Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

AKA sacred Horites? ;) lol

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Actually.. what would be really cool would be a weapon like a harpoon that made the stuck unit continuously easier to hit...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Seal Hunters (LA Atlantis) have harpoons, and they function as a net, so perhaps that's what you are looking for? The low precision of Agarthans makes me think they'd be better off with just plain nets though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I am posting a list of heroes that I think still need improving in CBM/WH. For the most part, they are non-mage heroes, as I think that they are the most problematic and least scalable. I am going in the order that they appear in the saved game attached to the WH thread that shows them all.

Chuzrael the demonbred Slayer- MA Aby- While he shows up in an age where flying assassins are no longer available, his stats are pretty underwhelming. Defense and stealth level seem like the most obvious candidates for a boost.

Rago the Rage Lord- MA Aby- Not bad atm, but the 5 zerk on top of 6 enc sucks big time. Maybe an enc reduction or some natural reinvig?

Shudul Cthuda- MA Atlantis- 7 enc? Really?

Hierolagus- LA Pythium I think- Standard seems to be one of the usual buffs, maybe an even 20 prot wouldn't be amiss?

Knights of the Stone- Man I presume? Again, standard seems usual. The CBM Warhorse Hoof attack is probably supposed to be there as well.

Bernlad- Man- Not so bad I guess, though maybe 20 prot as well?

Rhianne- Man? Patently useless, though if the patrol bonus gets boosted a lot it could be interesting.

Hildegard - MA Ulm- Wouldn't be bad if she got 2A instead of the useless 1A.

Barthulf- MA Ulm- I _think_ this guy domsummons black knights, which is great. However, turning up the spawn could be... interesting.

Niklatu- C'tis- Rainbow armor should give reinvig no? Maybe awe too, his armor IS shiny and colorful! 100 poison res wouldn't hurt either. However, 4 Swamp Guards a turn isn't so bad.

Anthromachus- Arco- Immortality helps a LOT, but enc 9 not so much. A better weapon would help too.

Orokestes- Arco- not in need of such a boost, but 1 in 4 magics and 2 in S isn't THAT useful. would 2 in the elements be too imba? Would make him a much better site searcher anyway.

Angelique- MA Mari- Maybe some priest level and inquisitor status? Otherwise she kind of sucks.

Rams Head- Pan- Why enc 7?

Auluudh- Ry'leh- No paths that you can't get from recruitables? An extra level of S and W wouldn't hurt.

Abasi- Machaka- Once again, enc 7?

Mwaka- Machaka- Seriously? About the worst hero I've seen. Unless the apes are on par with LA Arco's or Bandar swordsmen. Or if you get a LOT of them.

Warenheris- EA Ulm- Maybe a bit more prot? At least average MR would be nice too.

Yukinaga- Shin- immortal helps, but boosting to D3 for Soul Vortex would be a great boost.

Cu-Chulain- Tir/Eriu- More fear perhaps?

Fianna- Eriu- Generally better stats? Prot in particular could be improved.

Antlered One- Dunno- Less enc would be nice?

Bapu- Lanka- Never heals is a bit harsh, otherwise general stat improvements would help.

Ninjas- Jomon- More defense would help a lot with assassinations.

Golden Naga- Patala- "Skilled fire magic user" means more than F2 to me. Also, I don't see why she can't have a chest slot?

Tomb Lord- LA C'tis- 10 enc!?! not to mention that F1D1 isn't particularly useful.

Possessed Flame Corpse- LA Agartha- If this hero actually has the flame corpse explosion effect, its actually not bad. If not...

The Houndkeeper- Man- Two Cu Sidhe a turn is decent, but seeing as you're not likely to have much of a bless...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I was looking at the "Son of Sea" pretender. He's pretty useless, IMHO. All water nations already have good acceess to water magic and why would any UW nation bring air breathers underwater? Then I started thinking that isn't the gay basically Poseidon?

With a minor description change, you could add "storms" into his profile and give him W2A1 as starting paths. Then he'd at least give access to a new path.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Poseidon isn't so much a god of storms as he is the god of earthquakes so if he is an inspiration it should be Earth rather than his brother's Air that you'd want to add.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Blindness is exceptionally good. Blind SC is a dead/useless SC; in CBM, any fire mage can easily counter SCs as soon as you start researching alteration. I can live with it, even though its stupid, but its stupid nonetheless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Except there's the small matter of the mr check?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Yeah, that would work too. There point is that W3 titan is just useless for water nations. If it gave access to some other paths, it might be worthwhile. W2E1 would be good for blesses.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I dont know if you wanted this answer to be ironic, but as far as I can tell, its not. MR check is a rather small matter indeed.

Every time I read 'MR over 18 is unpenetrable' I dont know if I should laugh or headdesk. When one failed check means death/charm/uselesness (and probably death), even MR 25 is a very poor protection. Unless, of course, you have to face just one unscripted mage in the rear of the battlefield who will cast one or two blindnesses obefore auto-routing with the rest of the now-slaughtered army.

Balance-wise, paralyze is lvl 4 (in a not-so-useful for the early game path) and requires S2. Also, keep in mind that Astral path is meant to be a primary counter to single powerful combatants.
Blindness is now lvl 2 in Alteration, which also contains all maneer of buffs, and only requires F1.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

No, it's not ironic. You may think I'm overestimating the utility of mr against blindness, soul slay etc, but I think you're underestimating it.

You said any fire mage could easily counter SCs with blindness. I simply don't believe this is true with the mr check. The math with mr checks has never really seemed to match what actually happens in the game, but I think you'd need a LOT of mages casting blindness to make 25 mr 'very poor protection'. We're not talking about anything more than 'one mage casting it twice' working here.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Math with mr checks never matched what actually happens in game indeed. :)
Sometimes you will need a lot of mages casting blindness, but sometimes first casting penetrates magic resistance and kills SC.
My friend once ran some VotD checks. It took him lots of tries to actually penetrate MR of a pretender God, just as math suggests. Later his opponent killed 2 of his SCs within three turns, with three to five attempts, dont remember exactly. Etc, etc.
Thus, rather high possibility of a F1 mage with Alteration 2 researched crippling/killing your pretender or equipped raider is hardly a good thing. Random element must be under control; imagine chess where Pawns can retaliate, killing attacking Queens and Castles by rolling 20. Pwns! :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I think blindness is fine the way it is. Even in CBM, fire is the second weakest path in the game. Why should all tricks of fire magic be negated by fire resistance?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Fire is not THAT weak. Its a very good evocation path, also some of the best items require fire (firebrands (hell yeah), dragon helms, flambeaus/holy scourges, lightless lanterns, fever fetishes, rune smashers, charcoal shields, shields of gleaming gold, several nice arts etc). The only thing it lacks is good summons - but hey, no one is perfect.
And even if fire was as weak as some of us believe, its not a reason to make fire better than astral at countering SCs. At the very least blindness should be Alt 4, as high as Paralyze.
Imho, of course.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

The EA Atlantis hero who's basically a map move 0 living pillar. Give the guy some map move. I mean, he's a commander LP, so he's prime thug material, but he can't fricking go anywhere!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Suggestions for EA Agartha:

Look at the encumbrance for Oracles. 7 with no armor is ridiculous, imho, especially with cold blooded. These guys pass out after like 2 spells if their province gets hit with a snowstorm. And as the only really playable commander option...

Remove the attack penalty. Seriously. Its not like they had two eyes and lost one - they've had one eye their entire life. numerous other animals can only use one eye to see something at a given time, and are remarkably good at 'attacking' (most animals have one eye on either side of its head, which means there is little to no overlap in the field of vision of each eye). I can understand the precision reduction, but the attack reduction makes no sense.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Are you sure you're not looking at some guy with old age, or in a heat-3 prov? Oracles are base 5. You've also got super-easy access to Girdles, and can Summon Earthpower, and they are holy so you can get an earth bless too. You don't really need to wear armor either, just buff with Ironskin.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I've been wondering about boulder throwers, and I still haven't seen hardly anyone use them. It seems that even with the (greatly) improved attack, there's simply no real use for them(besides chumping down unsuspecting Adons, I suppose). Boulder throwers are supposed to improve damage outlay and help deal with high-defense troops. Of course these are very critical goals, especially for Agartha. But then why do we not see such a crucial niche filled, more often than not?

1. Range. Str/3 means that you can only have a very limited number of boulder throwers useful at any time--especially with their large sizes. Thus you cannot ever get a critical mass of them, even though there are several other considerations that would prevent such a thing(cost, for one, and friendly fire)

2. Ammunition. Two ammunition is fine on troops such as javeliners, who are also meant to be frontline troops. And if boulder throwers were meant to ever touch melee, that would be fine. Unfortunately, they have abysmal defense and easily die to even mediocre troops.

I'd suggest at least considering upping the range to maybe str/2 and/or pumping ammunition up to 3. It just seems that with a bit of tweaking, Agartha can get some of the killing power they need from stone hurlers.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I use bolder throwers; I use them as hp sponges, in combination with a nature regen. Going from memory the units above them have fewer hp.

It would be fun to see the boulders increased, and made AoE1

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

They ARE AoE 1 in CBM, and quite effective. A minor blood bless pushes the range to 7, enough to throw them over a front rank of Ancient ones or other melee troops.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

what about Jotun boulder throwers? they are pretty useless too

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Minor blood bless, with Agartha? Egads. Never thought about doing that before. Blood stones would be nice to have, though. Given the metagame's tendency towards no gem generator games, though, I'm a bit leery of using that as a reason to keep them as-is.

They are indeed quite effective in CBM--at least when they're not hitting your own troops or wading into melee with their fists.

Edit: Jotunheim doesn't really feel the pain with boulder throwers(except for niche uses and sieging), mostly because they could recruit a javelin thrower instead; 20 range on their weapons, and a perfectly acceptable melee combatant to boot!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Hey thats a neat factzoid to remember. Thanks fant!

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While i understand the desire to remove bloodstones because of gem gen, earth really needs a miscellaneous slot booster to replace it if its becoming unique.

Thinking on some different topics:

Magma Eruption - this should be castable underwater. seriously.

Bone Melter - this needs something done to it. AoE 1 means it tends to get dropped on worthless chaff by your mages, rather than high value targets. For a W3N2 spell that requires alteration 5, this is underwhelming. Either make it single target (so autotargetting will choose large monsters) or give it improved AoE. Possibly 1+ rather than 1 (so it kills enough chaff that you don't feel like you're wasting mage turns). I suppose another alternative is to make it W1N1 or W2N1 so you don't need to put boosters on most mages with W and N to be able to cast it. (Basically, the effect is not commensurate with the necessary investment of research time, gems for gear, and mage turns in combat).

Bone Melter is of course a natural spell for MA Oceania, and useable UW, so this improves their UW combat options (probably works for EA Oceania too). Magma Eruption is a natural for EA Atlantis's BKs. And having some alternatives to cold attacks, bad water offensive spells otherwise, and buffs would make UW combat less stupid.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

To make it target single high hp targets wouldn't be hard. You make a single target version with a nextspell of the aoe version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Yeah, that would work, but it would force two mr checks on the primary target then (one for the main single targe spell and then a second check when AoE kicks in). That effect would make it pretty powerful insta-kill spell.

But I quess he spell could use the boost.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I was playing about with EA Agartha again. It came to me that a good and reasonably thematic boost would be heat preference 2. That would give them some points to buy a blessing and some heat to push against cold dominions.

With that change they would be good enough I think, and Umbrals could stay at conj 7.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I think heat preference would be ok for agartha too, but it isn't really suggested anywhere in their descriptions etc. Though they do summon up fire elementals and earth elementals rather than water elementals, which suggests some ties with lava/geothermal stuff.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Uhm, if in 1.6 you are making bloodstones unique/removing them, do you think that maybe you can reduce the E level required for a lot of the higher level spells? w/out bloodstones, I think even a lot of real earth nations are going to have issues casting stuff like E attack, Deepwell, army of __, etc.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

There will hopefully be an earth booster to compensate, though it will not be without extra baggage (such as turning you into something or boosting nature).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

It wouldn't hurt. But taking heat 3 is already a law of playing Agartha anyway, so it doesn't actually give you any more points.

I also doubt giving cave dwellers a heat preference makes sense. What also doesn't make sense is cave dwellers being cold blooded in the first place. (Seriously, you get more than like 10' below ground and air temperature is constant and chilly.) Cold blooded only makes sense for things that are normally out in sunlight...

Edit: Support++ for reducing path requirement for Army of X spells and Weapons of Sharpness, and really, lategame army buff spells in general. The game favors thug/SC play way too much - making these spells accessible to regular mages would go a long way towards making armies actually viable.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

They might spend lots of time huddled around geothermal outlets.

I thought it was fairly warm deep underground, not chilly. I'm no expert though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I was just in caves two weeks ago that had ice all summer while the temperature above ground was 90+ (Deg F).

Here's a decent link on the subject: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env223.htm

Note that since many or most areas have seasonal temperature fluctuations, average temperature can be pretty chilly. In most of the US we're talking <=55 deg F.

(As you get deeper, cave temperature becomes more dependent on geothermal heat and less dependent on surface heating - which could lead to warmer or cooler caves depending on the area's average temperature. You have to go quite deep for geothermal to be 'quite warm' - deeper than any known natural caves and probably deeper than its possible to mine out tunnels.)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

As you are getting even deeper in caves, you end up in groundwater eventually, before it could get to any hot. Removing cold blooded might be too much a boost, though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

They have the "rhuax pact" spell as a national summon, Summoning magma children with heat and fire power. So that sort of implies a connection to heat and volcanic heritage.

Also I think EA agartha absolutely needs to take heat scales anyway to defend against cold, which is a total killer for them. So pretender design wouldn´t change much anyway, you just wouldn´t lose the income.

Taking away cold blooded would be an alternative but I somehow feel that it is a strong part of the Agartha theme.

Why not just imagine that Agarthas caves run deeper than caves known to man, that they are connected with earth itself and it´s burning core?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Oh, you people are just not living close enough to any volcanoes. You can cook eggs in some 5' deep caves in Japan.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

In my Balance mods, this is one of the steps I take to make the agarthas more competitive.

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Because at some point gravity just crushes the cave? Its not that there are no caves known deeper than that, its that there's a depth beyond which cave formation is *impossible* and supporting a tunnel structurally is *impossible*. The only reason magma pipes don't collapse is they're filled with magma, which is really dense.

Edit: before someone says it - if Agartha has magic powerful enough to achieve such a feat, (1) why are they bothering with the surface world? (2) Shouldn't they be able to move anywhere on the map from any territory? (3) They've already won, their magic is so awesome.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

The Agarthan caves are filled with water, didn't you know? And it doesn't get pushed up to the surface because AWDI.

(1) Because they don't want to be near the seal when it breaks
(2) Have you looked at those fat-arsed Agarthan Oracles? They are lucky to have map move 2.
(3) Agartha will never win, because of teh PD.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I think you mistake them for monkeys. :)

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It's sort of silly bringing our geography into this anyway. Who is to say the world of dominions isn't flat and heated from the bottom by a giant burning space squirrel.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

You silly man, it's turtles all the way down.

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Squirreloid informs me that my space squirrel 'proposal' is flawed; I just wanted to let people know before they cited it in their research.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I´m not going to argue the scientific possibility of warm caves, frankly I don´t know **** about it.

My point was: Why not **** science in this case and use our imagination?

Edit: Damn that ****ing forum cencorship.:p

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

No no no. First its the elephants, then the turtles.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

And the squirrel comes underneath the turtles, of course.