Tien Chi Conscription

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.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Zen:
IW has a good tract record for trying to fix things; whether or not they think all suggestions are warranted is another matter entirely.

They do, but as you just alluded to, the crux of the matter is whether they agree that TC needs some serious tweaking. I know this has been discussed quite a bit in this forum over the past few weeks, but I don't recall seeing IW weigh in on the matter. If they don't agree, my point about modding any desired changes may end up being the way to go.

Perhaps you'd care to do a Zen mod for TC?

I'm waiting for the full Mod tools before I try to do a Mod. I'd rather be able to do everything than halfway because of the limitations of the Mod Tools.

This is, more than likely, the best way to try to show implemented changes and their effect. Akin to Cherry's Scale Mod.

[PvK]

What you say makes perfect sense, on that topic. This thread was about the detail of Conscription, though, rather than overall TC balance. If that's lacking, it would be more important. I can't comment all that much on Tien Chi balance since I haven't tried them myself yet. A few random things I have seen:

Tien Chi commanders aren't technically the only ones who suffer speed 1 strategic. (Ulmish Guardian commanders, maybe Arco hoplite commanders (?) ... ) But ya it would be good to know IW's reason for this, or else perhaps to change it.

Tien Chi AI came and steamrollered my Arco when I was trying to build up a Natajara SC. They had over a dozen celestial giants of some sort which were quite hard to deal with. Just one example, and it sounds like it may be atypical.

I had a Tien Chi mercenary group of about 20 armored horse archers, and they were very effective with simple Fire orders. They'd kill the enemy with arrows until they arrived, and then kill those that made it through the arrows, in melee. I agree though that like most non-lance/knight cavalry, they would be better with better AI/orders options, especially if there were a way to get them and other light skirmishers to actually skirmish - i.e. harrass with missiles, and avoid (back away from) any melee where they are at a disadvantage.

PvK

Originally posted by Zen:

quote:

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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.

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[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Zen:
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.

Yes. What I *meant* to say, of course, is that they give *good* suggestions (i.e. well-defended, non-earthshattering, balanced ones) consideration. At least that is the way it appears to me.