I am reworking this post as this is now a full-fledged revival and not just be talking about changes I would like to do!
I really, really loved this faction, so I decided to revive this project and with the great help of misiokles (who is the reason this project is alive as it is) and the community, this project is now alive and well again.
Here is the current revival version. Enjoy and report any bugs and errors, as well as general feedback!
dropbox.com/s/z3l3j195sf07d … s.zip?dl=0
Current version: 0.71
Some original names sounded unimaginative such as “tentacle bird” and “jellyfish” which doesn’t exactly sound as fantastical as the faction looks, so I took the liberty to modify them. I also fixed all hero descriptions and special descriptions. I also changed “Kraken Teamster” to “Kraas” to sound less goofy. Names can be and will be changed by community choice, granted there is enough requests.
Here are some name changes I did:
Tentacle Bird/Electric Tentacle Bird -> Feeler/Surger - Changed to be more mystical and less literal.
Hippocamph -> Hippocampus - Changed for spelling. “Hippocamp” is also correct, but Hippocampus sounds bit more “upgradey”. Seahorse remains.
Jellyfish/Deepwater Jellyfish -> Floating Spires/Floating Sceptres - Again, adding to the “mystical” look of the faction. The “floating” bit (if not the whole thing) might be changed. Jellyfish is a silly word and makes a lot of people snicker so I need a temporary replacement until I find a better name. Some may like the ideas of surprising a laughing foe, though.
Octopus/Giant Octopus -> Kraken/Elder Kraken - Both of them are just as large, so the “giant” made little sense. Changed to Kraken for additional fantastical flavour.
Yuan-Ti -> Merrow - To avoid Wizards of the Coast breathing down our necks, and since Yuan-Tis are not seaborne creatures, this change was a natural one. A merrow is depicted in the folklore book Faeries look very close to this, so the name was a given. There is also this bit of info to cement my stance:
Yuan-Ti Leader -> Merrow Praetor - Spice up the “leader” name a little. “Leader” sounded generic and quite dull.
Sea Worm/Ocean Worm -> Carybdis/Lurid Carybdis - Since sea worms are a set of small, not so frightening little buggers the name didn’t exactly evoke fear. Since they are trained from a “Summoning Whirlpool” and their creepy look, I thought Carybdis was perfect, the unseen monster behind whirlpools in greek mythology.
Murloc -> Deep One - Murloc is copyrighted by blizzard and heavily affiliated with that fictional universe so I changed it to the closest thing it resembles in the public domain, and possibly making it a whole lot scarier in the process.
New Hero class names:
Oracle (magic)
Sea Lord (might)
These changes were made as “Abyssal Shaman” is so long it bugs out some menues, and “Ichtyander” is not really a word. Oracle is also quite fitting for the greek nature of Atlantis.
I renamed “Weed of Power” to “Seaweed of Power” (to avoid any 420 jokes) and “Weed House” to “Coral Cavern” as that seemed a bit more appropiate.
Bug fixes:
-Fixed hero abilities to be written like vanilla heroes.
-Fixed odd instances of buildings having weird descriptions (tavern providing morale?)
-Fixed building names being switched in one instance (spawning pool and shell shelter)
-Made Deep Ones proper neutral units, including new icon background.
-Added the old Abyssal Murloc in as “Dark One”, added neutral background and added a dwelling for them.
-Tier4 map sprites switched.
-Fixed four instances of large units taking one space, bugging them out in combat.
-Fixed Sea Urchins to a tier3 population booster which seemed the original intention.
-Removed aforementioned Sea Urchins from the town screen before being built.
-Reinstated WoG commander to work properly.
-Balance tweaks.
-Tons of additional minor tweaks and fixes.
-New unit sounds.
-Hero Verna is now actually useful and has a special unit (Golden Hippocampus) that only she can upgrade regular ones into and cannot be encountered randomly in the world.
-Grail map added.
-Neutral versions of tier 1 with life and mana drain added.
Another future change would be to make upgrades more different in colorscheme from their base units, such as making the tentacle bird (feeler) more blue so the difference is clearer. Stuff like that. This is beyond the power of anyone on the project currently, however. If you have the skills, help is very much appreciated!
Thanks to the original team for making my favorite faction! Did I mention the town music is amazing?
