My main problem with the nation is more thematic, it feels very weird that they have absolutely no access to the sidhe of MA, since usually even after the rulers of a nations earlier ages are gone they can still be summoned with magic (see Na'Ba and the jinn summons, bandar log with the yaksha summons, etc). I would suggest adding summons for bean sidhe, sidhe champions, and sidhe warriors. On a separate note, given the multiple references to the morrigans, including the spear, it would be cool to have access to fomoria's morrigan summon.

I don't necessarily think the gallowglass need that hard of a nerf, though perhaps a small cost increase would be prudent. Mercenary linebreakers could maybe go up to 11 or 12 gold? In their current state they are certainly better than gladiators and retiarii, but those units are kinda bad so I'm not sure that the linebreakers are broken. Sentries are ok right now, but very expensive, I would suggest giving them 1-2 points of disbelieve (false damage regen) since "illusions fade from their vision". This would give them a niche in allowing them engage the enemy in melee while your glamour mages toss evocations, and would make them somewhat resistant to the friendly fire, but not immune.

- Watchmen are slower and far less gold efficient in combat than the current Gallowglass. They have some solid utility tags (castle defense, patrol bonus and darkvision are.. interesting) and armored crossbows with decent melee capability are always welcome but as long as the former is so cheap everywhere and competes with them over fort recpoints they aren't going to get recruited. Overall I would say they are a well balanced unit though, so thats nice!

- Sentries are like Watchmen but too expensive and 8 mapmove is extremely painful, plus their tags matter less due to their cap only status and greater cost, even if magic weapons are nice. Do consider a small to moderate buff. Perhaps 12 mapmove and a magical, heavier crossbow?

- Luch Tighe - a situational supply train troop with non terrible stats that is nice, thematic and feels priced about right.

- Gallowglass... uh, how do I say this? I like them but even if the intent is S-rank vanilla troop powerlevel, they need nerfs. What I would do is make them 25g 30 rec with a 5g discount in mountains and highlands which wouldn't limit them as an option but encourage some diversity.

- Mercenary Linebreakers - foreignrec 10 gold 1 resource "berserk gallowglass"... even with much lower prot and #deserter, #undisciplined and mapmove 12, it is simply too much.

Similarly, I do believe in a price hike + terrain-limited discount to make space for other troops. Maybe it could also become less a one-battle wonder and more of a costly mercenary to rapidly spam out if desperate to fill the ranks, but one undesirable to keep long term? For example the unit could lose deserter but be 25g (20g in mountains/highlands) with 2x standard upkeep.

My general thoughts on balance (I just started playing an mp game with it) :

- Hobelars... cheap, fast, stealthy and effective mounted javelineers with a charge bonus on the first throw and decent stats? Goddamit. Very recpoint intensive but that is more than fine. Overall a thematic and good (but not overtuned) unit. The nation does not have a stealthy leader with equivalent mapmove and leading them with a Herdmistress feels odd. Perhaps consider adding one and/or 28>30g in exchange for pillagebonus for some very fun use cases?

- Shepherdess - Very interesting but suffer greatly from the "cheap sacreds are bad because infrastructure is costly" problem. Perhaps consider making their recruitment not require a fort?

There are other nations that start with one fort and build a different line. Ermor, Sceleria, Lemuria, MA Pythium, Phaeacia and Ind all have the walled city to start with but build regular forts, and LA Phlegra starts with a giant citadel, but builds regular citadels.

The nation starts with a Citadel instead of a Great Walled City, which seems like a mistake considering its fort line consists of cities and ends on the latter.

This is somewhat relevant because GWC has 1000 wall strength and 250% recpoint multiplier while a Citadel has 1500 but a 225% recpoint multiplier.

I really like the mod - it is clear that a lot of work was put into it and the quality really shows. I wish the nation was in vanilla, albeit of course in a much tuned down form because as it stands right now its really too powerful in several ways.

it is and it isn't. The inclusion of an MA version is deliberate, I suggested it to Ikiryo becaus when people run games with mod nations it's usually either a regular game with 1-2 mod nations added into the mix, or it's a big mod nation bonanza that usually picks MA as the meeting point, likely due to crossover with the OneAge mod. A fair few mod nation packs have an 'All MA' version to make playing with them easier.

The fact that the MA version of LA Eriu overwrites the official MA Eriu... that's a bug.

@Ikiryo Waitwhat? I thought this mod was just for Late Age? I'll admit I didn't give the MA version a very close look, but it looked like just Late Age units transplanted into the Middle Age, so I assumed it was a bug?

@saltystoryteller that IS likely something I should fix. I'll admit, I'd not considered 'What if someone wants the MA version *and* normal MA Eriu in the same game.'

I've found a small problem... It seems that in the Middle Age, this mod over-writes the vanilla Eriu, meaning no Sidhe for me :(

It might not be immediately but I've got some stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor originally when working on these guys that I'm looking at try and revisiting (A national item or two and a very situational unit).

So there should be a future update on this that adds some more content, not just bug fixes.

@dylancd: Will do.

@the dark crab

Not a bad idea, yeah.

If you ever do a custom immobile for LA Eriu I recommend The Silver Chair.

please add the pretenders in the image im having a hard time finding which ones they are

Thanks man! Yeah I figured it might have just been a slight error in how the file was named. Good work

Ah, found it!

It was because there was spaces in the file name (Late Age Eriu.dm). The mod has been adjusted to fix this.

Hopefully should avoid crashing this time.

@That elephant seal: That's odd. I'll get right on trying to fix that. Not 100% sure what is causing that but I'll see what I can do.

Yeah, completely okay, I think only thing that is a little bit different to la man: la eriu doesn't have bad units. AI is stupid and recruit a lot of spearmen and axemen as man, but for eriu all units are okayish, so it's easier for AI to not do something stupid

Just as a heads up, like the mod, but it does not seem to work with multiplayer. Crashes instantly if I try to set a lobby with the mod on.

@llew ap Aedd: Yeah, that was intended to be a weakness of theirs, though not quite to the extent of LA Marignon 'We don't even know what shields are'. They are brutal in a melee brawl but have limited shields and don't like crossbows.

I hope it seemed okay?

@kingofwinter: Yeah. It's a bit of a joke about how Narnia (In particular Prince Caspian) was based on C.S Lewis' experiences growing up in Ireland/the stories of the Tuatha his nanny use to tell him.

seems cool. This adds two Narnia themed pretenders as well right?

Played test game as man versus eriu. AI was little more competent than usual, but at the end of the day, fighting early war against crossbow nation without having air magic is rough. AI used a lot of priests with shields of faith and it helps somewhat, but overall it was clean stomp

Also you can just print out simple crossbows for 10 gold, 9 res, 9 rec and it will also starts to easily beats anything when you get critical mass

Yeah like that's the thing, even if we're running parity tests according to resource cost rather than gold (and I don't think that's valid given how the game plays in practice, but even if-), the real comparison isn't 13 Kerns vs 4 Defenders, the real comparison is ~50 Kerns vs 16 defenders *and a Magister Arcane*, at which point the Magister just paints Protective Winds, Body Ethereal, and/or Mistform, and the Kerns get slaughtered.

I think kerns are effective chaff, but pretty sure it's not actually a threat for la man military, defenders would slaughter kerns in melee and kill a lot of them at range, plus you would have greater numbers of tower guards if you are optimising (they are just a little less tanky in shootouts, while being substantially cheaper, so you can have frontline of defenders and main force of tower guard). Also defenders and tower guard would stand in place while they are shooting, so their mages could distribute more buffs among them

Hi all. 1.1 is live now. It's mostly minor changes to spelling/name issues, though one hero's weapon got adjusted, as did the Mercenary Linebreaker.

I will admit, It is a little amusing that the units I was MOST worried about coming up as 'Hey, this might be a problem' (Gallowglass having Elite Fir Bolg statlines and Watchmen having Sword + Torch), the Kerns were not something I had on my radar to get a lot of talking about.

I get it, you had a win against Man that felt easy. But to be frank, a 1v1 against the AI on a 50-province map is simply not the kind of scenario the game is balanced around, and it does not generate useful data for the more usual 6+ player FFA scenario where you have to account for a bunch of other concerns like keeping up with the research race and keeping attrition to a minimum lest somebody else see the kind of casualties you're taking and decide they make you easy meat.

No, resources govern how fast you can mass troops, but gold is ALWAYS the big limit, because scales troops are way down the priority list for spending gold.

Gold is in high demand. Infrastructure costs gold, troops cost gold, and most importantly, MAGES cost gold. Mages win wars, mages win games, so the more of your gold you don't have to spend on troops, the better.

You want troops to cost other things than gold as much as they can, because res/recpoints are essentially 'free'. They aren't factored into upkeep, they're not in high demand for other things, and they still get you better troops.

Upshot: Yeah, you can get 13 Kerns to my 4 Defenders (who aren't Man's strongest foot elite, they're still scales troops, not Wardens), and you're down 66 gold. Keep at it and you're up sheer number of troops (although not as much as it seems; Kerns low prot and stats means they'll take more attrition in other fights), but I'm up mages, and that matters more.

@Ddaigh_lleuad: The gold cost of the kearns is not at all the issue, and matching the kearns, who have a resource cost of 9 and recruitment of 9, against the strongest foot elite Man has, 27 resources and 23 recruitment points if I remember correctly, is not a logical comparison, unless you had the kearns outnumber the defenders by 3 to 1.

Here's what it comes down to: given even resources, I can recruit 4 defenders on turn 1 as Man, or 13 kearns as Eriu. In my tests, the 13 kearns annihilate the 4 defenders, and the difference only gets bigger as the turns snowball. I could be missing something... I play a lot of Dom, but I've still got much to learn, I admit... but can defenders really take on 3x the number of kearns, which is what the resources and recruitment points are going to result in early on?

But yeah, this weekend I plan to do a bit of an update. Mostly fixing 'various spelling issues' (Sorry about that everyone), reducing the availability of the Linebreakers a little (They're a bit too spammable) and taking a look at that weapon (As that's a bit odd).

@fxknight: There is actually a Saint Hero. I didn't make a specific Saint Patrick one but with enough luck one should turn up. They're a big holy, good leader with awe.

Oh, against the AI, yeah that explains it. The AI will throw piles of trash at you that basically anything can kill, getting good results against them is a non-issue. Like for reference, against troops that are actually good, like not even sacreds I'm talking LA Man's Defenders? I ran a same-gold test in the arena map with the Defenders scripted to ignore their crossbows and act purely as melee troops, and they cut their way through the Kerns for 1/3rd casualties. Kerns are fine as they are.

Ddraig_lleuad: LA Man, of course! Whom else would Eriu be battling on the Ireland map? A classic historical matchup, it was.

But my ability to raise hundreds of defense 15 frontliners with ranged weapons of their own in just a couple of turns from a single fort, have them hold and fire with sacred slingers right behind them until the enemy closes (if the enemy even does... they often get torn apart before they even reach the picket line), and then kick the crap out of them won me every battle and the whole map in about 2 years, even against a master-level AI Man. In their way, I found the kearns to be much stronger than the (very strong and cool but very expensive) galloglaichs. (Nice name and pfp, by the way!)

15 def with a shield really isn't that hard to deal with, I'm curious what kind of opposition they were facing that they proved so staunch against.

A beautiful faction with fantastic unit graphics, a great sense of cohesion, and fun combat. Honestly, perhaps a little too strong... I wiped out a very strong faction with no trouble at all on the recently-released Ireland map (perfect for this!) due mostly to the sword kearns being crazy cheap for how good they are. Their 15 defense made them extremely hard to hit and they formed an immense ranged refusal with the other units that just couldn't be broken.

A few spelling and grammar issues, but nothing serious except that the Shepardhess unit should be Shepherdess (you do spell it correctly in other references to them, only the unit name is wrong). Saiorse's special Record of Creation spell needs a description, as I don't know what it does as is, and Arafel's relic weapon surely isn't coded as intended (0 power, an area effect that does nothing, no stats, useless). I longed for a St. Patrick hero unit, but never got one. Maybe just luck. Anyway, AWESOME!

Funny thing with the Sacred Slingers. The Sacred Slingers ended up getting 'doesn't hit friendly' because of some initial battles during testing where they worked very badly with the rest of LA Eriu's linup. LA Eriu has limited shields, slingers don't have great range and they do have that first extra damage hit.

...Which meant that the Slingers were whacking their own allies in the back of the head with those +bonus damage first hits. Which was funny but I didn't really want 'Account for your own sacred being idiots' to be something players had to deal with a lot.

jirizelenkajun/Thorion228: The Linebreaker Mercs are on my list to make a little less accessible than they are right now. They'll be gaining a bit more Recruitment Cost and some Cause Unrest to make them a little less 'you can build up large amounts of them to spend'.

I do very much appreciate feedback. This is the first version that's been publicly available and I am very open to changes because the creator is generally the worst person to evaluate their own stuff.

So thank you for your thoughts!

Randomdue: Yeah, ironically that was something that ended up being discussed during development. Basically: The Watchman was for a while a much closer to the Man Defender unit and that felt wrong/too similar to them. They ended up getting a lot more brawler to make the crossbow a smaller percentage of what they bring to the table/to make you less able to mass them.

As while I wanted them to have SOME crossbows I didn't want them to be King of Crossbows/Displace Man in drowning the other guy in implacable walls of quarrels.

This is a really cool nation design and i think it will be fun. I don't think La Eriu would have access or need crossbows to function well, and i think it kinda strips abit of La Mans identity as the crossbow line holders. The Astronomer feels out of place in relation to your glamour, death and nature heavy mages. The slinger sacred is very cool and unique concept, it will be fun seeing what they can do.

Overall, this is an excellent mod. And i will be having fun trying them out

The Fir Bolg mercenaries feel quiet strong but they also take long to mass. The open access to H3 priests everywhere in connection with recruit in all forts sacreds is big although I think that it is still more or less working well.

@Ddraig Lleuad
I, uh... actually quite like Vanilla MA Eriu.

Regardless, this is a great mod! Though the Fir Bolg Mercenaries seem quite strong.

Was very fun to work on this and I'm looking forward to other projects to come in the future!

The Winter Witch is a "decedent" of Jinn and Frost Giants apparently, rather than a descendant. Might want to change it to descendant of Jinnun and Jotuns(or Rimtursar?) as well, to keep consistent with the rest of the game.