Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

NOOOOO! Use Emacs. :).

(But we are getting offtopic).

I was wondering, 10 dgems for tarts, or less, if they get a cost reduction. Would you ever use Bane Lords? (apart from being available earlier in the game).

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Actually, when playing Van, A gems are one of the gem types I least want to spend on summons since I need them to fuel cloud trapeze. I think a non-A nation that happens to end up with a good A income will be more inclined to summon (and benefit from) Asynjas.

But I agree that the best thing is to play a cycle of games and see what happens. If it turns out some nations were particularly hurt by the changes then adjustments can be made in the next release. And they can be tailored to the nations that need a boost, in the same way some of the weaker nations received a boost with this release. So if the changes to tarts are fine in general but C'tis is overly impacted, perhaps they will receive a national summon/spell to boost them.

Also ... tarts spent a long time at the top. If this release overly nerfs them for a period of time I can't say it will bother me. Especially because unlike with tarts the EDM summons are open to anyone and not contingent on requirements such as having the Chalice/GoH in order to take full advantage of them.

On a different note, I have taken a quick look at the changes to TNN/Eriu. The standouts are of course Song of Power and Mists of Hidden Paths. I like these spells and think they fit thematically - powerful but dangerous to the wielder as well as the intended target. It will be very interesting to see how these play out. I'm always up for a high risk, high reward option but we'll have to see if the chance of the reward is high enough or if it mainly ends up being high risk. :p

Also of note is Tuatha and Ri receiving Awe +0. That's a very nice bonus since glamoured thugs are all about layered defenses. It also means there's increased potential to get these out quick enough to help in expansion. The Golden Lance used by Tuatha, Ri and Eriu's (but not TNNs) Sidhe Lords now have the False Fetters effect - nice but I'd still be inclined to forge them gear as I don't like the idea of an E mage hitting them with destruction/iron bane after I've sent them out raiding. Another plus is reducing the base encumbrance on troops/commanders by a point. Anyway, nice to see these nations get some help.

Well you could give them herald lances and have them kill tarts. ;) But yeah, they are available a lot earlier and are more of a mid-game summon but the fact they have full slots is a big plus and I think you'll still see them.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

I meant to reply to this before - these are things you can't do. Please check what can be done before criticising people for not doing them.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

I will no longer deny that removing gemgens was a good idea. And yes. As long as blood sacing remains buggy, removing the jade knife is also a good idea. But hammers and SDR's are not gemgens. They are force multipliers and the game is balanced around using them. They don't create gems. They merely multiply your initial income.

The Hammer make it so that the value of gems used to forge items increase by approximately 40% If you assume that you spend 50% of your gems on gear and have a gem income of 50 gems/turn. Then having an infinit number of hammers will at most increase your gem income by 50*0.40/2 = 10 gems/turn minus the one time cost of the hammers. Because unlike normal gemgens that have a linear or slightly exponential pay curves, hammers have a reverse exponential curve that panes out towards 20% of gem income.

Think of it! The first hammer will pay for itself almost imedietly! The second also. But how often do you forge ten items in a turn? Sometimes sure, but even a rich nation will only do so on occasion, so it might take 15-20 turns for the tenth hammer to pay for itself. And thats not considering that you could build something else for the earth gems that helps you better.


And now to my personal observations. I am in the same game as NooBliss and from my observations, the absens of hammer have made thugs really rare. I have scouts in most parts of the world, but by turn 45 i have only seen 3 nations use thugs at all. Me, NooBliss and Bandar Log. I can afford it because I have the best gem income and can afford to be wasteful. NooBliss can afford it because much of his gear is made from bloodslaves and those are both plentiful and often did not benefit from hammer-discounts anyhow. The lesson here is that the game was balanced around hammer costs and without hammers people will spend the gems on other things.

And even I mostly use naked thugs like Shishis that does not loose out by not wearing things.


As for SDR's, they are, as already stated, more important for weak blood mages than the strong ones. I think a B1 mage gets a 100% boost from a rod, while a B3 gets a 20%. This is because B1-B2 mages are not guaranteed to find slaves and the rods increases both the chance to find slave and their numbers. These are guesstimates, but I believe them to be true. Guess whom its removal will hurt the most? It might be a bit annoying to make/assign them. But they will usually stay with the mage till he dies so its a one time thing. I don't see micromanagement as a reason to remove them. The unbalance created by their removal is a worse thing than the micro IMHO.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

My small tests and experience seems to imply that a SDR counts as an additional B level for both the find chance and the amount of slaves you get. Mine are also guesstimates. But they all increase the power of your bloodhunting. And even if they provide one additional slave each turn on a b3+ mage, that is still free slaves after turn 5. (Not totally true of course, as you waste one turn creating the SDR). This increases micro as you never ever send out a hunter without a SDR.

But as I said before, I'm not totally convinced SDR removal is a good idea. (Boosting some nations with a douse bonus for example just moves the issue around a bit (disregarding the additional mage turns and the used misc slot).

Ps: you get forge bonuses on blood items, just not the contracts, the black heart, the other blood heart, and probably one other item.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

I've held my tongue before I had a change to experience CBM 1.7 myself to criticize it. I hope something constructive will come of this.

So far from experience I'd have to say that CBM 1.7 has been a disaster regarding item prices, which ultimately led to several other problems.

Like Corinthian said, and quite contrary to what people expected as I remember some talks how it would actually increase the effectiveness of thugs, it led to a severe decrease in thug numbers.

Even the cheapest thugs become expensive without hammers.
And given that they are supposed to be expendable unlike SCs they shouldn't require much investment.

High level item forging became unbearable. Often you have to rely on a booster to forge other boosters and so on. And those boosters are quite often necessary to get a global spell, cast battle spells, to summon stuff and such.
For example forging a ring of wizardry to get a ring of sorcery to cast GONB for example is bloody awful, 110 gems just for the rings, etc.

Also, the race for the artifacts kinda got well much less important.
Even if you manage to hit construction 8 first it doesn't matter as you certainly won't have enough gems to make proper boosters and than the important stuff you need/want, even with very high site frequency which coshes more problems that it solves.

The thing about rushing to const 8 was that you had to sacrifice a lot to get there first. If you rush construction and get attacked in the meantime there's a good chance you won't ever make it there as you'll be dead since you wasted research on construction rather than summons and battle spells to defend or attack.

And even if you hit construction 8 first, ok, you managed to get a few good artifacts before you blew all your gems away, so now what?

Many of you feel that by simply increasing the site frequency it wouldn't pose much of a problem after all.
Wrong, by doing so you'd probably create much more micro and complicate things as I doubt anyone is crazy enough not to have some kind of a rainbow pretender with such common magic sites, so every nation would have to radically change their approach, strategy.

This is all based from experience on a CB 1.7 game mentioned above.

Now, as for CB 1.8 a lot of items got their prices lowed, paths dropped etc as to compensate for the loss of the hammers. I have no idea how this will actually impact the game until I try it out but I'm sure that this will be the first of several item balancings we'll see as a reprocation of the hammer loss.

The fact remains that even with lowered prices many items will still become unusable I feel. Bows will be the first to go probably, certain cross path items too. There are some items that just weren't worth using without hammers and having their prices dropped from 5 > 3, 10 > 6 etc.

I'm not saying that the loss of hammers will prove to be a bad thing in the end, having to think and plan in advance in how to get E3 with every nation you play is not very accommodating, and personally I love some changes on certain items as even with hammers things like stone idols or those big eartly trample wings were almost unexciting,
I'm just saying that it will need a lot of work and trials and error before it's all well sorted out as so far their removal has caused more problems than good.

Until than, I'll probably stick more to hammer games. Hammer time!

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Excuse me. Vim is *the* best editor. It also easily handles diffs :)

To topic, Tarts should cost more, say 20D gems but remove all nerfs except non-gored (and if possible can't heal afflictions).
To the "crazy" trait lovers a compensation can be made to lower the craze frequency to say 5%.

Edit: re. hammers. Players got used to them and so could afford "wasteful" thug/SC builds using tons of gems via hammers.
In CBM 1.8 world some tough choices would be required re. equipment for thugs. However, I think thugs would still be valid. I know, I'd deploy them happily, they'd just be leaner and more tailor made for the job.
Much like tarts, this has a lot to do with Psychology and "fashion". The natural first psych. response to no hammers is to think "Fuxk that. I'm not wasting gems on these stupid thugs". I think this will change a bit with 1.8 and over time thugs and SCs would be more common again (but probably not as in a hammer world).
Tarts were public enemy #1 b/c everyone loved them. This is doesn't mean that they should be nerfed to oblivions. The reason being thematic rather than pure balance.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

While the idea itself is good, give it some thought: you will spend 100 death gems and 5 mageturns to summon 4 meat shields and one commander (or not, if you're unlucky).
And that commander is likely to be a feeble-minded, armless, uncurable Monstra.

Or is there something I dont understand?

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

You could also get a 5S3B monster or some such. You never know :)

The 20D gems was just an idea. Anything between 15-20 would work IMO.

Re: CBM 1.8 released
 

Just ran three quick tests, summoning 10 tartarians every time.

First test: a mute Tartarian spirit (E2D1) with one arm and a never-healing wound, 3 feebleminded tartarian spirits. Very, very lucky to have 4 commander tartarians, but only one of them is half-decent.
Second test: Two feebleminded cyclopes, one of them without an arm.
Third test: One crippled, feeble-minded, one-armed female titan, one unblemished A2E3 titan.

In other words: 30 mage-turns, a heapload of death gems. One top-notch SC, one adequate SC, lots of cripples.
I am not sure what to think about it.