Game balance suggestions.

[Windreaper]

Ok, since everyone has probably spent few sleepless nights with the full Version already they've probably noticed some game balance problems that need to be, if not fixed, at least noticed. So, please post them here. Shrug, I suppose I got a few, too.

1. Give more medium infantry strategic move of 2. Okay Pythium legionnaires and Arco hyapists already got this but for example pan satyrs lack the ability (which is crippling for the pan as a nation as they _need_ to be able to move fast) and wear lighter armor and certainly have more speed and stamina than that aforementioned. Heavy infantry is still a no-brainer but I'd easily consider giving up some prot for that strategic move so please give us the choice.

2. This has been discussed earlier but I'll still bring it up: Tune Order/Luck balance. Reduce the income to 2-3%(and possibly make it kill off some unrest in case someone wants to overtax) and eliminate the modifier to random event frequency or something like that. Just anything to make options other than order/misfortune viable.

3. Paralyze and Mind BLast seem to be a bit broken. They're slightly too hard to resist and the paralyze time is far too long. I have yet to see anyone snap out of paralysis (prior to dying, that is).

4. Elemental magic seems to have gotten the shaft in Dom2. Water still got little going for it. Removing the fire requirement for acid spells and adding some decent amphibious summons and items would go a long way in actually making it useful. I recall that the devs were hesitant to add new spells/units but I hope that doesn't include the requirements.

[General Tacticus]

My two cents :

1) Mictlan as well might deserve to have their strats move looked at...

2) I think the Turmoil/Luck combo is also playable for nation that are not too dependant on gold, and quite fun. But those scales seem tilted in that it is better to go to a 3/-3 or -3/3 combo (for 0 points) than anything else (be it 0/0 or 3/3). In particular, the 3/3 order/luck combo is very expensive, and barely better than a 3/-3 order/misfortune. Perhaps the Gold bonus on the order scale need to be tuned, but I think the real problem is the events reduction power of that scale. 3 order is just too powerful at stopping random events, totally negating the effect of luck -3

3) I don't know, I have never tried these

4) No opinion on the subject

[PrinzMegaherz]

I know I already mentioned this before, but please... some kind of special regeneration for pretenders that allow them to cure their battle afflictions (maybe an special order "heal wounds" that gives a 10% Chance to lose a battle affliction).

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

2) I think the Turmoil/Luck combo is also playable for nation that are not too dependant on gold, and quite fun. But those scales seem tilted in that it is better to go to a 3/-3 or -3/3 combo (for 0 points) than anything else (be it 0/0 or 3/3). In particular, the 3/3 order/luck combo is very expensive, and barely better than a 3/-3 order/misfortune. Perhaps the Gold bonus on the order scale need to be tuned, but I think the real problem is the events reduction power of that scale. 3 order is just too powerful at stopping random events, totally negating the effect of luck -3

For a nation that produces 100 gold...

+3 Order / -3 Luck = 121 gold
-3 Order / +3 Luck = 79 gold

That is crippling to a turmoil/luck nation.

I would suggest reducing the gold effect of Order to +/- 4% and adding a +/- 2% to the Luck scale.

Maybe they should make Pangaea immune to turmoil tax reduction the way Ulm smiths are immune to drain.

[ January 09, 2004, 13:22: Message edited by: Catquiet ]

[Wauthan]

Well it might make sense that luck dominion adds to gold income. Even the taxcollector gets lucky I guess, but doesn't that make your citizens unlucky? But the present big "bonus" of a Turmoil/Luck combination is the chance of getting a very good streak of random events. I often use this combo and while it's a real gamble I often get a lot of good effects. Then earthquake/hurricane/vinemen invasion strikes my major production/gold province.

Perhaps it would be better to make the random events slightly less random so that only a very unlucky dominion often sees the major disasters and only a strong luck dominion gets the best advantages more than once or twice?

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Catquiet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

2) I think the Turmoil/Luck combo is also playable for nation that are not too dependant on gold, and quite fun. But those scales seem tilted in that it is better to go to a 3/-3 or -3/3 combo (for 0 points) than anything else (be it 0/0 or 3/3). In particular, the 3/3 order/luck combo is very expensive, and barely better than a 3/-3 order/misfortune. Perhaps the Gold bonus on the order scale need to be tuned, but I think the real problem is the events reduction power of that scale. 3 order is just too powerful at stopping random events, totally negating the effect of luck -3

For a nation that produces 100 gold...

+3 Order / -3 Luck = 121 gold
-3 Order / +3 Luck = 79 gold

That is crippling to a turmoil/luck nation.

I would suggest reducing the gold effect of Order to +/- 4% and adding a +/- 2% to the Luck scale.

Maybe they should make Pangaea immune to turmoil tax reduction the way Ulm smiths are immune to drain.

---

Some nations can get by with the 79 gold. -3 order / +3 luck gives some nice gold events (though not enough to compensate), and a very steady flow of magical gems (albeit of unpredictable type), which can compensate for less gold. What is more, the more provinces you have, the more random events you get (I think), so it does grows up with your empire.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Well it might make sense that luck dominion adds to gold income. Even the taxcollector gets lucky I guess, but doesn't that make your citizens unlucky? But the present big "bonus" of a Turmoil/Luck combination is the chance of getting a very good streak of random events. I often use this combo and while it's a real gamble I often get a lot of good effects. Then earthquake/hurricane/vinemen invasion strikes my major production/gold province.

Perhaps it would be better to make the random events slightly less random so that only a very unlucky dominion often sees the major disasters and only a strong luck dominion gets the best advantages more than once or twice?

This is already the case. Your luck scale determines which subset of events you can experience...

[Windreaper]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Maybe they should make Pangaea immune to turmoil tax reduction the way Ulm smiths are immune to drain.

That's the best suggestion for improving Pangaea, I've ever heard. It's weird how it never crossed my mind. In addition to adding strat move 2 for satyr hoplites would actually make the nation somewhere near competitive (it will prove to be hard to win with pan in dom2 as blood magic got nerfed).

[ January 09, 2004, 14:30: Message edited by: Windreaper ]

[SurvivalistMerc]

Has anyone listed those events that are only available in certain luck scales?

I seem to recall getting hit by earthquakes and 1/4 population floods even when I took luck. These seem to me to be the worst events. I realize there are some major luck events that you can only have with extreme luck scale, but really I think reducing the number of very severe bad events with even luck-1 but especially at luck-2 or higher would go a long way to make luck more viable.

The barbarian pillage some of us think shouldn't have a pillage effect if you kill the barbarian invaders.

Knights are really just a nuisance unless they happen early in the game to a critical province.

In some ways, taking bad luck is like taking death dominion. You lose important parts of your empire over time, never to be regained, at a variable rate. Well...you will anyway with common random events...I guess bad luck just accelerates the process.

[Karacan]

In my opinion (and mine only ), the luck scale is simply sub-par to the order scale.

Even with luck+3, you only have a 80% chance of a random event being a good one... that means that every fifth event is a bad one. Since bad events are usually much worse than average good events, I usually go for order scale to reduce the amount of events at all happening to me - I am more scaerd of floods killing of my population than looking forward to getting a random magic item and a couple of gold for free, as well in early as in late game.