Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

[Morkilus]

I'd like to see a revisit of the Dom2 CB idea of lesser summons showing up sooner on the resource tree. Also, perhaps archers should be more expensive than infantry (in gold, not resources). After all, it takes more skill to fire an arrow than to run around in armor and get hit with arrows. I often find myself only hiring archers after I get a couple good tanks to protect them, and this just doesn't feel right.

[FrankTrollman]

Lord of War is economic for Marverni IMO. But it isn't that great on stats, magic etc etc.

If your Earth wants to be 6+, a Cyclops costs less points.

If your Fire wants to be 4+ (or 3 with a Dominion of 4+), a Forge Lord is cheaper.

If your Nature wants to be 2+ and you want a Dominion of 4+, a Lord of he Forest is cheaper.

All three of those titans have better stats than the Lord of War and some have better abilities as well. If you weren't interested in stats, then a Great Enchantress is chepaer for almost any set of magical picks and generate magical income.

I have no idea what Maverni could be doing that would involve a Lord of War being economical for anything. It's just a bad god.

-Frank

[FrankTrollman]

Water Magic:

I find Water Mages to be annoyingly useless under water early in the game.

Solution: Why not have Water Strike available at Evocation 0? The indeps are using it from the start of the game, why shouldn't player armies do so as well?

-Frank

[PDF]

Huhu, what about nerfing Horror Mark ?

Else :

Agreed on excessive nerfing/cost of VQ.
All the new big "Greek Pantheon" gods are very costly and not that great.
I'm still not convinced with the "human" pretenders, yet they now have the advantage of being easily awake, so it needs more testing/discussion.

Both Air boost items are now A4, it's really hard to have mages able to make them. It means you need base A4 to be able to progress, it's too harsh a requirement. I'd make the Winged Helmet back to A3 and let the bag A4.
All other path have at least one lvl-3 boost or less (including those requiring dual-path).

I have issues with Bless effects, but these aren't moddable...

About archers, it's not that logical that lowly goblinoids make as much damage with a bow that a human or better - after all the bow effectiveness is related to archer strength and skill, as well as bow quality isn't it ?
So why not split the current "bows" in 2-3 categories with different range, prec and damage ?
For example Short Bow could be "inferior" with 8 dam/rg 25, standard at 10/30, or superior at 11/35/+1 prec.

Thus the too-easy hordes of cheap archers will at least be less effective that better, more expensives ones.

Issue is that I'm not sure we can *add* weapons in mods ?

[Zen]

PDF said:
Huhu, what about nerfing Horror Mark ?

Waiting on the first patch to see if this is done for me. If not it will have to be moved on the research tree and cost evaluated.

Issue is that I'm not sure we can *add* weapons in mods ?

Yes, you can. Which is a big part of nation balance. The only command that doesn't work and hasn't for a while is the number of attacks.

[Nerfix]

FrankTrollman said:

If your Earth wants to be 6+, a Cyclops costs less points.

If your Fire wants to be 4+ (or 3 with a Dominion of 4+), a Forge Lord is cheaper.

If your Nature wants to be 2+ and you want a Dominion of 4+, a Lord of he Forest is cheaper.

All three of those titans have better stats than the Lord of War and some have better abilities as well. If you weren't interested in stats, then a Great Enchantress is chepaer for almost any set of magical picks and generate magical income.

I have no idea what Maverni could be doing that would involve a Lord of War being economical for anything. It's just a bad god.

-Frank

Um, no. Lord of War is 75 points cheaper than Forge Lord or Cyclops. At least the last time I checked. =|

[Nerfix]

FrankTrollman said:
Water Magic:

I find Water Mages to be annoyingly useless under water early in the game.

Solution: Why not have Water Strike available at Evocation 0? The indeps are using it from the start of the game, why shouldn't player armies do so as well?

-Frank

Also, move Boil to...like Alteration 2 or 3 and make it Fire 2 Water 1 or perhaps Water 2/3 Fire 1. An underwater only combat spell that has awkward paths and appears at Alteration 6? No thanks.

[FrankTrollman]

Um, no. Lord of War is 75 points cheaper than Forge Lord or Cyclops. At least the last time I checked. =|

It sure is. However, a Forge Lord has an extra point of dominion and a point of Fire Magic. If you have a Fire Magic of 3, that costs your Forge Lord 24 points and your Lord of War 98 points. If you have a dominion of 4 it costs your Forge Lord 7 points and your Lord of War 21 points.

So that's 156 points of Forge Lord and 169 points of Lord of War.

And if the Lord of War gets anything else, the Forge Lord can get it for the same price or less.

It's cut and dried. The Lord of War is crap.

-Frank

[UninspiredName]

I'll second the Vampire Queen and Corpse Eater being boosted, as well as making the seniors take longer to die. Also perhaps have Old Age work by the percentage of the 'in his prime' time period, due to the also-aforementioned '51(50)/1001(1000) issue. Fire boosting aging would probably be much less of a problem itself if aging worked reasonably.

Seduction also feels like it doesn't work nearly often enough. I could swear it's literally impossible to seduce an enemy with the Oriad, though I haven't gotten the chance to try with Succubus. Some even consider it a glitch. Perhaps also add a way for such characters to improve their seduction ability.

EDIT: Also, not sure if this applies, but I could swear the AI will always go for you first before fighting other AIs. Doesn't really make sense.

[The_Tauren13]

A fiend of darkness is about equally strong as a devil. Which is effed up, seeing that devils take a better mage, are more expensive, and higher research.