Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Backtracking a bit, how many people have ever seen anyone cast the "Iron Pig" spell? Because I agree with who ever it was that said that the situation with Marverni is currently absurd for any nation that use size 2 units. And rather dire for any nation that use size 3 or larger.

Look!
http://i.imgur.com/MuVwC.jpg

A better price for these for marverni would be 15E for 10 or something. Maybe even more. The thing is, no other nation is using the Pigs so we might as well raise the price to be competitive. Currently its almost like buying Ettins from that nautilus place.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I've used Iron Pigs several times. A great little cost efficient spell IMO (and probably too efficient), especially for small raiding forces. I used them extensively as Bandar Log in a game I subbed into (when Bailz bailzed) last year, and was raiding high PD on my borders with just 7 pigs and a S1 mage.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I guess we can (and by we I mean someone other than me that can actually mod) replace the Iron Boar unit with a unit that is identical with the iron pig. Then we can make a new national spell that gives units that are identical to iron boars, with a proper price on it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

But its not like Iron pigs (or the fact that Marverni get iron boars) is a new addition to the game. It's always been there. Are a lot of games being dominated by herds Marverni iron boars? It's a useful spell, but so are a lot of national spells.

The current price of 4 E gems is reduced from the 10 of vanilla. It could probably use a small boost in price, perhaps back to closer to the vanilla cost of 10 E gems, but 1.5 times the vanilla cost is a bit extreme. I'm guessing that there was at least some logic behind the reduction and that they weren't seeing much action at the original price. Marverni still has a TON of other uses for E gems.

And yes the boars are more useful than the regular pigs. Much higher moral, and so less likelihood of a route through your own troops. But they still share that terrible MR stat. Is a just a higher moral really enough to justify a large price difference between the Marverni version of the spell and the regular version?

I'll admit that I'm a bit biased, I like Marv as a nation and don't like seeing them nerfed. I just think that as long as we're swinging the nerf bat there are probably other nations that still need it more than Marverni.

The main reason I originally brought it up was as a consistency issue. Since boars all have berserk now, the Iron boars should have it too. Now that would be overpowered at the current price. I would suggest doing two things, give the Iron boars berserk just like all the other boars and the boost the price (or decrease the amount). I still think about 1 E gem per boar is about the limit. Just remember what they're competing with: earth boots, earthquakes, crystal gear, armor, end game earth attacks and cyclopes, etc.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I dunno, that's actively removing a cool, thematic thing unique to marverni just because there's a perception that they're overpowered without any evidence.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Admiral, I am not saying that we should remove them. Read again. I *am* saying we should move them to a separate spell that is priced differently than the current spell. Because the current spell gives hugely different outcomes depending on witch nation is casting it and is thus making the spell hard to balance.

And Torgon, its not only the extra morale that is powerful, although it helps. They have boosted almost every stat except MR. The main thing is that they have gotten 1 size larger and that they are tramplers. So they are prot 20 size 3, sacred tramplers for a nation with a national haste spell, that cost 0.44 E gems a piece.

And weather or not these things actually dominates games is irrelevant because I dont think most Marverni players are even aware of it. The spell does not show up as changed in the list unless you cast it. I did not even know of it before Torgon told me truth to be told.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

mistake

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I don't see giving iron boars berserk.
Iron skin = no nerve endings...

If Marverni wants them to berserk, they have access to the area effect madness spell..(Touch of Madness?) - which has a huge area of effect, no gem cost, and its low research level.

This spell is over powered as-is. Making them berserk conserves a mage action unnecessarily, and makes the spell even MORE useful to other nations.

Leave it as is and raise the price to 6 e. (minimum).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Incorrect. Iron pigs are also size 3 tramplers. If they weren't it would be an altogether useless spell. Here are the actual stats of both units.

Iron pigs Iron Boars
Size 3 3
HP 15 25
Prot 20 20
Moral 10 15
MR 5 5
En 5 2
Str 12 15
Att 8 12
Def 7 7
AP 10 14
Trample Trample
Forest Suv Forest Suv
Sacred

Yes. There's an HP gain, a boost to attack, and a decrease in enc, and a boost in moral. I'll assert, as I stated before, that the real significant change is the boost to moral (and obviously the sacred). I'd argue that the others are pretty trivial for the purposes your really going to use them for.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

But that's sort of the point. This is a cool thematic easter egg that the developers put into the game. A useful spell (and Iron pigs for other nations that can cast it is useful spell) becomes even more useful for the guys who worship pigs. This is not some new addition of CBM. The devs very much intended for Iron Pigs in the hands of Marverni to be powerful. Changing cool thematic easter eggs should require a little more evidence than you're mustering.

Just because you did know about it doesn't mean others don't. It doesn't take long to figure out. As I and others have said, Iron pigs is a useful spell. Every nation that has E and N mages should be keeping at least a small herd of metal pigs around, Marverni included. Play one game with Marverni, or just make the pretty obvious guess that a spell dealing with pigs might have a different effect in the pig worshiping nation, and you'll find the change.

I agree that its a useful spell, but easily counter-able; the boars still have craptastic MR. Marverni has A LOT of other uses for E gems.

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.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Lanka is OP because the Dakini are to easy to get. With a awake pretender with high magic + magic 3 you can easily reach blood 6 within year 2. Then switch to blood hunting + patrolling with marakata (yeah, Go Monkeys). Start the Diakini factory. Research misform + cloud trapeze. Or anything else you think will help.

My suggestion, switch the summon Samanishada and the summon dakini spells. (lvl 7 vs lvl 6)

(75 slaves is still pretty affordable)

Or mess with the paths. Currently all the cap only mages can cast summon diakini, as can they themselves. If you want to **** with the nation, make it blood 4, not blood 3. (As is normal, the vampire lords and la ulm vampires cannot summon themselves without boosters, this prevents them from being able to be summoned to early in the game (you need const4 first, or empower, which is also expensive if you have to do it for each factory))

So my lanka suggestion (to make them a little bit "TAH BAST BLLLOOOOTH NATION") switch the research levels on the summon spells around, and make diakini summon spell blood 4).

This takes away a lot of the normal mid game Lanka power. But little of the end game power. (as you will still be able to summon the diakini, but just need to get a booster or empowerment first). It also puts the diakini spell on par with the vampire lords.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Not that I disagree w/ you. I just think it's worth mentioning that blood + gr8 scales get pawned by Armeggedon spam.

I wonder how much of blood's perceived OP actually translates to MP game wins. For instance, do blood nations dominate the HoF?

For reference here's the HoF nation wins statistics:
Early(88.500000)

EA Sauromatia : 10.00
EA Lanka : 8.00
EA Fomoria : 6.50
EA Mictlan : 5.50
EA Caelum : 5.00
EA Niefelheim : 5.00
EA Kailasa : 5.00
EA Ulm : 4.50
EA Helheim : 4.00
EA C'tis : 3.50
EA Pangaea : 3.00
EA Agartha : 3.00
EA Hinnom : 3.00
EA Atlantis : 3.00
EA Arcoscephale : 2.50
EA T'ien Ch'i : 2.33
EA Yomi : 2.33
EA Marveni : 2.00
EA Vanheim : 1.50
EA Oceania : 1.33
EA R'lyeh : 1.00
EA Abysia : 1.00
Nieflheim : 1.00
EA Arco : 1.00
EA Tien Chi : 1.00
Kailasa : 1.00
Yomi : 1.00
EA Rlyeh : 0.50

Mid(85.000000)

MA Pythium : 9.00
MA R'lyeh : 6.50
MA Shinuyama : 6.00
MA Abysia : 6.00
MA Jotunheim : 5.50
MA Pangaea : 5.50
MA Ulm : 4.33
MA Ermor : 4.00
MA Mictlan : 4.00
MA Caelum : 3.00
MA Marignon : 2.00
MA Oceania : 2.00
MA C'tis : 2.00
MA Vanheim : 2.00
MA Atlantis : 2.00
Itza : 2.00
MA Bandar Log : 2.00
Nehekara : 1.50
MA Machaka : 1.33
MA Man : 1.33
MA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
MA Arcoscephale : 1.00
MA Arga Dis : 1.00
MA Ashdod : 1.00
MA Nehekhara : 1.00
Vanheim : 1.00
Man : 1.00
Eriu : 1.00
Abysia : 1.00
MA Abyssia : 1.00
Pangaea : 1.00
Haida Gwaii : 1.00
MA T'ien Ch'i : 0.50
MA Agartha : 0.50

Late(57.000000)

LA Ermor : 10.00
LA Mictlan : 4.00
LA R'lyeh : 4.00
LA Midgard : 4.00
LA Utgard : 3.50
LA Ulm : 3.50
LA Patala : 3.50
LA T'ien Ch'i : 3.00
LA Jomon : 3.00
LA Agartha : 2.00
LA Marignon : 2.00
LA Pangaea : 2.00
LA Abysia : 2.00
LA Man : 2.00
LA Atlantis : 1.50
LA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
LA Pythium : 1.00
LA Gath : 1.00
LA Bogarus : 1.00
LA Marginon : 1.00
Agartha : 1.00
Jomon : 1.00

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Well, as the HoF wins are games with all kinds of mods, this is kind of hard to check. Armageddon spam is also a lot harder now that there are no gemgens.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Yeah, I'm guessing many of those wins were either vanilla or pre CBM 1.6 so clams are a significant factor. Much tougher now to chain cast armageddon and I haven't seen it cast in quite a while but I also no longer play large games so maybe it's still a factor there?

But even given that context I think B nations are well represented at the top of the EA and MA lists (can't really comment on LA since I almost never play it), with a strong showing by S nations as well in the MA.

Seems to me if you go the armageddon route you can reduce the game largely to a battle of gems but unless you have a decisive advantage in that area to begin with you've only equalized things with the blood nation, not gotten the upper hand (and of course you've poured a lot gems into casting wish in the first place). And if the blood nation has invested in, say, vampire lords, those units still exist and will continue benefiting him.

The funny thing about those stats is MA Ulm with 4.33 wins. Are those all since CBM 1.92? :p

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

No arguments from me. After all it's clear that blood benefits add up to gem income (and in late game the gold/pop loss is a minor factor).

I'm not sure how this can be balanced.
Maybe make more non B nations uber?- like MA Ulm ;)

On a serious note. Perhaps change the B to gems hidden factor from 2:1 to 3:1?- Or maybe 5:2?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

AwesomeCBM? ;)

I'm not sure I understand you. Do you mean in terms of how things are priced? Personally I've always viewed it as at least a 3:1 ratio in terms of the value of blood slaves to gems but I know 2:1 has been the more frequently used ratio.


These are areas I can think of in terms of balancing blood vs. non-blood.

Boost non-blood nations - This could certainly be done but I'd prefer not to go this route since my preference is to tone down the power level. And also, something nice I've noticed with this release of CBM is a marked lack of "nation x is hopeless" comments which is a really nice change and I don't know that I'd want to start another arms race where people feel their favorite nation now can't compete.

Nerf blood summons/spells - You could do things like have blood summons not have morale 30. I'm open to this but I think there would be considerable resistance.

Blood income - There's only so much you can do here. I guess you could play on low pop maps to inhibit blood hunting and double gold income to make up for the low pop but that's a matter of game settings, not CBM. I will say that even though I said earlier in the thread that I liked the changes to the rate of growth/death scales after seeing how it synergizes with blood magic I think this isn't a good thing.

Blood prices - Probably the most palatable way to make changes and I think you can actually get pretty far with cost changes.


So along the lines of price changes I'll throw out some specific ideas.

Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison - What about making them cost 2 blood slaves again? They were reduced to 1 blood slave with CBM 1.6, which was odd timing as that release also marked the removal of gem gens. I can't see any reason for these spells to have received this buff. Now it's one thing if you're MA Aby and a little over 1 in 4 cap only mages can cast this but if you're MA Jotun and 1 in 4 recruit everywhere mages can cast this out of the box and the other 3 with a single booster ... well that's a different matter. This seems like a pretty reasonable change to me.

Ritual of the Five Gates - increase cost to 30 slaves. This spell really caught my eye when D3 was released. Because it's a mid level spell that let's you summon a group of demons (and so is efficent in mage time) but also because it let's you summon demons that your mages normally couldn't. I especially like it with MA Aby but it's nice for any blood nation. I propose a 25% increase in cost.

Level 9 demon summoning spells - How about an increase from 50 slaves to 65 (a little over 25%)?

I have to say that neither of those proposed price increases for the summoning spells would put me off using them at all. Maybe that means the changes are not enough but I lean towards incremental changes so I don't think it would be a bad start.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Yes. I meant pricing.
I like your specific ideas re. pricing. There's something that comes to mind though. For all their strengths the demons just can't withstand opposition using many cleansing bells. Perhaps bells are the perfect counter to demons?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

What about nations that don't have/can't forge bells? Undead have counters in fire,water, astral and death for example.

Against Blood there is 1 global that is not a direct counter bc its too weak for late game countering blood(still quite interesting:The Kindly Ones)and especally if you have more than 1 blood nation. You can not even compare that to Purgatory.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

So why not sprinkle some bell like counters over more paths. Like astral (naturally) and nature.
No need to have counters in all paths so as not to compromise diversity by distinction.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Yea I completely agree with that it doesn't have to be in every path, just something else than water might be nice, as you said nature and astral might do fine. Maye fire item that casts demon cleansing at cons 8? Although I've never used Demon cleansing so I'm not sure how effective it is.

But yea those are the two options I see to balance it either higher up the prices a bit. Or put competent counters in more than 1 path.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

On the second thought, direct counters might not be the best idea, This will directly affect Lanka/Yomi troops(and other nations that have recruitable demons). I don't see any problem in those troops being used, since they are not that strong(relatively speaking), and the goal here is balancing blood, so upping the prices might be a better choice.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

direct counters should be hard to research and/or forge sufficiently so their availability targets mid to end game phase. The phase in which normal troops RoI drops and mid-high end blood summons start to come into play, such that has a significantly higher RoI.

Upping costs will work as well.

A combination of both approaches in small measures may be the optimal way to cont. addressing blood balance.

Cut the Kindly one's cost by a lot and buff the erinyas =D, maybe move it up the research.

Also agree with giving more paths anti-demon stuff, whether anti demon damage or anti demon summons.

Apotropaic sword looks like a good weapon to hand out to cost effective summons, or summons with built in cleansing bell equipped, which solves the item modding problem and allow for path customization. Of course, it'll have to be of sufficiently high research.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

All Skrattir can cast it in vanilla currently. They have b2, so they can use one slave to boost their path to b3, and one slave to cast the spell.

With sabbaths not requiring slaves it is a bit easy to create communions with blood.

One balancing thing we must not forget about blood is that they will usually be lacking in research. They need more magetime finding slaves, and summoning, and they have an additional path to research.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Blood slaves can't be used to boost your path level to cast more demanding spells the way other gems can be used. You need B3 at least to cast all B3 spells.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Seems you are right. My bad.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Regarding the kindly one's its cost is already quite low 30F gems I think, getting it lower might mean a cheap way to dispell someone else's global. Having more of them would not be thematic. Making them stronger is irrelevant, but I guess it can be worth it when killing high-end blood casters/weak blood thugs.

I really like the Idea of cleansing bell summons:D The way I see them they should have low attack and decent HP/protection to stay in battle for longer.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Hey,
I was messing around with EA Agartha recently, which is one of my favorite nations, and I really like what CBM has done with it, but it strikes me as kind of underwhelming how boring their underwater recruits are. It feels like a nation that's almost entirely amphibious should have something besides Wet Ones to recruit down there, even if it's just for completion's sake.

So I was wondering what the thought is about giving them some sort of Olm recruit in their underwater forts. I think Olms have a really cool aesthetic, so I'd love to see more of them, and you'd think that an underwater Agarthan fort is where you'd find them.

I'm not entirely sure what form they would take though. The wiki is down so it's tricky to check exactly what Olms are already present in the game. I know there's the Ageless Olm pretender, and the sacred Olmspawn it generates. There's also a non-sacred Olm mage hero and some Olmspawn priest-mage heroes.

Does anyone else know of any other Olms present in the game, or have an opinion on EA Agartha getting Olms in general?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I think it would be possible to make some sort of mini olm sprite. The olm spawn are more of a crossbreeding between olm and agarthians. According to the lore there should be smaller olms.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Actually looking at it again, the Olm hero appears to just be a scaled down Ageless Olm sprite anyway, so there's probably no harm in scaling it farther if needed. The hero's description also says that it has "huge proportions", which being size 3 would mean that a normal sized Olm would probably be size 2. (I was also wrong before, he Olm hero is sacred, but normal Olms probably wouldn't be, as the Agarthan idea of "Sacred" seems to be "Bigger than normal")

Also thinking about it more, having Olms as normal troops would probably be a bad idea, because they have mind blasts, and giving Agartha mind blast troops would just be silly. So maybe a low level mage recruit would work better, something like 1W1E or 1W+1WE. It wouldn't open any new paths up, but it would give Agartha something to recruit if they manage to take a fort from an actual water nation.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Attached is a modified version of CBM 1.92 that fixes the recruitable Wild Ettin bug, and replaces it with (what I believe to be) the correct unit (2855 Shambler Chief)

This mod is on the llamaserver under the name "CBM 1.92 - Ettin Fixed (with download link)", and this post is here to provide a download link for it.


Edit - Please note that you still need to download the full CBM mod to get all the new unit sprite files that you need to use and play CBM. The attached file is only the .dm file. (ie. only the mod file, not the support files)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

A quick check:

For jokes and giggles in SP testing as EA Ermor, I just tried to wish for a Grigori under CBM 1.92 with latest Dompatch and no other mods... And got a non-commander clone of Azazel rather than the old man Grigori as I expected.

6 Nature Gems later and Attalus the Grigori was ready to kick arse and take names.

Oops.


Can anybody verify this aberrant behaviour? I believe it is still the intention that the Grigori remain unique, unwishable, and limited to Hinnom?

I hope it is due to a user error on my part, but I can't think of what it could be. I've checked installed mods, activated mods, and that it is the latest domversion.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I can confirm Peter Ebbesen's findings. You do indeed get Azazael, the strongest of the lords of civilization. And looking at the mod file I can not explain why.

I dont think I have a vanilla game were I am capable of casting wish, but if someone would like to try this in vanilla I would be grateful.

Though I dont think people use the spell wish all that often in CBM any more so maybe this will give people a reason to use it again.

You can not summon more than one Azazael though as he is unique.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Just tested with CBM 1.92 and the mega powerful Grigori does indeed turn up as Peter Ebbesen and Corinthian say.

And attached are two save games (before and after) from a vanilla game I just did that shows that in vanilla the old weak Grigori turns up as normal. So it certainly looks like a CBM issue.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

When I was working on making some changes for an experimental game it occurred to me that iron bane is surprisingly cheap to cast. Compare to other battlefield-wide E spells:

Earthquake - 3 gems
Rain of Stones - 2 gems
Curse of Stones - 3 gems
Army of Gold - 3 gems
Army of Lead - 3 gems

Of course iron bane, unlike destruction, still requires a hit in order to destroy the armor but destruction has a much smaller AOE and requires proper scripting/placement.

In the experimental game I ended up increasing the gem cost and making it MRN easily, like curse of stones. I'm not proposing that but given that it is battlefield-wide and there's no resistance roll it seems reasonable that it should cost more than 1 E gem to cast. How about 2 gems? Though even at 3 gems it would still be perfectly usable by an E1 mage with earth boots and summon earthpower (since unlike the spells listed above, especially the offensive ones, there's no need for iron bane to be cast the first round to get the full benefit from it).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I think the question we should be asking before changing it is 'is iron bane causeing problems in games?'

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Well, if it were causing problems my suggestion would do little to fix that since it doesn't make it any more difficult to use effectively (in the way that increasing the cost of rain of stones from 1 to 2 gems did make that spell more difficult to use effectively).

If I had thrown out the idea of making it MR negates (and I'm not suggesting that as I don't know that it would be a good idea) then that would be completely different and I agree that would need serious debate as you get into questions about the balance between armored (usually recruitable) and unarmored (usually summons or freespawn) troops.

It's really just a price adjustment, as it seems to me that it should cost a bit more than one gem to weaken all the armor on the battlefield. It's not really a significant change - but of course if it isn't significant then you could argue why bother making it to begin with.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I think CBM needs some adjustment. I agree that vanilla EA Agartha is weak. However, in CBM just build 35g, 1r stone throwers. Maybe add giant strength. Yea, you just won.

Lances are effective. I just encountered this in a MP while playing Tir. early second year, i have no lances. I tried the best tactic i could think of, i started a force of 45 sacred infantry a bit back from the front, blessed with my prophet, then used quickening song. We charged. We died. He had maybe 30 throwers, nothing else.

I started a small SP with me playing Agartha, i conquered a 116 province map in 3 years, slightly faster than i can do with Niefel. Far faster than anyone else i have tried.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

It was suggested by a twit on Invision that i try thugs with brands against stone throwers. Just tried, doesn't work in anything resembling a decent return on gold. The stones hit glamoured thugs just as easily as militia. And insta kill.

Hopefully this is something that can be fixed, there is much good in CBM, but this is way overpowered against anyone but giants.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Wait, the naked stone throwers?

Did you try using slingers? I'm afraid stone throwers are specialized at dealing with expensive troops like the sacreds you used, so you sort of played to his strengths. Also certain scripting tricks can easily make the boulder throwers run forwards instead of throwing boulders.