra Long Range
Wizards: -4 dam, +2 def
Hydra: Poison strike
Bladedancer: Remove poison strike
Doom Bats: Less defense and more hp. It's many bats that's why I think it should have many hp.
Big Beetle: Grasp at Gold
Eagle Rider: Trap at gold
Enginer: Tunneling, rebuild structure at gold
Gargoyle: Regeneration at gold
Ivory Siren (Iron Maiden): Holy strike, remove magic strike
Druid: Healing at gold medal
Nymph: Taunt at gold
Earth Elemental: Stone skin at gold
Mystic: Animate Corpse at gold
Yeti: Wall Climbing, remove Wall Crushing
Frost Witch: magic relay at gold, remove lightning strike
Hydra: Water Concealment at silver or gold
Charger: Add Floating at silver
Roc: Remove Willpower
Zombie: Unlimited resurgence, poison strike
Necromancer: Energy drain at silver/gold
Warlord: Unholy Champion at gold, remove fury at gold
Magic Servant: Magic imm at silver, Magic relay at gold
Air galley: Shoot javelins
Vampire: Night Vision

[This message has been edited by Tearion (edited 04-05-2005 @ 03:31 PM).]

Just a thought....

Btw, Tom, I had to write the above long after I first read your post, because it took me a while to stop laughing.

@Tearion:

I've incorporated a few of your changes already. Extra Strike can now be built on items; Dwiggs mod will be packaged with mine; Spell Ward has been removed; and I'm considering some of the others as well. Thank you for the suggestions.

[This message has been edited by Tearion (edited 03-31-2005 @ 05:11 PM).]

Anyway, I'm gonna set green for the default second...or red, perhaps. Any recommendations, objections, congratulations, etc?

[This message has been edited by Tearion (edited 04-01-2005 @ 07:32 AM).]

@Tearion: I swapped the lightning and ice storms as you suggested. The idea makes sense

If yes, I am strongly against it -
- right now, a Wiz Tower II is to Dwiggs what the Builder's Hall was in the original game. Basing it on mana totally reduces the potential of it getting built. Firstly, mana is usually in short supply during the game (since enchantments and other spells are costly) and secondly, it doesn't make any sense!
- it doesn't have any indication that it costs mana instead of gold and that alone detracts from the mod, especially for new players who will assume the mod to be buggy!

If no, there is something strange going on that you should fix.

the tower costs 120 gold and 40 mana. The cost is outlined in the readme file, the Excel file, AND the tower description. You'll note that research for the tower upgrades has been increased. The idea is that if a person wants to take a magical rout, they should invest a bit of mana in it. If they want to build hoardes of summons or cast lots of enchantments, then they'll need to sacrifice their ability do develop their magical capacities

The Excel file and the Readme don't amount to anything if the same is not reflected in-game. Especially with people aging as they do, it becomes increasingly difficult if you have to remember the costs of different buildings.

The reason why you have to remember the cost is because the game still shows it as 150gp but I cannot build it at all, even though I have in excess of 250gp. Secondly, there is no place where the mana cost is mentioned, other than the Excel and the Readme!

Quoted from Stranger:

your are such a contentious man!

When you select a building you might like to build, look to the right and a description of that building appears. All of the mana cost buildings have something such as: "NOTE: costs xx mana" in that area. For example, in the library below the text reading: "Gives 5 trade and 25 research," you will see the mana note. It's not as convenient as looking at the little gold icon in the main left build area, but I trust that most players can do it

Now, for the magic route: if you want to make mana and be a strong magician, you should invest mana to make mana, don't you think? It's similar to building gold generating structures: you spend gold to make gold. The mana costs are not big: a tower II costs 50 mana, a Library 20. However it forces the player to make a decision: do I go for the early summons or the tower upgrade? After a few turns picking up treasure, a player should easily have enough to afford any of the tower upgrades. You should note that wizard tower II never, in orginal Dwiggs or mine, increased growth. They primarily increase research. What I hope to do is give the player more decisions as to what route they want to take. If, as you assert, everyone built wizard tower IIs right off the bat, that seems rather boring to me. So, I increased their research, decreased gold cost and added mana cost. If research is important to a player, they will skip two turns of summoning to buy a tower upgrade. If it's not, they'll summon and build a siege workshop instead. More gameplay options, that's all I want, sir.

Now, before this debate grows, let's play a few games together and see how things play out in a game

Respectfully,

BJ

go ahead and download this version, then download the patch (NewDwiggs4.3s) that I've also put up.

Thanks,

bj

Hi

i have installed dwig mod 4.3 and i have noticed a bug, maybe someone can help me.

I play with two friend in a random map and when i get Zor something a zonbie hero, he is a invisible one hehe .. dont have anything, same thing thing when i recrut a great ape.

Other new unit and character seems to be working .. so if u have any solution.

and to all others who may be experiencing this problem:

I'm not sure why it happens, but what it means is that the UGPM is not recolouring some of the new graphics. However, you can get it to work pretty easily. Try this:

Go here and download UGPM_Gui (the program I used to recolour the units):

http://www.hamletg.com/ugpm_gui.html#02_05_2004

Install this program in your main AoW directory. Double click the colourful icon and run the program. When the program opens, on the left you will see a bunch of folders and scripts (text files). Double click UGPM_script.txt. A bunch of scripts will pop up. Go the the top of the programs, select "tools" and then "create all units." Click that and wait a minute or two. Now all the units should be created!

Sorry for the inconvenience,

BJ

[This message has been edited by The_Stranger (edited 04-23-2005 @ 01:14 AM).]

well, the undead told me in our previous game that they want to have a transport too for their old slow bones.

then the resistance could be higher as well, slowness, holy weakness and exceptional expansive units is enough of a disadvantage for a "pure" race i think.

death knights and vampires are good units, so good that i forgot about the other units in our late game.

bone horrors looks impressive until you notice their holy weakness. very low resistance( i guess4), slow speed(24?), and exceptional high cost(240 - all out of my mind) resurgence and regeneration is good, but only if you have superior numbers to back it up with too, but it seems this unit has too good alternatives with deaht knight and vampires.

bone dragon has 200 mana cost, 160 with summoner. 200 mana is the amount of a basilisk(lvl4) in aow:sm v1.3. it has physical protection what is nice, but also have low resistance what is not nice pls add life stealing again!(it does get some nice improvements with medals but, imho they should have Life stealing without medals too)

also interesting is rogers comment about that undead should have as cheap units as goblins - in my idea the undead should be very cheap on low levels(1-2) and exceptional expansive on higher levels(3-4) cause usally undead have exceptional powerful units on their higher ranks what seems to be common for them.(thinking about the popular D&D high level undead) its nice to know that undead in dwiggs are strong against orcs and dwarves, but imho they should be strong against anything but archons, they allmost achieved that in version 1.3 but failed it closely cause of lack of speed(archons are noticeable much faster on lvl3-4 and some other races like elves as well for this the stats(att,def, res,hp - not including abiliteis) should be much higher, cause usally its power vs speed, while archons seem to have it both since i play aow1.

don't get me wrong - resurgence, regeneration and physical protection is very good - against ai but in online games those abilties are not exactly dominating, cause people know how to effectively deal with it, usally just high stats and a good speed will always dominating the online games.

so what do you do with undead in this current version of dwiggs? well - clear the domain area then guard the capitol with lvl1-2 undead and go for death knights/vampires. thats what i did, but its a bid 1 dimensional if the other units don't come into serious play.

add:

- transport for undead
- resistance higher
- bone horror cheaper or faster to keep up with death knight and vampire
- bone dragons hould have pure evil alignment and life stealing from the start away. since from its cost its more a lvl4 summon, on gold regeneration seems to fit them. its way easier to build some death knights or bone horrors than summon that one until you get summoner + cp50 to make them in 3/4 turns.

i have to test the reaper as well seems his stats haven't changed much except he is harder to access and slower?

btw, the black angel summon is too expansive, 320 mana! and not so impressive stats resurrection > animate corpse, the angel has healing and resurrection what is a powerful combination on a fast moving flyer!(and probably even ok seeing that insane cost) sad to see normal angels so much better than black angels in this mod, they even lost poison immunity and their defense, i rather build a BD heh, cause BD at least get some medal upgrades. :-/

while looking more through the editor and seeing all lvl4 summons with ridiculous high cost(which is more serious than to build lvl4 units in an ugpraded city) i guess lvl4 summons are meaned as joke in dwiggs.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 04-24-2005 @ 02:03 PM).]

Bone horror is strong in some cases and weak in others. I surrounded 2-3 bone horrors with silvermedalled lifestealing orc bruisers before and my units lost badly. Even if I would have killed one they would just resurge.

But undead should have transport.

[This message has been edited by Tearion (edited 04-24-2005 @ 06:03 PM).]

Skydrakes are immune to everything except flying Paladins (remember the book "Dragon Ryders of Pern" or maybe Dragonlance "The War of the Lance"?). Two of the strongest units in MOM. One is summoned only with sorcery magic (Sky Drake, very high spell level) and Werewoles are created by a Lycantrophy spell, cost 180 mana and +5 upkeep per unit of them.

But thats what it might amount to with your MOM werewolve idea, if it worked the same way as you say it does in MOM.

BTW, MOM stands for what again? (I mean other then wife of father)

@DM, the undead should have a transport and should get a boost in resistance, I agree! However, the cost of units and summons is pretty much balanced. Dwiggs is designed to prevent the rushing to lvl4s so commonly seen in regular games. Besides, the defense is lower across the board for all units (including higher level ones). Makes heroes and ranged attacks more important.

Physical protection is also a very good trait in Dwiggs since Enchant weapon costs 8 upkeep and research cost is way higher. So far, I have never started out with enchant weapon either (maybe it is disabled as a startup spell, should check that ).

We had the misfortune to pit the undead against Archons (who are very powerful against Undead in Dwiggs - with holy strikes on all units and heroes).
However, Archons do have a gold penalty and no bonuses whereas Undead do have a research bonus.

i played some other rounds with undead and enjoy their heroes now. especially joseph. he is now lvl14 and has regeneration, life steal and resurgence with many hp good stats all around, phase and block + extra strike.

in my wasteland domain i found a goblin outpost - so i build more goblin settlers and more outposts with them to abuse their growth rate. also did cast darklands it works until i saved and loaded horrible, horrible bug, the crops are always purple(not to confuse with true purple) with darklands the "de" crops will be used for each race. if it would be possible for the terrain spells to work like golden age, what is a more instant effect?(suggested by webusver)

cause terrain spells would rock if not for the bug with loaded saves, since terrain spells don't require domain to let crops grow.

yeah more resistance and a transport would be wonderful, right now i use goblin transports to move bone horrors, necromancers, vampires and plaguebringers. sadly i had to migrate to undead to be able to continue the game later, cause of a certain bug with darkland.

at least i fixed the invisible units now.

Quote:

the misfortune was more that i had no access to a transport to move my extreme slow undead lvl1-2 units - they are unfortunately all slow without exception. to move that necro party from north to south did take quite a long time no wonder it was outnumbered in the end. but i don't quite agree that undead must be afraid of archons i had made quite some death knights thats a key unit in dwiggs like orc cavalry or knights with polearm afaik! and has indeed more impressive stats. the best thing is, you can actually move it in time! and it has res too, heh. i knew that actually before starting the game but would like to try more other units once, especially the new ones i have not seen before the mummy and plague bringer and the womans with trap and the strange name.

finally, i must say the wizard portraits must be fixed. some have the wrong size and thats a pity cause some wizard ladys are quite beautiful.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 04-25-2005 @ 00:59 AM).]

I'm really happy that you guys are posting here In regards to the Undead, I'm making a transport for them right now. The question is, should I use the "Bone Machine," which is a level 3 machine available at the Master's Guild? Or maybe I should tone down the Bone Machine and add it to the siege workshop?

Ravenhood, I do have a werewolf but, alas, do not know how to add the abilities in question! However, there is a werewolf hero, who happens to be my favourite unit in the game

Before I set off on my travels, I'm gonna make one more set of changes to the mod, so please give me more feedback! You have 4 days

On my to do list right now are: tone down Syron Bastions, reduce upkeep of Stone Skin from 8 to 7 (or maybe make it three defense again), get Resurgence working on the items, increase Haste Domain upkeep a bit, look at the Undead resist, make spiders big again, and check some of the guards on structures....am I missing anything?

@Dark Mystery, if you fix the wizard portraits, I'll add 'em

[This message has been edited by The_Stranger (edited 04-25-2005 @ 02:43 AM).]

Tks for the answering on the subject of the invisible it works well.

I played to your mod quiet a bit and i think a high cost of the summoned unit is a good thing, because it force the player to make unit from city and from spells.

And i hated when i killed an dark angel to think that my opponent could summon him again in 2 turns ..

Heroes have a better chance of surviving too, its a good thing. I have saw some heroes who seems to be a lot more powerfull than other like sagestone hehe but it is still an heroe.

I saw a bug? maybe with the dopplegangers who take the moral of the creature mimics. Bad thing because, its already hard to fine a good creature to kills and who can be mimic so if the moral is not the same as your race .. its not good.

You should also make keeper of the peace a comp which count for 2 comp at the beggining. Personnaly we dont allow it because i think morale in aowsm is something important.

Tks for the mod.

Kain

Ps: sorry for my english, iam not used to write it

If yes how i know who resurge with no limitation and who dont ?

Quote:

The Orc wizard starts with Explorer, Anarchist and one more skill. This should be fixed to remove the one extra skill point.

Hehe, anyway... We were talking with Jom and we thought that there were heroes that were too strong compared to others. IMO and his too, heroes starting with mark4, vision3, and other high level abilities or improved versions of the more common ones are too good units to start with, considering they can still improve (and faster with such strenghs) with levels.

OTOH, he also commented (and I agree) that units like ghosts with physical immunity, even though you should be lucky enough to be able to find them, are just unstoppable vs most of the other dwiggs units (especially AI). I would also add here the white knight, for now.

And last, but not least, the ring that gives you flying+visionIII is IMO too good. Should either give flying or visionIII.

That's all for now... enjoy your trip !

(And don't forget to take with you a copy of your favourite game )

[This message has been edited by Timelord (edited 04-25-2005 @ 03:55 PM).]

I had never played werewolves before, and then when I finally got that spell "Lycantrophy" I thought I would give it a try (I'm mostly a ghoul army summoner only 60mana and 1 upkeep). An army of werewolves would make a human player scream if he saw that coming at him in the early to mid game. It takes Paladins, Priests and/or Wizards (which are mid game units) to take them out and you have to take out the whole army or the whole army comes back if only 1 unit of a werewolf survives. Talk about SCREAM when that happens.

BTW MOM stands for Master of Magic. It's a very "unbalanced" game, but, it was never meant for "multiplayer", it's a solo player made game only. So, many things in the game are in favor of the AI, but, occassionally the human player will get these spells as well and it's fun as hell playing with these two units. Especially after the AI has abused you with them for several games if you play on the "impossible" and "high magic" level of difficulty like I do.

I also take the "alchemy" skill trait, which exchanges gold to mana on a 1 to 1 basis instead of 2 to 1. Was fairly easy to churn out werewolves one after another, it takes about 10 turns though to produce one and that seemed fair enough. Build cheap spearmen units and turn them into werewolves and then go on a rampage till the AI starts churning out priests and wizards and paladins. Trust me, it isn't "always" that easy, just happened to be one of those "rare" games where I got the spell early, most games I find myself fighting for my life from beginning to end, have even been sent into the abyss a few times by the AI.