Tien Chi Conscription

Originally posted by PvK:
Balancing the various themes of Tien Chi is a different matter altogether.

PvK

Well perhaps I just look at it a different way. If the Base and Themes of a race is determined to be sufficiently out of alignment enough to need a balance change, then it moves logically for me to look at the improvements that are common to all themes and improve them while retaining the original intention.

Since Conscription is only Order based and is only usable by the base nation, it's priority is low, though it's intention was to provide more thematic flavor. If Conscription is changed not to balance the nation (which it will be regardless, every nuance impacts it, even in the slightest degree) then it has to be looked at and possibly adjusted later if the commonality between the base and themes is changed to put it in better 'balance'.

I agree that something should be done to Conscription at some point and time, as it is just something that you don't consider when choosing your nation. And if Peter's suggestion is implemented, fantastic. But I would rather have the entire nation viewed for balance before Conscription and if the Developers feel it's needed, adjust it, then adjust Conscription to fit that vision of balance.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Arryn:
To Zen and fahdiz, I was not suggesting it as a solution, but as an option. I think people in this forum are becoming far too quick to jump on others for the slightest perceived "flawed thinking", no matter if they use smileys or not.

My apologies if you felt I was "jumping on you". In reading your post, I thought you were suggesting the Ashikaga mod as a *replacement* for TC - and not just in your own games, either.

Glad we got that cleared up, and I'm glad you didn't mean what I thought you meant.

Looking forward to more discussion of conscription, balancing, and TC.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Zen:
But I would rather have the entire nation viewed for balance before Conscription and if the Developers feel it's needed, adjust it, then adjust Conscription to fit that vision of balance.

What would be some of your suggestions for TC balance, Zen?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
My apologies if you felt I was "jumping on you".

Glad we got that cleared up, and I'm glad you didn't mean what I thought you meant.

Thanks. I can readily see how it could be viewed as other than I intended. I would never propose, nor view kindly anyone else's proposal, that an integral part of a game, no matter who's game, just be scrapped. Not even some of the stuff in MOO3 ...

Looking forward to more discussion of conscription, balancing, and TC.

I think we can have all the discussions we'd like, but that IW probably doesn't view TC as 'broken' and in need of fixing. I suspect that if they did, they'd've done something about it by now. So anyone who feels that a change is needed will just be told "that's what the mod tools are for".

A few suggestions at current I believe for Base TC are:

Give all their Commanders 2 Movement or modify the statistics to reflect being the slowest leaders in the game (no other commanders have mv 1)

Give the Celestial Master +1 Astral, either adjust the cost or change the paths to fit it in.

Adjust the gold and/or resource cost of the standard heavy troops of TC.

As of right now they have terrible long weapon units (Glavies and Lightly Armored Pikes).

I'd have to wait and see exactly what the effects of the new and improved HorseArcher orders of Fire and Attack, which will hopefully fix that particular aspect. It might have more of an impact on balance than I could say.

Change the Celestial Servant and Celstial Soldier's paths to cast to be able to be summoned without having to rely on Random picks.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Arryn:
I think we can have all the discussions we'd like, but that IW probably doesn't view TC as 'broken' and in need of fixing. I suspect that if they did, they'd've done something about it by now. So anyone who feels that a change is needed will just be told "that's what the mod tools are for".

Well, I am not experienced with Dom II yet (darn demo is all I have right now) but I do know that game balance - especially in a wargame this deep - is an ongoing process. There isn't any way the developers can test every scenario themselves, and thus the community of players (and this forum in particular) has a great deal to do with presenting things to the developers they might not have seen/thought of before.

Patch 2.08 is soon to arrive, and there's no sign that patches will be grinding to a halt after its release. Furthermore, it seems to me (from reading a lot of the threads in this forum) that Illwinter is a very "populist" developer - that is to say, they appear to take all suggestions quite seriously.

In my opinion, something doesn't need to be completely broken in order to be in need of a little bit of tweaking. TC is probably viable, but could be more so. Again, I'm speaking from gaming experience as a whole, not from specific experience with Dom II.

[ February 16, 2004, 02:26: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

IW has a good tract record for trying to fix things; whether or not they think all suggestions are warranted is another matter entirely. I couldn’t say that any or all of the suggestions people give would even get the attention the original poster desires, but if you provide a good argument it would be hard to imagine they wouldn’t.

Some things are just outside of the realm of possibility at current and other things they are just stubborn about.