Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

I have not checked the thread in the other board, but has anyone noticed that zmey tail weapon and roc beak weapon both share #915.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

If he wanted to remove dominant magic sites he should have removed them all. Now that EDM is included, a 20% discount in ANY area can be gamebreaking. 20% const now that hammers are gone is too good. Not to mention the most broken site (20% alt) is still in. Really the only non-dominant discount sites are the evo sites and I say if you want to remove discount sites for balance you should go all the way.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Archers have been nerfed in several waves in the previous versions.
First they nerfed the general melee capabilities of archers.(att/def) This was somewhat justified in that it made flanking cavalry more effective and archers arent suposed to beat cavalry in melee. (Looking at the latest change log I cant actually find this so they might have reverted it again?)

Second they nerfed ranged units by making all common ranged weapons except slings and short bows more expensive in resources.

Third they made several units either more expensive or weaker. (Rangers of Ulm, Jomon longbows, bakemono archers (though they also got smaller so it evens out), more?)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Personally I don't care much about this kind of balance. Why? Because the game is in free for all form. If someone plays a powerful nation or get a good start the other players will take notice and gang up on him.
Also the random starting conditions and available magic sites means things will never be fair so what does one more random thing mater.
If a nation that was already powerful finds the ultimate gate? Well chances were that he would probably win any how. If a weak nation finds it? Why that might just be the thing that turns his game around! Making it harder to tell the victor in advance and making the game interesting for longer!

Either way, even the ultimate gate probably contributes less to your victory chances then your starting position. Take your SA lets play for an example. Ashdod, with all the god percentage sites in the first province they find, could not have salvaged Ermors terrible starting position.

Also on another note. I found both the bottomless lake (conj 20) and the ultimate gate (conj 50) in the same province. Unfortunately they don't stack:(

On a third note while I'm at it: Claymen really should be fire resistant. They are made of clay! Also golems are fire immune.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

looking at the first post changelogs for both 1.6 and 1.5 i am unable to see any sort of archer nerf besides the well deserved Androphag Archer cost increase. If you found this in the code yourself then okay.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Submitting forging suggestion for discussion:

Weightless Scale Mail : A2 -> A1

Moon blade : 2 handed -> 1 handed; S1 -> S2 or lower stats? (I mean, even sandhyabala has 1-handed moon blades...)

Ring of the warrior : B1 -> B2

Flesh eater axe : B1 -> B2

Bane blade (2H) : remove for slots? Would people actually craft this reasonably often over the 1H version with the new changes? Hmmm...

Bone Armor : D5 -> D4

Wraith Crown : D5 -> D4

Robe of Invulnerability : E5 -> E4

Frost brand : W1 -> W2, AoE dam restoration arguable

Lantern shield: D2F1 -> D1F1

Where I'm on the fence for in varying degrees, and where 1 lvl price drop seem excessive:

Amulet of Missile Protection

Rod of the Phoenix - Already used in games, but with hammer changes I think I may never see them again, even as a specific counter. FR and a leadership boost maybe?

Stymphalian Wings

Axe of Hate -(The fatigue damage is not AoE it seems, has to hit) - and honestly, I see kryss used as SC slayer over axe of hate 100% of the time.

Sword of Swiftness

The above with some exception (frost brand, blood items...etc) are items I've never or very rarely seen used in the MP games I played in (admittedly not very many... ), it's always the same ol' couple of items. The worst are weapons and shields, whereas armor and helm and to lesser degree boots are more varied. I wished more items are made more viable whereas there are some clear optimal winners now that everyone uses, in the footstep of herald lance change from S2 -> S1 in CBM 1.6 which was excellent. Given hammer changes, the never-seen items will probably get even more never-seen.

For frost brand, it just has amazing utility for an amazingly cheap price, AoE, decent weapon stats and CR 50 in a 1-handed package for 5 measly water gems? Objectively speaking its far and away better then most weapons out there overall without any doubt. Firebrand is likewise amazing and even heaps AP, but I can convince myself its a cross-path item bonus and already cost 10 gems.

As for blood items, maybe the blood hunt nerf is enough, but I still think 5 blood slaves for decent usable items are way too cheap.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

I hate that change.

I like the existence of unique magical sites that, if discovered, can radically change the game for the one discovering them. Sites that are so powerful that they can become specific targets for serious warfare if knowledge of their presence in a game spreads.

But then, I hate most of the changes made in CBM until now that do not either attempt to address bugs or attempt to balance nations or pretenders by changing nation and pretender specific information.

The sweeping changes in CBM to more general gameplay aspects available to most or all nations tend to reduce the game's strategic diversity in favour of balance through reduced randomness and a general homogenization process of power levels.

Which may be great for the large scale games CBM seems principally designed for with players who don't like for anybody to gain a benefit that they haven't worked hard for, but does reduce the fun quotient somewhat for the smaller scale MP games I participate in. SDR and Hammers as uniques are another example of things where the changes don't make much sense when the scale (both in map size, number of players, and expected length of game) is smaller.

OTOH, since I'm not the one making the mod, I really have little room for *****ing. If this sort of thing is what those who play games on the Shrapnel boards want, great! I'll just do my best to try not to use it in the games I play. (I may well fail - we are using CBM 1.6 now despite my wish to stick with 1.5 :D)

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

I do wonder about the earth booster, though. Given that CBM has already killed off gem generators except as uniques, why was a perfectly good and fun artefact, the Boots of Antaeus, replaced in favour of a Ring of the Earth booster rather than stripping the blood stone of its gem generating ability and newfound uniqueness (the simplest solution) or, if such was impossible (if the gem generation was in the game code and couldn't be modded), why not choose to replace some low-priority magic item that is almost never used such as Boots of Long Strides or the Main Gauche of Parrying?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

You do realize this would obsolete Lightweight Scale Mail? Not that that's necessarily bad...

Moving to 1-hand would definitely open up to potential situational use...

Do people make rings of the warrior? RE: the axe - how would it then compare vs. the heart finder?

It would be worth it to keep the AI from forging them.

I think that 1H bane blade + shield is pretty much always better than the 2hand version, which leaves its utility down to units you were going to give a magic weapon to that don't already have shields and you don't want to invest another 5 gems into...

All of these seem reasonable, in light of hammer removal. However, consider the impact of forging the hammer of the forge lord or hammer (potentially + forge lord pretender and/or early FoTA from Ulm) to churn out the above items.

At that price, people might be include to do it just to get the corpse candles at the edge of the field.

Note that at 2A it's the same price as the air-based shields.

For the Sword of Swiftness, perhaps adding +1 or more attacks would be a better re-balance vs. a price drop?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

None of your suggestions can be done with dom3's modding capabilities You can't take gem gen off the blood stone, and you can't add earth booster ability to other items. QM is working within considerable restrictions.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

My sources for the changes are mostly the 1.5 changelog. Here is a few excerpts:

--Weapons and Armor--

-Crossbow-
Resource cost: 6 (4)

-Agarthan Steel Crossbow-
Resource cost: 10 (6)

-Composite Bow-
Resource cost: 5 (4)

-Long Bow-
Resource cost: 5 (4)

-Samurai Archer-
Gold cost: 12 (11)
Morale: 10 (11)
Precision: 10 (11)

-Ranger-
Gold cost: 13 (12)


I also found some more nerfed archers when I looked again.

-Vanara Archer-
Defense: 9 (10)
Attack: 9 (10)

-Bandar Archer-
Morale: 10 (12)
Attack: 10 (11)
Defense: 8 (9)
Hit points: 17 (18)

--Marignon MA--


-Crossbowman-
Morale: 10 (11)
Attack: 8 (10)
Defense: 8 (10)

--Sauromatia--


-Archer-
Gold cost: 11 (10)

-Ulm EA-


-Archer-
Hit points: 11 (12)
Strength: 10 (11)
Morale: 10 (11)
Map movement: 1 (2)
Changed short sword for dagger
Removed stealth

-Warrior Maiden-
Gold cost: 14 (12)
Precision: 11 (12)
Morale: 11 (12)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

You can't mod either the magic boost attribute or the gem-gen attribute. That means that you only had the Boots of Antaeus, Pebble Skin Suit, or Tome of Gaia to choose from as existing earth boosters; QM chose the boots, presumably because its accompanying non-moddable side-effects (the re-invigoration/regeneration) were easiest to address.

Otherwise you'd have either had trollification + stoneskin (in the case of the armor) or +1 nature magic too (for the tome.) Personally, I'd have gone for the armor, but that's because I find the mechanic amusing :-)

If he only had *NINJAS* working for him, they could slip into Illwinter's offices and insert the necessary code mods...alas.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Thanks! I suspected the first restriction but was ignorant of the second. I guess that in those circumstances it really does make sense to destroy one of my favourite artefacts (sob!) in favour of a generic path booster if it has been determined that a second generic earth booster is essential.

(I am tempted to argue that it isn't and wasn't because in the MP games I participate in only few earth magic nations ended up with blood stones anyhow, so blood stones were almost solely used for their gem generation capabilities by the few nations that could make them, but that is almost certainly a result of the smaller scale of the games I play in)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Dimaz, I like your suggestion re. making house rules to deal with gem gens instead of removing them.

I think same can be made for SDRs and hammers, so for example all my future games will have a 20 pieces cap per nation rule.

So, If you, or someone else could volunteer to make a CBM 1.7 version w/o these changes (gem gens, hammers + SDR) it will indeed be the version I'd be using when hosting games. I think if CBM had a technical way to enforce this it would have, but for MP games (with house rules) we can trust the players to adhere to the rules.

makes sense?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Yesterday when I was going to sleep I was thinking about how to deal with gemgens (if I had the code access) in some more or less balanced and flavored way. So these ideas can be considered as produced by half-asleep mind, but still...
Clams - they are supposed to concentrate astral magic from environment and solidify it as pearls, so they can be connected with the amount of magic gained from other sources (showed in the graphs). Something like Nexus, but connected to one nation. So you can get maximum of your pearl income + 1/2 of other gems income divided by some coefficient (4?), and if you have more clams they have no environment magic to grow the pearls, so they will either stop working at all or give you pearl with 10% probability. So for example with income of 20 gems of each kind (140 total on the graphs), you'll have max 20 clams working - big number, but not insane. As I understand another problem with clams was that they lead to turtling for nations that can forge them efficiently - and when your clam income becomes connected with "real" income, it becomes less of a problem.
Bloodstones - they seem to be connected with "earth blood" and the earth that constantly bleeds becomes dead sooner or later. So concentrating large amounts of them can reduce resources and/or supplies for the nation. Like, every BS subtracts 5 resources from each province of the owner. This way the ability to build units and later even mages becomes reverse proportional to the number of stones, so sooner or later you'll have to stop producing them (this will also give more importance to production scale). The only exception that I see is LA Ermor but he has problems with blood slaves so probably it won't give him big advantage.
Fetishes - they can start spreading desease when there are many of them collected in one place. So for example if you have more than 5 fetishes in the province they start to act as bane venom charm. This will increase MM however so probably there are more elegant solutions.
WL, I will join such a game if I'll still play Dom3 at the time (currently I'm a bit tired of it so maybe I'll take a break after my games are ended).

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Don't forget that another problem with gem gens in general was it led to the bad playing mechanic of being able to conquer all of your opponents lands, but in doing so only managing to cut his gem income by a tiny percentage.

And this, combined with the huge defender advantage of having 1st combat action a player gets during fort storms (especially with several wish casters on hand for master enslave spam), led to many situations where actually capturing your opponents provinces didn't get you anywhere near defeating your opponent, regardless of how many provinces he had. And any sort of gem income advantage you had over your foe didn't matter much when storming, since you could have double your enemies gem income, but easily lose 10x the gem investment when trying to storm forts.

I am no lover of the changes CBM 1.7 has made, but gem gens in general were bad for large scale games, and so did have to go IMO (although I guess probably not much of a problem for small scale games. But I've never played small scale games so I wouldn't know). Even game rules, that for example, allow one clam per turn # would mean raid-immune gem income of 175 every other turn from wishing alone by turn 50. (and good players would easily be able to safeguard their gem gens from assassinations spells, remote damage attacks, Armageddon's etc. So relying on them to deprive your enemy of the gem gen income is not a real option in games involving proper players).

I know I will never play another game with gem gens again (although this is just my own personal preference of course)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Calahan, your points are true when gem gens are unlimited. Limiting them by house rules to 10-20 makes them just flavor and extra boost, nothing more. It's the same as with LaD, why castrate it in CBM if we can have a gentlemen agreement not to abuse it?

I'm not a modder myself but I like that solution. If enough players would like that we could have games set that way.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

As someone who had over 400 clams in a single game, and pretty much concentrated every game on them until they were removed I have to say I agree with Calahan, one player could have much worse stats in the score graphs and still be the far superior nation.
However limiting them to say 20 max per game for example shouldn't have much of an impact. There are various magic site discounts that act in the same way, while they don't give you gems per say, you do sort of 'gain' gems when using them. A fine line is to be made here, I neither agree that gem gens should have been removed completely or let to stay, same applies to both hammers and SDR. Eliminating any one of them will just lead to new problems that will need balancing, eg. cost of items, thug usage, blood supremacy of certain nations...
So rather than eliminating them all completely a compromise should be made.
As for monitoring their usage, that is rather simple, once victory is achieved a player will submit random mid-late game turns as to confirm there was no cheating, and/or trowing away of items near the end.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Sure, but why deal with it? Removing gem gens, hammers etc makes nations more unique. And it's what we want. Tartarians should be removed too and national troops boosted. I really want to see nations being still same nations even in late game. Not some homogenous mass that specialises in S and D. And uses all E to make more and more hammers or gear for tartarians.

Of course this requires more solid changes in nation balance, as you will have to rely more on what you get, especially mages that won't be so easily boosted. CBM without same changes may be made if someone desires, but here we should just accept those changes and see how to make the game more balance with those changes included. So item/ritual prices/levels and national changes.

We all know QM does not like unthematic changes, so the room is really in:
- prices
- stats
- randoms [% chance]
- national summons [also: prices, stats, randoms]
- cost of forts/temples/labs
- pretenders [but really, are there any weak national ones still?]

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Ok, here is a fast list of items and pricing.


Items that could be 1 path lower and so much cheaper:
The Summit
The Jade Mask
Amon Hotep
Wraith Crown
Robe of Invulnerability
Bone Armor
Stymphalan Wings
Wall Shaker
Stone Idol [make it S1E2?]

Items that could use stat boosts:
Wand of Wild Fire
Summer Sword [?]
Rod of the Phoenix
Shadow Brand
The Tartarian Chains
Woundflame
Ice Pebble Staff
Staff of Elemental Mastery [someone would have to be desperate to get it as booster]
Wraith Sword
Standard of the Damned
Tempest [?]
Sun Slayer should autocast Darkness
Lucky Coin, Shield of the Accursed, Lantern Shield were already rarely used, now they are even less useful
Flame Helmet [remove exhaustion?]
Spirit Helmet - nice item, but at 15A rather too expensive, you can get Shishi for that...
Jade Armor - situational and expensive now
Aseftik's and Monolith - quite often nor forged at all even now, but at 15E they may be too cheap, so some boost maybe?

Not sure about other x4 items - no hammer means they are all 8 gems more expensive... and some of them were overpriced at 17 too.

BTW, maybe you should remove Sickle too?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Well, they do give that extra boost if you need it for a ritual spell and the two different versions do have some nice side effects when used in combat, though admittedly one is usually better off using a 1H of choice plus a shield or going dual shields.

For forging, they have until now been mostly useless except for the 4-armed pretenders, but if dwarven hammers are going the way of the dodo wielding a 2H while forging is no longer going to be major drawback.

They are damn expensive and I certainly don't relish the thought of forging one without a dwarven hammer but if you can forge them they are still a better investment than empowering for many mages.

Burn your eyes. Must everything with a strong unique effect be killed off to satisfy your cravings for mediocrity? :D

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

If you'd like to add gem gens back into the game I'd suggest using gem generating summons rather than magic items, since monster modding is much more robust than item modding. Some of the advantages:

Differentiation & Limitation: one of the problems with clams is that anyone could (and did) make them so they didn't just benefit the nations that needed them and that they were forged in quantities only limited by the game engine. If you go to a summons based system using unique national summons you could say, for example, that Jotunheim gets 1 unique gem generating summon, while Bandar Log gets 4. Or you could vary the income per summon so that nations that needed gem gens got more out of their summons. You could also generate gems other than S/E/F in order to better match the character of a nation.

You could also vary the cost/research level of obtaining gem gens. A weak nation might be able to obtain their first gem gen summon at a low research level/cost while a more powerful nation will not be able to obtain any gem generating summons until much later/at a higher cost.

I agree completely! And I think using summons to generate gems and even troops could help do this in a way magic items can't. As an example, what about a game setting that doubles your starting cap gem income, has a magic site frequency of around 20% and has gem generating national summons? Your gem income would be heavily skewed towards the paths of your national mages but you'd have some diversity in case you really needed a certain summon/magic item (and trade becomes more interesting since you won't necessarily have the gem income to forge some items or summon some units). As the game went on your gem income would increase but it would be in paths your nation specializes in. Of course you need viable troop and especially thug/SC options to spend these gems on. I think CBM does a good job making the various troop summons appealing and the EDM now provides thug/SC options in paths that didn't have them before (of course the ideal is national summons but not every nation has a good set of those). It's not perfect but I think it can be balanced. For example, one of the really tough things about death/blood nations is that they aren't impaired by darkness. You could remove Darkness as a researchable spell and allow D/B nations one or more unique summons that would autocast the spell. So it would be a tool but not one they could use on a large scale.

Reduce micro: instead of a clam generating 1 pearl and having dozens of clams you could have a summon generate several gems, making management of this resource easy.

Presence on the map: A frustrating thing about gem gens is that you can breach the walls of a castle that you know has clam holders and they'll just be transferred to another location. If the gem generator is an actual unit though it won't necessarily be able to escape. You can make these units of varying strength; perhaps some will be quite resistant to damage while others are vulnerable to even low level remote attack spells. Perhaps some are mobile while others are not. I think you can make the unit immune to being enslaved/charmed/etc so that while an opponent could eliminate your gem generating units they couldn't gain them for themselves (have to test this though). You could make them immobile, no leadership, negative magicboost - basically try to make it so all they can do is stay in one place and generate gems. It's not perfect (for instance you could prophetize them) but I think you could have house rules not to do that kind of thing.

Options: with the range of monster modding commands available you could do all sorts of interesting things. Maybe a summon that generates a large amount of gems for a few turns and then generates only a few gems but also dom summons allies? Or a D gem generating summon that also causes unrest and population loss?


Now the one problem here is that you can only add so many summons to the game. The next patch will help with this immensely. Until then, I still think you could implement something like this (I'd have to check to see how many free slots are available with CBM 1.6 or 1.7) though perhaps you'd have issues if you combined this with mod nations.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

I am a new player, and I must say. I am going to host my first few games with CBM 1.41 +EDM.

I don't much care for these radical shifts in magic items 1.6 and 1.7 have brought out. Although I guess I can understand that if you have been playing for a while change is refreshing.

Ideally I would like to see the CBM branch, with one copy staying as it is and one holding closer to the origional with these 6 items re-added, as well as possibly other changes.

It seems to me that that is exactly what has happened. Its too bad.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

I have played this game long enough to dislike anything that spoils the fun - the fun of playing different games. I just hate the late-game effect when every nation is the same. You seek earth gems to make more hammers to put more gear on tartarians. They make every game repetitive. And they give you nothing in exchange. Gemgens are about pure hoarding and being the best horder. If anyone wants that, then probably Dom is not the right game for him. Hammers and SDRs are about hording too - you just forge so you don't waste hammer time. SDRs make you want to forge it for every mage. They make you forge SDRs before making anything else with blood slaves.

So really, if you want to use that stuff and you don't mind late game being exactly the same for every nation, then spend few minutes with text editor and undo all changes that annoy you. It's very simple. But please, do not try to tell me gemgens are cool.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

I see a lot of talk about making "houserules" about gemgens. I gotta say that I do not see how those can possibly succeed. I suspect that finding someone willing to take the time to check the turn files is going to be very difficult, and i wouldn't be surprised if people who didn't believe they had a real shot at winning just decided "**** it, they won't check me anyways since I won't win" and ignore the rules. Unlike sickle farming, LAD abuse, or bogus orders, gem gen limits cannot be realistically checked in-game. Therefore I think such "house rules" are doomed.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Let me get this right, Zeldor: If people say that something that the game shipped with, but which you seriously dislike and consider a bad gameplay mechanic (such as gem generators, hammers, and SDR), is cool and wants to play with it then a) The game is probably not right for them, and b) They should not tell you that they consider it cool, because you know better.

I'll admit to being pretty arrogant myself, but I doubt I'd ever have the gall to tell other people as you are doing: "If you like the game mechanics the game shipped with, the game is probably not the right game for you". This may not have been what you intended to say, but it is what you ended up saying. :D

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Perhaps Zeldor's point would have been better phrased as "then CBM is not for you."

Sounds good, toss out lightweight and make weightless cheaper.

I'd say my suggestion falls short by a lot, for reference I always compare to the value weapons, in this case I'll pull out Kryss since it's same const level:
+ 2x attack
+ AP attack
+ Death poison
+ PR
- Const 6
- Cost 10 N

Moonblade:
+ 2x vs magic (I'd take just AP over this, less powerful, works on everything. same with 2x attack if less power vs magic but more versatility)
o Cost 5 S
- 2 hander
- Const 6

Really, I would make moonblade 1 hand AND give it either a) +MR b) slay magic or c) x3 vs magic creature, all of which are thematic and gives it an actual purpose. Up price to 10S with the above modification, and it would be a weapon that might actually be considered.

I know I forge rings and axe often when I have blood access (they do well together even) as they cost practically nothing and are very usable for super economic thugs and general thug deterrent. Axe gives unresistable chest wound! where heart finder gives MR kill, both have their uses (SC deterrent vs animal/low MR slayer). I know from experience how daunting it is in terms of using thugs/SCs to find enemy flesheaters + warrior rings liberally sprinkled all over the place (for a pittance).

Right, about the only time you might forge 2H is if you don't plan on a shield, but then you'd still go for 1H because of the option and versatility of adding shield. Considering the situation you would use baneblade for (not heavy duty anti-thug/SC surely), the damage boost from 2H doesn't seem that good most of the time to justify giving up shield possibility, maybe if you keep 2H bane in const 0 and 1H bane in Const 2 or 4, or a large boost to 2H bane like AP or 1 AoE horror +0 effect.

Indeed, but that is true for all items, FoTA is nuts before, it's still gonna be nuts either way. hammer forge lord, forge lord and hammer are all going to skew things before and maybe a little more with the changes, they are powerful for sure but each with their price (rushing const, taking forge lord and burning pts on him, declaring war on the world), and all things considered, I don't think that's a bad thing in general until proven beyond a doubt that it's broken as hell and most games are won relying on them.

Agree, it just might, and I'd be happy to see it instead of the usual vine, eye, gleaming gold and charcoal. changes to other never-seen shields might be in order too, so they can actually compete for player consideration.

a 5 gem cut seems excessive I admit, but then most things that can use missile prot amulet would rather tend to use various shields. I will agree there are rare cases where for slot consideration you may use this instead, but really, for 10 gems, you can get a very solid shield that both block most arrow and do a hell of a lot more. So... I'm on the fence for this one, maybe a mini boost? (50% LR? tiny def boost?)

Agree, 3 attacks would give swiftness actual use as anti-high def, or otherwise give it something or lower price, again compare it to Kryss:
same # of attack, no AP, no death poison, no PR, same gem cost (though using W rather then N), the only advantage is Const 4...

Same with axe of hate, you get a fatigue damage on hit which has its use, but would you trade it for kryss' list of utility for the same price? Though it does comes much earlier at Const 2, so I could actually see it stay as it is now when you need to kill something BIG before const 6 rolls around.

Edit: Zeldor's list looks pretty reasonable too, though I have little experience with artifacts (never gotten Const 8 early enough).

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Nation balancing: LA ryleh

Some more suggestions for discussion:

LA Ryleh has sustainability problems, in any reasonable sized game they hit a point rather soon where they can no longer recruit mages or priest as your population dwindle to nothing, which you need to wring any use out of the chaff. On paper the various ways to help with their income is:

1) Luck - a) inconsistent. b) luck income is hit by your maintenance cost before you can spend them, making most of the smaller luck income event meaningless.

2) Fire gem - Even with alchemy stone if you manage to forge it, thats 13F per mage, 19F without. If you can make this feastible in a clamless game, I salute you.

3) Summon mage - your V spectre cost 25S, has only 4S path with none of the utility you can get out of mage. Their cost reflect their purpose: to make things go insane rather then replace your mages as buffer, battle mage, researchers ...etc. Honestly, it's almost the cost of a golem, or an elemental royalty if you consider wish conversion rate.

Finally, their freespawn chaff have a gold cost of 1, meaning every 15 of them have a 1 gold upkeep. Why do they take upkeep? Maenads don't require upkeep, why are my junkies and crazies asking for gold?

Some suggestions:

1. No upkeep for chaff, hell if it was moddable I'd suggest -2 gold cost for that matter to generate gold and require decision on using them or saving them for gold income.

2. national mage/priest summonable, though I can see various problems and abuse for this. Perhaps a spell to change 10S into 500 gold? So you can actually switch to a gem economy (as LA ryleh certain don't have the choice of gold economy). Your "spell" income would still get hit by maintenance so you want to do multiple casting in one go, the upper limit imposed by gold economy is still there since your spell income gets hit by maintenance before you get a chance to spent it. You'd still be disadvantaged since others get gold + gem economy (or blood+gem), while you can only run on gem economy with "free" chaff to "compensate".

3. Dom summoned cultist can have higher/random paths, currently they can possibly get 1S and abit crazy to boot. I can frankly imagine hedge wizards and witches getting the dreams and turning to your cult, god knows my summoned casters and mermage slaves go bonkers fast enough. With high insanity on them it is already a heavy enough penalty and make marching armies in formation diffioooOOOO shinyyyy!

4. LA National summon spell to call a small batch of random void monsters, more for flavor then anything else. The power of the void grows and the star spawns can now open the gate anywhere given preparation (lab).

LA ryleh strikes me as dripping with theme and oppurtunity to enhance their gameplay (not more powerful, but more different / weird / thought out). The void takes a small role in MA, and supposedly in LA the void has become much more significant, Spawns receive great dream powers (dream of ryleh), their void spectres can be called back and the voice influence sleepers around the world. I could easily see global spell (In the vein of soul gate for LA Ermor and carrion woods for Pan) for ryleh and greater access to void creatures, and other unusual mechanic to make goldless Ryleh work.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Some improvements to Rlyeh are pretty easily moddable.
I'd suggest the following and then reanalyse:

1. replace water only free spawns with with amphibious. Mid+ you have no need for these troops, adn they become cost drain and micromanagement hell.

2. The immovable free spawns should be modded to other cthulu inspired units.

Personally my cbm mod replaced some of them with map move 1 dom spreading units.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Agreed. I also think all freespawns should be 0 upkeep.

IMO, a rare freespawn that is immobile and dom spreading would be cool. With movement I think it might be to powerful.

On top of that I'd suggest adding a silver mine or something to the capital, so you keep a trickle of gold after population is dead.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

If I understand correctly, and based on what I know with how the Artefacts game was setup. Limiting nations to a specific number of items can be modded (rather than use house rules) by giving each nation X starting commanders (who are immobile and die on turn 2) each equipped with whatever item you are limiting. With X being the number you want. And making the item unique (or Const 12) so they can't be re-forged.

My limited modding knowledge means I'm not sure if this has to be modded via map commands though, which might prevent it being an actual mod. (although nations starting commanders can be changed using a mod, so maybe commanders can be added as well, unless there is a hard limit of two)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Sounds great :)
Any idea where to start looking for how to get it done?

And come to think of it, 20 is too much, even for a large game. 5 makes more sense if the idea is to keep it for flavor only. It will also allow nations not to go out of their way in order to get those hammers. The only difference from 1 is that it's less drastic so instead of turn off the lights they are just dimmed.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

What's people's opinion on the different pretender prices?

... I'm thinking of the classic pretenders like Moloch, Prince of Death, liches, and Cyclops that I think aren't seen often enough now, as well as some high priced nationals like the Risen Oracle.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

IMO the whole point of hammers and SDRs is investment, so the idea of adding them at the start sounds really strange to me. In fact, I certainly prefer removing them completely than adding them at the start, as it will only make you scratch your head trying to utilize them most so rushing const will be even more top-priority than with vanilla hammers. Again, as i said, in fact I see no problem with vanilla DH at all, other than few individuals trying to promote their playstyle for everyone else. SDRs are a bit too cheap for what they do OTOH.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Valerius, this is a really cool idea.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Gem generating summons sound an interesting idea in the 'investment strategy' area of the game. But I think the only way they'd work is if each nation was given X national uniques as a way of limiting them. As I doubt house rules (the same as house rules for items) to limit their numbers would work due to genuine player counting errors, and intentional rule bending (plus all the other reasons TheConway pointed out).

And right now 10+ unique summons for each nation will likely overshoot the mod spell limits by quite a way (until the next patch comes out at least).

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

No idea sorry. I'm waiting until all my current games are finished before venturing into modding. (as I do have a few mod plans if I can find the time and patience)

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X number of Hammers from turn 1 might not fit that well into the 'investment strategy' area of the game, but it would still allow players to choose which gem type to use for maximum forging efficiency, and which type to allow some wastage with. Unique hammers removes that area of the game entirely (along with several others), so at least limited hammers would still allow some skill to remain.

Although the 'everyone rushes Construction' problem might be an unwanted drawback, but personally I think I'd still prefer limited hammers to no hammers. But I also think there is nothing at all wrong with Hammers to begin with, and I wasn't even aware anyone considered them a problem until this CBM version was released.


Right now I'm also firmly in the 'leave hammers alone' camp, at least until someone provides some truly creditable evidence to why they are bad. As the reasons I've heard so far for nerfing hammers is far from credible IMO, and seem more based on some players just not liking them, and/or not liking the extra thought required during design and play with regards acquiring them. In theory, I'm all for modding-out broken aspects of the game (such as unlimited gem gens), but not for modding-out things purely on the basis that someone doesn't like them. But I do accept of course that the owner of a mod is free to do whatever he or she likes. The same way everyone is free to use whatever mods he or she likes for in their games. So if you don't like the changes a recent version of your favourite mod(s) has made, then don't use it basically.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Dimaz, I just caught myself after posting with the exact same thought. However, if I were to choose between infinite hammers and no hammers I'm no leaning towards no hammers.
Imagine for a 2nd that there were items giving conjuration/enchant bonus. Then what, everyone would be forced to forge them. So if everyone forges them then it's the same as if no one forges them but with less MM.
Nations that suffer greatly from no hammers need to be addressed by CBM.
I think I have come a full circle and now am more open to accept the unique hammer change.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

This makes sense. I'm not a modder, so this may be a bad question, but would there be a way to limit the actual number of these "uniques" that could be "in play" at any one time for each nation?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

As far as I know, and I may well be wrong since my knowledge is limited, modding unique spells is limited to pinching and overwriting the unqiue spells from an already existing unique summom spell, as you can not 'create' a new unique summon spell.

I believe a lot of modders have used the Ashdod spells (for example) for their mod nations, since that nation is never allowed in most games anyway, so it's spell slot won't be getting used. But the Ashdod set of spells can only be used by one nation per game, (again I might be wrong with my knowledge of modding limits), which means it's currently not really possible to mod each nation to have a unqiue set of summon spells (unless it was a very small game, and all the other unique summons in the game were pinched and overwritten in order to get enough unique summon spells for everyone)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

It's possible to add new spells that summon a particular unique unit. It's not possible to add new spells that summon one of a set (e.g. a version of Tartarian Gate, or the Ashdod unique summons). If you want one of a set then you have to overwrite another set like Calahan says.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

1) Yes, this would need to be done via map commands vs. mod commands, because
2) Yes, you are hard limited to 2 commanders at the start (i.e. the starting commander + the starting scout.)

(I realize the discussion progressed past this point, but in case anyone was interested.)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

For reference, I believe the options for multi-unique summon spells are:

1) The various elemental royalty summons
2) The demon princes (ice, fire, heliophagi, demon lords)
3) The treelords
4) The Lords of Civilization/Grigori (Hinnom)
5) The Spentas (Caelum)
6) The Tlaloques (Mictlan)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Many thanks for clearing that up llama. So it would be possible (spell limits allowing) to give each nation 8 (for example) seperate unique summon spells (that generate gems for the purpose of this debate). Interesting idea. I have no idea yet on the merits of this, but as an idea it's good to know it is an actual option.

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

Thanks Stavis. I suspected nations were hard coded to 2 commanders :(

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

There's also the Jinn, Percival the Pocket Knight, Carcator and Holger the Head, but those are all from items, are singular summons (like Illheart and Banefire), and all but the Jinn are combat summons. Some of the combat summons might be unique because they come from artifacts, I don't really know; do they accrue experience?

Blood slaves are used if they are close to the caster, aren't they? If the combat summons can be used to introduce extra blood slaves they could be interesting as a means to ensure a constant supply of blood slaves in combat.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

It's not that easy in my opinion. Infinite hammers mean that you can invest some time and thought to improve your forging and get more magic items. No hammers means that you get no such opportunity, thus you have less items.
Thus, nations with blood and/or stronger troops (usually countered by equipping thugs) get stronger while nations such as Eriu get even weaker.

P.S.
Make LA Rlyeh freespawn truly free? Why not make LA Ermor freespawn generate gold as well? :)

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Regarding Ulm:
I think the 'boosts' Ulm got almost entirely miss the point.

Ok, the armor rebalancing is probably a good thing. Although Ulm's infantry still has a serious problem - their base stats are straight 10s. For a professional military, I'd expect *some* infantry soldiers with better than basic stats. EA Ulm has them, why doesn't MA Ulm? I'm not convinced the armor rebalancing does enough for Ulm's troops, since they were actively bad before, and now they might just not lose to tall grass, but i still have to couch that cautiously. Don't be fooled into thinking the armor changes make Ulm's infantry actually good.

Iron Angels should not be Ulm's focus, its troops should be. And with thugs nerfed pretty hard by the loss of hammers, i'm not convinced making them easier to acquire helps them all that much. But then, its been so long since i've actually seen one, I can't remember what they do.

Finally, FotA available at level 0 is laughable. On the one hand, there's little worth forging without construction research anyway. Otoh, casting FotA take a lot of E gems - gems they can't afford to spend very early anyway (or even if they do, then what gems are they going to forge with?). And since I expect Ulm will roll over and die pretty easily even with the armor buff, its just another reason to kill them early. (Not that a second capital is ever a bad reason to kill someone).

Regarding SDRs:
SDRs are a gem gen. They needed to go. The heims probably need to be looked at following their removal to help their chronic blood hunting problem, but no one else should be overly affected in an adverse manner. All the other real blood powers either have cheap(ish) B1 hunters, or B2+ hunters readily available.

Regarding Hammers:
I think this is a change that hasn't been thought through very carefully, and many nations need adjustments, potentially dramatic adjustments, to account for the change. Eriu went from bad to unplayable. TNN and the heims are also in pretty bad shape. The real winners? Nations like Mictlan who didn't really have a good way to get hammers before (because they took a non-E bless chassis and had no E national mages). Mictlan, of course, had no need of a buff, stealth or otherwise. (And no, loss of SDRs doesn't really harm Mictlan very much).

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Without SDR's a B1 blood hunter only has a (unconfirmed) 50% chance of successfully hunting slaves. Way to low chance.

With a SDR this raises to 90%. (Yeah, the percentages are influenced by the game settings).

Removal of the SDR just makes it very hard to blood hunt with B1 hunters. So these b1 mages are now useless.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Exactly what I stated a few days back, it will just make certain blood nations much more powerful eg. Jotun, Marg... while nations like Van get royally screwed.

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Well, if you want to give the Heims (or anyone else) more blood slaves, would it work to give their commanders a retinue of blood slaves (unit 326) to help them in combat?

Re: CBM 1.7 released
 

Squirrelloid's balance mod also removed SDRs and Jack_Trowell suggested giving Vanjarls/Vanadrotts a dousing bonus. I think this is an excellent solution. They get the bonus without having to spend 3 blood slaves (or 5 without a hammer) and a mage turn to forge an SDR but the restricting factor with Van's blood hunting is that you have to pay 280 gold for the mage so I don't think giving them a dousing bonus really changes game balance.