Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

Another issue that has arisen for me... this time with Marignion, and honestly all cavalry. The Royal Guard is so far superior to the infantry units that marignion has to offer now so as to render them almost completely obsolete. While not exactly Vans, the Royal Guard massed and backed with crossbows is fearsome. With the production costs lowered to half of what they were before on both gold and resources, there is no reason to build anything other than crossbows and these broadsword cavalry.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

Yeah it seems all cavalry in CBM was improved. This has resulted in heavy cav, which I thought was powerful enough already, becoming absolute monsters.

Of course light cav is now useful, which is a good thing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

Here's my overview and summary of the mod; to be edited and hopefully distributed with the ReadMe if QM desires in the next version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

Thats one of the better explanations of CB that Ive seen.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

It's a very good summary, I don't quite agree with some of the explanations, but a slightly edited version will be in the next release for sure.

On heavy cavalry, I agree they were good base game, but they were very uneconomical to mass. So naturally the indies that have them are tough, but as far as the player recruiting them it was rarely if ever viable. Mostly because of the huge barding costs with no in-game effect.

I agree that Marignon basically only needs one kind of melee troop to go with crossbows, but I disagree that the royal guard is the obvious choice. One problem with heavy cavalry is that it tends to be significantly more vulnerable to battle magic than infantry because of the high gold density on a square, and easier to hit with single effect spells. In any case, it's certainly an improvement over base game where you pretty much only needed crossbows. That said, it's quite possible they need some price tweaking, but so far I haven't seen an eruption of heavy cavalry armies in CB games.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

The Royal Guard Cav seems balanced to me now, but the marignon infantry seems now a bit too weak, mainly because of the high resourcecosts.

I think it would be fair to reduce their resourcecosts 20-30% too.
Then you would get 2 infantry or 1 royal guard.
Would seem fair, the 2 infantry would be slightly cheaper regarding gold costs and overall also be slightly more powerful compared to the royal guard probably, but have the mobility disadvantage.

Because i only share QMs opinion about battlemagic in the last post to some degree. My reason for that is that the Royal Guards have 23 AP, the infantries only 9-10.
So they are exposed to enemy artillery spells before they can do damage for a shorter while, usually only 1 turn before they engage in melee with the enemy troops.
Then the enemy troops might also get hit hurt by friendly fire battlemagic.

And if they survive they are fast enough to kill some mages if the enemy army routs whereas the infantry is too slow so they only rarely kill fleeing mages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

I've a quick question - was it intentional to add a spell, "Summon Spectral Infantry" to Early Abyssia, that none of the national mages can cast without empowering them? Fire and Death is fine and all, but I thought there was some consensus that national spells should be castable by national mages, and _none_ of EA Aby's mages can ever cast it - not even a 10% or 2.5% chance of it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

They have a hero (smoulderghost dude) that can do it, I believe.

Also note that without empowering etc LA Ulm can't get its vampire counts.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

If I remember right, Early Age Yomi has the same problem. Few (if any) of their national mages have the path requirements for their national spells.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00
 

Yes it was intentional... but it was also IW's doing not CB. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

That said, as Sombre says, if you have worthy heroes running too there is a pretty good chance of getting a fire/death hero.