"REAWAKENED" - an environment mod for Kohan: Ahriman's Gift by Jadahri (jdwheeler@uswest.net) First posted: 02/22/2003 (version 1.0.2) Updates: 03/03/2003 (version 1.0.8) 03/16/2003 (version 1.0.9) 02/24/2004 (version 1.1.0) WHAT DOES THE REAWAKENED MOD DO? Reawakened is an "environment" mod -- it seeks to add enhancements to the original game without making major changes to the core gameplay or modifying the game's basic units. This mod is >> PLAYABLE WITH ANY STANDARD KAG AI <<, either those that shipped with the game or those that have been subsequently developed for it. The only thing standard AI players will not do is build any of the seven Reawakened tech units listed below, although experienced players can modify any existing AI profile to enable them to do so. (Note: The Siren AI included with this download *will* build the Reawakened tech units.) MOD HIGHLIGHTS: * Adds a lot of new sound effects. For anyone who enjoys watching game films, or for anyone who has ever wished for more sounds - or just sounds that were more informative - these are a fun addition to the game. Many of them are unit death and melee related, making it easier for example to tell when your melee Kohans are engaged, and when and where they've perished - even when they're located in large crowds or fighting in a forest. Other sounds, like the swooshing melee sound for a Lancer, make it easier to distinguish them in combat from similar effects, like the swing of a Slaanri Warrior's clubs. Are those Void Beasts you hear attacking one of your offscreen towns? Yikes, it is! With cool sound effects that differentiate them from Shadow Beasts, you'll be much better informed about what they are and where they are. * Adds 19 new lairs. These vary in difficulty from fairly easy to rather challenging, with gold rewards that more closely match the effort required to tackle them compared to some of the windfall opportunities in the original game. Many lairs have new denizens, or generate interesting new wandering monster parties. Deciding which lairs to take on (and what you should attack them with) in the early portion of a random-map game is a fun challenge for experienced players trying to uncover the fog of war and put their mark on the world (not to mention it can also be very humorous in the post-game film). * Adds 7 new tech units: Demonic Knights, Slaanri Marauders, Conscripts, Ghost Infantry, Templars, Advocates and Elder Mages. Their advantages are comparable to other tech units (or standard units) in the game, and their abilities allow for fun new wrinkles in strategy. Conscripts, for example, give Mareten players a rare opportunity to quickly and quietly beef up the ranks with units that require no upkeep. They look identical to footmen (not silver like pikemen), but they're not nearly as capable - a fact that becomes obvious when they employ their speed advantage over zombies to run away from them as fast as possible after a brief engagement. * Adds Amon Koth, Shohn Maht and Sar Lashkar to the multiplayer Kohan mix. Their abilities have been significantly toned down to improve play balance for multiplayer games, but they're still among the most capable heroes and it's always nice to see them pop up in your list of awakened Kohans. * Includes spell enhancements for a number of heroes at experience levels beyond Awakened. No one gets Volley of Shadow or Earthshock (the devastating spells of Ceyadev and Simurgh respectively), but in many cases there's greater reward in getting a spellcaster up to Restored or all the way to Ascended. Example: In a game without any Ceyah opponents, you don't have to worry about getting Sadira Bahhrum up to Restored and losing her lightning blasts (when she gets "rewarded" with Heaven's Bolt instead; which of course only affects creatures of shadow). Now at Restored she keeps her lightning (with an excellent mana regeneration rate), and at Ascended she's the only Kohan firing off chain lightning (at a rate slightly superior to that of a Storm Lord - who after all, is not a Kohan). In general, heroes with spells now compare much more favorably to tech units and elite support units when they reach a high level of experience. * Enhances the fighting capacity of all melee heroes for experience levels beyond Awakened, mostly by including slight hit point increases at Enlightened, and bigger ones at Restored and Ascended, though in some cases other adjustments were made as well. The net result is fighters who can fight, fighters who can wade into a large battle and slay their way to the other side and back again, fighters who will make you proud. A high level fighter can now dominate a small battle - crushing skeletons and hacking "sticks" with impunity - but in a big battle involving large numbers of enemy companies, dangerous amounts of ranged firepower, or companies containing elite units, they can still perish amidst the fray. Nonetheless, it's now possible to put experienced melee Kohans on engage with much greater confidence, and they compare much more favorably with high level Kohan spellcasters in terms of their power, and their ability to have a significant impact on a game if they reach Restored or Ascended. * Increases militia ZOC to all but eliminate town stealing. In almost every case a town cannot be taken - not even attacked - unless all of the militia have been killed first. Henceforth, your multiplayer games will no longer be marred by controversies over town stealing. With this change in place, battles for towns often take on a larger scale, becoming the epicenter of many smaller engagements on all sides of the town. Militia are more determined defenders - never spontaneously switching sides - and they'll give lengthy pursuit to any opposing unit encroaching on the town's guard zone. Players will quickly find that trying to pull the opposing militia far away from it's town source serves far less purpose now, and that if they want to capture a town they have to get serious about killing the militia - usually it's best to just hit the town with as much force as you can all at once. Any militia that pop out after the first wave has been destroyed must also be eliminated before the town can be attacked again, and this can buy the defending player time and create valuable opportunities for defending reinforcements to arrive in order to prevent the town from falling into enemy hands. * The recruiting requirements for high-level Mareten spellcasting TECH units which required a specific kind of upgraded library (namely the Warlock, Conjuror, Sorcerer, Enchanter and Khaldunite Golem) have been streamlined. Instead of having to match the tech unit with a specific kind of upgraded library, all of these units (save for the Khaldunite Golem) now require a Temple and a Library. The Khaldunite Golem requires a Masonry Guild (upgraded Quarry) and a Library, instead of a Quarry and a Mage College. This simplifies what I believe is an unneccessary complication and makes these units more accessible to more players. It's my feeling that if you get a tech unit as a Mareten player, you should get a consistent opportunity to use that tech regardless of which of the 3 Mareten factions you've chosen to play. The next section expands on this. What's the net effect of the Temple/Library recruit requirement? 1. First of all, the number of possible company combinations goes up even higher. Have you ever wished you could put a Sorcerer (Mage College) in the same company as a Storm Lord (Wizard Tower)? Or a Storm Lord together with an Enchanter (Astrology Hall)? This change makes these interesting combinations possible, among numerous other company support possibilities. After all, they're tech units, and it's nice to have fun with them whenever the opportunity presents itself. 2. Tech units benefit all factions more equally. Under "unmodded" conditions, if a Royalist player has a Mage College with the intention of building Elementalists and they suddenly get a strong tech unit like the Warlock, they can immediately build all the Warlocks they want. A Council player with a Wizard Tower or a Nationalist player with an Astrology Hall not only doesn't have that option (they'd have to sell their upgraded library and build a Mage College), but they'd be confronted with an either/or choice, like building Storm Lords or Warlocks, but not both. Now all spellcasting unit techs are of equal benefit to all Mareten factions. 3. Some tech units that rarely saw the light of day are now easier to produce. Since 3 of the 4 factions have a natural reluctance towards building an Astrology Hall, finding a unit like the Conjuror (which required an Astrology Hall) often proved to be of dubious worth. This is no longer the case - players can now feel confident that anytime they find one of these units they'll be able to build them if they so choose. 4. The higher slot requirement of tech units like the Warlock and the Sorcerer moderates the potentially imbalancing effect of one player or side getting these strong units early in the course of a game - and being able to quickly build them without adjusting their building components or upgrading their settlements for more slots. The pace of employing them is now more along the lines of other high-level spellcasters like the Archmage and the High Priest (both of which already required a Temple and a Library). WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE PLAY: * Independent settlements and independent units are in a nice tan color instead of white. (Beyond the aesthetic considerations, making this change allowed me to populate lairs with more interesting inhabitants, configure unique wandering monster parties and change the appearance of some tech units.) * Independent cities will no longer spawn (only towns and villages). * Settlements of the independent races (Drauga, Gauri, Haroun and Slaanri) aren't as receptive to being assimilated into your empire. The level of difficulty in conquering one of these settlements varies, but it's now more akin to taking a town than a village. Furthermore, once you capture one of these settlements you'll find their fiercely independent status has caused their economy to be a bit more backward compared to the network of towns choosing to support one of the 4 main factions. Instead of the 12 gold the settlement originally produced, they now produce 8. They still have 4 slots however, and can be turned into good trading partners when you invest money into their local economy (by building banks, iron exports, etc). Hence, non-village settlements now match up this way: independent race settlements give +8 gold/4 slots, Royalist and Ceyah towns give +10 gold/3 slots, Nationalist towns give +10 gold/4 slots, and Council towns give +12 gold/3 slots. A Slaanri Kraal is +4 gold/2 slots. (Note: Maintaining 4 slots for the independent race settlements found in the original game also ensures that any build templates listed for them in an AI player's SAI profile will still work according to the AI creator's wishes.) * It's still nice to be graced with lots of big independent settlements near your starting village in a random map game, but the above changes moderate this somewhat, and the random distribution of lairs can now be a major factor as well. In fact, doing well with lairs in Reawakened - or being adversely hindered by them - can sometimes rival the importance behind the distribution of independent settlements, making a random map game an even more intriguing and challenging undertaking. * Absolutely no changes have been made to the strengths of standard units that players produce from their settlements (infantry, bone bows, disciples, clerics, etc.). I think this greatly reduces what players have to know before playing with the mod, and will allow more people to hop right in and play. It also ensures that the overall "balance" of the game is at least as good as it was without the mod, since the relative strengths and weaknesses of the four factions and their units is unchanged. All of the things that have changed affect all of the players equally. * Almost all of the heroes are unchanged in their Awakened states, and to a large extent maintain their pre-existing personalities from Enlightened to Ascended. As they gain experience after the Awakened state however, you may notice gradual changes to some heroes focused on making them stronger at the highest levels. Ascended heroes like Balthasar Aswan, Slyys'Stok and Hss'Rak are still among the strongest, but the gap between these heroes and those who offered very little at Restored or Ascended state is no longer quite so wide. * And some helpful tips for city battles: 1. Sometimes the large militia ZOC of an enemy town will pull a friendly company a fair distance away towards the town and into a fight, stretching them far from their company banner in the process. From time to time, players may find it helpful to retreat *into* the town ZOC to shorten this distance, commiting them to the fight with the town militia and reducing how far they'll have to walk to return to their banner when the militia are destroyed (since all companies regroup at their banner following an engagement). 2. An even more efficient way is to get in the habit of not tripping the guard zone of an enemy town unless you plan on taking it. Try to converge all of your attacking forces on the enemy town simultaneously, getting them all close to the enemy guard zone just before your first unit enters it. Once your first unit enters the guard zone and the enemy militia pops out, all of your units will immediately engage the militia and the distance of your company banners from the actual settlement building will be short. 3. When an attack on an enemy town goes sour and your units are about to rout, be sure to give retreat locations that are sufficiently distant to get the company out of the large militia ZOC, otherwise they may engage again, fail a morale check and you'll lose control of the company. You might want to make your first attack on a town with the show zones of control option turned on to get an idea of how big this distance should be, but after that you'll probably want to keep the ZOCs turned off as the big ZOC squares are blinding and hideous and the game plays better with out them. REAWAKENED TECH UNITS: Playing with new units can be a lot of fun. In addition to the standard KAG tech units, this mod includes the following new ones (shown after the tech which makes them available and followed by their Unique Name in CAPS, for anyone who wishes to modify an existing SAI profile which will enable the AI player to build the specified unit): Tech Tech Unit Unique Name Academy of Magicks - Elder Mage (Mareten) ELDER_MAGE Economic Advisors - Conscript (Mareten) CONSCRIPT Khaldunite Shield - Templar (Mareten) TEMPLAR Military College - Ghost Infantry (Mareten) GHOST_INFANTRY Shadowsteel Armor - Demonic Knight (Ceyah) DEMONIC_KNIGHT Counter Magic - Advocate (Ceyah) ADVOCATE Slaanri Champion - Slaanri Marauder (Ceyah) SLAAN_CHAMPION Five of these are frontline unit types, and two (Elder Mage & Advocate) are support. In selecting the enabling techs, I aimed in part at technologies which are (arguably) among the least powerful and which don't already provide a major benefit to the side (i.e. the Mareten forces or the Ceyah forces) or provide an immediate benefit only to the opposing side. For example, in the original game Shadowsteel Armor and Slaanri Champion were excellent techs for the Maretens, but provided negligible benefit to any Ceyah players. If you want to try some of these units out while playing a game against the AI (without actually waiting to get the tech from a lair), you can use the following cheat code (if cheat codes are enabled in the game setup). Hit the Enter key as if you were going to send a chat message and type: prometheus [techname] When you hit the Enter key again, you immediately have the specified technology. So if you're playing Ceyah and type "prometheus counter magic" you will get the ability to produce Advocates. (Try Demonic Knight/Shadow Priest/Dreadlord, Demonic Knight/Advocate/ Dreadlord or Slaanri Marauder/Slaanri Slaver/Slaanri Slaver for some fun demos. You can also enter "pyrite" for more gold and "more peons" for more resources, if you want to get the demo romp rolling more quickly.) SUGGESTED SETTINGS: USAGE: This mod is intended for the various modes of skirmish play only, either with other players on a network or against one or more AI players. Although you can attempt to play campaigns and scenarios with it, it's likely that you'll get some odd results from time to time, and there's no guarantee that the balance of forces and the difficulty of the map will be at all consistent with the designer's original goals. TECHS: Obtaining technologies and employing tech units is a highlight for many players during a game of Kohan. They're perhaps a little harder to get with this mod, but hunting for techs is still loads of fun, and there's new things to see and try. To increase the overall number of techs in a random map game, I suggest starting with as many heroes as you want (I seem to have adopted 7 as my recent standard for some reason), and then seeding gold and technologies as rewards, but not heroes. LAIRS: I highly recommend putting the random map setting for lairs at the maximum setting. The various spawn rates of the 19 new lairs, combined with their random distribution on a terrain-rich map will generate a significant amount of variety from game to game. In fact, it might take 5 to 10 games on a 128 x 128 size map just to see all of the different types of lairs, since some are rarer than others. I often set neutral settlements and mines at 2/3 and lairs at 100%. This works great for all map sizes. If you want to ensure you get some time to explore, beat up on lairs and load up on techs before being confronted by the enemy, try increasing the map size a level or two above what you might normally play for the number of players you have. AI: Computer players do very well when using this mod and the most recent 1.3.7 patch for Kohan: Ahriman's Gift. Exactly how well they do depends only on the difficulty of the AI itself. In fact, in a skirmish game vs multiple AI players, you may even cross paths with some highly experienced companies/armies commanded by very capable - even dangerous - heroes. One reason for this is that AIs who are successful explorers/lair hunters can gain good experience fighting monsters even before you've encountered them, and those that are good about retreating can preserve those companies longer and make them stronger over time. Should enemy companies start reaching Veteran and enemy Kohans start hitting Restored, you'll definitely feel the impact. BALANCE: It was never my intention to make a strict "balance" mod, but while adding features and making changes to increase variety and replayability I did keep one eye on balance at all times. Although things have been changed, I don't think any of the changes in this mod should have a detrimental effect on multiplayer balance since (as noted earlier) all of the things that have changed affect all of the players equally. I had a heck of a lot of fun creating this mod. I hope it yields many enjoyable hours of quality gaming for you as well. Any comments or feedback you wish to share can be sent to: jdwheeler@uswest.net CREDITS: Although many of the sound effects are the product of my own creativity, many others are not. A fair percentage of sounds (I lost track of my source material a long time ago) were borrowed from a number of other games on my hard drive. In many cases these sound effects were then heavily modified before being incorporated into this mod, but in some cases the sound fit perfectly after mere volume or length adjustments. The following quality games contributed one or more source audio effects to this mod: Kohan: Ahriman's Gift Shogun: Total War Close Combat Age of Wonders II Civilization III Thanks also to Chimaeros for putting "Reawakened" up on his excellent KIS/KAG site "The Awakening", and for all the information he has stored there which was invaluable to me in creating this mod. Thanks also to TimeGate for two of my all-time favorite games (KIS/KAG) and for K-Mod, the capable game editor which was a blast to tinker with and which enabled me to get all of the things listed here into the world of Khaldun.