Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Sombre]

Possibly. But simple enough to not use the mod with the AI if so. I also suspect the AI wouldn't try and build them.

[Alpine Joe]

Qm has done a great job in this mod of making some nations stronger, but there is a lot of work yet to be done on nation balance. I would like to see a balance mod where no nations are clearly much more powerful than others. Ideally, nations like niefelheim, hinnom, mictlan, etc would actually be on par with other nations in terms of strength, rather than clearly ahead. Thus, I'd like to jumpstart a discussion of nation balance by proposing my own list of changes that I feel would do more than provide small power buffs to weak nations, but rather give them a substantial boost putting them on par with the powerhouse nations.
thus here is my list. i welcome disagreement/discussion, and i acknowledge i am not the most experienced of players. Nevertheless, I think some discussion of nation balance is warranted, especially with the removal of gem gens.

EA arcoscephale:
1. Mage engineers recruitable everywhere
2. Oreiads get A3E1N2 default with the extra 110 percent random
3. lower encumbrance on icarids

EA ermor:
1. Augurs get a point in D magic
2. Augur elders get an extra 100 percent F/D/A/S random

EA Ulm:
1. 50 percent random on smiths increased to 100 percent
2. Archers restored to vanilla stats
3. Antlered shamans increased to N3

Marverni:
1. Druids reduced to 300, W random option removed, leaving randoms only S/E/N
2. Axe wielding infantry +1 strength

Sauromatia:
As is

Tien'chi:
1. Master of elements recruitable everywhere
2. Reduce resource cost on archers

Mictlan:
As is

EA Abysia:
1. Warlock and Warlock apprentice recruitable outside of capital
2. Extra point of earth on Annointed of Rhuax
3. Demonbred given leadership 40/Undead leadership 40

EA Caelum:
As is

EA C'tis:
1. extra point of N on Sauromancers, research malus 1 to compensate
2. Serpent dancer cost reduced by 5

EA Pangaea
1. Centaur warrior price reduced by 5
2. Pan reduced to 300
3. Maenad generation rate reduced

EA Agartha
1. Extra E/Element random on Oracles
2. Earth readers 10 Percent chance of extra E random
3. heat 2 preference

EA tir'na'nog
1. Extra point of E on Tuatha sorc and Ri
2. Sidhe warrior price reduced by 3

Fomoria
As is

EA vanheim
1. Dwarven smiths recruitable everywhere
2. Sacred boar cost reduced by 10

EA Hellheim
1. Svartalfs restored to recruit anywhere

Niefelheim
As is

Kailasa
1. Yaksha recruitable everywhere
2. Bandar longbows reduced to 18 gold

Yomi
1. MR on demon troops increased by 2
2. Reduce encumbrance on Dai oni armor by 2
3. Old age removed from sorcerer

Hinnom
As is

Atlantis
1. MR on all "Deep" troops increased to 10

R'lyeh
As is

EA Oceania
I have no idea where to go with this one.....

Lanka:
As is

Feedback on this list? Unless people really hate talking about this, I'll post some suggestions for other ages later. Once again, i only intent this as a starting point for a discussion of nation balance, not as some kind of definitive list.

[Alpine Joe]

Well I tried to avoid making any nation's strongest, iconic mage recruitable everywhere, except kailasa, and maybe that was a bad idea. I can't see anything wrong with making warlock apprentices at least recruitable everywhere, and mage engineers almost never get used otherwise. Svartalfs and Dwarven smiths aren't the iconic mage for either of their nations, IMO.

I don't understand the problem with extra magic paths. They make nations more interesting by adding more options. In EA especially, the more human nations are magically equivalent or weaker than their non-human counterparts, who often come with impressive physical stats, immunities, and other powers. Ermor's frail, old elders should be better at magic than Niefelheim's giants.

Caveat: I am not much of a thematic person, preferring balance over staying true to the spirit. I understand QM's reasons for not touching certain things, and perhaps there should be a separate nation balance mod. However since the thread is for "complete balance," I think this is an appropriate place to have the conversation.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Alpine Joe

Well I tried to avoid making any nation's strongest, iconic mage recruitable everywhere, except kailasa, and maybe that was a bad idea.

That's not really true for EA T'ien Chi eihter. Sure, they have captial only celestial masters, but these are not the best mages you want to recruit. They fly and are expensive, so being capital only is not much of a drawback. If you allow masters of the elements to be recruited everywhere, there's simply no reason to recruit any mage except masters of the 5 elements and celestial masters in the capital, thereby removing 2 units from the game, which is counter to CBM purpose.
Furthermore, I fail to see how this strengthens T'ien Chi. I'm also not sure they need boosting. The cost reduction on archers would let them mass more archers, but would it really help? To me, EA TC is a bless nation. Warriors of the 5 elements will make mincemeat of most other troops but are capital only, so later on, you switch to TC's sacred national summons. The biggest problems EA TC may face early on is Hinnom (fire resistant giants with good mr) or hyper aggressive Mictlan eagle warriors flying above your archers. Where T'ien Chi is weak is late game: They have weak astral and death mages, so must make up by having a good early/mid-game so they can empower or summon better mages. The boosts you propose don't help early on and don't help late-game. Masters of the 5 elements would make T'ien Chi a nation with awesome battlefield magic without need for communions, but I'm not sure they need an armada of wizards to back them in late game.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

If you allow masters of the elements to be recruited everywhere, there's simply no reason to recruit any mage except masters of the 5 elements and celestial masters in the capital, thereby removing 2 units from the game, which is counter to CBM purpose.

There are many, many units that are not recruited and could effectively be removed from the game. Forcing people to use them doesn't exactly make the game better. Unless there's a compelling balance reason to make a unit capital only it should probably be recruitable everywhere. Otherwise you run into the actual thematic problem that no national unit should be recruitable from anywhere that is not the capital (or initial territory) since that's the only place that those troops would be trained.

[Alpine Joe]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

That's not really true for EA T'ien Chi eihter. Sure, they have captial only celestial masters, but these are not the best mages you want to recruit. They fly and are expensive, so being capital only is not much of a drawback. If you allow masters of the elements to be recruited everywhere, there's simply no reason to recruit any mage except masters of the 5 elements and celestial masters in the capital, thereby removing 2 units from the game, which is counter to CBM purpose.
Furthermore, I fail to see how this strengthens T'ien Chi. I'm also not sure they need boosting. The cost reduction on archers would let them mass more archers, but would it really help? To me, EA TC is a bless nation. Warriors of the 5 elements will make mincemeat of most other troops but are capital only, so later on, you switch to TC's sacred national summons. The biggest problems EA TC may face early on is Hinnom (fire resistant giants with good mr) or hyper aggressive Mictlan eagle warriors flying above your archers. Where T'ien Chi is weak is late game: They have weak astral and death mages, so must make up by having a good early/mid-game so they can empower or summon better mages. The boosts you propose don't help early on and don't help late-game. Masters of the 5 elements would make T'ien Chi a nation with awesome battlefield magic without need for communions, but I'm not sure they need an armada of wizards to back them in late game.

I don't really think EA tienchi is a bless nation...... your sacreds are weak against archers and even with F9W9 they lose to most other similarly blessed sacreds (hellheim, mictlan, lanka, Hinnom, Kailasa, ). They have terrible HP in the off-season as well, where they have trouble even with regular infantry.

I also don't really understand your point about masters of the 5 elements...they are too good, but you never use them? They completely eliminate the use of masters of the way? Well, when was the last time you used the F1D1 LA c'tis cap only mage, or the equivalent one for LA agartha? nonmage commanders almost never get recruited as is, losing a lot of thematic commanders simply for not being optimal.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Alpine Joe

I don't really think EA tienchi is a bless nation...... your sacreds are weak against archers and even with F9W9 they lose to most other similarly blessed sacreds (hellheim, mictlan, lanka, Hinnom, Kailasa, ). They have terrible HP in the off-season as well, where they have trouble even with regular infantry.

I also don't really understand your point about masters of the 5 elements...they are too good, but you never use them? They completely eliminate the use of masters of the way? Well, when was the last time you used the F1D1 LA c'tis cap only mage, or the equivalent one for LA agartha? nonmage commanders almost never get recruited as is, losing a lot of thematic commanders simply for not being optimal.

Warriors of the 5 elements are very very underestimated.
EA T'ien Chi blessed beat easily Lankans and Mictlan jags. Against Hinnom they struggle. The point is not to rely on warriors of the 5 elements beyond early expansion however. You've got sacred summons. Demons of heavenly waters are not weak and very easy to get. Demons of heavenly fire with a water 9 bless shoot fire wheels very often. Celestial soldiers rock.
As for archers, there's no reason to send only warriors of the 5 elements. Bring in yoru composite bowmen for support with fire archers and 3 shielded infantry to use as decoys, and you don't have to worry about archers.

Masters of the 5 elements right now are so good that you don't always pick celestial masters in your capital, so you alternate (you want some for their flight + strong paths, the others for the random E2 and N2 in particular). If they weren't capital only, you'd always build them outside your capital, and only celestial masters in your capital. There would be no point in recruiting masters of the dead anymore since you can get D random on the celestial masters, and why would one buy masters of the way if one can buy masters of the 5 elements?

There are many, many units that are not recruited and could effectively be removed from the game. Forcing people to use them doesn't exactly make the game better.

The point of CBM is to make the huge variety of units more usable. The 'Balance' in CBM means units inside a nation are more balanced so you have more reasons to pick under-used units. I don't understand why you'd want to use this mod if you think some units should be removed, as it strives to make more units usable.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

The point of CBM is to make the huge variety of units more usable. The 'Balance' in CBM means units inside a nation are more balanced so you have more reasons to pick under-used units. I don't understand why you'd want to use this mod if you think some units should be removed, as it strives to make more units usable.

I didn't say that I think that units should be removed. I said that some units could effectively be removed, and will always be effectively removed from the game if they aren't worth building. People still recruit theurg acolytes even though theurgs are better mages because theurg acolytes have a useful purpose and are worthwhile. People don't recruit battle deacons, and never will as long as communicants are available. You'd have to make battle deacons free before they would be worth recruiting instead of a communicant. The Alae legionnaire might as well not exist because the hastatus is strictly superior. Reduce its gold cost to match its actual combat performance, and it would become a useful unit.

Yes, masters of the five elements are better than masters of the way, and people would recruit masters of the five elements over masters of the way if they had a choice. This doesn't mean that masters of the five elements have to remain capital only so that people will use masters of the way. It means that should masters of the five elements be made recruit anywhere, then masters of the way would have to be improved to be worth recruiting instead of a master of the five elements.

It's quite clear that balance between nations is the overall goal of the mod. Otherwise nations that have worthless national troops in vanilla like Bogarus wouldn't have been given heavy cavalry that's is virtually identical to tower knights. Your argument that the mod is meant to promote balance "within" a nation is basically nothing more than the argument mod supporters use to convince those people who like imbalance, because they can take advantage of it, to play in the modded game. The CBM doesn't go nearly far enough in making all units viable.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

Warriors of the 5 elements are very very underestimated.
EA T'ien Chi blessed beat easily Lankans and Mictlan jags. Against Hinnom they struggle.

I love both W5E's and lankan kumas and mic-jags. But both your post and micah's post are a little simplistic.

W5E's benefit more than mic jags do from a S blessing as they are more fragile. So a heads up comparison of an F9S9 blessing mics v jags will give skewed results.

Jags have mediocre attack and defense numbers, and have the ability to survive a hit based on on their were form. In fact, their were form is de-rigeur to really get the maximum advantage from the f9 bless (three attacks vs one).

A few other factors: W5E's are very, very susceptible to archer fire. And finally, the key to beating W5E's is killing them first.

You don't use the same tools on every problem. Mictlan will probably be using eagles not jag's agaist the W5E's. Set them far back Hold and attack, and with a priest set to Bless, bless, whatever.

This allows the eagles to get the first hit, offense or defense.
And if you are doing equal GPs, (iirc 15 vs 35?) 10 eagles and a priest vs 5 M5E's and a priest should win 19/20.

Even if you *don't* do it on a gp basis - M5E's are cap only and do not scale.

[Belac]

One thing EA Agartha could use, for balance, I think, is easier research. Its mages get 4 and 7 RP for 120 and 350GP (sacred), which is pretty lousy overall, especially for early era.