ABM (if I can figure out how to make that work ).

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Are you going to remove old age altogether? If not, what kind of commanders will you leave old?

Generally, I favor incrementalism. Many nations top line mages have specific references to old. All of those nations remained old (iirc) for thematic reasons.

In general however, many nations had 'acolytes'. None of the acolytes contained text saying old - and yet many of them were.
So I believe I removed old age from all acolytes.

I don't believe many people build them, but they might be someone more attractive now.

A few nations were old where I thought it was unthematic. Abysia's slayers are no longer old. Sorry, they idea of a geriatric assassin (stay put while I gum you to death)...

Also, a few nations where I thought they shouldn't be old, where alreadly very strong, so I did not change the nation. The idea to my mind is to increase balance, as well as make units and spells that are not currently viable, more so. So anyway, for this reason nations like EA-Mictlan - a low tech, low lifespan nation, did not get old age tags removed.

Generally, the nations affected are in the readme.

I also *do* like the idea of removing old age entirely, however I figured old age was part of the general balancing act and hence removing it entirely was not appropriate for a balancing mod. However someday I may write an "old age" mod where all old age is removed. A golden time of magic, indeed.

How did you change Black Bull and Blindfighters?

Black bull had a bug in CBM that gave him stats and text from the fenris wolf (or vice versa). I merely removed the bug.
Blind fighters had 8 levels of air, the numbers were juxtaposed. I merely changed 8 1 / 1 8 ie., giving them one level of holy.

Are Cat Charm, Fires from Afar and Seeking Arrow now at the same research level they were in vanilla, or did you make them available earlier? No manual, no game, can't check myself.

Cat charm I restored to vanilla level. Fires from afar and seeking arrow I did not change level - I lowered the casting cost.

Seeking arrow got 1 gem cheaper, and fires from afar now costs 4 fire gems.

It is my general thought that Astral and death schools are the strongest. Air is pretty good. Water, Nature and fire are somewhat weak.

But additionally, I would like to see additional options open up for play. Much of the current game focuses on summons, magic item construction, SC's, and in some cases globals. I'd like to make using magic on a strategic level a more viable option.At 10 gems I think there was no serious use of fires from afar; certainly not in the mid game.