Call Of Warhammer: Beginning of The End Times - "A Struggle for the Old World"-WIP: (1.1 submod)
Hello all, for the last couple of weeks i have worked almost all my awaken time on a sub-submod for Call of Warhammer: Beginning of the End Times 1.1. At first i wanted to greatly expand on and enhance the unit rosters of the Wood Elves, Dark Elves and the High Elves in the mod. But while working on this sub-submod i also fixed some of the bugs mentioned in the thread about COW:BoTET. Minor fixes have been made for most factions in the game, but the heavy focus has been on the elven factions.
I now plan to greatly expand on the factions of the Empire, the Tomb Kings, the Skaven and Orcs and Goblins also. Even the Dwarves will get some changes- but i may upload my first version with only minor changes for all factions but the elves and Brettonia. Yes, i have also done some modding on the Brettonian faction- so they will be stronger than before and have a few new units and unit upgrades.
The balancing of the game is still a problem, but in the final version i will have fixed most of the balancing problems regarding EDU-stats and EDB-recruitment. For the elven factions and Brettonia this is already done. But they are somewhat OP against some of the untouched factions, but not at all invincible. This will change later. The elves are very well balanced against each other though, so it will be a long and hard match going on between the Dark Elves and the High Elves in Ulthuan and the Dark Lands. The Wood Elves now have the strength to survive longer- and their units are more varied with some new units and upgrades to pre-existing ones. They will have the strength to fight the Skaven and others now. And Brettonia, while still mostly using bad peasantry- will have the stength to actually fight back! Their elite units are on the same level as other factions elite knights and heavy infantry. But they don't have any good long-range units. And only one elite infantry unit. No beasts or dragons for them, the Pegasus knights are their best unit still.
There are possibly too many changes made for me to recall them all, as i haven't written a list when modding and kept everything in my head going forward. But here is a small taste of the changes made:
Wood Elves:
Campaign map:
1. New "Maidens of the Everqueen"-captain.
2. New "Avelorn Character"-general.
3. Added some new units to the starting army for each of the three settlements, including some old units with varied armour upgrade levels.
4. Remade the recruitment structure of the Wood Elves- all the new units are recruitable in the campaign, and for each upgrade you get one more unit slot per unit.
5. New hero traits and ancillaries for the starting generals, King and Heir.
6. Heir renamed to Queen, as the heir is now Yrwaine the Everqueen.
7. New portrait and female name to the starting general.
8. Wood Elves Captain-led unit stacks now have the female Avelorn-Captain portrait- it resembles the Handmaidens of the Everqueen.
9. Wood Elves more of a female-led Elven faction- with female generals, captains and more female-soldier units.
Traits and ancillaries taken from the Sundering-mod, as are most of the unit models and other new stuff in the game. In the case of the Wood Elves, the traits and ancillaries are taken directly from Yvraine in that mod- or from the Avelorn tree of traits and ancillaries.
Sidenote: A possible 10th change is the adding of the female voices for the Avelorn-faction, as it's weird with male voices for a general or captain with female looks.
Credits to Kolwen and the others involved in the already released "The Sundering"-mod for the new traits, ancillaries and strat-map models of the Avelorn generals and captains. I have mostly implemented everything in the game for the Wood Elves, and changed stats, recruitment stuff and such. I didn't create the material of wich i used. The point of my mod isn't to make my own models and stuff, it's about taking the best from the Sundering and create the ultimate experience for Elven lovers in BoTET.
Also, the Wood Elves had a serious lack of units in their roster and were in need of new ones. Especially creatures, animals or women. Didn't feel right without the sexy wood elven women.
Battle-map/custom battle:
1. Handmaidens of the Everqueen added as a general unit in-game- it can be recruited with the right building being built on the campaign map, and is available in custom battle -Yvraine the Everqueen, and the ordinary starting general- will have this bodyguard from the beginning.
2. New Avelorn-Captain in battle- wich is a Handmaiden captain-unit.
3. New Avelorn-Character general in battle- it's the Avelorn female general unit from The Sundering.
4. Avelorn Spites added as a new melee-unit. They are pretty much what the Wood Elves needed to counter the Skaven and their huge stacks of rats. The unit is quite numerous, cheap, weak and can be recruited en masse!
5. Lost vale Maidens added as a new long-range missile unit- the Wood Elves needed a unit with women. The unit is a little better than the Glade Guard.
6. Yvresse Great Eagles added- the Wood Elves needed their own flying beast-unit, animations for the Eagles added also so it workes perfectly in COW:BoTET. The High Elves shares this unit with the Wood Elves, but the Wood Elves will start the campaign with one at the start- it will take the High Elves to actually build a required building, and wait over 20 turns to be able to recruit the same unit. This unit is also not very easy to come by. You can have only one free slot at any given time, and it's a 25 turn recruitment time, after wich the unit itself takes about 7 to 10 turns to be recruited. If the Wood Elves want more Eagles in their army, they need to also build the required building and wait for this same number of turns to finish.
7. Unit upgrade variations for some of the older units, including the Eternal Guard, the Glade Guard, the Wildwood Rangers and the Wardancers.
The Glade Guard has got mostly Avelorn Militia-archers upg 0 and 1 as their first unit variations, and for upgrade three and four they use their BoTET-look.
The Eternal Guard has gotten the Avelorn Spear-militia up0 and upg1 unit variations. For upg three and four the old looks apply.
The Wildwood Rangers now use the Woodelven Commander-unit as their fourth unit-upg variation. For upg0 to upg2 the old looks apply.
The Wardancers do now use the Woodelven Women-officer unit as their fourth unit variation. As in the previous case the old looks still apply for upg0 to upg2.
8. King Orions Wildwood rangers-bodyguard do no longer use the Orion-model as their general. This is because the unit animations were buged, If it's used as an officer and not a general it do work without problems however, so i use the Orion model as a regular officers-unit instead. King Orion now use the Avelorn-Character as a general-unit. The only unique general for the Wood Elves is Yvraine the Everqueen.
9. Officers added to most, if not all, units in the Wood Elven roster. All but the Eagles of course! Units like Orion, woodcommand, woodwomen and woodcaptin. All unit stacks have three officers.
10. Unit upgrades added for Tree Kin and Dryads- but i didn't see much of a change. Maybe they were the same models all along.
Stats are the same as in The Sundering for the new units. For the old units that got unit upgrade variations, i have made their stats as good at it should be when they reach their last unit upgrade. Of course they get a little better after each upgrade, but that wasn't enough -i did make them stronger because i thought they were too weak.
As always, credits to Kolwen and the Sundering team for the new models, i have mostly incorporated the models into COW:BoTET- not made them from scratch. But all in all i have been working for almost four weeks on my mod. I may have forgotten something about the Wood Elves, but i don't remember anything more at the moment. Other factions that are already finished are the High Elves (most of the work regarded this faction), the Dark Elves and Bretonia.
Other modified factions are most of the factions in the old world like the Dwarves, the Empire and Kislev- but these changes only has to do with their EDU or EDB-file. Stats and recruitment stuff only. I made the Kislevite pathfinders a regular unit for Kislev though, and fixed the War Wagon bug. Now it workes as intended and actually fires it's ammunition at enemies. Fixed recruitment bugs, now all units in the EDB will be recruited by all factions. Removed the attribute wich made handgunners etc slow to fire- they are now more deadly and can actually hurt the Elves with their guns even though the elven infantry are far better. For the chaos factions i have done many changes, including adding new units both faction specific and/or originally intended as mercenaries. All the chaos factions can now recruit Norsca units. Khorne can recruit the Khorne Hounds and their faction specific demons (i have fixed the missing text for the hounds), Tzeentch all their demons and sorcerers, Nurgle all their demons and sorcerers, Slaanesh all their demons and Chaos Undivided can recruit all the units of every chaos faction. Chaos hounds added to all the chaos factions, plauge beasts added to Nurgle. The Plague beasts had a bugged animation- this i did solve by replacing the model of the unit with the very similar unit from The Sundering- that wasn't bugged.
I am not entirely happy with the Chaos factions however. I will do more work on them later, and that will include new unit upgrade variations, new beasts, better stats for some units, better recruitment balance and especially make a better balance between the different chaos factions. My thought is that Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch should all start with some of their stronger faction-specific units. That will make them dangerous from the start and able to actually stand out from the rest. Different Norscan units will be starting units for different chaos factions- like for example Slaneesh getting Shieldmaidens and Khorne getting Raiders, while Tzeentch and Nurgle will get the Huscarl unit. What about Chaos Undivided then? Well, while they will be able to recruit all the units of the other factions in the late game- they will only have ordinary Norscan, chaos and beastmen troops from the beginning. So it will be a hard start for them against the independent Chaos factions and their greater beasts and demons. They will not be entirely without strong units however, as they will have Chaos Ogres, Chaos Trolls, Chaos Siege Engines and Minotaurs. Even some Chaos Spawns perhaps. I will not release the mod before at least all of Chaos is finished also. But the Empire, the Dwarves, Orcs & Goblins, Night Goblins, the Skaven and the Tomb Kings will have to wait for a second version i think.
This became quite a long post. I will explain more later about my changes for the Dark Elves, High Elves and Bretonia. They are finished and i am working on the Chaos factions as of now. It may be a little hazzle to remember every change and choose all the right files. I did however upload a backup some week ago of over 870 mb of work. So i won't have to start all over if something bad should happen. But it's more than a week since then. I need to release the first version soon. When i am finished with Chaos as a whole, i will release the first version even though the old factions are a little weak compared to the elves. But to counter this they have very strong gunners- most of them at least.
To be continued.. PS: I will upload some pictures of the work done in the near future.
Updates: High Elves, Dark Elves & Bretonnia finished, and i have reworked their starting armies. Wood Elves has a new unit upgrade for the Glade Guards- a unit from the Sundering taken from Warhammer Online, and it was the only Wood Elven unit from that mod. The others were Avelorn-units. Wood Elves are in need of new voices.
I am going to show off the rest in the future. But right now i need to get back to work. My first goal is to add new stats for all factions of interest. Then add new unit upgrades and choose new starting armies for chaos, the Empire and others.
Updates on what's already done:
Britannia:
Campaign map:
1. Added some new units to the starting army for each of the settlements, including at least one unit of all the old unit types- with varied armour upgrade levels.
2. Remade the recruitment structure of Britannia- all the new units are recruitable in the campaign, and for each upgrade you get one more unit slot per unit.
3. Starting armies have access to cavalry of all types in the beginning- but the player will need to build specific buildings to recruit more of them.
Battle-map/Custom battle:
1. Removed the Yeomen Horse Cavalry from the game. The horse-mount is still there due to it being used by other factions, but the unit is gone from Britannias roster- and the rider is totally removed to open up a free character slot.
2. Knights of the Holy Grail-mount (green clothed mount) removed from the game, to open up a free slot for a new Grail-mount.
3. New Dismounted Grail Knights-unit added to the game, replacing the Yeomen-unit and adding to Britannia it's first heavy infantry-unit. Unit taken from the Britannia faction of The Sundering, as it had two Britannian units and a mount not previously used in that mod.
4. New mounted Heavy Grail Knights unit added to Britannia, the same unit as the dismounted unit but now mounted- taken from The Sundering, as it's the same unit as mentioned before!
5. Old Grail Knights mounted-unit now given another units horse-mount, as their original mount was removed.
6. Yeomen-rider and the rider of the mount that now belongs to the original Grail Knights- added as armour upgrades, for other Bretonnian units with the same weapons.
7. New Grail Knights Heavy Horse-Mount added as mount for the new Grail Knights, taken from The Sundering which used them as Blazing Sun-mounts for the Empire! But the rider was the Grail Knights and therefore i thought the unit should be used as a mount for the Grail Knights!
8. New Heavy Grail Knights-rider added to the Pegasus Knights, replacing the old riders of these mounts. Size increased for the Pegasus Knights as well!
9. New armour upgrades for some Bretonnian units, including the "men-at-arms"-unit from The Sundering- stats increased to take into account the new armour and shields.
10. Three officers added to all the units that can have officers- this includes one Heavy dismounted Grail Knight-unit, one upgraded Men-at-Arms-unit and some Banner-carriers.
11. Starting heroes consists of Dismounted Heavy grail Knights-bodyguards, and Heavy Mounted Grail Knights-bodyguards- spawning generals and family members consists of Knights of the Realm-bodyguards, but you can recruit more Heavy Grail Knights-bodyguards after constructing the right buildings.
The new Grail Knights are a match for any human cavalry or foot-infantry in the game!
Dark Elves:
Campaign-map
1. New Malekith-Faction Leader-Portrait, from The Sundering mod.
2. New Hellebron-Faction Heir-Portrait, and new traits added from The Sundering- including ancillaries and ancillary images.
3. New Morathi-Family Member-portrait, and new traits and ancillaries added from The Sundering- including ancillary images!
4. Added alot of new units to the starting army for each of the dark elven settlements, including some old units with new varied armour upgrade levels.
5. Remade the recruitment structure of the Dark Elves- all the new units are recruitable in the campaign, and for each upgrade you get one more free unit slot per unit.
6. New hero traits and ancillaries for Morathi and Hellebron, as mentioned above!
Possible 7th update: Replacing the Medieval 2 models of priests and diplomats for the Dark Elves - with the cultist priests and Caledor diplomats of The Sundering mod.
Possible 8th update: Replacing the strat-map model of Morathi which is an ordinary general-model, with a model of Morathi from either BotET or The Sundering.
Battle-map/Custom Battle
1. New "Malekith"-Faction Leader- the same model as before but wider, and with a broader sword -taken from The Sundering. The same model was used in BotET, but it wasn't as wide- and used a smaller weapon.
2. New Black Dragons-bodyguard-unit for Malekith, and the stats are increased as well as the number of units in the unit.
3. New "Dark Elf"-captain- as seen in The Sundering when using Dark Elves in custom battles.
4. New Morathi-model for Morathi in battle, a general unit from The Sundering.
5. Old Hag-Queen model used as a placeholder for Hellebron, the Witch Elf Queen- and faction heir.
6. New Manticore general's bodyguard unit added- with both new Manticore-mounts and Manticore-Riders taken from The Sundering.
7. New animations added for the Manticore Riders- the same as for the Griffons of Yvresse! The unit did have a buged animation with one wing in The Sundering also, so it's not perfectly looking. This is fixed temporarily when it is flying.
8. New Hydra monster-unit added from The Sundering- the Dark elven answer to the chaos Mammuths and beasts.
9. New Reapers archer-unit added- taken from The Sundering. It's a very cheap long distance unit for the Dark Elves!
10. Three officers added to most ordinary units- mostly consisting of unreleased BotET armour upgrades that i thought weren't cool enough to get a place in the actual armour upgrade spots for specific units. There can only be four armour upgrades per unit- and that meant i had to skip using some because sometimes i had up to six or seven different variations of a unit. The ones i didn't choose to use as armour upgrades became officers!
11. New stats and improved projectiles for most of the units- specifically for those being in The Sundering!
12. New Sorceresses-bodyguard units for Hellebron and Morathi- as Hellebron uses a Hag-Queen model for now, and Morathi is a sorceress.
13. Many new armour upgrade variations added to the Dark Elves- including nearly all the Dark Elven and Cultist units from The Sundering- minus a few ones. Some units had to improvise because of a lack of free character slots
14. All the starting generals and family members are using varied general's bodyguards now- Cold One Knights, Manticore Riders, Black Dragons, Sorceresses and Black Guards of Naggarond.
15. Anakonda's Amazons added as a recruitable unit for the Dark Elves- you can only have one unit at any single time, the unit is still hireable as a mercenary unit for other factions when you are in the right location. The unit is no longer hireable for the Dark Elves as mercenaries. The Dark Elves can recruit them as an ordinary infantry unit when upgrading the barracks.
The Dark Elves are alot tougher and cooler now- and their starting armies are the strongest in the world in the beginning of the game.
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Originally Posted by WhiffOfGrapeshot
