Two new MODs from me

[apoger]

>You're assuming that no other nation will take luck 3 in your comparison there.

No I was comparing Pangaea under standard scales and Panagea under my mod.

The common Panagea strategy is to attempt Turmoil-3 Luck-3 for the extra luck events. Right now it's near unplayable due to the way luck is handled.

Even though my turmoil offers no extra events, I'm telling straight up that my mods Pangaea will be much better off due to the differnce in how I do luck scale.

Hence your complaint that "Now you've effectively told Pangaea that they shouldn't bother using their standard theme" is a load of crap. In fact they are better off under my mod.


>You're assuming that no other nation will take luck 3 in your comparison there.

If you insist on comparing to other nations, then Pangaea can take Order, Luck, or other scales just as easily as anyone else. This has no bearing on anything.


Honestly Graeme, I'm weary of this childish nonsense. For the final time I will quote:

"Please keep in mind that this mod is just my interpretation of how things should be. If you disagree and want to ignore it, by all means go back to the standard game. It's your game, play the way you want."


And that's all I have to say to you.

[ January 15, 2004, 03:26: Message edited by: apoger ]

I wouldn't want you to go hog wild with the precision, though certainly a few *minor* tweaks here and there. You also don't want to lessen the fact of Nature (eagle eyes) or Air (Aim) low end spells so they are no longer as impacting as they are now.

Edit: You should also stop fighting about the Mod that hasn't even been released. I have reservations yes. I have things I'm going to be looking at when I test it. (The least of which is pick these 'themes' that the balance wasn't keeping in mind) But I can't say anything now other than conjecture. I hope Alex has been able to use Luck to Balance out his hypothetically overwhelming Order (or in this case Turmoil) but I have to be in game to see.

[ January 15, 2004, 03:37: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by apoger:
[QB] >You're assuming that no other nation will take luck 3 in your comparison there.

No I was comparing Pangaea under standard scales and Panagea under my mod.

You still haven't fixed the problem though, as order 3 is still more useful to them than turmoil 3.

The common Panagea strategy is to attempt Turmoil-3 Luck-3 for the extra luck events. Right now it's near unplayable due to the way luck is handled.

I'll reiterate that luck 3 is not supposed to be a standard part of Pangaea, turmoil 3 is.

Even though my turmoil offers no extra events, I'm telling straight up that my mods Pangaea will be much better off due to the differnce in how I do luck scale.

That's of course if Pangaea takes a luck scale. They gain no special benefit from doing so compared to other nations, so why should they bother?

Hence your complaint that "Now you've effectively told Pangaea that they shouldn't bother using their standard theme" is a load of crap. In fact they are better off under my mod.

If luck is able to overcome a 45% relative reduction in income to order 0, then you've almost certainly made luck too powerful. It doesn't depend on the quality of the rest of your economy, just the number of provinces you own, so it will likely be better than order 3.

>You're assuming that no other nation will take luck 3 in your comparison there.

If you insist on comparing to other nations, then Pangaea can take Order, Luck, or other scales just as easily as anyone else. This has no bearing on anything.

Right, Pangaea can take order and lose a good part of their Maenad production. The point is that Pangaea is "supposed" to take turmoil,

Honestly Graeme, I'm weary of this childish nonsense. For the final time I will quote:

"Please keep in mind that this mod is just my interpretation of how things should be. If you disagree and want to ignore it, by all means go back to the standard game. It's your game, play the way you want."

And that's all I have to say to you.

Ahh yes, the old. "You don't have to play it if you don't want to." copout that's used whenever someone points out that your "balance" isn't really balanced, except to your particular style of play. The problem is that you refuse to accept that spending points on a pretender should be every bit as valuable as spending them on dominion scales. I'd like to see your rationale for how spending 275 points to get a green dragon to level 9 nature is going to be as effective as spending those points on order and prod 3. Remember that for it to be close the berserk, regeneration and nature spells must overcome a deficit of roughly 80 gold and 70 resources per turn from the capital province alone.

[Jasper]

Wow. This mod is so bad it isn't even worth trying out. All it does is punish those who take negative scales, and reward those who take positive scales. Clearly the best choice is to put all points into scales -- far more so even than in Dom 1. 120 pts for +45% income? 120 pts for ludicrous population growth? Would anyone ever take less?

Alex, I know you like the idea of powerfull scales, and prefer low or even no magic pretenders, but do you honestly think this leads to any balance or variety?

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

---

"Please keep in mind that this mod is just my interpretation of how things should be. If you disagree and want to ignore it, by all means go back to the standard game. It's your game, play the way you want."

And that's all I have to say to you.

Ahh yes, the old. "You don't have to play it if you don't want to." copout that's used whenever someone points out that your "balance" isn't really balanced, except to your particular style of play.

---

Well it is a mod Graeme. I really think that given what you have said you don't want to play the game the way Alex does - ie more like Dom1. Sure the balence is way in favour of dom scales and thus against powerful pretenders. If Alex wants to play that way and thinks others out their might feel the same then whats wrong with that?

Your view of what is a good game is too different from Alex's to make this discussion useful and it seems to be degenerating into flames. I have found it hard to discuss dom constructively with Alex since Dom2 came out as our opinion of the changes is so different. That being the case I'm happy to see Alex have the possibility of approaching the game the way he wants even if its not my cup of tea. No point in him keeping on being annoyed at the game having changed in ways he really doesn't like. As I'm lucky enough to like the changes it seems only fair to show some understanding to the perspective of someone who loved Dom1 (and contributed heaps to its growth) who hasn't got what they want out of dom2.

Having just lost a large chunk of my dom2 race designs to the patch and having been shown little or no sympathy I can understand how irritating it is to have your favourite toys taken away. It pays not rub the salt in - certainly makes me grumpy.

Alex has a valid point regarding the need to play the mod to understand it. I have got annoyed at people who don't seem to have played dual bless effects races telling me dual bless effect races haven't been changed by the patch - so I can appreciate Alex's perspective on this.

I think you should let this one go Graeme as the discussion has become too grumpy to be reasoned or reasonable.

Its time for the good old:

Don't worry, be happy.

Keir

[apoger]

>Wow. This mod is so bad it isn't even worth trying out.

I'm surprised to hear that from you.
Just what do you think is so bad?


>All it does is punish those who take negative scales, and reward those who take positive scales.

I don't see an issue with that.
It's that way now, just to a lesser extent.

Also it does more than that. It addresses the luck issue, and is an attempt to make all scales useful.


>Clearly the best choice is to put all points into scales -- far more so even than in Dom 1. 120 pts for +45% income? 120 pts for ludicrous population growth? Would anyone ever take less?

Of course they would.
A> There are reasons to do so
B> Even if I didn't think so players still would (plenty of evidence for that).

Keep in mind that the maximum gold ajustment for Dom2 is 33%. With my mod it's 45%. That's a 12% boost. It's not nearly the outrage that many here seem to think. Your starting province generates 25ish extra gold. It's not the end of the world. In Dom1 the starting max gold was effectively +60% and that was before 200%/patrolling.

Why would you not take the max? For the exact same reasons you don't do it now. Because there are other things to spend on.


>Alex, I know you like the idea of powerfull scales,

That I do.


>and prefer low or even no magic pretenders,

No I don't prefer them. I used them in Dom1 because that's what worked. I have always lead the charge on wanting more power for the mage pretenders.

My preference is always for all paths to be of value.


>but do you honestly think this leads to any balance or variety?


Do you think that the scale pumping I did will make players forget their gods? If so what does that say about the current balance? Wouldn't that imply that the gods are more important than scales right now? I don't see that as good. I don't want any obvious best choices. You feel that my mod makes scales an obvious best choice? Possibly. But don't you think you should try it before making that assumption?

[Graeme Dice]

There's a few other issues with the scales as set up that I've thought of just recently. While large supply and income reductions for mismatched temperatures might be workable as long as you only use the default theme, it makes the themes that require temperature changes far weaker that the default. Miasma, Niefelheim, Fires of the Faith, etc. all take a 20% hit in every province, which makes it pretty hard to justify the themes at all.

The other is that while DOM2 might allow a 33% income bonus with the default scales, that bonus requires you to spend 360 nation points on your scales, while order in your Version requires only 120 points.

The productivity scale also seems to give too large of a bonus. Currently sloth 3 lets you produce about half as many troops as prod 3. With sloth 3 under your scales you've reduced troops production to 5% of what a prod 3 nation gets. (190% vs. 10% of base resources) If there's some way to overcome that with a SC pretender, I can't see it.

A death scale of 3 means that after 20 turns your capital will be reduced to 20,000 people, while the population under growth 3 will be 45,000. The resources and income boost the growth 3 nation will get when combined with a 45% boost to gold and a 90% boost to resources will be awfully hard to overcome by pretender design.

I can't comment on the luck scale because of the difficulty in calculating its effects. However, it seems fairly obvious that the most efficient way to spend your points are on order 3, prod 3, growth 3 (Even if Abysia to avoid self destruction within 20 turns). Drain 3 should be fairly easy to overcome through spending on large amounts of researchers, and luck 3 also seems like a good idea since the order scale doesn't hurt it, and it ensures that you will mostly get good events. You'll also need to spend a bunch to improve your dominion to the point where it won't be overwhelmed by the people that aren't bothering to give magic skills to their pretender.

That leaves you a maximum of 140 points to spend on your pretender, which hardly gives you a lot of options to make them magically powerful. You'd have to seriously improve the pretenders, especially their starting magic skills, to make spending any more than that worthwhile. After all, they are only one unit, and will have a very hard time overcoming the massive economies that can be produced in short order under your systen.