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October 15th, 2004, 07:02 PM
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First Lieutenant
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 771
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Zen,
I love a lot of the changes. Here are a couple of I am a couple of questions about :
1. Soul Vortex. The new cost makes casting it from a wraith lord or a vampire lords very difficult. I assume this was the idea. However I now have a hard time thinking of why Wraith Lords are worth 40 gems ( perhaps the immortality is worth far more than I give it credit for ).
2. False Horror. I guess this is sufficient. I don't know. It's still not too hard to spam the crud out of them if you are Caelum. But perhaps that is more of a Caelum problem than a problem with the spell cost.
3. Love the Bane Lord fix. However I *do* use him for his leadership  Not like it matters 15 gems is perfect.
4. Wrathful Skies/FireStorm/Battlefield spells. I'm still drawn to these spells even with the current costs. More play testing will be required ( and I will try to start one this weekend ) but I think that people will still attempt to blow armies up at this cost. Perhaps the requirements have to be boosted across the board for all battle field spells by 2 or so making them pretender only ( basically ). They are all far more powerful than the Shimmering Fields/Nifel Flames/FireSomething yet they are lower on the tech chart and they have similar requirements ( but lower gem costs it is true ).
5. I think that the angels may whomp on humans a little too much, but I think that the change is ( over all ) much for the better.
I have no other negative observations. This Mod is, IMO, fantastic. You have done a bang up job. I mean that. And no, I'm not sucking up I really think that you have done some good work here.
There are now so many good spells and so few less than useful spells it's freaking great.
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October 15th, 2004, 07:17 PM
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Lieutenant General
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bavaria , Germany
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Zen said:
I've been in situations where any global go up was brought down in a matter of a handful of turns, regardless.
I've also been in a situations where certain globals have stayed up much longer than I feel it should and am pulling my hair out that people are letting them stay up.
So with the variability of this I don't have the personal experience to adjust them one way or the other (the exception being Purgatory which is, to me, less of a game factor).
If you have suggestions, reasoning and such, please post them. As I said before this isn't just a pure "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" type of mod, I'm looking for reasonable feedback to create a better sense of balance. I just merely took the first step.
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Did you talk after the game with the players ?
I just brought up a thread asking about ppls favourite global strats cause i am curious as well .
So when ppl brought down globals always i guess they wasted at least quite some amounts of gems by dispelling .
There is at least 1 global that you should change imo :
The forge of the ancients .
Maybe i am blind but i didn't find a weapon mod so far . So if you already modded artifacts then sorry  .
But with forge : If you play a blood nation and can bring up the forge of ancients with the current bloodstone EVERY B2 mage can forge a bloodstone .
Abysia / DF marignon can even forge a few bloodstones with their mages with good randoms .
If they time the forge a bit they will be able to forge 20-30 bloodstones / turn in midgame .
So if the opponents don't react immedeately and the forge is up only 3-5 turns Abysia / Marignon DF / Mictlan will have already 50-200 bloodstones .
Then they can bring the forge up again almost 1:1 in cost vs. pearls .
I remember that you wanted to change clams + fetishes to higher requirements that they can't be massproduced so much anymore .
So if you keep the Forge of Ancients as it is then you need either to make bloodstones harder to forge as well ( Maybe B5E ) or change something with the forge of ancients .
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October 15th, 2004, 08:53 PM
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Sergeant
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Forlì, Italy
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
A little typo in the pretender mod. Asynja is described as having air magic but now she has no more air.
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October 15th, 2004, 09:25 PM
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Second Lieutenant
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 510
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Boron said:
Abysia / DF marignon can even forge a few bloodstones with their mages with good randoms .
If they time the forge a bit they will be able to forge 20-30 bloodstones / turn in midgame .
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That is either quite a lot of slaves saved ahead of time for this purpose or an immense empire being bloodhunted dry, but no matter - assume the slaves are available. Even with the half-price FoA, the price to get 20 bloodstones is a respectable 200 slaves - enough to cast Astral Corruption, summon a Demon Lord, several Ice Devils, 28+ Storm Demons or to forge five FoA soul contracts for that matter.
Quote:
So if the opponents don't react immedeately and the forge is up only 3-5 turns Abysia / Marignon DF / Mictlan will have already 50-200 bloodstones .
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Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.
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When I said Death before Dishonour, I meant alphabetically.
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October 15th, 2004, 10:37 PM
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Second Lieutenant
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Join Date: Sep 2003
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Peter Ebbesen said:
Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.
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This seems an odd thing to say. A lot of nations aren't likely to have either an Astral 3 mage for dispelling, or enough of their own gems lying around to overwrite a Forge.
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October 16th, 2004, 05:36 AM
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Second Lieutenant
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Join Date: Jan 2004
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Truper said:
Quote:
Peter Ebbesen said:
Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.
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This seems an odd thing to say. A lot of nations aren't likely to have either an Astral 3 mage for dispelling, or enough of their own gems lying around to overwrite a Forge.
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Honestly, I was thinking that people would cooperate immediately to get it dispelled. Admittedly, I have only played MP in games with few people rather than the 10-17 big games, but Forge of the Ancients is something like the ultimate war declaration since anybody who has it up for a significant amount of time is quite likely to win the game due to his access to cheap path-boosters, construction of most of the artefacts not already made, good weapons and armour, much that you could not even forge before FoA - it all adds up to greatly enhanced power. Under the standard rules, Fever Fetishes (everybody), Clams (W1), and Blood Stones (B2) are just one aspect of its power, and I find Blood Stones to be the least abusive of the three as it requires a specialise mages (no random sage is going to do this), still has a non-negligible cost even with FoA, and the output (gems) cannot be converted to its input (primarily slaves) easily.
It is one thing to argue that Fever Fetishes/Clams of Pearl should be more restricted because they can provide an easy ramping up of power from the very beginning of the game due to reinvestment and low pathcost; it is another to argue that Blood Stones should be restricted because they become economic to make when one of the best global enchantments in the game is in play.
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When I said Death before Dishonour, I meant alphabetically.
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October 16th, 2004, 07:59 AM
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Corporal
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.
This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.
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October 16th, 2004, 08:25 AM
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Second Lieutenant
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Join Date: Jan 2004
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.
This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.
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Unless somebody else has filled out the fifth slot or the FoA was taken down by another FoA rather than a dispel... I grant you that it is possible, but, honestly, I don't see that the danger of somebody using FoA to forge 80 bloodstones for 800 stored bloodslaves (enough for 20 Soul Contracts under FoA to put the price in perspective, or even 80 Lifelong Protection, for those who want to swamp the opposition with imps in battle LOL) and 80 B2 mage-turns of work (at least two rounds given the size of the magic item repository) is great enough that it should warrant making the bloodstone even harder to acquire in general.
If somebody does manage to pull it off, the more power to him. The fact that something can potentially pay off very well under the right circumstances is not in itself justification for preventing it from happening.
__________________
When I said Death before Dishonour, I meant alphabetically.
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October 16th, 2004, 08:42 AM
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Lieutenant General
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bavaria , Germany
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.
This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.
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Yeah .
And with dispelling it requires some effort .
If you play in a game with 10-15 ppl and are at friendly relations with 2-3 while most others are engaged already in a war i think the chances are not bad that the forge stays up some time .
You still have to invest something like 60-80 pearls for the dispel attempt normally at least normally .
On turn 30-40 the forge is normally cast first .
If you are a clamhoarder (Pythium , Arco , Atlantis , Ryleh) you have probably an astral gem income of 15-40 .
If you are another nation your astral gem income though is probably much lower and used for forging .
So the chances are normally really good that your forge stays up a few turns cause at this stage of the game probably a lot of players don't want to invest a still rather big amount of their gem income to dispel the forge .
For a forge cast with 120 gems ( = 40 extra ) you could forge 7 2/3 dwarfen hammers or cast e.g. 6 times enliven statues / 8 times mechanical men .
Especially the items which cost only 5 gems are nice with the forge cause they only cost 2 gems then .
As i said if you are a blood nation then you forge as quick as possible as many bloodstones as you can .
Then you have probably soon higher earth gem income then others have pearl income .
Blood + Forge is imo Abuse .
On turn 30-40 when the blood nation first casts forge it has normally already a bloodincome of 100-200/turn so really enough to forge lots of stuff + profit from the forge immediately .
A nonbloodnation has probably not enough resources to profit from the forge when it is up only 1-3 turns but a blood nation has .
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October 16th, 2004, 07:39 PM
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Lieutenant Colonel
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Gilbert, AZ
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Boron said:
I remember that you wanted to change clams + fetishes to higher requirements that they can't be massproduced so much anymore.
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Clams and fetishes were meant to be put on commanders so they could carry a few gems with them to battle when needed. I say you higher the cost so they don't get mass produced and give them a bonus so they are worth carrying and so they are still worth building for the higher cost. The clam could be like 15 water, +2 MR... Fever Fetish 10 fire 5 death, +2 fear? something like that? I dunno.
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