Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Festin]

The tread is actually about CBM, so I will try to be brief, so that we can concentrate on discussing possible mod suggestions

If you hire mages at all your castles every turn, and continue castling aggressively, you should get most variations you need.

This does not really solve the problem. Sure, if I hire a huge number of mages, eventually I will get all the needed combinations - and end up with scores of nearly-useless high-upkeep mages.

First, your god doesn't *need* to do anything for you except provide good scales.

IMO, Jomon absolutely needs death on their pretender. Without death, they will miss one of the best thugs in the whole game, and their late game will be completely unimpressive. Nushi is _not_ an option for death access, because it is difficult to summon, and, far more importantly, comes far too late. Ghost General is Conj 4, and as Jomon I would want to mass summon them ASAP. Not to mention the amount of death gems Jomon will have available using this approach. Forget Dai Oni, I am not sure Jomon will even have enough for some generic late game summons.

You have summonable thugs capable of raiding, you have good battle magic especially in earth and astral, and you have solid troops. You even have mages capable of casting Wind Guide and Flaming Arrows (F2 + Phoenix Power + 3f gems - so keep an eye out for good indie archers).

Sure, Jomon has all these options. In addition, it has good national SCs, powerful amphibious troops, great flying shapeshifting water mages, etc, etc. Too bad most of these options are best described as "hypothetical". I mentioned communions because this is one of the precious few things Jomon can _reliably_ access.

So, to keep this constructive
Jomon as it is, in my opinion, is flawed in several ways. It has access to very, very intersting things that can make this nation unique, competitive and just fun to play. But Jomon practically cannot use most of them. I would accept the mage-frustration thing by itself without any problems - lots of nations have problems with their mages, and they should compensate for it somehow, it is part of a game. But in Jomon's case it is a part of a greater picture. Heavy armor, bad randoms, no death, weak starting army, no underwater access, etc - all these things combine in a way that cripples the nation and ruins its great potential. Remove a few of these, and then players will be able to either compensate for the nation weaknesses, or accept them and boost the strong sides instead. This is the usual approach with most nations.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Festin

The tread is actually about CBM, so I will try to be brief, so that we can concentrate on discussing possible mod suggestions

This does not really solve the problem. Sure, if I hire a huge number of mages, eventually I will get all the needed combinations - and end up with scores of nearly-useless high-upkeep mages.

....

I'm not about to go through all the possible path combinations to tell you what they're useful for. Suffice it to say that most of them are good for something, and you do need researchers after all, so even the few 'bad' combinations aren't actually useless. There are lots of great spells available at X2 for most paths, and quite a few at X1Y1 or X2Y1. Once you get some boosters you can cast 80-90% of the spells in the game. Most nations *cannot* say that.

IMO, Jomon absolutely needs death on their pretender. Without death, they will miss one of the best thugs in the whole game, and their late game will be completely unimpressive.

...

No. In fact, Death is among the *last* things I would want on my pretender. Nushi -> Kolkythiad -> Lich -> Tarts gets you all the death you could ever possibly want, and the early steps don't even require d gems!

Nushi is _not_ an option for death access, because it is difficult to summon, and, far more importantly, comes far too late.

Conj 5 being late is hilarious, considering most pretender achieved D-access is acquired at conj 5 or 6 (lamia queens, streams from hades)

Ghost General is Conj 4, and as Jomon I would want to mass summon them ASAP. Not to mention the amount of death gems Jomon will have available using this approach. Forget Dai Oni, I am not sure Jomon will even have enough for some generic late game summons.

Ok, first of all, ghost general (like dai oni) is a yomi/shin summon that you are *lucky* to still have access to.

Second, you have your own perfectly good thug summons at conj 2 and 4 that don't require death.

Third, you will never have the d gems that early to mass ghost generals. You might get one, maybe 2. You'd be better off saving those d gems for something you actually need.

If your pretender is awake so you can get d-income that early, your scales aren't good enough. Jomon lives or dies by its scales. Then you consider sites in LA are often fairly rare, and you're really wasting your pretenders time if all he's doing is site searching and casting thug summons.

Sure, Jomon has all these options. In addition, it has good national SCs, powerful amphibious troops, great flying shapeshifting water mages, etc, etc. Too bad most of these options are best described as "hypothetical". I mentioned communions because this is one of the precious few things Jomon can _reliably_ access.

When i said summonable thugs i meant the e/s ones that are actually Jomon's, not the shin/yomi summons that jomon happens to have access to.

Jomon does not have national SCs really - it has access to shinuyama's SC summons (which is, in turn, a yomi recruitable). Its lucky to even have that as an option. Not being able to predictably use it should not be interpreted as a Jomon disadvantage - they only have access to it because Shinuyama has it. It was never intended to be cast by them.

So, to keep this constructive
Jomon as it is, in my opinion, is flawed in several ways. It has access to very, very intersting things that can make this nation unique, competitive and just fun to play. But Jomon practically cannot use most of them. I would accept the mage-frustration thing by itself without any problems - lots of nations have problems with their mages, and they should compensate for it somehow, it is part of a game. But in Jomon's case it is a part of a greater picture. Heavy armor, bad randoms, no death, weak starting army, no underwater access, etc - all these things combine in a way that cripples the nation and ruins its great potential. Remove a few of these, and then players will be able to either compensate for the nation weaknesses, or accept them and boost the strong sides instead. This is the usual approach with most nations.

... the starting army can expand just fine with some recruits - it is by no means especially weak.

They have everything but death, and all you need is a swamp to bootstrap up death in a real way. You won't need death magic until the endgame, so...

Kappa provide UW access. Also Naiad warriors, which you can easily summon, or happening across merfolk/shambler towns.

Basically, stop whining about things that Jomon doesn't do well when it was never intended to do those things well. Look at what Jomon actually does well instead - there's quite a lot. Not having easy access to death magic isn't exactly the end of the world - plenty of good nations don't have access to it, and Jomon can bootstrap into it *without* using precious pretender points!

[Illuminated One]

Instead of linked randoms why not make the master shugenya for example 2e1n + 100%fawen and somewhat more expensive. Or even make that a copy, so the player can choose if he wants to recruit the new or the old one(s) (i.e. you could theoretically have 5 versions, giving the player the decision over his magic).
This could produce quite powerful combinations reliably while you still need to balance them against the cheaper s2 + 200%fawen mages.