Balancing the blesses

[Sombre]

I actually like Borsuk's idea about precision. It would make sacred battlemages a lot more interesting, that's for sure.

I also agree that the bonus you get at blood9 is pretty silly. I'd prefer to see something like a watered down blood vengeance based on morale or mr (obviously watered down quite a lot).

[thejeff]

The blood 9 bless is one of the worst. It's a little more useful if you apply it to one of the cheap mass-produced sacreds, flagellents or jaguar warriors (are there others?), instead of the standard expensive capital only units.
Still probably not worth it, though.

I wouldn't use Air on Shadow Vestals. They're ethereal and have shields. Arrows aren't a great threat. Again that's for the cheap unshielded sacreds, so they can survive to close and do damages. Astral's the same way. Practically doubles the lifespan of a flagellent, does almost nothing for giants.

Death does work with arrows, so I'd assume it works with spells as well. I had fun with W9D9 Ancestor Vessels. 2 volleys of affliction & fear causing arrows a round until they reach your lines, then they still face serious heavy cavalry.

Fire is nice, but it isn't always the best. With the heavier units, survivability is more important than more damage, so Water, Earth and/or Nature dominate.

I think they're pretty well balanced. At least they all have uses, even if some are more niche than others.

[B0rsuk]

Death bless and arrows
Does it really work ? I mean, you can perforate light infantry anyway. As for heavies, especially with shields, they're not likely to get more that 2-4 damage anyway. We know affliction chance is based on damage dealt compared to creature's max health. So 2 damage arrow isn't very likely to cause an affliction. How much does death compensate for this ?

Replacements for Blood9
1. I'd call it Pain Mirror. It would work much like Blood Vengeance, except it mirrors damage instead of redirecting it. Sacred unit still takes damage, it's just likely to cause automatic harm to attacker.

2. Hp increase ! For example max(3, totalhp/5). It would be roughly +15 percent extra health, or +3 hp, depending on which is higher. It would feel a bit like Earth bless, except it would help against some spells/poisons more. In cases where totalhp/5 is more than +3, it wouldn't matter much anyway because big high hp creatures usually have low protection.

3. How about Rotting instead of Curse/Horror Mark ? It wouldn't work at all against many creatures, but would cause serious harm to most living creatures.

Gandalf: unless it's a Horror Mark, Shroud of the Saint wouldn't be of much use on an assasin. I think regular Curse really isn't all that scary on a regular commander, or even priest or mage. He's not likely to go into melee.

Maxwilson: very interesting research. Also thanks for the Python code, I'm trying to learn the language because it puts fun back into programming for me.

Keep in mind that Fire/Death damage probably interacts much better with multiple attacks, because each attack gets +6 damage. As far as I know +1str = +1 damage, potentially.
Also, some of weapons have'strenght of the wielder not added' property. This is actually quite common. All kinds of sacred animals and cavalry have hoof, bite, peck etc attacks. Then there are strange wieldable weapons which don't benefit from extra strength. (20+6ap Lance is an overkill...)
Why is Sling a 'strength not added' weapon, anyway ?

Is the Lance wasted if it doesn't hit ? If true, Fire bless would be even more valuable.

I think that Fire reacts especially well with Water. Fire is a synergy with itself. Water is +50 percent attacks on average, and each of these attacks will get +6ap.

I would look into Earth bless, too. How about
+4 for units with 15+ protection total
+5 for units with total prot between 10 and 15
+6 for units with total prot between 1 and 10*

* total 0 prot means the unit doesn't wear any armor so Earth bless won't help.

[Endoperez]

Sling is a "strength not added" weapon because we there's no #clear command for weapons, and when I had time I didn't have Edi's list which shows all units armed with slings. I'd have modded it a long time ago otherwise.

#selectweapon 22
#clear
#name "Balearic sling"
#dmg -2
#att -2
#ammo 15
#range 33
#end

If I could remove the "strength not added" tag (e.g. with a non-existant #clear tag), this would do str-2 points of damage, so 8 (instead of 9 the sling currently does) in most cases. Enough experience would add to damage, the +str spells would add to damage, and the range is long enough to make slingers useful against archers.

As it is, the most I'll be able to do is a Jotun Slinger. In fact, I'll do that. You better go check the mods subforum.

[Sombre]

For those who don't check the mod forums, here's a mod that puts the strength based sling into the game. No Jotun slingers in this one though.

It's attached. Enjoy :]

[Sir_Dr_D]

Wouldn't a death bless because of the increased infliction chance be deadly against SC's and giants?

[MaxWilson]

I don't know about "deadly." It does increase the amount of protection a given SC needs against his attackers but even a quadrupled chance of afflictions doesn't matter if you can't damage him in melee in the first place, so it's a deterrent but not an absolute one. Except, I haven't played any MP. Do people feel worse about an afflicted SC than they do about a dead one? It might give you a psychological advantage.

-Max

[Baalz]

B0rsuk said:
Death bless and arrows
Does it really work ? I mean, you can perforate light infantry anyway. As for heavies, especially with shields, they're not likely to get more that 2-4 damage anyway. We know affliction chance is based on damage dealt compared to creature's max health. So 2 damage arrow isn't very likely to cause an affliction. How much does death compensate for this ?

[

Oh yeah, it works pretty good. If you have 400% affliction chance, then that 2 points of arrow damage to a 10 hp human is an 80% chance of an affliction.

[Velusion]

Good info in this thread!

[Xietor]

Death bless afflictions would be pointless against Pangaea. Depends on who your friend(s) is playing as well i think.

And even with Man, by mid game the bulk of my armies are KOA(heal afflictions) and longbows(do not heal but harder to target with mage).