Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

[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.

[Zen]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

Well, it may have been you didn't ever use the CB mod for Dom2, but it's intention was never to create the same playing style for all nations, but rather allow more choices for each and every scale/nation/pretender/spellpath/item.

Obviously everyone will have to wait for the first version of the Mod to make a conclusion in either direction, but I can tell you my intention is to allow every style of play effective use.

[Shovah32]

@Twan:
Do you really think elemental magic has been nerfed? Fire magic (other than old age problems) is great, plenty of high damage AP spells with good AoEs (and later on pillar of fire is amazing) although the summons and items arent great.

Water isnt too great (dosnt have much in the way of summons or items either) but quickness is a very useful buff and falling frost and frozen heart are great battle spells

Air is pretty hard to defend. It has very nice battlefield buffs and some battle summons but almost all its battle magic, while having good precision and damage, just cant hit enough units.

[dirtywick]

Shovah32 said:
Air is pretty hard to defend. It has very nice battlefield buffs and some battle summons but almost all its battle magic, while having good precision and damage, just cant hit enough units.

Air has some of the best items in the game, and a couple of nice global spells too, but it really shines in self buffs.

[Shovah32]

Winged shoes, chainmail of displacement, tempest and what? None really come to mind (although yes, the globals are nice and the buffs are even better)

[dirtywick]

Spirit Helm, Barrel of Air, Amulet/Robe of Missile Protection, Weightless Shileds, Eye of Aiming, Bow of War, Thunder Bow, Flying Carpet, I guess that's about it and some of them are debatable but it's definately better than a lot of other schools items, like Fire or Earth.

ETA: Owl Quills too

[Shovah32]

Apart from a bow of war on some cheap commander for extra oomph or maybe some of the breathing items i wouldnt really consider them to be the best of items but to each his own i guess.

[dirtywick]

Shovah32 said:
Apart from a bow of war on some cheap commander for extra oomph or maybe some of the breathing items i wouldnt really consider them to be the best of items but to each his own i guess.

What I mean is you get a lot of the better items at all research levels in the game using Air. I guess they're not the best items for building the ultimate unit, but at Const 6 and below especially Air offers a lot of good items for a lot of your units.

My fault though, "best" was bad word choice initially.

[Cainehill]

And hopefully there'll once again be an early version that simply deals with the pretenders - those are the least debatable, as there are simply way too many pretenders that one would never choose because there's another that's much much better for the same cost, and other pretenders that are once again no-brainers because they're so great for the cost.

So, some balancing of the pretenders could come fairly quickly, while other things (units, magic, etc) might warrant more play and analysis.

[Twan]

I don't want to hijack the thread with my impressions so I'll stop after this explanation.

My analysis was mostly based on common/no gem consuming battle magic. With the kind of very big armies you encounter in dom 3 (at least in sp against mighty+ AIs, as my mp games are around turn 10 I can't say how players will use their extra gold, perhaps armies in mp games will stay closer to what they were in dom2), a spell like pillar of fire (aoe 1) is not that good (especially with precision 0, and your nation perhaps not having access to precision buffs), as well as all lower levels elemental damage spells (falling fire/frost with their bigger AoE being the most useful).

In a battle between two 300+ soldiers armies, to use an earth buff spell with all the AoE full of troops (say legion of steel, SoG etc...) looks better than to make a little hole in ennemy ranks with an AoE 1 spell of air or fire (spell you have with the same path and research level and not using gems). And in early era, earth is also one of the best schools for killing armies (blade wind power).

But as the new army sizes make spells affecting the entire battlefield more powerful too, the balance may be preserved after mid game, especially in mp games. So better to forget my message after all.