Conceptual Balance mod 1.93 released!

[llamabeast]

After a fair few months, version 1.93 of the Conceptual Balance mod is now ready for release.

I haven't called it version 2.00 simply because I haven't done everything on my to-do list for a next major version. However I have been persuaded that more regular releases are a good idea.

This is not a huge release, but it does contain quite a lot of goodies. There are some balance tweaks and bug fixes that the community has been asking for a lot. One of the really big things is that EDM summons have been made harder to summon. Everyone can still have Zmeys if they want, but they're going to have to make a real effort to get them.

There's also some fairly extensive pretender work courtesy of kianduatha, and Sombre's sprite update mod has been incorporated, which makes a real difference to the quality of many sprites (with lots of the new sprites having been drawn by KO himself!). In the realm of new content, the Elemental Royalty have hopefully been made a bit more interesting and powerful, and LA Man has a few new summons.

A full changelog is downloadable below. Here's the short version:

Overview:
- Modified MA Ulm, EA Agartha and MA Agartha to address issues of OP-ness in CB1.92
- Incorporated kianduatha's pretender sub-project
- Incorporated Sombre's sprite update project
- Changes to scales to make scales builds less universally appealing
- EDM summons made generally harder to summon
- Elemental Royalty each given a unique buff, and made a little cheaper to summon (40 gems)
- Fixed various bugs, most notably the "free Ettins" bug. Forging spreadsheet update and all known bugs fixed.
- Minor national changes; LA Man gained some construct summons representing the engineering prowess of the Magisters

[llamabeast]

I expect that inevitably I'll have made some mistakes, so it's probably worth waiting a few days for error reports before starting any mulitplayer games with this mod.

Feedback much appreciated as always!

[Valerius]

Thanks, llama! A new CBM release is always exciting.

This all looks pretty good to me (yay, boosts to the elemental royalty!). I'll have more feedback once I've had a chance to check out all the changes but wanted to get you these bugs ASAP:

* Shambler skin armor still enc 0 (you changed it but then it's referenced again further down in the mod setting it back to 0 once again).

* Ettin still only costs 14 gems.

* Shishis and Roc still only require A4 to summon and Aesir only requires A5.

* Also, the Kraken has gone from W4 to W5 summoning requirement. It's not mentioned in the changelog but I assume that's deliberate?

[Valerius]

There was one other thing I wanted to mention which was that a notable recent success of CBM was making bottom tier nations competitive. I'm most familiar with MA and for a long time there was a good size group of nations that really had problems (I'd put Ulm, Man, Eriu, Machaka and Agartha in this category). And now they're all competitive (ok, maybe a bit too much of a boost in some cases but some fine-tuning is inevitable). So, thanks for that!

[Valerius]

Also, the zmey nerfs appear to be set for only its first, three-headed, shape. Later forms have the old enc, attack and defense values.

[llamabeast]

Thanks Valerius, great feedback!

I'm planning to do a hotfix release on Friday which will address all bugs reported by then. I will probably somewhat nerf LA Man's new Const-1 Automata since they may be a bit crazy.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I'm planning to do a hotfix release on Friday which will address all bugs reported by then. I will probably somewhat nerf LA Man's new Const-1 Automata since they may be a bit crazy.

On the crazy-zaniness scale the colossus falls at least a grendelkin above the automaton. That's essentially what it is, a grendelkin with all the immunities of a mechanical man (and the sieging capability of 4 gate cleavers at half their cost). It is also cheaper and easier to cast.

The colossus should probably have its sumomoning cost at least doubled (perhaps more, I can not honestly say that it is weaker than the much more difficult to summon ember lord.)

The current automata should probably be two or three times as expensive in gem costs as it is. The closest comparison in difficulty to summon is the attentive statue. The statue has more general survivability but the Automata has all the immunities. They're otherwise very comparable. Seen in general utility there's the siege bonus versus a patrol bonus. The siege bonus is much more useful.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I am now planning to reduce the immunities of all LA Man's constructs to 50%. They are largely mechanical, with little magic to smooth their workings. Fire, ice etc. are likely to warp their gears, stiffen their springs etc..

[parone]

as a huge fan of MA Ulm, i was worried about this new cbm. however, i think the nerfing was very reasonable, and even i admit, necessary. forges of ulm will be missed, but it was a little ridiculous. kudos!

[parone]

how do you decompress/unzip the mod once it is in the mod folder?