Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Edi]

I'll get back to you on the Asynja, I've got to run a few checks on it, but I've not the time until tomorrow. That one might need some tweaking, it's now so unattractive compared to the male titan.

Edi

[Yvelina]

I do not know whether I should be openning my mouth in such august company, but isn't there a problem with changing the order/turmoil and luck/misfortune scale? The Marignon&Devils and Spring&Autumn themes would get a major boost. After all, Turmoil is supposed to be a bad scale that keeps these two themes down.

In the same way, some of the nations that are required to take Death and Misfortune would be influenced as well. The Vampire Queen nerf hurt Black Forest Ulm hard. I do not think the theme can actually survive increased penalties for death and misfortune.

[Zen]

Yvelina said:
I do not know whether I should be openning my mouth in such august company, but isn't there a problem with changing the order/turmoil and luck/misfortune scale? The Marignon&Devils and Spring&Autumn themes would get a major boost. After all, Turmoil is supposed to be a bad scale that keeps these two themes down.

In the same way, some of the nations that are required to take Death and Misfortune would be influenced as well. The Vampire Queen nerf hurt Black Forest Ulm hard. I do not think the theme can actually survive increased penalties for death and misfortune.

Good question.

Well the Order/Turmoil issue is not that Diabolic Faith and S&A (and BK, don't forget will become overpowered unless not enough thought is done to the repositioning. But making Order less of a single impact (Gold, and that's all really). Because as it stands now, a Forced Turmoil 1 Nation does not lose 7% Income (A slight but significant impact nationwide), but instead loses 28% (Since if you can take Order and decide to take it (Safe bet) you will pick Order 3). If this scale had less of a single influence impact and some of it's single influence (Gold) was adjusted to other scales then it would still be "the Scale" for Gold, but if you were forced to take Turmoil, you could circumvent some of that gold loss by taking another scale.

Death on the other hand, I do not agree that adjusting it will hamper Black Forest (or Helheim), simply because I *always* take Death to some degree. Death 2 to be precise. And it may be because I don't play games past the 100 Turn mark, or that I don't want to rely on my Dominion to keep supply (Since it's hard enough to maintain). And it's a playstyle issue. However, the minute death of the death scale coupled with the minor loss of income makes Growth seem (to me) to be a waste of points.

On the Misfortune part: There are, I think, two schools of thought on this. The first being that you are going to have bad events even if you have luck, so you might as well get some Nation/Pretender points if you do (a valid opinion). The second is that even some of the Minor Luck events on the side of "Good Luck" tend to not give enough to be considered lucky (Milita don't get the ol' juices flowing), so taking Luck is a gamble (Perhaps Long shot), whereas taking Misfortune is playing the spread.

Like I said, I haven't rolled out the mod because I haven't tested it enough personally to feel comfortable with the changes (which are no, in fact standard changes of adjusting *just* the Scale adjustments).

[Edi]

Time to get in those Asynja comments:

With the Asynja's cost unmodified and her magic not increased, she is a totally useless pretender to take compared to the male titan.

Reasons why: The main point to take Asynja would be to get air blessing (Air 9, probably). However, it is cheaper to achieve Air 9 with titan, even though its initial cost is greater. Assuming same scales, same dominion strength and same castle, the titan is 21 points cheaper, and it is physically more powerful and has 100% shock resistance, which the asynja does not. The Asynja is stealthy and has glamour, which imo does not nearly compensate for the other shortcomings, especially when the titan only has a new pathcost of 50 vs Asynja's 40.

Furthermore, the point totals are set up so that typically the asynja will have an uneven number of points unspent that are not enough to afford anything useful, while the titan with the otherwise same everything will have 40 points, or one more scale left.

The titan's cost was lowered from the unmodded game, while the asynja is unchanged, and even in the unmodded game, to achieve the same effects (assuming Air 9), the titan was 6 points cheaper. As things stand right now, the Asynja is a complete and utter waste of resources unless one is fond of having a sneaking pretender leading an army of Vanheim holy units, but why take the pretender when you can have the Vanheimn commanders (glamour + stealth) do the same?

I would suggest either lowering Asynja's base cost or beefing her up a bit, or doing something to make her more attractive than the immediate competition for the same role.

Edi

[Zen]

Edi said:The titan's cost was lowered from the unmodded game, while the asynja is unchanged, and even in the unmodded game, to achieve the same effects (assuming Air 9), the titan was 6 points cheaper. As things stand right now, the Asynja is a complete and utter waste of resources unless one is fond of having a sneaking pretender leading an army of Vanheim holy units, but why take the pretender when you can have the Vanheimn commanders (glamour + stealth) do the same?

I would suggest either lowering Asynja's base cost or beefing her up a bit, or doing something to make her more attractive than the immediate competition for the same role.

Edi

Thanks Edi. I have run into the Asynja problem, but I wasn't really lookint at it in regards to the Titan, but rather in regards to the Allfather. She is the medium between them but doesn't seem to fit in either role. Though she is significantly cheaper with the same SC capability as the unmodded Allfather (without the intrinsic flying, or mounted, which does play a difference, as well as having to equip flying boots).

I haven't been able to find much information on the Asynja mythology (This is Freya?) as far as looking for ideas that do not conflict with other Gods.

This problem is run into with a variety of nations with Nation specific pretenders. One you'll see is Pangaea, as well as Ermor and Man have issues with this.

[Huzurdaddi]

so taking Luck is a gamble (Perhaps Long shot), whereas taking Misfortune is playing the spread.

Spoken like someone who lives in Vegas!

[Truper]

I wasn't able to find that much about the Asynja, but here's what little I did find: Asynja is not a specific deity, but the word for a female Aesir, one of the two pantheons of Norse gods, along with the Vanir.

Since the Allfather is Odin (who has a lot of names, including Wotan, whom I mistakenly thought was another deity), it might make sense to associate the Asynja with Frigg (or Frigga), the mother goddess and wife of Odin. Frigg and Freya are closely related, and may in fact be different aspects of the same deity. Frigg was considered queen of the heavens, the goddess of motherhood, fertility, love and housework. She was reputed to have the ability to forsee everyone's destiny without revealing it. She owned a necklace, the Brisingamen, which, besides making her irresistable to man or god, gave support to any army which she favored on the battlefield. She also possessed a cloak of feathers which allowed her to change into a falcon, or into the battle-boar Hildisvin (which she is also described as riding). She chooses half the slain on the battlefield, whilst Odin gets the other half (is this the justification for the Allfather's death magic?). As Freya, she also practised Seidhr, the form of magic practised by the Volva. There is speculation that Gullveg was Freya under another name, and if so, she was stabbed and burnt 3 times, but arose from the flames each time and transformed herself into Heidhr, the Glorious, mistress of magic. This started the war between the Aesir and Vanir.

Whew. Confusing stuff But out of it, I can come up with some suggestions. 1) Give the Asynja some nature magic, since she's a fertility goddess. Problem is she basically becomes a Mother of Tuathas 2) Give her the ability to avert bad events, since she foresees destiny, and practises Seidhr. Not bad, and especialy thematic for Midgard. You'd probably even want to change her path to Astral. 3) Give her a standard, since she owns the Brisingamen. 4) Depict her as riding a great boar, and give her trampling. 5) Let her tranform into a falcon. 6) Make her immortal - but I don't know that Dom2 needs an immortal titan-class pretender

I rather favor changing her path to 2S, or possibly 1S1N, and giving her a standard effect, while removing the glamor. It might be a bit much to give her bad luck prevention as well, but it might be thematic. She should remain a mighty warrior, as all the Aesir were apparently gods of war.

[Reverend Zombie]

I'm hosting a game using 1.72 Version of Zen's Pretender Mod.

The thread with game details is located in the MP forum.