Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'd like to see pangeae get Lord of Rebirth as a pretender.
Oddly enough it would be nice to give mictlan some pretenders as well. Something to compete with the std bless chassis.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

God, what a disgusting visual.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The aforementioned Mictlan's new national Pretender with an >STD< bless:

The Old Man of Festering Fertility

The Old Man of Festering Fertility is dirty old man, a black sorceror whose corruptedness and amorality were so great that it pleased the darker demons of the underworld to an extensive degree. The demons decided to afflict the old man with a blessing of Festering Fertility. Part of him is now in a constant state of rot while remaining vigorously alive. The Pretender is able to pass his bless to his holy followers through direct contact. The Festering Fertility causes the blessed ones slight madness, gluttony and unquenchable burning desire, which also drives them to go berserk in battles. It also keeps all his holy followers to be constantly diseased and regenerated in the same time.
The maddening desires of the Old Man fuel his magical power to an extent which allows him to approach godhood.
If his wickedness is not stopped, the world will surely become a vile place to live in.
:bug::brain::heart::bananas:

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Rotten fruit!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Gosh, that was horrible.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Mictlan's pretenders don't "pretend" to be good while simultaneously raping the world they exist on, like, say, the Lady of Fortune.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Pretenders... cbm did really well in improving the balance, but I think there is still a long way to add some real diversity. there are a lot of unusable, for which some niche usage are possible..in theory..but nobody really uses them.
One common thing to consider - is giving all pretenders who have blood, like deva some bloodhunt bonus, less then fountain, of course. Freak lord, vampire queen. It's very thematic.
And those pretenders that have other weak blesses, like air, all of them but great enchantress... if to add them 1-2 more air, will not make them op, but in some cases at least some will stat thinking about using them. If it will make some of them OP for one of nations (sacred hidras comes to mind), those can be not available for specific nations.

Otherwise cyclops, master druid,mother of rivers will always be a priority (or some sc). Adding recuperation to some Sc's would be also cool, otherwise many of them just unusable..at early stage because of nott compensated encumbrance problems in addition to risk of affictions and to lose it, later - because just bigger armies. Adding recuperation to more pretenders would make Sc choice more fun of later use of them. Not just early game, especially those relying on force rather then magic.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I am reading through the .dm file trying to understand it and I notice a lot of blank entires that #selectwhatever then #end without any changes. Do these do anything? Are they necessary placeholders? Examples:

#selectspell "Summon Earthpower"
#end

#selectitem "Lightless Lantern"
#end

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Nope just placeholders. Do nothing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just realized that Ninjas aren't spies. This seems wrong to me for some reason.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

OK, so MA Oceania is harmed by the clam nerf. How can it be repaired?

I think we can just quick fix any nerfed nation by adding pearls (or other gems) to it.

Maybe we should work on a handicapping chart and buff the weaklings. I think it would be best to use another mod in addition to the CBM, so that it can be updated more rapidly, especially if we were to become popular.

Any thoughts?

I'll toss up a new thread.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I've been thinking a lot about Jomon recently(maybe because I'm playing a game as them!), specifically their national summons. So many of them are rather redundant/useless, like the Mori-no-Kami. Oh, it's to get a N3 mage...in a forest...when you already had an N3 mage. It'd be easy enough to tag something like heal(30) on him to make the guy useful, or summon allies like a wolfherd, or low enough cost to let you burn nature gems for research.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'm not sure if it should be changed or not, but MA Atlantis can't actually recruit reef warriors in coastal forts.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

How do i set up the new heroes folder ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

In your dominions folder there should be a folder labeled doc. This contains the modding manual, which should answer your questions for setting up a mod.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Thank you very much for being kind enough to point me to the tutorial instead of using your 20 word post to explain it directly.

I dont need to know how to set up mods, i need to know where there is a herores folder inside the balance mods archive.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

good old find the name of a hero-->search was too obvious?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sorry, but I read "how do I set up the new heroes folder" as how to set up a mod instead of "where is the heroes folder."

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Well no, to be fair, you had a N2 mage with a Thistle Mace, and now you have an N3 mage with a Thistle Mace (so N4). I agree that a lot of the summons are mediocre and could use tweaking, but none of them are outright useless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

What do you mean by heroes folder? Everything is in a single .dm file, or do you look for the graphics?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Well there is a folder for the graphics, which is just in the mods folder like everything else. The actual code is indeed in the single CBM .dm file. Swan's solution is probably the best, though doing a search just for "heroes" or "hero" might also do it if QM has included headers in the .dm

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Basicly, what im asking is, if i enable the CBcomplete_1.6.dm within Dom3 and my mods folder has the heroes subfolder, which contains only images, no .dm, will i play with the new heroes & images or not ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

1) The fact that you can enable the mod in the DOM3 application means that it can see the .dm file in your mods folder, so that is working.

2) The .dm file for CBM references images in a subdirectory from where the .dm file is located, e.g. #spr1 "./Worthy_Heroes/Keymaker.tga" --> looks for an image named "Keymaker.tga" in a subdirectory named "Worthy_Heroes" under you mods directory, which is in turn under your DOM3 application directory.

Assuming that the above are true (including uppercase/lowercase distinction in some systems) and that the user you are running the application as has access to that subdirectory, you should be able to load the image when running the mod.

Note that if you're running Vista/Win7, your application directory may not be where you think it is (but since you're able to enable the mod itself, this does not appear to be the case here.)

BTW, you'll need to start a new game once the mod is enabled to have it take effect. After that, it should automatically load the mod when you start that game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I hate to say it, but RTFM.

In particular, the CBM .dm file has a credits section at the top which tells you the history of the mod, notably including which mods are incorporated into CBM. Worthy Heroes is one of them. This is basic documentation that should be consulted before asking questions. (Older versions of CBM have a readme file, which unfortunately due to the extensive changes is actually less readable than the short documentation at the top of the .dm, if not vastly more specific about what has been done - bar reading and interpreting the code portions of the .dm file).

You could also do a quick search of the .tga file names from the Worthy Heroes folder over the text of the CBM .dm file to see that they are indeed referenced by units defined in the CBM .dm file.

You could also just assume that because it came bundled with the WH folder and there was no readme telling you otherwise, it was included because anything else would be stupid.

But mostly just read the documentation that came with the mod. Sheesh.

Edit: Why the heck are people asking about a separate Worthy Heroes mod anyway? At this point that's as much of anachronism as asking about the conceptual pretender mod or the troop balance mod. They're all CBM now - there is no longer a WH mod as a separate entity. From the CBM .dm documentation, it looks like WH is a dom2 mod (maybe a dom3 beta mod?)???

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I guess, if you were unlucky and didn't manage to get an N3 Master Shugenja by then(and needed an N4 guy right away?).

I'll bite, though. What are Tatsus actually useful for?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Dudes seem pretty excited about this unique gem generator thing. Are the generators really just one item per kind? I mean, one clam per game, one blood stone per game, etc.? Cuz, maybe this has been covered already in the million billion pages this thread already has (I did scan back several pages), but it seems like a good middle ground would be to have say eight unique clams, all with the same function, but each with a different identity. Or any finite number of them that'd be small enough to keep the item menu manageable. Heck, they needn't even be all the same. I think it'd be cool to have a different stat boost on each of several fever fetishes, and a little tweak to the flavor text of each one--not so much for strategic purposes as for style. Has this been considered?

If the whole point of making clams etc. is to achieve geometric growth in one's gem income, then this idea wouldn't matter. But certainly there's a point in making blood stones, other than just gem generation. Why not have several unique generators of each type? Hm maybe that change just isn't allowed by the modding system?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The thing with clams. They -make- high competition games more based on micro management, WHEN, in fact, they seem to have been designed to keep pearls on certain mages. The three kinds earth, fire, pearls. And the Sea King with his water gems. He is quite good as well.

Thus, hoarding caused a device that should minimize MM to cause MM.

If I understand correctly, you can't change the clam to make it not produce gems. I think you can add boosters, but you can't add gem generation or take gem generation away. I'm not certain about being able to add boosters...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Exactly.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Cripes, you can't even make a new thing that's like a clam? Harsh.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Lets just say the modding tools are extremely limited.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I guess you probably also can't make unique commanders that any nation can summon, on the order of Queens of Elemental Air and so forth? Cuz if you could then there could be a Summon Clam Man spell that'd get you one of a limited number of immobile units that generated gems like clams do. :)

Okay I'll learn how modding works before I suggest anything more.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Thank you. Too few people are willing to do this.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Hey, QM -- apologies if this has already been mentioned before (I did a quick thread search on it and found nothing), but I noticed the changes to Rams Head the White Satyr seem to have removed his ability to summon allies. Was this intentional?

(For anyone else interested in a quick fix without having to look up the unit ID in the database, for my own version I just added #makemonster5 230.)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

One thing that has bugged me for a long while has been the Artifact "The Sharpest Tooth", which advertises itself as being able to poison units that are poison-immune. Which is not true. The weapon is bugged and does not poison poison-immune units, which is a really nasty suprise if you forge it for some anti-SC usage.

Not a big deal, but I have had to share this bit of info on IrC twice already and the item is really misleading. Perhaps the next version of CBM could fix the description for the item and just say that it won't work on poison immune units because it's super-hyper-unlikely that the bug would be fixed.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sharpest tooth should just be AN damage with death poison, frankly, and say it is deadly to those not poison immune and dangerous to those that are.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It is quite easy to fix. You can have damage-over-time that is not poison, IIRC.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Like from the bleed spell.

llama - while you are browsing - Cambridge this weekend? I can't remember if it was decided.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Bloodstone.. I believe it should be non-unique, but it just shouldn't generate gems. Making it unique, makes -1 earth boosters in game, whiсh is not good.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The bloodstone cannot have its gem production taken away. No new item can be made that boosts earth. The only two possibilities that are likely to be changed are either the pebble skin suit or the tome of gaia.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I am trying and also proposing a following modifications to
Late Era JOMON 1.6 CBM:

Mages:
Kannushi + 50% 1 death magic & +50% 1 elemental magic
(retains also 2 holy as previously)
(previously only 10% 1 elemental magic and 2 holy)
cost 120 gp (previously 80gp)

Monk of Fivefold Path cost 90g (previously 100gp)

Onmyo-Ji +10% death magic in addition to everything else (previously none)

Troops:
Samurai Archer goldcost 14gp (previously 12gp)
resource cost 20 (previously 23)
precision 11 (previously 10)

Samurai (Katana) resource cost 16 (previously 18)
str 11 (previously 10)
Samurai (Naginata) str 11 (previously 10)

O-ban str 11 (previously 10)

Aka-Oni goldcost 15gp (previously 14gp)

COMMENT:
Added death magic gives Jomon access to many small national
summons (which are more useful in the early game) and is also thematic, since death and ancestrual/spiritual magic had it's respected place in the Japanese/Asian religions.

The tweaks to troop selection make archers and other
samurais more even, so that it woulndn't make sense to
only recruit Aka-Onis and Samurai Archers.

Please give me feedback everyone and tell me what you
think of this. I would be especially interested in discussion
about minor (but oh how important!) tweaks to troop price/gold costs.

yours truly,
Snowcat =^.^=
:strawberry::strawberry::strawberry:

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Snowcat:
I think the gold costs are fine as is - its the resource costs that don't make much sense.

No one should buy samurai archers anyway. Even if you de-nerfed them, they'd be a marginal and highly situational unit at best. In the high armor LA a longbow doesn't mean much, and if you're casting flaming arrows you want cheap massable archers, not 20 resource ones.

The top units right now are aka-oni, go-hatamoto, cavalry, and yamabushi. There is some place for ashigaru and samurai with naginata. Everything else is basically useless.

The o-ban and katana samurai are not salvageable in any obvious way because their thematic space is occupied by superior units - there's only so much you can do with the concept of 'armored guy wielding a sword'.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I think these are good suggestions.

It would also be good if Tatsu was boosted in some way. It is a very nice-looking summon, but with its current cost it will never ever be summoned. Especially after removal of bloodstones.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Another suggestion: remove upkeep from summons. Its annoying, and prevents some of them from being used much at all. It also doesn't even make much thematic sense.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Removing the upkeep costs from sea trolls and trolls would also have the side effect of making conjuration a better school to research, and of helping to boost those nations that have strong earth/water mages. Water could use the boost. Earth is quite good already, but it probably wouldn't hurt. I would think that this would definitely be a good thing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Although I don't think it's possible to find on random maps, trolls can be assigned as native to a province on user-made maps and then hired for gold. Making trolls upkeep free would also put their gold cost at 0 at such provinces, unless duplicate units were made.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yeah although it's a theme of the troll summons, it does make them pretty annoying. Suiciding the troll kings troops just to get rid of them, for instance.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Fixable with mod commands, to a great extent. Also I think that's so rare a clash it should be ignored.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

There is a uncommon earth magic site that allows you to recruit trolls. Getting them for 0 gp could be considered somewhat OP.

Although just modding that site out of the game is pretty trivial.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The site is actually not overpowered at all because trolls are very, very costly in upkeep. I should know, I got this site in a MP once and went wow, trolls, recruit, recruit and then wondered where all my gold went to to recruit any future mages.:o:D

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That doesn't make sense meglobob. The trolls cost the same upkeep to price as everything else.

If they cost 0 gold, as burn said, the site would be ridiculous.