Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I noticed wendigo can't command undead troops despite their death knowledge, dunno if it's a bug or not.

Is there a release date for the CBM ? :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

That makes sense, and they should come at the same point as Tarts, research level 9. Balancing against Tarts is good but balancing them against Tarts and putting them at research 8 is bad. Balancing against Tarts and putting them at research 6 is insane.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

But "balanced against tarts" does not have to mean "identical to tarts". It could (does, actually) mean "not as good as tarts, but available at earlier research level." That is, obviously, a harder balancing act, but I don't think anyone has advocated just adding a bunch more Conj 9, cheap, super-multi-path, 200hp, 0 encumbrance summons.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

That's a definition of "balanced", but not for an *endgame* diversity mod. By that balance, Tarts are still the trump of the endgame; you've just added *midgame* options which may pre-empt Tarts. That's a lot of the complaint in the post that started this subthread. There certainly isn't much need for diversity at research level 6 - IMO that's the period of the game which already had the most diversity, with a lot of different magic options and still some possibilities for mildly boosted regular armies.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Many proposals have been made to make the VQ playable. Including that exact proposal. None of them have been implemented.

I think a viable VQ is just too unpalatable for the Dom2 vets who remember when she was (too) good, so now she's doomed to suck forever.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Luckily I never played dom 2, so when I come to review pretenders I will definitely make her stronger.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Awesome God changes her to Dom 3 and beeing a semi rainbow with 30pts path cost. This makes her a decent choice for a more expensive higher dom rainbow that can be used in battle, although, for some nations that need B/D the most, you could see her as a bit strong.
Some other Awesome God changes I like:
-Master Alchemist got immortal
-Frost Mage (the rainbow, not the SC) got Summon Allies for Winter Wolfs
-Master Druid domsummons Vine critters
-Freak Lord domsummons crossbreeding stuff
-I think the mounter archmage gets more paths
Basically, most rainbows get some kind of non too powerfull extra gimmick.

What I also liked was liberal use of Magic boosts on Pretenders, for example, the Virtue go Magic boost 3, so she can be a capable battlemage but is crappy at blessings. The Forge Lord got Magic boost 4, so if you empower him he gets straight up to level 4, but is sphinx class immnobile.
Other things are great bless grants by starting out with high paths, but not great casters because they have negative magic boosts.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

What happened to rain of stones?


Do I have change my evil plans???


Noooo...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Did rain of stones really need the nerf. Sure it was powerful but so are a lot of other spells. And its not like the nations that can cast it natively are exactly powerhouses.

EA Arco
EA Ulm
EA Tien
EA Caleum
EA Tir
EA Van
EA Helhiem
EA Yomi
EA Oceaniana

MA Man
MA Ulm
MA Tien
MA Van
MA Eriu

LA Man
LA Midgard

Am I missing any? And most of those needed at least a pair of earth boots to pull it off on any significant portion of their mages. It was also fairly hard to make it effective as you generally had to lure someone into attacking so you could get it off before any first round protection spells are cast. Where big mage communions under powered?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

The nerf to RoS is my least favorite change in CBM. It was totally unnecessary. (It also totally lobotomizes LA Man, who depends on the spell).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

+1 to rain of stone nerf criticism.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I am neutral to the RoS change. But only because I was personally abusing it quite a lot in earlier versions of CBM and it made my opponents miserable. I like that it requires more research though. People almost never research evo 8&9 previously unless they had nothing else to research.

LA Jomon
LA Ulm
LA Caelum

Can also cast RoS.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Some thoughts on patala:

The golden naga should be amphibious like all other naga.
The casting monkeys (gurus?) should have stealth. As is they have near zero mobility and a morale of seven. To make them somewhat better and still remain thematic, a stealth +0 option would be nice so they could accompany the stealthy monkey armies and provide a slightly stronger raiding vector.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Excuse the ignorance, but is there a list somewhere that documents all the changes between Vanilla and the current CBM?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

No :(

I'm supposedly making one, but I don't have time at the moment to actually work on it. There's a start to it down in this thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=46904

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

When I want to know what CBM does I have found it most useful to just open the mod file in wordpad and have a look. Even if you are not a coder or a moder you can still often determine approximately what something does. And even if you cant, there are plenty of comments in the code explaining most of the complicated stuff.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Possession, I just found out about this CBM spell playing LA Ulm. It seems pretty interesting, a cheap zero research GoR that eats a mage. Really nice for nations with cheap recruit anywhere S1s like LA Ulm. So question:

1) How many nations have this spell?

2) Obviously all the normal things you might GoR, you can now do more cheaply like Gargoyles and Crushers and what not, but there must be things that you'd normally not consider GoRing but might be worthwhile possessing. I was considering Demon Knights as cheapo thugs with built in fear and very low encumbrance, but LA Ulm has no easy way of getting Demon Knights. What other options are there that people have found?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Eating a mage is a very big thing. Mages win games(*). So it isn't that useful.

iirc only la ulm has it. But there might be one other nation that has it.

(*)Actually mage turns win games. A mage can only do one thing each turn, search, forge, move research etc. By using possession you use up the mage turns for the rest of the game. Usually, this isn't worth it. Even with cheap mages. (As recruiting a mage also costs a fort turn).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

If you have sages, every year a bunch of them will get diseased at which point they might as well be used to possess something. Occasionally, you'll get a diseased astral Black Priest. And sure, recruiting an Illuminated One solely for possession costs a fort turn, but so does recruiting a thug for nations that have them. It'll be worth it if the result is good enough. Not sure a Demon Knight would be worth it, but there should be something useful.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

LA Man also has the spell. And maybe LA Arco? Can't remember.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Recycling diseased mages is marginal. (And you never get them at the moment you want them). And recruiting thugs from forts instead of mages is suboptimal anyway. See the assassin discussions :D.

Demon knights are meh, get the devils. Able to command other demons, and flies. Flying rocks.

(Most recruitable thugs are mages, so they have dual role).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Where is the assassin discussion?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Question, are all heroes in CBM supposed to have 3 miscellaneous slots? Ie, is a hero with only 2 slots an oversight or intended?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Edit: never mind original post not accurate

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Machaka needs some loaf.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Still? What weaknesses do you see in the modern Machaka?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

needs more variance, its not about a specific weakness.
That, and a fix for the bad spider sprite.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Bad spider sprite? What's all that?

More variance as in it's too one-trick-pony-ish? I suppose they only get high nature/fire/earth/death, but that's a decent amount of stuff. You have to prioritize getting a wasteland to get Hidden in Sand astral(or spend a bunch of death gems for specters), but you can get that up too. It's pretty frustrating that they get max N3 and D2(realistically), but you can still deal with that.

Speaking of which, is the Treelord's Staff going to go down to N4? 40 gems is...a lot.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Witch Doctors should totally get heal-20 or something. In their description they heal the sick!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Can't find a link, but assassins as recruits when you could have recruited mages has been discussed to death.

I think recruitable assassins are not worth it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

One of the good things CBM has done is provide counters to rush attempts, whether they be general changes or boosts to specific nations. It's not much fun to get steamrolled by a heavy bless early and not have much you can do about it. But one side effect of this and other changes is that I think the scales + magic diversity and/or light bless build is better than ever.

What about reducing the gold bonus/penalty of each tick of the scales by 1? So order would be +/-5, production +/-3, and growth +/-1. This isn't a huge change and I expect scales builds would still be optimal but if someone wanted to try a heavy bless it would be a bit easier to justify since the discrepancy between poor scales and good scales wouldn't be quite so large.

On another note, I really like the change to the growth/death scale. Changing the percentages there really differentiates it from the other scales and I've been quite happy with the long term benefits of growth 3.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

There's what appears to be a minor error I noticed. Late age C'tis starts with a Tomb Priest, which they can't actually recruit. That seems off.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Happens in vanilla game too, so it isn't really a CBM specific thing. Also I don't see it as a so weird thing since it fits the nation theme too and you can summon those rather easily with stock mages anyway too.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I think that's a good idea. It's not a small change though - likely to be a bit controversial I think.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I disagree. It's a needlessly complicated and circular means of achieving balance that will inevitably never do so. The original goal was making high bless builds less dominant. If that has succeeded to an excessive extent such that low bless/pure scales are now too good in comparison, the way to balance that is to step back the original changes, not make completely separate changes to nerf scales. The former can achieve balance with just a few tries, the latter never will as the unrelated changes will have knock on effects on everything else, leading to further imbalances that if corrected with the same philosophy will only end in an endless spiral of imbalance.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

So.. you're saying balance can never be improved?

Close the thread!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Learn to read.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

This raises the question of why the changes to scales were made. If they were made only to impede bless builds then I can certainly see the logic of going back to the 7/3/3 increments for order/production/growth. With anti-rush counters available I don't think that would be a problem from a balance perspective. But I thought it was also intended to make each scale (especially production) be of value and break the typical pattern of order/sloth builds (even in cases where a heavy bless wasn't involved). And I think the changes were successful in doing this. So regardless of which approach you take (of toning down scales or reverting to the previous setup or a similar one) is the idea of making each scale valuable an idea worth keeping?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Honestly, I don't see how the scale changes from vanilla affect bless builds at all. I assumed you were talking about buffs to particularly weak nations that used to be prime targets for a bless rush, a few spells given lower research requirements, and some regular troops buffed so they were useable giving an alternative to sacreds for more nations.

I think the idea of making each scale valuable is worth keeping, and further has nothing to do with the viability of high bless builds. For that matter, I can't think of any high bless nations that no longer find a high bless attractive, except maybe Ashdod and that's due solely to specific nerfs to that nation's sacreds.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

No, you're right, I was talking about those kinds of changes - but also about how they interact with scales. You pay a price for a strong bless. And that cost has gone up, in particular with the changes to order/production. At the same time there are more counters to rush attempts. Taken together, this decreases the appeal of a strong bless. Long term I think the approach we're talking about (scales + magic diversity and possibly a light bless) is optimal for most nations. If it's also clearly optimal short term then I think you'll start to see a lot of the same builds. Note that I don't think this is a balance issue. I'm thinking only in terms of keeping a variety of approaches viable since it makes things more interesting.

As I mentioned, I think it's good that nation's have a chance against a rush attempt so I wouldn't want those changes undone. But in order to reduce the opportunity cost of taking a heavy bless I thought it might make sense to tone down scales a bit. It's worth noting that I tend to be in favor of making small changes and seeing how they play out and I thought that's what this suggestion was but based on llama's comment perhaps that's not the case. :p

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

See that's the problem. How has the cost of a strong bless gone up scale wise? The cost of tanking order and the short-run (and thus most relevant for very heavy blesses intended to win quickly) cost of tanking growth have gone down. The cost of tanking production has gone up. That hurts Mictlan, but is anyone going to argue that high bless is no longer attractive for Mictlan? Lots of Bless nations have sacreds sufficiently resource intensive that they never could tank production: for them the cost of a strong bless has actually gone down.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Okay, there are two problems; One is that growth is too powerful at the moment. Granted. There are two ways to make that disappear: revert the changes and make it 3% income/0.2% growth, or make it 1% income/0.3% growth. The second is that scales in general are too powerful it seems, particularly Turmoil/Prod/Growth/Luck. How much of that is due to Growth being too awesome? If Growth is taken down a notch, will that still be overpowering Order/Misfortune?

In addition, pretender changes are on the horizon, which may affect the scales/bless/awake SC balance a bit. I have to say, awake SCs are looking mighty fine with some of the level 0 item buffs.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Wouldn`t this make her a "default" pretender for LA Ulm?
Immortal, thuggable, with vamp freespawn and both needed paths... Maybe, a domscore of 2 would be enough?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

The point about growth is very good - short term it costs less to take death but you'll pay for it long term. A good trade-off.

As regards order/production, if turmoil was taken as frequently as sloth in order to get points then I'd be inclined to agree but that hasn't been my impression. If you're not offsetting turmoil's hit to income by taking luck that's a very high price to pay. Previously the easiest way to get points (not just for a bless but for an awake pretender) was sloth. The same hit to income as death but without the long term effects. The price is a slower start until you grab a province or two to boost your resources. While sloth 3 can be pushing it, I think a lot of nations can get away with sloth 2 (a few examples from MA would be Van, Pan and Jotun). Now, none of the nations I mentioned have first class sacreds and I'm not claiming a heavy bless was ever an optimal strategy for any of them - but it was a viable one. And for those nations (all of whom happen to be blood nations and don't really want death) paying for a bless has become more expensive. It's worth keeping mind that if you are taking the bless primarily for commanders (as is certainly the case with Van) then as long as you can get through initial expansion you won't be too worried about dealing with sloth. A different example is playing MA Aby with an awake PoD and using sloth to help pay for it (the idea being to basically ignore my high resource troops and jump directly to blood magic).

But again, I like the changes to scales. My idea was just to reduce the gap between good and bad scales.


I definitely prefer the latter. Makes growth different from order/prod as a scale you take for long term benefit.

My guess is that it will, because it strikes me that the key thing is that prod offsets most of the income hit from turmoil while luck keeps generating the same boosts as always (I think someone ran some tests at one point comparing the long term results of order vs luck - and that may have been vanilla where luck isn't as good as CBM).

Good point; might be best to leave scales as-is and see how they interact with the pretender changes. After all, it's not like the current scales are causing huge problems. My main concern was that it will get a bit dull if we start seeing mainly scales builds.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Looks like I`ve found a bug in Worthy Heroes.
Member of the Third Tier, LA Ulm`s multihero has only one chance at showing up in his WH form (2F 3S 3B not old), and sometimes even this doesn`t happen, so even the first one comes as non-WH (2F 2S 2B old), and any subsequent Members of the Third Tier will be non-WH too.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I've had this happen to me in a game. Is this intended?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Not sure if I've mentioned this before but I'd like to lobby for EA C'tis to get a scout. Indie scouts can be difficult to come by in EA and it's kind of tough having to rely on black servants for scouting or ferrying gems...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

i find the call selkie spell for ma oceania a fantastic idea, a balanced and thematic buff, but i wonder if its intentional that she can only be summoned above water. I would change that.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Okay, this is not really a CBM issue, but I figure CBM might as well fix it. Why does Mictlan's starting army have map move 1 but otherwise identical versions of its armored warriors that it can't even recruit? Is it supposed to be that way for some obscure reason of balance? I didn't see it on the bug list, but surely someone must have noticed before.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Okay, this is coming a little late since I didn't watch this thread, but...

I disagree strongly. The shift of growth from direct income boost to later income boost is only a positive thing in the absense of popkilling effects, which is only reasonably certain in single player. As it is, CBM growth only breaks even with vanilla growth on turn 20. Income early is better than income later, not only for reasons of expansion and the increasing obsolescence of recruitable troops, but because the later the income comes, the more likely it ends up never coming due to war, poploss events, or various means of attacking population. CBM has made Volcanic Eruption only cost 5 gems, btw. Certainly, your suggested turmoil/production/growth build is not conducive to actually benefiting from the new growth thanks to all the popkill events opened up by turmoil, which will hit even with luck 3.

Taking growth is a gamble, that you'll be able to keep your population long enough to benefit, as it should be. But it shouldn't be a terrible gamble. With your suggested nerf of growth to only 1% income per tick, it won't break even with vanilla growth until turn 38. I suggest that makes growth a terrible gamble. And it nerfs those nations with no choice but to take growth thanks to old mages.