Balance Mod: Newest Nation - TC

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Actually, illuminated, I think that is a compelling answer for why fever fetishes ought to be nerfed as well.

I know. If it's done there shouldn't be holes.
Maybe you should nerf blood magic as well then, don't know.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

2) the micromanagement they force upon one to compete is obscene.

That's not true, at least not for me.
Making 5 clams, creating 5 scouts, moving them and handing them out + clicking on pool gems is done in two minutes.
Well, pooling forces you to redistribute the gems against assassins, but I'm often pooling anyway to have max gems for casting. There's only little point in protecting a mage that isn't valuable and unfortunately this can change depending on where your items are.
It's the 400 mages and 100 normal items, that you are forced to build to compete, that take hours to manage. Seriously, recruiting mages for combat and forging only would cut down useless micro by 90% imo.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

1) they make the endgame even stupider than it would be otherwise.

That's a good point. There should be at least some limitations in using them.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Great idea Chris. I agree with taking them out and giving compensation. Would be great if there was a replacement earth booster though. I don't think giving alternate ways to create gems is the way to go, need to strengthen the nation through what they should be good at rather than loading them with astral gems.

Note that EA Abysia is on the list for heavily affected, I find bloodstones are critical for the earth boost on the anointed and are about the only way to leverage their meagre blood capability.

The earth generation is currently the only way to have a hope at casting their lvl 8 scorpion men summons in any kind of decent numbers, and is particularly used for gate cleavers to cover how wwoeful they are at sieging and how difficult it is to combine indies with abysians.

Suggested compensations would be:
1. Earth booster with same path requirements but lower cost (5 earth 10 blood) to account for no gem generation
2. Halve Scorpion Men cost from 12 to 6

That should be enough, the loss of gem generation would be covered by the cheaper cost to get the anointeds the earth boost. It would work for the other abysia eras too

Hrm. I'll add abysia to the list. I don't think abysia is hosed by the lack of bloodstones. I think abysia is hosed, and bloodstones were their best way out.

Considering that abysias are creatures of molten lava, I think having some familiarity with earth is reasonable.

Can someone run a test for me? If you give a unit a gemprod value of -1 does it work?

I'd like to give abysia an alchemist unit that has the additional ability of consuming fire gems and creating earth gems.

I do think that the scorpion men are too high in level, and will look at the cost.

[chrispedersen]

Ok, so I have to clean up the descriptions, balance check, and add strabo's new sprites (thanks strabo)!

But I am pretty pleased with the result. Try it out!
I view agartha (especially ma argatha) as pretty weak.

Load in this order:
CBM 1.5
Balance No Gen
BNoGenComp
Balance Argatha

No gen Comp adds some capability to replace the possibility of bloodstones.

Balance argartha strengthes agartha slightly, and thematically.
To whit: Since you are facile with constructs and do not eat, the death scale affects you less. Since you live underground, you are never subjected to extremes of cold - so your preference is heat +1. (Helps with points, and with cold blooded encumbrance)

Your Water oracles are 25 cold res (again helping with cold fatigue) and your fire oracles are 25 fire res .. helping with heat fatigue.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Can someone run a test for me? If you give a unit a gemprod value of -1 does it work?

Doesn't.

[Kuritza]

Actually... Agartha should be immune to heat scale. I mean, at all. In the underground caves, its always about +10 Celsium or so, even when its -30 on the surface. Logically, same applies to extreme heat; temperature just doesnt change in the underground tunnels.

[Sombre]

That would make sense if all provinces with agarthans in were caves and we were talking about a world without powerful fields generated by godlike beings which flow through provinces changing their very nature.

But yeah, perhaps caves should always have netural heat scale. Still wouldn't make much difference to agartha. And I'd prefer to darkness bug was fixed first.

[chrispedersen]

Well you could have a site in caves that spawned 1 hp units every turn.. that autocast darkness in combat....

[chrispedersen]

Anyway...

The compensation package is finished. Agartha, Abysia, and oceania have a module BNoGenComp, so that you can give compensation for these nations if you run with no generators.

These nations only got compensation, as it was thought they were especially poorly affected. I am still awaiting sprites... but I'd like feedback in the interrim.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Well you could have a site in caves that spawned 1 hp units every turn.. that autocast darkness in combat....

This isn't moddable (afaik) and would be a fairly horrible solution anyway.

[chrispedersen]

Yomi update done. And it looks nice, thanks to Strabo!