Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9

[Boron]

Nerfix said:
I'm not sure if culling some of the most obscenely overpowered stuff in Dom 2 really counts as "masochistic", especially when the mod boosted some unused stuff. I especially liked the changes to Sabbath and Hellfire. The Wraith Sword thing might come close.

I did not say i disliked the mod.

But some changes were somewhat questionable at least, like the low morale blood summons like devils and fods. They felt unthematic.

The tartarian price increase was also a bit much, because you needed GoH or the Chalice to fully abuse the tartarians.
And the additional cost for GoRing your tartarians was also there.

But >90% of the changes were excellent, and it improved mp a lot .

But balance is always to some degree subjective too.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
Graeme said it is more MM to directly sitesearch, but imho directly sitesearching with a mage requires about the same effort as sitesearching with the remote 1 path search spells, maybe even less MM.

If you want to sitesearch with a mage, you have to move him to a province, then remember for the next turn that he should search that province. You have to plan out a route that leads him to each province without having to backtrack over a province he's already been to, and then you don't even get to find all of the sites in the province. If you use spells you press shift+M, cast the spell, then ignore that mage until he stops casting it. The second is a lot more fun than the first.

- Troops might become too useless by this change.

By the time you've spent several thousand gold researching level 9 spells, troops should be mostly useless compared to mages, or else there was no point in spending that gold to research. Dom2 had the right idea about magic balance. DOM3 goes a little to far towards the AOW2 example, where your magic doesn't matter much compared to yor troops.

Graeme said that a mage has to be able to kill more troops than his cost, but imho this is not really true. Mages have other uses too. If mages with some research kill easily troop armies, then troop armies have no niche.

The majority of mages have absolutely no use beyond killing troops and researching. You need a half dozen mages at most for all of your ritual and forging needs, several dozen for researching, and the rest should be on the battlefield making up for the gold cost that all those researchers are costing you by killing large numbers of troops.

But in general at least in early and midgame it seems more rewarding in Dom3 to try a combined arms approach than it was in Dom2 were spending gold on troops almost felt like a waste of money.

And why would that be a bad thing? You have to make troops useless at some point, or else all the game becomes is wack a mole with armies. The most boring Dom2 multiplayer games I've been involved in are those with very difficult research and low magic. You spent the entire game pushing an army around without ever being able to force your opponents army to stand still in a pitched battle.

[quantum_mechani]

I must admit to being utterly confused by claims that magic has become underpowered. I would be absolutely astonished if someone could win even a mid sized blitz without investing in mages.

People seem to think a lot of things were overnerfed, and are now useless. So here is my question, what is what too useful now, what are the overpowered strategies that let you win with little thought? As I said before, it makes little sense to try to boost everything to the level of the very best options, rather than meeting halfway. It would be like trying to boost every troop to the power of helhirdlings.

I would also like to point out the limiting of magic by nation is just tying up the loose ends of what IW wanted anyway. If they were aware how easy it still is to diversify magic, and felt motivated to tweak it, it's quite likely they would make similar changes.

Oh, and after looking at Nerfix's buggy save, I'm very baffled. I made no change to vine arrow, or even tangle vines. My guess is that due to some bugginess with the new spell modding, one or several of the aoe changes for other spells somehow got onto vine arrow. Tracking down such an issue is going to be extremely difficult.

[Nerfix]

Magic is not underpowered per say if you ask me, people just propably have hard time getting used to Quickness not affected spells. This is why I feel that further nerfs to spell aren't needed since we the heyday of quickened lightning bolts and skeletonspam are gone.

If I'm made to look with the "magic is weak" perspective I see that some spells are IMO too high up in research tree in the base game. Boil, especially Boil, Cleansing Waters and Pillar of Fire. Elementals could be made gemless spells now that it's just plain impossible to see recreations of the Caelian Air Elemental Spam. The non-damage spells also tend to be overshadowed by damage spells, but I think your changes to False Fetters, Bonds of Fire etc. are very nice.

I think that when it comes to modding balance we have two different aproaches. If I for example want Raptors to use the Caelian Seraphs & Lightning Bolts aproach less I make the Seraphs 1 A 1 W 50% Air and give Raptors something lucrative in other research trees than evocation such as actually usable national spells in Alteration or Enchament.

If I think that some of the summons are truly too strong I take away a bit away from that edge of the summons and give national units some interesting abilities that synergize with the nation and see how things go. If these moves are too much or too little, tweak.

I see you've tried the meet in the middle aproach I would use but I've found your aproach too restrictive and radical so far, especially with magic, even if there are good things. But I'm really unhappy how you've managed to invalidate nations with strong or even moderate Earth as combat magic users and how you removed Marignon's ability to bootstrap Which Hunters to Fire 3 which was few of their saving graces IMO.

I must congradulate you for your productivity with the mod though, and I like the changes you made to some spells like Boil and Bonds of Fire. I also like the changes to magic items.

I'm not sure if IW would have wanted these changes either. I'm not sure if invalidating diversity for nations is a good idea, and the changes to sitesearching spells just trade gems for time and microing and thus are just frustrating changes in my opinion. I don't also see what would be so bad in ending with a diverse empire after conquering large areas and *investing* in diversity. At least you can't bootstrap a blood economy from a mage with a Sorcery random like you could in Dom 2 and I don't expect to see Caelian Ice Devils without a mix of luck, empoverment and investement.

What comes to my mind immediatedly as overpowerful is the Order-Misfortune-Death scale pattern and some of the blessables, namely Helhirdlings, which you toned down. The *mix* of Water & Fire blessing is also very deadly even if the two aren't so deadly alone. Good yes, but not so hugely powerful as together. What I'd like to see here is Order getting a *MODERATE* reduction in power and Growth and Luck made more lucrative with Death and Misfortune conversely made less lucrative. Another issue is that some nations have practicaly only old mages like MA & LA Abysia and Pythium...could we please, pretty please with a Void Cherry on top get Anathemant Salamanders and Theurgs that won't kick bucket because of bad luck?

Regarding my savegame I thought that javelins out of all things could also be bugged...did you mod javelings? I forgot.

[Zen]

A comprehensive Mod of Scales and Pretenders only is going to be coming out if not today, then by monday.

It won't include the spell, nation, or other portions since Pretenders have eaten a bit of my time due to the Awakening feature, Sacreds under a heavy gold enviroment (especially those that are usable under heavy Sloth for free points for Double blessing), plethora of points and really balancing scales with their new features and creating reasons to actually take different scales.

For example, the new gold events haven't really changed the Luck scale, but it has made it easier to uncouple it from the Order scale.

"These arn't the droids you're looking for."

[Nerfix]

That sounds good.

I must apologize if I came out very harsh sounding. Smashing the mod around wasn't my intention if it came out as such but I just wanted to vocaly point out features I dislike. i'm going to try the 0.91 out.

[quantum_mechani]

Nerfix said:
Magic is not underpowered per say if you ask me, people just propably have hard time getting used to Quickness not affected spells. This is why I feel that further nerfs to spell aren't needed since we the heyday of quickened lightning bolts and skeletonspam are gone.

If I'm made to look with the "magic is weak" perspective I see that some spells are IMO too high up in research tree in the base game. Boil, especially Boil, Cleansing Waters and Pillar of Fire. Elementals could be made gemless spells now that it's just plain impossible to see recreations of the Caelian Air Elemental Spam. The non-damage spells also tend to be overshadowed by damage spells, but I think your changes to False Fetters, Bonds of Fire etc. are very nice.

I think that when it comes to modding balance we have two different aproaches. If I for example want Raptors to use the Caelian Seraphs & Lightning Bolts aproach less I make the Seraphs 1 A 1 W 50% Air and give Raptors something lucrative in other research trees than evocation such as actually usable national spells in Alteration or Enchament.

If I think that some of the summons are truly too strong I take away a bit away from that edge of the summons and give national units some interesting abilities that synergize with the nation and see how things go. If these moves are too much or too little, tweak.

I see you've tried the meet in the middle aproach I would use but I've found your aproach too restrictive and radical so far, especially with magic, even if there are good things. But I'm really unhappy how you've managed to invalidate nations with strong or even moderate Earth as combat magic users and how you removed Marignon's ability to bootstrap Which Hunters to Fire 3 which was few of their saving graces IMO.

I must congradulate you for your productivity with the mod though, and I like the changes you made to some spells like Boil and Bonds of Fire. I also like the changes to magic items.

I'm not sure if IW would have wanted these changes either. I'm not sure if invalidating diversity for nations is a good idea, and the changes to sitesearching spells just trade gems for time and microing and thus are just frustrating changes in my opinion. I don't also see what would be so bad in ending with a diverse empire after conquering large areas and *investing* in diversity. At least you can't bootstrap a blood economy from a mage with a Sorcery random like you could in Dom 2 and I don't expect to see Caelian Ice Devils without a mix of luck, empoverment and investement.

What comes to my mind immediatedly as overpowerful is the Order-Misfortune-Death scale pattern and some of the blessables, namely Helhirdlings, which you toned down. The *mix* of Water & Fire blessing is also very deadly even if the two aren't so deadly alone. Good yes, but not so hugely powerful as together. What I'd like to see here is Order getting a *MODERATE* reduction in power and Growth and Luck made more lucrative with Death and Misfortune conversely made less lucrative. Another issue is that some nations have practicaly only old mages like MA & LA Abysia and Pythium...could we please, pretty please with a Void Cherry on top get Anathemant Salamanders and Theurgs that won't kick bucket because of bad luck?

Regarding my savegame I thought that javelins out of all things could also be bugged...did you mod javelings? I forgot.

First off, I'm not trying to eliminate magic diversifying, just slow it down a bit. In fact eliminating diversification, if someone wanted to, would be a whole other huge project. Slowing it down was exactly what IW was trying to do, but they missed some loopholes. I wouldn't venture to say the rest of the mod follows any particular plan of theirs, but making nations more magiclly diverse was a clear goal.

Anyway, I realize path level changes can be pretty annoying for players used to certainn strategies, so in the future I will try to substitute less invasive nerfs.

And no, I didn't mode javelins.

[Nerfix]

Alright then.

The problem must be Vine Arrow as I witnessed more subtle but nevertheless buggy behaviour with it in my 0.91 test game as early Tien. It hit an unit in one other square and entangle and unit in other square, missed totally my square once but still entangle an unit in the middle of it. So odd.

[Truper]

QM: please explain what you mean by "loopholes" as regards achieving magic diversity.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

If you want to sitesearch with a mage, you have to move him to a province, then remember for the next turn that he should search that province. You have to plan out a route that leads him to each province without having to backtrack over a province he's already been to, and then you don't even get to find all of the sites in the province. If you use spells you press shift+M, cast the spell, then ignore that mage until he stops casting it. The second is a lot more fun than the first.

Yes, but this currently only works if you use only 1 mage to sitesearch (or has it been improved with patch 3.01?).
But usually you want to search more than 1 province per turn with your remote sitesearch spells.
Voila, you have a lot of annoying MM too because you have to remember which provinces you already searched too. And you could try to futher optimise by starting with those provinces which have the highest chance to have a site.

Graeme Dice said:

By the time you've spent several thousand gold researching level 9 spells, troops should be mostly useless compared to mages, or else there was no point in spending that gold to research. Dom2 had the right idea about magic balance. DOM3 goes a little to far towards the AOW2 example, where your magic doesn't matter much compared to yor troops.

The majority of mages have absolutely no use beyond killing troops and researching. You need a half dozen mages at most for all of your ritual and forging needs, several dozen for researching, and the rest should be on the battlefield making up for the gold cost that all those researchers are costing you by killing large numbers of troops.

And why would that be a bad thing? You have to make troops useless at some point, or else all the game becomes is wack a mole with armies. The most boring Dom2 multiplayer games I've been involved in are those with very difficult research and low magic. You spent the entire game pushing an army around without ever being able to force your opponents army to stand still in a pitched battle.

I neither want overpowered armies.
But currently in Dom3 battlemagic is imho still strong enough to eventually become dominant compared to troop armies.
After all most of the spells are still the same as in Dom2, some got some minor range nerfs by Illwinter, but at least in early era mages are more powerful as compensation.

Spamming stuff like magma eruption or falling fires still kills most national troops nicely and cost effective imho.

So the current mod left aside do you think that in dom3 vanilla magic is too weak now or do you think it is still useful enough?
Imho it is still the latter, but because armies are now a bit longer viable the game gets usually more varied.