Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Theme is totally fungible. For instance, you could just say Man's engineers found a way to convert its energy into more useable products (which is why it produces fewer gems than it used to). Man may have inherited the land from the Tuatha, but they are a nation of engineers who construct great machines (siege bonus engineers!) and likely make other great structures - surely this has consequences. And as their engineers are also mages, who's to say their engineering only affects the mundane world - someplace as important as their capital site they have had much time and likely expended much effort transforming it to suit their needs.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Those same thematic grounds don't seem to apply to well to other nations where the gemtypes lurch around between eras anyway.

MA Ulm directly follows on from EA Ulm, so where's the nature income there? You're talking about a LA nation vs an EA nation, but I'm saying there aren't even site connections between many MA and LA nations.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

After doing a bit of testing for the UWGIM, I realized that Phantasmal Warriors can get repel-killed. In fact, this seems to be one of the main ways they're killed in normal combats, as they only have 1hp. This seems excessively silly and Phantasmal Weapons should have a length of 6 to prevent this from happening.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Why is it silly? As soon as they're hit, the target realises they aren't real, because they're passng right through the weapon. Pop, they vanish.

Phantasmals aren't supposed to be good.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Simply saying that Phantasmals are supposed to suck is I would think the exact opposite of what this mod is trying to do--to make more strategies viable. As is, in Legendary Ordeals I killed Ulm's God with an unequipped ninja because the AI decided to spam Ghost Wolves. My ninja managed to actually hit one--and the other 7 Ghost Wolves killed themselves with repel. That...isn't right.

The flavor text actually says that they're difficult to hit, and the mechanism of their Phantasmal Weapon is that they only deal damage when their opponent believes in the attack. It says nothing about them disappearing at that point. And guess what? They actually are pretty hard to hit if they don't kill themselves via repel.

There should be no reason that Phantasmal Warriors etc. should work strangely better against Wolf Tribe Warriors than others. It isn't even a hard fix, and it would give the spells the actual ability to tie up enemy troops.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'd be ok with boosting them to length,... what are they on the graphic, axes? Length 2 or 3 or 4 if it's a spear I guess. But length 6 doesn't make sense. Neither does length 0, I admit.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It's a pretty brutal limitation though. Maybe add a gem of another type or replace one of the Nature gems, representing the weakening of the power of Nature under the curse?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I found a typo in the mod file:

#selectnation31
#hero5 2840
#end

I did a quick search of the thread, which didn't turn up anything, so apologies if this has already been brought up. And I'm most certainly very sketchy on modding knowledge and how forgiving the game is about syntax, so apologies as well if this is one of those no-big-deal, the-game-reads-it-properly-anyways things.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

And yet another report.

I posted a while ago about how the change to Rams Head the White Satyr, one of Pangaea's heroes, removes his ability to summon Satyr Hoplites.

I just figured out that it does the same thing for Iszvat the Unwinged, EA Caelum's hero. Yeah, I know, Temple Guard suck, but nonetheless...

In case anyone else finds this bothersome, here are the fixes for both (repeating the Rams Head one for ease of reference):


For Iszvat's entry:
#makemonster5 1289 -- re-enables Iszvat's ability to summon Temple Guard

For Rams Heads's entry:
#makemonster5 230 -- re-enables Rams Head's ability to summon Satyr Hoplites


Am I correct in concluding from this that you can't mod any aspect of an existing unit that has a #makemonster summoning ability without eliminating its ability to do so (without specifically re-enabling the ability as done above)?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I believe removing summon allies from heroes was intentional, and was done to all the heroes who previously summoned allies.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It was pretty damn boring. I'd rather they were all artificially inflated up to be thugs, frankly. Even if sticking enc 1 or reinvig and elemental resistances and boosted hp on some mortal doesn't make total sense, I figure it's cool because hell, Beowulf ripped the army off grendel. See what I mean? Heroes are legends. Legends, despite being mortal, are not constrained by mortal limits.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Okay, for people who may like to use different portions of the CBM mod but don't want to use all of it, here is the solution to your problems:

Conceptual Balance Mod v1.6: The Piecemeal Edition

You can download the mod from here. The same location also houses the Better Independents mod, the Dom3 DB and the Faerun map.

I have copy-pasted the text of the readme file I created for the CBM Piecemeal Edition (included in the zip file):


------------


The CBM 1.6 Piecemeal Edition contains the (almost) unaltered CBM 1.6 mod, but it is chopped up to sections. The complete CBM version is also included, but uses a different banner than the original CBM complete. Some minor things have also been fixed in this version (see below).


CHANGES AND FIXES

• The selectnation31 typo for the Locksmith hero is fixed.
• Duplicate entry for Pike has been removed from weapons section
• Weapons & armor changes are organized so that modifications to existing weapons and armor come before adding new weapons or armor.
• All weapon modding for existing weapons selects them by weapon number instead of name
• The weapons and armor section has been moved to the top of the mod code in the complete version. This was done to ensure maximum compliance with good modding practices, since weapons and armor are more basic entities than units. Any new ones must be defined before being used by any unit, so moving the code to the beginning guarantees this.

BANNERS

All mod banners for the CBM Piecemeal Edition were made by Ballbarian. You can customize the pic for the complete mod if you like, because there are several alternatives.



SECTIONS

Each section deals with a specific aspect of the game:

• Pretenders
• Scales
• Spells
• Nations
• Items (two versions)
• Heroes (the old Worthy Heroes plus modifications)
• Independents

All sections of the mod except Scales contain the fixed weapons and armor section to guarantee compatibility. Any changes should be done in a single mod and the entire section replaced across all the sections.

There are two versions of the item mod:

• The "GG off" version makes the fever fetish, clam of pearls and bloodstone artifacts
• The "GG on" version leaves them unaltered

The CB Independents mod contains all the CB modifications to independent units, which allows mixing and matching for better compatibility with other mods such as Better Independents.

The Worthy Heroes mod sections and its subsequent additions during the course of CBM development have been renamed CB Heroes for the sake of simplicity.

The site mods to Whispering Woods and Farm of Plenty are included in the Nations section. Since these changes do not assign altered or new units and only change the rarity, they are placed out of order in terms of mod command processing (see modding manual). This change does not result in anything being broken.

There is a combo file that combines the Whispering Woods and Farm of Plenty site modifications, pretenders and scales all in one file named Gods & Scales for convenience. This is originally for my own convenience, since Pretenders and Scales are the portions I most frequently use.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

What's the actual benefit of this? The drawback is that it makes renumbering trickier.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Existing weapons, as in those weapons that were already in the vanilla game. E.g. Short Bow (#23) and so on.

I did not change any references to the new weapons or how weapons are referred to in unit code.

The way I understood the renumbering to work, that was only relevant to making mods compatible with each other, so it would only be an issue for new weapons that the mods added.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Ah, only changed existing ones. Gotcha.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

My thanks for the great work done so far on CBM. It's a real achievement!

Would it be possible to request a "deluxe" edition of CBM? - basically a CBM bundled with a few falvor or gfx mods such as:
- Streamers and Standards
- Community Sprites
and possibly:
- Endgame Diversity Summons

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Actually I was planning on doing pretty much exactly that.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sounds great llamabeast. I'm looking forward for your release. I hope this bundle will ultimately be considered the standard for MP & SP games. I will probably use it for each and every of my future games :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The MA and LA mod combos have streamers, cbm and endgame diversity already.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yes, I meant to mention: Sombre's combo mods could also pretty much be considered standard for MA and LA games, as they have a good combination of mods rolled into them. They additionally have nation mods, which you can use or not use as you prefer.

I have some ambition to include cut-down versions of the community sprite mod and possibly the magic site mod as well. "Conservative" versions if you will, which contain only elements that I think the large majority of players will be happy to have included. Going through the magic site mod might be quite hard work though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sombre, I love your mod combos but what I had in mind is CBM with some gfx and flavor mods but w/o nation mods. Like Vanilla game on steroids. The Community Sprites is really nice and I'd really love to see it included in CBM/CBM combo. Same for streamers.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Those mods don't conflict with cbm though, you can just enable them on top of it.

You can also just not enable the mod nations in the packs, if you don't want them.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Can somebody tell me which sections of the mod deal with removing the Summon Allies ability from heroes?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That's the strange thing, Rookierookie -- there doesn't seem to be (from analyzing the two entries that I've put the summon ally ability back into) any actual command that does it. It seems, then, that modifying the units without specifically re-enabling that ability does so. If that's the case, then it's simply a matter of knowing which ones are supposed to have it, and manually re-entering it for those who prefer it. (And it makes me wonder if, in the sprite mod, I'll need to watch out for that -- if merely changing the sprite for a unit could unwittingly disable certain abilities of it.)

But my Dom3 modding knowledge is extremely rudimentary, so I am perhaps missing something. Someone else would need to verify this technical bit. (I understand the points that have been made as to the possible intentional nature of the removal and the undesirability of it from certain viewpoints, but in spite of these I find my own preference on it remains as is.)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Name one of the units that in vanilla has summon allies and in cbm doesn't.

I'll look into it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You right and you are right - But the same could be said of CBM, you could pick and choose every which part you like. There is merit to a consolidated bundle of mods beyond that of the picking of different parts. A consolidated mod is also a recommendation for which mods work well together. Its also much more convenient to have a bundle than to start picking 5-8 separate mods before starting a new game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Much appreciated, Sombre.

The ones I saw were Ram's Head the White Satyr for Pangaea and Iszvat the Unwinged for Caelum.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Neither of those units summons allies in vanilla, according to both the Wiki and Edi's DB.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Unwinged

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/White_Satyr

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Indeed. That's what I figured.

What's happened is they had summon allies previously in cbm. And now they don't.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Damn. You're right. Bad assumption on my part.

The summoning ability for those commanders must have been in earlier CBM, I assuming all the while that they were vanilla, rather than a change introduced in CBM and then later removed from CBM.

Well then. Never mind my half-baked theory on that. Go on about your business, nothing to see here. :o


EDIT: (I saw Sombre's post after I wrote this.)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

New, more systematic to ballancing nations.

Since CBM is the main mod for ballance improvement, I think it is a proper place where strategic balancing of nations should be done. Approach, which I see now is quite simplistic. It would be cool if someone knowing dominions, and main strategy templates of all nations, and counter templates from other nations would make some look of obvious holes.

For example as Ctis, I just was smashed by S9(+ some minors) bless Lankas.
Twist fate makes Cti's tramplers ineffective, skellyspam is sound like an answer, but it was always just not enough spammers. And it was very hard to protect provinces from raiding by lanka's thugs. Ctis's PD is something terrible and N+D magic is not a best kind of magic for supporting troops. It was just overkill.

We can take men against giants, etc. Any nation with any. Then to generalize it to some common templates and then look at each nation which seems vulnerable to each template ,if it has counter strategy at all. I believe that the game is ballanced, when you always have some counter strategy, not connected with diplomacy.

I mean approach should be systematic. Maybe a table of nations, with commonly used strategies of each agains each and counters. If they exist. It would help to create a frame, though which we could see better what nation on what stage of a game against which nation needs some method.

One of templates can be expansion for each nation. Some nations, with a single bless expands very fast, and others are in pain all this stage, and it is not necessary because they are stronger in other game stages.

So the answer of CBM can be an answer to major templates, used by players in MP against other nations + during expansion phase.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The thing is militarist, CBM has never really been about inter-nation balance, except for really egregious cases. Instead, its been more focused on intra-nation balance, trying to make it so that different troop/commander choices within nations are all equally valid.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Might i request not bundling standards and streamers? its not like it conflicts with CBM, and I would prefer not having to find the standards and streamers bits solely to delete them. Its already silly enough having a blanked copy of the standards and streamers mod.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

This isn't really true. most of the 1.6 changes were inter-nation balance focused. CBM seems to shift more and more to overall balance from intra-nation balance as time goes on.

Basically, I wish people would stop trotting this out as an excuse not to fix things. The goal of CBM is to have people be willing to make a larger variety of choices, and that can just as well apply to nations as units within nations or magic items.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Squirrel - it is possible that eventually CBM will one day reach the standards you're setting for it. However I expect that day, if coming, is a very long time off. Why don't you try your hand at modifying CBM and making your own balance mod like chrispedersen did? It's unlikely you'll get as many people playing your mod as CBM has, but you can at least start your own games under it. And you'll be able to play the game you want that way ;)

QM has been known to add parts of other mods into CBM... a la no gem gens, UWGIM, and worthy heroes. If he likes some of your changes they could end up being included in CBM as well. All you have to do is a bit of modding.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just realized that Jomon's Tatsu might actually have a niche if you gave them H2--their flavor says that they follow one of the Five Paths, so they could be like flying Monks of the Fivefold Path. They'd still be niche, but at least they wouldn't be completely useless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I think there is only one possible use for Tatsu - cheap flying thugs which can be used without investing in additional equipment. It is just a matter of making them more cost-effective. Maybe if they are made cheaper and a bit more tough, or given the ability to self-bless...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Just started getting acquainted with CMB 1.6 and so have got a question.
Why does the Skratti pretender (Blood 1, new path 10, dom 1) with slightly above 30 hp and human stats cost 50 points while the other rainbows either cost 0 or are greatly improved (or both) and the immortal(!) Bog Mummy (B1D1, dominion 2, better stats) costs 110.
It's either I misunderstand something or it was not covered by the mod.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Not sure, that does seem a bit expensive for how CBM would cost it. Should probably be more like 30 points, honestly. but maybe there's some reason for it that I don't immediately comprehend, either.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Maybe he is supposed to be able to change shape like normal Skrattis do? Then the extra cost would make some sense.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Added a mod tag to this thread.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I doubt CBM will be updated anytime soon. Unless QM comes back into the fold.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I specifically asked QM about it when I was doing the balance mod. (Where I had changed the value and suggested the same to qm)
His answer, as I recall it, was that it was fine as is.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Anyone ever found Fire Snakes FAAR to powerful for only 9 Gems ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

No.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sometime in the next few months I should be returning to work on CB. I do apologize to the many of the people who commented in this thread as there are a few too many comments to respond to individually.

Also, when I do return to work on it, the mod/discussion will probably be located at http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?. This actually has less to do with the recent ban spree than earlier even less defensible actions such as the de-modding of Ich, the creator of the wiki.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sounds good! You could start a preliminary CBM1.7 thread or something like that there already, possibly copy some suggestions you feel worthy of implementation from here to there if you're not keeping the project here.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Kailasa I think need changes. All it's summons, whithout which it just can't build a ballanced strategy are astral, and late. The fact that they are astral could be fixed with clams to which Kailasa had great access, but with CBM it has no such option. And Kailasa is really weak in the early game, unless you take blesses, worthless for endgame and paths for pretender which he just don't need otherwise. I would propose to make 2 changes with them - 1st - to make all national summons 2 research levels earlier, and second - change type of gems needed for these casts - it would be reasonable to switch some to N,W and E fro S. And to leave only top summon(s?) in S. Otherwise without nexus, it's just not realistic to have these summons in MP. And to cast Nexus, you already should be winning, so that's not a realistic case.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I disagree with you there militarist. The monkey nation summons are the same for all ages, and I think they should stay astral themathically.

It would be much better to balance the monkey troops a bit so a non-bless strat becomes doable for all the monkey nations.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The monkey nations can fire up all sorts of fun gem gen globals anyway and alchemise that stuff into pearls. I don't see what the problem with that is.