[NewClass] Dynast Thread - Conquest of Elysium 3

A new class I made for Conquest of Elysium 3: the Dynast. You can download it from Mediafire or this link at coe3.proboards.com.

This is a class centered around upgradeable hero units. There are 21 types of dynastic heroes which each can level up upon getting 20, 60, and 120 experience (or sooner for more gold). At their weakest they generally outperform the standard hero; at their strongest they can topple armies. This mod also enables the standard hero that shows up for recruitment to often be able to upgrade to a random dynastic hero by any class (any Hero that shows up for recruitment with a Chinese name can be upgraded); for a version of the mod that does not do this see here.

The class uses sumpower between 72000 and 72099. The bodyguard sprites are based on Dominions 3 sprites, so credit for those goes to Kristoffer Osterman. The sprites for the heroes were made by me.

I welcome balance suggestions, feature ideas (though I don't want to overcomplicate things), and especially bug reports.

Above: Seven mighty heroes stand front and center amidst a small force to take down the Dwarven Queen.

The Dynast claims to have the mandate of heaven to rule over Elysium and create a line of succession for descendants to reign in perpetuity. The Dynast is a powerful force on the battlefield and attracts other mighty heroes to pledge their allegiance.

Each Dynastic Hero has the potential to develop their skills to legendary heights. This can be done at minimum expense upon attaining a new rank of experience. Impatient heroes can supplement the advancement of their prowess through intensive training, though at high cost.

The rule of the Dynast is declared at watch towers and guard towers, and a recruitment center is established at each controlled tower. Each tower has a small chance of attracting a new hero each turn.

The Dynast's bodyguards have been trained to take a support role, and will never crowd Dynastic Heroes out of the front rank. Elite bodyguards with magical elemental weaponry can be recruited occasionally.

Abilities:
Dynastic Heroes can level up with enough experience or money.
Control watch towers and guard towers to attract Dynastic Heroes.

"I welcome balance suggestions, feature ideas (though I don't want to overcomplicate things), and especially bug reports."

Since the ability to level for 50 gold is triggered by HP growth, any +hp item allows full level up without waiting for XP and for all heroes by just trading the +hp item among heroes.

Simple solution: remove all slots for all except fully leveled heroes. That solution lacks style and also means dynast cannot collect magic items till very late.

Complicated solution: add to all experienced hero versions another form they turn into with hp+4 or more named "Trade items away for leveling" and without the ability to level for 50 gold but with the ability to level for 200 (the latter for stupid AI, who is unable to trade items away)

the hero with hope, hope of the people or so (the abilities to charm humans) has abilities for highest and second highest form mixed up, the second highest form has better charm skill than highest.

In respect to balance the dancer girl with entire row enslave with normal MR is just too strong compared to the other heroes.

Its hard to tell, but i think the chance for heroes is too high, as heroes are quite powerful.
For example, noble swordsman. At lev 1 its leader with HP 18, armor 2 with 3 1-8 attacks, fastheal. A barb leader has (with raging) HP 18 with 2 1-10 attacks and lousy MR and no armor and costs about 30 gold (and that price in my eyes already includes a barbarian discount). Hence, noble swordman level 1 would be worth about 50 gold (armor 2 + fast heal + much better MR are worth 20 gold).

That alone means, dynast gets from the 2% chance per watchtower effective 1gold per watchtower and effective 0.5 gold from guard towers.

For lev 2 20 turns have to pass and 50 gold invested.Then its HP 35, armor 2, 4 1-9 attacks, fastheal, awe 1 and charm 3 humans normal MR vs front rank. The latter ability is about a level 2 spell (cardinal of el casters have a 5 humans charm easy MR hits anywhere, so 3 humans charm normal MR only melee is about the same). Without the charm ability, i would put the worth above twice the level 1 version, so about 120 gold worth. The charm i would price at 30, so 150 worth in total, minus 50 upgrade cost, minus 50 alread acounted for above means watchtowers are already worth 2 gold per turn.

The higher levels are harder to estimate, since 60 xp take some time, but lev 3 version could well be regarded as 250 gold and lev 4 as 350, maybe even more and some heroes definitely more (the dance girl at lev 4 with row enslave is well above 500 gold). So watchtowers are for dynast something like +4 gold per turn. In combination with the very cost effective special guards, i think its not balanced.

The recruit chance could be fine tuned with maybechainevent, by having a classterrevent with empty result and 2% chance followed by a macbechainevent with 75% chance to get for example a 1.5% recruit chance each turn. Although i am a bit uncertain what would be an adequate chance.

Otherwise, very nice mod.

Hey I just checked back on this thread after a long hiatus. Thanks for the comments!

Yeah the +hp item thing is a problem that I didn't have a good solution for. I also considered having every hero start with the highest +hp chest item and picking the numbers based on that, but it didn't allow for as much customizability and there are +hp items for other slots (don't remember them any more). Turning off all item slots until max level is probably easiest, though a little sad. Your +4 hp idea is good (are there no items that give less than 4 hp?) but represents a major overhaul, needing some 100 new forms and a lot of rewiring and retesting masteries, so I probably won't ever get around to that .

I'll try to take a look at those hope abilities; I think it might have gone from normal MR front row to easy MR all ranks, which is in retrospect not necessarily an upgrade. I'll also try to take another look at the dancer; as I recall the justification was that her other abilities were kind of bad, but it might still be a problem. It'd be nice if there was something between normal and easy MR. Of course to some extent the heroes don't need to be balanced against each other, especially if you compare them to the variability in the summon lists on the base classes .

Overall likelihood is tricky, especially since one of the eras has more watch towers than the others. So maybe they weren't the best terrain to use, but I wanted to try to do something with them.

I felt like it was too infrequent at 1% per tower and too plentiful at 2% per tower. I remember that I did try to go for a 1.5% chance using a maybechainevent like you suggested, but it had issues. I think instead of triggering off of every instance of the terrain, the maybechainevent only tried to trigger once. I don't recall exactly anymore, but I did test it and it didn't work as I intended. So I went with 2% on the watchtowers and 1% on the guard towers.

Using your estimates, a watch tower being worth 4 gold seems like a bit much, but that's predicated on your heroes surviving to level up which is not guaranteed if you're putting them to use (which you do need to do to expand and survive). One thing with the class is that it's hard to come back from losing an important hero, since it's hard to get a new one when you want it and it takes a while to level up to endgame relevance.

In terms of balancing the overall power level with little editing required on the file, the easiest things may be to drop the recruit chance to 1% (potentially while upping the random recruit for gold chance), and/or up the special guard costs.

Edited by: BrianKB

Just found that there is horror helmet giving +1 hp, so the solution wont work.

Started playing with this mod and its great. Thanks a lot!