Auric Ascended

[joseasoler]

Although it is quite strong, Auric Ascended does not feel as powerful as a unit with such an high cost should be. In fact, Drifa ends up being far more useful than Auric because it can earn promotions.

Many changes to Auric were included in r1891. The following changes remain to be implemented:

• Summon Frost Giant: Summons a permanent Frost Giant. Auric can keep a certain number of them. This unit may be included in BarbsPlus at some point (see https://bitbucket.org/lfgr/barbsplus/issue/15/new-barbarian-units)

• Summon Aquilan: Summons a permanent Aquilan. Auric Ascended can only keep one of these units. This unit may be included in BarbsPlus at some point (see https://bitbucket.org/lfgr/barbsplus/issue/15/new-barbarian-units)

[lfgr]

What are your preferences on Frost Giant and Aquilian stats? If I implement them in barbsPlus before anything is done with MultiBarb Winter faction, Deepening and/or The White Hand, they would just appear after Samhain, fighting everyone.

From lore perspective, I think Frost Giants should be stronger than giants, but only able to move on ice and tundra, or maybe with a huge penalty on non-tundra (and unable to enter desert like wilboman).

Aquilians should somehow create blizzards. Do you considered the Better Blizzards Mod or something similar? Tholal has a feature request for it, but I doubt it's high priority for him. With the current blizzard implementation, creating Blizzards would be much too powerful, especially for barbs.

[joseasoler]

I was thinking on just implementing the units on ExtraModMod as summons for Auric and not using them for anything else until any of the other changes are done. The Deepening changes IMO require MultiBarb and therefore I won't be implementing them for now. The White Hand changes also have very low priority.

I agree about Frost Giants. IMO they should be allowed to enter non-cold terrain but get a huge penalty, and they would also be incapable of entering desert.

I think that the Aquilan should be intended as an unfrequent spawn that only appears after Samhain (like the other Winter spawns). It would have relatively high strength (10 after adding normal and cold combat, maybe) and high speed. Aquilans should be winterborn and probably have Cold Resistance. They would only spawn in cold areas, but IMO they should be allowed to roam whenever they please. As beasts, it would be possible to capture them. It could be possible to sell them at a high price but they shouldn't have any other additional effects (their intended use should be war or exploration).

The blizzard implementation in that mod is quite interesting. IMO it should definitely be part of the Deepening changes (I'd rather have slow terraforming that works via blizzards than a single shot huge terraform) but I'm not sure if Aquilans should be allowed to create blizzards at will. I can't check the lore right now, but it could maybe be an effect triggered when they kill an enemy.

Auric's Aquilan should start with at least the Strong promotion, and maybe others.

[Former user]

Perhaps at one of the rituals, all of the "winter" units (frost giants, Aquilan, Samhain-units-that-I've-forgotten-the-name-of) should get the strong promotion?

[joseasoler]

During the development of BarbsPlus lfgr and I discussed about a lot of related topic and this was one of them. We reached the conclusion that in order to implement a new Samhain and new winter barbarian units, we would need to have a nearly finished version of the barbarian spawning part of BarbsPlus and the "multiple barbarian factions" feature.

The shape that winter barbarian spawns will take once that both of those are done is described at the end of this proposal: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/barbsplus-contributions/wiki/Units (search for "Multibarb units and spawns"). We ended up designing something close to what you propose, as winter barbrian units get promotions as the Illians progress through their rituals. The only difference would be in the frost giant, for which I proposed to make it spawn along with some frostlings. I'm open to changing it to just better promotions, perhaps at that stage of the game facing bigger and meaner barbarian units is more challenging that just groups of them.

In summary, they would progress as follows:

Frostling: Starts spawning after Samhain is built. Frostling Archer: Starts spawning after Samhain is built and the barbarians research Archery. Frostling Wolf Rider: Starts spawning after Samhain is built and the barbarians research Stirrups. All frostlings spawn with the Strong promotion after The Draw is built. They also spawn with Commando after Ascension is built.

Aquilan: Starts spawning after the Deepening is built. Spawns with the Strong promotion after Ascension is built. Young Kocrachon: Starts spawning after the Deepening is built. Starts spawning in groups when the Draw is built. Stops spawning when Ascension is built. Kocrachon: Starts spawning when the Draw is built. Starts spawning in groups when the Ascension is built. Frost Giant: Starts spawning when the Draw is built. Starts spawning with a few frostlings when Ascension is built. Ice Golem: Starts spawning when Ascension is built.