Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

It would probably be best if people other than QM did not release versions of CBM using the numbering system.

Just name it something weird like, GAME_NAME-CBM 1.4

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'm with Jazzepi there. It's all been very confusing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

But llama, I called it cCBM1.44. Your eyes are as bad as mine =P.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Has anyone suggested a nerf to the lovable Frost Brand? I think bumping it to 10W would help increase thug/SC weapon diversity.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

God that's even more confusing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

he's stuttering

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'm with vfb on the Frost Brand. It's very underpriced imho.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

If QM changes it though, countless frost brand fanboys will lynch him. It's a hard job being the master of CBM.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

My Mictlan Priests keep fatiguing themselves out by casting Sabbath Slave and Master. They don't cost a blood slave to cast any more so that is why the AI is prioritising them too highly. I think it would be better if these two spells were not cast by the AI.

Frost Brand is under priced, but probably should not be the same cost as a Fire Brand. Many undead have cold resistance whereas fire resistance is less common.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I would rather see all brands moved to construction 6.
They are pretty much the pen-ultimate weaponry, why shouldn't they be at the next to highest tier?

I don't think Fire/cold damage is overly important as a divisor, they'll each be better in different in situations (vs Undead/Abysia) rather consider that Fire Brand also has armor piercing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

1) Frost Brands are Expensive

Bzzt! Wrong. Incorrect. There is nothing special about them.

2) But what about Crossbows?

Crossbows pwn Frost Brands! For example, see your mum. LOL


I have many more points.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I concur heartily.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Me too. His logic and argumentation is irrefutable.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Methinks, Control spell that doesnt require an astral pearl is OP. Ungodly powerful. Compare it to the Mind Control - it requires no pearls as well, but its S4.
Also, it sort of screws constructs too much; they are supposed to be immune to such tricks unless you script your mages for control and give them pearls; in CBM they are, in fact, MORE vulnerable to mind controlling than anybody.
P.S.
Control is also down to S1 from S3 in CBM, so ANY astral mage can spam it. That's just crazy.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Personally, I always thought that Control should be harder to cast (ie- S5) and cost no Pearls. If it's to be brought down in power, it should retain the gem cost, for a semblance of parity of effort/effect.

I would have to agree with Kuritza, that there are 2 problems with low pathreq, and no gem cost, the first being that lower MR Magic Beings will become completely useless, as they will get grabbed immediately (far greater problem than with mundanes which are everywhere, so you have to use Enslave more tactically), but also even if the Magic Beings have very high MR, as many do, the AI may sit and uselessly spam Control when perhaps there is something that might be more effective, like Stellar Cascades.

That reminds me, maybe the Fatigue Damage on Stellar Cascades ought to be reduced slightly? Not a lot, mind you, but with a certain critical mass of mages, it becomes the most brutally effective spell against anything with a decent MR. If it is not quite as powerful, more thought will be required as to whether or not to script it (or just reduce the AOE or Precision? lowering Precision may be the best answer, it should be hard to focus the light of distant stars, no? ;) a reduction in Precision would make it less of an "I win" against low number high power opponents, without much eroding the usefulness against massed troops).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I was going to post that I think Vampire Lords are too cheap in CBM, @44 slaves, but I see it's now @55 slaves in 1.4.

So, thanks for already including this in the update! :)

Now how about those Frost Brands, huh?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Does CBM alter blood slave production in any way?
I have B1+SDR/B2 mages getting 16 slaves a turn sometimes. I thought you got (1d6+Blood level) slaves when you blood hunt?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

No, you get (Blood Level + drn) in slaves. Bear in mind, the DRN is 2d6 -repeating on 6s-, while the drn is 1d6 repeating.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Frost Brand fanboy here - QM, back away from the keyboard! What else am I gonna do with my water gems - start clamming? Never! :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

CBM gives douse bonuses to bloodhenge druids.
My version tones it down a bit, but gives a bonus to the skratti pretender.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

In the chronicles game I noticed that the mercenary cavalry (hector's heavy cavalry? I think that was the group) had the normal hoof attack instead of warhorse hoof. Bug or WAD?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

If it's any help, the units used in Hector's Heavy Horsemen have the ID 292, and he has ID number 293.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Another small thing: Evening Star I think has too low research. I'd say it should be on a level with main Brands (4), not 2 which allows very easy construction of pretty brutal thugs very early...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Would it be possible to make the spell "enliven statues" summon attentive statues for MA agartha instead of the normal ones? (bit like iron pigs for marverni) Or to add a similar spell that does? That would be a thematic way to make the nation a little more powerful to balance the nerfs of Umbrals and Risen Oracle (which I suppose are aimed primarily at LA agartha)

I would also give their giant sacreds long spears, that would make them a bit less crappy.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'm fighting Executor's leftover AI Sauromatian army in turn 80 of World in Crisis, and an AI D7 witch king killed himself and his vampire army with a couple Bone Grindings (he wasn't carrying gems). He probably would have been much better off spamming Disintegrate. The AI really likes Bone Grinding if it can manage to cast it, even when it's up against an army of high-HP thugs and SCs where no-one has MR less than 18.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

It's pretty easy to mod a spell so that the AI casts it only when scripted. Make Bone Grinding a personal buff spell that gives haste or something other insignificant and the #nextspell the real effect.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'm sorry for double posting but I need to clarify this statement (Damn I hate the new editing system).

There is a bug in this system, since if the caster already has Haste, he won't cast the spell even if scripted (since the AI thinks that the hacked spell is just a personal buff to give haste). So that means that you can't cast this spell twice in row, since the first casting gives you haste. There are workarounds over this:

1) Make the haste effect mr easily negates. Since most high level casters have ridicilous mr, they will basically never actually get it, but there would still be a problem of some friendly casted "Haste" on the caster (unlikely, but within the realm of possibility)

2) Make it mr negates easily and make it give Twist Fate + haste. Now even if the buff affects the caster, the bone grinding will likely wipe out the "Twist Fate" effect and the only way the AI won't cast it is if the caster has Haste and Twist Fate both active. I really can't see that happening by accident.

I have the solution 1 working on a single spell in my Alugra mod on a spell that heals all fatigue but blinks the caster (I really didn't AI casting such a risky spell unscripted). QM, if you're intrested I could start testing the solution 2 on bone grinding.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Why was Bone Grinding dropped from 100 fatigue to 99 anyway? It wasn't like no-one was casting it in Vanilla, at least in the games I played.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

is the version in the first post the latest of this?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I can confirm this is true. I played in a game with Ermor, and I had something like 4 thousand troops on the screen, and the r'yleh player had it setup to cast the undead enslave spell. The caster who had been buffed by the communion just cast bone grinding multiple times instead :P

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Poopsi - I think so, yes. The versions labelled 1.41b, 1.41c etc are in fact confusingly by chrispedersen. 1.41 is QM's latest version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

So, is there any chance control will revert back to normal in CB?

Amongst other things, ape nations are simply castrated by a 0-gems, 1S Control spell; take monkey summons away from them and they are left with low-quality troops and mighty monkey PD (tm).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Just realized Control is now a 0-pearls, S3 spell.

Still sucks to be magic beings reliant or use golems against a free Control. Now there will be less stupid deaths amongst raiding Golems encountering a lizard Shaman, but still its not hard to get an S3 communion with just S1 mages and charm all magic being thugs and SCs on the battlefield.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Isn't control mr negates? I would think a golem would be pretty damn hard to control

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

If your opponent has good astral, I think magic duel is a much worse plight for you then control spam for the golems.

There's no resistance roll for duel.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Yikes! Do NOT bring this up, please. I'm trying mightily to banish that memory to the depths of my subconciousness. :hurt:

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

That entire game was epic fail on the part of the AI. I lost more than half a dozen battles with HUGE Ermorian armies because my wind mages thought it would be a great idea to cast arrow fend instead of mass flight the latter of which would have flown them over the castle walls in a heartbeat.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Duel requires a pearl and is dangerous for the caster. Control does not and is not.
Furthermore, CB 1.41 doesnt exclude magic duel; it gives yet another option for dealing with magic beings.
Btw, poison golems cant be magic dueled, yet they are very much controllable.
Magic resistance fails surprisingly often in real games. In Querty, I've seen Devils fail MR 25 on the second check or so, twice in a row. So when you have a whole communion of lizard shamans spamming Control, there's a very, very fat chance all your magic beings within melee range will happily desert. Good luck fighting with markatas without supporting thugs. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Setting up big reverse communions of lizard shamans is a pretty big cost in and of itself. I don't know anything about this control problem in CBM though so I definitely can't disagree. It's true that mr checks can be really weird.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Change lizard shamans in my example to stargazers, star children and whatever cheap national S1 you like - it will get much cheaper.
I just dont understand why Control should be easier to cast than Mind control. Its not like magic beings need yet another single-target counter.

Better buff Unravelling somehow for the purpose of beating massed magic beings; right now its competly useless. Puts 'decay' effect of magic beings (they tend to have 1000+ lifespans, so good luck getting ANY effect with that) and feebleminds your own mages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I have to say, I seem to do pretty okay with Bandar Log without _having_ to use the Gandharvas. Of course, I do play SP, pretty much.

I do like running around with an entirely Abysian army, though. And using a Warlock Apprentice to bootstrap me into Blood.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Is there any documentation for CBM? The idea of the mod is great, but it's a bummer that the changes cannot be seen anywhere.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

There should be a readme that comes with the mod files.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

there is! the .dm is the mod file and the .txt is the readme.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I see, unfortunately I didn't take the split file which contains the readme files. Thanks.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I meant that there was one, not that there isn't and should be one. Sory if I wasn't clear :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

With the new patch out is there an update in the works?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Yes (though it was already in the works), hopefully I'll have time to polish it up in the next few weeks

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Summary: The zip in the first post has been changed slightly, but there's no need to download it because the change is very minor. The Blindlord bug is fixed though, so you may want it for that reason.

---

Long version:

I have modified CBMcomplete_1.41.dm in the zip in the first post, with QM's permission.

Due to the slightly different way that dominions loads mods in text mode, the original version was not compatible with the llamaserver; I fixed it at the time and ever since the LlamaServer has been running a different version to all the players. Being as the change was very minor this has never been an issue, however it can affect spells in mod nations, and has now done so in Lapis.

So, I've tidied the LlamaServer version and uploaded it. I also used the opportunity to fix the Blindlord Air-8 bug. He now has Holy-1 as intended.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I was looking at the prices for some of the blood summons and was confused by the prices of some of the spells.

Bind Fiend costs 2, Bind Devil costs 3, Bind Frost Fiend costs 2, Bind Storm Demon costs 3, Bind Demon Knight costs 5. Ritual of Five Gates costs 28 slaves (13 more than the individual summons), requires 3 more blood than the individual summons, and requires 2 more levels of research.

I'm sure there is a reason that Ritual of Five Gates costs almost twice as many blood slaves as the individual summons, but I can't think of any other than the reduced amount of mage time required.

A similar issue arises with the level 9 spells: Infernal Forces (50 blood slaves for 7+ devils), Infernal Tempest (50 blood for 7+ storm demons), Forces of Ice (50 blood for 8+ frost fiends), Forces of Darkness (50 blood for 14+ fiends). Infernal Crusade (50 blood for 10+ knights) is the only one which potentially presents a cost savings.