Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Huh? Well what do you know. They did not like size 3 i the sprite and the wiki was down. Though looking at them in the game I notice that the iron pig have a base morale of 8 not 10 though. And the boars are useful blockers even against bigger enemies.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I personally think allowing mages to cast spells while *not* at a lab would be cool and fun. They'd still have to carry their gems with them...

I suspect that would be a developer question.

What might be possible is to create a spell that either puts a site in a province, or puts a lab in a province.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Oops. I had the moral of both 2 too high because I was looking at them in the home pov in friendly dom. Pigs are 8 boars are 13.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I dunno... are you really saying that a difference of 10hp, 3 encumbrance and 4 AP are irrelevant to the usefulness of a trampler? That's a pretty huge difference in efficiency here. It lets them trample better for longer, and take more evocations to the face before dropping.

Edit: Also wow, that must be an insanely old post you're quoting bat/man, I barely remember having made it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Calahan made the above comment in an exchange regarding claws of kokytos and I thought I'd use it as a jumping off point to talk about the current state of blood magic. I think I'm definitely more optimistic than him as there have been some significant CBM nerfs with regards to blood magic recently (jade knives unique, vampire lords more expensive and infernal disease more expensive) but blood is certainly still very powerful - especially once you reach the late game.

The great (and problematic) thing about blood is that it basically alchemizes gold into "gem quality" summons and powerful battlefield and ritual magic. In this sense blood nations have gems + blood, while non-blood nations have only gems to work with. Now initially of course there is an opportunity cost involved. Individual demonic summons may be cheap but they also require a turn of mage time (in addition to the lost gold from the provinces being blood hunted). But as the game goes on this opportunity cost starts to disappear while at the same time you get access to spells that summon large numbers of a demons at a time as well as powerful battlefield spells.

The utility of gold late game depends on the nation you're playing. Giant nations have mages that are tough enough to survive the late game battlefield. Stealth nations can pick their fights. And of course magic paths factor in. If your mages are throwing around elemental magic that has less utility than if they have S/D/B. If they need a lot of boosters to reach effective levels of magic then gems are the limiting factor, not gold.

So while I don't think gold is useless late game, its utility does go down as the game goes on. Unless you are a blood nation - then you can translate that gold into magic power. And as your need for recruitment decreases, the more of that power you can access.

I'll start the conversation by focusing on one aspect of blood: demonic troop summons. Some highlights of these troops:

High HP and MR (these two are key for late game use)
Morale 30
Low encumbrance
Not effected by darkness
Mobility (usually flight)
Magic weapons
Varying elemental immunities
Specials such as fear, auras, dark power
No upkeep

When you consider the fact that they can stand up to late game magic ranging from master enslave to rain of stones better than national units and that they don't cost a single gem to summon (meaning you can save those gems for forging, summoning SCs and global casting) I'd say these are the best troops in the game.

And it's not just that they're good - they're massable. Even if you haven't gone the route of soul contracts or don't have a trick such as beast bat spawning onaqui, you can still generate large numbers of top flight troops quickly, meaning you can recover quickly from setbacks.

I had a funny situation in a recently completed game where utterdark was up. While everyone, including myself, had their gold income largely eliminated, as the only blood nation in the game I didn't mind this turn of events at all since my blood hunting continued unimpeded - and it was actually an incentive to flip more provinces to being blood hunted to increase my advantage. Btw, in this same game I did most of my blood hunting in just three provinces. Two were in the typical 7-8,000 pop range and another had around 14,000. Under growth 3, in 30 turns of hunting the two smaller provinces with 4-5 B2/3s (and with patrolling to keep down unrest) each province lost only around 1,500 pop. The 14k province was hunted with up to 10 B2/3s for 20 turns (again with heavy patrolling) and only lost about 2k pop during that time.

In another game I had GoNB up and was recruiting mages like crazy. Of course my upkeep shot up as well but my plan was that if I lost GoNB I'd just switch all my provinces to blood hunting and still get value from them despite operating at a loss. But you don't need GoNB for this mechanic to apply - if your upkeep gets too high just convert as many provinces as possible to blood hunting and once again get full value from them.

In short, blood gains strength as the game goes on. Once you reach the endgame I think blood nations have a significant advantage over non-blood nations of equal research and (especially) equal gem income. They are certainly not undefeatable (only MA Ulm is undefeatable ;)) but since the mechanics of blood magic are what they are I think there's a case to be made for some price adjustments to high end blood magic along the lines of what was done with vampire lords.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Aren't lances one shots?

Shouldn't ermors cavalry have some weapon beside lances?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Check again, as they have Light Lances not Lances, and the former are not one shot like the Lance is. (both get a Charge bonus)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Get with the times rdonj, as this is all the rage amongst the new crowd right now. The cool kids also go a step further by splicing it with some tabloid skullduggery to edit what you previously said to create a juicy sound bite that makes you look like a complete idiot!

Groovy!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

After looking at a game from, I think Executor, I have realized I have been playing blood nations all wrong. I now tend to agree with Calahan. They are way broken. Even more so when you have a Air/Blood nation.

Air gets a fantastic summon that is the best synergy with blood.

Call of winds. Patrol the unrest away, put as many hunters in the province as you want, if the unrest rises, throw more birds at it. You only need one high pop province. (If you manage to get a unrest reducing pretender this is even easier).

I'm also starting to think that blood sabbath is to easy to cast now.

(Edit: being able to start ritual of the 5 gating at turn 14 is surely nice).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Tbh I haven't played or tested blood hunting under CBM 1.92's new Growth scale settings. But if the sort of results for patrolling pop loss that Executor and Valerius have been posting are true (and I have no reason to believe that they're not), then blood is no longer OP, as now it's just completely f*cked instead.

As if under G3 you can blood hunt any high pop province with insane numbers of hunters for an insignificant pop loss, then that just totally screws any game with a blood nation in it. The income mechanics of blood hunting and patrolling with taxes are pretty fuzzy (your income numbers lie to you), and it's usually the pop loss that's the problem with mass hunting and patrolling a single province. But if that's gone then it appears the sky's the limit. Blood for everyone! and CBM might need to add a few cloned mod nations to meet the demand. Lanka 1, Lanka 2, Lanka 3.