Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I am pleased to present the first ever version of CBM (to my knowledge) uploaded from Japan! CBM 1.94, Tokyo Edition.

This is just a minor update to 1.93. Changelog:

Changes
- Kraken summoning requirements changed to W5, Ench 5 (was W4, Ench 6)
- Machaka's "Send Hunter Spider" spell nerfed - now N4, costs 4 gems (was N3, cost 2 gems)
- "Summon Scorpion Man" spell for Abysia and C'tis had research level reduced to 6 (was 8)
- Earth Kings (including Father Illearth) are now "Blind" (can see in the dark)
- EA Arco Chariot Archers changed so that after battle, killed archers do not return. Cost also increased to 45 gold (apparently they had been overpowered for years!).
- LA Man constructs all had elemental resistances reduced to 50%. Flavour texts changed to highlight this.
- LA Man's Colossus siege bonus reduced to 50 (from 100), and cost increased to 40 gems (from 30). Attack and defense also nerfed.
- LA Man's Clockwork Mason's castle defence ability slightly nerfed to 12 (was 15).
- New LA Man summon: Clockwork Phantom.

Bug fixes
- Path level increases for the EDM Air summons hadn't gone through. Now changed successfully.
- Changelog for 1.93 said that Ettin cost had increased; in fact this was deliberately not done.
- LA Man accidentally had a free Bean Sidhe summon and an erroneous "Summon Shades" spell; fixed.
- Shambler Skin Armor was still enc 0; now enc 1.
- Fixed minor issue from the sprite upgrade mod which gave Adepts of the metal orders two weapons by accident
- Fixed small bug meaning that changes to the forgeable Moon Blade weren't being applied
- Accidentally gave the Zmey heat instead of Heat Power (more powerful in hot dominion); fixed
- Failed to give Dwarf Elder intended forge bonus; fixed
- Changes to Zmey stats weren't properly applied to all the different partially headless forms; fixed.
- Seraph had some quirkiness in cost; fixed.
- Encumbrance not properly set on Fomorian slinger; fixed.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Hopefully this will have addressed all major issues with CB1.93. Please wait a day or two just in case and then go ahead and use this in multiplayer games.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Arigatou gozaimasu.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Very nice!

Now that I can assume you're looking at this thread.
I remember you writing about an expanded nations pack at one, which as I understand would implement some mods in a larger package. Are you still thinking about making that mod? (Am I possibly thinking of someone else?)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Redeyes: Look at my signature! :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I saw the discussion of tarts on Dom3mods and wanted to add my thoughts since a big reason I started running modified CBM games was dissatisfaction with tart mechanics.

I think a reason qm kept the cost of a GoRed tart skewed towards N gems is because they were the only game in town (especially post clams) for a non-national, non-unique SC (with magic diversity to boot) and as inefficient as it may have been he wanted non-Chalice/GoH holders to be able to summon enough tarts so that they could get some non-feebleminded ones. If costs had been skewed towards D gems that wouldn't have been possible.

But I think that the EDM summons as well as other CBM changes have now made it so that tart pricing can and should assume that you have the chalice/GoH. If you don't, then they shouldn't be a good buy given how many will be feebleminded. If you do, then you get an SC chassis (which of course you can now also find elsewhere) and the big reward is the magic diversity that comes along with it.

I think the key thing is setting reasonable price points. First, decide what the price of restore soul should be, using non-tart undead as the reference point. I think you've got to go with the worst case scenario. What is a fair price point for restore soul when used in conjuction with umbrals or perhaps morrigans? Yes, those are national summons but you don't want to underprice the spell and have it abused.

Having set that, you can then say a tart will cost x N gems to GoR (factoring in IIRC that 1 in 5 will already arrive as commanders) so what is a fair price in D gems for the summon (say an average of the prices you'd set to the seven different types of tarts if you were pricing them individually)?

I'd also like to add another vote to removing shattered soul. I view it as a failed attempt to balance tarts that is really just irritating.

As an aside, even though it's not going happen, if I could ask IW to add one spell to the game it would be a version of tartarian gate that didn't add afflictions. Wouldn't even have to be active or replace the current tart spell - just have it available for modders.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

It might be possible to mod this out. There's a certain attribute you can give units when modding them that gives a chance for afflictions. It might be possible to remove it from the Tartarians if they use that mechanic when they get afflictions.

Someone who has tried modding it this way might be able to tell if it is actually possible or not. It would have to replace the current gate in any case.

It's one way to get around the problem of having the chalice of gift of health making Tartarian summoning much better.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Doesn't work, but it was a nice thought!


Edit: Of course, we *could* just #clearspec and then give them all the fun stuff back as that's the only crazy thing about 'em. Heck, we could make it 50% affliction (which would result in random afflictions, not usually feeble mind) if we wanted to keep flavor!

Edit again: Or not! That's some powerful Juju the devs put on that spell. Dang. Still feebleminded etc.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Lol. I was about post saying that had been my experience as well. The best I could come up with was to steal Hinnom's Lords of Civilization spell (dropping the monstrum from the rotation since only six slots were available) and have them change shape. Main drawback is it limits tart summoning to 6 per turn - ok for my usual size games and worked fine in Momentum3 but obviously wouldn't for CBM. Oh, and I guess some people might be bothered by taking Hinnom's spell, but that I had no problem with. :p

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Couldn't you mod all the tartarian versions to #nextshape into an affliction free copy of themself? it would be as if they came out the gate afflicted/insane but healed up during the first month, or would the afflictions carry over to that shape?

I don't really want that to happen mind you, I personally like the complexity and limitation involved with needing the chalice or GoH. As I think it's alright that only two nations can achieve it now that other lategame options are just as good.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

It's been a while since I messed around with this but I'm pretty sure the afflictions carry over. One very circuitous possibility I guess would be to shift them into a relatively harmless form that has recuperation and, taking into account how long it usually takes to heal feeblemindedness, have them stay in that form until shifting to their final tart form.


Having thought this over, I retract my statement about wanting an affliction free version of tart gate. I mean, it would be nice to have a spell that chooses a random unit from among a group - but it's not needed to balance tarts. When I got to talking about tarts I threw that onto the end of my post because for a long time I did want exactly such a spell.

My focus was in fixing tarts, but looking back it might have been more productive to focus on creating alternatives to them in the way that EDM (successfully IMO) did. Given my skill/interest in creating graphics I never would have come up with a nice mod like llama did but I could have created a quick and dirty version by repurposing existing units/sprites. In Momentum3 (I think the last of my modified tart games) I touched on this by making the elemental royalty non-unique SC options. What I never ended up doing was extending this out to the magic diversity side of things the way EDM has done.

In any case, I'd like to see a tart focused strategy be a valid one, even a strong one. But I don't think it should be a clearly optimal one. I don't think I'm the only one who got really tired of the chalice/GoH --> tarts (pick up WoM along the way) routine.

To throw a number out there, I'd say the cost of a GoRed tart could drop the current 28 (8D/20N) to maybe 20-23 total cost (split would of course depend on what restore soul was set at). Since the nerf to their HP they're not as fearsome as they once were as SCs but they can still fulfill that role and of course the magic diversity is the best in the game.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Well, I think the nerf of shattered soul has hit them the hardest. It is also a mechanic I'm not really fond of. It is very thematic though.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

It's incredibly irritating. About the only thing in its favor is that it's thematic. Ok, so as a compromise how about reducing shattered soul to 5%, maybe 10%?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Is that even moddable?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Yeah, in one of the patches IW added a #shatteredsoul mod command. CBM actually uses it to reduce the tart level from a default of, I think, 25 to 20.

I ran a quick test, setting it to 5 and 10 and got a 6% and 11% crazy rate respectively so it should work fine.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

According to the changelog, Scorpion Man should be a level 6 spell for Abysia, but it's level 8(at least on my computer). C'tis does have it as a level 6 spell on the other hand.

Anyone else notice this?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I did know about that particular difference, but the two spells are different in more ways than that.

The primary difference is that C'tis gets the scorpion man as a commander and Abysia receives it as a regular unit.

The Abysian version is also 12 gems in cost while it is 15 gems for C'tis.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Oh, interesting. Is it intended to work like that?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I never questioned it.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I think the Gorgon is overpowered. Give it a shield, order it to attack...and that thing can't be stopped by Indies.

Maybe take away flying ability..????

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

the same reasoning can be applied to about 20 other pretenders...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

The gorgon is fine as it is.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Not sure if this was already mentioned- Why is the amphiptere summoned by "summon amphiptere" a commander now?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

LA Caelum's "Last Crafter" hero is broken, see below:

---enable high seraphine mummy
#selectnation 59
#hero1 2792 -- Last Crafer
#hero2 557 --Harab Seraphine
#multihero1 2838 -- Eagle King Mummy
#end

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

.. and those are cheaper than the Gorgon, which comes with a hefty price tag.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I'm not sure how 'valid' any balance suggestions someone who only ever plays SP are, but here goes:

Could Bogarus' Lady Midday summon perhaps get a couple more hitpoints?

As it stands, if the poor girl gets winged by a stray arrow (which I'm sure we all know is A Thing That Happens), she instantly pops, and you basically lose a mage's whole turn of summoning. If the intention of the mod is to make everything Kinda Useful, then yeah, two or so hitpoints more would be nice, or perhaps moving the cast a stage or two up the research tree and doubling them to fourteen while increasing the gem cost?

Hope that wasn't unreasonable. Sorry if it was.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Nah, that was very reasonable! I don't personally play Bogarus enough to comment, but I'll ask around and see what peoples' thoughts are on her.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Hi.
I recently downloaded CBM 1.94 and unzipped it into my Dominions 3 Mod folder.
A sub-folder "CBM_Sprites" and two files were created in that directory, "CB1.94 Forging reference" and "CB1.94.dm".
I started Dominions 3, clicked Preferences then Mod Preferences and selected "Conceptual Balance Complete (1.94). It then showed as "Enabled".
However, when I started a new game in Dominions 3, the program crashed with the error message "Bad #selectweapon command".

Sorry if this is explained elsewhere but I've been searching the forum with no luck.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Did you install the latest patch? What OS are you on?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Ah, thank you Fantomen.
I have just purchased Dominions 3 and had assumed that the purchsed version was up-to-date.
I applied patch 3.27 and no more crashes.
Thanks again.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

lol. that's quite a handle

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

I'm relatively new to Dominions 3 and I notice the CBM mod is very popular for PBEM games.
There seem to be a hell of a lot of changes from Dominions 3 vanilla; is Dominions 3 vanilla badly balanced then, or do players just like to play with a different setup at times? Some changes seem rather arbitrary.

I've just been looking at a few of the changes and they really turn things upside-down: Dwarven Hammer now Construct 8(!) ... heck, the game could be nearly over before people get a discount on forging.

Also, I noticed some very powerful weapons available at low Construct levels.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Vanilla as is very unbalanced for multiplayer yes, CBM adresses that.

The changes are not arbitrary at all, but it takes lot's of multiplayer experience to understand why they were needed. It's admittedly a bit of a catch 22 there because you can no longer fully obtain that experience when all games already use CBM, you have to trust the veterans who came to these conclusions in the first place.

In the specific case of hammers, dwarven hammers were so good that it forced everyone to make them in order to compete in mp. Without dwarven hammers you lost, so every nation that did not have national earth magic had to take it on the pretender, this limited the number of viable pretender builds and thereby the number of strategies available.

This was not so much a balance adjustment as it was a way to diversify the strategic spectrum. Not only in the sense of pretender builds, but also because forging any item at all before you had your hammers made was wasteful playing, which really shaped the strategic options for competitive play.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Thank you for your reply, Fantomen.
Ok, that all sounds very logical ... but that makes every tutorial, walkthrough and FAQ for the various factions I've read on WIKI and watched on YouTube redundant and a complete waste of time :)
Kind of annoying.

Also, Earth seems kind of nerfed now, as well as Construction.
That means I'm even more of a noob than I thought I was and everything I thought I knew will need to be rethought with CBM 1.94 in mind, as CBM appears to be pretty standard for multiplayer.

And every time there is a CBM update, all strategies will need to be rethought.
New CBM versions must be keeping a lot of people busy reassessing their strategies.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

It's unlikely that you will see any more changes on that game warping scale, most strategies deviced with the current CBM should remain viable.

Also, most of the discussion and work on CBM and most other mods is done in the dom3mods forum: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

Earth is not necessarily weaker because of the hammer removal. It's a matter of opinion, but consider that you HAD to make hammers before to compete. That used up a lot of your earth gems, now you can spend them on other nice things like crystal shields, earth boots, summons and battlemagic...

A lot of items were also made cheaper to balance the hammer removal, so construction is still a good path.

But yes, keeping up with CBM changes can be frustrating. Hopefully we are about to reach the point where only small adjustments will be needed.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Some of the balance changes seem fairly gratuitous without knowing their history and I would le to see them explained, like why Dai Tengu is so much cheaper than other summons (it's a really good spell), why Monkies have such cheap summons (Rudra!), or why the glamour nations got,so large compensation for changes (blood on Vans, forge bonuses on Bean Sidhe and Alfs) when no others got something similar.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

The rationale behind the high degree of compensation to the glamour nations was that hammer removal hit them the hardest because they rely so heavily on thugs. It's possible that the were overcompensated and needs rebalancing, as was done with Ulm and Agartha for example. I would like to see more than theorycrafting to justify that though, as in actual game data proving they got too powerful.

The monkey summons cost pearls, the most valuable gem and a critical resource for those nations. So they aren't actually cheap considering the opportunity costs involved. You never have enough pearls as monkeys. I'm not sure when and why the reduction was made, but I suspect it was because the removal of clams hit monkey nations the hardest, and they needed compensation for that.

I haven't tried the Dai Tengu, I've fought them and never seen them dominate the game in any way.

When discussing national summons or other national traits, I think it's important to see them as a part of the whole nation, not as individual spells or units. The rudra is "cheap", but your troops suck, this gives you a weak early game and a strong lategame that is part of the theme for those nations. The important question is whether the nation as a whole is interesting and balanced enough. And you're going to argue for changes, those arguments should be based on real MP testing.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Was there anyhing like this at the different times when the changes I mentioned were made? The explanations you make seem like post-factum explanations at best. You aren't a primary source for the changes.

And we aren't touching the really gratuitous stuff now, like Machaka's cursing rock shards or point-blank fear spell.

I have some understanding for the forge bonuses the glamour nations got as the idea always apparently was having a few strong thoughts. The blood change looks like an attempt at making the nations relatively better at blood in comparison to others (and if that wasn't the intention then it is the effect) which never was their theme to begin with, the change looks very gratuitous.

The changes to the glamour nations seem very schizophrenic as an earlier version of cbm also lowered the cost of all their troops to make the nations less about their commanders.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

Yeah, I absolutely agree that too much extreme buffs have been handed out without enough data to prove they were needed.

I'm not arguing all the changes were good changes, just trying to explain what the thoughts behind them were. I might not be a primary source, since only llamabeast is, but I've taken part in all those discussions on dom3mods that preceded those changes. So whether I agree or not I'm referencing the arguments as they were presented then. You can go there and backtrack the CBM threads to compare.

But now that they are done, I don't think they should be undone unless they are proven to actually unbalance the game. Simply because tinkering back and forth based on theorycrafting is a very bad way to do things. So what I would like to see is you, me and other people showing with references to real games that stuff is unbalanced. Not just saying that they are. If the Vans are overpowered now then we should see them dominate the MP scene over time, check their win ratio and impressions from good players a year from now. Then you can change the things that has turned out to be broken.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

IMO I think the Ermor spell Apostacy should have another look taken at it.

It seems to be working as often as charm, but less fatigue, less research and the most common spell path.

I think the MR resists easily in vanilla was actually better balanced.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released!
 

It is still resist easily in CBM due to a bug so you have nothing to fear here. At least according to my tests. I have not looked at the debug logs, but i have seen about 100+ castings of it.

It is possible that it might hit non-sacred units and not work if they are located in the same square though.