Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

Is it deliberate that carrion woods is now in CB a level zero spell, or is that a bug?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

It appears to be intentional. The code:

#selectspell "Carrion Woods"
#researchlevel 0
#fatiguecost 5000
#pathcost 0 5
#pathcost 1 4
#end

The intention is to drop the research level to 0, increase the nature gem cost to 50, and drop the spell requirement to N5D4.

HOWEVER, there is an error! #pathcost was used instead of #pathlevel (#pathcost is used for pretender design). Thus the spell is still N6D5. Assuming N5D4 is intented, the correct code should be:

#selectspell "Carrion Woods"
#researchlevel 0
#fatiguecost 5000
#pathlevel 0 5
#pathlevel 1 4
#end

I like that it's a deliberately level-0 spell. LA Pangaea is supposed to be crawling with undead animals & manikins; in vanilla that won't happen until well into the late game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

Well, it could also be a 0-level spells to figure out if the changes work. I doubt it is in this case, because the actual spell isn't changed, only requirements and cost, but you never now.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

Yes, level 0 is intentional, #pathcost obviously is not though, thanks for spotting it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

1.21 with various fixes and a little new content up.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

Great! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

QM:

Did you attach it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.2
 

It replaces the old .zip files in the first two posts.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

CBM 1.21 forging reference is attached. It contains 2 .pdf files.

The first pdf, "Single Path Forging Reference," looks like this:
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/9...pathkn7.th.jpg
Under each of the 8 magic paths, all the "single path" items are listed, grouped by the magic-level needed to forge them, and color-coded to indicate the needed Construction level (blue = Const0...red = Const8). Items that boost magic paths are italicized.

The second pdf, "Dual Path Forging Reference," looks like this:
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/8...pathvf3.th.jpg
It's a consolidated matrix that groups all similar "dual path" items together, includes the path requirements, and follows the same color convention as before.

EDIT: Removed Carrion Woods "Fix"

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Actually, even though I forgot to fix that bug, I had decided to scrap the path level change anyway.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Removed it from the download.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I find the Tartarian gate at 25 a little too expensive, unless I have more chance to have a commander or maybe the level (D8 or 9 ?) should be decrease :
To make a tartarian factory, you have to plan this since the beginning : high Death pretender, maybe Construct 8 for +4D, Enchantement for Lich and Gift of Health / Reason, ...

But with an overpriced Tartarian Gate, nobody will try this strat in MP.

I think 15 gems and -1 to the casting level is better.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I still think it may be overpowered. Reall small price for what you can get, other similarly powerful beings are limited in number and cost a lot more gems. And they are not so easy to cast either.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

There's not much to aim for in late game. Tartarians, Abominations and Iron Dragons, only Tartarians having a chance of being commanders and full slots.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

As has been stated, tartarians have no real competition, I can't imagine them not seeing action in the late game at 25 gems, or even higher.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

but they need very high level of Death, it's very difficult without a special pretender of the unique artefact (+4D)

perhaps decrease the price of abo and iron dragon ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Even with steep requirements it seems people are using the tart strat often and it's extremely effective, so it's arguable that they (and the other two big guys) are too hard to get.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Tartarians are not that hard to get late game, you hardly need the 3d artifact. A liche with a staff, a skullface, and a ring of sorcery (or the book of black secrets, or the robe of the magi) can cast it. And it's quite possible to bootstrap your way to liches with even a little bit of death. The whole process is even easier if you can trade for some items.

Making abominations cheaper doesn't help much of anything, they already get used often, and it's not like they are any kind of direct competition to tartarians. Iron dragons I'm actually not a big fan of, I might be open to a slight price drop, but it sounds like they are getting used as is.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I have a request for the next version:

Please fix the oh-so-craptacular Champion's Trident (the piece of junk you "win" in the Deathmatch competition).

It's currently not a bad weapon - 2 attacks per round & +6 defense - but it's certainly not worth risking a thug over, and definately not as good as several readily-forgable weapons.

I think simply giving it a life-drain should do the trick, like a wraithsword. The coding would be:

#selectweapon "Champion's Trident"
#partdrain
#end

I suppose I'm really asking that the Deathmatch be fixed. Right now, Deathmatches tend to be populated with impotent indy commanders, because the only real benefit to winning is the chance at a good Heroic Ability.

Conceptually, Deathmatches should be populated with thugs, not commanders. I'd personally be comfortable risking a low-level thug (Bane, maybe?) if the Trident would really improve his frontline capability.

Thoughts?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I seem to recall Quantum saying that he doesn't see a problem with the Trident. It already gives quickness, so it's not useless, and it's not meant to be a key for your ultimate victory. In that regard, it's an easy way to send an expendable unit to try and claim the experience bonuses and a free magic weapon.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Do you agree?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I agree! In Fallacy and Testament I was the only one to send a champion, and it was only AI nations that thwarted my plans to snag some gold. (You do get a bit of gold too, right, don't you?)

In both cases I sent a diseased crippled commander. Got chopped up by the god of the monkeys in Testament, and a lousy assassin stabbed me in Fallacy.

I think the trident would be used more if it was one-handed. It's the loss of the shield that kills it for me.

I've tried using the Wraith Sword (from Bogus) on thugs, but it just doesn't steal enough life to keep them alive, and again there's the problem of giving up the shield.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

???????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CARRION WOODS AS A 0-LEVEL SPELL???!!!
What kind of madness is THAT?
And, damnit, Wild Hunt still a 5-level... A spell do decimate expensive mage-priests, or AT LEAST stalemate the enemy forcing him to assign best troops as bodyguards (and even that wont help most of the time) - as a FIFTH LEVEL?
I've used it against Mictlan, I had it used against me as Tien Chi, heck, its quite powerful for a 9th level spell.

Oh my God, Carrion Woods as a 0-level spell.... what have I signed myself for!...

P.S.
Malaya Druzhina with composite bows. Good job, the only real damage dealing melee is now useless too. Slavic heavy cavalry didnt use bows, they were charging whith lances and swords. And slavic foot archers used composite bows as well. But oh well...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Uh,.. I think you're hugely overrating wild hunt and carrion woods there. They kinda suck. Wild Hunt does very little to the overall game to help you and pisses people off so they attack you, for instance.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Tell that to mictlan and marverni, who were losing their expensive druids and capitol-only priests of whatever (sometimes with magic boosters for forging or sanguine rods for hunting) each turn to my Wild Hunt. Did it suck? For them, probably. Mictlan lost without even giving me a single fight - with Wild hunt, constant Earth attacks and ghost raiders I denied him blood hunting.
As for carrion woods, it DOUBLES Pangaea's already endless hordes of chaff, making them even more capable of dealing with thugs and armored guys.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

You could have inflicted far more damage using the gems/global slot/mage time/research elsewhere, is my feeling. If I had wild hunt cast against me I'd mostly ignore it, maybe toss some bodyguards on some high loss commanders.

I'm not very experienced with Carrion Woods but to me it seems like a weaker version of the non national spell. Haunted Woods is it?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I could?
Well, would you ignore the fact 2-3 of your 400-gold mages die each turn? Seems to be a sure way to sound defeat if you ask me. And I needed that research anyway, for ghost raiders. Now for the gems invested, you tell me what would be a better investment, seeing how this spell was killing several expensive mages each turn.
Carrion woods, AFAIK, turn each killed maenad into a manikin with sleep wines. One of my friends was playing against a Pangaea with this enchantment up - maenads were killing his Tartarians. Is that not good enough? Now imagine that on turn 10, when you have no Tartarians.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Aren't you confusing Carrion Woods with Haunted Forest?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Carrion Woods creates the nation-spesific animal-manikin. It turns Pangaea into Ermor-lite, with dominion transforming population into freespawn.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

In my 'question Of balance' game I created a pretender build in order to cast Carrion Woods. Doing so is pricy. Not only do you need a Prentender that has both nature and death, you need a high dominion, and a life scale in order to make the spell effective. In order to make this build, I had to give up blessed centaurs. But we will see if the spell is overpowered at level 0 or not. But at level 0 it does make Pangaea a lot more interesting to play.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Oh yes, no doubt it does. Ghost raiders at level 0 would also make Helheim and CTis a lot more interesting to play.
P.S.
My own pretender has death and nature, and very good scales. I fail to see the 'sacrifice'.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Dominions II had a theme in which Pangaea started the game with Carrion Woods as a dominion effect. They had Nature/Death mages and level 0 national spells for summoning the Carrion lords and ladies and critters that now have to be researched. I don't remember how good it was considered, but I doubt level 0 Carrion Woods is as big of a problem as you think. It kills off population, reducing your income and your capability to recruit normal troops or mages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Playing Mid Marignon, I had the AI cast wild hunt against me, and if I recall correctly, it only works in forests, so it's not that hard to avoid having your mage priests killed (quite annoying though).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Isn't it a bug with lvl0 Carron Woods? I think they should be lvl 7 or 8.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

It is intended, so as to make the casting of carrion woods easier and more of a thematic choice. (never used it, so I don't know if it is worth the gems)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

It's worse in the forests, but attacks can happen absolutely anywhere, including your own capitol. There are no domain or terrain restrictions afaik, except for attackers strength maybe.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

On carrion woods: This spell only carries the vaguest resemblance to haunted woods, which I agree is extremely powerful. Carrion woods gives you a few manikins and gems in exchange for your population dying, haunted woods turns every singe unit that dies (friend or foe) in battles in your dominion into a manikin. I'm honestly not sure I'd cast carrion woods right away if I had the gems and pretender to cast it from turn 1.

On wild hunt: It is indeed forest only, or at the very least it was in dom2 and I've never seen it occur anywhere else in dom3. Given that, it seems rather niche, unless someone you are at war with has a capital in a forest. Still, I wouldn't mind bumping up research a bit if other's share your opinion.

On longbows replacing lances: That was a bug, I thought I fixed it in 1.21, but it may have slipped though.

On the trident: I send pretenders and mages into the arena mp, though I know I'm in the minority. I wouldn't mind boosting it a bit though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Have you considered giving lance bonus to magical spears?

Also, I like CB more and more. I haven't played Dominions in a while, and when I started looking at it again I noticed how few pretenders really were useful. Anything compared to Prince of Death seemed so weak... I guess I'll try CB games when I get back to actually playing again.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Maybe you should restore Bone Grinding, my 8D mages spam it a lot and butchered there own army, unless there is a hint for prevent that ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I have to say that while making LA Agartha's top level necromancers capital only is perfectly fine because those guys are completely nuts, the second tier mages should be stepped up a bit because as it stands you're paying something like another 40 gold and taking a unit with old age for all of one level of priest magic, which is pretty situational. Something to make the choice between the two non-capital only necromancers a little less obvious would make sense I think, maybe more death/earth so that they could summon nearly as well as a ktonian necromancer, but no fire so they couldn't bust out the crazy evocations as much.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

You have a point that the servant of the oracles doesn't have a lot of use as is... a d/e random might even things out.

As for bone grinding, I must admit I hadn't anticipated that being a problem. One doesn't usually have that high of death mages lying about without a script, and I would have thought the very high fatigue would discourage AI use in any case. If it's a common problem though, I could certainly change it back.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

I'm almost certain that you've covered this before - and I'm not questioning your decision, because you're far better than me at this game - but what was the reasoning behind removing sacred from all Niefelheim's recruitables?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Here's the Niefelheim code.

--Niefelhiem EA

-Hurlers
#selectmonster 1305
#def 9
#end

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 845
#clearspec
#coldpower 1
#cold
#coldres 100
#fireres -50
#end

-Jotun Spearmen
#selectmonster 1303
#end

-Jotun Javelinist
#selectmonster 1304
#mor 13
#end

-Jotun Skin Shifters
#selectmonster 1310
#gcost 90
#end

-Jotun Herse
#selectmonster 1301
#gcost 50
#end


By using clearspec sacred and other abilities are removed. qm then puts cold immunity, fire weakness, coldpower and chill back,.. but the chill is 3 rather than 15, which is a huge difference. Also no sacred put back.

I'm not sure if this is intended or not. I doubt it is. I'd never realised how nerfed the niefels were in this cbm, anyway.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Niefels without sacred is like pizza without cheese. Toast, basically. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Removing sacredness is most certainly not intended. I did intend to lower the chill, and it's unfortunate that it is not possible to set custom chill levels.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Something I just noticed as I'm about to start a CB 1.21 game as MA Ulm -- the Piercer item was changed to requiring 1 level in earth only to forge.

Maybe I am alone in thinking this is unbalanced..

The Piercer was one of my favorite missile weapon items in base game.. with this change.. I mean.. wow!!! I am loving it as Ulm, but I sort of feel bad for those who will perish utterly under a rain of Piercer fire.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Well, I have yet to ever have something important die to a piercer (or any magic bow), but maybe I'm in the minority. Rest assured, if they start cropping up everywhere I'll take another look at them.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

You are probably right that it won't make much of a difference for most races. But, you have removed the major barrier that prevented MA Ulm from mass producing them early on.

Now I will be able to mass produce them as soon as I get the research. Ulm will easily be able to get.. I dunno... 10-20 of them in their armies by turn 20-25. SCs and thugs without air shield will get shredded.

But maybe this is not such a bad thing. Ulm needed some help against SCs.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21
 

Yeah, maybe now they won't be so obligated to take a SC pretender of their own. And it would be fun if people actually bothered with air shield items on SCs.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.21 (feedback)
 

I started to test CBM and had a big surprise (and critic) : how/why was it decided to boost more astral and death magic with a discount on mass enslave spells (master enslave and more arcane domination and undead mastery) ?

When other changes look good for me, reducing levels and costs of the most endgame spells of the best paths make IMO balance worse, especially when they are astral spells not supposed to be usable without some mages in a communion (and available so late that you can be sure the caster will have all penetration gear he can carry).

Even if the boost of master enslave looks small it may reduce by 4 or more the number of mages the weak astral nations need to use it (ie : to cast ME with as best astral mage one S4 -boosters counted- you need a 8 slaves communion + one mage casting light of the northern star in base game ; you just need 4 slaves + LNS with CBM ; if your best mage is S3, you need 8 slaves instead of 16, etc). And worse, it become easier for common mages of the nations powerful in astral to cast it out of communions (natural S5 with 2 boosters, S4 with 3, S3 with 3 + support from a mage casting light of the northern star) when in base game the same mages usually need a communion with 4 slaves, all needing to start with S3 and to be supported by a mage casting LoS to survive the fatigue.

The bigger discount on other mass enslave spells allow to chain cast them easily in a communion, making armies of magical beings or undeads more dangerous for their owner than for his ennemy in endgame (of course if the ennemy has astral or in the case of undeads, is a communion capable nation with death mages -it's a boost for Ermor and Utgard vs. non astral death nations).

Mass enslave spells are for me already overpowered in base game as they are in the spell category allowing round one victories in defense against big armies (if you can cast them with full penetration gear before the ennemy can cast antimagic he usually stands no chance to recover). Even at 8 gems ME is very cost effective compared to anything else and limit the armies usable against an astral power to forces of SCs and mages only. So I'd rather nerf all mass enslave more than boost them (S9/900 fatigue for ME, and lvl8/800 for the specialized mass enslave spells, would look better for me, making them not usable without a big communion or specialized pretender).

Now, I've not played a lot with CBM, so enslave boosts may compensate other changes (like more effects for summons which mostly concern non astral nations). But I think, due to the power of round one casting in defense, it would be generally better to avoid to make instant effects affecting the whole battlefield easier to cast or more powerful.

(As well, in the "round one battle winner" category, I think something should be done to reduce the efficiency of rain of stones (limiting the effects to 50% of the ennemies, making it avoidable with defense or air shield if doable, or increasing the cost/requirements a lot). Rain of stones (or worse RoSx2 or 3) cast in round one in defense essentially mean all ennemy 10hp / 0 protection mages will be dead if the ennemy hasn't spend about 10 gems to give a good armor or robe of shadows to each, when in endgame the defender can protect all his own casters with one fog warriors or army of something before the RoS.)