Conceptual Balance Mod 5.4

[Oversway]

Isn't frozen heart castable underwater? I think you overlooked that one. Numbness, and sailors death, too. I'm not sure why you restricted it to evocation only...

He already was water-earth. I'm not really sure why people wanted to change it, I guess to be more interesting.

I'd say that earth or air make for a better SC than death or nature, although nature wouldn't be that awful.

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I see drakes used more as well. I think the buffs are great for them. Not sure about the gem cost. Since they are such a low level summon, usually people get better options and so don't summon many of them.

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Anyways I'll be happy with whatever is done. I think this mod is a great improvement over the base game.

[Endoperez]

Oversway said:
Isn't frozen heart castable underwater? I think you overlooked that one. Numbness, and sailors death, too. I'm not sure why you restricted it to evocation only...

To tell the truth, I was being lazy.

He already was water-earth. I'm not really sure why people wanted to change it, I guess to be more interesting.

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I see drakes used more as well. I think the buffs are great for them. Not sure about the gem cost. Since they are such a low level summon, usually people get better options and so don't summon many of them.

--

Anyways I'll be happy with whatever is done. I think this mod is a great improvement over the base game.

I haven't yet used this mod much, but it does add a new level of experimentation to the whole game. That alone is worth it, and with the addition of more gold/gem-efficient choices... Great fun!

[PDF]

Turin said:
I think that the problem with the vine ogre isn´t the vine ogre himself, but rather the ivy kings. I doubt anyone complains about precious n3 mages forging an ivy crown and then using their time getting 2 ogres per turn. Especially when you compare them to lamias.

The ivy king on the other hand doubles that efficiency and is already a bargain summon. A very high hp, no encumbrance n3 mage for only 20 gems is really sweet.

Regarding the drakes, I find all of them to costly with the exception of the cave drake, which makes an excellent tank. The others should drop to 6 gems in price.

As for Scs/thugs, the nerf to lifedrain weapons makes them a bit less dominant, Ice and arch devils are fine now imho, but banelords are still to cheap. I would raise the price to 20 gems.

About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.
And Ivy Kings should *not* be able to "reproduce" so easily, so have N2 instead of 3 and cost a little more.
Ogres should be back to their base stats and costs 2 or 3 gems.
I don't see any Drakes in my games, and IMHO they should cost 4 to 6, no more. Who'll care to have such high-cost, one-per-summoning, sort of critters except in the very early game - where gems are quite scarce ?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.
Also Devils are still too strong : "real" devils should have some less HP (32, like a Jotun) and morale 15 for all kind of devils, 18 still makes them rather unbreakable.

Maybe I'm going to make my own mod ...

[quantum_mechani]

PDF said:

About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.
And Ivy Kings should *not* be able to "reproduce" so easily, so have N2 instead of 3 and cost a little more.
Ogres should be back to their base stats and costs 2 or 3 gems.
I don't see any Drakes in my games, and IMHO they should cost 4 to 6, no more. Who'll care to have such high-cost, one-per-summoning, sort of critters except in the very early game - where gems are quite scarce ?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.
Also Devils are still too strong : "real" devils should have some less HP (32, like a Jotun) and morale 15 for all kind of devils, 18 still makes them rather unbreakable.

Maybe I'm going to make my own mod ...

Hmm... I'm not sure I understand, I thought you were criticizing the mod for being _too_ extreme?

I don't know why you don't see drakes in your games, probably play to big of maps? When you are in conflict around turn 20 or before they are highly useful.

Your suggested nerf to the ivy king would nerf him to oblivion, and the ogres would be rarely if ever used.

[PDF]

QM,
I criticized the mod for having nerfed things that did'nt require it/were not unbalancing. OTOH I've noticed that some things were still too strong, mostly Blood Summons (Elem Rulers went up to Conj7/path7, ID only to Blood6/B3W3)

As for my nerfs, why would having IK only nature-2 and not capable of summoning easily their own kind so bad as to make them useless ? (and BTW, another, less nerfing, way to make it would be to make the summon Nat5 )
And even at 3 gems/spell, VO summoned by batches of 3-4 would still make very cheap and good chaff. What can you have in such great number for such a low price ?
About drakes, maybe they're useful on turns 15-20, but as I wrote, how many will you make with the poor gem income you get at that stage ? And noone will make them anymore once they have a decent research/gem income ...

[quantum_mechani]

PDF said:
QM,
I criticized the mod for having nerfed things that did'nt require it/were not unbalancing. OTOH I've noticed that some things were still too strong, mostly Blood Summons (Elem Rulers went up to Conj7/path7, ID only to Blood6/B3W3)

As for my nerfs, why would having IK only nature-2 and not capable of summoning easily their own kind so bad as to make them useless ? (and BTW, another, less nerfing, way to make it would be to make the summon Nat5 )
And even at 3 gems/spell, VO summoned by batches of 3-4 would still make very cheap and good chaff. What can you have in such great number for such a low price ?
About drakes, maybe they're useful on turns 15-20, but as I wrote, how many will you make with the poor gem income you get at that stage ? And noone will make them anymore once they have a decent research/gem income ...

As the matter of fact, elemental royalty is back to 5, while IDs remain nerfed. And yes, making ivy kings more expensive and n2 would make them pretty much useless. Making them take an n5 mage would by ok, but if you see it as an abuse it would just restrict/delay the abuse for a few nations. I would not pay 1 gem for a vine ogre most of the time, when you figure in the difficulty of getting an n3 mage and an ivy crown. Though, I suppose I could make the ogre spell 2 gems and see how that works out.

Gem income may be relatively low early in the game, but by turn ten your start site has usually produced 50 gems that remain unspent. If you are in an early war it very much pays to pour those into drakes and similar summons. And yes, they will be rarely used once you research better spells, but what would be the point of research if you did not get better things? I believe the low research niche was all thy were intended to fill in the first place.

[Edi]

I actually like the cave drakes least of all of them. High prot and lots of HP, yes, but low defense and not such a spectacular damage. The frost and fire drakes, on the other hand, ain't nothing like them early on to blast away the dirt and chaff. Just a few with a screen of infantry out front will be murder on indies or even early armies of other players. Though gem cost 6 or 7 would make them slightly more attractive than they are even now.

The elem royals could perhaps be at #6 if they need adjustment?

Edi

[archaeolept]

i'd up the ivy kings to 25 maybe, but that's all

[Graeme Dice]

PDF said:
About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.

Why do so many people think that vine ogres are so dangerous when they are only slightly more useful than the infinite skeletons from raise skeleton?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.

A SC without effective lifedraining can be taken out quite easily by your elite national troops. The devil commanders can never be made 0 encumbrance, so they will always tire out eventually.

[quantum_mechani]

Graeme Dice said:

A SC without effective lifedraining can be taken out quite easily by your elite national troops. The devil commanders can never be made 0 encumbrance, so they will always tire out eventually.

Not quite, properly equipped (including regeneration and reinvigorating), few national troops alone would be capable of defeating them.