Conceptual Balance Mod 1.84

[Valerius]

I have an idea that I think might address llama's comments regarding feedback that awe on Ri/Tuatha was OP, rdonj's preference for adding something to the units to make them better/cheaper thugs out of the box, and my concern that the current changes sideline Sidhe Lords. What about removing awe on Ri/Tuatha and giving both those units and *also* Sidhe Lords #onebattlespell of personal luck? Before you say "that's completely OP" hear me out.

The thing that's so useful about awe in the early-mid game (against certain opponents) is that initially it adds a layer of defense you didn't have before (for expansion) and later on it adds an extra layer of defense while not forcing you to give up another one (once you reach constr. 2-4 to forge a shield). You get the effects of a shield of gleaming gold while still being able to use your vine shield. This is a significant change. Luck with a vine shield on the other hand is a well tested combination. Basically, even if you fully equipped a thug it would amount to having an extra misc slot - not nearly as much of a problem as having the extra hand slot that awe basically amounts to. It's also worth noting that #onebattlespell of personal luck isn't actually as good as having a pendant of luck since it doesn't protect you outside of combat. I was lucky in that I didn't face mind hunts during my game because the increase in forging costs from 6 to 10 gems for rainbow armor and 3 to 5 gems for pendant of luck or AoMR makes that even more of an issue than before. Which is also an argument in favor of rdonj's idea of making them good enough out of the box and/or cheap enough that they don't need much equipment and the increased attrition rate doesn't hurt as much.

The other thing that luck does is equalize the effects of the bonus. During the early game luck will be equally effective vs all opponents while awe will be disproportionately effective against some opponents (which could account for some of the frustration with it).

I would think there are two objections to awe: that it results in an extremely fast expansion and that it can be difficult for some nations to counter early on. Based on my tests, this solution addresses the former issue - which makes me think it would also address the latter (if you can no longer expand reliably against indies I can't imagine you would do well against a player).

In case anyone is interested in running their own tests I've attached a couple of modified versions of CBM 1.84. The first removes awe but adds a #onebattlespell of personal luck on Ri, Tuatha and Sidhe Lords. The second makes the additional change of removing False Fetters as a secondary effect on the golden lance.


Here are my test results (using luck instead of awe but keeping false fetters):

TNN (E9N6 bless, Ri scripted to: Bless, Air Shield, hold, hold, hold, attack closest)

4 elephants (w/ infantry & slingers) - Ri wins (false fetters stops enough elephants)
4 elephants (w/ infantry & slingers) - Ri loses (false fetters doesn't stop enough elephants)
6 elephants (w/ infantry & slingers) - Ri loses
6 elephants (w/ infantry & slingers) - Ri wins
jade maidens/amazons - Ri loses repeatedly
wolf tribe warriors (2 daggers) - Ri loses
heavy infantry/archers - Ri wins (gets affliction though)
bear tribe warriors (hatchets & spears) - Ri loses
deer tribe warriors (spears, archers) - Ri loses
light infantry/archers (only a few of them) - Ri wins
jaguar tribe (sword, spear sling) - Ri wins
light infantry/archers (medium number) - Ri loses


Eriu (E9N6 bless, Tuatha scripted to: Bless, Air Shield, hold, hold, hold, attack closest)

small number heavy cav/infantry - Tuatha wins
small number knights/longbowmen - Tuatha loses (knights kill)
small number deer tribe (spear, dagger) - Tuatha wins
medium number barbarians - Tuatha loses repeatedly (couldn't get a win - note that with awe won repeatedly against barbarians)
medium number bear tribe (hatchet, spear) - Tuatha loses
small number of knights & archers - Tuatha loses


A few thoughts here. First off, Mirror Image from glamour contributes greatly to victory - once that is gone hits add up quickly and if there's still decent opposition it will probably result in a loss. Also, even when the thugs won they took more damage and had greater risk of losing than with awe. False fetters is responsible for the wins in elephant fights as it removed enough of them from battle - when not enough were removed the thug lost.

Based on viewing the results of the first test and LDiCesare's comment earlier I ran some quick tests with luck and no false fetters and the failure rate went up even more. In particular, the chance of winning against elephants is poor.

I think either of these changes (no awe or no awe as well as no false fetters in exchange for personal luck) would solve the early game issues. I guess the main worry would be could this abused in some way. But I don't really see it - it's the equivalent of a free piece of gear to make up for the increase in forging costs for a thug focused nation.

Thematically I think this change would also be ok. TNN/Eriu to me are more focused on individual champions whereas Van, while also having thuggable commanders, is more focused on troops. And heroes are supposed to have uncanny luck (you can see this too in the personal luck #onebattlespells granted to CBM heroes).

If you think this is too much for a recruit everywhere unit then you could just make the change on Ri/Tuatha and come up with another boost or cost reduction for Sidhe Lords.

[llamabeast]

Hello everyone!

I have had almost no time at home recently and it will be the same for the coming week, but just thought I would let you know that I am reading this thread (far too often!) on my phone and keeping track. Lots of interesting thoughts.

I was considering giving the Ri 10% forge bonus. Thoughts?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I was considering giving the Ri 10% forge bonus. Thoughts?

You won't be surprised to hear I like the idea.

But I think that would help with making thugging more affordable and I think it's a safe amount for a forge bonus. It would help because with exception of vine/eye shields all the gear I regularly forge for glamoured thugs costs 5 gems (technically rainbow armor is 10 gems but it's a 5/5 split). Reducing the cost to 4 (compared to 3 with hammers) definitely helps restore affordable thugging. I also think it's a safe discount in the sense that the discount isn't large enough that you could try to develop an Ulm-style forge economy - which I don't think TNN/Eriu should be able to do (btw, I assume this would apply to Eriu's Tuatha as well?). I wouldn't mind a 15% discount because while it wouldn't change the cost of 5 gem items it would help get 10 gem items like vine shields down to 8 gems (compared to 7 with hammers) - but that also allows a larger discount on items that cost more than 10 gems than you may want.

I also wanted to throw another idea out there, also intended to address the early game issues with awe. What about doing something like you did for Machaka with Foul Sacrifice? Only instead of summoning a troop, the ritual would "transform" the caster into a unit that had awe (or personal luck, or whatever bonus you wanted). It would be a fairly low level spell but wouldn't be available from turn 1 for expansion purposes. I guess the main issue would be to avoid loopholes where you could use a cheap indie mage and get a thug out of it. I think casting requirements of A2H2 would serve that purpose. I don't think there are any indies with those paths and of your national mages only Ri, Tuatha Sorceresses, Tuatha and Sidhe Lords would be able to cast it. In terms of magic paths, I was thinking the Sidhe Lords' A2N1H2 would be best. That means Ri would lose magic by casting this spell but if they receive a forge bonus they'd have a useful niche right there, while Tuatha Sorceresses would have the strongest magic.

You could even have a couple of versions of it, one of them being a high level late game spell that would perhaps give a HP boost as well so that the thug can be more survivable in a late game setting. Even if it were more cost effective to go for an EDM summon I'd get some of these just for the fun factor.

[LDiCesare]

There are defeinitely other nations which need a forge bonus more than the tuatha. And the Ri is supposed to be a fighter, not a forger.

[AnimateDream]

Missing quotation mark deletes yomi bandit's jinsaga.

line 3429 in cbm 1.84
3460 in llama's 3.27 updated cbm 1.84

[earcaraxe]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Hello everyone!

I have had almost no time at home recently and it will be the same for the coming week, but just thought I would let you know that I am reading this thread (far too often!) on my phone and keeping track. Lots of interesting thoughts.

I was considering giving the Ri 10% forge bonus. Thoughts?

the question arise in me about that. what is the problem that ought to be fixed by that?

its aim is to:

-make TNN's thug strategy more powerful?
-make TNN's lategame more powerful?

im curious what peolpe think about TNN's needs. i understand, that from a historicaly viewpoint ("losing" hammers) TNN "has less gems now". But lets forget that, and suppose hammers never were in the game. what are the reasons for making changes to TNN?

[LDiCesare]

TNN has an extremely strong early game with Ris as is, and then very bad lategame. A strategy to counter this issue is to pick a pretender that provides diversity an magic paths for late game. I'm not sure what needs be changed. Did someone actually try to play TNN decently, with a pretender that would give some good path-searching options and access to late game summons? (Ris just don't need a bless to let you expand like crazy as they are).

[Valerius]

I'm not really looking to boost TNN/Eriu but preserve a style of play. I thought it would be nice if Eriu in particular could have gotten a boost (despite the fact that EA has tougher competition I thought Eriu was worse off than TNN) but if it didn't happen I could live with it.

If you look at these nations as of CBM 1.6 (and vanilla for that matter) they are thug centered and, in a broader sense, focused on commanders rather than troops. I like this emphasis - if I want more of a thug/troop combined focus I play Van. This focus on thugs certainly isn't the most powerful strategy in the game (and in the late game raiding becomes very difficult and the focus of these units changes to being part of anti-SC squads) but it was the dominant theme of the nations and I find it a lot of fun to play.

If you gave me a choice between a version of the nations that was weaker but had the same emphasis on thugging and one that deemphasized thugging but was stronger overall I would choose the former. As far as options go, I was always pretty happy with my options with TNN, largely because of recruit everywhere bean sidhe. It's Eriu that seems really limited.

But the thing is, if the nation is focused on thugging it has to be done cheaply. In the end these are low HP units and there is constant attrition. So removing hammers hits them hard. Since most of the items I forged cost 5 gems using a hammer was effectively more like a 40% discount than 25%.

You can deal with the impact of removing hammers in different ways. One is to do nothing and say they just have to deal with it. It's one thing to do that with a top ranking nation but it doesn't seem fair to do that to nations that are in the bottom half of their respective eras. Thankfully, llama (and/or qm - not sure when things switched over) decided to compensate them for the loss of cheap forging. They went with a hybrid approach - a considerable boost to a cap only thug chassis and some non-thug boosts to the nation. My reaction to this was that awe added enough utility to Ri that it made up for the increased forging cost. However an unfortunate side effect is that I didn't find Sidhe Lords worth equipping at full cost and didn't recruit one the entire game.

It's a bit strange to hear talk that TNN is OP. I'm guessing it's due to the impact of the boosts to Ri (though even with that they hardly seem like more of a threat than being rushed by one of the EA powerhouses). So let's say you eliminated the boosts to Ri/Tuatha. Now they no longer have a clear advantage over Sidhe Lords as thugs, which is good. The bad part is that now they are both not worth equipping, which really kills thugging. So llama mentioned giving them a forge bonus. Personally I'd be happy removing everything that has resulted in complaints and give them a 25% forge bonus and be done with it. Sure, they won't be able to forge fire/astral gear at a discount like they could with hammers but otoh having a 25% forge discount when most others don't is a relative advantage. The relative importance of thugging to the nation would stay the same. But that's probably not in the cards so if the Ri/Tuatha boosts are removed maybe a 10% forge bonus with some better built-in gear or reduced cost like rdonj mentions could would keep them viable (though if Ri lose their improvements I really think the forge bonus should be 15% to get another gem of savings on shields). What I wouldn't like to see is compensating them by improving their troops (the reduced encumbrance was already a nice bonus) - I think the commander level focus of the nation is fine. Again, if I want a combo thug/troop focus I'll play Van.

As far as the late game goes, yes, they don't have a great late game. So what. That means they have to get something done earlier in the game to position themselves for a strong late game. I think it's interesting if nations have different areas of strength. Some might have great troops but middling commanders or vice versa. Some might have a great early game but fade later, etc.

[llamabeast]

I'm away on holiday so haven't seen dom3 for a bit and am getting a bit confused between this thread and the dom3mods thread.

Somewhere someone mentioned giving Ris (a chance at?) earth access. I think maybe that's quite interesting, it would give them different strengths as thugs and as army buffers.

So as changes how about:

- Remove Awe from Ris
- Add some chance of an extra earth pick for Ris
- Give female mages 10-15% forge bonus

[Valerius]

If you go with those changes please make the forge bonus 15%. It may seem like a small thing but being able to forge shields for 8 gems rather than the 9 gems of a 10% bonus will help.

A 15% forge bonus would let you equip a thug with weapon and shield for 12 gems vs. 10 with hammers. Not too bad of an increase. More fully equipped thugs, such as I prefer, don't fare as well since fire/astral gear won't be forged at a discount, but it's worth giving these proposed changes a try.

Thugging takes a hit with the elimination of hammers. As I mentioned above, I'd be happy to give back any boosts TNN/Eriu have received in exchange for a 25% forge bonus but I realize that I'm probably in the minority and that isn't likely to happen. But thanks for trying to keep thugs a viable option. Removing awe from Ris/Tuatha and replacing it with a non-thug focused buff would have been depressing.

So I think it's a reasonable compromise. And I can't imagine anyone will think it's OP.

Btw, since Eriu doesn't have both Ris and Tuatha Sorceresses but just Tuatha (as well as making Bean Sidhe cap only) will the forge bonus and chance of an extra earth pick all go on the Tuatha or will you move the forge bonus to Bean Sidhe (making a new unit since EA and MA use the same one)?