Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[llamabeast]

After a few months of work, the Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9 is hereby released!

I have attached a full changelog below, but here's the short version to give you an overview of what's been done.

- Huge review of items, with the intention of making every item have at least a niche use. Quite a few items recosted (generally downwards in view of the hammer change), others given boosts or even new effects in a few cases. Two-handed weapons are much better. Item descriptions have been updated - there should be no non-obvious changes.
- A PDF Forging Reference is included with the mod - this was a bit of a monster to create, but hopefully will prove useful. This may be worth printing out - I have tried to choose colours so that it will be comprehensible even in black and white. The reference is based on a previous document by Cleveland - thanks Cleveland!
- Boosts to a number of weak nations. EA & MA Agartha, MA Ulm, MA Man, EA Vanheim and EA Helheim in particular benefitted. Other nations to receive some changes include Marverni, Tir na n'Og and Eriu. Great effort has been put in to make the changes interesting and thematic. For example with MA Agartha the challenge was to increase the power of the nation while maintaining an overall theme of sorrow and loss. Hopefully this has been successful. These nations should have gained not only raw power but also diversity of choices.
- Full incorporation of Burnsaber's Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod. Hopefully interactions between land and water nations should be much more interesting. The water nations also receive some new content. Playing Oceania or MA Atlantis should no longer feel so frustrating.
- "Unfun" spells, e.g. Burden of Time and Arcane Nexus, made harder to cast or more expensive
- Small scales tweaks - Production a little better, Order a little less good
- A large number of miscellaneous changes - see the full changelog for details. For example Storm Demons can no longer throw lightning underwater, Tartarians can be Gift of Reasoned again (via a new spell, Restore Soul), Tarrasques and Treelords are better, and some of the most powerful EDM summons got slightly more expensive.
- A lot of bug hunting and miscellaneous fixes.
- Thanks to quantum_mechani for comments and of course having done the huge majority of this mod, Sombre and kianduatha for contributing some code, Larz for his dom3editor which helped with bug hunting, and above all lots of you for the huge number of helpful comments I went through in preparing this update.

I really hope people enjoy this, it's been a lot of fun to create.

Comments are as always extremely welcome.

[Curious Yellow]

Thanks a lot llamabeast!

One small thing I noticed: Curse of Blood still appears to be 66 slaves even though changelog says it should now be 99.

[Scaramuccia]

Army of statues agartha alt4 spell has no description.

[llamabeast]

Inevitably, a quick bugfixing release, motivated mainly by the Ulmish Tower Shield bug.

v1.91 fixes the following bugs:
- Ulmish Tower Shields were obscenely good (I had been using them for tests of spells which were stopped by shields)
- Army of Statues had no description
- Erroneous spells "Paralyze Statues" and "Heal Statues" were visible
- Curse of Blood still costs 66 slaves, was meant to be changed to 99
- Medallion of Vengeance used the bearer's strength to determine damage
- EA Agarthan netters had wrong stats

In addition a couple of design changes:
- Polypal Spawn no longer sacred. An earlier CBM had made them sacred but that no longer seems good with them being amphibious.
- Fay Boars have reduced rather than zero upkeep.
- Locus of the Seal has misc slots only.

[Dahis39]

How about a movable dome statue? Like a Juggernaut.

Im getting tired of four flames from the sky in one turn which just destroy any human army outside of their dome.

[PriestyMan]

Originally Posted by Dahis39

How about a movable dome statue? Like a Juggernaut.

Im getting tired of four flames from the sky in one turn which just destroy any human army outside of their dome.

Well you would hope that spending 140F gems would do some damage.......

[Dahis39]

Originally Posted by PriestyMan

Well you would hope that spending 140F gems would do some damage.......

I don't think three SCs can do the same effect. A movable dome really open up and enrich the late game gameplay. I'm really tired of SCs vs SCs and those giant troops and mages, which are the only army type u can bring out of your domes safely late game. QQ

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Dahis39

I don't think three SCs can do the same effect. A movable dome really open up and enrich the late game gameplay. I'm really tired of SCs vs SCs and those giant troops and mages, which are the only army type u can bring out of your domes safely late game. QQ

I really don't think mobile domes would open up anything. Quite the contrary in fact. Let's assume we have mobile domes now. Well, any conceivable overland ritual you can cast is now effectively dead and useless. No need to spend gems on these. What else can we spend them on? Summons and SCs. People would still build lots of SCs, maybe even more now that a good deal more spells become more or less useless in the lategame and there's nothing else to spend gems on. Perhaps SCs would see more use in armies sitting under domes but... consider SC raiders hiding under mobile domes now. They're protected from rituals, so if you want to kill one you have to take a gamble and pray that your spells pierce the dome and then get lucky with whatever spell you were casting to kill it. Coincidentally this would make intercepting SCs even harder, as now you can't rely on teleporting anti-thugs to do the job.

Thus, in my opinion even if it were possible to make mobile domes (which, as previously stated, it is not), I can't see how it would do anything other than make matters worse.

Also if you're worried about flames from the sky, try using an army made of fire-immune troops. No you can't bring out a human army without it being potentially exposed to ruin, but if your opponent is spending huge amounts of gems killing your regular armies in that fashion, he's not doing something else with those gems, and is helping you win the gem war. But really in the late game gold is for buying mages, not armies.

[Bat/man]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Thus, in my opinion even if it were possible to make mobile domes (which, as previously stated, it is not), I can't see how it ...

I personally think allowing mages to cast spells while *not* at a lab would be cool and fun. They'd still have to carry their gems with them...

I suspect that would be a developer question.

What might be possible is to create a spell that either puts a site in a province, or puts a lab in a province.

[Dahis39]

For ma Oceania, there are two mermages, one of them cost only 30 golds.