Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Those spells really are only there to save you mage time.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Yeah, I was wondering about that myself. One factor is the time saving for mages. Also, they do not require the secondary paths of magic for Ritual of Five Gates.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Saving time of Blood mages can (at least theoretically) be transformed into increased slave income. I believe 4 B2 mages hunting instead of casting wcouldn't have much trouble catching more than 13 slaves per turn.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Ehhh, in Vanilla, a Fiend of Darkness costs 5, I believe all others cost you 7 slaves apiece. Adding a couple of extra boosters, then pushes efficiency for the high end spells significantly higher than the single cast spells.

2-3 slaves I believe is really much too cheap, I mean over a 50% discount from Vanilla, on units that see a lot of play even at full price.....?

Yeah sure, you can open up other blood hunting provinces, of course. But, most people would want to saturate to the point that the rate of blood income to gold income gives them the most satisfactory results. In many cases, this would indicate it to be easier to just Monthly cast the low level versions of the spells. This warps the blood economy a bit, making the big spells a very big trade-off, rather than a no-brainer.

Can't believe I didn't notice this myself. o.O

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Sure devils see a lot of play at full price, but where do those units come from? Usually from the higher levels spells: ritual of the five gates, the level 9 spells, and soul contracts. I think that making these lower level summon cheap was a brilliant move by QM as it adds new strategies.

I also don't think it is overpowered at all. In the early game mage turns are at a premium and dedicating a decent mage (in many, but not all, cases a capital only mage to monthly casting a ritual is expensive).

I do have one question though, and it is not directly related to the change in blood summons (although it is in a way). It seems, that even with these changes, that people still prefer to use their gems to forge items for thugs than summon troops. Perhaps it is time to go back to addressing the cost of some of the really popular items in the game, such as:

Dwarven Hammer
Frost Brand
Vine Shield
Eye Shield
Anti-magic amulet
Lucky pendant

(I am sure that there are many more). These items are forged, in great quantity, in most games. For good reason, they are fantastic bargains. Maybe that needs to be addressed? I know that QM tried to fix the cost on the dwarven hammer and people rebelled, but now that them mod is so very good maybe now is the time to try it again?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Ref boosters:

One of the interesting aspects of the game is that empowering is so expensive, and booster items so cheap. AND booster items can be handed around.

Changing that has long been a pet idea of mine - but the game implications are really strong - not that strong is a bad thing - but it may be the thing with the biggest single change to the game.

Boosting the cost of all boosters (say by 50), changes the value of cross path mages. Changes the relative strengths of nations; increases the value of gems, delays the onset into mid and late game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'd agree about a Frost Brand. I'm making it myself, but it still feels criminal. I'd say that 10 gems and possibly Water 2 requirement would be OK...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I've always thought the difference between fire brands and frost brands was fine. Ice resistance is usually the worst of the three since favored thugs are likely to be undead and thus already immune, and more deadly/common evocation magics are straight up fire damage then straight up cold damage.

Also, the firebrand loses 4 points of damage and 1 point of defense over the frost brand, but gains armor piercing which makes a difference against high level SCs which regularly will have 25-30 armor.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

yeah, but fire brands are a lot tougher to make

I think dwarven hammers are worse than frost brands though, seriously how many players that survive a year or 2 in a game don't have at least 1 hammer? They are exceptionally powerful in how much they can save - a hammer probably saves on average at least 3 gems per turn, so is 3x+ better than a clam, which people generally agree make for overpowering stategies. Yet a hammer is so easy to obtain, single path of 2.

10% reduction in forge cost is probably a lot more reasonable. It can gain a 2x bonus against constructs as a thematic compensation

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

On the one hand, increasing the cost of frost brands would nerf (slightly) Niefle. But generally water is already noncompetitive with death and astral...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Actually, hammers require an Earth 3. :) If you mean that AFTER you research the higher level of Construction you COULD make first Earth Boots and after that, Hammer, you may also argue that Wish requires Astral 5... :P
Bonus against constructs would be useless too.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

In regards to the cheaper low level blood spells, it's possible they might displace some high level summons, but before this they were not getting used at all. Ritual of the five gates is still theoretically good for when you don't have the cross-paths for other things, and the level 9 summons for late game when you can get the cross paths but not on a lot of mages (and of course the level 9s and the five gates save mage time). It's hard to say how all that falls out in the end, before a few games have been played to late game with the current price scheme.

As for item nerfs, I certainly agree some are way overused. But making items harder to forge is the source of much confusion and frustration. Unlike with spells, it's not clear what is going on when they are more expensive or higher research level, you only see you can't forge them when before you could. I should also note there is no good way to change price without change path requirements. Much, as I would like to (and in fact have in earlier versions), I think item nerfs are mostly off the table

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Could you take a second look at Fata Morgana? It costs 40 more gems than Gift of Nature's Bounty, and does almost nothing. It's like a terrible version of gift of nature's bounty, Riches from Beneath, and Mechanical Militia all rolled into one. The additional PD can't damage anything so it's only good when combined with a decent amount of regular PD. The income increase is miniscule (I cast it with a nation earning 1700 gold and went up to 1900 in a test game). The resource addition is noticable, but Riches does it much better and for a tiny fraction of the cost.

By the way, why does Mechanical Miliita still cost 80 gems?

Personally I think both of these spells should get some love. Make them cheaper, and buff the effects if you can. Maybe there's some way you can make the phantom PD better for Fata? Or raise the income boost?

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Beckoning should be way cheaper as well.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'd say that the first one of them to be buffed should be Gift of Nature's Bounty itself! Then, probably, Riches from Beneath...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Riches from beneath is not that weak. Plus it costs almost nothing in CBM. It's perfectly usable in its current form IMO. Actually I think CBM makes it a bit too good.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Well my take on the Blood summons, is a bit more complicated.

For example, many nations already have trouble getting the large summons cast. They push for it, because although it takes significant effort and expense, the cost/benefit ratio of each cast makes up for the trouble.

With individual casts being dropped so drastically in price (I can see them being -slightly- more efficient than the large spell's base effect), it gives some nations a massive benefit, compared to others. For example Helheim/Vanheim can ultimately make good use of Storm Demons at 2 slaves apiece. Perhaps LA Ulm wants to use Storm Demons, they are relegated to their pretender, and for every 25 Demons that Vanheim is putting out, they are getting 7-8 for the same 50 slaves.

So to reiterate, I'm not saying it's not a good idea to slightly reduce the cost (7 slaves is insane for early game, I agree), but to slash costs by 60-70% on them is rather heavy handed, I think.


Also I was going to mention Leprosy. I don't know what gave the impression that it wasn't useful enough, but I always found it terrifying at 10 Death gems per cast. Hitting large armies with it (they're on the move, so no dome) can do more damage in a short time than almost any other attack. Now at 5 gems, in one game I am getting hit by ~3 per turn, and even units/mages with up to 18 MR are simply no match for it.


(Sorry if I seem overly critical about these things, though I admit, I am extremely bothered by the Leprosy change.)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'm actually surprised that spell would be made so cheap. I always thought 10 gems was a fine trade, especially with penetration gear. If you hit commanders it makes it much harder to micro, and they can get afflictions which make them drop gear that's buffing spell paths, or makes them so retarded that they can't cast their scripts (mute/feeblemind), or makes them lose an eye so that they have trouble aiming.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I agree about Leprosy being too cheap in CBM. I always like using it with penetration items. It seems to cause more damage than the other rituals over the long term.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Agree in both cases.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Is it me or do some of the heroes and pretenders need balancing with all of the troops they spawn? Such as the Lord of the Gates with all of the shades it spawns it becomes unstoppable!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Well, I would say that the only really concrete reason for reversing a change would be if it becomes a problem in-game. AFAIK there haven't been any killer strategies using the LotG... That said, go ahead and see if you can put one together. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Leprosy: I'm not entirely convinced it's unbalanced at 5 gems... but I can certainly see that the effects can be rather annoying and mm inducing, so maybe it would be for the best if it were cast less.

Early Blood summons: It's a tough situation, on the one hand I'm not sure even for current prices they will see much use early, on the other hand I can see the point that they might abusable late game (and by that I mean displace other spells). The issue is, mage time is too valuable to waste on them when you first research them, but once you have everything researched all the sudden you have a huge glut of mage time. I'm not sure there is a real solution to this, but I suppose I can mess with the prices a bit again.

Lord of the Gates: I'm actually really pleased to actually get a compliant about him... he has been stacking up boosts in vain since dom2. :)

Out of all the troop generating pretenders/heroes he gets by far the most, but I'm not quite convinced it's overkill. I've played against several people trying to leverage the shade spam, and it's usually not to hard to use the usual undead counters on them.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

By the way, do you see any possible use for Lord of War? Soldiers generation has little real effect on his performance...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Okay, I went into SP to see what the Lord of the Gates was capable of. He is definitely a capable expander when given dom9, and likely would be even with ~dom 7. The shades do a lot to reduce hits to him, and are actually excellent units against indies. The main issue is that only Ermor and C'tis get him, and his paths aren't really anything they need. If I want more death with them I would probably go with a lich/ML. However, I might give him a shot as C'tis, since they have slightly more problems with expansion than Ermor. Past indy clearing, he does drop off in usefulness. Though he is still fully equipable, he just doesn't measure up to an E9 cyclops, or one of the multi-armed pretenders. Perhaps adding 1E? That seems thematic, and would make me seriously consider him for a low level E-D bless for my mages. Though even as is, you can get E4 D4, dom9, and decent scales without too much trouble.

After all the above meandering, I suppose I would conclude that his lack of use has more to do with his narrow availability than anything else, and I can easily see him as simply a pretender who just needs someone to take a second look at him.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I love the Lord of the Gates. I (personally) like the auto-summoners, except those that produce troops that require upkeep.

Here's a theoretical question. For the Lord of War (or the Celestial General), what is the tipping point for a summon that you have to actually command? E.g., would a Lord of War that auto-summoned nothing, but could use Summon Allies to summon 25 infantry and 5 cavalry be balanced? What about 15 and 3? I would much prefer a design that used 'Summon Allies' over auto-summon, because of the control it allows.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I found the Lord of War to be a reasonable choice as an awake SC for Bogarus. The units are only slightly worse than their national ones, but it lets you you get away with sloth scales without severely hampering early expansion efforts

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Leprosy is not just micro management. Even a single cast against a large army can death sentence 1000g worth of mages and many gems worth of summoned elites. Cast that 3x a turn, every turn on an invader and if you can stall him for a few months, he's completely screwed - unless he is just totally outplaying you otherwise.

Even at 10 gems a player with a small stockpile can ruin an enormously expensive army at relatively little cost - at 5 gems that ruination is easy just off of your monthly income. As if Death nations needed less expensive tools of destruction. :p


The Demons are a complicated issue - I do cast the individuals sometimes in Vanilla, but only in rare cases, otherwise I shoot for the batch summons if I intend to use them in my strategy. But 2-3 slaves apiece is just wow for some nations.

For example, with a strong Blood income, over 14 turns you can make a raw Empowerment + Booster (total = 68 slaves w/hammer) outperform base batch spell casting. So if you get Blood started early, and take a long view, even a nation without cheap B+? mages can do better with the single casts at 2 slaves per demon. Even 3/demon isn't too bad, it's not until they cost at least 4 apiece that it's just not worth it in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Well, I like giving gems the possibility of being used for something other than SC's

(thanks QM). However, I am concerned that Black Death at 6 too cheap. Try boosting it to 8? Or perhaps better, keep it at 6 but make the path requirement 7, instead of 4.

The problem isn't the casting of it, its the spamming of it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Damn you :O

Address the global I mentioned!

You buffed Gift of Nature's Bounty, but left Fata Morgana useless!

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Heh, sorry, I didn't mention Fata Morgana because I had already buffed it for next version. ;) I don't think Gift of Nature's Bounty is boosted any more though, seems to see a lot more use than in dom2 even without the buff.

About leprosy and black death- while they are superb at screwing somebody over they are less useful for the ultimate goal of winning. Strategies evolving around them take simply too long to come to fruition, and in black death's case ruins your spoils as well. As far as destroying armies leprosy is many times less scary than other options the late game can lob at them (any battlefield damage spell, flames from the sky). And for the purposes of any reasonable length conflict, the effect can be 90% offset simply by castings of astral healing... of course once the war is over having lots of diseased things is a mm nightmare. Given that, it will probably be 8 gems next version.

The problem with this analysis is that it totally ignores mage time, which is the critical factor far more than 2-3 slaves difference.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

The point of auto-summon instead of summon-allies (as far as i understand) is that auto-summon let your pretender do other valuable things with his time, like search, forge, cast etc.

Maybe the auto-summon should be dominion-strength-dependent like with the ghost king ?

I find a batch-summon-allies Lord of War scary because i would strip him of magic and use him as a mobile troop-factory. But maybe that is exact what he need to become more popular.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I can't imagine a pretender being given "summon allies". Usually when you have a pretender you do one of four things.

1. Invade PD provinces. (cyclops, wyrm, PoD)
2. Site Search (Rainbow mages / mages with high levels in off paths)
3. Research (primarily rainbow mages)
4. Forge (Any god can do this)

Summoing allies is almost always strictly worse than any of the above 4. Basically the last thing you would ever want your pretender to do is sit around summoning chaff, or even regularish units. To balance something like this, your pretender would have to spit out 20+ units a turn. Probably more, actually. 25 infantry, 5 calvary, and 10 archers could be good. The idea is that you would literally want him to summon a small raiding force each time he is used.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I meant you buffed Gift of Nature's Bounty from vanilla version ;)

I think it's fine as you have it now. It's difficult to research, and expensive castings of gift of health are more in vogue these days then extra money.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

QM:

I think that both Leprosy and Black Death would be viable at 8-10D gems per casting. Black Death is level4? Huh, I thought it's level 7[which it definetely should be, well, at least 6]. And QM knows why the cost of Black Death can be not so big :)

There are wars you don't win. Or those where you don't care for spoils. Black Death is a nasty spell, but not really great against bigger enemies, as their income is really distributed.

And could you maybe add a small item pack? Water and fire could really use more items. Especially water. Use of W gems is really boring :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

[quote=quantum_mechani;684751]Flames From the Sky is 50 gems. For this, it tends to kill less units outright, than Leprosy will Disease. The overland kill spells are HP+Prot dependent, while Leprosy is only an MR check - many more later game and elite units can survive multiple fire/ice bombardments, and yet still more than likely die to the first penetration boosted Leprosy that touches them. The spell truly is a bargain at 10D, I've seen it used to great effect multiple times now - including the current situation, where it is being entirely abused at 5D/cast.....


It hardly ignores mage time. To cast the big batch spells usually requires you to use your pretender, a summoned Demon Lord, or a special hero, and the use of artifact boosters. Building just 1 castle where you pump out cheapo low path demon spammers allows your big guys to do other things. For a little bit of gold and effort, you've allowed someone to exchange 7 nearly useless little no name mages, for the use of their most powerful mages. I'd do that in a heartbeat any chance I got. Dropping the cast from 7 to 2 makes that choice feasible, and economical - and it makes it virtually impossible to boost the single caster high enough to justify using the batch spell over the single spam.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Firstly, Flames from the Sky has been 35 gems in every version of Dom3, including every CB version. Secondly, the spell can be stacked in one turn to kill even higher hp things. Thirdly, for the most part the things that escape other artillery also laugh off leprosy. You also seem to be saying failing the mr check = death which is an extreme exaggeration. It's a rare situation you don't have healing spells to prolong the effected units almost indefinitely, or access to some kind of healing to solve the problem completely.


It would indeed make a lot of sense to just build a fort, pump mages there to use the low level spells. Except, people are _already_ generally putting the maximum amount of gold they can into produceing mages. Which means that in general, sacrificing a bunch of mages for that is going to put you far behind in research of where you would be, and all the demons you can muster are probably not going to be a big help if you are behind in research. It's especially compounded if you already are using up a significant portion of your mages to sustain a blood economy.

Of course, as I was saying, once research is done, the whole situation changes. Suddenly you are rolling in more mage time than you know what to do with. So I certainly see the problem with the spells, I just do not see it being any kind of issue in the early/middle game (which is where they should be being cast). The real issue is that mage time goes almost instantaneously from being indispensable to almost worthless, it's very hard to make the spells account for both stages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

In small to medium maps, one third of your income can be derived soley from the capital. Hence *two* castings of Black death are sufficient to drop income 20%.

Way more than an adequate return for mage time.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

This is quite true... however I think you are actually perhaps safer from this in CB than base, considering how much easier domes are.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Typically, you get two castings in before someone realizes... damn I should have put a dome up.

I think the spell is great - however in terms of power I think it should be d6-7 instead of d5

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Black Death is level 7. Domes are level 5. So reasonable player in competitive MP game won't leave his capital undomed. The really bad thing is that some nations cannot put good domes up. Only A/S ones are really good at stopping spells. Well, to be honest, only air one is good, and it needs A4, which is extremely hard to get for many nations.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Can you stack domes? As in have both a forest dome and fire dome for example.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

You certainly can. You can have multiple domes of the same type, even.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I know that this used to work (IE multiple domes of the same type would be effective) now I believe that multiple domes of the same type are no more effective than a singleton.

I'm not sure, though.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I've heard that they are as effective as earlier, but passing 1 air dome and getting stopped by 2nd is enough to break one. Didn't test it seriously though.

And it looks like QM got convinced to increase cost of Black Death :P

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I'll just put it out there:

What is the Conceptual Balance Mod? What does it do?

Could you post this in the Original Post,
Or in a word file in the zip?

Thanks.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

I do believe there is some documentation in the zip which sets out to answer that question.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

It's a general mod that, for the most part, simply makes spells/creatures/items more effective/cheaper/easier to cast so that there are more options for a given nation. It does nerf a few things (like fire arrows) by making them more expensive/harder to cast, but in general it just opens up new options.

Jazzepi

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

Regarding the blood summons issue: Perhaps the best thing to do is not decrease the cost, but address the mage-time issue instead?

Maybe try changing it to summon ~3 (or whatever number is deemed appropriate) at cost that's higher per unit than the mass summons. That way it's feasible to build up a moderate number of them early game without destroying your research capabilities?

Late game people with blood mages of the appropriate paths for the mass summons would still get benefit out of them. Although I think those could probably be cheaper and/or summon more units than they do currently, given the difficulty in obtaining those paths.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41
 

A few things I noticed while looking through:

1) Green dragon is in twice, once lines 170-176 (with stealthy), one in "monsters" lines 251-259 (no stealthy)
2) Armor for lord of war is commented (line 554). Purposeful?
3) 3228 --> mackaka ==> machaka (this typo is actually throughout the entire section on this nation)
4) Ulm hero "the locksmith" - desc speaks of great age. Might want to reflect in stat block.
5) line 7044 - "MR" --> "mr"
6) 7106, maverni "Champion of the Horn" hero seems to be added as a pretender; is this right?
7) 7715-7720 - the creature 2829 created here is not used. Perhaps it should be another multihero for early Oceania?
8) 8061-8074 - The red tengu is not added as a hero/multihero; should the mods here be in the hero section, or somewhere else?