Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'm assuming it's the overall goal because it's the only overall goal that's worthwhile for a mod that makes as many changes as it already does. If you would rather it not change overall balance between nations, then there are a large number of things that will have to be done to restore the balance back to what it is in vanilla. The nations with light cavalry, for example, will have to have the power of their other units reduced, or costs increased so that the improvements to cavalry don't upset the balance between nations. Niefelheim will need some major changes to unit costs so that the extra 100 gold cost on niefel jarls and the smaller cold auras on niefel giants doesn't reduce the nation's power relative to other nations.

Every change that is made to a nation changes the relative balance between nations. To argue otherwise is ignorant.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

*eye roll* I used a W9F9 bless on the jags when I did the comparison and the first hit did surprisingly little, since the Warriors have such good defense and the single attack the unhurt jags have isn't enough to hit them.

I can't imagine eagles doing better, but run a test and let me know. The Elemental warriors are only 25g as well, not 35. Luckily they don't HAVE to be non-cap, since they're not a great midgame unit and you want to switch to other stuff, as previously mentioned by other posters. You also have a pretty badass S9 pretender with a lot of dominion power since you start at 3 dom, which is kind of nice. The higher dominion also means you have a high holy limit and can outnumber them early on when raw troop numbers are more important.

As far as the archer comment: I was responding to the assertion that they fold to other sacreds, not that they're uncounterable. To delve into more strategy for a moment though, TC has excellent archers and good shielded infantry, so it shouldn't be too hard to archer screen with a few guys and tear their archers up with a fire archers command to save your sacreds. It's not foolproof, but it's gonna make life hard for your opponent.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Who is arguing otherwise? That statement is a truism to the point that it's meaningless. What you're talking about is the goal of the mod. Still. Even if qm never said another peep about CBM there are plenty of posts about the intentions behind CBM. Plenty of IRC logs. And even without those, the changes themselves tell a pretty clear story of balancing units, items, spells against each other. There have definitely been changes made which were primarily about nation balance, for example the original toning down of Hinnom's starting army (before a patch did it).

Anyway, no need to argue about it. Just ask qm if you want to know. Send him an email or pm, that's probably easiest.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Nope. The only overall worthwhile goal, obviously, is to make the game more fun, by increasing diversity. How is diversity increased? By balancing under-used stuff.

Obviously, "not changing the overall balance" is not a goal of CBM. The overall balance will be changed, as a side effect of making under-used stuff more worthwhile.

There's nothing stopping you from making your own nation-balancing mod, if that's what you want.

I think Chris P has a project like that started. And there's another mod somewhere that gives all players identical nations, if you're looking for perfect balance for some reason.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Right, my balance mod makes changes to oceania, all agarthas, and abysia.

I had changes started for machaka, and eriu.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I agree that tc has excellent archers; I agree that an S9 pretender absolutely rocks. I just do not agree that W5E's outclass jags.

I also don't think that you are going to have a higher dominion score than mictlan.

Mictlan can afford to dump resources, heat, and growth/death if need be, and even two points of drain. TC just can't afford to do that - it need resources for archers; doesn't have a heat preference; and needs growth for its old age mages.

Finally, Mictlan can afford drain, by using a dominion pocket strategy, whereas all TC's mages are cap only, with crap outside its capital and hence, should not afford a drain scale.

Mictlans preferred bless chasis long ago was the oracle; since thats now no longer available the blood fountain is probably next best. Sucks on the endgame - but in terms of dominion the fountains Dom 4 under CBM is BETTER than the Dom 3 you're referencing. A typical mictlan starting bless will be an f9w9b4 with Dom7. however you certainly can see dom 8 easily, as well as an 9-9-9 bless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Could one of the way to balance nations just be to increase the gold and/or resource settings at the beginning of the game. If sacreds are a smaller percentage of armies, it may make the game more balanced.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I was just speaking about the sacreds, not the nations as a whole, though you're blowing 5 scale picks on that build vs a TC with s9w9 at any level of dominion (the starting dom doesn't cause enough of a difference to matter) and I doubt the 2 points of strength will change the battle results by much.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yes and no.
At first glance making a 'richer'game seems as if it would mean more normal troops compared to sacreds.

However, it doesn't actually change the equation tooo much. Blesseds expand faster, and so have a steeper ramp up on their incomes. So instead of building a castle on turn 4, they build it on turn 3.

What it does tend to do is compress the game. Expansion against indies tends to happen faster. Armies tend to get larger faster.

There are also other effects. Niefle, hinnom, agartha a few other nations tend to love rich resource and gold games, and it tilts the balance in favor of them, rather than dom limited smaller nations.

Spell research easier is a bigger effect, in my opinion.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I finally noticed something that bugs me: Ichtycentaurs and Trident Knights don't have a hoof attack. They should, at the very least on land. Give Trident Knights lances too and you might even see people using them.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Hinnom seemsto have acess to two Son of the Sun pretenders. one S1 one F1. this is in vanilla also. maybe just change the name of the S1 since son of the sun seems more firey to me.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Sorry I thought you said F9S9 vs F9W9. You're ownly blowing 3 scale picks due to a heat preference on mictlan.

Well, with 11 tests, only two of which were conducted at 6 hp and 9 hp (one each). mictlan won 5 fights, TC won 6. Tests were fought within TC dominion.

These were at even odds, usually 10 on 10.

A few things I noticed:

Eagles won more often because they killed the enemy priest.
TC inflicted much more casualties, in general. TC never lost more than 5, mictlan lost 9 or 10 4 times.

These results seem *highly* variable.

Switching to a s9w9, the TCs won 6 out of 9, at equal #s. The extra defense of the W5E's and extra attack just tears mictlan up.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

T'ien Chi's warriors are inferior to Mictlan sacreds only in that they are capital-only. Their strengths are different. TC does better vs. units relying on fire/heat/cold for instance. Eagle warriors are great against units which need boosting for instance, as these will get attacked before their buffs are on.
My point about using a bless for EA T'ien Chi is that the bless allows them to start fast. They'll tear down non archer indies. Later on, as the W5E are capital only, you can't rely on them, but you can summon sacred demons and sacred celestial warriors in the mid-game, and your bless should help these too. So mid-game, TC still has usable sacreds, which they can mass-summon everywhere (if you have the gems).
By the way, one reason to recruit a master of the way over a master of the 5 elements if these weren't capital only would be to try and get an S random so you can summon demons of heavenly waters, but it's probably easier to bring in a celestial master (fly/teleport/trapeze depending on what you've got) than risk 4 or 4 lousy picks in the process.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Mictlan's heat preference is only one point, and it's kind of odd to bring it into the discussion anyhow, since it's not like Mictlan loses it if they don't take a bless. Additionally, I can't remember the last time I took anything but heat or cold at 3, because it's by far the least important scale, so getting a freebie there isn't worth as much as one elsewhere.

I take it the only reason mictlan won 3 of those fights with the proper bless is because they popped the commander? The Element warriors just absolutely mop the floor with Mictlan's troops. Even at equal goldcost the eagles were being destroyed wholesale when I ran some tests.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Proposed change: short sword attack from 0 to 1.
Because short swords are pretty decent weapons, but their current stats has them plain inferior to broad swords, while in reality they have some advantages and are used for those at times.
May help unit balance some, as short sword (like spear) tends to be a weapon on lame units.
Zlefin :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Biggest problem with short swords is length 1. Att boost wouldn't be bad though, since they're plausibly more nimble. Maybe even a def boost?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That minor short sword boost is a very good idea. As it is now, short swords are a plain disadvantage. I suggest 1 in both attack and defence.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

LA Agartha could really use a boost like that, considering that all their melee troops, even their sacreds, use shortswords, which makes them quite ineffective.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Or then, swap the short swords of the blindfighters into broad swords. It wouldn't make them top of the line troops but would make them at least a bit more viable without spending points to blood in your bless. Rest of the troops I see as pretty fine for LA troops for what they can and can't do.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Another suggestion for the next version of CBM: divine grasp should be a bonus weapon, so you can equip iron angels and not lose the halt sacred attack.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Agartha and its short swords are supposed to be stabbing "cave fighting" weapon flavour of the nation.

Blindfighers do have 11 strength to help them out a touch.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Roman troops use short swords also, so that would also be a boost to troops that probably don't need it too badly.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Yes, this is very important. There are other units with the same situation, as far as I remember.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Talking about swords:

Anyone else also thinks its unthematic that a big and heavy 2-handed weapon like e.g. the Wraith Sword does less damage than many single handed weapons?

Generally i think the magic items could still use quite some balancing work in CBM.
Just to name a few:
- Fire Brand and to a lesser extend Frost Brand are overpowered for the cheap prize imo.
-Hell Sword and Wraith Sword are extremely underpowered on the other hand,they have to offer much more bang for the buck in order to compete with single handed weapon+shield.
We got a 25 Death gem/15 slaves + 10 fire gems weapon here,with just average stats,below average and not even AP damage,nerfed life drain,using two hand slots.Thats just plain terrible.

(Also i would like to see the Shadow brand to be on par with the other two (nerfed) brands,AN damage would be thematic here imo)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I have never used Iron angels, but that sounds like a great suggestion.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just had some thoughts on middle age Ulm. Are you able to mod the starting sites of a nation. If so would you be able to give ulm a starting site that allows it to collect an extra 100 or so resources per turn? The theme of the nation makes it sound like they should have access to a high resource site.

I will also add my voice to the opinion that ulms armor encumbrance should be reduced further. Contrary to popular belief, plate armor was easy to move around in. They were specificially designed to give knights mobility. If Ulm has such genius smiths, they should have been able to create armor that is stronger and just as easy to move around in. Not only that, but ulm is a nation that is tough and strong, and specifically trained to wear armor. They should be able to wear armor, and be less effected by encumbrance then other nations. I don't know the formulas enough to say what the best encumbrace should be, but don't be afraid to give the encumbrance a value of 5 or 6. Do that, or else give all umlish troops a natural reinvogration. The reinvogration would simulate their toughness,resilence and trained ability to be less effected by armor.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I don't think the hell sword is actually that bad. If its price was reduced you wouldn't want to reduce it more than 1 step, probably. It has a couple extra things on it other than just life drain which should increase its price. The wraith sword I'll agree with, it is way overpriced. At d2 or d3 it would be much better balanced with the brand weapons, and it is after all a cons 6 item.

Frost brand and fire brand could use maybe a one step price increase, but iirc QM tried this before and people complained until it was changed back. As for the shadow brand, again I don't think it is that bad. With fear and/or quickness it is actually much better than a fire or frost brand most of the time imo, at least at killing chaff.

Unfortunately, you can't really alter the stats of weapons with item modding. Basically the only change you could make to improve or weaken any of them would be to change the secondary effects they use. For example if one really wanted to they could double to damage of the shadow brand's aoe and make the fire brand's aoe do one damage. But you cannot alter the actual weapon itself.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I haven't either, I was just looking them up in edi's database :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Oh,wow,didnt know that.
Thats very sad.
I really think that e.g. Wraith Sword having like 16 base damage or so would be much more thematic.
Thanks for the info.

Maybe giving it 50 or 100% CR,+some kind of fear effect+reducing the price then.
I agree,that the Hellsword is better in comparison,but still most of the time it isnt really an option because of superior brand+shield kits.
Maybe giving it 100%FR and a slightly better berserk effect?
2 handed weapons just have to offer quite a lot for its big downside.
Is it possible to change the damage type to AP damage?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Huh? You can change the stats of weapons like the wraith sword no problem via current weapon mod commands.

It can certainly be given 16 base damage. The code would look like this:

#selectweapon 110
#dmg 16
#end

You can't give it better berserk or fire res or anything like that because those are item effects - I guess that's what rdonj was referring to. Essentially items (forged stuff) may grant weapons and armour (things that appear under the stats on the unit info screen) which have the same name as the item, but they are NOT THE SAME THING.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

They already get a resource bonus in all of their forts. This can be changed.

But yes, you could easily give them a site which gives them extra resources in the cap, or add the extra resources to an existing site.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Actually I was just wrong, so thanks for straightening me out.

In other news I have finally figured out how to create new forgeable magical items, although it seems a bit buggy. I couldn't get multiple attacks to work while having a #secondaryeffect or #secondaryeffectalways.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

ok,i am glad that the stats of the magic items can be changed.:)

I think a lot of items are just off or way-off stat wise, some for thematic reasons,some for balancing.
Instead of changing the gem cost it often might be better to slightly alter the stats instead.
Lets take the brands for example,they are meant to be massable,i.e not very expensive.
Probably better therefore to just lower the damage output for both while keeping the price.That would make them still a great choice vs chaff but they would be considerable weaker vs thugs/SC`s.

what about the following list : ( )=old value
...................Att....Def..Dmg...type

Fire Brand:....4(4) 1(1) 6(12) AP,area effect
Frost Brand:..2(4) 4(2) 12(16) area effect
Wraith Sword:5(2) 6(3) 18(9) Partial Life drain
Hell Sword:...7(3) 0(0) 16(9) Partial LD

If possible to mod,maybe change Damage type from Hell sword to AP instead and make it like 10-12 damage.The berserk effect grants indirect more damage anyways.

With that list,i would keep all prices the same except for the wraith sword which probably should cost 15-20 Death gems.

What do you think?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

bah,how can i remove the automatic formatting?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

That's weapon modding not item modding!

Mardagg: I suggest you read through the mod manual to find out what is and isn't possible. It will help inform suggestions.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I just took a quick peak at the modding manual and i think i might understand it slightly better now.
So you cant change those values of existing magic items,just weapons.

You got me confused,since i was referring to the magic item wraith sword and you were telling me,the damage output can be changed..for weapons.Which at that time i wasnt aware of the difference.
So basically,for my changes to work you could either create new weapons and assign these via #weapon <weapon nbr> to the corresponding item,or you could alter the existing weapon.Didnt know before that such a manual exists.Good stuff.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You are correct sir!

Bravo for taking up the invitation to check the manual out. I think you might be the first person I've suggested that to who actually bothered, rather than continuing to make suggestions without a sense of what was possible.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Huh, I'm not reading all that discussion, too much of it. I wonder if QM will :P

Sombre:
Nation balance was not a concern earlier, surely not the biggest, but now it's changing. While whole game is now almost fully balanced [still, tarts need smth to be done with them], lack of nation balance is even more apparent. But last CBM already had big changes, so I bet QM wanted to see reaction to that [and it had probably the biggest amount of nation balance in long time]. I know there are some changes for weak nations that did not make into 1.6 but hopefully they will be in 1.7 [like 100% random instead of 10% for EA Ulm Shamans].

kianduatha, Squirrelloid:

No new spells will be added [maybe llamabeasts late game mod if it's great?], so if you have any suggestions, they should be about things like price/research level of national spells; randoms on mages [that can be upped]; prices; unit being cap/non-cap.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Wha? I've never suggested new spells. My suggestions have largely been minor stat changes:

-Jomon's Samurai archers should get 11 def, 11 precision, 11 morale, and if QM is feeling rowdy maybe a Yari instead of a Katana(lowers the resource cost a bit, gives more variety of weapons, keeps them from making normal Samurai obsolete)
-Jomon's Shrimp Soldiers and Crab Generals should have Naginatas instead of Glaives, if just for theme.

-MA Ulm's Iron Angels' Divine Grasp should be #bonus, and while we're at it Iron Angels should really be 0-encumbrance(and only 4 earth/Conj 7)
-MA Ulm's Guardians should get at least 10 MR.

-Machaka's Hunter Spiders(the big black ones without riders) should get 16 str so their Venomous Fangs match up with the Spider Bite on the original Black Hunters (the normal Great Spiders could be changed too, but those don't matter so much)
-Machakan PD should get priests/casters. My personal preference is towards a Witch Doctor at 1 and a Voice at 20. Some ruckus was made about not having casters at PD 1, but EA Vanheim, EA Helheim, EA Oceania, and MA Oceania(the latter two only on land) have casters at PD 1.

-MA Oceania's Ichtycentaurs and Trident Knights should get hoof attacks, like the Centaur Warriors they're based off of. Maybe give Trident Knights a lance, too, though I'd almost rather just lowering their cost to 75.
-both Triton Kings and Capricorns could afford to get their 10% randoms up to 20 or 25, so you have more than just a freak chance of getting A2 or E2.

-Flaming Arrows should go back down to 1 gem.

-Riches From Beneath should probably be only 4 earth.

Here's a new one, from playing a couple of MP games as underwater nations: give at least Mermages, Slave Mages and (maybe)Mages of the Deep the ability to bring some troops underwater. This prevents the very odd necessity of creating underwater breathing items to move your Bog Beasts/Frost Drakes etc. from your staging ground to your battlefield.

Just as a question, how often do people use/see Amphipteres?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I don't recall specifically requesting new spells either.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

No? Someone was? Well, it was to those who suggested it. Anyway, what is the problem with flaming arrows being 2 gems?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I'm not sure when the Devana summons was lowered to 65 slaves, but, after fighting an army of them in Early Days, I would suggest putting them back to 75 slaves. 65 is too cheap for a unit as powerful as almost any high level blood summons.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

well there is that thing about the 40% blood site he had.....

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

sorry to sound very noobish but how do you make the mod work? I downloaded the zip file, extracted it(still have zip files after the initial unzipping) and copied the entire folder into my dominion 3 folder under "mods"(was already available but empty). I assume I did something wrong here, or just stopped a step or 2 short...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

You also have to enable it from preferences -> mod preferences and then start a new game. It suffices if it is just in the mods folder if you are playing a game that has been started with the mod on (such as a multiplayer game hosted by someone else).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

Lingchih:

Uber magic sites are going to be removed in CBM, or already are? Summoning Circle should not exist really, I had 100 vampire lords in one game, when I got it. And all I had were B1 mages to recruit, and not even reliably [LA Midgard].

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

I think that the spell "Fate of Oedipus" should be removed, or at least drastically changed. At the moment it adds nothing, it just means that no one will ever cast Eyes of God in a game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

High level S mages don't really need eyes anyway ...

And does anyone really cast Eyes of God other than to show off ?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

They might, if it didn't mean a certain dispel and blinding via FoO. And if it was cheaper.

The thing is EoG is cool and interesting, and FoO while cool in concept, does nothing but stop people casting EoG. So it never even gets cast itself.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6
 

EoG is useful to:
- take up a global slot, without making people mad
- let you look at the gear on the heroes in the HoF
- scout out rare (discovered) sites in enemy lands
- scout out income (pop) in enemy lands

You only need it up for one turn to get info on sites and income.

I've used it in more than one MP game. But it used to be 30 pearls, now it's 50. With no more clams, I probably wouldn't cast it now.