Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[13lackGu4rd]

Dragons certainly need some sort of a rework to make them viable again... the whole 80/new path and only dom1 makes them a very crappy chassis even for a single bless. as for SCing, it can do that early game vs indies, but barbs still tear them apart most of the time, and with crappy equipment slots they're very crappy SCs later on. I think they deserve more than dom1, and either improve the built in weapons+armor, so the lack of equipment slots won't be as faulty, or make them better as a bless chassis or something, with maybe less than 80/new path so you can diversify a bit and when you're done indy expansion you change him to human form and work the lab...

[Frozen Lama]

I see dragons used very often in MP. they work well as a single bless chassis and sc. they are reliable expanders, assuming you take Dom9 of course. barbs are the indies that almost all sc gods besides wyrms stay away from, its not the dragon only.

[Trumanator]

Dragons don't even need dom9 anymore thanks to cbm upping their prot to 20. You can take on pretty much any indies that other early SCs can.

[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

I see dragons used very often in MP. they work well as a single bless chassis and sc. they are reliable expanders, assuming you take Dom9 of course. barbs are the indies that almost all sc gods besides wyrms stay away from, its not the dragon only.

haven't had the pleasure of seeing a Dragon pretender on MP yet, but than again my MP career is pretty short... however, yeah they can be a decent single bless chassis, but most of the times you'll have a better option. for example the blue dragon, why not take any of the various W1/W2 pretenders instead? for example the Mother of Rivers, Father of Winters, Son of the Sea, Dagon, Lady of Springs, etc. all of these are either better SCs later on due to better item slots or do useful things like generating water gems, taking troops under water, etc. yes the Dragon will win on the short run, but if you're going for a W9 bless than you rely on your sacreds for a quick expansion, hence no need for a turn 1 SC pretender in the first place...

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Dragons don't even need dom9 anymore thanks to cbm upping their prot to 20. You can take on pretty much any indies that other early SCs can.

yeah, they're great early game SCs but lose their utility really fast and become pretty useless with just 1 path of magic, or an expensive as hell 2nd path, and no good item slots...

[Trumanator]

You're forgetting that dragons have flying, which means that you can skip tougher indies, fly from higher dom to attack (meaning more HPs), and can provide really good expansion by adding both a bless and an SC.

[13lackGu4rd]

yes, really good expansion, which often translates to being first on the province graph which leads to getting gang banged... not to mention that once indy expansion is over your pretender becomes very useless... heck, if you want a flying pretender take a PoD, Moloch, or something... those will be useful later on, unlike the dragons...

[Trumanator]

Just saying, don't assume that because you personally haven't seen it that something never happens. FWIW I'm using a dragon in one of my games, and its been quite useful, and I probably would not have been able to replicate my performance w/out it.

[13lackGu4rd]

I never said it never happens, I said that even if it is used it's suboptimal at best... well I guess in a blitz game they're still actually useful, but outside of that niche there would usually be other pretenders that would be much better choices than any of the dragons... which is a shame cause the dragons are very cool even somewhat thematic, but they just seem to under perform...

[Snowcat]

I was tweaking, comparing and testing my previously proposed changes for CBM1.6 Jomon LATE ERA for many hours and consulted several people. Here are my final changes. Please give feedback about the fairness of these changes and if you would support them to be added into the next CBM.

Commanders:

Ninjas
goldcost 45 (instead of 40 as in CBM or 60 in vanilla)

Important Note: The changes that original CBM1.6 made to Kannushi and Ninja prices were not working, because the #id numbers in the original CBM file were incorrect.

Kannushi
+ 50% 1 death magic & +50% 1 elemental magic
(retains also 2 holy as previously)
(previously only 10% 1 elemental magic and 2 holy)
cost 120 gp (previously 80gp)

Monk of Fivefold Path
cost 90g (previously 100gp)

Troops:
Samurai Archer
goldcost 14gp (previously 12gp)
precision 11 (previously 10)
morale 11 (previously 10)
Wearing ashigaru armor (instead of samurai armor)
and using wakisashi (instead of katana)
total resource cost 17 (previously 23)
hp 9 as before

Samurai (Naginata)
str 11 (previously 10)
hp 10 (reviously 9)

Samurai (Katana)
str 11 (previously 10)
hp 10 (reviously 9)
rcost 0 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 17 (previously 18)

O-ban
str 11 (previously 10)
+ patrolbonus 2
+ castle defence bonus 2
rcost 0 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 21 (previously 22)
ap 13 instead of 12 (combat move now 9 instead of 8)

Go-hatamoto
goldcost 14gp (previously 13gp)
morale 14 (instead of 13)
ap 11 instead of 12 (combat move now 7 instead of 8)
rcost 2 (previosly 1) > total resource cost 22 (previously 21)

Aka-Oni
goldcost 15gp (previously 14gp)

RATIONALE:
Added 50% chance for 1 death magic gives Jomon access to many small national summons (which are more useful in the early game) and site searching. It is also thematic, since death and ancestrual/spiritual magic had it's respected place in the Japanese/Asian religions.

The tweaks to troop selection make archers and other
samurais more even, so that it woulndn't make sense to
only recruit Aka-Onis.

All melee samurais have better str and hp than samurai
archers. Also, O-ban received patrolling and castle defence
bonus, they are the only samurais that would otherwise be very rarely be used (either because other samurais are cheaper/faster or go-hatamoto is just better).

All in all, the tweaks make the nation more balanced internally
(almost all unit could have a function) and externally when compared to other nations. The most used units would be probably still Aka-Onis, but archers and normal samurais and Go-Hatamotos (and sometimes possibly even O-bans) will be much more viable
troops to use. The general rationale for using troops would be
as follows:

archers - capable archers
normal samurai - good, cheap, fast fighters
o-ban - heavy slow fighter (a bit faster/cheaper than hatamoto)
+ can be used as patrollers/castle defenders
hatamoto - heavy slow fighters with morale equal to aka-oni
aka-oni - all round good fast fighters (but the most expensive)


So yeah, looking forward for your additional feedback
Snowcat

P.S.
If anybody wants to play a CBM game with more balanced
LE Jomon, then the mod and it's icon are attached to
this post. Enjoy!

Edit:
If you think Aka-Onis should still cost 14gp instead of 15gp
then be my guest to change it back in the .dm file. It's very
easy. Although you wont save alot by doing that, likely

[kianduatha]

It seems weird to make even the baseline samurai 11 str 10 hp. Moreover, I just don't see homogenizing Jomon's troops as actually helping to solve anything.

I can understand reverting the costs on Aka-Oni and Go-Hatamoto, but at the same time making Jomon's only useable troops even more expensive isn't really a solution to the actual problem. Instead, wouldn't it make more thematic sense(given the costs of human troops in previous eras) to just decrease the cost of Ashigaru and Samurai to 7 and 9 gold respectively?

As far as I can tell, the only actually useless recruit is the O-ban. Couldn't that be fixed simply by giving them a different niche? The O-ban's description says they are heavily armed...what about giving them a wakizashi too and just having them dual-wield?

I dunno...it seems like the best fixes for overall balance are cheapening Monks, increasing the scaling on Fear-Not-Sign from 1002 to 2002(so Dai Tengu/a Master Shugenja Prophet can blanket a fair area if you want to), and buffing Jomon's starting army. Even something simple like bumping it up to 15 Samurai Archers would make a big difference.