Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[PvK]

I think Militia could be as low as 0 or 1 gold.

If magic summons and stuff are keeping their low unmodded costs, then you might halve the gold costs of most other mundane troops.

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

PvK said:
I think Militia could be as low as 0 or 1 gold.

If magic summons and stuff are keeping their low unmodded costs, then you might halve the gold costs of most other mundane troops.

PvK

Mmmm.... I'm also doing a separate magic mod, based on Zen's, that would work well in conjunction with the infantry mod. I don't want to drastically change all infantry costs, which would necessitate changing every other mundane unit in the game as well. As long as I change them relative to each other (and keep the mean near 10g) I hope to be able to rebalance infantry without changing the balance of anything else... and then mod the overpowered summons (of which there are far fewer than mundane units) independantly.

As for militia costing 0 or 1 gold - keep in mind that some nations (e.g. man) can recruit these from the start. A choice between recruiting 6 heavy infantry or 120 militia on turn one is... already unbalanced, IMO. But there are not many militia types in the game, so I can quickly adjust them downward if they still seem utterly worthless at 5 g (which will probably be the case, though they can still be used absorb spells and lances, patrol, siege and defend castles at that price).

[Alneyan]

On a side note, you can only recruit fifty units per province every turn, so you would be unable to get 120 militia per turn; how impressive 50 militia per turn is would be another matter.

[Ighalli]

I love the R'lyeh hybrid descriptions!!
You didn't make them upkeep free like you had mentioned though. Did you get them mixed up with the void gate summons?

[FrankTrollman]

This series of changes does a lot to Ulm, but a lot of it seems really counterproductive. The fact that various units have Cold, Fire, or Shock resistance is a nice trick, but since it's not consistent across the army, it ends up being very hard to plan ahead.

And the increase in resource price seems to take the BP units completely out of contention. Even with order 3 and productivity you can't afford 2 Black Knights a turn, and that means that you can't conquer neutrals in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Even a 3 turn build-up will just get smacked down by level 6 neutrals, and that's not cool. (Interestingly, you will have a big pile of money left over in a pile, not that it will do you any good).

I suggest an increased money cost (like you have it), with a decreased resource cost. And you should make the resistances on all the BP units the same. The setup in which your axemen are resistant to one thing and your hammermen are resistant to another and your guardians to still another is a non-starter.

The problem with Ulm is that they can't get a big pile of BP units in fast enough to take territory fast enough to actually make their "good" units matter. They need a random elemental pick on the Smith, and they need a reduced resource cost on the BP units. Until they get that, it almost doesn't matter what their units have and do.

Although on that score, is there any reason why BP units shouldn't just use actual BP? The whole impetus for having them use inferior BP has always been lost on me.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

FrankTrollman said:
Even with order 3 and productivity you can't afford 2 Black Knights a turn, and that means that you can't conquer neutrals in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Even a 3 turn build-up will just get smacked down by level 6 neutrals, and that's not cool.

After just having finished a game with SC's mod while playing Ulm, I can tell you that Black Knights are not the initial way to go vs indies. Just use about twenty or so of the ultra-heavy morningstar inf and you are ready to rumble. Which, by the way, can be done - given your starting force and a turn or two. Once you have all the provs surrounding your capital captured (for the production boost) then you can begin building BK's for your 2nd indy-killer force.

Additionally, its the choice of castle, not prod scales that effects production most. So as Ulm, in any non-blitz game, you would want to pick a Wizards Tower, since it is cheap/fast to build and has good production. This allows you to ramp up the total production of your empire far more than any prod scale. The only nuisance is that you have to muster your troops from many forts (easy for BKs, hard for footsoldiers)

They need a random elemental pick on the Smith

Iron Faith

PDF said:
Just build Arbalests, shielded chainmail units, back them with the Prophet casting SoC and it's done ...

PDF, how can you suggest to anyone that Arbalests be used? Ever? Thier rate of fire is so terrible as to make them usless. Unless thier accuracy or ROF has changed in the latest version of the mod?

[FrankTrollman]

BTW, if you really want a Soul Slay effect that only works once per battle, couldn't you just make an additional attack that had a very negative "#ratt" value? It could do zero damage and have an on-hit Soul Slay effect, and it would go off once per 50 turns or so, which means that he Valkyries would cough it up on the first round of combat and not afterwards.

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

FrankTrollman said:
BTW, if you really want a Soul Slay effect that only works once per battle, couldn't you just make an additional attack that had a very negative "#ratt" value? It could do zero damage and have an on-hit Soul Slay effect, and it would go off once per 50 turns or so, which means that he Valkyries would cough it up on the first round of combat and not afterwards.

-Frank

Yes, that would sort of work. Thanks for the idea... I might try it.

[quantum_mechani]

One change I cannot understand is upping the cost of serpent priests to 200. The theme is already regarded almost universally as weaker than base, why make it worse?

[Saber Cherry]

quantum_mechani said:
One change I cannot understand is upping the cost of serpent priests to 200. The theme is already regarded almost universally as weaker than base, why make it worse?

Ummm... I guess, when pricing some units from special themes, I did not pay any attention to the "known wisdom" of the power of theme. Serpent Cult Pythium would actually be very strong on many maps if it could be combined with Water Cult, yielding powerful, amphibious, poison-immune, high-MR sacreds able to kill Atlantians (with their poison weapons) and Illithids (with an Astral blessing for additional MR). Illithids tend to be unable to kill things with high regeneration, regardless of MR.

But that's all beside the point. The reason is just that I re-priced Serpent Priests at 200 when I went on a holy-priest-mage price-boosting spree, since that approximately reflects their value outside of the context of their theme's weakness. Compare to a 140g Druid at 2H, 2N. 60g for +1W, +1? seems quite reasonable... or, starting with an 80g High Priest, 120g for +2N +1W +1? seems like a great deal, considering that it's all sacred... or starting with a Witch Hunter (already a great bargain) at 150g, and adding +1H and +1? for 50g (and changing the magic paths) also seems like a great deal.

However, there's also the fact that low-level Water and Nature magic are almost entirely worthless in most cases, which neither I nor Illwinter had really considered when pricing mages.

I still think 200g is a fair price for the unit, when obseved in a vacuum. But as you point out, the theme is pretty weak (especially considering that it takes Pythium from the (arguably) strongest magic nation to the (possibly) weakest). Do you think that giving Serpent Priests (another random *or* a linked random *or* 3N *or* 4H *or* 2W), and raising the price to 220~230, would make SC Pythium competitive? What about giving Acolytes a sorcery random, or replacing their 1N with a sorcery random (so they become like sacred holy Vaetti Hags)? As it stands, their mages can do little except pray for their sacred hydras...