Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Psycho

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.

I have to disagree. I play Pangaea, a lot. Over half of all the games is with Pans... Anyway, in vanilla I would be an idiot if I didn't take the Gorgon. Not because I *need* it, but because it is ridiculously cheap, and it would be pure idiocy (or pure role-playing ) to take anything else.

Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.

Just out of curiosity, which is the nation that uses hoburg champion thugs to overrun enemy provinces? I fail to see how any other thugs would benefit against PD's using a two-handed anti-SC weapon (it is my experience thugs usually avoid two-handers like the plague, and prefer Vine Shield + one-hander to take provinces), but I am known to be slightly dim and slow at figuring things out... Hero's Blade is *nice* against big SC's, but even then it is more or less the weapon of a kamikaze warrior (especially if the opponent happens to field a proper army instead of the SC you expected to meet, as without a shield those thugs of yours are just deat meat walking if confronted by a (more or less) "traditional army").

[archaeolept]

Some good concerns there, Psycho. I too am worried about possible unbalancing effects from hero blade; but that remains to be seen.

however,

5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.

20gp may well be too much, as Sauro traditionally depends so heavily on these guys, but equating them w/ c'tis slingers is way off base. C'tis poison slingers have low range, and then tend to rush forward when the opposing forces retreat, right into their own clouds, and then die. I have yet to see this happen w/ Anthrophag archers

[Sombre]

Poison archers also benefit far more from buffs and deal a greater amount of poison damage in my experience. The main difference is the range/friendly fire issue though.

[Stavis_L]

A few miscellaneous question/observations.

1) You specify 2 different cold aura values for Niefel giants, one right after the other:

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 8
#end

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 10
#gcost 600
#end

2) Why remove the Living Pillar hero?

3) Summon Likho cost bump - was anyone actually summoning these? Please do tell? At 2D, I *might* summon one in a pinch as a scout/black-heart chassis...though still probably not.

4) Why the size increase for cyclops + corresponding Tartarians? Is this because of the Hero blade changes?

5) If you want to make the headless hoburg marginally more useful, you could equip it with one of the new hero blades instead of the sword of sharpness it has now.

[Psycho]

@Jarkko: Gorgon has the same starting paths as pans. She will bring almost no magic diversity to the nation. That is why there are many other good choices. As pangaea you especially miss astral. I don't see the Gorgon as being so uber powerful.

I didn't mean that hero's blades will be used to conquer pd. Just that they will make those nations with good thugs even stronger, because in addition to their ability to make huge-scale surprise attacks, they will be much better against SCs.

@archaeolept: OK, probably not a good comparison, but the point remains. Like you said they are Sauromatia's driving force.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Psycho

@archaeolept: OK, probably not a good comparison, but the point remains. Like you said they are Sauromatia's driving force.

And sauromatia is just sooo weak. With these nerfs I just can't see any reason they'd be competive in MP. [/sarcasm]

[Psycho]

Why shouldn't they be competitive and a top nation? I am sure everybody sees Sauro as a very powerful nation and it wouldn't be hard to convince someone into dogpiling Sauro. It could be a problem for a Sauro player if this conviction remained and the nation got nerfed.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Psycho

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.

Actually, this makes more sense than boulder throwing. The crossbow is a compact ranged weapon capable of being fired from one hand and used as a shoot-and-discard weapon for moderate distances. The crossbow saw extensive and preferential use historically by otherwise melee troops because you didn't have to load it before hand, and could quickly drop it after firing to grab your melee weapon. (see accounts of the crusades, for example).

Not needing to be drawn meant it could be used in confined spaces, including inside castle interior spaces (which, let me tell you, aren't any bigger than tunnels most of the time).

So the use of a crossbow by cave dwellers is perfectly sensible, although underground they should tend to prefer more powerful or more compact crossbows with less accuracy over long distances. Joining the surface world could easily have taught them to reload in combat (greater distances involved), volley fire, and the essential aspect of long range accuracy.

edit: Dropped an 'h', stopped making sense

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Psycho

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.

This is a big reason behind cheaper pans.

Originally Posted by Psycho

2) Tartarians -25% hp. I'd rather see reducing their numbers in games, than nerfing them further. I think that increased gem cost would be a better thing to do.

I considered lower gem cost, but I was convinced that would give tartarian troops less of a niche, and make GoH and the chalice that much more critical.

Originally Posted by Psycho

3) Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.

Well, thugs could already holy scourge vs. a very large percentage of SCs. The aim here is to give human-sized nations an option against giant nation's natural SCs, which lack weaknesses like magic being or undead.

Originally Posted by Psycho

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.

LA Agarthan humans use them, and frankly 4 types of troops (all infantry) outside the capital is just not enough troop variety.

Originally Posted by Psycho

5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.

As Arch said, poison slingers are not a good comparison. 20 gold is maybe slightly much, but they were definitely abused at the old CB price.

Originally Posted by Psycho

6) Tomb wyrms got fear - this could be overpowering.

I would be extremely surprised if this were the case- 20d gems for a unit that spawns one per turn.

Originally Posted by Psycho

7) Kailasa capital only mages cheaper, and all sacred troops -5 gold. Kailasa doesn't have money problems, I could always buy all the troops I needed. And besides, their sacreds work better in small groups, you don't need many of them. Reducing prices of celestial summons is what is needed because of the clam nerf.

I could look at the summons too, but gold boosts are always helpful.

Originally Posted by Psycho

8) Naiad Warriors too cheap, could be overpowering.

It's possible... but I can think of very few traditionally strong nations that can make good use of them.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

1) You specify 2 different cold aura values for Niefel giants, one right after the other:

That looks to be a rather nasty bug.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

2) Why remove the Living Pillar hero?

Because he was neither very interesting or very good. Hopefully I'll replace him with something better eventually.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

3) Summon Likho cost bump - was anyone actually summoning these? Please do tell? At 2D, I *might* summon one in a pinch as a scout/black-heart chassis...though still probably not.

This was a request by Baalz. He found the event causing quite severe.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

4) Why the size increase for cyclops + corresponding Tartarians? Is this because of the Hero blade changes?

Yes, because of the blade.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

5) If you want to make the headless hoburg marginally more useful, you could equip it with one of the new hero blades instead of the sword of sharpness it has now.

That is a very good idea.

[kianduatha]

If you wanted to buff Ulm just a little bit, you could make it so that Iron Angels' Divine Grasp attack is bonus, so you can actually equip them with weapons without losing it. As is, even putting on a different one-hander gets rid of it.