Earth and Sky – Pale One King and Cloud Lord Tweaks
Okay, this one is a bit more focused than usual, largely because while reacquainting myself with Pale Ones and actually trying Cloud Lord, I noticed how insanely awful the early game is for each for a variety of reasons. As a result this is largely geared towards helping each class break out of that unreasonably painful stage of the game.
Pale Ones still suffer from a mediocre late game, are in a much better position to expand and fortify in the early- and mid-game, and I’m struggling to think of any good options for improve their late game.
Cloud Lord is now in a similar position to what the Pale Ones had in the late game, but are in an amazing position in the early and mid-game now, so I don’t feel bad about them getting reamed in the late game.
Pale One King
- Several tweaks to existing units to help eliminate the worst aspects of the early game. Notably: All early commanders have tunneling, slingers have been given increased sling damage, and the King is much more dangerous in melee.
- The starting troop lineup has been revamped to include more ranged support and a free Cave Grub "commander" to jumpstart tunneling efforts.
- Several mid-game economic and military rituals for expanding Pale Ones’ economy now promote staying within Agartha or invading the elemental realms of earth and water (when they exist).
Cloud Lord
- Cloud Lord now has a greater incentive to stay in the skies, as he is able to build up the sky realm for his own personal use.
- Cloud Lord has "easy" access to the Plane of Air (if it exists in a given game) to further encourage non-standard expansion.
- Cloud Lord’s faction troop traits specialized a bit more; to prevent selfkills and ward against the common threats of the sky realm, all airya non-special are shock resistant. This comes at the cost of minor to moderate fire vulnerability. The caster line’s armor has been normalized, so Cloud Lord doesn’t mysteriously lose 1 armor.
- The starting army’s size has been increased, but the quality of the frontline troops has been reduced. Additionally, the Cloud Lord now starts with a backup caster, rather than a mundane commander.
- The standard line of class-themed terraforming and non-terraforming rituals has been applied, provinging the Cloud Lord an alternate way of playing the early game if he ends up on 3 occupied cloud tiles (as is the case half the time).
There should not be any compatibility issues with any existing mods, but that hasn’t stopped problems from occurring with the rest of my lineup.
Balance-wise, Cloud Lord might have too easy a time just flying down and expanding on the ground, but that’s not a major concern right now.
Mechanics-wise, the only issue right now is that bentarg and bentargall rituals (buff rituals) don’t fire off properly, and only provide their effect for one turn. This appears to be a bug introduced with 5.03.
I’m currently in the process of making overhauls for every single faction in CoE 5 and I plan to eventually port over the Warhammer Fantasy Battles mods for Dominions 4-5 over to CoE as new classes (a sizeable undertaking, only barely in the planning stages).
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