Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[llamabeast]

How would you go about giving Zmeys fire shield?

Squirrel wasn't referring to the awe on Ris (Tir na n'Og), which was indeed OP. Eriu didn't have that, but Eriu's thugs are indeed available early and very powerful.

I think the problem is that dom3 is basically a game made up of "OP" things. If you have just been hit by a rush of E9N9 Niefel Giants, or well blessed Jaguar Warriors, or anyone using Fog Warriors, or a massive Eriu stealth / cloud trapeze attack, you could say quite legitimately that these strategies seem "overpowered". Luckily there are many opportunities to create overpowered strategies so a good player can generally create their own with any nation.

So, turn 20 zmeys would be really powerful, I agree. I don't really agree that it's more powerful than many other strategies. It does succeed in increasing the diversity of options available to Abysia, which I consider a success. I would be concerned if the Zmey strategy was difficult to counter, even by a skilled player.

Balancing for EDM can be difficult, because the whole point was to correct the lack of viable powerful summons for many of the paths. So if the Zmey, for example, stands out as an exceptional Fire summon, that's because there weren't any before, and that was the problem that EDM was trying to solve.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Squirrel wasn't referring to the awe on Ris (Tir na n'Og), which was indeed OP. Eriu didn't have that...

Yes, we did! It was just more expensive to do the one thug = expansion party strategy than it was for TNN since Tuatha cost more than Ri. The funny thing is in my one game with them I ended up with a horrible start position surrounded by undead, lizardmen and (as an "easy" province) knights. And got attacked early by apostacizing, smiting Ermor. So sometimes even OP things don't work out as planned.

I've heard good things about Sea Kings as thugs but since I usually play thug nations this isn't something I'm looking for. I do like using sea trolls as durable units that can draw enemy fire but it's cheaper to just summon some individual trolls for that purpose. So I think part of the problem is you're paying a high price and may only have need of either the troops or the commander. You could of course have a spell to just summon a Sea King and price it competitively but that might detract from the theme of the original spell. Something that I think would cause this spell to see a lot more use is increasing the Sea King's gem gen from one to two gems per turn. Even if you use him as a thug and he gets killed in a half a dozen turns you've still defrayed the cost of the spell significantly. The main drawback would be creating a gem gen mentality but I don't think 2 gems/turn is enough to cause that.

Zmeys are an interesting unit. I like the idea of monsters without full slots being feasible combatants. They are challenging because with flight and without any need to buff they can attack immediately. And of course they can dish out a lot of attacks. But the lack of slots really is a significant drawback. Actually, the main thing that frustrates me about them is that they often have lychantropos' amulets. Please change the cost of those things to 25 gems - not because they are that great but because it's maddening to keep losing mages to them.

As regards the elemental royalty, rather than make them cheaper I would prefer to keep the price as-is and make them significantly better. Generally speaking, I think unique summons that are available to all nations should be better than the non-unique options as a reward for getting them. As to how they are better, well it could be through combat abilities for some of them (ex. earth king have a large AOE attack like the zmey), useful #onebattlespells for others (ex. AQ autocasts fog warriors), and improving the summoning abilities for others (instead of summoning one unit per turn, summon five, etc.).

Speaking of the cost of summons, what do people think of the cost of angelic summons? Perhaps I'm underestimating them since I never play these nations but it seems like these are kind of pricy in comparison to other options.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Yes, we did! It was just more expensive to do the one thug = expansion party strategy than it was for TNN since Tuatha cost more than Ri. The funny thing is in my one game with them I ended up with a horrible start position surrounded by undead, lizardmen and (as an "easy" province) knights. And got attacked early by apostacizing, smiting Ermor. So sometimes even OP things don't work out as planned.

I've heard good things about Sea Kings as thugs but since I usually play thug nations this isn't something I'm looking for. I do like using sea trolls as durable units that can draw enemy fire but it's cheaper to just summon some individual trolls for that purpose. So I think part of the problem is you're paying a high price and may only have need of either the troops or the commander. You could of course have a spell to just summon a Sea King and price it competitively but that might detract from the theme of the original spell. Something that I think would cause this spell to see a lot more use is increasing the Sea King's gem gen from one to two gems per turn. Even if you use him as a thug and he gets killed in a half a dozen turns you've still defrayed the cost of the spell significantly. The main drawback would be creating a gem gen mentality but I don't think 2 gems/turn is enough to cause that.

Zmeys are an interesting unit. I like the idea of monsters without full slots being feasible combatants. They are challenging because with flight and without any need to buff they can attack immediately. And of course they can dish out a lot of attacks. But the lack of slots really is a significant drawback. Actually, the main thing that frustrates me about them is that they often have lychantropos' amulets. Please change the cost of those things to 25 gems - not because they are that great but because it's maddening to keep losing mages to them.

As regards the elemental royalty, rather than make them cheaper I would prefer to keep the price as-is and make them significantly better. Generally speaking, I think unique summons that are available to all nations should be better than the non-unique options as a reward for getting them. As to how they are better, well it could be through combat abilities for some of them (ex. earth king have a large AOE attack like the zmey), useful #onebattlespells for others (ex. AQ autocasts fog warriors), and improving the summoning abilities for others (instead of summoning one unit per turn, summon five, etc.).

Speaking of the cost of summons, what do people think of the cost of angelic summons? Perhaps I'm underestimating them since I never play these nations but it seems like these are kind of pricy in comparison to other options.

Tend to be grossly overpriced, but I'd have to go through each of them individually =P

One battle at a time...

[Shangrila00]

Without clams, pearls are too valuable to use on summons. If by some freak accident, you end up with more pearls than you need for forging, they are pretty nice with a good bless though. Though Pythium/Marignon don't tend to have good blesses.

[Mightypeon]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Tend to be grossly overpriced, but I'd have to go through each of them individually =P

One battle at a time...

The Angel from Blood for Mari is quite usefull, it opens paths and needs B and not S.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Generally speaking, I think unique summons that are available to all nations should be better than the non-unique options as a reward for getting them.

I absolutely agree 100%; the Eroyals and Archdevils should not compare badly to stuff added by a mod that is across the board easier to summon.

The unique stuff should be the baseline, not tarts, if tarts are still too strong address them, not everything else...

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

Umm, I have one in a test CBM 1.92 game right now with F1, although, I admit, I'm not sure what the chance is.

That's quite lucky as they only have a 10% chance of getting fire magic. I've tangled with them a fair amount and I don't think I've come across one with F1.

Originally Posted by Nightfall

I absolutely agree 100%; the Eroyals and Archdevils should not compare badly to stuff added by a mod that is across the board easier to summon.

The unique stuff should be the baseline, not tarts, if tarts are still too strong address them, not everything else...

Well, I think you have to balance the EDM summons against tarts because they fill the same category: non-unique summons available to all nations. If they aren't competitive with tarts then you'll end up with the same old "must get Chalice/GoH in order to spam tarts" mentality. So, I'd say balance those summons against each other (and make non-unique national summons competitive as well) and then look at making the unique summons special. I think you have a bit more leeway with unique summons because even if they become a bit over the top their numbers are limited so it's unlikely to throw balance off.


On a different topic, I've been thinking about some of the magic items that have been made unique. Some are very good as unique items (dwarven hammer is the one that comes to mind), others not really. In a current game I finally got around to forging the unique SDR, more out of pity than anything else. I guess maybe if you reached Constr. 8 and your only blood access was from something like a lamia queen it could be useful at that point but other than that... So what about giving it boosts along the lines of what was done with owl quills? The drawback is that thematically you'd really be forging them for the secondary ability rather than the primary but I think it's worthwhile in order to make them useful as a unique item.

[Nightfall]

On a completely unrelated note, I don't think I've seen anyone ever use a vampire queen...

Has anyone suggested upping her base dominion to 3. It's a small change that might make her a little more viable?

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

On a completely unrelated note, I don't think I've seen anyone ever use a vampire queen...

Has anyone suggested upping her base dominion to 3. It's a small change that might make her a little more viable?

Many proposals have been made to make the VQ playable. Including that exact proposal. None of them have been implemented.

I think a viable VQ is just too unpalatable for the Dom2 vets who remember when she was (too) good, so now she's doomed to suck forever.

[Shardphoenix]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

On a completely unrelated note, I don't think I've seen anyone ever use a vampire queen...

Has anyone suggested upping her base dominion to 3. It's a small change that might make her a little more viable?

Wouldn`t this make her a "default" pretender for LA Ulm?
Immortal, thuggable, with vamp freespawn and both needed paths... Maybe, a domscore of 2 would be enough?