Version 1.952.011 is up!

Changes:

+Cities and Outposts now attract monsters to them.

+Warden and Nightwatch will make monsters ignore Cities and Outposts.

+Lairs have been refined to give the player a 50 turn heastart before crushing them.

+Trolls, Darklings, Wildings specifically won't upgrade till later. But how much later?

+The Syndicate is now more dangerous.

+Mundane Staves now offer some defense and do better damage. -1 Crit is gone in most cases.

+Book of Mastery now unlocks Shadow Rift spell when you also have Death V

+3rd Book of the Magi now unlocks Shadow World Rift when you also have Death V

+Shadow Rift opens a gate to a shadow plane, unleashing dozens of deadly creatures.

+Shadow World Rift opens dozens of gates to a shadow plane, unleashing hundreds of deadly creatures.

+Minor fixes according to feedback.

I will switch it on over to city. I must have reverted that change during the henchmen fiasco today.

Anyone been able to cast Shadow World Rift? So frakking epic!

   [e digicons]:karma:[/e] [e digicons]:karma:[/e] [e digicons]:karma:[/e] [e digicons]:karma:[/e]                         

No you didn't.  You got Shadow World. Shadow World Rift opens 25 gates on the map. Each one spawns 5 armies of death demons. You need to get 3rd book of the magi and death 5 to unlock it. I am going to make something like this for each 5th level spellbook and 3rd book of the magi.

It doesn't seem to work for cities yet, but it does for units. Changing it back to a unit modtype will make the monster AI see your units and want to kill them. So there are still ways to apply it, but cityhubs are not a good way. It does wonders for outposts though.

I am also having a problem with the Guild Grocer not making my units beefy. Need to check on that, but I guess no one else has tried it yet.

I did it for pioneers Sean and watched as the AI built several pioneers, which walked right by monsters (100% aggressiveness) and the monsters did not attack.

I noticed today that the General trait only increases cutting damage, not pierce damage (haven't tested blunt).  I also noticed a similar problem in vanilla, where the armory buildings only increased blunt defense instead of all 3.  Maybe related?

I do. That +1 materials and +2 PPM really make training there a must for tank units. As Gilden, you are better off building the Iron Golem in a Town to get all that extra Hp. At level 5 you can double the bonus. Or at least you could if I could fix the damn code. I pick on my mod subscribers with violent monster and Derek picks on me with non-functioning xml. Shit rolls downhill I guess.

If you are reading this, Derek, I am still your loyal sycophant. I am just trying to make it less obvious to the others.

Oh, I agree: they scale up too much, but only if you have an appropriate heroic weapon--and then they go over the top.  I much prefer a lower percentage increase that isn't related to just one kind of attack.  Lethal is an example.  It can get pretty sweet.

Verga is just another example in need of balance.  Playing vanilla earlier tonight, I found one empire champion--can't remember his name at the moment--who had several really great benefits to melee at level 9, and yet was on the Path of the Mage.  Amazing.

Well, and there should be one unit like that.  I don't like some of the AI choices for leveling up champions.  Not surprisingly, they focus on what's immediately the best choice, rather than the best choice for a longterm build.  Yours are wisely built, varied and personal, and I like that.  -Just a thought, but at some point, perhaps after game release, you might want to consider releasing the mod in sections: champion and leader changes, town alterations, monster and monster attack changes.  Not everybody is crazy enough like myself to chuckle at a horde of mites appearing over the horizon, like some demented, midget Tamerlane.  Being able to get just certain changes would pretty likely get you a lot more usage.

You've obviously put some thought into this.  Very nice.

Apropos of nothing, I'll probably try to mod up at some point heroes who have great benefits and great drawbacks at the same time.  There's a blandness to the vanilla game heroes--not in the accompanying text from each, but in the way they play out.  I'd like to see one who has made a bad career choice at some point and fixed it, but is still struggling, or another that has an enormous number of spells but is acute sensitive to any and all magic, or a very powerful melee type who is extremely slow, and won't use a mount.  That kind of thing.  Possibly cliched, and the balance would be a bitch to create, but there are many variations that can be worked on this, given traits, stats, races, paths, spells, and items.  I don't think it will interfere with the actual running of any of your mods.

Bash chance is equal to the damage done. I was doing 9 damage and they were doing upwards of 20 damage. I am going to rebalance Mace now that I realize how powerful Bash can be. Currently it takes no metal, in one-handed, does -6 Init, has 16 damage and the AI always chooses it because it has the maximum sum of damage. I need to make the Mace do less damage and cost some metal. Trog's special axe should be their go to choice, which means 15 attack must be the highest attack value for Weaponsmithing.

For example, if a mace does 30 total damage to an enemy, it has a 30% chance to knock the enemy down. Once prone, the enemy loses a turn to get up and cannot dodge any attacks. 9 knights with Maces can get really out of hand if the enemy does not have horses.