Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Some of the changes from 1.41:

*Strands of Arcane Power, Fata Morgana, and Enchanted Forest all made lower research and cheaper/easier to cast.

*Treelords now generate 1 nature gem per turn, and are somewhat better in combat.

*Bug fixed where one of the unarmored Lanka sacreds was too expensive.

*Several national rainbow pretenders made more attractive, especially the Lawgiver and Divine Emperor.

*Some types of LA Pythium legionnaires made cheaper, as well as renata.

*Eater of the dead further improved, and made easier to cast.

*Dark vines made cheaper.

*Bone grinding once again needs a gem to cast.

*Leprosy and Black Death more expensive (though cheaper than base game).

*Sirrush cheaper.

*Son of the Heavens, Lord of the Sky, Daughter of the Dawn and Son of the Sea all cost fewer points.

*Tartarian Gate costs 12 gems and Gift of Reason costs 15.

*Arouse Hunger now costs 4 gems and creates 16 ghouls (instead of 2 gems and 9 ghouls).

*Tarrasque and Legion of Wights cheaper.

*Poison Golem cheaper.

*Several pretender auto summons toned down to make it harder to get an unstormable capital (infinite troop spam inside sieged fort).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Split Version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Great job Qm!

Comments:

I don't see the reason for the GOR change. Great spell often used.

Id rather see tree lords with an auto summon of a vine ogre or vine man, rather than a nature gem.

But very cool anyway!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

You know, i have really grown to love this mod - indeed, i don't play anymore with out it. I just have to thank you for work you have done - it has made a truly remarkable game extraordinary.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Yes, it's the best Mod going. I also only play games with it on.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Agreed! Thanks for all of your hard work QM!!! :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Great!
Cant help feeling that Tartarians could cost 15 death, since GoR is 15 nature now. In my experience, GoR is the main limitation anyway.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Thanks QM for updating this excellent Mod.:)

When you first started the conceptual balance mod for dom3 I hated it (was probably new and slightly stupid) but now I by far prefer playing conceptual balance mod games to vanilla games.

The conceptual balance mod makes so many spells, pretenders and units actually useful, rather then useless in vanilla. For example in one of my MP games, I am having a great time with stone/fire drakes being cast from multiple dragon masters. Thats 3 spells I wouldn't touch with a 10 ft pole in vanilla.

Thanks again QM and all who helped you for making this great game even better.:)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

The best about this mod, is that the rebalance of low level spells is a great boon to the AI, especially combined to NI maps(they are FORCED to recruit their mages from time to time), as the auto cast AI has less chance of selecting an useless spell.

So thanks for this tedious and boring work of updating regularly this awe + 99 mod. (don't forget your sunglasses !)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

+1, Even without GoR, Tartarians are great thugs on their own.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

+2 Anything to increase end game options. Tartarians are one of 2-3 main avenues.

Wonders what lankan was too expensive.....

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Lord Warden still has mapmove 1. Is it WAD?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

A nice improvment, although I still think that Man is even more crippled in CBM due to higher resource cost of longbowmen and flaming arrows moved to ench. 5.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Was the autosummon really that much of a problem? The things in question still have a fair chunk of domsummons, and someone can (bar wishes) really only have one pretender...

I'm asking because I considered the best feature of most of the summoning pretenders to BE their autosummoning.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Oops, didn't spot this in time to edit. Nevermind.

Did you massively buff shade beasts? You set the cost to summon 15 of them to 70 death gems, and...

Well, I've never found them THAT useful :)

Edit: Just checked, and there's no change by ID number. I'm going to assume it was a typo and it should be 7 per 15?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Yup, that's what happened.

Freespawning pretenders could definitely be an issue, especially the lord of the gates shades (they can't even starve). I agree though it leaves those pretenders in a poor spot.

As for why the tart cost nerf was so modest, the problem is the more expensive the summon gets the more gigantic the advantage for those few players that can heal tart afflictions (with chalice or GoH). Not to mention making using tartarians as troops that much less attractive.

Also, while GoR was definitely used plenty before, the idea with making it cost less is for it to be used on a wider variety of units.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Man could probably be helped with national versions of flame arrows.

Other suggestions would be a song of winds that was a 10+ AoE arrow fend, that only lasted while the song played.

One other more general interesting spell would be something like burst of fertility. Increased population growth, lower unrest.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Now the Lawgiver looks very strong, i'd say no-brainer for MA Mictlan. New path cost 40 (was 50), starting dom 3 (was 2) and A1S2N1 (was A1S1N1).

Assuming S9 bless and 6-7 DOM, the change is the equivalent of more than 100 design points.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

P3D - see my post on MA-Mictlan strategy thread.

The lawgiver makes an interesting alternate stratgy available for MA mictlan - but it is still sub optimal to FW bless.

Now, if he was A1S2D1 / F1A1S2 / or even W1A1S2 it would be enough to probably make him the dominant MA pretender. But, by a nose, the oracle still has it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Interesting point, and *very* true!

Machaka also very dearly in my opinion would need a national version of flaming arrows. Even though Baalz have written a very excellent guide on how to take advantage of the spiders, and even though Machaka *can* eventually cast the flaming arrows in CBM (unlike Man, who just are totally screwed there) it still would great IMO to actually be able to cast it when the flaming arrows still are useful (at least I usually get around to flame arrows in CBM when everybody already have the counters available to basically nullify the spell, thus making it less than attractive to go for).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Hmm.. And man should probably have a unit: High King's Tax Collector. Causes unrest, but a negative cost.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Wouldn't that cause constant cheating messages?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Well, for an FW bless the only disadvantage of the Lawgiver vs Oracle is Dom3 Dom4 - and you have two additional paths, and neither A4 nor N4 are useless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Typical MA Mictlan uses s9f9 though... so the lawgiver is best if you want to lay down some extra minor blesses but the oracle is still the choice for semi-decent scales with your bless.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

After installing this mod and enabling with under mod prefences the game craps out with the german 'FAIL' box as well as this error message: "name2spell: no such spell".

I've delted and reinstalled the mod with no change - the 1.41 mod worked fine.

Any ideas?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Are you sure you have the most recent patch?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Are you sure you're not using it with another mod? Could be caused by a different mod, or a conflict between the mods.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Rather than a flaming arrows version I'd be inclined for the spell to just make them AP. That way it wouldn't be as strong and wouldn't require the Fire caster that is hard for Man to get hold of.

An Ench 4 with E2 requirement sounds about right to me, not too easy to get but not too hard either.

In terms of the Tarts I think the combination of changes will just strengthen the strategy. If GoR is going down for other reasons I feel Tart cost should rise further - I don't see how Chalice/GoH holders are not better off compared to everyone else by this. They are the only ones who can really make the strategy powerful, and it just got sweeter.

In order to separate the use of GoR for other purposes, would it be feasible to have all Tarts start as commanders, but up the death cost dramatically? That should stop mass production - massing gems of one type in very large numbers is harder than moderate numbers of two, excepting gem types that can be produced by items.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Tartarians are dirt cheap compared to other SCs, but can the spell be modded as suggested?
Even 50 gems would be less than the usual SC cost if it is guaranteed to be commander.
To decrease the advantage of the Chalice/GoH, their initial afflictions should be reduced (esp. with higher proce).

About Man.
Give them an additional path. Say Mothers with N+100%AN+110%WAEN (not N+200%AN).
Perhaps access to the lower-level angelic summons.
Make the Warden everywhere recruitable?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

There are no other mods! :)

Didn't have the latest patch - thank you.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Did you remove the Marverni hornblower pretender? That has been a really annoying bug in the Worthy Heroes section of this mod and it can't be commented out. Needs to be removed entirely.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

It seems that he did remove that bug. I wonder if he shows up as a Marverni Hero like he's supposed to now?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Concerning Sea of Ice:

Once R'lyeh can wish it's a much too cheap way to defend.
Dispel 30 pearls > Wish for gems + Sea of Ice 18 pearls

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

@QM: Thanks for the new version! I like the idea of a cheaper GoR, it's one of the spells that makes this game fun.

@Illuminated One: Sea of Ice works both ways. It's not much of an advantage to be stuck in the water, there are a lot of spells he can't cast underwater. Once the Ice is up, it should be easier to eliminate R'lyeh's presence on land. Second, you can try to fill up the global slots. Base cost becomes less important when there are 5 globals up, each boosted by hundreds of gems.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I have to ask: why nerf the Moloch even further? It's not like he gets much use as it is. Not enough of a SC to be thrown around, and magic paths too expensive to stray from the two original ones.

Methinks he should either get cheaper paths, and boost it from that side, or get his combat status boosted (with an AOE attack, maybe? Or perhaps recuperation? Limp molochs are a sorry sight)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Hmm, you are right about 5 globals.

But still early on it can be a very powerful spell.
I blitzed a much stronger LA Atlantis by casting it and if he wants to counteract I just could recast it for less (even without wish I count 35 w as less than 30 s).

Or consider locking in an Oceania with 50 provs on turn 25...
There's nothing he can do to defend his lands.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I think you should consider decrementing the effect that order has on income to 6%. And incrementing the effect that productivity has to 5%.

This will give a large boost to

agartha, abysia, jomon, oceania, bogarus and machaka.

It will also do a bit to make the choice of 03 M2 decision not necessarily a no brainer. And I'm kind of surprised we haven't talked about it before.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Took a look at the mod at work. Looks good and no comment on the balance things and alterations as such, but typos abound still. I can do a once-over of those and see how it turns out.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I didn't check the thread to see if anyone else mentioned this, but there's a typo (I assume) in the .dm file. Shade beasts cost 70 gems right now.

In any case, thanks for this great mod, I've been playing it quite a lot lately.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I found a discrepancy between the CBM 1.5 readme and the actual spell, and I don't know which is wrong.

The readme shows:

-Call Horror-
Fatigue: 200 (300)
Gem cost: 2 (3)
Blood magic needed: 2 (3)
Astral magic needed: 2 (3)
Research level: 5 (6)

However, Call Horror is actually in the game as a Blood level 4, not level 5, spell.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

I was playing EA Atlantis a bit, and noticed that the description of the War Shambler says they are equipped with Coral Glaives, while their weapon is Coral Spear. The same discrepancy exists in vanilla.
That'd give them +6 damage for the cost of 1 attack and defense score. Giving them a glaive and increasing their attack score should help their mediocre combat troops. Or just remove those penalties from the coral glaive.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

CBM1.5 cut the seduction rating of all units except satyrs in half, so that the ratings are now below what they were in the vanilla game. (And once again, seduction never works).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

EDIT: Worked out the answer myself.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Standard (vanilla) seduce value is 10, most seducers got changed to 12.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

As far as I saw, they all got cut to 12, except satyrs. I don't undestand the logic of that at all. Regardless, the combination of the MR check and then the seduction check means that once again seduction never works. I got 2 hits out of 54 attempts with oreiads.

A creature with a +5 awe due to beauty, should probably succeed more often than 2/54.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Oreiad's have seduce 10 in vanilla. That's coming straight from the code. 12 in cbm is therefore a boost.

Succubus has 15 in its special seduction (the flying one) - this is boosted to 16 in cbm.

I don't know where you're getting the idea that they've been cut in cbm, other than perhaps bad results?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

They were 20ish in cbm 1.4 Or am I completely hallucinating?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

No they used to be stronger in cbm according to qm. But they proved a bit abusive.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

How about making Pythium's emerald guard poison immune? It would make them a perfect compliment to hydra (the other mapmove 1 heavy) and a bit more exciting. It could easily be justified - the eastern provinces of rome often featured stories about how people had eaten poisons at a young age and become immune (the most famous being mithridates of Pontus) - they could be the imperial food tasters as well as bodyguards.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5
 

Why does pythium need a boost at all?
Additionally, they the empire legion were the guardians of the emperor... I can't see it as thematic.

Clouds of billowing poison.. dangerous creatures... and you're toting around tonnes of armor?