Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00

[Blitz]

And I can't say I agree too much about LE Atlantis being so weak. I find the national units decent, and the best mages very durable and potent battle mages

I hate to semi-hijack your mod thread with individial nation balance discussions, but I may as well inject my thoughts regarding LA Atlantis anyway. Their Angakoks are good mages, with up to 3 levels of death and falling frost, but that is about where their usefulness ends. They cannot forge anything terribly useful with their 2 off picks except the odd feather or black steel item. Not having astral on the random list hurts a lot. No amulet of antimagic, no medallion of faith, no nether darts. You can get astral off of indies fairly easily, but the gem income will be slow and it comes later in the game. The Tungaliks, at WDH are frankly a terrible mage, for the most part good only as a researcher. They can lead 40 units, build temples and labs, and are cheap on research, but for 130 gold they are only used by default. Compared to other LA nation's secondary mages, they are easily overshadowed. Really only LA C'Tis's 120g Keeper of the Tombs is as poor, while LA nations such as Jotunheim get Seithkonas (NSD, 90 gold), Vamhiem get Volvas (SS, 120g) and Galdermen (AA?? 210g). These two are good examples because both are LA nations with free cold picks, and both have both better national troops and better secondary magic.

Blessings seem a no-brainer with LA Atlantis, as their sacreds (25g, 10 resources) are ideal for sloth. Additionally, Atlantis can take an extra cold pick and react well to a death scale for a total of 360 design points. Not using a bless strategy makes the sloth strategy much less appealing, as you will almost surely be forced to take order to support your high-resouece cost units. A strategy of massed mournfuls is possible, and can work under sloth, but as they are not resistant to cold, they are often taken out by the Angakok's falling frost, powered by their 8 precision of suckage. Additionally, neither the mournful or Arssartut have a shield, leaving the Ice warrior and Ice guard at 37 and 39 resources a pop respectively as the only LA Atlantis units with them. As an interesting side note, the Mournful's sprite has a shield, but the unit itself has only a halberd.

To wrap all this up, LA Atlantis is a good challenge. It can be an exceptionally powerful nation if it is allowed to control the seas... which it often can with only R'yleh (and ermor) as a challenge in the Era. Unfortunately, like Caelum, the heavy resource cost of it's best infantry units is a huge problem throughout the game. Unlike Caelum, LA Atlantis have 10-resource sacreds and the Dagon as a potential awake, awe-9, W9 trampler. This redeeming feature IMO was critical to the limited success I have had with them in MP.

[KissBlade]

You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.

[Blitz]

KissBlade said:
You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.

Angakoks are great, falling fires + skelle spam is good times, but Tungalisks? They can't cast anything of any importance except your ghost grip/frozen heart, (and frozen heart is level 6 alteration... a path not otherwise useful (except drain life which you cannot natively cast, and quickness, which comes very early). They also can't forge a damn thing either. About the only thing of importance that they can do is research and Dark Knowledge. Aside from the aforementioned Keeper of the Tombs, I challenge you to find a secondary mage from LA who is even close to as bad.

Ulm - Fortune Teller
Arcoscephale - Mystic
Man - Magister (this guy ain't that great either, but in a drain faction)
Ermor - Spectator
Marignion - Royal Navigator
Mictan - Take your pick
T'ien Ch'i - Choice of 4 better ones
Jomon - Shugenja + two main mages
Argathea - Servant of the Oracles (not amazing either, but at least it can forge and cast some national summon rituals)
Abyssa - Warlock Apprentice
Caelum - Caelian Seraph (prob the best 100-150g mage in the game, unless perhaps it's the Harab Seraph (145g, AD(AWED)
C'tis - Keeper of the Tombs (bad)
Pangaea - Black Dryad (not great, but they do get their choice of DDNNN or EENNN main mages, plus two rather weak dryads)
Midgard - Volva (A+)
Patala - Two 250g mages, plus a 160g Guru and a nice communion slave in the Yogi
R'lyeh - Star Child, Star Spawn

Only Man (drain nation), C'Tis (reanimator nation), and Pangaea (two 5 path mages, plus stronger nationals) have secondaries that are as poor as LA Atlantis. With that said, I'm a fan of these guys, especially the sailing and the amphibious nature. They can be a pretty big pain in the ***, tho I think their gimmicks are often not enough to make them a player in LA.

[Sombre]

I couldn't be bothered to wait to be told there's no ID usage list for the mod, so I went ahead and made one. After all, if you want something done,....


Counterbalance complete 1.00, new slots used up:

----Weapon slots used: 659, 708-10, 751-5, 768, 769
----Armour slots used: 252-264
----Monster slots used: 2851, 2877, 2888, 2890-2892
----Site slots used: 890

Despite the weird spreading around of monster numbers and weapons, this is actually compatible with quite a few things. Most importantly, Worthy Heroes. It's also 99% compatible with the Late modcombo 1 I posted, although those mod nations are balanced for use with vanilla, not CBM.

I still plan to make CBM versions of Ulm Reborn, Vaettihiem SE and Zepath's 4 late nations,... but I'm wondering if people are interested in seeing that or not, since most CBM users play strictly multiplayer and mods don't seem at all popular in MP games.

[Blitz]

Another issue that has arisen for me... this time with Marignion, and honestly all cavalry. The Royal Guard is so far superior to the infantry units that marignion has to offer now so as to render them almost completely obsolete. While not exactly Vans, the Royal Guard massed and backed with crossbows is fearsome. With the production costs lowered to half of what they were before on both gold and resources, there is no reason to build anything other than crossbows and these broadsword cavalry.

[Sombre]

Yeah it seems all cavalry in CBM was improved. This has resulted in heavy cav, which I thought was powerful enough already, becoming absolute monsters.

Of course light cav is now useful, which is a good thing.

[Morkilus]

Here's my overview and summary of the mod; to be edited and hopefully distributed with the ReadMe if QM desires in the next version.