Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I know a lot of people feel they want to explore the base game longer before considering balance mods, however I have been thinking many of the veteran Dom2 players are probably ready to start experimenting with some changes.

So I thought I would release the changes I have been working on so far for CB, a beta of sorts. It's not documented by a readme, and many of the changes are likely not their final versions, but those interested are welcome to try it and give feedback.

A rough outline of the changes:

*Order scale income lessened, luck scale luck effect increased.

*Growth from growth scale increased.

*Pretenders ideal for blessing increased in cost. This was a hard change to commit to, since it makes such pretenders even less suited for roles other than blessing. However, that seems a necessary side effect to making blesses more expensive.

*Bows (shortbows, composite bows, longbows and crossbows) all slightly reduced range, and some increased in resource cost. This is not really enough to counteract their prevalence, but every bit counts.

*All cavalry given hoof attack, cavalry that already had it given warhorse hoof attack. This is bound to be a controversial change, due to it admittedly somewhat stretching realism. However, I see it as the lesser of several evils (such as useless light cavalry, or ridiculously cheap light cavalry) which strike me as even less realistic. More ideas on the issue are welcome, keeping in mind the limits of modding.

*Barding cost drastically reduced on all cavalry. Barding cost is another sticky balance vs realism issue, due to the fact it amounts to, in game terms, paying something for nothing. There doesn't seem a good way to mod in the benefit of barding, so instead I simply reduced the cost's impact.

*Some new factors in unit gold cost. Units wielding spears get a training cost discount. Units wielding a single one handed weapon and no shield get a training cost discount. Units with only leather armour given a discount (the idea being cheaper upkeep, but the way the game is set up that also means lower recruit cost). These are not necessarily universally applied, but then the old unit pricing wasn't exactly 100% consistent either.

*Independent commanders made poor leaders to encourage using national leaders. Independent scouts increased in price for the same reason.

*Some prominent sacred troops increased in price.

*Some primitive archers given a new crude shortbow weapon.

*Some site search spells and booster items more difficult to forge/cast, in order to improve magic diversity between nations. As it stands base game, it is not too hard by the time you have level 9 research in a school, to have dom2-like access to almost all paths.

*Many mediocre summon spells made cheaper.

*Falling frost/fires and similar spells got their range back in exchange for fatigue, and research cost.

*Other evocation spells moved in research and/or changed to allow more niches.

*Many rarely used globals made cheaper.

*No gem battlefield summons made more difficult to cast.

*Several blood battlefield spells improved.

*Treelords given increased magic.

*Many weak items made cheaper/easier to forge.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Testing testing...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Thanks alot for this. Too bad it couldnt have been released earlier (having a hoof attack on my samurai cavalry would be helpful) but thanks all the same.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Excellent work, thank you.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I'm not sure that you really needed to utterly destroy Ulm by making it impossible for master smith's to cast bladewind without earth boots. I also very much dislike the changes to site searching spells. I'm not going to voluntarily play mods that add to micromanagement, and magic already has far too little effect in Dom3.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

The cons, on a quick glanse

- Red Dragon is rather redutant now
- The research bonus on Titaness is just crazy
- Moving Phoenix Power and Earthpower to pathlevel 3....wthex, this completely nullifies the purpose of those spells which bootstrapping Fire 2 and Earth 2 commanders to actually useful magic levels. Now they are there just to bring some slight boost to Falling Fires and Bladewind. But wait, with Dominions 3 research times and changes in the mod it's unlikely we'll see either spell in use ever anyway. Whee.
- Moving Lightning Bolt to Evocation 3 makes early game with Caelum feel like trying to piss blood up the wall.
- Bladewind costing a gem..........WTF. I'm sorry, but WTF. Umor, just make the spell have less effects or damage if it is too powerful but you just made earth utterly useless for combat. What are Agarthans and Ulm going to do in combat now? Or Marverni? Magma Bolts? Star Fires and Farstrike!? You have no idea how many nations you essentially invalidated with this move! Half the amount of the blades, make it do less damage or 99 fatigue instead of the 80 it was.
- Thunder Strike at research level 5? Uhhhh...no. Just make it less powerful if you feel it is too strong. It already has a fatigue cost of 80 so it's not terribly spammable.
- I don't like upping pathcosts for site search spells either
- Seven Year Fever, are you sure an AOE Disease spell that scales with power is a good idea?
- No Raise Skeletons at all?
- Abysians are still old
- ME Marignon has Lion TRibe Warrior instead of Friar in recruitable commanders

Pros

- I like most of the stuff you did to magic items
- Raven Guard Captain! I aprove
- Completely selfish, but I aprove cheaper sky titan pretenders, improved Slime and gemless ward spells

To put this all shortly, you were way, way too eager with the nerf stick but the mod does have interesting ideas. I know this sounds very harsh, but it's the way I feel as of now. I'll be following the development in future since CB for Dom 2 was good, but this one is way too radical as of now.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Earth Boots and a gem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

It's not only Ulm. Agartha and Marverni also.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

It's not like blade wind is even that good of a spell. A master smith casting it is likely to kill maybe a dozen troops per cast, which means that he doesn't even come close to paying for himself.

I also can't believe that celestial chastement, which is a superpowered version of enslave mind, is a level 1 spell.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I discussed Celestial Chastisement. It's S2, so only 1/4 of Celestial Masters can cast it. CMs are capital-only. It's got a range of 15. Arcane Bolt might be a better option EVEN now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

The changes also manage to destroy Miasma C'Tis, since they can barely even cast raise skeletons anymore, especially when raise skeletons is the only way that the death nations can even attempt to survive against a dual-bless. Note that even 8 skeleton summoners are utterly effective against a mere 20 F9W9 Helhirdings, which are still underpriced at 110 gold.

I'm not sure why there's so much hate towards battlefield summons. If a spell is going to have a gem cost, then that spell had better be able to completely alter the course of a massive battle with only a single casting. Spells like wrathful skies and firestorm fit this description. The elementals don't. All the gem cost on them does is ensure that nobody ever uses them thanks to the horribly micromanagement of moving gems around. Dominions needs more magic on the battlefield, not less, especially when there are so many almost worthless spells like fireball.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

haha no one likes the remote search nerf =).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Why would anyone like it? Remote searching is the only thing that removes the horrid micromanagement of searching for magic sites.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Why?
It's not, it has to be very high to make you consider leaving such an expensive pretender to research.
I am positive I will still use both spells whenever I have e3 or f3 mages and conj 3, which is usually a high research priority anyway. Graeme does make a good point about Ulm ME, I may have to consider nerfing a bit differntly.
Expanding using mages was not really necessary to start with, try mammoth and wingless.
You may be right that cutting the number of effects would be less annoying to people, but I don't think this change is actually less extreme power wise than half the effects.
I don't see why the research nerf is worse.
This is a change I knew would not go down easily. I'm not absolutly committed too it, but I would like people to give it a try before deciding it sucks. I think the benefits from better magic diversity can outweigh the seemingly minor annoyance.
Yes, I do, it is still rather hard to use effectivly.
Check slightly higher in research.
I consider such matters of thematicness IW's call. However, I am still looking at boosting them in other ways.
Thanks for the catch.

I hope everyone keeps in mind, as I said in the first post, these are not final changes, they are things to try. Some changes you may find imbalancing, so try them out, and then convince me. Even better, suggest other ways to acomplish the same goal.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I'd suggest not nerfing it at all. Battlefield magic needs to be able to ensure that a mage can kill, at an absolute minimum, his gold cost in troops, or else you might as well not bother researching it. To be truly balanced with respect to research costs, it should enable a mage to kill many times his gold cost in troops.

Of course it's a more extreme nerf. For one thing, it means that I would never cast the spell in any battle, ever. It's not like the spell needed it. I would have suggested halfing the fatigue cost on it and most battlefield spells to make them actually worthwhile.

I don't see why any nerf is necessary at all. It can kill a maximum of three troops per turn, for a spell that requires a capital only mage or massive horde of communicants for every nation that can cast it. That means that you need to cast it multiple times a battle for it to pay for itself.

It's not a seemingly minor annoyance, it's a game killer. Nor does it promote diversity. What it actually does is restrict the site searching spells to those few nations that have native level 3 path mages. Everyone else gets the joy of manually moving mages around the map. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Thing is, most of the changes really aren't worth trying. I can tell just by looking at the spells that I won't be casting blade wind ever, nor will I be casting the site searching spells.

I'd suggest starting from the Dom2 mod, rather than trying to further nerf magic down to useless levels.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

As for Red Dragon, I can sum it up with two words: Solar Disc.

As for Blade Wind costing gems, Graeme summed up well. What makes you think that having it cost earth gems you must earn and micromanage is less drastic than making it less powerful?

Research nerfs are worse because it eliminates a spell that required a 4+ Air mage to be used more than once, max twice per battle until a high level of research.

EDIT: I also pretty much echo Graeme. Why not just start with porting CB for Dom 2?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Well, there's many good things, I mean things that many/most players wanted to change because over/under powered/priced , be it Hellheim nerfing or most pretender changes. Still Titaness' 25 RP bonus is so high I thought it was a typo ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

Yet there are *many other* things that aren't "balanced", but just changed because the author wanted to change it : the remote searches at level 3 research/ path 3 totally changes the way searches could be done, but don't change the game balance at all !
Some other changes - BW nerfing and many Evo nerfs also are hard to justify as "balance changes", I didn't ever see anyone claiming BW was unbalanced...
Now for example Ulm that always was weak now looks utterly crap, with smiths unable to cast Gnome Lore without E.Boots, requiring a gem for Earthpower, and paying gems for BW !!
So they won't even have an earth gem pile to cast their FotA later in the game, poor ones...

Eventually I don't think I'll use this mod, but I still think that what we need is a simple mod rebalancing the most blatant balance issues, agreed on by at least a good part of the community, without taking this as an opportunity to make the game fit the mod author's wishes as how it should play.

QM, don't take this too harshly or as an attack on you, I recognize the effort, it's just that this mod doesn't fit my vision of a "balance mod".

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

This thread is good reading:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=1

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Vine arrow appears to be massively bugged. It has a gigantic AOE, yet it doesn't seem to be that effetive against singular enemies... o____o

I can even provide a savegame to show this.

EDIT: Okay, I'm not sure if this anymore related to just Vine Arrow, but something is most definedly wrong in this game with Machaka...I, uh, I think I need to show it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

The solar disk is quite awful for expanding, you would need at very minimum protection buffs. Those extra provinces you pick up from expanding from turn 2 forward are very important.
Well, it's quite obvious why it's less drastic than cutting it's number of effects in half, that directly cuts it's effectivness in half where as this just makes it trickier to use. Given that I'd be just as happy with either nerf, I'm inclined to switch it next version.
Thunder strike is an extremly useful spell at _any_ stage of the game. Even ff it were level 9 research I think it would probably still be used on occation.
Very many things have changed since dom2. Many of the most powerful options in the game were nerfed, so the buffs to other options would be overkill.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Your save game needs a mod called sns3. In any case, I didn't mod vine arrow.

I have of course read the conceptual balance discussion thread.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I think you will be hard pressed to find her overpowered with the that, a lesser bonus would have meant nothing because there would be no incentive to keep her around researching.
On the contrary, they change game diversity a great deal. People tend to forget, what balance really is allowing for the for the most diverse number of options to be viable. By the time reach the late game (level 9 research in a school or two), you most likely have very good access to all paths, and so near all spells. What this means, is that late game, everyone is playing with the same deck, so fewer options have niches. Every game, the same handful of spells rule the final phase. If each nation has a different selection of paths, it makes each game more unique, and more options can get their time in the sun. Without magic being limited more by nation, in makes carving niches for all the options many times harder.

You may not have- in the mp games I have played, it is the most frequently abused and complained about battlefield spell, after skelly spam.
I agree, that was an unintentional side effect, and I'm going to work towards easing it in later versions.

As for the other evocation 'nerfs', look carefully, more spells were boosted than nerfed. Again, the effort here is to improve diversity, it is much easier to meet halfway than try to buff up every spell to the level of the best ones.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

If people are complaining about bladewind and raise skeletons, then they, quite frankly, need to learn to play better. Bladewind is absolutely useless against heavy infantry, while skeletons are absolutely necessary to the balance of death magic nations.

The thing is that the spells that were nerfed weren't even that good. Thunderstrike for example, kills six people per mage per normal combat unless you have an air 4 mage, are carrying around 20 gems worth of a staff of storms so that you can cast storm power, or have a communicant horde with all the attendant vulnerabilities. Bladewind gets cast twice at most (Summon earth power and bladewind in drain 3 costs about 134 fatigue for a master smith), and might kill ten to twenty people per mage. And that's if the opposing force is a typical AI army of 200-400 unarmoured troops.

I think, that in all the games of Dom2 I played, that the total number of spells I cast on the battlefield that required gems comes to a total of less than 50. Battlefield spells that require gems are not fun, they are a chore. I cast summon lesser air elemental twice with Caelum before I realized it was useless. Water elemental summons were cast a total of about 10 to 15 times in two different games as Atlantis. Summon sharks got cast once. Four vapors was cast once. I used wrathful skies about a dozen times. Rigor mortis got cast twice. Darkness was about six times. Soul drain was a single time, as was firestorm. Hellfire had a half dozen casts, but that's because demonbred are mobile enough to shuttle their own slaves. Rush of strength got cast once, as did the similar spell for demons. Summon imp had a bunch of casts from blood mages defending their hunting provinces, but that's about all. The micromanagement required to shuffle gems around just isn't worth the relatively minor effects most of those spells have. Then there's the fact that site searching spells must remain the most effective way to search for magic until such time that Illwinter decides to add automatic searching with mages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I think that we all have to thank to qm, that he spent countless hours to make this CB mod. Right now I haven't tried it yet, but after I've read the changelog, there are some things what I like, and there are some things what I don't. For example: why was it needed to nerf the order scale? I don't understand it still. Make the sacred units more expensive, instead of nerfing the order scale. We cannot recruit countless number of troops anyways, since we won't have so many resources to do it...however we can use up the remaining gold to build forts for example.
Its a good thing that the growth from the growth scale incresaed, however maybe [to compensate to order scale nerf] we should get more income from the growth scale now?
People won't take death scale so often in blitz games at least.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I again echo Graeme. I apreciate qm's effort but I think he went into a very wrong direction with the mod.

The mod needed for the savegame is the streamers and standards one, so it shouldn't affect the game mechanics...but I did realize that on both occasions I was facing javeling armed infantry. I'll have to see more of what could have caused that weird combat behaviour.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I have the same feeling about many changes. Diversity should be the result of players choices with lots of good options, not of extremely pigeonholed nations and overnerfed magic, two things already too much used in dom3 IMO. I think I would prefer a mod buffing the weak paths (what is now possible with the new spell modding commands) and giving more possible strategies to each nation (adding ways to developp original magic choices instead of restricting more the possibilities). Anyway it may or not be the good direction for the cbmod, and another mod can be done for those (like me) prefering a more dom2-like game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

The search spell nerf boosts rainbows, accashic record and sitesearching directly with mages.
Graeme said it is more MM to directly sitesearch, but imho directly sitesearching with a mage requires about the same effort as sitesearching with the remote 1 path search spells, maybe even less MM.


QM maybe nerfed some spells too much, mainly my beloved skelspam and probably bladewind too, but if you buff the weaker paths battlefield spells then this might have 2 cons:
- Magic doesn't feel different enough if nature/water/death/blood magic get stronger battlefield spells too
- Troops might become too useless by this change. In Dom2 troops were imho too useless usually, now in Dom3 they are still butchered by battlefield magic eventually, but they seem to have more niches and be more useful than in Dom2.

Graeme said that a mage has to be able to kill more troops than his cost, but imho this is not really true. Mages have other uses too. If mages with some research kill easily troop armies, then troop armies have no niche.

Currently the balance could roughly be seen as rock paper scissors balance imho:

Mages > SCs > Troops > Mages

This is generalizing too much of course, some spells counter troops very well like magma eruption, and "Mage SCs" like Dai Oni can defend vs. mages eventually with earthquake and rain of stones.

But in general at least in early and midgame it seems more rewarding in Dom3 to try a combined arms approach than it was in Dom2 were spending gold on troops almost felt like a waste of money.


Yeah a retro-mod that tries to make especially the middle age an exact copy of Dom2 might be cool too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

The sitesearch nerf just brings more annoyance into the game as even having 2 picks in a path usualy signalizes some sort of specialization in the magic. Puttign them into 3 picks/path mages them extremely hard to cast for nations even specialized in their own magic. Caelum would need to use a High Seraph, Abysia an Anathemant Dragon and Agartha an Oracle!

Perhaps the only "issuos" site search spells are Dark Knowledge and that Astral probing spell, but those could be raised to 2 pick spells...or then just left alone.

I have a less radical aproach to mages than Graeme and QM. While I don't think that a Master Smith or an Oracle should be able to kill 14/40 units per combat round I think they should be able to do something else than cast Stoneskin or sit. Mages are expensive and the spells need DOUBLE the research from Dom 2. If you feel that a spell is too strong try something less radical than moving it up to high research levels or making it prohibtively expensive and annoyingly hard to use. In unmodded game the Pillar of Fire is a fine example. Sure it is a nice spell for Fire 2 but it is freaking Evocation 8, same level as army blaster spells and all that.

I really do apreciate QM's effort, but this is the equivalent of smaking around with the Nerf Stick while wearing Boots of Quickness and under influence of Astral Weapon...but failing to hit that Helhirdling which gleefuly charges into the ranks of helpless Earth and Air mages.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Helhirdings cost now 110 gold, that is almost a 50% price increase. It might still be too little, but at least they weren't left unnerfed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

I agree though that it is very questionable if extreme nerfing is a good approach. I am still undecided regarding this design decision. It has to be made when trying to make a balance mod though.

But theoretically someone could try to make most national troops extremely cheap and buff all the weak spells.
Probably this would add more options and might lead to a better mod. At least in theory this approach sounds worth a try at least imho.

Zen's and QM's CB mods all had a masochistic touch imho. But their Dom2 CB mod has nontheless been the best balance mod for Dom2 imho.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I'm not sure if culling some of the most obscenely overpowered stuff in Dom 2 really counts as "masochistic", especially when the mod boosted some unused stuff. I especially liked the changes to Sabbath and Hellfire. The Wraith Sword thing might come close.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I dissent.

With most of qms mod, and with most of what has been said here - either pro or con.

Just for the records.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I did not say i disliked the mod.

But some changes were somewhat questionable at least, like the low morale blood summons like devils and fods. They felt unthematic.

The tartarian price increase was also a bit much, because you needed GoH or the Chalice to fully abuse the tartarians.
And the additional cost for GoRing your tartarians was also there.

But >90% of the changes were excellent, and it improved mp a lot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But balance is always to some degree subjective too.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

If you want to sitesearch with a mage, you have to move him to a province, then remember for the next turn that he should search that province. You have to plan out a route that leads him to each province without having to backtrack over a province he's already been to, and then you don't even get to find all of the sites in the province. If you use spells you press shift+M, cast the spell, then ignore that mage until he stops casting it. The second is a lot more fun than the first.

By the time you've spent several thousand gold researching level 9 spells, troops should be mostly useless compared to mages, or else there was no point in spending that gold to research. Dom2 had the right idea about magic balance. DOM3 goes a little to far towards the AOW2 example, where your magic doesn't matter much compared to yor troops.

The majority of mages have absolutely no use beyond killing troops and researching. You need a half dozen mages at most for all of your ritual and forging needs, several dozen for researching, and the rest should be on the battlefield making up for the gold cost that all those researchers are costing you by killing large numbers of troops.

And why would that be a bad thing? You have to make troops useless at some point, or else all the game becomes is wack a mole with armies. The most boring Dom2 multiplayer games I've been involved in are those with very difficult research and low magic. You spent the entire game pushing an army around without ever being able to force your opponents army to stand still in a pitched battle.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I must admit to being utterly confused by claims that magic has become underpowered. I would be absolutely astonished if someone could win even a mid sized blitz without investing in mages.

People seem to think a lot of things were overnerfed, and are now useless. So here is my question, what is what too useful now, what are the overpowered strategies that let you win with little thought? As I said before, it makes little sense to try to boost everything to the level of the very best options, rather than meeting halfway. It would be like trying to boost every troop to the power of helhirdlings.

I would also like to point out the limiting of magic by nation is just tying up the loose ends of what IW wanted anyway. If they were aware how easy it still is to diversify magic, and felt motivated to tweak it, it's quite likely they would make similar changes.

Oh, and after looking at Nerfix's buggy save, I'm very baffled. I made no change to vine arrow, or even tangle vines. My guess is that due to some bugginess with the new spell modding, one or several of the aoe changes for other spells somehow got onto vine arrow. Tracking down such an issue is going to be extremely difficult.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Magic is not underpowered per say if you ask me, people just propably have hard time getting used to Quickness not affected spells. This is why I feel that further nerfs to spell aren't needed since we the heyday of quickened lightning bolts and skeletonspam are gone.

If I'm made to look with the "magic is weak" perspective I see that some spells are IMO too high up in research tree in the base game. Boil, especially Boil, Cleansing Waters and Pillar of Fire. Elementals could be made gemless spells now that it's just plain impossible to see recreations of the Caelian Air Elemental Spam. The non-damage spells also tend to be overshadowed by damage spells, but I think your changes to False Fetters, Bonds of Fire etc. are very nice.

I think that when it comes to modding balance we have two different aproaches. If I for example want Raptors to use the Caelian Seraphs & Lightning Bolts aproach less I make the Seraphs 1 A 1 W 50% Air and give Raptors something lucrative in other research trees than evocation such as actually usable national spells in Alteration or Enchament.

If I think that some of the summons are truly too strong I take away a bit away from that edge of the summons and give national units some interesting abilities that synergize with the nation and see how things go. If these moves are too much or too little, tweak.

I see you've tried the meet in the middle aproach I would use but I've found your aproach too restrictive and radical so far, especially with magic, even if there are good things. But I'm really unhappy how you've managed to invalidate nations with strong or even moderate Earth as combat magic users and how you removed Marignon's ability to bootstrap Which Hunters to Fire 3 which was few of their saving graces IMO.

I must congradulate you for your productivity with the mod though, and I like the changes you made to some spells like Boil and Bonds of Fire. I also like the changes to magic items.

I'm not sure if IW would have wanted these changes either. I'm not sure if invalidating diversity for nations is a good idea, and the changes to sitesearching spells just trade gems for time and microing and thus are just frustrating changes in my opinion. I don't also see what would be so bad in ending with a diverse empire after conquering large areas and *investing* in diversity. At least you can't bootstrap a blood economy from a mage with a Sorcery random like you could in Dom 2 and I don't expect to see Caelian Ice Devils without a mix of luck, empoverment and investement.

What comes to my mind immediatedly as overpowerful is the Order-Misfortune-Death scale pattern and some of the blessables, namely Helhirdlings, which you toned down. The *mix* of Water & Fire blessing is also very deadly even if the two aren't so deadly alone. Good yes, but not so hugely powerful as together. What I'd like to see here is Order getting a *MODERATE* reduction in power and Growth and Luck made more lucrative with Death and Misfortune conversely made less lucrative. Another issue is that some nations have practicaly only old mages like MA & LA Abysia and Pythium...could we please, pretty please with a Void Cherry on top get Anathemant Salamanders and Theurgs that won't kick bucket because of bad luck?

Regarding my savegame I thought that javelins out of all things could also be bugged...did you mod javelings? I forgot.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

A comprehensive Mod of Scales and Pretenders only is going to be coming out if not today, then by monday.

It won't include the spell, nation, or other portions since Pretenders have eaten a bit of my time due to the Awakening feature, Sacreds under a heavy gold enviroment (especially those that are usable under heavy Sloth for free points for Double blessing), plethora of points and really balancing scales with their new features and creating reasons to actually take different scales.

For example, the new gold events haven't really changed the Luck scale, but it has made it easier to uncouple it from the Order scale.

"These arn't the droids you're looking for."

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

That sounds good.

I must apologize if I came out very harsh sounding. Smashing the mod around wasn't my intention if it came out as such but I just wanted to vocaly point out features I dislike. i'm going to try the 0.91 out.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

First off, I'm not trying to eliminate magic diversifying, just slow it down a bit. In fact eliminating diversification, if someone wanted to, would be a whole other huge project. Slowing it down was exactly what IW was trying to do, but they missed some loopholes. I wouldn't venture to say the rest of the mod follows any particular plan of theirs, but making nations more magiclly diverse was a clear goal.

Anyway, I realize path level changes can be pretty annoying for players used to certainn strategies, so in the future I will try to substitute less invasive nerfs.

And no, I didn't mode javelins.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Alright then.

The problem must be Vine Arrow as I witnessed more subtle but nevertheless buggy behaviour with it in my 0.91 test game as early Tien. It hit an unit in one other square and entangle and unit in other square, missed totally my square once but still entangle an unit in the middle of it. So odd.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

QM: please explain what you mean by "loopholes" as regards achieving magic diversity.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Yes, but this currently only works if you use only 1 mage to sitesearch (or has it been improved with patch 3.01?).
But usually you want to search more than 1 province per turn with your remote sitesearch spells.
Voila, you have a lot of annoying MM too because you have to remember which provinces you already searched too. And you could try to futher optimise by starting with those provinces which have the highest chance to have a site.

I neither want overpowered armies.
But currently in Dom3 battlemagic is imho still strong enough to eventually become dominant compared to troop armies.
After all most of the spells are still the same as in Dom2, some got some minor range nerfs by Illwinter, but at least in early era mages are more powerful as compensation.

Spamming stuff like magma eruption or falling fires still kills most national troops nicely and cost effective imho.

So the current mod left aside do you think that in dom3 vanilla magic is too weak now or do you think it is still useful enough?
Imho it is still the latter, but because armies are now a bit longer viable the game gets usually more varied.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

I think that, as has been the case since Dominions 1, that the low level battlefield evocations are far too weak. Everytime a mage casts flying shards or fire flies I cringe, because the spells are completely useless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

My Kailasan army was defeated by bunch of EA Ulmish mages casting Flying Shards in Slow Game MP. Well, I won THAT battle, but couldn't advance to take his capital, he had time to recruit archers, and then his archers decimated my army. Still, Flying Shards makes an E1 mage comparable to four archers. with even few archers, against enemies that are weak against missiles but would devastate you in melee, Flying Shards can be better than, say, Legions of Steel. There aren't MANY situations like that, but Evoc 0 spell isn't supposed to be always useful.

Now, if you'd complained about Farstrike... 17 + strength damage at long range is just nice. However, you will have very few mages, and can't script him to aim at the important enemies, and even if he does choose a nice target, with precision of just 5 he'll miss more often than hit.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

They're 0/1 level spells so they're supposed to be largely useless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Then your mages should also never cast them once you've researched higher level spells. This is part of the problem with making all of the battlefield summons unavailable. Mages will waste fatigue on zero effect spells instead of being able to summon something that could actually be useful.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Mmm, that is a good point.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Hm if you would remove those spells from lvl 0 then but improve them a bit and make them lvl 1-4 spells would you think that would be interesting?

This way weak schools like water could be made slightly more useful too probably.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Water needs something else than an anti-undead spell (which is less effective than banishment in most cases) and underwater only motion inhibitors to make it better.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Regarding BladeWind, may I point out that Dom3 _already_ gave it (and a few other battlefield spells) a pretty big nerfing? It does _mundane_ damage, meaning that it's now useless as pissing in the wind for dealing with hordes of ethereal critters, which was imo its main niche in Dom2.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

AFAIK, those might've been in the game from the times of Dom:PPP. 52+ blades will still decimate Summer Lions, because (if they all hit) 13 will pass ethereality, and prot 0 ensures that they all do damage. There are so many CHANCES at damage that something is surely dealt. One Blade Wind won't be enough, but I doubt it ever was. 3 will hurt and 6 will still kill ethereal units.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9
 

Thanks for what must have been alot of work.

I'm not much for multiplayer lately (maybe soon), but I've always appreciated most of the CB changes. Admittedly the sitesearching nerf will be the most difficult to get used to, but it seems like I'm always swimming in gems anyway due to the increased research costs of schools. I'm curious why you decided to up the resource cost of archers rather than the recruit cost. It always seems like gold is more of a limiting factor than resources, especially considering upkeep of the always useful "crossbow horde armies" running around. It seems realistic to have the training cost of archers more than regular footmen.

Regarding Blade Wind: I've had this used as the only spell in my Ulm armies; in the old CB mod it was completely worth it to have a half-dozen or so smiths with boots to deal with vine ogre/skeleton/maenad hordes. I've yet to tool with it now, but that spell was ridiculously useful compared to other spells in that research level.