Adept's Mod (weapon, magic and monster changes)
 

Updated to version 1.10. Name shortened to Adept's Mod to avoid confusion.

1.01
Minor pricing and weapon adjustments for Jomon, fear removed from Aka-Oni samurai.

1.10
I had forgotten to bring Hatchets to the same standard as other things (left the damage to just +1 on shortswords here). Gave werewolves back the head slots. If dragons get to wear helmets, so should they.

Mod feels ready now. Some day I'll try to bring Hinnom and the rest of that nation path to some sanity, but that can wait for a while. For now we just don't play them.

-Adept

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Hello everybody, sorry that this took so long. Many things were more tedious to do than I anticipated, and I wanted to test things extensively before making this public.

But here it is. Click on the banner to download.

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions...dbanner110.jpg

I'll try to summarise the mod without going into every tedious detail. This is not in order of importance, just the order in which I built the mod.

1) Adjusted weapon balance, mainly for the sake of realism, but also for game fun reasons. The weapon modelling in Dominions has had some oddities since the original game. I have some passion for archaic weapons and history, so I got together with like minded friends and have done my best to address the oddities.

The game reason is that in Dominions it has often seemed that swords are the best all around weapons, and most of the others are inferior or even horribly inefficient chioses. This isn't historically true and not very interesting in the game. The attempt here is that weapons have strengths and weaknesses, and the combination of their stats and resource cost should make them all feel like valid choises (for the cultures equipping their soldiers).

Here are some general principles. All in all we tried to leave well enough alone, and not over adjust. Swords and the spear were used as the yardstick for determining values for other weapons.

Two handed weapons have +2 damage to the equivalent one handed weapon.

Axes have less reach, no defence bonus and +2 damage to swords.

Jotun giant weapons adjusted accordingly. Jotun axemen and such should now suck a bit less.

Mace is a cheap res 1 weapon. Reach 1, damage 7 (one point more than on a sword). Decent low tech weapon.

The hammer is now modelled after the medieval warhammer. Higher resource cost and less damage than the mace (5), but it's armour piercing.

Glaive, which in Dominions represents many polearms should be a pretty good polearm. It and it's relatives were used a lot over history. The accuracy and defence penalties made it stupendously bad previously. The glaive is by nature a defencive and versatile polearm, so we went with that. The damage was brought down to a still respectable 8, att 0, def 1. All other glaives adjusted accordingly.

Halberd is the offensive polearm. The impact of a twohanded battleaxe with reach 4. Att 1, Def -1.

The giant's hurled boulder now has the standard acc -2 of thrown weapons.

Slings have damage 7, range 25 and acc -1. (2 points from the rather high damage were given to accuracy and range, if you will.)

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The japanese weapons of Jomon and it's earlier incarnations had very strange values. I can't blame Kristoffer too much, since looking for information on them one is swamped by orientalist hype. We made a decision to go with closest european equivalents, adjust for credible research results and make the weapons "offensive" instead of defensive where appropriate to reflect different approach to martial arts. For instance the katana's attack and defence values are those of the greatsword, but swapped around. Where the greatsword has att +1, def +2, the Katana has att +2, def +1. Damages were are based on european equivalents, with the +2 added for being used two handed.

The Naginata, being basically a Japanese glaive has the defence bonus moved to offence, to keep the flavour of the nation.

The bamboo longbow called Yumi was created for the samurai archers to differentiate from the generic longbows. As in real life it has less damage than the Welsh longbow, but to compensate we upped it's attack to +2. Considering the samurai archers have a prec of 11 already, this makes them excellent at long range archery.

The japanese spear (or Yari) inspired me to fix something that has long bothered me. Dominions has a generous handful of troops with spear and no shield, but they all use the normal one handed spear stats. As yari is just japanese for spear, I decided to use it in fixing this. I turned the Yari into "War Spear", which is just a more atmospheric way of saying a-spear-used-with-both-hands. With the usual logic this ends up being a polearm with dam 5, att 1 and len 4. It also meant I had to go through the unit list looking for all the troops armed with spears only, and create a war spear version of any exotic spear used in this way. This took some months as it was very slow and frustrating. Do tell me if (when) you find some that I've missed.

The shuriken is capped at one point of damage, and can't take anybody's head off anymore. Still quite efficient with the strong poison.

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Magic adjustments:

Items that create magic gems out of thin air have been removed or turned into unique artifacts. Forge of the Ancients has been removed from play, as has the Hammer of the Forge Lord and Dwarven Hammers. Aside from the few gods and units that have built in forge bonuses, magic items will cost the full amount.

Frost Brand cost 10 water gems, to be better matched with fire brand.

Sanquine dowsing rod is now unique, so blood income will require more honest work as well (and there won't be the pressure on blood nations to drive for construction).

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Creatures:

Werewolves now have 2 claw attacks and a bite, and they don't have weapon or head gear slots. I hope I found every werewolf.

Dragons have 2 claw attacks and a bite.

The Kindly Ones, The Damned Admiral and Lord of the Hunt have no item slots. Especially the Lord and the Erinyas suffered from stupid effects when they happened to pick up some gear after a fight, often rendering them practically harmless and easy to kill (see what happens when one of the Kindly Ones finds a skull amulet).

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Unit changes:

All samurai have have a gold cost of 11 to reflect their skills and morale as veteran troops (att 10, def 11, Mor 11). The prec has been brought down to 10 on non archer samurai for neatness (no actual game effect).

Ronin adjusted to the same standard, as they are just masterless samurai with different armour.

The higher level Samurai were brought in line with the elite troops skill / cost levels from other nations.

Samurai cavalry prec brought to 8 as they are mounted.

Sacred Sohei and Yamabushi priced at 30 gold. The yamabushi's attack and defence swapped around at att 11, def 13. They make a great defensive line with their naginatas.

The ninja gets the standard att 13, def 13 of any assasin. Other stats and price kept.

Hatamoto and Mounted Daimyo get standards (at 6 and 10), as a nod towards the banners in their graphics, and to add flavour.



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There you go. Feedback is welcome.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Mm, Samurai Archers have two copies of their weapons. You need to #clearweapons before giving them your own.

You may wish to rethink the 'werewolves have no weapons' thing, as this basically destroys Skratti thugs.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Fear on a 20g troop is definately underpriced. Fear auras stack, so fear 0 on massable troops is extremely cheap. I'm not sure you can balance it actually.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I definitely don't want to rethink it, as Skratti are supercombatants not thugs with a bit of thought. The mod is all about removing cheese.

Samurai archers don't show up with extra weapons in my game, nor do any of the others..

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Fantomen, I do have some worry about that. I was hoping to give them a fear -2 or so, but couldn't figure out how to do it.

It's possible they can't have fear. It's the bit of the mod I'm least sure about. Jomon just needs more character, rather than just a long list of tougher and tougher samurai.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

So you remove options from the skrattir to force them to be used like you envision?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

The weapon changes here are strange to call as balance. Weapon ones might turn weapons more realistic - I honestly have no clue - but it doesn't achieve that much in reality. The thing with buffing axes and maces is that it does not really buff many units. Most of the infantry in the game just happens to have a sword of some kind. I mean, seriously, all I can think of is is this improving the monkey nations' terrible infantry very slightly and making Marverni's berserk infantry more desireable. If you want to see more mixed units in field, you need to actually give most nations options to begin with: human nations in general only have swordsmen and some two handers to begin with.

Two handed weapons need a lot to be worth using. You're after all losing a shield in most cases, and that's arrow protection and 3 def in most cases. I generally consider that worth more than a couple of points of offensive stats at least since if you lose an unit, you'll have to rehire it and besides, two more turns of one handed weapon hits due to survivability are a lot to catch up for for any two handed weapon. Twohanders have their niche uses, but I bet small changes won't make people use halberd infantry etc too much more.

Nerfing Jomon by making their weapon stats more realistic is in general pretty stupid in my option. It's not a strong nation to begin with and has serious lack of shields. That said the fear 0 20g samurais are bat**** insane and probably way more than make up for the change. Now any Jomon player will only spam those.

Magic item changes are roughly in line with CBM, no comments on those.

Making werewolves pretty much useless seems dumb and removes a really fun aspect of Jotun nations. If they needed a nerf (I don't think they did since there are many other roughly equally easy options of just fine thug chassises too, but I'm no expert) they should've gotten a slight stat nerf at most.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I don't aim to please everybody Elmokki. Leaving unbalanced weapons as they are "because everybody just uses swords anyway" is a very silly way to go about things. There are quite a few troops in the game armed with axes and maces for instance, and there is no reason for them to be unduly nerfed.

The choise of using two handed weapons is now a bit more realistic and a real choise, as for instance the main polearms aren't nerfed to hell.

I suspect I'll bring the jomonese things up to western standard (with the reversed attack / defence), even though the japanese metallurgy and blade harmonics really don't justify it. But, it's a game, so I shouldn't go into too much real world detail. I was reluctant to up the damages from those used by Kristoffer, but I think in game terms it will make more sense to just treat the katana as a broadsword sized 2 handed sword, for instance. I'll do that.

As for the fear effect, I suspect it will have to go. I didn't bother using those troops much in my test games, as samurai archers, samurai cavalry and naginata armed samurai as the defencive line worked perfectly well. The lack of shields naturally hurts Jomon in many situations, but that is the style of the nation. If you don't like the challenge, pick something else. Their masses of summoned creatures (I'm especially looking at the tengu) more than even up the score I believe.

Werewolves are not useless. They are better right off the bat and in line with the original werewolves (like the Vanir skinshifters and Mictlan jaguar warriors). Werewolves should claw and bite, and with 3 attacks, built in regen, a strength of 25 and the ability to quicken self the Skratti is a good thug without any gear at all. You still get to beef them up with misc, feet and armour items. What you can't do it spam supercombatants with no weaknesses.



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Oh, I forgot something. I fixed the chariots that have been broken since the original game. Now the Arco chariots have enough ambidexterity to actually use those spear and shortsword attacks if they run into something too big to trample.


As for the fear produing Samurai, I guess this is the unit we should be looking at: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Nightmare

80 gold for a fast, sacred, fear +5 cavalry soldier. Do you guys think there is any way to price the Aka-Oni samurai with fear 0, or do I need to do something entirely different with them?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

If anybody has ideas on how to differentiate the high end samurai from each other other than increasing cost and ability I'll be glad to hear it. The Aka-Oni samurai description talks of them infiltrating the besieged city (stealth? siege bonus?) and being the most feared troops of Jomon (fear is indeed maybe too effective, or the price should be kicked to 40 or so).

The on-foot daimyo looks exactly the same as the Aka-Oni, so if they were turned to special troops neading their own type of leadership, the Daimyo is the commander to adopt.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Adept, you missed one important part of the Nightmare. They have encumbrance 15! They better hope that the fear scares away the enemy on the first try because if it takes two turns then they are dead. They are the ultimate glass cannons! Note that I would have no problems with 50g Aka-oni that have enc 15.

But no, there is a reason that fear is only given to recruitable commanders and not troops. Its because fear auras stack with each other. So 4 Aka-oni samurai would have stronger fear than a prince of death. Its hard to mass commanders in that way however.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I'm afraid you guys are right. I can't find a formula that would work.

By the pricing used in other Dominions nations the units should be a touch more expensive than they are for their skill, but I guess the reduced hitpoints give an excuse to ignore that.

I've adjusted the prices like this:

samurai: 11 gold (veteran troops, defence 11, morale 11)
(should be gold 12)

O-ban: 14 gold (11 / 11 skill, mor 12)
(should be 15 gold)

Go-Hatamoto 17 gold (att 12 / def 11, mor 13)

Aka-Oni Samurai: 20 gold (att 12 / def 12, mor 14)

***

They get a progression of +3 gold each which is nice and consistent. I'm gonna leave the Aka-Oni samurai as generic tough guys. Too bad, but I just can't find a way to fit any ability with their description.

An updated 1.01 version will be out in a few hours.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Skrattir in wolf form no weaknesses? Have you even played with them in MP? They have enough weaknesses. (ps, I think CBM reduced the HP a bit). Sure they are powerful, but removing the hand slots really takes away they usability as thugs. 250gold is way to expensive for a unit without shields, or the ability to hold shields, or a head slot. Against any opponent even with shields and head slots they usually die like flies. (They do not have a lot of MR for example, without hand slots they are stuck at reasonably low damage and attack (for thugs/sc anyway), defense and only normal damage, not AP or AN. Which removes large swaths of jotun and urdheims midgame strategies). And without head or hands you cannot even give them enough resistances against attacks. Using them against a skilled opponent is now a big mistake.

Nobody will ever use them in wolf-form anymore. As you get more mage bang for your buck in normal form. (Fallen frost spam for example, blood gives easy access to communions).

Fear on recruitable units is a big no no. Fear is way to good massed. That is what makes the demon knights so good. The massed fear on the super heavy cav. Also the nightmare is not recruitable in the base game, and I think they have never been balanced for ingame use. (The 15 enc is a bit strange for example).

Other stuff you could try with the samurai, give them patrol and pillage bonuses. Make them auto remove unrest. (Doesn't work on troops iirc).

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Also, without gemgens, the monkey nations (except lanka, which is more an ape nation anyway ;)). Are a lot weaker. As all require a lot of S gems. Same for LA R'lyeh.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

What nations are you using as a baseline for this pricing scheme you have going on for Jomon? Gath? Because those troops are largely overcosted themselves and have thematic reasons for their costs(see: Asherite Soldier).

As an example: LA Arcosephale. 10 gold for utterly average Peltasts. 11 gold for 11 hp, 12 morale, 11 str, 11 attack, 11 defense Phalangites/hoplites. Hypaspists are 15 gold but only different from Phalangites etc. by 14 morale instead of 12.

LA Man has 11 HP 12 morale 11 attack 11 def 11 precision crossbow-wielding Tower Guards for 13 gold. 15 gold to bump hp and morale to 13 and def and precision to 12.

Gath: 13 gold for 13 morale, 11 attack 11 def on Zebulunite Soldiers, 15 gold for Asherite Soldiers with *worse* stats than that for thematic reasons. The only troops so far priced similar to yours--and at least they have shields.

I'm also very confused about increasing the gold cost of the sacreds--were you finding people using them too much?

Overall, it feels like instead of making the various weapons more unique or fitting, they are all homogenized. For instance, all of Jomon's weapons are more or less the same. You can use a Katana for 7 damage 2 attack...or a No-Dashi for 8 damage 1 attack. Not enough of a difference to recruit one over the other for different situations. Or the Naginata, which used to be a good option for dealing with high-protection targets. Now it is no different from a No-Dashi damage-wise. Everything is either 7 or 8 damage and...boring. Your changes have reduced the amount of strategy that you can use recruiting Jomonese troops.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Oh, and the Hammer change only affects two things: it makes Claymen super-powerful and makes MA Ulm not purchase any other kind of infantry. I suppose there's also one mercenary band of heavy infantry that is now really good too.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

The hammer change also affects hoburgs and siege golems iirc but yeah, the main change is to make ulm's hammer troops the only unit they ever use.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Nightmares are bollocks. One or two death mages or a swarm or two and they're gone.

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Executer, never heard of the axe wielding samurai then?

Or the knights of the round axe.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Heh, indeed I have, and they are a royal pain in the arse. Way too good for their price. Shields you say? I say etherealness, luck and as many attacks as you can pile on them... like this, with cheap early game magic items: (The etherealness and luck come from vaetti hags buffing them at start of battle).

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/wolfman.JPG

<snip>
Other stuff you could try with the samurai, give them patrol and pillage bonuses. Make them auto remove unrest. (Doesn't work on troops iirc).[/quote]
Pillage bonus could be a good idea for feared troops. For now I think I'll just leave them as straight elite tough guys.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

You think it's superior form the stats here? No, it definitely isn't. What it does is do _more_ damage than a sword.

Compare:

Broadsword. dam 6, len 2, def +1
Axe dam 8, len 1

The sword is definitely the better all around weapon, but at least the axe has something going for it. If you manage to get into range 1 and land a hit, it will hurt more. It's "point" is the low resource cost. Compared to a sword an axe is a low tech affair.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

For those who missed it, the Ashigaru are semi professional soldiers with 9/9 skill, and full 10 in morale. Gold cost 9.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

To be fair, historically the axe was an excellent weapon. It was easy to forge, and you could use the down-hook to pull shields and people off balance. Not a very defensive weapon though. Real life war axes were much smaller and faster than in fantasy pictures. Easier to hit with, but doing less damage.

A realistic stat would prob dmg5, atk2 def -1, len 1 and costing only 1 resource. Real axes probably used as much metal as a dagger and a dagger cost resource 1.

Not that you should implement these stats of course. Changing only weapon stats would unbalance every unit that uses these weapons.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

By the way, your example Skratti is wearing 40+ gems of gear and supported with extra casters. I would hope that it would take at least a handful of mages to take him down. Looks like orb lightning or just plain some fireballs would fatigue him out and then make short work of him. But none of that matters because he has an army with--you can just cut off retreat routes and rout the surrounding army without even having to take him out. He's only a problem if you don't expend somewhat comparable amounts of resources taking care of him.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Too late! Though from what you say atk 0 and #flail would be more appropriate.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Supported by a 55 gold-recruit-anywhere vaetti hag doesn't exactly rate the comment of being supported by "extra casters". They become fearsomely powerful with construction lvl 2 items, and you can create more at will. You can have these guys out really early in the game, and only a few nations have credible magic options for countering them. They are so good that in most cases it's much better for the Jotun player to focus on the mage werewolves than spending his gold in recruiting an army of giants. Granted taking out the forging bonuses makes spamming such SCs harder, but you don't need many to roll over somebody in early game. One pretty much needs tartarians and very good magic items to match recruitable SCs Jotunheim can have out in _early_ game. No thanks.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Adept, I don't think you understand the purpose of a *balance* mod.

Call it a historicity mod if you must. I don't care to argue about the metallurgy or whatever. But the only 'changes' you've made that have anything to do with *balance* are ones CBM already made.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Updated to version 1.01

Try to be a little less insulting Squirrellord. This forum used to be such a polite and grown up place. You even manage to use the word changes in a "sarcastic" manner. What you claim above is simply not true.

a) There is a lot of weapon balance that CBM doesn't do put in here. Check out the effects of the War Spear for one.

b) CBM, at least when I last looked didn't categorically remove forging or gem creation items, nor does it remove forge of the ancients.

c) CBM doesn't fix the problem of Lord of the Hunt or the Furies being neutralised by picking up items in combat.

***

Many of the changes and fixes I've done change the game's balance point. It may not be a change you agree with (though I seriously doubt you've had time to test it). but it does effect the balance addressing things that consern me.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Not that i really want to get into an argument about historicity, but historically an axe had an advantage in penetrating power, because it had a heavy head that came to an 'edge' (not actually that sharp in practice, but momentum helps) at the end of a shaft, so the Force per square inch was really high. On a solid hit it was much more likely to punch through armor than a swung sword was.

FWIW, swords aren't historically much of a slashing weapon either. Sure, if you could bring it to bear on an unarmored target it could slash just fine, but a knight in full armor in the late medieval/early renaissance was mostly immune to a swung sword. Which is why thrusting became the dominant attack mode with a sword, because against an armored foe it makes a much better piercing weapon. And thus developed a number of swords which were focused on using the tip as a weapon rather than the blade per se. Note that a sword has a much smaller area of contact if it strikes with the tip rather than the blade, and since it doesn't get much of a momentum bonus from a swing (because its not end-weighted), its just a very poorly designed weapon for swinging.

(Similarly, the mace was more effective as a swung weapon against a well-armored foe than a sword was).

But lets be honest, the dominant weapon during the heaviest armored periods was the pike, and well-drilled battalions of pikemen dominated the wars in europe.

Swords as a swung weapon (eg, the cutlass) became more popular again as armor got lighter with the growing dominance of gunpowder.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Also consider that I have not done any work on this mod to specifically please you squirrellord, nor do I require your approval. I only post it here incase others are interested in trying it out. The mod has been created for my multiplayer groups continued enjoyment of this fine game.

Now returning to our regular mod discussion, hopefully.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Which has nothing to do with balance. CBM alters the units directly because it preseves the weapons as distinct options with their own advantages and disadvantages, and tries to make sure the *units* using them are balanced. (To the extent it succeeds or fails is not the point, its targeting the right thing to balance).

If your efforts are anything to go by, you've homogenized jomon to the point that differences in weapon are totally meaningless. That's boring, and its not balance in any real way, and it certainly doesn't give jomon any interesting choices (this is still a game).

Forging and gem creation items are made artifacts in CBM, since 1.7 and 1.6 respectively.

Forge of the Ancients doesn't need to be removed. Its a Const 9 (in CBM) global spell whose purpose (like a number of other level 9 globals) is to break stalemates.

Which doesn't actually make them more useful or balanced, since they're really bad spells even if they don't pick anything up.

On the flip side, if they managed to pick up any good items, they would have been more dangerous. (Not likely that they'll kill anything carrying *an* item in teh first place, but as long as we're playing what if).

So you didn't actually improve their balance, but you might have decreased their variance a little bit.

You don't have a vision for the game's balance point. You don't even seem to know what the game's balance point currently is, since you seem hell-bent on nerfing a weak nation into the ground, which is hardly a balance-oriented change.

Hint: if you're making changes for a reason other than balance, you're probably not making a change that improves balance.

A balance mod needs to boost nations and spells that are underperforming and rein in those that are overperforming. Your obsession with Jomon is hilariously misplaced, and I'm not actually convinced they're playable in your mod.

I really need to ask: How much MP experience do you have? Because you can beat the AI by doing horribly inept things, so 'it works against the AI' is not a test of balance. To have any clue about balance in this game you need to routinely play against the best players in the game.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

[quote=Squirrelloid;785194]I feel like I'm feeding a troll, so this is probably my last reply to you. You are being massively impolite.

You seem to have an issue with using the word balance in the name of the mod. This is a linguistic fixation. My mod is it's own thing, not a rival to anybody elses work. I am familiar with the CBM, but I do not like the approach personally.

Your comment about Jomon is just dickery. If you want to be qualified to make such comments, you need to try it out.

This is your opinion and preference. You are entitled to it, but it doesn't make it the only right one. I'd go into detail on what is wrong with the FotA in detail, but I have no interest in further "discussion" with you.

Your comments on the Furies and Lord of the Hunt don't merit a comment.


Like I said originally, I fully intend to play Jomon in the next multiplayer game of my group under this mod, unless somebody else insists on having it.

This form a grashopper who has joined these forums in 2009. The arrogance and personal attacks probably give me a pretty good clue about your age.

I've played the dominions games since the original game out, and been a member of these boards since 2003. I could have called the mod anything. Your obsession with the name doesn't do you any favours.

#description "Fixes weapon oddities, addresses unbalancing magic items, global spells and broken summoned creatures."

Here's a hint about language for you young grasshopper. Balance can refer to the balance between weapons, balance between magic items... anything like that. You seem to think it is automatically about balance between nations. Dominions is complex enough that a fine balance between all the nations is impossible. Mostly one can aim for consistent pricing of skill.

For me the feeling of verisimilitude and realism is important. Jomon has a significant and historically accurate weakness in not using shields. It doesn't mean they need super weapons or boosted skills to counter that, it means it's a challenging nation which needs creative tactics and use of it's summons and indies in the war of the gods. This is a good thing.

If you have anything further to say, learn some manners. Othervise just go away.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly. Are you saying a longer shaft, and a heavier head, aid in penetration?

Wow that's almost tldr.

But I think what you are saying here is that for better penetration, thrusting is better than swinging. And pikemen are dominant because their weapons have really long shafts. Is that right?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Here is an example of how the Skratti werewolf thug is far form extinct despite not having weapon or helmet slots.

I'm sure you all know how to do this. All you need is enough vaetti hags (which you'll want anyway for cheap researchers) to score one or two with astral. Then You need to rush Alteration 4 for Quicken Self, Body Ethereal and Luck. Since the Hag fits in the same square as the giant werewolf after two rounds of buffing your totally unequipped early game überthug looks like this:

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/moddedwolf1.JPG
(in the picture 2 of them are tearing apart experienced heavy cavalry).

In the other picture you see the rest of the indie lvl 9 defenders. As can be expected in the battle nobody lands a single hit on the werewolves.

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/moddedwolf2.JPG

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

@Deathblob

I am getting the same thing from squirrelloid's post. He prefers long shafts and a heavy heads for his armor penetration. I am admittedly unlearned on the subject, so IDK if it makes a difference whether the weapon is an axe, long shafted spear, or sword. Maybe some LARPer will come along and enlighten us.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I have made no personal attacks. My comments are almost wholly directed at the mod. I have no opinion on you as a person. If you can't separate yourself from things created by yourself, that's your problem and not mine.

I did challenge your authority to know what balance was. Since a balance mod implicitly makes a claim to authority ("I know what balance is, because i'm writing a mod to 'fix' it"), its a relevant challenge.

How long you've played the game isn't very relevant. There are people who have only ever played SP yet played since it first came out. Expertise is something that needs to be worked at, it doesn't automatically come from doing an activity haphazardly for a long time. Gandalf, who did beta testing of dom3, can't even get the mechanics right. Gandalf has done a lot for the community (such as run a server which hosts direct-connect games), but I wouldn't use a *balance mod* written by him. (Its my impression he has no interest in balance mods, so there's no problem there).

I'd be happy to compare:
(1) Number of MP games played
(2) Quality of opponents
(3) Mechanics knowledge
(4) Significant MP game wins (>= 6 players)

ie, real measures of experience and skill.

And finally, words have meaning. When you use the term 'balance mod', people expect certain things. Being surprised when they call the mod on it not improving gameplay balance at all is disingenious. Yes, maybe i'm hung up on teh word. I looked at this thread *expecting* a balance mod. I didn't find one.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Thanks Foodstamp!

You are obviously an expert on penetration, having joined these forums in Oct 2006, whereas I only joined in May 2011. I am just a very young grasshopper. A nymph, in fact.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Why are we using indies as a measure of balance? Especially indies vs. *4 turns of mage recruitment* which requires two 1/4 hags (so we're looking at 18 turns of recruitment time on average to even see that), by which point there aren't going to be any indies? (Ok, your second fort coming online is going to speed that up, maybe, but indies are mostly gone by turn 12, you'll be lucky to have this ready to go before then).

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I don't know that my forum experience has helped me with penetration at all. That is why I was hoping someone with more real experience on the subject would come along and tell us which implement is best for penetration so the balance mod can be modified accordingly. If using a long shafted spear actually results in more penetration, it would be useful to know.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

There is such a thing as too much penetration. It isn't always a good idea to break through protection.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

I don't understand how too much penetration could be a bad thing? Are you afraid a long shafted spear would get stuck? If that is the case, maybe a long shafted spear could be used as a high penetration weapon that is rendered useless after the initial thrust. This could be achieved by using the #charge tag or something.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Also, s1 random hags are not that easy to get. You never have enough of those. (You want them sneaking around to prevent mind hunts, sitesearch, research (you are a blood nation, these suck at research), forging etc).

Also, the rainbow armor is not standard forgable by any of the heims. You need to work for that. (or put it on the pretender, which takes away a lot of pretender turns (who needs to be everywhere at once, and could even be sleeping/imprisoned if you have a bless (and you probably need one else your sacreds are worthless in the early game)). Pretender turns are never cheap.

Also, you put 20 nature gems on this unit alone, which are the best gems. And he isn't even fatigue neutral (3+3 from the quickness) quicken self already adds 21. But who gets 20 N gems to use like this each turn? You cannot outfit that many like them. Or you at least use up a lot of other gems.

And like people said, any fire/air spells kill them. Flaming arrows? And they are gone. Sure you can swap in an elemental protection ring. But where are you going to get additional fire and air magic? Without poison resistance you can stop their regen. Which also works nicely. (And tends to afflict).

Also, luck+eth only works cheaply for jotunheim, nief and utgard have less cheaper ways of getting astral. (nief has gygjas and utgard needs to build additional labs to build the mages). The hags are also easily sniped away (archers at front set to shoot large target/rear). And if you set them to cast cast retreat, you can only use the trick every other turn (And your retreat routes could get wiped). Also body eth+luck tends to miss if you do use gygjas. As they buff themselves first.

And if somebody starts raiding you back they can raid a lot quicker than you can with this setup. As you can only create one each turn. (and it uses a pretender turn, five fort turns (1 for the skrattir, 4 for the hag (at average)), and 6 mage turns, and 40 gems).

Without eth they get killed by cavalry charges.

A blood nation with lvl 8 blood can life for a life them. Or just wound them with with a flesh eater. +10 fatigue each turn. Bye bye!

Death nation? Hand of death! 40AN damage. Almost enough to one shot them. (A bit hard to use btw, but every once in a while you get lucky). But piling on enough fear might also do it. Morale 17 isn't great (according to the manual lone units get a penalty). Wailing winds, terror, fear aura's! Brave sir robin!

They get hit a lot, so they get afflictions rather quickly, and some really wreck them. (chest wound like above, blindness, armloss, crippled, never healing wound, etc). A chest wound deep in enemy territory just means you lose all the items. (as you transform to wolf form and sneak away, sure you could add scouts, but that is even more stuff you must recruit before your guys are workable).

And they can also be countered with the standard skelly spam, or put a lot of cheap chaff between them and the important stuff. Bigger SC with AP/AN weapons.

But yeah, they work, unless you go up against a fire/air nation, a death nation, or raiding nation, a heavy cav nation, a fire bless nation, a blood nation, etc. They can dish out a lot of damage but can't really take it. Sure they arrive early at the game. But so do niefel giants, or other recruitable SC chassis. Sure these are usually more expensive, but also have one other distinction. They are always sacred. Which adds even more powers.

Removing the hand slots just means one more thing. They do even less damage. I would then only use them as falling frost casters who cannot be killed easily. (give skrattir a water ring, and they can always cast falling frost, do they get hit bad? they transform into werewolves that run away).

You just don't like the skrattir do you?

On a different topic? Furies useless? I disagree, they did a number on my bloodhunters in Bootcamp. I lost a lot of blood random hags, high blood gygja's, and skrattir in that game due to these *****es. But that was using CBM, where the spell is moved waaaaay down in cost and research (lvl 6, 30 f gems, f4 n3). They poison like crazy, auto cast darkness. Lot of stuff dies to them. And them picking up a blood thorn did not improve things.
Also, how do you make them worse by letting them pick up items? Sure if they pick up 2 shields it is bad, but then they still have high fear and a poison aura. But most other items either don't do anything or they add to their abilities. And trying to kill somebody with 2 shields is hard, and the poison and fear aura make you run.

And squirreloid has a point. By putting fear on cheap recruitable unit you prove that you don't really understand balance. Or at least the fear mechanic.

And I don't think he is that insulting. Balance? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Squirreloid has a valid complaint there.

You brought up the insults and age thing.

Edit: I take way to long to type this stuff)

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Just look at this image:
**This link has been removed by the Shrapnel obscenity auto-detection. Do NOT post obscene links. You now have 10 additional infraction points**

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

That would leave your unit very vulnerable and exposed!

I suggest dual-wielding in this case, so your unit is not impotent after the weapon's charge is expended. If both weapons have long shafts, then ambidextrous units should probably get a double penetration bonus. Can you mod this in?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Yeah, I think so. Especially if the unit is size 6 or has multiple arms.

The best way to implement it would be to give the unit two long shafted penetrators with the #charge tag. It's a bit abstract, but imagine that the enemy unit would receive double penetration that causes an immediate shock, but then the melee settles into your typical blow by blow. It would be awkward wielding two long shafted weapons though, so there would have to be penalties to compensate for loss of balance, lack of defense etc.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Also needed to sitesearch, sneaky protect vs mind hunts (blood hunters for example), and forging. You also want 2 so you can let the one run away, and the other to sneak into your next target province (or waste another turn).

So you use 4 mages against heavy cav? most of the cav should die then. Try a rematch against more cav, 20 for example. It does not really have critical mass here. (I did some tests myself, with only one skrattir with luck and eth, it didn't go that well. The long combat resulted in fatigue, the massed attacks overcame the eth+luck. Crits -> afflictions -> meant the end of the wolf).

Also, as soon as you hit research lvl 4 there will usually not be any indies left. Then you start to face the real enemies, the other players. (And your tactic of rushing to alt 4 means one problem. If a bless nation rushes you. You do not have a good magical counter. Only numbness. (After getting alt 2 (quickness!), I would either get con 4 for some serious magical items on the skrattir thugs (wha.. no hands!) or falling frost. Depending on the other nations I expect to face.

And other players have good troops. Attack 16 might not even be enough to dent the enemy troops reliably. Lets say marignon royal guards for example. defense 19, recruitable everywhere.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

For anybody interested, use this as a google search term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piquerism turn of your safe search!

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Don't like = it's too good for it's price and the synergy it has with the nation.

I have nothing against thugs and SCs, but the super werewolf skratti is cheese and a half. I never claimed they are unstoppable, just that they are too good. Again, this is my preference, and I don't expect it to be shared with everybody.

You missed it the first time I guess. All they need to do is pick up an item that let's the cast a spell, and they are neutralised. A fury that picks up a skull amulet will sit in place, summoning one skeleton / turn.

I _like_ the Kindly Ones spell. It's very atmospheric and can be quite effective. What I don't like is the creatures being neutralised by such sillyness, especially as it's this easy to fix.

***

I guess I should have re-stated the goals of the mod in this thread. Ignore the name, think of it as Adept's Mod if you are confused by the word balance in the name.

What the changes are meant to do: The weapon changes are easiest to understand. Many of the weapons in vanilla Dominions are prevalent, but really horrible choises. I've gone for a combination of getting closer to historical weapons in effectiveness, and making sure that better weapons have higher res cost. It's not very important as weapon res costs in Dominions are rather low anyway compared to those of armour. Still it has some effect, and at least one can now get a bit more use out of polearms.

The removal of forge boosters and gem production moves the emphasis a little towards armies, and away from magic. More importantly it lessens micro management. No spending time moving forging hammers from mage to mage over your empire, nor flushing out gems from people carrying fever fetishes, bloodstones and the like.

Making Jomon be more in line with rest of Dominions is a personal fancy of me and my friends. Blame it on an interest in history and martial arts interests if you will. I'm quite keen to see how Jomon will stand up now in our next match. A part of the motivation is that Dominions is actually one of the best (pseudo) historical wargames out there. It is interesting to see how a more realistic take on the samurai squares up with it's European rivals.

Fixing the people who only carry a spear will give a little more punch to some units in sore need of it. It won't come up that often, but like the chariot fix when it comes up it will be nice.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Er... the werewolf has 6 attacks due to being quikened. You did notice that they get _two_ claw attaks now? While the 50 gold royal guard may parry one or two, it's pretty much given that the werewolf will still tear up two of them / turn, and quite often four.

Nicely done, remembering that huge defence and kite shield. But that is the point anyway, the thing can be brought to bear very quickly, and shouldn't be super hard to counter. What is is is excellent value for money, especially as it's an excellent mage with movement that effectively approaches that of flying units due to the survival skill.

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

...Right.. Look, I just have to ask. If this sin't actually a balance mod, and you aren't actually trying to balance things but are just making things make more sense to you.. why did you call it a balance mod in the first place and complain when people pointed out it doesn't actually balance anything?

Re: Adept's Balance Mod 1.00 ready
 

Skull amulets? Who even uses those? On valid kindly targets I would expect more powerful stuff. (actually, I would expect no spellcastable items, these are usually used by non casters, mages have their own magical power.

I think you are solving a problem that simply does not happen in normal games.


So, you want historical effectiveness, but use resources as balance? You understand you are getting your messages a bit mixed here.

Well it doesn't really matter that much. defense +2 or defense +1 does not matter when you get hit in the face with a frost blast, burn yourself to death on a banefire aura. Get killed by an earthquake, get eaten by a skrattir in werewolf form. Or any of the other milions of ways normal troops are obsolete from turn 12 onward.