Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Alpine Joe]

Well, I don't know much about underwater nations, having only played two UW games and hating them both. Once again, I don't claim to be some kind of expert, I just thought it would be interesting to have discussion of nation balance with some kind of starting point.

[Squirrelloid]

Alpine:
I think your list isn't sufficiently thought out regarding which nations are weak and which are strong.

EA Ermor in no way needs a boost. Its plenty strong as it is, and capable of defeating any of your power nations, even in a rush scenario. The key, of course, is knowing what your anti-rush spells are, and actually start researching them *before* you get rushed.

While Marveni isn't really as bad as people seem to think either (it has good earth magic, the best rush-counter path there is), reducing druid cost further is probably warranted. 340 is a lot of gold for an old mage with 8 RPs.

EA TC needs no help.

And so on. A few nations could definitely use a boost (like EA Agartha), but for most of them people need to get used to the fact that being a different nation means playing them differently. I really can't understand how any nation with good E+S can be considered weak (ie, Marveni) unless people just haven't thought about what their options are during an early war. I imagine a similar analysis applies to many nations. As long as you have acceptable expansion options against indies, the real key is finding those spells which can keep you alive in an early war.

[Alpine Joe]

Well, the list of nations with no wins was my starting point to determine nation strength. Participants in the various cripple games got the biggest suggested buffs. I've only played EA ermor in one multiplayer game, but I always assumed it was understood it was a weaker nation based on its poor performance.

However, you are most likely right. Which nations do you think need buffs other than Agartha? What would you suggest micah? Unless you believe every nation is equally strong, it helps to get some suggestions, rather than pure critique, although the latter is welcome.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by Micah

Also, your suggestion that Atlantis get almost nothing and rlyeh gets absolutely nothing while giving kailasa recruit-anywhere top-tier mages kind of makes me doubt your grasp on "balance."

You could suggest different changes rather than suggest that the game is currently perfectly balanced.

[rdonj]

I think you guys should probably bring this to a seperate thread. CBM is less about overall balance than it is increasing the number of non-terrible options available to the player.


Personally I like not having all nations be perfectly balanced. The more perfectly balanced a game is the more boring, imo.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Alpine Joe

I don't really think EA tienchi is a bless nation...... your sacreds are weak against archers and even with F9W9 they lose to most other similarly blessed sacreds (hellheim, mictlan, lanka, Hinnom, Kailasa, ). They have terrible HP in the off-season as well, where they have trouble even with regular infantry.

I also don't really understand your point about masters of the 5 elements...they are too good, but you never use them? They completely eliminate the use of masters of the way? Well, when was the last time you used the F1D1 LA c'tis cap only mage, or the equivalent one for LA agartha? nonmage commanders almost never get recruited as is, losing a lot of thematic commanders simply for not being optimal.

Warriors of the 5 elements are very very underestimated.
EA T'ien Chi blessed beat easily Lankans and Mictlan jags. Against Hinnom they struggle. The point is not to rely on warriors of the 5 elements beyond early expansion however. You've got sacred summons. Demons of heavenly waters are not weak and very easy to get. Demons of heavenly fire with a water 9 bless shoot fire wheels very often. Celestial soldiers rock.
As for archers, there's no reason to send only warriors of the 5 elements. Bring in yoru composite bowmen for support with fire archers and 3 shielded infantry to use as decoys, and you don't have to worry about archers.

Masters of the 5 elements right now are so good that you don't always pick celestial masters in your capital, so you alternate (you want some for their flight + strong paths, the others for the random E2 and N2 in particular). If they weren't capital only, you'd always build them outside your capital, and only celestial masters in your capital. There would be no point in recruiting masters of the dead anymore since you can get D random on the celestial masters, and why would one buy masters of the way if one can buy masters of the 5 elements?

There are many, many units that are not recruited and could effectively be removed from the game. Forcing people to use them doesn't exactly make the game better.

The point of CBM is to make the huge variety of units more usable. The 'Balance' in CBM means units inside a nation are more balanced so you have more reasons to pick under-used units. I don't understand why you'd want to use this mod if you think some units should be removed, as it strives to make more units usable.

[Squirrelloid]

So, my hit list for power improvement would include:

EA, MA Agartha
MA Machaka
EA, MA Atlantis
MA Eriu
EA Oceania
MA, LA Ulm*
MA Man
EA TNN
EA Aby
LA Caelum

In about that order of severity. I might also consider small boosts to:

LA Atlantis
LA Jomon
MA Oceania**
EA Ulm***
MA Bandar Log**

*My biggest problem with Ulm is that the combination of 'we suck at magic' and 'we're very vulnerable to magic' is just a stupid theme that is DoA. Sucking at magic is an ok theme - but if they suck at magic, they should be especially resistant to it as well. There's really no other way to balance sucking at magic. As it currently stands, the game basically says 'everyone else has an advantage over you in area A, which is the single most important component of nation power. Oh yeah, and you're especially vulnerable to it, so not only can't you fight back with that tool very well, but they get to clobber you with it'.
**Its really hard to make a worthwhile change to these nations that meets QM's philosophy for CBM.
-Bandar Log's biggest problem is that in the early game it only gets E on randoms from Rishi. While it can eventually solve this with conjuration, its far too late to defend against a rush by the time you do so. And S+N is not the best magic for defending rushes.
-MA Oceania's problem is total lack of lategame magic, having possibly the worst magic paths in the game (as a set), and no feet slots UW to even take advantage of its E randoms at all. And having no recruitable thugs, much less SCs, Ns good uses mostly don't apply. However, QM doesn't really screw with magic paths, so no help for that. Drastically slashing the cost of Capricorns might be worthwhile, however. (Say 250 or 275 instead of 350?)
***would benefit from the same changes as MA, LA.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

The point of CBM is to make the huge variety of units more usable. The 'Balance' in CBM means units inside a nation are more balanced so you have more reasons to pick under-used units. I don't understand why you'd want to use this mod if you think some units should be removed, as it strives to make more units usable.

I didn't say that I think that units should be removed. I said that some units could effectively be removed, and will always be effectively removed from the game if they aren't worth building. People still recruit theurg acolytes even though theurgs are better mages because theurg acolytes have a useful purpose and are worthwhile. People don't recruit battle deacons, and never will as long as communicants are available. You'd have to make battle deacons free before they would be worth recruiting instead of a communicant. The Alae legionnaire might as well not exist because the hastatus is strictly superior. Reduce its gold cost to match its actual combat performance, and it would become a useful unit.

Yes, masters of the five elements are better than masters of the way, and people would recruit masters of the five elements over masters of the way if they had a choice. This doesn't mean that masters of the five elements have to remain capital only so that people will use masters of the way. It means that should masters of the five elements be made recruit anywhere, then masters of the way would have to be improved to be worth recruiting instead of a master of the five elements.

It's quite clear that balance between nations is the overall goal of the mod. Otherwise nations that have worthless national troops in vanilla like Bogarus wouldn't have been given heavy cavalry that's is virtually identical to tower knights. Your argument that the mod is meant to promote balance "within" a nation is basically nothing more than the argument mod supporters use to convince those people who like imbalance, because they can take advantage of it, to play in the modded game. The CBM doesn't go nearly far enough in making all units viable.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Tollund

It's quite clear that balance between nations is the overall goal of the mod. Otherwise nations that have worthless national troops in vanilla like Bogarus wouldn't have been given heavy cavalry that's is virtually identical to tower knights. Your argument that the mod is meant to promote balance "within" a nation is basically nothing more than the argument mod supporters use to convince those people who like imbalance, because they can take advantage of it, to play in the modded game. The CBM doesn't go nearly far enough in making all units viable.

qm has said before that nation balance is not the primary concern. Obviously it is something that CBM works towards addressing, but I don't know where you get that it's the 'overall goal'.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

Warriors of the 5 elements are very very underestimated.
EA T'ien Chi blessed beat easily Lankans and Mictlan jags. Against Hinnom they struggle.

I love both W5E's and lankan kumas and mic-jags. But both your post and micah's post are a little simplistic.

W5E's benefit more than mic jags do from a S blessing as they are more fragile. So a heads up comparison of an F9S9 blessing mics v jags will give skewed results.

Jags have mediocre attack and defense numbers, and have the ability to survive a hit based on on their were form. In fact, their were form is de-rigeur to really get the maximum advantage from the f9 bless (three attacks vs one).

A few other factors: W5E's are very, very susceptible to archer fire. And finally, the key to beating W5E's is killing them first.

You don't use the same tools on every problem. Mictlan will probably be using eagles not jag's agaist the W5E's. Set them far back Hold and attack, and with a priest set to Bless, bless, whatever.

This allows the eagles to get the first hit, offense or defense.
And if you are doing equal GPs, (iirc 15 vs 35?) 10 eagles and a priest vs 5 M5E's and a priest should win 19/20.

Even if you *don't* do it on a gp basis - M5E's are cap only and do not scale.