Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Thufir]

I like what you've done to the human pretenders, I'm looking forward to trying them out! I suppose you've considered stripping the Moloch of his imps, and decided not to?

[archaeolept]

you leave my imps alone you!

[Yossar]

Ya, I noticed the Void Lord but forgot to mention it. The Sacred Statue got an odd change that I'm not sure is a nerf or a bonus. I guess it's to differentiate the Oracle, Sphinx, and Statue a little more? Now Statue is the most versatile of the three and Oracle is the cheapest Astral 3.

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.

[Zen]

Cainehill said:

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.

I haven't really decided what role the Skratti is to play, if I could redistrict the pretenders, Giants would only have a very limited selection of Human Pretenders (Giants have a hard time calling any "Human" god).

In his current state, the Skratti has tougher stats, costs 50 and has 10/path, it's hard to not choose him if you are going for a Rainbow Pretender as Jotun, I feel.

[Zen]

Re: Human Pretenders -

Human Pretenders are a hard cookie to balance while remaining true to flavor. They should, in effect, be powerful casters of magic but bottom of the barrel fighters (with barely enough hp to survive direct applied force, as it is with the mod)

But the changes I would like to make (Enchantment Bonus, Global Research Bonus, Auto-searching, etc) are unavailiable at current. The only way I could simulate being consummate spellcasters without drawing away from the "Demi-Gods have more FOCUS, but less variablity" that giving them lots of paths would do (You can't change the scaling of paths or that would be another great factor to make it more realistic) was to make their Encumberance so low that fatigue was less of an issue (Especially if you look at getting 4Stars of experience, which makes their Enc 0, and a very real shift between Demi-Gods and Humans for casting encumberance).

If you have ideas with the current modding tools availiable for suggestions to make Humans fit into their Dominions 2 concept, please don't hesitate to mention it.

[Foom]

Looks great, thanks for all the work. I'll venture some suggestions, at the risk of being argued into a pulp.

The main problem I had with human pretenders so far was that their only advantage (lots of cheap magic paths) was at such high risk because they're so vulnerable. The higher hit points help that a lot, since now they're more likely to survive seeking arrows and stray shots on the battlefield.

I like the idea of giving the humans small unique bonuses so they don't all look the same, so here are some ideas:

• Forge bonus. I thought the Cyclops was pretty good without it, being the only chassis with good earth magic.
• Blood hunting bonus. The only one so far is the Fountain o' Blood, could be very nice on a mobile pretender. Perhaps this would be something for the Skratti? Give me your offspring, midgets!
• Starting equipment. Unlikely to make much of a difference though.
• The much-maligned autosummon imps would actually be useful on human pretenders since they offer some protection from assassinations. Perhaps a master of the dark arts who sold his soul for Lifelong Protection and now needs to achieve godhood before Sheogorath comes to take him away. Or a mad scientist type who gets corpse men (not moddable, I know).
• The Frost Father is a lot less sexy than, say, the Abysian Great Warlock or the Great Sage. He gets cold resist and the chill aura, but I don't think those are much good on a pretender who will hopefully never be in close combat. How about turning him into a "Great Conquistador" with the "can sail over oceans" ability? And maybe a pillage bonus for flavor.
• I don't know if this is a valid comparison, but Pythium's Divine Emperor is a lot less interesting than e.g. the Serpent King of C'tis or the Arch Seraph of Caelum. Perhaps give him awe? Or even higher starting dominion?

It's kind of hard to come up with suitable ideas since pretender modding is still somewhat limited..

[Endoperez]

Wow, looks good... I am probably not going to use it, at least not yet, as I play SP and haven't yet found the IW-balance to be too far off.


For Foom:
Have you tried the chinese mod? I think it was called Kami. In it, there were Shrines carried by four swordsmen. They had four attacks with the swords! It was a great touch, and giving Divine Emperor four Emerald Lords to carry his palanquine could help it nicely... He wouldn't have the full protection and would be unable to use body armor, but he would have some ambidextercity and maybe three misc slots as well?

Awe and/or starting dominion would probably be too good for a mere human... Remember how rare Awe is, and how all the humans have low dominion. Divine Emperor might be able to be a mage of mysterious powers, but so would be all other wizards... Why is this one special, besides the fact that he won't touch earth on his own feet?

[Graeme Dice]

I'd like to make the suggestion that you might want to take another look at the pretenders available to the aquatic nations and see if you couldn't figure out something to make them a bit more interesting. They really seem to be lacking an effective monster type, as the Kraken is nowhere near as fearsome as the new dragons. The wyrm is a possibility, but he's not that unique.

[Zen]

There are new Versions of the Pretender and Spell Mods availiable here:

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/

Pretender Changes:

Lord of Fertility +100 PR
Lord of the Gates +5 Fear
Saurolich -1 Death, +1 Fire
Dracolich Basecost: 125, -Recuperation, +Immortality, +5 Prot
Dracolich (Bog Mummy) -Recuperation, +Immortality
Asynja -Recuperation
Lord of the Desert Sun +3 Berserk, Basecost: 110
Father of Serpents Basecost: 110, +Venomous Fangs (Deadly Poison)
Jade Emperor +7 Prot
Son of the Sea Basecost: 100, -1 Water, +1 Earth
Neried Basecost: 50


Spellmod Changes:

Too numerous list. I'll be sending the changes to Edi to modify the Readme that will be included more than likely on the webpage as well.

Also. I have a beta of the Scalemod, without the proper graphics to make it complete. If anyone would like to offer to make a few graphics for the Luck units, I would appreciate it since I haven't had alot of time to make sprites (mostly attack sprites).