Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Digress]

Originally Posted by vfb

EoG is useful to:
- take up a global slot, without making people mad
- let you look at the gear on the heroes in the HoF

I have cast it for the first reason - but class it as showing off. Basically saying "I can burn a bunch of pearls just to see whats cooking". I take the view that you can never have too many astral pearls ... never.

I had no idea it gave you info on heroes ... thanks.

[BigDaddy]

Why CBM?

Is it to make dom3 a more relaxing casual game?

I ask because it seems like, if someone knows a nation intimately, that then they can use it, and the game is probably fair (it is 23b afterall) without the CBM.

I guess what I'm asking is why and when do you like to use the CBM?

Like this, let's say I like to clam hoard with Atlantis, because it can be hard climb up on land and make war after I take out another underwater nation. So, with the CBM I can no longer clam hoarde, and the other players are no longer concerned bout Atlantis hoarding clams and suddenly emerging to beat them into a pulp...

I say clam hoarding as a time bomb for underwater nations... you have to find a way to go down there and get him...

I remember in dom2 without the CBM clam hoarding was violently fast... They have slowed it tons in the stock version since then. I think that they have thought carefully about how fast clams pay off. Does it make sense to make clams unique in all cases?

[rdonj]

Vanilla is not really that well balanced, really. There are a number of nations that are just plain stronger than most others. They are still beatable, but there are just far fewer chinks in their armor than most nations. CBM doesn't really try to address this that much, though it does make some of the grossly overpowered nations a bit more reasonable. Mostly what CBM does though is make more strategies viable, and try to work around bad mechanics (see: clam nerf). I prefer playing CBM because it improves a lot of spells and pretenders that are pretty useless in vanilla, and makes them actually usable and fun.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Like this, let's say I like to clam hoard with Atlantis, because it can be hard climb up on land and make war after I take out another underwater nation. So, with the CBM I can no longer clam hoarde, and the other players are no longer concerned bout Atlantis hoarding clams and suddenly emerging to beat them into a pulp...

I say clam hoarding as a time bomb for underwater nations... you have to find a way to go down there and get him...

I remember in dom2 without the CBM clam hoarding was violently fast... They have slowed it tons in the stock version since then. I think that they have thought carefully about how fast clams pay off. Does it make sense to make clams unique in all cases?

This is bad game design because you're basically saying a UW nation basically should stop playing the game for awhile (30 turns? 50?) unless someone else can be bothered to come and fight them underwater. In the meantime, they should be able to build up an insurmountable advantage by just sitting back and clamming?

Winning the game should involve playing the game. Not just seeing how much you can abuse the forging system. And attacking UW is really hard in Vanilla - I'd say it would be next to impossible for a land nation to take out an UW nation before late game. Further, there's the social problem of everybody knowing you're sitting there clamming, but no one is willing to attack you because it weakens them, so you just don't get attacked. (Of course, everyone is clamming, and water income is actually less common underwater, so you probably lose the clamming race anyway. This is a pretty degenerate metric for winning/losing the game).

The lack of interactivity between land and water nations is a serious problem in vanilla. CBM in 1.6 took large strides towards fixing this by making access UW easier, and the ability of aquatic-only commanders to leave the seas easier (cheaper water-breathing and air-breathing items). And this is a good thing. Attacking underwater is still too hard, even with these changes, but at least it can happen earlier and requires fewer resources.

Besides, not fighting a war is still plenty beneficial at present (don't need to divert valuable mage resources to combat, or use as much cash on armies so you can spend it on mages or infrastructure). But clams just turned it into an 'I win' button if you could successfully turtle and forge tons of clams. As a strategy that simply had to go.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Why CBM?

Ok - a lot of people are going to respond with MP balance related responses, which is valid, and nice and all, but only one reason to use it. A perhaps more pragmatic reason is that a large number of MP games are started using it, so familiarity is helpful if you intend to join a lot of MP games.

For me, however, the big attraction of CBM is that it lets you do things that you otherwise wouldn't do due to opportunity cost. For instance - Dragon Master. This always sounded cool in vanilla, but was always too expensive to justify. In CBM, it's cheaper, so it actually sees some use. As another example, see the use of wholesale transformation in e.g. Baalz' Oceana guide (or his latest Pangea guide.) You can justifiably recruit or summon many more national units than before. You can use some of the "cool sounding" pretenders and not feel like you're taking a huge handicap for doing so. You can cast nifty spells that were previously "inferior" and never saw play.

It diversifies the game and expands the palette of economical strategies (somewhat.) It's not a panacea, but it does help.

[Sombre]

I think CBM is worthwhile even if you only play SP, because it evens out the difference between things which are hugely cost effective and those which are, essentially, far too little bang for you buck.

You might really like the concept and look of a certain summon, for instance abysian smoulderghosts. But whenever you use them, they do worse than far cheaper regular troops, which is discouraging, so you stop using them and almost inevitably drift towards stuff which works well, rather than stuff which is interesting (partly because the stuff which works actually survives and is affordable, while the other stuff dies horribly). Now if you introduce CBM, it makes those smoulderghosts, if used in an intelligent way, worth the cost. That idea you had of using them with sulphur clouds becomes feasible, because you can actually afford more of them. So you're able to make use of the units and tactics you want to without them being overshadowed too horribly by obvious better choices. They may still not be optimal, but at least they work ok.

[BigDaddy]

But smoulderghosts is a conjuration 2 spell, it should be far inferior to level 8 spells... like animate archers. If the smoulderghosts become comparable to skeletal archers then the CBM is a game mechanics fail.

I don't know exactly how these two things were determined. Well, if you go straight for conjuration with Abysia, the smoulderghost seem intent to fill a very short term early game niche if you've got death gems, or you can cast protection spells on them. They also have a magic weapon. I could say that the smouldghosts suck for similar reasons that Caelum sucks. I think that's funny.

But, I'm not arguing against the CBM, I just think it takes away from nation specific skill.

Since I always played MP with added AI players, clamming hard with the computer set to aggressive. The objective should be to make rushing more appealing.

IMHO nations without an H3 priest are at a serious disadvantage as they can be easily rushed. Maybe we should give everyone H3 priest? How do you make up for the fact that every MA Pythium city has a H3 brigade of "researchers" inside it? You don't, that is just how Pythium is. Or maybe we could just tinker with smite... I just smote my brother in MP the other day (10 Kings of Rain showed up at his territory on turn 16). He still thinks its scary... especially because I was also ahead in research. Maybe getting smote doesn't bother people as much because it happens early in the game, whereas losing because you of clamming takes days.


Unless they have a titan pretender which can kill lots of priests without equipment. But then you can't heal your pretender until you get to conjuration or construction 8.

I guess it isn't that I fail to see the usage of the CBM, I just fail to see the game as horribly imbalanced in the first place.

[KissBlade]

If you find it balanced in the first place, then don't use a balance mod. =) However, a lot of people don't find it balanced so opt for the alternative.

[BigDaddy]

I seem to having some difficulty getting my point across or my question across. In what cases should I use the CBM? Most of the people on this thread are divided between "never" and "always." It's clearly a popular mod.

In what cases should I use the CBM?

[KissBlade]

There is no "should". As I said, it is a matter of opinion. You stated that you felt the game has no imbalancing issues. In that case, why would you use a "balancing mod" if you felt it added nothing to balance. The point of cbm is for people who felt "Hey, some of these pretenders/troops/summons/nations don't appear to be costed right ..." or "Turtlegemgenthreehourmicro" is not fun. If you have none of these issues, then why use it?