[Mod] Conquest of Ulysium Thread - Conquest of Elysium 3

Important for mod-compatibility: as of now this mod reserves the montags 20000-20139 and will be incompatible with mods using the same montags.

This is a complete rework of Conquest of Elysium 3 that is based on the core game. Many units have been added and the recruitment lists of some classes are very different. Don't expect it to have the quality of the base game,

For an incomplete overview of added and changed stuff please look into the related thread in the Mod Discussion Subforum. For comments, discussion and feedback, please post there, too. Post here if something is broken or plain nonsense (missing attacks for example)

Credits go to Kristoffer Osterman for generating the Dominions 3 and Conquest of Elysium 3 sprites, that I used, and to haihappen, gp1928 and PvK, who shared some ideas for the mod. Special credits go to Illwinter for making CoE3 in the first place and super special credits to jk for creating the already amazing mod-tools.

One more thing: The vanilla game is great and will always be great.

Have fun with my interpretation of coe for a varied game experience:

new version out 30.05.: Conquest of Ulysium 0.14d

• many fixes and tweaks
• architects added (they build walls and traps). Unfortunately the AI places them randomly atm (which is funny for traps )

The Mod runs stable and plays nicely, but some of the added graphics still look rather stupid.
The goals I had, when creating this were:

• more distinct races (not many classes are left with Spearmen, but sometimes Spearmen was only replaced with Goblin Spearman or Archer was replaced with Bandit Slinger )
• more magic in Elysium
• more options/counters in general
• I also "balanced" some things from my point of view. When someone says this, don't actually expect things to be balanced. I boosted units/classes I felt were too weak, and nerfed units/classes I felt were too strong. This is my personal perspective and I won't discuss "the truth". I'm still interested in opinions and I will tell my opinion, too, of course. I laid my focus to making every unit in the game useful in general. There may be some early game only units, but I'm trying my best to avoid this (doesn't mean I made it happen ).
• weaker ranged units
• stronger heros

Greetings
ulius

Edited by: ulius4

Odd glitch with this, probably a bug with the game itself; when a commander unit, that is itself under the command of another unit, autospawns a unit (for example, if you play Enchanter, and put your Enchanter's Apprentice under the Enchanter's command), the autospawned unit is not under command, and will be left behind by the army if it moves.

Happens to me, too. I'll post it in the bug thread.
....and *bump* for a new version

edit: If you haven't noticed: by shift clicking in the commander window you can select multiple commanders, that will move together. That's the easy work around for that (and the reason why I haven't noticed this behaviour). It's usually faster that way, if you want to split up.

Edited by: ulius4

I love it when my light cavalry throw boulders at my enemies.

I do like the sprites

I'd prefer a version that just adds content rather then changing the original balance.

Juzza wrote:
I'd prefer a version that just adds content rather then changing the original balance.

What balance changes are you referring to? The weaker archers? I changed so many things .... Could you explain to me a little, what changes you dislike? Or do you dislike tweaked stats in general?

edit: removing the tweaks would result in even more unbalances, because I'm trying to balance the costs of the units in comparison to each other.
Example: I'll do the math for Ice Mage Apprentices, who should generally do less damage than archers for the same cost. 5 Archers in CoU do an average damage of 12.5 to an unarmored target, while in CoE they do 15.
Ice mage apprentices do:

• freeze: avg armor negating dam 5
• frost: avg armor negating dam 7.5 (full effect)
• frozen heart: avg armor negating dam 11 (full effect) vs magic resistance
• cold resistance
• icicle: avg dam 6.5

So in CoU they're a bit too cheap right now while in CoE they would be ok.

Edited by: ulius4

Did you do something with Herb generation? For whatever reason, when playing Barbarian, during the summer it shows Herb generation as +100%, but no herbs are actually generated.

no. This usually happens during a draught, although it is not shown in the event description or somewhere else.

Hmm. I don't remember seeing a report of a draught, but it didn't persist into the next year, so I guess that might have been it?

next time you see a draught, see if it happens again. I think it is the draught but I always forget to make sure it really is because of the draught
Did you try the new summons? They're probably quite unbalanced so feedback would be appreciated.

Didn't quite have time to do much with the Amazon summons; that game wound up ending fairly quickly as I got murdered by a Priest King right after winning the final battle against the Cultists, who'd been bottlenecked up against me; I didn't get more then a couple of mines the whole game. I found, irritatingly enough, that each time I recruited a Priestess, the cost was higher then the last, and I didn't wind up collecting enough gems to summon anything but a single burning ancestor... who was okay, but not game-changing.

Update, having played a longer game with Barbarian...

The assorted Jade summons are meh, but cheap. Cheap chaff is always a good thing, though since I was shorted on emeralds the whole game, they weren't more then a footnote in my case.
Everburning Ancestors are very massable, given a half-decent supply of rubies. They multi-summon, after all... I was just really unlucky that first time. They're fairly useful, and don't feel especially overpowered.
Ancient Amazon Queens are especially awesome; like Creeping Doom, they render whole categories of enemies irrelevant. They feel somewhat more balanced then Creeping Doom; since they aren't immediately invincible on the offensive, more care needs be taken in their deployment. 'Somewhat more balanced' then the most broken unit in the game isn't saying all that much, of course... and it's also easier to get them on purpose, since you always get an Ancient Amazon Queen when you drop 50 diamonds. That said, the fact that I got a five-diamond meteor right near my main base early in the game probably skewed my numbers.
Holy Hawks felt underwhelming. Sure, they're level 3 casters... but Solar Magic isn't particularly impressive. Sure, they're fast fliers... but they're the only flying unit in the arsenal, and they aren't commanders, so it's totally irrelevant. Blessed status may as well be flavour text, since Barbarians don't have any way of modifying the divine favour attribute. Accordingly, they wind up as little more than middle-of-the-road back-row casters, and felt overpriced.

All told, this looks like a good start. I'd be inclined to suggest more Amazon summons in general; Ancient Amazon Queens wouldn't be as much of a problem if they were merely one unit off a varied list.

I'll see, if I get some more ideas for the summons. I think my creativity is taking a break .

And thank you very much for your feedback!

Edited by: ulius4

You don't have any ideas? Really? The Amazon troops from Dom 3 should at least be a starting point.

Jade - Their signature Velociraptors, with and without mounted units riding them (possibly with a separate commander version); maybe a Medusa or something as a high-end summon
Garnet - Archers with Flaming Arrows, maybe some low-end fire elementals, Gryphon Riders, including a Gryphon Rider Commander; maybe a Phoenix or something as a high-end summon
Onyx - Armored Undead Meleeists, Powerful Armored and Slow Defenders, Nightmare Riders, including a powerful Nightmare Rider Commander with Fear and such; there is no shortage of giant scary undead things that they could call up for a high end summon.
Crystal - Phantasmal Warriors (hard to hit, but with no defenses, and minimal attack), Black Hawks, plus a Great Hawk Commander (like Call of the Winds spell, only not ranged), Pegasus Riders, plus a more impressive Pegasus commander with Awe and stuff

I like the velociraptors and the pegasi a lot. If I find some time, I'll add them, thanks for the suggestion.

At first I had so many ideas about units and stuff I want to add, but atm I feel like I need a break .

Velociraptor would be safe
Pegasus is in the game altho not completed, so you might want to avoid using that particular monster name or it might cause strange things in the future.

Endovior wrote:
The assorted Jade summons are meh, but cheap.
.

They're Velociraptors now , thx for the idea.

Endovior wrote:
Holy Hawks felt underwhelming. Sure, they're level 3 casters... but Solar Magic isn't particularly impressive. Sure, they're fast fliers... but they're the only flying unit in the arsenal, and they aren't commanders, so it's totally irrelevant. Blessed status may as well be flavour text, since Barbarians don't have any way of modifying the divine favour attribute. Accordingly, they wind up as little more than middle-of-the-road back-row casters, and felt overpriced.
.

I'm surprised you say that. The lvl3 spell Solar Brilliance does an average of 2 armor negating damage and induces blindness to all enemies. I think this is extremely strong. It even does an average damage of 4 an fire damage to undead. The other two lvl3 spells are rather weak, but solar brialliance is extremely good imo. I made them commanders for now and I'll create another basic flying summon to the Crystal Priestess to make it worthwile. I think that the Holy Hawk will stay the ultimate Crystal (High) Priestess summon, because it is a strong counter to Burgmeister and Necromancer at least.

I hope I can do it in the future, that you're allowed to upgrade only one path of the 4 priestesses. So you'll have to decide which ultimate summon you get.

The blessed status was intented to be flavour .

Edited by: ulius4

Hmm. I didn't see Solar Brilliance last time around... IIRC, the spells were something like a huge pile of buffs to one random unit (unlikely to be worthwhile) and awe to a rank (which isn't all that impressive, as a level 3 spell). I suppose it's possible I had bad luck on spell selection; it's always hard to tell when evaluating high-priced summons.

Illwinter seem to balance super-game-winner-spells with crappy other spells in the same tree

Playing the newest version, as Druid; in two games, it crashed within the first year each time, with a 'bad rec price' error. This suggests to me that one of the new Druid recruits is borked.

try this version:
Conquest of Ulysium 0.14b

edit: even newer version up

Edited by: ulius4

Hi ulius4,

I am playing with your mod and it is very good. I like the rebalancing of the standard units., so gold is more important.

Do you have a newer version of your mod?

Greetings from the Legion

actually yes.

It has loads of new stuff, like extended summoning trees etc.. Unfortunately I changed so many things, that the AI has serious trouble playing the game . So I stopped developping the mod for now, sorry.

I could give you the new version, but it just ain't fun, sorry.

Oh...that are bad news.

I like this mod much more than the vanilla version. Do you plan trying to solve the AI problem? Or is it too serious?

And yes, I would like to try the new version, even if the AI isn't that good. Just seeing the possible changes is fun. Maybe some changes could be solved in another way. And by the way, in the vanilla version the AI seem to have some problems with different units too. I have never seen a Necromancer upgrade to vampire or even better a lich. They just ressurect the dead and get insane. sometimes far over 50%. That seem to be a little bit...silly.

Greetings from the Legion

There is no AI modding for CoE at all, so this is not an option . It's still a good game though.

The only solution to solve the "AI issues" right now is to develop my own game =). The AI doesn't distinguish between units other than by their rank, I suppose. the only available switch is "Leave in Citadel? Yes / No".

I added traps and fortifications to the game and the AI spammed them anywhere (because they were summons) so I had to remove them again. It also leaves mid-rank units to guard mines, even if those units are expensive and vulnerable alone.
I made the mistake to change the pace of the game. I lowered unit numbers and increased their health in return. I also added a lot more magic items to the game for the second version of the mod. This resulted in having smaller armies with more items and made afflictions, disease and curse an important part of the game and balanced (imo) damage spells vs hold/paralyze etc spells.. I liked the way it played, but those changes finally made the game unplayable for the AI . It still left the same amount of troops in sites and seems to mix its stacks rather randomly. Since it has the double amount of choices the stack mixes were often stupid and because it had less units this hurt its efficiency a lot.

In the Warlock's army I added more special troops. Those had special abilites, but were more expensive AND vulnerable than Spearmen. If you got enough of them they were a real power. But the AI just spammed Spearmen and left its special units in coal mines :p, lol.

I continued the mod solely for MP after that, but my sparring partners left the game, so I quit the development.

I actually started programming my own small engine, but I'm just playing around and not good as a programmer.

Edit: I agree with you about the resource spending. But programming a strategic AI seems very difficult, if you look at Civ V, for example, and as far as I know CoE uses a simple algorithm to just put x% for small summons y% for majors z% for upgrades etc.. So it should upgrade to a Lich after a while.

Personally I never upgraded to a Lich in MP, too, because it's too slow, so I would agree with the AI that it's not a high priority .

Edited by: ulius4

Thank you for this answer.
I am a It noob. So can not assess, how complicatet it is, do do a special modding task
Your arguments seem plausibe to me. Maybe in the next patches there will be some more modding options.

Greeting from the Legion

Edited by: Legion69

hey i woldent mind having the new version even without ai so plz give me a link and thanks in advance