Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

MA Ulm could probably use some more help, but they can now equip black lords with Hero's Blades to counter a lot of stuff.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Iron Angels are weaker than they would be with Blood Stones, obviously, and they aren't as good as I remembered them as. :(

Tartarians are more expensive (in both initial and summoning costs), but Iron Angels can't withstand much damage at all... Well, at least QM's last comment reminded me about a nifty little thing: Iron Angels are size 4! That could work well with the hero's blade.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

QM, any chance of some help for Eriu? I play them a lot so I'm biased but a while back you rated nations and I think on your own scale you rated them as weak. Great raiders only take you so far...

Edit: and Eriu is a clam capable nation so they should get compensation for eliminating gem gens. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Thanks Q! Is there a list somewhere of all the units that spawn stuff?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

What's the big deal with a handful of freespawn? None of them make them in sufficient quantity to really matter.

Mother of Lions and Lord of the Gates both freespawn. I'm sure there are more.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Depending on the version of cbm, the spawn by the Lord of the Gates is *not* trivial.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Im trying to balance out the AI's for my single player games. All of the nations that have pretenders and units that spawn such as Lord of the Gates for Ermor just steam roll over all of the other nations.

It would not be a big deal if it were just a few free spawn but unfortunately a lot of these units begin to pile them up in droves after the game gets going.

Another example if you get two Jotun heroes as Niefel and you are cranking out 4 free hirdmen a turn. No AI nation can handle that unfortunately.

Lots of other examples like this. Ctis, Sauromatia, Ulm, among others...

I began to notice this pattern when the same nations were strongest in every single game I played.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Well, some nations are supposed to run on 'free' units. LA C'tis and LA Ermor are prime examples - its not free if it takes mage turns to call them. (Ie, animating undead with undead priests, or calling gibbodai with the EA Rlyeh priests).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yes I have no problem with these type of situations...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Eriu can now take advantage of the wonderful naiad warriors. While not replacing the end-game clammin ability, a front of 30 naiad warriors who have fog warriors cast on them is just *mean*, and gives Eriu helluvalots of staying power.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yea, all the way to the first Golem they encounter. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

P.S.

Oh well. Actually, I am tempted to play one game with CBM 1.6 after all, to check Eriu with no gem gens. It may well be that Eriu will actually be stronger without them, with recruitable thugs and all.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Seems that Golems are just a waste of 30 astral gems unless supported by a proper army. Hero bladed thugs everywhere, and they just *love* to meet Golems (have your Golem yet met five flying banes with hero blades? it's not pretty if you're the golem...). It's not good to be a lone Golem these days, and without clams it is quite hard to amass Golems, so the only way is to have a real army along the few golems you can afford.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Didnt see these 'hero blades' yet. New weapon, custom made to slay SCs?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

From the first post of this thread:

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Lets hear it for Hoburg Champions!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Good work with the new CBM QM,

Something that caught my eye couple of weeks ago is why the Clockwork Horror exhaust "ability" hasn't been changed in the CBM so far. Maybe it has been discussed in some of the earlier version release notes.. Recently I've just been wondering with friends if the whole exhaust 15 is really necessary for them and would the drop to exhaust 10 or even 5 make them that much more powerful?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Wow. :)

Let me know if any nation with weak military ever wins without gemgens and SCs. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I don't really see how cbm removes SCs. The hero sword is good but I think there were already comparable forges available. It still requires a delivery system - probably,.. well,.. another SC.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

There are a few thing I don't like here:

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.

2) Tartarians -25% hp. I'd rather see reducing their numbers in games, than nerfing them further. I think that increased gem cost would be a better thing to do.

3) Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.

5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.

6) Tomb wyrms got fear - this could be overpowering.

7) Kailasa capital only mages cheaper, and all sacred troops -5 gold. Kailasa doesn't have money problems, I could always buy all the troops I needed. And besides, their sacreds work better in small groups, you don't need many of them. Reducing prices of celestial summons is what is needed because of the clam nerf.

8) Naiad Warriors too cheap, could be overpowering.


So as not to appear to be just criticizing, I will state some of the changes that I particularly liked:

- Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items
- Midget Masher doing AOE damage
- Juggernauts with awe
- Heroes improvements
- MA Oceania now gets mermages in coastal forts and Capricorns only lose 1w when out of water
- MA man wardens and lord wardens everywhere.
- EA Arco engineer recruitable everywhere

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I have to disagree. I play Pangaea, a lot. Over half of all the games is with Pans... Anyway, in vanilla I would be an idiot if I didn't take the Gorgon. Not because I *need* it, but because it is ridiculously cheap, and it would be pure idiocy (or pure role-playing :) ) to take anything else.


Just out of curiosity, which is the nation that uses hoburg champion thugs to overrun enemy provinces? I fail to see how any other thugs would benefit against PD's using a two-handed anti-SC weapon (it is my experience thugs usually avoid two-handers like the plague, and prefer Vine Shield + one-hander to take provinces), but I am known to be slightly dim and slow at figuring things out... Hero's Blade is *nice* against big SC's, but even then it is more or less the weapon of a kamikaze warrior (especially if the opponent happens to field a proper army instead of the SC you expected to meet, as without a shield those thugs of yours are just deat meat walking if confronted by a (more or less) "traditional army").

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Some good concerns there, Psycho. I too am worried about possible unbalancing effects from hero blade; but that remains to be seen.

however, 20gp may well be too much, as Sauro traditionally depends so heavily on these guys, but equating them w/ c'tis slingers is way off base. C'tis poison slingers have low range, and then tend to rush forward when the opposing forces retreat, right into their own clouds, and then die. I have yet to see this happen w/ Anthrophag archers :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Poison archers also benefit far more from buffs and deal a greater amount of poison damage in my experience. The main difference is the range/friendly fire issue though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

A few miscellaneous question/observations.

1) You specify 2 different cold aura values for Niefel giants, one right after the other:

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 8
#end

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 10
#gcost 600
#end

2) Why remove the Living Pillar hero?

3) Summon Likho cost bump - was anyone actually summoning these? Please do tell? At 2D, I *might* summon one in a pinch as a scout/black-heart chassis...though still probably not.

4) Why the size increase for cyclops + corresponding Tartarians? Is this because of the Hero blade changes?

5) If you want to make the headless hoburg marginally more useful, you could equip it with one of the new hero blades instead of the sword of sharpness it has now.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

@Jarkko: Gorgon has the same starting paths as pans. She will bring almost no magic diversity to the nation. That is why there are many other good choices. As pangaea you especially miss astral. I don't see the Gorgon as being so uber powerful.

I didn't mean that hero's blades will be used to conquer pd. :) Just that they will make those nations with good thugs even stronger, because in addition to their ability to make huge-scale surprise attacks, they will be much better against SCs.

@archaeolept: OK, probably not a good comparison, but the point remains. Like you said they are Sauromatia's driving force.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

And sauromatia is just sooo weak. With these nerfs I just can't see any reason they'd be competive in MP. [/sarcasm]

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Why shouldn't they be competitive and a top nation? I am sure everybody sees Sauro as a very powerful nation and it wouldn't be hard to convince someone into dogpiling Sauro. It could be a problem for a Sauro player if this conviction remained and the nation got nerfed.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Actually, this makes more sense than boulder throwing. The crossbow is a compact ranged weapon capable of being fired from one hand and used as a shoot-and-discard weapon for moderate distances. The crossbow saw extensive and preferential use historically by otherwise melee troops because you didn't have to load it before hand, and could quickly drop it after firing to grab your melee weapon. (see accounts of the crusades, for example).

Not needing to be drawn meant it could be used in confined spaces, including inside castle interior spaces (which, let me tell you, aren't any bigger than tunnels most of the time).

So the use of a crossbow by cave dwellers is perfectly sensible, although underground they should tend to prefer more powerful or more compact crossbows with less accuracy over long distances. Joining the surface world could easily have taught them to reload in combat (greater distances involved), volley fire, and the essential aspect of long range accuracy.

edit: Dropped an 'h', stopped making sense

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

This is a big reason behind cheaper pans.

I considered lower gem cost, but I was convinced that would give tartarian troops less of a niche, and make GoH and the chalice that much more critical.
Well, thugs could already holy scourge vs. a very large percentage of SCs. The aim here is to give human-sized nations an option against giant nation's natural SCs, which lack weaknesses like magic being or undead.
LA Agarthan humans use them, and frankly 4 types of troops (all infantry) outside the capital is just not enough troop variety.
As Arch said, poison slingers are not a good comparison. 20 gold is maybe slightly much, but they were definitely abused at the old CB price.
I would be extremely surprised if this were the case- 20d gems for a unit that spawns one per turn.
I could look at the summons too, but gold boosts are always helpful.
It's possible... but I can think of very few traditionally strong nations that can make good use of them.

That looks to be a rather nasty bug.

Because he was neither very interesting or very good. Hopefully I'll replace him with something better eventually.
This was a request by Baalz. He found the event causing quite severe.
Yes, because of the blade.
That is a very good idea.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

If you wanted to buff Ulm just a little bit, you could make it so that Iron Angels' Divine Grasp attack is bonus, so you can actually equip them with weapons without losing it. As is, even putting on a different one-hander gets rid of it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That's a good suggestion.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The MA Agartha Kin-Breaker hero has some good flavor regarding Agartha getting completely owned on the surface world due to their outmoded cave battle tactics, so I think it makes a lot of thematic sense for Agartha to have adopted ranged weapons in response. Plus they really need the help.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Oh, and I disagree that no gens makes it harder for a lagging nation to come back, since the leading nation(s) will be able to break into wish cycling and Forge of the Ancients abuse much sooner than a lagging nation, furthering their lead. Gens do force more reliance on national units and gold though, so weaker nations do take a hit, but the solution to that is to buff the nations to get to a point of balance, which also leads to a lot more of a flavorful late game, since tart hordes and armageddon spam won't be the order of the day.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Err... Isn't this exactly what I said? Pangaea does not *need* the Gorgon, but at the price in vanilla it would be simply stupid to take anything else but an awake Gorgon.

I mean, if you are buying car and can choose a brand new Volvo for 50 bucks or a Ferrari for 2 millions, which one would you choose? Sure, Volvo isn't anything super fancy, it's "just" a comfortable, good and reliable car which is bound to get you where ever you are going, and if you'd get it practically for free...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Hopefully it is a bug, but Pangaea's CW costs now 90 nature gems and takes 6nature 5death to cast it. I thaught that it was ok in 1.5 to have it cost 50N and to be able to cast it 5n4d. In readme file there is nothing about this change.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Agreed. I liked the 1.5 version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

yeah, i hope qm addresses this soon. if its a bug, i really hope he fixes it very soon

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Blame Jarkko for abusing it in Forge, I think that might be behind the nerfing. =)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

he abused it in magellan too I thought it rather smart of him = )

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Ohohoh, look, my name is mentioned! :)

Anyway, CW in CBM prior to 1.6 was slightly over the top, I just wonder why it hasn't been used more before :) Anyway, it's not like Pangaea needs it, but it certainly did open up totally new options for EA and MA Pangaea :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'm intrigued. I tried abusing it in SP and found it rather ineffective. What was your trick?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I think the CW cost was fine.

But I think it shouldn´t be available until LA, both balance wise and thematically.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Oh right yeah, I was trying it in LA. Maybe it's more powerful in the hands of the earlier Pangaeas.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

The "trick" is that in EA and MA Pangaea got (with earlier CBM's) Carrion Woods up on turn 10, latest. 5 nature gems per turn, and with high luck scale (there is absolutely no reason why EA or MA Pangaea shouldn't take Turmoil 3 and Luck 3) the 50 nature gems were collected even before turn 10. In fact, you could take your pretender sleeping, as with Luck 3 he is practically bound to wake up on turn 10. Add to that Pangaea absolutely *needs* Growth 3 in EA and MA (while the maenads are free, they still like to eat, damnit, and a horde of naked skinny women eat more than one would believe to be possible); incidently having Luck3 and Growth3 results in more of the better manikin, and you will be dancing in joy as those manikin elephants keep rolling out from the forest temples.

Now imagine you mix masses of maenads and manikin. The maenads basically autoberserk and rip apart the targets stunned by the manikin. Free stuff with high morale and stunning ability mixed with free stuff who go berserk but with crappy weapons (and when the opponent is already stunned, who cares what sort of weapon you are hitting with?). It doesn't get any better than that.

Carrion Woods is *much* less effective in LA in my opinion. First of all, fewer nature gems per turn, so you will get it up much later. Secondly, no maeanads to mix with the manikin (so either you send the manikin in alone and watch in horror the slaughter when the massed arrows and x-bow bolts hit your oh-so slowly moving dead plants, or you mix them with dryad hoplites and/or black centaurs and wonder why the heck you are spending so much effort on crap because the centaurs and dryads do just fine alone). Thirdly, dryad hoplites and black centaurs really ask for a (minor) bless strategy (and at the same time Pans get diversified to the other magic paths too, say for example W4F4A4 (plus 2 or 3 in earth and death) is excellent, as it gives access to all the astral stuff, staff of elements etc).

Summoning Carrion centaurs instead of getting CW up in LA is much more efficient in my opinion. The carrion centaurs will summon enough manikin to keep any snotty hostile SC's from walzing over your lands without proper support (becase killing lone thugs and SC's is the use for manikin in LA, if you ask me; incidently they are pretty good at that too).

Carrion Woods is an excellent tool *early* in the game. Later on the effectis minimal and even hampering (your population keeps dieing, and you really would need the tax-money for more of your dryad hoplites and black centaurs). But before others have massed evocations available, and especially in the not-so missile-troop-infested EA and MA, massed manikin mixed with massed maenads rock. So, in LA you can't get CW up early enough and you won't have the synergy with maeanads.


As it is now in CBM1.6, Carrion Woods is perhaps not worth going for; in EA or MA you can get it up on 18 (unless you get lucky with nature sites and/or random gem events), in LA you can't get it up until year three. It would be better IMO if CW was only available for LA Pangaea but at a reduced cost, as it would make thematically sense; being able to cast CW in year three makes absolutely no sense in my opinion, as by then you'd much rahter get up Mother Oak and Gift of Health. I seriously doubt anybody would seriously claim Carrion Woods is as good as Mother Oak and Gift of Health *combined*, but that is the situation where CW is in CBM 1.6 :(

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Incidently, can globals have requirement for two types of gems? If Carrion Woods required 50 nature gems and 10 death gems for example, it would be basically impossible to get it up with EA or MA Pangea (alchemy could become handy though, but that would still push the first opportunity to cast), while not scewing LA Pangaea that much.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I don´t think there is any way to make any spell cost more than one type of gems. It´s too bad really, would open a lot of possibilities.

Why not simply reset the gem cost and remove it from EA and MA?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

In my opinion, it's always better to try and fix/balance a specific strategy, instead of completely removing it:)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

It feels kind of a weird spell for EA and MA but I guess if they can cast haunted woods, it's fair game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sure it is, in general.

But Carrion Woods and manikins is kind of the theme of LA Pangea, if it is available in all eras you remove the depth of the storyline IMO.

I think it is more important to make it worthwhile where it is thematically supposed to be, than making it "balanced" and half assed in all eras. Otherwise you´re breaking the game a bit.

An alternative would be to keep it low cost and no research for LA, and make another version for EA and MA requiring research and some more gems.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You could just #copyspell it and make it available for all ages but cheaper for LA Pan.