Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Shangrila00]

I disagree. It's a needlessly complicated and circular means of achieving balance that will inevitably never do so. The original goal was making high bless builds less dominant. If that has succeeded to an excessive extent such that low bless/pure scales are now too good in comparison, the way to balance that is to step back the original changes, not make completely separate changes to nerf scales. The former can achieve balance with just a few tries, the latter never will as the unrelated changes will have knock on effects on everything else, leading to further imbalances that if corrected with the same philosophy will only end in an endless spiral of imbalance.

[Deathjester]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

I disagree. It's a needlessly complicated and circular means of achieving balance that will inevitably never do so. The original goal was making high bless builds less dominant. If that has succeeded to an excessive extent such that low bless/pure scales are now too good in comparison, the way to balance that is to step back the original changes, not make completely separate changes to nerf scales. The former can achieve balance with just a few tries, the latter never will as the unrelated changes will have knock on effects on everything else, leading to further imbalances that if corrected with the same philosophy will only end in an endless spiral of imbalance.

So.. you're saying balance can never be improved?

Close the thread!

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Deathjester

So.. you're saying balance can never be improved?

Close the thread!

Learn to read.

[Valerius]

This raises the question of why the changes to scales were made. If they were made only to impede bless builds then I can certainly see the logic of going back to the 7/3/3 increments for order/production/growth. With anti-rush counters available I don't think that would be a problem from a balance perspective. But I thought it was also intended to make each scale (especially production) be of value and break the typical pattern of order/sloth builds (even in cases where a heavy bless wasn't involved). And I think the changes were successful in doing this. So regardless of which approach you take (of toning down scales or reverting to the previous setup or a similar one) is the idea of making each scale valuable an idea worth keeping?

[Shangrila00]

Honestly, I don't see how the scale changes from vanilla affect bless builds at all. I assumed you were talking about buffs to particularly weak nations that used to be prime targets for a bless rush, a few spells given lower research requirements, and some regular troops buffed so they were useable giving an alternative to sacreds for more nations.

I think the idea of making each scale valuable is worth keeping, and further has nothing to do with the viability of high bless builds. For that matter, I can't think of any high bless nations that no longer find a high bless attractive, except maybe Ashdod and that's due solely to specific nerfs to that nation's sacreds.

[Valerius]

No, you're right, I was talking about those kinds of changes - but also about how they interact with scales. You pay a price for a strong bless. And that cost has gone up, in particular with the changes to order/production. At the same time there are more counters to rush attempts. Taken together, this decreases the appeal of a strong bless. Long term I think the approach we're talking about (scales + magic diversity and possibly a light bless) is optimal for most nations. If it's also clearly optimal short term then I think you'll start to see a lot of the same builds. Note that I don't think this is a balance issue. I'm thinking only in terms of keeping a variety of approaches viable since it makes things more interesting.

As I mentioned, I think it's good that nation's have a chance against a rush attempt so I wouldn't want those changes undone. But in order to reduce the opportunity cost of taking a heavy bless I thought it might make sense to tone down scales a bit. It's worth noting that I tend to be in favor of making small changes and seeing how they play out and I thought that's what this suggestion was but based on llama's comment perhaps that's not the case.

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Valerius

No, you're right, I was talking about those kinds of changes - but also about how they interact with scales. You pay a price for a strong bless. And that cost has gone up, in particular with the changes to order/production.

See that's the problem. How has the cost of a strong bless gone up scale wise? The cost of tanking order and the short-run (and thus most relevant for very heavy blesses intended to win quickly) cost of tanking growth have gone down. The cost of tanking production has gone up. That hurts Mictlan, but is anyone going to argue that high bless is no longer attractive for Mictlan? Lots of Bless nations have sacreds sufficiently resource intensive that they never could tank production: for them the cost of a strong bless has actually gone down.

[kianduatha]

Okay, there are two problems; One is that growth is too powerful at the moment. Granted. There are two ways to make that disappear: revert the changes and make it 3% income/0.2% growth, or make it 1% income/0.3% growth. The second is that scales in general are too powerful it seems, particularly Turmoil/Prod/Growth/Luck. How much of that is due to Growth being too awesome? If Growth is taken down a notch, will that still be overpowering Order/Misfortune?

In addition, pretender changes are on the horizon, which may affect the scales/bless/awake SC balance a bit. I have to say, awake SCs are looking mighty fine with some of the level 0 item buffs.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

See that's the problem. How has the cost of a strong bless gone up scale wise? The cost of tanking order and the short-run (and thus most relevant for very heavy blesses intended to win quickly) cost of tanking growth have gone down. The cost of tanking production has gone up. That hurts Mictlan, but is anyone going to argue that high bless is no longer attractive for Mictlan? Lots of Bless nations have sacreds sufficiently resource intensive that they never could tank production: for them the cost of a strong bless has actually gone down.

The point about growth is very good - short term it costs less to take death but you'll pay for it long term. A good trade-off.

As regards order/production, if turmoil was taken as frequently as sloth in order to get points then I'd be inclined to agree but that hasn't been my impression. If you're not offsetting turmoil's hit to income by taking luck that's a very high price to pay. Previously the easiest way to get points (not just for a bless but for an awake pretender) was sloth. The same hit to income as death but without the long term effects. The price is a slower start until you grab a province or two to boost your resources. While sloth 3 can be pushing it, I think a lot of nations can get away with sloth 2 (a few examples from MA would be Van, Pan and Jotun). Now, none of the nations I mentioned have first class sacreds and I'm not claiming a heavy bless was ever an optimal strategy for any of them - but it was a viable one. And for those nations (all of whom happen to be blood nations and don't really want death) paying for a bless has become more expensive. It's worth keeping mind that if you are taking the bless primarily for commanders (as is certainly the case with Van) then as long as you can get through initial expansion you won't be too worried about dealing with sloth. A different example is playing MA Aby with an awake PoD and using sloth to help pay for it (the idea being to basically ignore my high resource troops and jump directly to blood magic).

But again, I like the changes to scales. My idea was just to reduce the gap between good and bad scales.

Originally Posted by kianduatha

Okay, there are two problems; One is that growth is too powerful at the moment. Granted. There are two ways to make that disappear: revert the changes and make it 3% income/0.2% growth, or make it 1% income/0.3% growth.

I definitely prefer the latter. Makes growth different from order/prod as a scale you take for long term benefit.

Originally Posted by kianduatha

The second is that scales in general are too powerful it seems, particularly Turmoil/Prod/Growth/Luck. How much of that is due to Growth being too awesome? If Growth is taken down a notch, will that still be overpowering Order/Misfortune?

My guess is that it will, because it strikes me that the key thing is that prod offsets most of the income hit from turmoil while luck keeps generating the same boosts as always (I think someone ran some tests at one point comparing the long term results of order vs luck - and that may have been vanilla where luck isn't as good as CBM).

Originally Posted by kianduatha

In addition, pretender changes are on the horizon, which may affect the scales/bless/awake SC balance a bit. I have to say, awake SCs are looking mighty fine with some of the level 0 item buffs.

Good point; might be best to leave scales as-is and see how they interact with the pretender changes. After all, it's not like the current scales are causing huge problems. My main concern was that it will get a bit dull if we start seeing mainly scales builds.

[Shardphoenix]

Looks like I`ve found a bug in Worthy Heroes.
Member of the Third Tier, LA Ulm`s multihero has only one chance at showing up in his WH form (2F 3S 3B not old), and sometimes even this doesn`t happen, so even the first one comes as non-WH (2F 2S 2B old), and any subsequent Members of the Third Tier will be non-WH too.