Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Maerlande]

I see quite a bit of Chris's analysis that points to the templar discussion. We've been hashing out ideas on the ghouls in IRC today.

I guess to put it simply, I'd like the templars to cost less gold to fit with the competition for sacred cavalry. I strongly agree that the low MR is thematic and fits. If the templars cost less gold it would provide another strategic option, neither the best nor worst, just another one.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

The fact that because they *can* build guardians, sacred nations don't choose ulm as a target.

Ghoul guardians are neither especially fast nor especially strong defenders. So they are likely to get attacked before attacking, and likely to die when attacked. Defense 6 is pitifully easy to hit, and Protection 19 isn't spectacular without decent defense to keep the number of hits low. Especially since many sacreds used for rushing are going to be offensively powerful, like F9W9 jags or Gibborim with ~20 strength, and so on. The best defense against many of these sacreds is the Templars because they combine good defense with good protection in addition to a good offense.

The problem, of course, is having them get eaten by the opposing prophet (or other H3 priests if they have them) while they are stymying the sacreds. The ghoul guardians might survive smite-spam, but they just keel over and die when anything with plausible offense gets near them.

I disagree completely with squirrel that bless nations tend to field large armies of smiters. In fact, very few nations field large numbers of H3 priests. Abysia comes to mind.

It only takes one smiter to ruin an reasonable force of Templar, since they kill about 3 templar for every 4 smites, and a reasonable force is ~10.

Secondly; Ulm has a 25% production bonus. This means that it is easier to have dump stats, and translates into a bonus on pretender design.

...

Neutral production scales with *turmoil 3* and *cold 3* found me definitively resource limited. Ulm's troops individually take a lot of resources and not much gold with the exception of Templars, who take a lot of both.

Ulm has a national spell that boosts MR. I would rather increase the AoE of that spell than make any fundamental changes to ulm units.

Thaum 4 is kind of late to be fending off a rush, especially as Ulm is not going to be blazing fast in the research department. And only gets E2 on 25% of black priests.

[chrispedersen]

Neutral production scales with *turmoil 3* and *cold 3* found me definitively resource limited. Ulm's troops individually take a lot of resources and not much gold with the exception of Templars, who take a lot of both.

Sorry. I can't imagine taking turmoil-3 with ulm. You have hearty, expensive units. Get the scales to buy them.

More or less you have units with good protection, good precision or strength, good hit points. Your weakness is mobility and magic resistance.

So unit for unit your units compare well in straight out combat against other nations.

Thaum 4 is kind of late to be fending off a rush, especially as Ulm is not going to be blazing fast in the research department. And only gets E2 on 25% of black priests.

Since all of my researchers are black priests.. E2 is never a problem. I like the lower upkeep costs. Reserve the others for blood hunting.

I also like to take an awake or dormant pretender at the worst to take care of the holes in magic paths, act as a deterrent to rushes, and to start using my forge bonus as fast as possible.


Finally, you decried the ghouls defense adn mobility. Once you're going to get hit (def 6) the point is don't try to compensate for it.

Either boost their protection up (legions of steel) or get them berserking - find a shaman.

19 protection isn't great?? huh? Barkskin em, or whatever and most usual troops will take 2-3 hits to kill em. Whereas the converse is not true.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Sorry. I can't imagine taking turmoil-3 with ulm. You have hearty, expensive units. Get the scales to buy them.

I think you missed his point. Even with turmoil 3 cold 3 limiting his gold income, he was still limited by resources in producing black templars, not their gold cost.

[chrispedersen]

I got his point. I just don't agree with it.

You *shouldn't* be building black templars significantly, let alone exclusively.

For example, EA-Ermor has some of the cheapest, most cost effective cav in the game. I *still* don't buy them. Early game you want cost effective expansion. Ermors roti's, and lixard auxiliaries and other troops are much more cost effective. Likewise for Ulm, except in a handful of niches - black templars aren't it.

If you try to expand using a round peg to drive a square hole - yes, you will be limited. Villains, rangers, and various footmen are much more cost effective.

Generally ulm units cost a few gp more than other nations. So I stand by my comments that you need $$ for units, and cannot envision a setup where turmoil-3 works.

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I would say thats *a* problem with it, but its main problem is its horribly overcosted, which makes it impossible to really benefit from any of its advantages.

Vanheim has cold scale, and can perfectly live with some sloth, so they have free points to buy Allfather. But they cant buy him enough extra magic paths to really diversify with him.
So yeah, you can say its his high cost that is a real problem.
Make him much cheaper, and he will be terribly overpowered though. With Awe, Allfather can solo indies on turn 3 (with an earthen kite shield). Having a stealthy, awake SC-God which also diversifies you into death and, I dont know, astral may be a bit too much.

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Generally ulm units cost a few gp more than other nations. So I stand by my comments that you need $$ for units, and cannot envision a setup where turmoil-3 works.

In the game where I just beat you, Zebra, I had turmoil 3. And if I could start over I would probably have taken some sloth too and swapped the fountain for a WQ.

I expanded using my starting army + a couple templars(!) for the weak indies and second tier mages casting call horror+retreat with indy scouts following to capture for the moderate to hard ones. Lots of micro but worked like a charm.

Extra bonus is that after initial expansion you already have those mages sprinkled out to blood hunt.

[Squirrelloid]

It wasn't i was limited on templars by resources, i was limited on *any* troops by resources. With adjacent mountains.

Ulm's troops take so many resources its hard to imagine them being *gold* limited no matter what you do to your scales (except maybe take sloth 3, which sounds like a terrible idea).

Also, since 4 Black Templars + a Black Priest make a great expansion party that doesn't take losses, and you can combine these into larger parties when you need to, Black Templars would seem to be ideal for 'efficient expansion' - especially since your infantry do take losses and are less effective against things like HC (which are common in LA).

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

Vanheim has cold scale, and can perfectly live with some sloth, so they have free points to buy Allfather. But they cant buy him enough extra magic paths to really diversify with him.
So yeah, you can say its his high cost that is a real problem.
Make him much cheaper, and he will be terribly overpowered though. With Awe, Allfather can solo indies on turn 3 (with an earthen kite shield). Having a stealthy, awake SC-God which also diversifies you into death and, I dont know, astral may be a bit too much.

So lets see, you're advocating 150 pt chassis + 30 pt new path + at least 72 pts boosting the new path (S4 or you'll just get mage dueled to death, and even that is somewhat risky) + 21x7=147 points on dominion, or 399 points, and that's still a pretty minimal allfather. You're also advocating awake, so we're already 2 scales in the hole from balanced (ok, so that covers C2 of the C3 you're going to take). Now, we desperately need Mg1 and O3, and you've advocated Sl3, so our points balance. We have 31 points left which is A3 or D3 or A2D2. And you know what, that's a really crappy pretender for the points we just spent. We can pile on some misfortune (2), which gives us enough to get up to D5 for fear (from D3) plus give us A3. Of course, now we'll be fending off indie barbarians all game long, with our non-existent armies since Van's troops require non-trivial amounts of resources, so we can't mass troops very fast with Sl3. And our sacreds have no bless worth caring about. And our sacred mages/thugs have no bless worth caring about. And its not even a very good allfather.

I mean, I confess, you can just play the Allfather. You have to basically give up on all your national units, but you'll get an allfather worth caring about. Of course, you'll lose since the only thing you have going for you is the Allfather, but you can do it.

The ability to solo indies on turn 3 is actually rather pathetic for a titan chassis. Most Titans can do it on turn 2, at least if they're sufficiently careful about who they attack. (I imagine he can too. But he's not as good at it as say, the Wyrm at 1/3 his cost).

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Because, you know, taking a cheap SC pretender like the 25pt Asynja, and paying 50points each for new paths would also get you Astral and Death and *still* be cheaper than the Allfather... And did I mention she has better stats and equipment like a *chainmail of displacement* to start with, so she can be SCing from turn 2? And a boot slot to slap some Boots of Flying in?

And because, you know, Vanheim does get D1 randoms I'm reasonably sure. Or can just gain access to death via blood summons. So access to death is not exciting. So we can just save another 50 points and skip death on the pretender.

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

So lets see, you're advocating 150 pt chassis + 30 pt new path + at least 72 pts boosting the new path (S4 or you'll just get mage dueled to death, and even that is somewhat risky) + 21x7=147 points on dominion, or 399 points, and that's still a pretty minimal allfather. You're also advocating awake, so we're already 2 scales in the hole from balanced (ok, so that covers C2 of the C3 you're going to take). Now, we desperately need Mg1 and O3, and you've advocated Sl3, so our points balance. We have 31 points left which is A3 or D3 or A2D2. And you know what, that's a really crappy pretender for the points we just spent. We can pile on some misfortune (2), which gives us enough to get up to D5 for fear (from D3) plus give us A3. Of course, now we'll be fending off indie barbarians all game long, with our non-existent armies since Van's troops require non-trivial amounts of resources, so we can't mass troops very fast with Sl3. And our sacreds have no bless worth caring about. And our sacred mages/thugs have no bless worth caring about. And its not even a very good allfather.

I mean, I confess, you can just play the Allfather. You have to basically give up on all your national units, but you'll get an allfather worth caring about. Of course, you'll lose since the only thing you have going for you is the Allfather, but you can do it.

The ability to solo indies on turn 3 is actually rather pathetic for a titan chassis. Most Titans can do it on turn 2, at least if they're sufficiently careful about who they attack. (I imagine he can too. But he's not as good at it as say, the Wyrm at 1/3 his cost).

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Because, you know, taking a cheap SC pretender like the 25pt Asynja, and paying 50points each for new paths would also get you Astral and Death and *still* be cheaper than the Allfather... And did I mention she has better stats and equipment like a *chainmail of displacement* to start with, so she can be SCing from turn 2? And a boot slot to slap some Boots of Flying in?

And because, you know, Vanheim does get D1 randoms I'm reasonably sure. Or can just gain access to death via blood summons. So access to death is not exciting. So we can just save another 50 points and skip death on the pretender.

Well actually, I have won as MA Vanheim with Allfather. It didnt make into HoF because its not updated anymore, but I did. And I am not exactly advocating him - it was quite a relaxed game with little competition, so I took him just for the sheer beauty of taking a real Norse God, not for powerplaying. And still, I liked him even if he is not the *best* thing you can take.

First off, I didnt take Astral. I just took A3D4, domain 10. When I mentioned Astral, I meant that if you make Allfather cheaper, it will be possible to take some other endgame path as well, and that may be too much.

My scales were Order 3, Misfortune 2, Sloth 1, Cold 3 and Magic 1. Pretty decent.
Vanheim doesnt require 'nontrivial' amount of resources by the way. Skinshifters are just 7 resources each, and they form the bulk of Vanheim's armies.

Vanheim has high air and earth, they have blood hunters - and with such Allfather you also have D4, which is enough to summon demiliches etc. The only thing I really missed was an earth bless for Vanjarl thugs. And, of course, Astral.

If you dont mind, I will discard your concern about Astral Allfather being vulnerable to magic duels. Allfather picks his fights - he is stealthy, and he can teleport.

D1 is tooooooo slow to get into death magic soon enough, by the way. Its enough, sure, but its really slow. Allfather can conquer an indie province (nearly any indie province, including heavy cavalry) and search it, rinse and repeat. Once you have some death income, your D1 dwarfs can start casting dark knowledge.
A boot slot is also something you wont miss. Because, you see, Allfather has his boots of flying built-in.

So all in all, Allfather is decent. Not great, but decent. Make him much cheaper, and he might get too strong. Maybe he should cost about ~100 points instead of 150 though.