Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9

[Nerfix]

The cons, on a quick glanse

- Red Dragon is rather redutant now
- The research bonus on Titaness is just crazy
- Moving Phoenix Power and Earthpower to pathlevel 3....wthex, this completely nullifies the purpose of those spells which bootstrapping Fire 2 and Earth 2 commanders to actually useful magic levels. Now they are there just to bring some slight boost to Falling Fires and Bladewind. But wait, with Dominions 3 research times and changes in the mod it's unlikely we'll see either spell in use ever anyway. Whee.
- Moving Lightning Bolt to Evocation 3 makes early game with Caelum feel like trying to piss blood up the wall.
- Bladewind costing a gem..........WTF. I'm sorry, but WTF. Umor, just make the spell have less effects or damage if it is too powerful but you just made earth utterly useless for combat. What are Agarthans and Ulm going to do in combat now? Or Marverni? Magma Bolts? Star Fires and Farstrike!? You have no idea how many nations you essentially invalidated with this move! Half the amount of the blades, make it do less damage or 99 fatigue instead of the 80 it was.
- Thunder Strike at research level 5? Uhhhh...no. Just make it less powerful if you feel it is too strong. It already has a fatigue cost of 80 so it's not terribly spammable.
- I don't like upping pathcosts for site search spells either
- Seven Year Fever, are you sure an AOE Disease spell that scales with power is a good idea?
- No Raise Skeletons at all?
- Abysians are still old
- ME Marignon has Lion TRibe Warrior instead of Friar in recruitable commanders

Pros

- I like most of the stuff you did to magic items
- Raven Guard Captain! I aprove
- Completely selfish, but I aprove cheaper sky titan pretenders, improved Slime and gemless ward spells

To put this all shortly, you were way, way too eager with the nerf stick but the mod does have interesting ideas. I know this sounds very harsh, but it's the way I feel as of now. I'll be following the development in future since CB for Dom 2 was good, but this one is way too radical as of now.

[quantum_mechani]

- Red Dragon is rather redutant now

Why?

- The research bonus on Titaness is just crazy

It's not, it has to be very high to make you consider leaving such an expensive pretender to research.

- Moving Phoenix Power and Earthpower to pathlevel 3....wthex, this completely nullifies the purpose of those spells which bootstrapping Fire 2 and Earth 2 commanders to actually useful magic levels. Now they are there just to bring some slight boost to Falling Fires and Bladewind. But wait, with Dominions 3 research times and changes in the mod it's unlikely we'll see either spell in use ever anyway. Whee.

I am positive I will still use both spells whenever I have e3 or f3 mages and conj 3, which is usually a high research priority anyway. Graeme does make a good point about Ulm ME, I may have to consider nerfing a bit differntly.

- Moving Lightning Bolt to Evocation 3 makes early game with Caelum feel like trying to piss blood up the wall.

Expanding using mages was not really necessary to start with, try mammoth and wingless.

- Bladewind costing a gem..........WTF. I'm sorry, but WTF. Umor, just make the spell have less effects or damage if it is too powerful but you just made earth utterly useless for combat. What are Agarthans and Ulm going to do in combat now? Or Marverni? Magma Bolts? Star Fires and Farstrike!? You have no idea how many nations you essentially invalidated with this move! Half the amount of the blades, make it do less damage or 99 fatigue instead of the 80 it was.

You may be right that cutting the number of effects would be less annoying to people, but I don't think this change is actually less extreme power wise than half the effects.

- Thunder Strike at research level 5? Uhhhh...no. Just make it less powerful if you feel it is too strong. It already has a fatigue cost of 80 so it's not terribly spammable.

I don't see why the research nerf is worse.

- I don't like upping pathcosts for site search spells either

This is a change I knew would not go down easily. I'm not absolutly committed too it, but I would like people to give it a try before deciding it sucks. I think the benefits from better magic diversity can outweigh the seemingly minor annoyance.

- Seven Year Fever, are you sure an AOE Disease spell that scales with power is a good idea?

Yes, I do, it is still rather hard to use effectivly.

- No Raise Skeletons at all?

Check slightly higher in research.

- Abysians are still old

I consider such matters of thematicness IW's call. However, I am still looking at boosting them in other ways.

- ME Marignon has Lion TRibe Warrior instead of Friar in recruitable commanders

Thanks for the catch.

I hope everyone keeps in mind, as I said in the first post, these are not final changes, they are things to try. Some changes you may find imbalancing, so try them out, and then convince me. Even better, suggest other ways to acomplish the same goal.

[Graeme Dice]

quantum_mechani said:
Graeme does make a good point about Ulm ME, I may have to consider nerfing a bit differntly.

I'd suggest not nerfing it at all. Battlefield magic needs to be able to ensure that a mage can kill, at an absolute minimum, his gold cost in troops, or else you might as well not bother researching it. To be truly balanced with respect to research costs, it should enable a mage to kill many times his gold cost in troops.

You may be right that cutting the number of effects would be less annoying to people, but I don't think this change is actually less extreme power wise than half the effects.

Of course it's a more extreme nerf. For one thing, it means that I would never cast the spell in any battle, ever. It's not like the spell needed it. I would have suggested halfing the fatigue cost on it and most battlefield spells to make them actually worthwhile.

I don't see why the research nerf is worse.

I don't see why any nerf is necessary at all. It can kill a maximum of three troops per turn, for a spell that requires a capital only mage or massive horde of communicants for every nation that can cast it. That means that you need to cast it multiple times a battle for it to pay for itself.

This is a change I knew would not go down easily. I'm not absolutly committed too it, but I would like people to give it a try before deciding it sucks. I think the benefits from better magic diversity can outweigh the seemingly minor annoyance.

It's not a seemingly minor annoyance, it's a game killer. Nor does it promote diversity. What it actually does is restrict the site searching spells to those few nations that have native level 3 path mages. Everyone else gets the joy of manually moving mages around the map.

I hope everyone keeps in mind, as I said in the first post, these are not final changes, they are things to try.

Thing is, most of the changes really aren't worth trying. I can tell just by looking at the spells that I won't be casting blade wind ever, nor will I be casting the site searching spells.

Some changes you may find imbalancing, so try them out, and then convince me. Even better, suggest other ways to acomplish the same goal.

I'd suggest starting from the Dom2 mod, rather than trying to further nerf magic down to useless levels.

[Nerfix]

As for Red Dragon, I can sum it up with two words: Solar Disc.

As for Blade Wind costing gems, Graeme summed up well. What makes you think that having it cost earth gems you must earn and micromanage is less drastic than making it less powerful?

Research nerfs are worse because it eliminates a spell that required a 4+ Air mage to be used more than once, max twice per battle until a high level of research.

EDIT: I also pretty much echo Graeme. Why not just start with porting CB for Dom 2?

[quantum_mechani]

Nerfix said:
As for Red Dragon, I can sum it up with two words: Solar Disc.

The solar disk is quite awful for expanding, you would need at very minimum protection buffs. Those extra provinces you pick up from expanding from turn 2 forward are very important.

As for Blade Wind costing gems, Graeme summed up well. What makes you think that having it cost earth gems you must earn and micromanage is less drastic than making it less powerful?

Well, it's quite obvious why it's less drastic than cutting it's number of effects in half, that directly cuts it's effectivness in half where as this just makes it trickier to use. Given that I'd be just as happy with either nerf, I'm inclined to switch it next version.

Research nerfs are worse because it eliminates a spell that required a 4+ Air mage to be used more than once, max twice per battle until a high level of research.

Thunder strike is an extremly useful spell at _any_ stage of the game. Even ff it were level 9 research I think it would probably still be used on occation.

EDIT: I also pretty much echo Graeme. Why not just start with porting CB for Dom 2?

Very many things have changed since dom2. Many of the most powerful options in the game were nerfed, so the buffs to other options would be overkill.