Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

[Gandalf Parker]

I havent read thru all of this thread but...
my peoblem with balance mods is that they tend to balance toward one persons playing style. One persons balance of Pangaea is to make it more like LA Ulm (armored, using more resources, more able to fight an Ulm army of equal size) while if I were ever interested in "balancing" Ulm to Pangaea Id make it less armored, less use of resources, add more stealth and give them flying units.

But Zen has done great work in the past so I will wait and see what comes from this.

Gandalf Parker

[Nerfix]

Another thing is that EA Van/Hel units should propably cost more resources, at least Helhirdlings. IIRC those units even use magic armor, so it could be even justified (other than them being too easily massable now).

And Ulm, hmmmm, I think the randoms on the smiths should be 25% instead of the 10% we get now. Ulm is not supposed to be a mage power, but even in the rank of mago-phobic empires (LA Man, Marignon etc etc) they are really weak on the mage departament and while the randoms are interesting the 10% chance to get them is a consolation prize. I'd add capital only Grandmaster Smiths who get a 100% random, but that's just me.

[Reverend Zombie]

This might warrant a separate thread, but there are commanders with special default ranged weapons that they lose when equipped with melee items. I'd like to see the #bonus tag added to the Lord of the Summer Plague's Plague Bow and to the Harbinger's Horn, so that they are not forced to use "fist" in melee if we want them to use their ranged weapon.

[Zen]

Reverend Zombie said:
This might warrant a separate thread, but there are commanders with special default ranged weapons that they lose when equipped with melee items. I'd like to see the #bonus tag added to the Lord of the Summer Plague's Plague Bow and to the Harbinger's Horn, so that they are not forced to use "fist" in melee if we want them to use their ranged weapon.

This is something I will be doing as well. There are a number of commanders with wierd slot problems. They are easy enough to fix.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Zen said:
This is something I will be doing as well. There are a number of commanders with wierd slot problems. They are easy enough to fix.

In that case it might be good to report those slot problems in the bug thread as well. I'm sure that some of them have been reported but many more bugs of that type (and some of them definitely qualify as bugs, not preference) come to the surface when one systematically mods a game than arise in random bug reports. Doesn't guarantee that the dynamic duo of amateur developers will actually fix it, but who knows?

[Shovah32]

Also, remember that along with doing huge AoE1 damage pillar of fire can set many other units on fire.

[PDF]

Shovah32 said:
Also, remember that along with doing huge AoE1 damage pillar of fire can set many other units on fire.

Yes, but in midgame where you wont'see Pillars but rather Fireballs, Fire Clouds or Falling Fires, all things equal a given number of Fire mages will be *less* effective than they were in Dom2 because they'll face 2x the number of troops ! Same for Air, and to a lesser extent Earth.
Later in game the BF area spells make Elem magic rules again.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Here is a suggestion for improving light calvary. It makes sense that light calvary has lower precision values. But because they are on fast horses they should also be a lot harder to be hit by arrows in return. The easiest way to do that would be to give them an automatic air shield. If there defense isn't high enough, that could get raised as well. Light calvary then would still be less effective at straight archery then archers, but at the same time they would be much harder to kill. Plus they have the speed advantage. You would be able to do hit and runs with them, and use them as light calvary are meant to be used.

[curtadams]

When people talk about what's happened to battlemages you can't neglect the improved AI. All ranged units target noticeably better than they used to, and cause much less friendly fire damage, so you get more "bang for your buck" for battlemages. The flip is that most of the gain comes when battlemages combine with a meaningful groundpounder army. That encourages combined arms - which I think was a goal of the redesign. But, boy, even a little artillery makes quite the difference.

I doubt the aging system can be modded. Starting ages probably will be moddable and that obviously can fix most problems. If you can mod the mechanism, a good calc for deterioration chance which is based on how organisms age in the real world is 100/years to get old)*2^(age-(years to get old) (possibly with a scaling factor - I can't test). It captures the exponential harm from aging and the slower exponential growth for long-lived species.

IMO workhorse mages - researchers, some forgers, and artillery mages - shouldn't start old unless there's an important game balance or thematic reason. It's just too much of a micro hassle - I was going bonkers with my Witch Hunters in MA Marignon and I understand Pythium and Arco at least are similar and Abyssia worse. IMO if LA mages are supposed to be really weak it's better to nerf workhorse mages rather than make them old. I'm OK with top rank mages being old - I can stand having to pay attention to each one of them.

[Twan]

A general impression about magical balance : with the new spell ranges, size of armies etc... Elemental magic (except earth thanks to summons in addition to good battle spells) has become weaker outside of spells affecting the entire battlefield (which cost gems and generally need old mages to be used... and old fire mages don't last long). I don't know if it's bad for the balance between nations or a part of a new one, but my impression is : having earth or death magic is more useful than fire/water/air with the dom3 settings as common artillery spells don't have the same power (fewer/more expensive mages against bigger armies) and all magics have good end game battle spells. Also water with quickness and clam hoarding nerfed may need more utility for non-cold non-aquatic nations (Ct'is miasma ie... the former kings of quickened skeleton-spaming ).

Don't know if I'm right and if it's worth doing lots of changes at this stage (to wait for some finished big games is probably better) but making the death(+astral) and earth good battle spells harder to cast may make the paths giving fewer summons more attractive (or perhaps making the rare fire and air summons better/cheaper) ; and water magic desserves some attention too.