Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Trolls could be made very resource intensive. But then again, the province could end up being mountain, surrounded by mountains :P

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Oh yea if they are changed to 0 cost, I suppose it would but trolls actually are not that good anyway, rarely used in MP.

What do they cost normally, been sometime since I have seen that site, damn nearly credit crunched me thou, never forget it!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Per Edi's DB:

troll 60
troll guard 70
troll king 150
troll moose knight 110
war troll 70

sea troll 50
sea king 150
slave troll 70

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

which trolls does the site(s? UW?) actually let you recruit, because the others could be set to 0 gold with no problems.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It's always bugged me that the dragon pretenders are actually less scary up close than at a range--at this point(especially with the latest CBM changes) dragons in melee are brick walls with fear auras. That doesn't really sit well with me, since it doesn't make sense that a dragon would stop breathing fire/cold/poison when it gets closer to an enemy.

At first I thought of suggesting giving a bonus melee attack which gives an area fire/cold/poison, but that seems hackneyed. So what about a heat/cold/poison aura instead? I mean, the Tarrasque gets a poison aura, so there's even precedent. And it'd make Dragon Pretenders more viable/relevant in combat other than 'that guy with Fear +5 that soaks up hits'.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I thought just give them a flaming hands attack, but then, the red dragon can cast that with just a little research that he can probably even do himself... while he sits there soaking up hits... that IS what he should be doing. You can say...

At evo 5 your commands could be (attak rear)(cast flame eruption)x4

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You can't scrpit that. On single turn attacks you can only tell the commander to attack (and he will attack the closest target), and if there are no hostiles in range for Flame Eruption (very likely if there was for example one wolf running way ahead of the rest of the hostile army (and if you are playing in a MP, you can be guaranteed there is some fast lone something running ahead of his army if he knows you use spells like Flame Eruption or Shockwave or some such)), the spell-casting AI will override the script and start casting fire flies or some other equally "useful" spell.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

OK, yes. As long as he's in dragon form you should be just fine on defense, but when attacking he'll get confused by fast units.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Will they use their fire breath in melee if it is #bonus?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

No.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Dragons certainly need some sort of a rework to make them viable again... the whole 80/new path and only dom1 makes them a very crappy chassis even for a single bless. as for SCing, it can do that early game vs indies, but barbs still tear them apart most of the time, and with crappy equipment slots they're very crappy SCs later on. I think they deserve more than dom1, and either improve the built in weapons+armor, so the lack of equipment slots won't be as faulty, or make them better as a bless chassis or something, with maybe less than 80/new path so you can diversify a bit and when you're done indy expansion you change him to human form and work the lab...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I see dragons used very often in MP. they work well as a single bless chassis and sc. they are reliable expanders, assuming you take Dom9 of course. barbs are the indies that almost all sc gods besides wyrms stay away from, its not the dragon only.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Dragons don't even need dom9 anymore thanks to cbm upping their prot to 20. You can take on pretty much any indies that other early SCs can.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

haven't had the pleasure of seeing a Dragon pretender on MP yet, but than again my MP career is pretty short... however, yeah they can be a decent single bless chassis, but most of the times you'll have a better option. for example the blue dragon, why not take any of the various W1/W2 pretenders instead? for example the Mother of Rivers, Father of Winters, Son of the Sea, Dagon, Lady of Springs, etc. all of these are either better SCs later on due to better item slots or do useful things like generating water gems, taking troops under water, etc. yes the Dragon will win on the short run, but if you're going for a W9 bless than you rely on your sacreds for a quick expansion, hence no need for a turn 1 SC pretender in the first place...

yeah, they're great early game SCs but lose their utility really fast and become pretty useless with just 1 path of magic, or an expensive as hell 2nd path, and no good item slots...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You're forgetting that dragons have flying, which means that you can skip tougher indies, fly from higher dom to attack (meaning more HPs), and can provide really good expansion by adding both a bless and an SC.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

yes, really good expansion, which often translates to being first on the province graph which leads to getting gang banged... not to mention that once indy expansion is over your pretender becomes very useless... heck, if you want a flying pretender take a PoD, Moloch, or something... those will be useful later on, unlike the dragons...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Just saying, don't assume that because you personally haven't seen it that something never happens. FWIW I'm using a dragon in one of my games, and its been quite useful, and I probably would not have been able to replicate my performance w/out it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I never said it never happens, I said that even if it is used it's suboptimal at best... well I guess in a blitz game they're still actually useful, but outside of that niche there would usually be other pretenders that would be much better choices than any of the dragons... which is a shame cause the dragons are very cool even somewhat thematic, but they just seem to under perform...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6 Jomonese Plus
 

I was tweaking, comparing and testing my previously proposed changes for CBM1.6 Jomon LATE ERA for many hours and consulted several people. Here are my final changes. Please give feedback about the fairness of these changes and if you would support them to be added into the next CBM.

Commanders:

Ninjas
goldcost 45 (instead of 40 as in CBM or 60 in vanilla)

Important Note: The changes that original CBM1.6 made to Kannushi and Ninja prices were not working, because the #id numbers in the original CBM file were incorrect.

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)

Troops:
Samurai Archer
goldcost 14gp (previously 12gp)
precision 11 (previously 10)
morale 11 (previously 10)
Wearing ashigaru armor (instead of samurai armor)
and using wakisashi (instead of katana)
total resource cost 17 (previously 23)
hp 9 as before

Samurai (Naginata)
str 11 (previously 10)
hp 10 (reviously 9)

Samurai (Katana)
str 11 (previously 10)
hp 10 (reviously 9)
rcost 0 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 17 (previously 18)

O-ban
str 11 (previously 10)
+ patrolbonus 2
+ castle defence bonus 2
rcost 0 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 21 (previously 22)
ap 13 instead of 12 (combat move now 9 instead of 8)

Go-hatamoto
goldcost 14gp (previously 13gp)
morale 14 (instead of 13)
ap 11 instead of 12 (combat move now 7 instead of 8)
rcost 2 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 22 (previously 21)

Aka-Oni
goldcost 15gp (previously 14gp)

RATIONALE:
Added 50% chance for 1 death magic gives Jomon access to many small national summons (which are more useful in the early game) and site searching. It 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.

All melee samurais have better str and hp than samurai
archers. Also, O-ban received patrolling and castle defence
bonus, they are the only samurais that would otherwise be very rarely be used (either because other samurais are cheaper/faster or go-hatamoto is just better).

All in all, the tweaks make the nation more balanced internally
(almost all unit could have a function) and externally when compared to other nations. The most used units would be probably still Aka-Onis, but archers and normal samurais and Go-Hatamotos (and sometimes possibly even O-bans) will be much more viable
troops to use. The general rationale for using troops would be
as follows:

archers - capable archers
normal samurai - good, cheap, fast fighters
o-ban - heavy slow fighter (a bit faster/cheaper than hatamoto)
+ can be used as patrollers/castle defenders
hatamoto - heavy slow fighters with morale equal to aka-oni
aka-oni - all round good fast fighters (but the most expensive)


So yeah, looking forward for your additional feedback :)
Snowcat:lightning:

P.S.
If anybody wants to play a CBM game with more balanced
LE Jomon, then the mod and it's icon are attached to
this post. Enjoy! :)

Edit:
If you think Aka-Onis should still cost 14gp instead of 15gp
then be my guest to change it back in the .dm file. It's very
easy. Although you wont save alot by doing that, likely ;)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It seems weird to make even the baseline samurai 11 str 10 hp. Moreover, I just don't see homogenizing Jomon's troops as actually helping to solve anything.

I can understand reverting the costs on Aka-Oni and Go-Hatamoto, but at the same time making Jomon's only useable troops even more expensive isn't really a solution to the actual problem. Instead, wouldn't it make more thematic sense(given the costs of human troops in previous eras) to just decrease the cost of Ashigaru and Samurai to 7 and 9 gold respectively?

As far as I can tell, the only actually useless recruit is the O-ban. Couldn't that be fixed simply by giving them a different niche? The O-ban's description says they are heavily armed...what about giving them a wakizashi too and just having them dual-wield?

I dunno...it seems like the best fixes for overall balance are cheapening Monks, increasing the scaling on Fear-Not-Sign from 1002 to 2002(so Dai Tengu/a Master Shugenja Prophet can blanket a fair area if you want to), and buffing Jomon's starting army. Even something simple like bumping it up to 15 Samurai Archers would make a big difference.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Thanx for the feedback!

Strength of the samurais reflects their training which focused often on deadly, powerful sword-hits and slashes. The archer has 9 hp and melee samurais 10hp presuming close-combat samurais are overall more athletic and durable than the ones who are more used to shooting. So they've compensated their smaller frame with martial and athletic training.

Because of the changed stats on samurais and heavy samurais, Aka-Oni is not "the only usable troop" any more. And seriosly, adding 1 gold to their price isn't really nerfing them.

I think you're right about the starting army.
Perhaps 12 samurais and 12 archers would be fitting? With this mod, archers are weaker in melee too.

Btw, Does anybody here think giving Jomon access to death magic
would overpower them? Your opinions are higly anticipated :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Maybe the death access could be even less than 50%. A simple 20~25% would be enough to get the occasional site searcher I think.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Randomness is the devil that unbalances game - you should probably give the Kannushi at least one guaranteed path if you want to see them recruited as researchers/site searchers, to avoid scenarios where bad luck delays your death income needlessly. A guaranteed D1 is easily balanced by the extra temple investment you need to recruit them, and the combat applications are extremely minor.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I think this is a very nice mod. If I ever decide to host a LA game, I will probably use it.

Some suggestions:
1)Possibly instead of increasing strength of samurai units(I do not think it is very thematic), a better way to slightly boost them would be to reduce their armor encumberance, which is currently way too high.
2)It would be great to see summons tweaked a bit. Tatsu could use some boost, because they are useless. Dai Oni can be made somewhat cheaper to make them a possible alternative to Tartarians.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

While we're on encumbrance...did you know that the armor on Shinuyama and Yomi's Bandits(the melee ones) is superior to Samurai Armor, despite the flavor text of the units outright saying they have bad armor swiped from corpses? Heavy Ashigaru Armor is 14 prot -2 def 2 enc. Samurai armor is 14 prot -2 def 3 enc, and costs more resources.

The only other units(that matters) which use Samurai Armor are the Dai Bakemono for Shinuyama, who have 2 encumbrance right now. Bumping their base encumbrance up to 3 would keep them the same.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Interesting and strange. But I do not think this should be solved by nerfing the Bandits - they are rarely used as they are, and, probably, are even in need of slight boost.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Thanks a lot!

I was hesitant to reduce the encumberance of samurai armor, because chain mail cuirass is 14 prot -2 def 2 encumberance and costs 15 resources instead of the 10 that samurai armor costs. So
reducing samurai armor encumberance to 2 seemed a bit unfair.

How much is the resource cost for heavy ashigaru armor?

Either way, it seems reducing samurai armor encumberance makes sense. However perhaps I should increase its resource cost by 1 or 2 to make it more even with other similar armor.

I could also just reduce the base encumberance of LA Jomon samurais, since they're fighting with a single weapon which is a lot less tiring than fighting with a weapon and a shield.

And I agree that the bandits shouldn't be nerfed :)

PPS.
I will be posting a new summary together with mod files when there are enough changes.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Hi, I've never used a mod before and I decided to try out the CBM because it seemed like the most comprehensive. So I downloaded it, but I can't use it. My computer can't find a program to open it.

So my question is, how do I use the CBM? Do I need anything specific?

Thanks,

Jon

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

What you need to do is to make sure that there's a "mods" folder inside of your Dominions 3 folder. You then unzip the files into this directory, which will give you at least one other folder and a .dm file. You then go into Dominions, and click on 'Preferences' then 'Mod preferences', then select the mod you want. Any game or pretender you make with that mod selected will then use it automatically whenever it's loaded. Dos that help?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That was helpful, but I think I might be doing it wrong. I made a folder for mods in my Dominions3 folder and I put the cbm into it, but when I get to dominions to select my mod preferences it doesn't show up.

Do you do the same thing for maps. You put the new maps into the map folder in the program files and they'll show up?

I appreciate the help.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Do you have the 'CBcomplete_1.6.dm' file in your mods directory. And the mods directory is inside of the Dominions 3 folder?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yes. When I get to the mod preferences in the game, its blank.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just figured it out. Apparently the folder has to be called mods and not mod. That's all it took :)

Thanks for your help

Jon

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

HI!

is there a list of this kind for all the CBM changes (not just 1.5 to 1.6?)

many thanks.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Download the mod, look in the txt file + dm.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Phoenix pretender...and awe/regen/frightening atributes in general

I'm trying to use Phoenix it now. It's a fun pretender. But it's very hard to understand why in CBM AWE+0 was added to him. The main idea of phonex is to die. What's the idea behind increasing it's surviving? If someone believe it's underpowered there are a lot of ideas what can be improved. Heat level for example :)

In general, there are some very important attributes without which any early expansion combatant pretender has really not much sense regardless of price. What's the sense to take even cheap titan if it will get afficted very soon and will become worthless? It would be more reasonable I think that most of pretenders pretending to take part in early expansion had something wich makes them not useless. Even taking 9-10 dominion is not worthy if you have a pretender without fright,regen or immortality.It would be interesting to see statistics of usage of pretenders. I bet 80% of them are never requested (unless just for experiment, and only once). I think it should be some conceptual reform for pretender. Don't say how, but maybe separate tread is to be created and discussed?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I came across a few bugs when going through the .dm:

These guys all have a typo: should be #stealthy instead of #stealth
Son of Fenrer
Master Druid
Arch Druid
Wolf Lord - Sporsnjall (just listed a second time incorrectly)

Lord of the Forest
(This might have been deliberate). The readmes (back to 1.3) all list him as being 50 points, but the mod sets the cost to 75... same as vanilla. It appears that it's just always been wrong.

Lady of Love
(This also may have been intentional, just undocumented) The "reduces unrest" effect was reduced from 100 to 25. There isn't any mention of it anywhere. It may not matter though; it doesn't seem like it's that useful of an ability. Taxing over 100% still kills off population at the same rate, as far as I can tell. You just don't need as many patrollers.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

And Son of Fenrir is still spelled wrong, but what can you do?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

IIRC, patrolling kills population, so at least bandits, rebels and other trouble makers are spared. :p

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Awe on the phoenix means that the enemy troops take a little bit longer to kill it, meaning they have more time to clump up around him, and that he has a much better chance to get a spell off at close range. Flame eruption does more damage than a pyre explosion and costs less fatigue if you're F3 or higher.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just got an idea to make the Panganea and Man spell songs to actually do something. Currently those spells are just too niche to really do anything (except for Soothing Song, it can occasionlly be useful). What if we made them into "cloud" spells that lasted say 2 turns? The current AoE's could be reduced and still have them useful. I admit that there are some spells that could be problematic (Tune of Growth mostly), but you could make it "def resists" to keep it balanced. I think it's not much of a strecth to assume that the haunting melody of the song could have an effect even after the caster has "stopped" singing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Minor request: Could the Hero Blade be renumbered higher, say like 850 or so. This would make combineMods.py work better with it without having to figure out a crazy multi-line regex for one item in one mod.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Did anyone ever actually bother to do a chopped up version of CBM 1.6 to Pretenders, Spells, Nations, Heroes etc?

If they didn't, I've got a chopped up version though all components use the CBM Complete banner and some have been mashed together (like Pretenders & Scales). Also placed the CBM Indies in a separate mod so that it's easier to use Better Independents with the other parts.

If anyone is interested in making the banners for the separate pieces, it'd be trivial to post them.


Also, one note of complaint:

Any weapons and armor definitions should be at the very beginning of the mod before any monster or spell modifications. This helps avoid mod bugs. Especially in a project like CBM where not everyone wants to use everything, it would be easiest if that section was first, because then copying and pasting it to all the necessary chopped up sections (Pretenders, Nations, Spells, Independents) would be much easier.

As it is, chopping things up was a real hassle yesterday.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

A call for opinions.....

Assuming this is possible for CBM to do, what do people think about the idea of swapping LA Man's starting gem income of 2 Nature gems for something they can actually use instead.

Since having now checked to be sure, it appears LA Man are the only nation in the game who have a starting gem income that does not match any of the paths on their national mages. This seems mighty odd to me, as they'd surely be better off starting with Fire, Astral or Earth income instead of the Nature they currently have (to go with the 2 Air they also get).

Plus this change would bring them back in line with the matching "starting gem income-national mage" relationship that is standard for every other nation.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Will the next version of CBM actually ever be released? To me, it looks like this excellent mod was forsaken by its creator. Any news from him?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Have blood sites been removed somehow or am I just really unlucky ?

I haven't found a single blood site in two games playing with the current version of CBM.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Not in my experience. I've been getting them with CBM in a number of SP games.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Just my luck then ... damn.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

They might be considered an exception that proves the rule, like pythium getting 8 gems in MA.

But then I think pythium should be taken down to 5 gems as well.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

For balance, sure, makes sense.

For thematic reasons, though, there should definitely be nature income because after all, it's basically sites taken over from the now departed Tuatha. The fact that the impudent usurping humans don't comprehend how to best use and control the ancient faerie magics is perfectly appropriate.

I oppose this on thematic grounds.