Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

How is disease demon bugged? I used it extensively in BootCamp. Work pretty well.

And Diseasing 5% of a army is a rather nice effect. Sure it will not kill them now. But in a few turns it will thin out, get afflictions etc. Mages need regen items, or you need GoH, or the Chalice. Of course you never cast one rain of toads. You cast it that often that there are no toads anymore in the whole world. Toadicide! It is only 10 slaves. Disease demon is more expensive.

Edit: Fixing old age would be a nice benefit indeed. :).

About the *LOTS* remark, remember that price is linked to paths, so increasing the Chalice to N6S5 (now n4s3) it would cost 65N and 40S. But it would also require very large paths. I don't know if these are even accessible to C'tis, if balancing those nations is your plan. (And rushing to con8 would still be useful just to get a hammer :)).

Anybody ever try out what happens when you have multiple chalices in a game?

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Or you could make Chalice non-unique, make Tarts GoRable again and increase their cost to, say, 30D.
Taking additional expenses into account, that should them on par with other SCs.

And on unrelated topic... how often do you see Flame Arrows in mp? Without CBM it's much easier to cast, and very effective. With CBM, I believe I've only seen it once. Also, they are F4 and Enchantment 5. Arrow fend, which makes FA obsolete, is much easier to cast and just a bit harder to research.
I think they are quite overnerfed.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Another problem with making the Chalice cost LOTS (which it would need to) is that you can't do that without giving it really high path requirements. (6S6N)?
So most nations won't be able to forge it without a specially designed pretender.

Hard to make it common enough to let everyone access tarts and rare enough to not affect anything else...


Edit: Ninjas. Ninjas everywhere.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Does the word 'lore' ring any bells?

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Tartarians are fairly luck-based right now and far more testing needs done to figure out how much they should be altered--in my testing afflictions were much rarer on commanders and only one out of 5 or so was disabled due to them, not the other way around.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Removing clams, hammers and sdr's, removing the astral part from obviously astral items, adding new stuff and making tartarian exiles impossible to restore already ruined it in my opinion, so I wont mind seeing Chalice non-unique. :D Or anything else.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

I'm not sure I'm following you.
Which nations?- AFAIK only GoH and chalice can heal undead.

The afflictions are not that bad. Even feeblemind are comparable and better than say Ettin.

I disagree. GoR gave you much much more ROI in terms of diversity even w/o chalice. In-fact I made it a habit not to rush for chalice and not squabble over GoH. In two games that I won I summoned many tarts and just GoRed some to get lots of good stuff.
The chalice is a different matter. I agree that it's problematic. I agree it should be seriously increase price and requirement raised. The main stream tart strat. should be optimal w/o it. Only players that would choose (and pay for) being able to forge it will benefit from it (but pay for it in pretender design and # turns to RoI huge chalice investment)

My point. They are still good. Just lower crazy factor and up price a bit.
If they could be made unhealable then it would be perfect.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Wraith is asleep today I see :)

The nation who has GoH up = 1 nation
The nation that has the Chalice = 1 nation

Hence, "at most two nations can heal the afflictions" :)

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

GoH up => Overwrite it.
Chalice forged => Wish it.
(So the two nations claim is based on false base assumption - that they are immutable and can exclusively abuse said mechanism)

:)

That said, chalice is still too cheap and GoH as well probably.

Edit:
Oh, and I ain't asleep, just a long day at work and still haven't had a good evenings pampering of hot bath, cool beer etc :-)

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Those that have full slots, maybe. Feeblemind also cuts mr. I'm not sure offhand what Ettin mr is.

I think we may be agreeing here. I've used much the same strategy. Summon many tarts, GoR those w/o feeblemind. With the new changes that doesn't work: You summon a lot of tarts, but only a fraction are commanders, and only a fraction of those aren't feebleminded. GoR doesn't work on them, so you don't get to pick which ones you put the rest of the investment into.

They can be made unhealable. Remove Chalice and GoH from the game.

Making them better and more expensive doesn't help, nor does making them worse and cheaper, because neither changes the balance between those who can heal them and those who can't. Before you could pay roughly half the cost upfront (Gate) and then only pay the rest (GoR) on those that were worth it. Now you have to pay the whole cost upfront. That changes the balance. Without Chalice/GoH you now pay just as much for roughly 1/4 the SCs, before you only paid the GoR cost for the SC ones.