Conceptual Balance Mod 0.92

[BigJMoney]

I really enjoyed using the CB mod for Dominions II for three reasons: 1) It implemented balance concepts the majority of the community agreed were beneficial, 2) It helped reduce bugginess or other gameplay oversights that were never touched in a patch, 3) It took a few overlooked elements in the game and made them slightly more effective so that people would use them when they would otherwise logically be required to overlook them to be competitive.

I will not be playing with this Doms 3 CB mod, however, and I truly hope that not a single person downloads it merely under the assumption that it will auomatically be as good as the Dom II mod. I hope I can find online games with people who are willing to play Vanilla.

I've looked at the changes, and it seems to me that this time around, we are too hasty to make balance decisions. The truth is that the community is NOT ready for a mod this intense yet. It is far too extensive already. If this mod wants to have the credibility of the last one, I suggest it slow down and be more prudent about making altercations to Doms 3. I think the best example are the scale changes. There is no need, after only mere months of this game's release that anyone has the crediblity to say that Doms 3 scales are not ideal. Now I know that QM, you played in the beta, but I truly hope you aren't going to turn the CB mod into "Quantum Mechani's CB Mod" becuase that's certainly not the mod I want to play.

Most of the changes I see on the list up there are pure opinions that are far to drastic; and yet not even all of the opinions up there I disagree with. I like the idea of a hoof attack, and I think making the growth scale better sounds cool, but those cannot possibly be issues that are ready to be tackled yet.

The only obvious change I see is the barding, and I agree that it's always good to try making some of the spells and items cheaper since it's so easy to simply increase the price of those spells/items again if they prove to be uber. Of course all the bug fixes are welcome.

"*Some site search spells and booster items more difficult to forge/cast, in order to improve magic diversity between nations. As it stands base game, it is not too hard by the time you have level 9 research in a school, to have dom2-like access to almost all paths."

This is a good one too, I suppose, because it works for the spirit of Doms 3, and seems to address an oversight. One reminder I'll throw in here is about all the low-level summons that allow you to branch into other magic paths so easily. (ie. Death)

I hope this isn't taken as a rant, but I want it to be known that I have a hard time taking this iteration of the CB mod seriously with these changes so early on, yet I still think the value of there being a Conceptual Balance mod (not a Conceptual Opinions mod) is indisputable. My $0.02.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[quantum_mechani]

The thing is, when it comes to balance, there is no real objective way to separate what is opinion and what is balance.

Part of the problem I think is that people have played dominions at all different paces. For people who have only played a few MP games since Dom3 came out, the changes can seem very sudden and come out of nowhere. Even worse for those who never played Dom2 MP (where many of the issues changed are carried over from). This is not to say some of the changes here might not indeed be imbalanced, but I don't think there is any greater chance of that than for any given change in Dom2 cb. Infact, I consider it actually easier to balance Dom3, given how much about balance has already been uncovered from Dom2.

I'm always willing to listen to criticism of specific changes, I've already gotten a lot of such feedback and it's been useful for polishing the mod. For the specific issue of scales, that is actually the most popular change among veteran players. I have yet to talk to one who didn't have issue with base game scales, and most of the input about them has actually been to ramp up the changes.

[Cainehill]

Yeah - scales and pretenders were the most popular changes with the Dom2 version, in part because they're the simplest to analyze. I understand that pretenders are now more complicated because of the awake/dormant/imprisoned uber-bless fiasco, but these two areas are still the easiest to make corrections to, imo. With pretenders, there's still absolutely worthless chassis's that no sane player would take in a MP game unless they purposely were handicapping themselves by doing so.

With scales, the base game still has no-brainer choices (okay, _little_ brainer choices, since there are a few nations / setups you might want to veer from them for).