First off, sorry for the long post, I got behind on this thread. Wow, so much feedback and even more art contributions, this is awesome!
Jesus, @BrainDamaged@, that Lich looks bad ass like that!
which I really hate because it's a well done unit and I want the original magitech to be as complete as possible. Perhaps we can replace it with a very similar summoned unit like an imp (which fits more gracefully into a "natural magic" concept), a wood or clay golumn (which would probably be too slow) or some other high mobility unit with good sight, short (melee) attack range and moderately week defense & offense. Even better would be something that could grow into either subfaction, perhaps being adapted slightly with some enhancement, causing them to retain their usefulness. If that is done, it's important that they don't conflict with the role of the skeleton.
Skeletons are kinda slow (190 speed right now, 205 after the upgrade), have very poor sight and deteriorate when away from their masters. But after they are upgraded they are actually more powerful meat shields than the daemons, especially against archers (I gave them armor type of "bone" which is highly resistant to damage type "piercing"). If we replace the daemon, my thought is that the corruption path adaptation should augment what differentiates them from skeletons, perhaps faster movement. AH! I got it!! Whatever the alignment-neutral replacement for the daemon is, they can be sacrificed and turned into "ghasts", which move faster, have less HPs, greater sight and a chance of not being seen, so they can be employed as spies while still being useful (although far from ideal) as a very temporary meat (etheral?) shield. The ghasts should also probably be particularly vulnerable when away from their "haunting grounds." Perhaps they can become "pets" of the graveyard where they are created (from the sacrifice) and a similar, long range emanation from the graveyard causes them to be stronger and regenerate when within 25 spaces or so, but be very vulnerable and not regenerate when outside of that range? Then, on the nature side, they could morph into some kind of more advanced forest protector/dweller unit where they go the opposite direction, more HP and attack, but still greater guile (and perhaps travel through trees).
I'm just brainstorming, so I'm not set on any of this.
i have an idea for another path of magic-path of elements. units-fire mage, ice mage, etc. also should have titan (really strong version of golem but can barely move) (needs more units if this is to work)
Agree? or Disagree? and if you disagree, can you state the reasons?
if you agree, feel free to add new ideas
@michchar@, that sounds like natural magic, which would probably fit in well with the natural magic theme. I was thinking of that faction more along the lines of druids, tree huggers, maybe forest rangers, hippie elf types, but perhaps a little of this would go nicely. Then it could even be implemented as a separate subfaction, "Path of Element" perhaps. The existing magitech follows this theme somewhat with the battlemages shooting fire balls, archmage with an ice attack, etc. That gives me another idea for a daemon replacement though, a lessor elemental or some type and a "Path of Element" would be able to expound upon that concept. Just remember that the more factions/subfactions we introduce, the more work it will take to balance them all. If they aren't well balanced people will tend to play the stronger factions and then you loose the diversity. So ditto wciow's response about adding more work, but I think some ideas can be borrowed from that for the nature path.
@vahron@, I think you posted this elsewhere as a death knight? I love the textures! It doesn't fit well IMO with a "holy knight" just yet (the textures), I think it needs more whites and such. I think the old "holy knights" of lore actually wore these mostly white tunics or shirts over their armor with their holy symbols on it. I don't want anything to look Christian, although we are hinting at the era of the Christian crusades. I agree that the boots needs to be a little smaller and I think that most of the rest is kick ass!! Also, I don't think the sword fits at all with a "holy knight", which sucks because it's perfect as a weapon of a more sinister character. I'm thinking that the weapon of a holy knight should be a single bladed, 2 handed long sword that is slimmer and shiny, like silvery or chrome-ish. Also, if you did use that kind of sword for a death-knight type character, I would hope it would have some magical properties, because it's looks too cumbersome otherwise. But here is where a death knight comes to life, the "unholiness" in him enables him to wield such a large "unholy" weapon and it's not at all out of character, where as a holy knight lacks such ability to harm and instead is bestowed with more protectiveness and healing gifts.
If you could pull of some textures of this quality oriented in a more "churchy" look but the same kind of very nice decorations, it could work really well. (and don't get me wrong, I love all you Christians out there, but it's certainly not for me!
(jeeze, I'm glad I'm not posting any of
my artwork!!) First, for the decorations on the belt, hymns, etc., I think we need to come up with some holy symbol for our church goers. This way, we can reuse this motif or motifs throughout the subfaction. My original thought on the monk was a crusty old guy, but I like this approach
much better. A more feminine face can be just fine, and we
may even consider randomly creating male and female monks (so when you create one, you don't know which gender you will get). They could have the same capabilities or slightly different. I would prefer if their hood was down around their shoulders. Somehow, I think that if we're going to go with the hood up, it makes them more mysterious and less affable and monks are supposed to be devoting their lives to their deity and the service of mankind. Also, his arms are sticking out just a little bit. I hate having so many criticisms, but we criticized your Lich and it came out awesome!
So you specify the subfactions (if any) in the faction.xml file and then you can restrict units, upgrades and commands to particular factions. You can also specify that the production (either start of production or end of production) of a unit, building, upgrade or morph will trigger an advancement to another subfaction. Rather than greying out commands including those to build/production/upgrade/morph that are not available in the current faction, they simply do not appear at all. Thus, with the extmagitech faction, You only see the abilities to produce either a necromancer tower or a grove. Once one of those is produced, the other goes away and you only see icons to build units/buildings, etc of that subfaction. The cool part is that you can use this for Age of Empire / Empire Earth-like progressions as well (but there's no model changes that happen). I'll post windows binaries as soon as I get to building them. It's merged with r126 from the mainline, so we get the startup command line parameters too.
Poll