There's a couple of things I like about what Zen's proposed in this and the other thread. One is that rather than just complain, he's actaully got off his backside, thought through concrete proposals, and put them into a mod. The other is the focus on making un-regarded Pretenders and magic items more interesting.

But I think he's also given us an instructive example of why this process almost certainly cannot work. A few months ago everybody loved the VQ and it was nerfed as a result. Now a lot of people seem to have moved on to the Ghost King instead, and so Zen's proposal includes a nerf for that. If that proposal got into the next patch, I reckon that the majority of those players would agree on a new "best Pretender", and in a couple of months we'd be seeing nerf proposals for that. I'd like to make the following points.

1. There will always be a best tool for a particular job. The only way that can not be true is if all the tools are the same! Let's not kill the diversity that gives Dominions its unique flavour.

2. "I think that balancing these types of games when there is an active community is a matter of nerfing what people do a lot and then buffing what they do not use. And doing it in small steps." - Huzurdaddi. Sounds good in theory, except few of the actual proposals we've seen have been anything like small steps (Zen's Pretender changes excepted). Remove life drain! Double the gem cost and casting level of Clams! Such a process, if it had any chance of working, would require repeated, controlled testing, with detailed quantitative analysis of results. Any volunteers?

3. There's a distinct lack of argument based on evidence in these discussions. Does anybody even have numbers for how many games have been played and which nations have won them? How can we sensibly discuss play balance without that?

4. Generally "problems" or "broken tactics" are discussed as though they happen in isolation from the rest of the game, or in the face of purely passive opponents. Yes it's true that life-draining weapons are widely used; but anyone who unthinkingly uses them all the time is going to see their SCs killed by C'tis, Ermor, Pangaea CW or anyone else who has access to death magic (to name only one counter option).

5. Players follow fashions. I suggest that often a particular Pretender/Nation/Strategy is popular simply because everyone is talking about it, not because it's the only good one out there. They will also gravitate to what is cool. A Vampire Queen is cool; a human arch-mage on a horse is bleh. So just because it's popular, doesn't make it over-powered.

Now when we're talking about mods, all of that doesn't matter. Zen can freely disagree with me, write his mods, and find some like-minding players to play his Version of Dom2. Everybody's happy (ha! likely story...)

But lets leave the vanilla game alone. There are enough bugs and needed UI improvement for the devs to work on, should they be feeling generous enough to do so, without constant demands for nerfs to this and that "broken" feature. And should there be really be some sort of balance problem, let's see someone actually collect some evidence and present it to the community and the devs before they start the traditional wailing.

Mark