Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

Aren't lances one shots?

Shouldn't ermors cavalry have some weapon beside lances?

Check again, as they have Light Lances not Lances, and the former are not one shot like the Lance is. (both get a Charge bonus)

[Soyweiser]

After looking at a game from, I think Executor, I have realized I have been playing blood nations all wrong. I now tend to agree with Calahan. They are way broken. Even more so when you have a Air/Blood nation.

Air gets a fantastic summon that is the best synergy with blood.

Call of winds. Patrol the unrest away, put as many hunters in the province as you want, if the unrest rises, throw more birds at it. You only need one high pop province. (If you manage to get a unrest reducing pretender this is even easier).

I'm also starting to think that blood sabbath is to easy to cast now.

(Edit: being able to start ritual of the 5 gating at turn 14 is surely nice).

[Calahan]

Tbh I haven't played or tested blood hunting under CBM 1.92's new Growth scale settings. But if the sort of results for patrolling pop loss that Executor and Valerius have been posting are true (and I have no reason to believe that they're not), then blood is no longer OP, as now it's just completely f*cked instead.

As if under G3 you can blood hunt any high pop province with insane numbers of hunters for an insignificant pop loss, then that just totally screws any game with a blood nation in it. The income mechanics of blood hunting and patrolling with taxes are pretty fuzzy (your income numbers lie to you), and it's usually the pop loss that's the problem with mass hunting and patrolling a single province. But if that's gone then it appears the sky's the limit. Blood for everyone! and CBM might need to add a few cloned mod nations to meet the demand. Lanka 1, Lanka 2, Lanka 3.

[WraithLord]

Not that I disagree w/ you. I just think it's worth mentioning that blood + gr8 scales get pawned by Armeggedon spam.

I wonder how much of blood's perceived OP actually translates to MP game wins. For instance, do blood nations dominate the HoF?

For reference here's the HoF nation wins statistics:
Early(88.500000)

EA Sauromatia : 10.00
EA Lanka : 8.00
EA Fomoria : 6.50
EA Mictlan : 5.50
EA Caelum : 5.00
EA Niefelheim : 5.00
EA Kailasa : 5.00
EA Ulm : 4.50
EA Helheim : 4.00
EA C'tis : 3.50
EA Pangaea : 3.00
EA Agartha : 3.00
EA Hinnom : 3.00
EA Atlantis : 3.00
EA Arcoscephale : 2.50
EA T'ien Ch'i : 2.33
EA Yomi : 2.33
EA Marveni : 2.00
EA Vanheim : 1.50
EA Oceania : 1.33
EA R'lyeh : 1.00
EA Abysia : 1.00
Nieflheim : 1.00
EA Arco : 1.00
EA Tien Chi : 1.00
Kailasa : 1.00
Yomi : 1.00
EA Rlyeh : 0.50

Mid(85.000000)

MA Pythium : 9.00
MA R'lyeh : 6.50
MA Shinuyama : 6.00
MA Abysia : 6.00
MA Jotunheim : 5.50
MA Pangaea : 5.50
MA Ulm : 4.33
MA Ermor : 4.00
MA Mictlan : 4.00
MA Caelum : 3.00
MA Marignon : 2.00
MA Oceania : 2.00
MA C'tis : 2.00
MA Vanheim : 2.00
MA Atlantis : 2.00
Itza : 2.00
MA Bandar Log : 2.00
Nehekara : 1.50
MA Machaka : 1.33
MA Man : 1.33
MA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
MA Arcoscephale : 1.00
MA Arga Dis : 1.00
MA Ashdod : 1.00
MA Nehekhara : 1.00
Vanheim : 1.00
Man : 1.00
Eriu : 1.00
Abysia : 1.00
MA Abyssia : 1.00
Pangaea : 1.00
Haida Gwaii : 1.00
MA T'ien Ch'i : 0.50
MA Agartha : 0.50

Late(57.000000)

LA Ermor : 10.00
LA Mictlan : 4.00
LA R'lyeh : 4.00
LA Midgard : 4.00
LA Utgard : 3.50
LA Ulm : 3.50
LA Patala : 3.50
LA T'ien Ch'i : 3.00
LA Jomon : 3.00
LA Agartha : 2.00
LA Marignon : 2.00
LA Pangaea : 2.00
LA Abysia : 2.00
LA Man : 2.00
LA Atlantis : 1.50
LA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
LA Pythium : 1.00
LA Gath : 1.00
LA Bogarus : 1.00
LA Marginon : 1.00
Agartha : 1.00
Jomon : 1.00

[Soyweiser]

Lanka is OP because the Dakini are to easy to get. With a awake pretender with high magic + magic 3 you can easily reach blood 6 within year 2. Then switch to blood hunting + patrolling with marakata (yeah, Go Monkeys). Start the Diakini factory. Research misform + cloud trapeze. Or anything else you think will help.

My suggestion, switch the summon Samanishada and the summon dakini spells. (lvl 7 vs lvl 6)

(75 slaves is still pretty affordable)

Or mess with the paths. Currently all the cap only mages can cast summon diakini, as can they themselves. If you want to **** with the nation, make it blood 4, not blood 3. (As is normal, the vampire lords and la ulm vampires cannot summon themselves without boosters, this prevents them from being able to be summoned to early in the game (you need const4 first, or empower, which is also expensive if you have to do it for each factory))

So my lanka suggestion (to make them a little bit "TAH BAST BLLLOOOOTH NATION") switch the research levels on the summon spells around, and make diakini summon spell blood 4).

This takes away a lot of the normal mid game Lanka power. But little of the end game power. (as you will still be able to summon the diakini, but just need to get a booster or empowerment first). It also puts the diakini spell on par with the vampire lords.

[Soyweiser]

Well, as the HoF wins are games with all kinds of mods, this is kind of hard to check. Armageddon spam is also a lot harder now that there are no gemgens.

[Valerius]

Yeah, I'm guessing many of those wins were either vanilla or pre CBM 1.6 so clams are a significant factor. Much tougher now to chain cast armageddon and I haven't seen it cast in quite a while but I also no longer play large games so maybe it's still a factor there?

But even given that context I think B nations are well represented at the top of the EA and MA lists (can't really comment on LA since I almost never play it), with a strong showing by S nations as well in the MA.

Seems to me if you go the armageddon route you can reduce the game largely to a battle of gems but unless you have a decisive advantage in that area to begin with you've only equalized things with the blood nation, not gotten the upper hand (and of course you've poured a lot gems into casting wish in the first place). And if the blood nation has invested in, say, vampire lords, those units still exist and will continue benefiting him.

The funny thing about those stats is MA Ulm with 4.33 wins. Are those all since CBM 1.92?

[WraithLord]

No arguments from me. After all it's clear that blood benefits add up to gem income (and in late game the gold/pop loss is a minor factor).

I'm not sure how this can be balanced.
Maybe make more non B nations uber?- like MA Ulm

On a serious note. Perhaps change the B to gems hidden factor from 2:1 to 3:1?- Or maybe 5:2?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

I'm not sure how this can be balanced.
Maybe make more non B nations uber?- like MA Ulm

AwesomeCBM?

Originally Posted by WraithLord

On a serious note. Perhaps change the B to gems hidden factor from 2:1 to 3:1?- Or maybe 5:2?

I'm not sure I understand you. Do you mean in terms of how things are priced? Personally I've always viewed it as at least a 3:1 ratio in terms of the value of blood slaves to gems but I know 2:1 has been the more frequently used ratio.


These are areas I can think of in terms of balancing blood vs. non-blood.

Boost non-blood nations - This could certainly be done but I'd prefer not to go this route since my preference is to tone down the power level. And also, something nice I've noticed with this release of CBM is a marked lack of "nation x is hopeless" comments which is a really nice change and I don't know that I'd want to start another arms race where people feel their favorite nation now can't compete.

Nerf blood summons/spells - You could do things like have blood summons not have morale 30. I'm open to this but I think there would be considerable resistance.

Blood income - There's only so much you can do here. I guess you could play on low pop maps to inhibit blood hunting and double gold income to make up for the low pop but that's a matter of game settings, not CBM. I will say that even though I said earlier in the thread that I liked the changes to the rate of growth/death scales after seeing how it synergizes with blood magic I think this isn't a good thing.

Blood prices - Probably the most palatable way to make changes and I think you can actually get pretty far with cost changes.


So along the lines of price changes I'll throw out some specific ideas.

Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison - What about making them cost 2 blood slaves again? They were reduced to 1 blood slave with CBM 1.6, which was odd timing as that release also marked the removal of gem gens. I can't see any reason for these spells to have received this buff. Now it's one thing if you're MA Aby and a little over 1 in 4 cap only mages can cast this but if you're MA Jotun and 1 in 4 recruit everywhere mages can cast this out of the box and the other 3 with a single booster ... well that's a different matter. This seems like a pretty reasonable change to me.

Ritual of the Five Gates - increase cost to 30 slaves. This spell really caught my eye when D3 was released. Because it's a mid level spell that let's you summon a group of demons (and so is efficent in mage time) but also because it let's you summon demons that your mages normally couldn't. I especially like it with MA Aby but it's nice for any blood nation. I propose a 25% increase in cost.

Level 9 demon summoning spells - How about an increase from 50 slaves to 65 (a little over 25%)?

I have to say that neither of those proposed price increases for the summoning spells would put me off using them at all. Maybe that means the changes are not enough but I lean towards incremental changes so I don't think it would be a bad start.

[WraithLord]

Yes. I meant pricing.
I like your specific ideas re. pricing. There's something that comes to mind though. For all their strengths the demons just can't withstand opposition using many cleansing bells. Perhaps bells are the perfect counter to demons?