Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Festin]

Oh, of course Jomon has its strong points. It even won a game once(according to HoF)!

I do not think it is a most productive use of time - trying to convince everyone that Jomon mages are perfectly nice, when they are obviously not.

I do not think it is very reasonable to explain that Jomon is unable to use most of its national summons because it was not supposed to have them at all. Meh.

And I would so like to listen about the way you managed to enter water with Kappas.

But I guess it would be considered as more "whining", so I will stop here.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Festin

Oh, of course Jomon has its strong points. It even won a game once(according to HoF)!

I do not think it is a most productive use of time - trying to convince everyone that Jomon mages are perfectly nice, when they are obviously not.

...
-recruitable mages with E+S is nice.
-Recruitable mages that cover 6/8 paths, where one of the excluded paths is blood (and thus easy to access if you really want it) is nice.
-Recruitable mages capable of remotely searching all 6 of those paths is nice.
-Access to a summons which grants sufficient access to bootstrap the 7th non-blood path is nice.
-Access to E1 + 2 chances at E randoms is nice (early game alteration to counter rushes).
-Access to E2+ with boot slots to permit hammer forging is nice.

Jomon's mages cover so many bases for which many nations have to use their pretender, its hard to consider them 'bad'.

Try comparing their mages to other LA nations. There are a few LA nations with powerful mages (Patala, Rlyeh, and Bogarus spring to mind), but most of those are capital only, and Rlyeh has other issues (hard to find the gold to buy mages). The only LA nation with better recruit-anywhere mages that I can think of is C'tis, and their mages don't cover their holes very well (they need an E+S pretender to forge hammers, coins, RoS/W, etc...). Well, and Rlyeh, who has other issues, and can't wear boots, and thus can't forge hammers without a pretender.

If you can't come up with good things to do with Jomon's mages, you really aren't trying hard enough.

I do not think it is very reasonable to explain that Jomon is unable to use most of its national summons because it was not supposed to have them at all. Meh.

That you have access to them at all is an advantage regardless of how hard it is to use them. But demanding the nation have good access to them when they aren't intended for them is ridiculous. Shinuyama similarly has access to some summons (eg, Dai Tengu) it would really like to use but can't, because they are intended for Yomi or Jomon.

Not that anyone would summon Dai Oni over Tarts given the difference in gem cost.

And I would so like to listen about the way you managed to enter water with Kappas.

There is *one* water nation in LA, and it is often banned (for stupid reasons) or has expansion issues. I leave acquiring a water province as an exercise to the reader.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

5) The monks are just amazing, but not for research. They're less efficient researchers than your other mages (no seriously, they've got half as many RPs for more than half the cost, meaning they cost more upkeep/RP than the mages do). What the monks excel at is being handed a master matrix, and leading line-backer communions in which they get to use awesome spells (W+N monks), or casting AoE air shield (A monks) on your shield-less troops. The F and E monks are acceptable researchers, and the cost of getting the really awesome monks.

Math error not in my favor. I'm halving the wrong thing in this analysis. Monks are more cost-efficient than your other mages.

That said, the other mages are (generally) more use efficient (you'll want some monks, but won't need them in quantity), and most certainly more *time-efficient* for research. Getting there first is generally better than getting there cheapest.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by Festin

I do not think it is a most productive use of time - trying to convince everyone that Jomon mages are perfectly nice, when they are obviously not.

They aren't that different from Arcoscephale's mystics, so they really aren't that bad.

[Festin]

You almost convinced me that I was missing something, so I decided to check the situation with other races: surely, Jomon's situation is not unique? So, here are the results:

There are 21 nations in the Late Age, and only 2(two) of them do not have death or blood (or both) on their recruitable mages. One of them is Jomon, the other one is Patala.

I admit that I have never really played as Patala (monkey troops are not my thing), but the only guide I found in Strategy Index suggests picking a pretender with death and blood. And Patala has _very_ powerful sacred mages and national Astral end-game summons like Rudra. It must have suffered greatly after clam nerf, so I assume that death on pretender is even more important now.

Well, that's it. If you still insist that Jomon is one single nation in whole LA that can do just fine without death or blood on their mages or their pretender, then so be it, I admit that I was wrong.

[Illuminated One]

The problem of Yomons diversity is that it's so random.
Sure, Yomon makes one of the best sitesearchers in the game, but one of the worst combatants and booster forgers imo.
Sure there are other very random mages but the nations that have them have either someone else to base their strategy on or they are enchantresses (which pretty much means that your sitesearching advantage is an illusion as some power nation will luck into them).
Yomon has only these. So, you start the game at turn 1 and start researching into conj3 and evo5 for GfH and Falling Fires. Let's say you have it with 25 mages. The chance that you have not a single mage able to cast these spells on his own is ~ 20% for each (the chance that you can get there with a communion is ~ 98% - I did ignore that the chances are not independent for the spells, i.e. if you have no GfH caster you have a better chance to but this shouldn't make a too big difference I think). Now maybe these values look not so bad but in comparison with other nations who can get their spells without communions always and ever, or with a very high probability (the chance that Tien Chi has 4 or more Rain of Stones casters in 20 Ancestor Smiths to kill a lot your communions is ~ 80%). Now, you also have the bad mapmove which means you either teleport around a lot or don't have the mages that can cast the spells that you went for where you need them.
In any case I've yet to see a game where Yomon does more than defend it's territory, so a boost certainly wouldn't hurt. I disagree about giving them d or b though.

[Squirrelloid]

Festin: there are things to do besides d or b. And breaking into b is easy if you really want to do it. Why are you so obsessed with these two? You get death eventually, enough to bootstrap up to tarts (which is why everyone wants death), so its not like you're lacking that.

Jomon has pretty good astral, which is enough to base a strategy around.

I completely disagree with Illuminated One and don't know why you'd try for Falling Fires at all. GfH is good, but not enough to make racing down Evo right away worthwhile.

Here's the actually good spells you want early on:

Conj:
F: (2) Bind Scorpion Beast, (3) Summon Phoenix Power
A: (5) Dai Tengu
W: (5) Contact Nushi, Naiad Warriors, Naiad, Kaijin? (haven't tried, looks plausibly useful)
E: (2) Summon Ujigami, (3) Summon Earth Power
N: (0) Contact Jigami, (3) Awaken Sleeper, (4) Summon Bog Beast
S: (4) Summon Kenzuoko,

Alt:
F: (2) Blindness
A: (1) Aim, (4) Windguide
W: (2) Numbness, Personal Quickness (use with eagle eyes/aim and a bow)
E: (2) Earth Might, Armor of Achilles, Earth Meld, (3) Curse of Stones, (4) Destruction
S: (3) Body Ethereal
N: (1) Eagle Eyes, (3) Protection, Mossbody, (4) Swarm, (5) Wooden Warriors

Evo: Slime, Rusting Mist, lightning bolt, vine arrow, magma bolt, acid bolt, sleep cloud

Ench: Gift of Flight, Str of Giants, Dragon Master (combo with frost or fire drakes, or wyverns)

Thaum: Farstrike, Curse, Bonds of Fire, Panic, Paralyze

Much of that is even available without boosters. Note i've listed through Conj 5, Alt 5, Evo 3, Ench 3, Thaum 3. Overall recommendation on early research targets was Conj 5+, Alt 4+, Evo 2, Thaum 2, and Constr ++, which gets you most of that.

[Festin]

Ok, so I must be wrong. Jomon is a strong nation not underpowered in any way, and has a solid chance of victory in any MP game. Being an only nation without death or blood access does not really matter. Path selection on its mages is ok. Access to most of its national summons is not really needed. Underwater expansion is easy. Armor weight is irrelevant. 9 HP infantry is thematic. Pretender selection leaves nothing to be desired. Initial army is adequate. Important midgame spells are easily accessable. Endgame summons are fine. Is short, completely no need for boost of any sort.

[Sombre]

Agreed, so let's move on.

[Illuminated One]

I didn't say you should try to get those spells early (if you want to know it I'd go down thau and alt first), it was merely an example how Yomon struggles to get them. I have an error in there and the chance is even lower.
You have a ~ 2% chance that when you want to use lightning bolt that you get a guy who can cast lightning bolt. Same for most other spells. So quite simply you need 50 Yomon mages on average if you want to spam lightning bolt from one of them (yeah, communions, but you can't have a large communions running around everywhere and fatigue can be quite ugly if you are casting spells that your slaves don't have the paths for, have fun calculating the fatigue with everyone different). Basically it's not you deciding which spells you use but the drn.
It's not a question of theoretical availability it's a question of mass. Sure you can go through your mages and look at what you have picked up, but this is a) tedious and b) subpar in most situations (farstrike is defeated by missing, shield, armor, same for magma bolts, bow + quickness only works half of the time and don't think of using crossbows, etc).
Now consider Bogarus who can have lightning bolt from every mage they recruit if they choose so, or nether bolt or magma bolts or via smallish communions a lot of good spells like magma erruption, gifts from heaven, shadow blast, astral fires, dust to dust, leech, etc. Same versatility but a better control.