Mod: CBM 1.7 released

[TheConway]

I see a lot of talk about making "houserules" about gemgens. I gotta say that I do not see how those can possibly succeed. I suspect that finding someone willing to take the time to check the turn files is going to be very difficult, and i wouldn't be surprised if people who didn't believe they had a real shot at winning just decided "**** it, they won't check me anyways since I won't win" and ignore the rules. Unlike sickle farming, LAD abuse, or bogus orders, gem gen limits cannot be realistically checked in-game. Therefore I think such "house rules" are doomed.

[TheConway]

Perhaps Zeldor's point would have been better phrased as "then CBM is not for you."

[Finalgenesis]

Nation balancing: LA ryleh

Some more suggestions for discussion:

LA Ryleh has sustainability problems, in any reasonable sized game they hit a point rather soon where they can no longer recruit mages or priest as your population dwindle to nothing, which you need to wring any use out of the chaff. On paper the various ways to help with their income is:

1) Luck - a) inconsistent. b) luck income is hit by your maintenance cost before you can spend them, making most of the smaller luck income event meaningless.

2) Fire gem - Even with alchemy stone if you manage to forge it, thats 13F per mage, 19F without. If you can make this feastible in a clamless game, I salute you.

3) Summon mage - your V spectre cost 25S, has only 4S path with none of the utility you can get out of mage. Their cost reflect their purpose: to make things go insane rather then replace your mages as buffer, battle mage, researchers ...etc. Honestly, it's almost the cost of a golem, or an elemental royalty if you consider wish conversion rate.

Finally, their freespawn chaff have a gold cost of 1, meaning every 15 of them have a 1 gold upkeep. Why do they take upkeep? Maenads don't require upkeep, why are my junkies and crazies asking for gold?

Some suggestions:

1. No upkeep for chaff, hell if it was moddable I'd suggest -2 gold cost for that matter to generate gold and require decision on using them or saving them for gold income.

2. national mage/priest summonable, though I can see various problems and abuse for this. Perhaps a spell to change 10S into 500 gold? So you can actually switch to a gem economy (as LA ryleh certain don't have the choice of gold economy). Your "spell" income would still get hit by maintenance so you want to do multiple casting in one go, the upper limit imposed by gold economy is still there since your spell income gets hit by maintenance before you get a chance to spent it. You'd still be disadvantaged since others get gold + gem economy (or blood+gem), while you can only run on gem economy with "free" chaff to "compensate".

3. Dom summoned cultist can have higher/random paths, currently they can possibly get 1S and abit crazy to boot. I can frankly imagine hedge wizards and witches getting the dreams and turning to your cult, god knows my summoned casters and mermage slaves go bonkers fast enough. With high insanity on them it is already a heavy enough penalty and make marching armies in formation diffioooOOOO shinyyyy!

4. LA National summon spell to call a small batch of random void monsters, more for flavor then anything else. The power of the void grows and the star spawns can now open the gate anywhere given preparation (lab).

LA ryleh strikes me as dripping with theme and oppurtunity to enhance their gameplay (not more powerful, but more different / weird / thought out). The void takes a small role in MA, and supposedly in LA the void has become much more significant, Spawns receive great dream powers (dream of ryleh), their void spectres can be called back and the voice influence sleepers around the world. I could easily see global spell (In the vein of soul gate for LA Ermor and carrion woods for Pan) for ryleh and greater access to void creatures, and other unusual mechanic to make goldless Ryleh work.

[chrispedersen]

Some improvements to Rlyeh are pretty easily moddable.
I'd suggest the following and then reanalyse:

1. replace water only free spawns with with amphibious. Mid+ you have no need for these troops, adn they become cost drain and micromanagement hell.

2. The immovable free spawns should be modded to other cthulu inspired units.

Personally my cbm mod replaced some of them with map move 1 dom spreading units.

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

1. replace water only free spawns with with amphibious. Mid+ you have no need for these troops, adn they become cost drain and micromanagement hell.

Agreed. I also think all freespawns should be 0 upkeep.

2. The immovable free spawns should be modded to other cthulu inspired units.
Personally my cbm mod replaced some of them with map move 1 dom spreading units.

IMO, a rare freespawn that is immobile and dom spreading would be cool. With movement I think it might be to powerful.

On top of that I'd suggest adding a silver mine or something to the capital, so you keep a trickle of gold after population is dead.

[Dimaz]

IMO the whole point of hammers and SDRs is investment, so the idea of adding them at the start sounds really strange to me. In fact, I certainly prefer removing them completely than adding them at the start, as it will only make you scratch your head trying to utilize them most so rushing const will be even more top-priority than with vanilla hammers. Again, as i said, in fact I see no problem with vanilla DH at all, other than few individuals trying to promote their playstyle for everyone else. SDRs are a bit too cheap for what they do OTOH.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Dimaz

IMO the whole point of hammers and SDRs is investment, so the idea of adding them at the start sounds really strange to me. In fact, I certainly prefer removing them completely than adding them at the start, as it will only make you scratch your head trying to utilize them most so rushing const will be even more top-priority than with vanilla hammers. Again, as i said, in fact I see no problem with vanilla DH at all, other than few individuals trying to promote their playstyle for everyone else. SDRs are a bit too cheap for what they do OTOH.

Dimaz, I just caught myself after posting with the exact same thought. However, if I were to choose between infinite hammers and no hammers I'm no leaning towards no hammers.
Imagine for a 2nd that there were items giving conjuration/enchant bonus. Then what, everyone would be forced to forge them. So if everyone forges them then it's the same as if no one forges them but with less MM.
Nations that suffer greatly from no hammers need to be addressed by CBM.
I think I have come a full circle and now am more open to accept the unique hammer change.

[NooBliss]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Dimaz, I just caught myself after posting with the exact same thought. However, if I were to choose between infinite hammers and no hammers I'm no leaning towards no hammers.
Imagine for a 2nd that there were items giving conjuration/enchant bonus. Then what, everyone would be forced to forge them. So if everyone forges them then it's the same as if no one forges them but with less MM.
Nations that suffer greatly from no hammers need to be addressed by CBM.
I think I have come a full circle and now am more open to accept the unique hammer change.

It's not that easy in my opinion. Infinite hammers mean that you can invest some time and thought to improve your forging and get more magic items. No hammers means that you get no such opportunity, thus you have less items.
Thus, nations with blood and/or stronger troops (usually countered by equipping thugs) get stronger while nations such as Eriu get even weaker.

P.S.
Make LA Rlyeh freespawn truly free? Why not make LA Ermor freespawn generate gold as well?

[llamabeast]

It's possible to add new spells that summon a particular unique unit. It's not possible to add new spells that summon one of a set (e.g. a version of Tartarian Gate, or the Ashdod unique summons). If you want one of a set then you have to overwrite another set like Calahan says.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

It's possible to add new spells that summon a particular unique unit. It's not possible to add new spells that summon one of a set (e.g. a version of Tartarian Gate, or the Ashdod unique summons). If you want one of a set then you have to overwrite another set like Calahan says.

For reference, I believe the options for multi-unique summon spells are:

1) The various elemental royalty summons
2) The demon princes (ice, fire, heliophagi, demon lords)
3) The treelords
4) The Lords of Civilization/Grigori (Hinnom)
5) The Spentas (Caelum)
6) The Tlaloques (Mictlan)