Conceptual Balance Mod 1.84

[llamabeast]

The difficulty with a changelog is that CBM makes thousands of tiny changes, so if such a log is made it is unreadable. CBM is now ~22000 lines long. Lots of stuff, and even if you can "read mod" it is hard to be sure exactly what's been done.

Having said that I will aspire to make a short list of general changes contained within CBM, so that people can understand the general ideas even if the details are not listed. I think that would be helpful. For example:

- Pretenders extensively rebalanced, with many given extra special abilities (always mentioned in the in-game descriptions). Special abilities include spawning of troops, generating gems and automatic in-battle spells (e.g. Phoenix Pyre for the Phoenix).
- Cavalry made more usable - all have a "hoof" attack, with heavy cavalry upgrading to "warhorse hoof". Almost all cavalry made cheaper.
- Gem generators (clam of pearls, blood stone, fever fetish) made into unique artifacts, to reduce micromanagement, turtling and the necessity of focussing strategies around forging them.
- Armor stats rebalanced, with a general reduction in encumbrance for heavy armor. Heavy armor still has higher encumbrance, but now it is at least a net advantage for most battles (consider base-game MA Ulm for a clear demonstration that heavy armour was previously a hindrance).
- New content added for a number of nations, especially weaker nations. Most of the new content takes the form of national spells. Marverni, Agartha, Tir na n'Og, Machaka and MA Ulm are examples of nations which have received quite a few new spells.

... etc.