Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

If you all will be kind enough to PM me with the province # of your respective capitals I will do my best to come and end your feud. PERMANENTLY!!! Heheheh.

As for me, one interesting thing I have noted about Ulm is that I am buying only one type of infantry. I want to diversify into the other infantries, but I cant because thier high resource costs mean low troop numbers. And with numbers that low I must ensure that all men in the squad have the same speed or they will "run" ahead and be killed and shatter the squad morale.

Additionally, I think the change to increase the cost of the Black Knight back up to its original 60gp was a mistake. While that makes them a *really* great deal, the truth is that the knights are Ulm's only truly potent weapon given its lack of any useful magic. They need to be a good deal for ulm to have any chance at all in a regular game.

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OK, sorry I got angry with you earlier. It was just the combined anger from this bug and from something going on in another of my games.
To be honest, I took those 2 provinces because they were easier than anything else, and with hardly any money I couldnt put together much to go after real strong indies. When I saw I was adjacent to your cap, I decided "Aw what the heck, Ill start a war and get killed quickly to end the pain." Didnt realize just how good those sacred dudes are.

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Many times.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Eagle warriors are even better in many cases, as they can cause huge amounts of havoc with a fire-9 blessing.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Yeah, this is an interesting problem for me with Jotuns and Vaetti as well. They are excellent to mix together, giving 2 Vaetti and 1 Jotun per square. But Jotuns run way ahead unless you start them on the far right of the tactical map.

You might consider buying a cheap militia screen to stall the opponents, so that if the speed different is low, the slower ones have a chance to catch up by the time the enemy eats through the militia to hit your faster units. Other than that, and starting them at the far right, I'm not sure what can be done, but I'll look at the infantry lineup and their speeds...

I should note that you're expanding faster than anyone at this point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif But obviously, that may change when you start encountering nations and magic. I've been giving some thought to additional changes to Ulm units, like ingraining elemental and/or magic resistances into the armor, such that Full Plate + Full Helmet units become substantially different (better) than Chain + Helmet units, and more expensive.

Tien Chi and Mictlan: It's unfortunate to hear that you're both encountering problems. That negative scales bug is especially annoying... I'd thought it had been fixed.

Thanks for the suggestions on Tien Chi; Communion as a national spell (and MotW communicants) is probably a good idea, as flight is sort of... bleh. I'll look at Fire Demon stats and weapons precision as well; I've never used them, only the default TC summons. I was underwhelmed with the pig-men, though; very expensive for such a terrible unit.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

As for the TC Celestial Servents, the latest Zen mod has them mostly fixed: Those pig guys are now 2 earth gems, which is just about perfect for their worth (they are sacred which is why I think the 2 gem cost is correct). I truly doubt that nobody other than a rank beginner would spend 4 earth gems on them in the unmodded game version.

Also, the Celestial Soldiers can now be cast by any old CM under the Zen mod with the new A1S1 path requirements.

Heck, a bless effect for TC now becomes a very strong option because of the national summons!

All I can say is, GO ZEN!

Of course, S&A and BK are both still weaker themes in a very weak race. Zen mods alone cannot change this simple fact.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

His nation mod might http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

(hopefully it can be merged with SC's mods)

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Well I don't know about very strong. The celestial soldiers with a N9 blessing are quite good. However note that your national mages are sacred as well and you really don't want them going beserk.

Still N9 celestial soldiers in are quite nice.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

It is a fault of the game, really. A squad should attempt to stay together, even if it means moving as slow as the slowest unit (except if routing or some kind of special case). In the particular case of Ulm, my suggestion would be to just make all the "heavy" versions of each infantry have the same speed, speed 5 i believe. And all the light versions of the infantry have speed 7. That way you can mix and match to really get full use out of Ulm's only real assest, its armies.

Please note that I am not suggesting this to be done all across the board for all nations. I just think its valuable and viable in the case of Ulm since thier troops are all ***-slow anyway that I don't think anyone is going to complain about a loss of 2 movement points.

I am. But my expansion is almost entirely due to a very strong pretender and effective use of mercenaries. From my test games (without pretender or mercs) I found that Ulm expanded at a rate of about 1 prov/turn vs indy 9 on turns 3 thru 9 whereupon you can just barely squeak out a second force for an average of 1.5/2 provs/turn after that. Which, to me, didnt seem radically different from any of the other strong military nations (man, abysia, etc..)

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

speed starting Ulm
Try my Ulm mod - it's floating around on the forum (search for "Black Steel of Ulm"

To make all troops have the same battlefield speed an easy and not so easy task at once:
Battlefield speed depends on ("base chassis AP"-encumbrance), so as you as you change equipment speed changes most likely as well. Therefore it's the base speed of a unit that has to be adjusted. This can easily done via #ap <action points>. But you'll have to fiddle around with the value to get the desired result. Maybe sometimes you won't be able to really hit the mark and end up 1..2 movement points off. Which isn't that bad in my experience as long as the troops needn't march across the whole field before meeting the enemy.

Noted this down for the next version of "Black Steel of Ulm".

EDIT: Just skimmed through the unit roster with my mod active. See and behold: All inf has either 6,8, or 10 movement points. So there's the possibility to mix sensibly them already present. Try it out.

May I ask you a favour, Cherry? Could you keep Ulm out of your Rebalance Mod? Ulms Inf should be very special anyway. Furthermore, our mods wouldn't be incompatible then. I really hate it if we both put a lot of work (you considerably more than me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) into it and one makes the other invalid ...

edited: EDIT

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Mmmmm... While I agree that there's a potential problem, I don't really like that particular solution. The intent behind the mod is to apply certain principles to ALL recruitable units of specific categories in the game; leaving out any nation, theme, or indy type causes balance problems or inexplicable irregularities (like, why do indy cavalry get bonus strength and HP, but not those of Nation X?). Unfortunately, this philosophy can cause incompatiblities with all nation mods, and the only way to solve that is to leave all nations out of the mod - which defeats the purpose... or leave out nations that are specifically being worked on by other people - which ends up being a lot of nations - and which again defeats the purpose.

I'm not trying to make a giant conglomerate mod in order to render all other mods worthless (like the "One Ring"), and I really doubt my mod could have that kind of effect. Look at Space Empires IV, for example - there are a huge number of mods out, many of them partially or totally overlapping, without particularly hurting each other.

Here's my proposed solution:

I took quite a lot of information, opinions, and ideas from your Ulm mod thread, and I'll be more than happy to credit you (and other thread participants) for them. However, I'm pretty sure that the final version of "my vision for Ulm" will be different from the final version of "your vision for Ulm," even though there will also be some similarities. So if you want, you (or anyone else with a nation mod) can take my mod, delete the Ulm units from it, add your Ulm units, and release it as "Recruitable Rebalance with Arralen's Black Steel of Ulm" or whatever, which would eliminate any incompatibilities.

I never really thought about accidentally treading on other peoples' toes, and I hope that's a reasonable response, because I don't want to invalidate anyone else's work...

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All ulm inf in the rebalance mod have 5, 7, and 9 speed. So, while not the same exact values that is actually the speeds I have been working with and it has poor results. The faster units are invariably the lightly armored ones and they get to the front or the flanks where they are quickly killed, collapsing the squad morale.

At the very least, the "heavy" versions of all the ulm infantry need to be the same speed. [Heavy Axe, Flail, Hammer, Maul, Morningstar, and Pike] That way you can mix and match units into your ultra-heavy infantry blocks, since they are basically all you ever use anyway. It would be like a modular army. Want some more attacks in your squad? Add in some Heavy Flail. Need to bring down a heavily armed target? Add in some Heavy Maul.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Speaking of which, I think making Mauls 5ap damage was too much... Barbarians and Maul-using Ulmians became immensely powerful in this mod. I'm considering a change to 4ap or even 3ap, which still allows Barbarians and Ulmians to damage protection 30+ targets regularly (at the price of -1 defense and no shield) and possibly increasing the rcost and attack or defense penalty.

On the other hand, it did finally make mauls useful http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Useful yeah, but on the other hand a block attached to the end of a stick isnt supposed to be better than a greatsword! The problem is with the AP flag I think. It would be nice if it ignored half the armor up to a max of X. Then maybe the maul would reduce enemy armor by 5 while fire attacks would half it no matter how much armor they have. Ahh well...

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

So I have a question for you guys? Is Man dominating? In my test games his AP longbowmen put him at the top of easy expanders. He was very difficult to stop. I was wondering if this trend would continue in this mod.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Actually, Man is around the middle of the pack. Ulm, Jotunhiem and Pangaea seem to be leading in most areas.

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I really hope Dominions III allows variable armor-piercing ratings (0-100% in 5% increments at least). If 9ap is much too strong on a longbow, though, I can always increase the price, drop it to 8ap, or (worst case scenario) return the longbow to its original stats, where it can't hurt knights at all. I'll be experimenting with #flail today (the command that makes morningstars ignore shields), and maybe I'll be able to make Blow Pipes (woodsman) ignore shields, since they are short range and highly accurate weapons that you would not aim at a shield. If so, I'll make boulders and ballista bolts ignore shields as well, if they don't already (I'm not sure).


Edit: What do you know, #flail works on projectiles. Watching longbowmen with #flail and 90 ap damage versus indies with 12-defense round shields is pretty funny.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

One balance note: Independent lizard troops are quite inferior compared to barbarians and other fodder at the moment.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Interesting. Perhaps man is not using the 100% longbow armies or perhaps something horrible happened to him early on ( not a stretch there is a lot of random stuff in this game ).

Jotunhiem also worked very well in my test games I can easily see them doing very well.

Ulm ... well I never play Ulm but they were beefed up quite a bit.

As for Pangaea I've never played them and I don't understand them at *all*. It would be really cool if someone made an AAR of this game with saved turn files and explain how the heck to do well with Pan. What a bizzare nation ( again: IMO ).

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Yeah now that mauls are AP, they can probably drop a point or two in damage. But I wouldn't go further than that. They are two handed after all, so if the maulers ever come under missle fire, they are pretty much done for.

I agree, it *is* really nice to have the maul be useful!! It went from being a joke weapon to filling a really useful niche. Was there never any AP infantry melee weapon prior to this?? I'm thinking back now and I cant recall one... well, lances I guess? But thats not really infantry per se. On the topic tho, does anyone feel that mauls might be moving in on the territory of heavy cav? 13-14 dam ap attacks every round instead of once per battle?

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I could write an AAR for this game, though I played Pan quite a bit different with white centaurs getting such a boost.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

No other mundane melee weapons are AP, and AP is pretty rare even for magical weapons. Lances are not AP, despite the description. Unfortunately, Action Points and Armor Piercing have the same abbreviation... lances get a damage bonus based on the unit's speed, and kill things easily because they do massive damage, not because they pierce armor.

That's a very good point, though - I certainly would not want to render an entire unit category obsolete to make a single weapon useful. One *possible* solution is to give mauls a negative attack modifier, and lances a positive attack modifier. When you think about it, it would be WAY easier to hit a moving target with a sword than with a maul, yet they have the same (0) attack modifier. OTOH, a knight charging into a battle is probably going to hit SOMETHING with his lance before his momentum dies. If lances can hit and damage most things, while mauls tend to miss agile units and are best used on heavy / slow things like Living Statues and super-heavy infantry, then both would still have a niche. Not to mention that lances - being a cavalry weapon - are still ideal for many things that mauls can't do, like racing across the field to kill pretenders while they are still buffing.

Anyway, my preliminary thought is to change mauls from (5ap, 0, -1, 0) to (3ap, -1, -1, 3), and I still think they will be highly useful. Considering how seldom Cavalry is deployed (though that may change with the pricing in the mod), lances might be due for an upgrade, like ignoring shields. Part of the point of lances (war lances, not joust lances) is that they can go right through wooden shields and kill an armored unit. They should damage / stun / dehorse / knock down someone even if it is blocked by a metal shield, though I'm not sure that shields with thick enough metal to stop a lance were ever commonly deployed. Either way, it makes sense to me for lances to ignore defense. As a little footsoldier watching a giant, armored, lance-wielding, mounted knight bearing down on me, I wouldn't lift up my leather-bound wooden shield - designed to block swords and rocks - and assume I'll somehow live, if only I keep the shield between me and the lance.

So, I think giving #flail (shield ignoring) to lances - heavy lances, at least - would be a good change. I don't think light lances should get that, though I'm not really sure what they are. If they're just spears aided by charge momentum, I doubt they could pierce shields AND still do damage, since true lances have a very long, sharp, steel head specifically designed for very deep piercing attacks. In fact, it makes sense for heavy lances to get both #flail and #armorpiercing, but that might make them too powerful.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Yeah, my armies arnt 100% longbowmen... Maybe I'm expanding too slow, but at least I'm taking no casualties from indies, so it's a tradeoff. I don't play Man all that often, so I'm just experimenting really.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

100% longbow armies leave you vulnerable to cavalry and archers - not to mention that they're quite expensive. It's true that with ap, they're much better than base Doms II pure-longbow armies. But the rest of Man's lineup is also better, with possible exception of the Wardens, who were already good... and building purely longbows and mages, you'll have lots of resources left over every turn, which you'll probably wish you had used later on when capitol resources are limiting...

I'm not an expert playing Man, but I only build pure armies when playing Ulm, and Abysia. Speaking of which, I wonder if Abysia's units are too homogeneous? Does anyone else build armies purely of a single unit type when playing Abysia?

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NO [censored]! I've never understood why Ghost riders do tons of damage on their charge. If figured that sure it's AP but still it should not do the kind of crazy damage that it seems to do. This makes total sense. Longdead horsemen have tons of AP so the damage they do must be huge. Now it makes sense. Thanks! I don't know if it changes anything wrt. my tactics but now I understand what is going on.

Well I don't know if I would make my armies 100% longbow men. During my tests I had a little chaff in front and in time converted the chaff to vine ogres. But generally my armies were composed of primarly archers. To pay for this I went after farms which was easy to do as the longbowmen could take HC and/or Knights with ease.

Whoa. Light lance. More attack. Lower cost. Sounds *very* good. What bless did you go with? Given the new data ( at least to me ) on how lances work I would figure that a W9 blessing would crush. A F9 would work well also since the unit has hooves.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Lava warriors and morningstar infantry are pretty much all I build.

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Longdead horseman have a spear and a 10 damage hoof. So they have two attacks, one with 13 damage and one with 10 damage. Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre are the only undead with lances.

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Pangaea's early game strategy is actually fairly straightforward. For Illwinter's scales, you might take something like:
Order 3, sloth 3, misfortune 2, magic 3. Pick a monster for a pretender in very hard research games, or a giant humanoid in standard research games. Recruit dryad's for researchers and centaur warriors for troops. Only recruit Panii when you need them to cast specific spells. Gold is your major limiting factor. Centaur warriors give Pangaea a huge amount of early game punch, and remain effective for a very long time. They are even capable of taking down full-fledged SCs. (An air queen with wraith sword, jade armour, and luck pendant.) Against normal troops, 20 centaur warrior's will kill kill 20 Hoplites with fewer than 5 losses.

Research alteration up to mother oak, then cast it right away. Then research conjuration to Lamia's. You now have you standard troops for most of the rest of the game ready. Pile these against SCs, and the lifedrain fatigue can take them down. Research construction for blood stones and other items. Trade for a starshine skullcap so you can boost your astral magic. Make sure to research up to charm, which gives you what is probably your most effective anti-SC weapon. Watch out for wrathful skies, as it will hurt you badly. If you can catch air mages without storms, use harpies.

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Ooops, I think I boosted White Centaurs way too much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I was trying to keep them equivalent to Black Centaurs, which I was pricing to be affordable even though CW has almost no money, but that was a bad idea... W9 would bring them up to 21 defense, 22 hp, 12 protection, 13 strength, 12 attack, 16 mor, 14 mr, with 3 attacks per turn (average)... and stealthy, healing, 3 strat moves, forestry, all for 60 gold and 2g/turn. Quite a powerhouse... they'd probably kill most SC pretenders easily.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Just took a look at a replay and the undead horsemen summoned via Ghost Riders have the following weapons: light lance, hoof. This is a replay using Zen's mod so I don't know if this is different from the base game but I doubt it.

Like I said this finally explains, at least to me, why ghost riders crush so much. With 25 AP I wonder what kind of damage that charge does ( 25+3? If so, wow, ouch. ).

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Oh I whipped up a test game to see how the W9 bless would work. Not bad. They are not unkillable but they do a decent job against Indep-9 HC. And they seem to have a pretty decent charge ( I tried about 5 test cases and on average lost 2 units against HC indep-9 provinces ).

Sadly the beserk does not work well with the W9 bless ( as your defence goes down after getting hit ). I guess I should try out the F9 bless to see how that works ( it usually works dandy on units with a hoof attack ).

A F9W9 bless would be fun to try out ( but they are darn expensive ).

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Yes, I'm using f9 bless, I could have gone w9 as well, but I've played basically every nation with sacred troops using that bless. They may be a little over powered, but given that they are capital only, and only around the power of vans, I'm not sure they are that bad.

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I only build Morningstar Infantry. Do you have any ideas on how to make the lineup interesting? And do you find the improved, cheaper salamanders or cheaper humanbreds tempting?

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What about Marignon / Patrick ???

He's the last one to do his turn the 4th or 5th time in a row, if he did his turns at all ...

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Yeah I noticed this as well. I just recieved a PM from patrick that he feels he is unable to keep up with the 24hr quickhost and wanted to be set to AI. I countered that since his nation isnt being actively crushed, we should find a replacement.

As far as replacing him: Why not use one of the players who is already on the way out of our current game? Machaka just lost what looks like a final battle and from what I am told Mictlan is besieged by a powerful force. Would either of you like to replace Marignon?

edit: And by the way from what my spies show, Marignon is far from a lost cause. Due to bad capital location picking by the computer, Mari still has some room to expand if they move quickly.

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WTF? For the love of god, this game is just trying to [censored] piss me off. I just had 2 very expensive mages set to retreat who 'died when retreating into enemy territory' when they clearly had a province to which to retreat. [censored] this.
After I fight Man's army, I think I will take over Marignon. It was actually my nation of choice, but he got to it before me.

Edit: Actually, on second thought, I dont want to take over Marignon.

Re: Rebalance Mod game starting, everyone welcome!
 

Tauren, did you lose any provinces adjacent to the province where the mages fled from in the same turn? As far as I know, no one has ever figured out when fleeing actually occurs. If it happens immediately after every battle then situations like this can occur. If it happens at the end of the combat phase tho, this would be a bug.

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The only thing out of the ordinary that happened was I killed a scout in my only adjacent province. Maybe they retreated, like, during the battle with the scout, but thought the scout owned it, or something weird like that.

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Were they amphibians who had to go from water to land or vice versa?

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Nope.
However, the army that forced them into retreat was mercenaries who were on the last turn of their contract. Maybe that had something to do with it.

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So tauren. You are sure you will not take over for Marignon? Thier position is not bad. As far as I know they still have expansion room and are probably flooded in money due to staling.

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I *might* if I lose to Man when it hosts in 15 minutes...

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Unsurprisingly, I won. So Ill just keep on trudging.

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Ok. Control of Marignon has been turned over to Tomahawk the ex-Machaka player.

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Who killed Machaka?

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Abysia.

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And another smashing victory for the valiant armies of Mictlan, as they continue to fight against all odds...

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To think that just a while ago you thought Mictlan was getting crushed out of the game! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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Well, now Im dead, due to some abysmal scripting on my part. Those white centaurs are hardcore.

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I'm loving how fast the turns are going, now that we cut anchor on Marignon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif