Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod (and summary file) 1.1

[Sombre]

Ok having looked at them again,...


Summon Vetalas - 10 / 10 - D2, RL5 - These guys are great fun at parties. Their first form is a fairly tough undead Bandar Warrior with some solid offensive power. If this is killed they switch to a second form which is ethereal but fragile, rather like ganas; though it has a damaging life drain attack. The second form also has a touch of madness attack which can feeblemind, but is mr negates as well as only resolving at att 9. The second form will restore itself back to first form after battle. Because of this they are pretty durable and much stronger than I initially assessed. The base price therefore seems ok, though if they aren't seeing much use they could still be discounted to 10 / 8 or so.

[Sombre]

Here comes some more,.... finishing up EA and moving on to MA. As always, I welcome discussion. These are just my ideas after all.


FOMORIA EA


Summon Black Dogs - 20 / 10 - D2, RL2 - These little dogs are actually rather good. They have dark power, 100 DV and stealth 20. Much better combat stats than animals like wolves too. Good spell and fun unit. Really shows how bad summon animals is for the basegame 20 / 20.


Summon Barghests - 9 / 13 - D2, RL4 - Barghests are basically upgraded black dogs who are also sacred. The spell is fairly good and if you have a nice bless, the dogs can make a mess. With DP3 and DV100 they're also badass in the dark. I suggested changing Cu Sidhe from 7/10 to 7/7 (that might be a bit cheap) so a cost reduction would make sense,.. to differentiate them from the Black Dogs summon, reducing the numbers further might make sense. I suggest 5 / 6.


Summon Morrigan - 1 / 4 - D2A1, RL6 - Like the Umbral (for EA and MA Agartha anyway) the Morrigan is rather hard to mass because the recruitables capable of casting it are all cap only. I therefore suggest a change to 3 / 10 or 12. Badass troops though.




------------------MIDDLE ERA--------------




ARCOSCEPHALE MA - Same as EA.


ERMOR MA - As with Ermor EA, no national summons here.


PYTHIUM MA


Contact Harbinger - 1 / 25 - S4, RL6 - Nice. Cost seems fine, as long as people are actually using them. No change.


Angelic Host - 1+6 / 50 - S5, RL7 - This is a farsummon. You get 1 Archangel commander with 6 Angel troops. Again this is powerful and seems costed about right.


Heavenly Wrath - 1 / 35 - S3F1, RL7 - Summons up an Angel of Fury. No magical abilities, no leadership, he's built purely for SC duties. Blood Vengeance 2 is the really interesting thing about him. Do people use him? The lack of magic paths seems like a turnoff.


Heavenly Choir - 1 / 144 - S7F2, RL9 - Generally considered the most powerful SC monster in the game, the Seraph might actually justify this kind of price tag. You also get a load of Angels of the Heavenly Choir, which aren't too shabby themselves, unless I'm mistaken. I'm out of my depth here so I'll just say 'No Comment'.



MAN MA


Summon Black Dogs - 20 / 10 - D2, RL2 - Same spell as the Fomorian version. Man lacks the recruitable mages to cast these.


Summon Cu Sidhe - 7 / 10 - N2, RL3 - Identical to Tirnanogs 'Contact Cu Sidhe'. I suggested 7 / 7 or thereabouts. They are different spells, but are functionally identical afaik.


Summon Barghests - 9 / 13 - D2, RL4 - Same spell as the Fomorian version. Like Black Dogs, it's not castable by recruits.



ULM MA - The same as ULM EA, except you actually lose the Pack of Wolves spell.

MARIGNON MA - Same as Pythium MA. Identical Angel summons.

MICTLAN MA - Same as Mictlan EA.

TIENCHI MA - Same as Tienchi EA.

MACHAKA MA - Have no national spells.


AGARTHA MA


Awaken Cavern Wight - 1 / 3 - D1E1, RL3 - In competition with the Summon Umbral spell which is only 2 research levels higher. CBM 1.1 made them 1 / 1. The problem is that MA Agartha can only cast them with cap only expensive oracles. LA Agartha can mass the buggers, but also has Sepulchrals to go for, plus a mass summoning of them up the research tree with 'Halls of the Dead'. So in my opinion this spell should be usable for MA Agartha and for LA should offer something a bit different from Umbrals and Sepulchrals. I suggest 8 / 10.


Summon Umbral - 1 / 2 - D1E1, RL5 - Same as the EA Agartha spell. Like EA, MA Agartha has problems massing these.


Attentive Statues - 2 / 8 - E2, RL3 - These are roughly the same as the 'Living Statue' units gained by casting 'Enliven Statues'. The requirements are quite a bit lower but they cost over twice as much. Bearing this spell is for MA Agartha, it should be better. CBM 1.1 had them at 2 / 5 but I think to differentiate them from both Enliven Statues and the higher level agarthan statue spells, they should be 5 / 10. This gives Agartha an early game boost without treading on the toes of the other spells and would surely make the spell usable, even good.


Enliven Sentinel - 1 / 4 - E2, RL4 - Being sacred and with boosted stats, these kick the crud out of living and attentive statues. I think they should be 2 / 7 or 8. Massable because they're E2 and you get 2 per cast, but far less so than the attentive or living statues, while obviously quality over quantity.


Enliven Granite Guard - 1 / 12 - E3, RL5 - CBM 1.1 had these at 1 / 8. Only making 1 at a time makes perfect sense and differentiates the spell from other statue summons. I reckon you could go 1 / 7 without unbalancing them though. The pinnacle of quality over quantity.


Enliven Marble Oracle - 1 / 45 - E3D1, RL6 - I'm really not sure why these are worth 45 gems. I feel like I'm missing something. They are like upgraded Golems, but with holy 2 instead of astral. Clearly they are to be used as SCs and they do have nice slots and stats for that duty,... but 45 gems? 35 would seem closer to the mark to me, especially when you consider that Golems are basically something you get for free just by researching construction (which you'd have to do to get items for your Marble Oracle SC anyway).

[DrPraetorious]

The angels are a lot more useful for Marignon than for Pythium. Marignon has recruitable sacred troops enough to at least *justify* a strong bless, marignon doesn't get air magic (hence the harbinger).

The price points might be marginally high, since astral pearls are so precious in large amounts - but people certainly do use the angel summons, so I think they're okay.

Didn't you forget holy pyre, or are we ignoring national combat spells?

[Sombre]

I'm just looking at national summons right now. Weak summons are my bugbear.

But I'm sure QM would like feedback on other national spells. They are one of the most time consuming and tricky things to look at when balancing.

[quantum_mechani]

DrPraetorious said:
The angels are a lot more useful for Marignon than for Pythium. Marignon has recruitable sacred troops enough to at least *justify* a strong bless, marignon doesn't get air magic (hence the harbinger).

I think Pythium gets at least as much use or more out of them (they have astral gems coming out their ears). I agree they are pretty much fine as they are though.

[Sombre]

Before I post some more stuff, I want to revise what I said about two summons for Kailasa/Bandar/Patala.

Contact Yaksha - 1 / 25 - N2E1, RL4 - These are buildable by Kailasa so are unlikely to be summoned. They also cost gold upkeep. They can be summoned by Patala, though they aren't especially attractive to them. For Bandar Log they are nice enough summons for the Rishis, though there is some difficulty in getting them. The cost is ok at 1 / 25 or so considering the access into earth.


Contact Yakshini - 1 / 25 - N2W1, RL4 - These are buildable by Kailasa so are unlikely to be summoned. They also cost gold upkeep. They can be summoned by Patala, though they aren't especially attractive to them. For Bandar Log they are nice enough summons for the Rishis, though there is some difficulty in getting them. W3 is simply less useful than E3, making the Yakshini less appealing than the Yaksha, so I think they should be cheaper. 1 / 20 or 22.


I can't be bothered to go back and edit the original entries where I was mistaken about a couple of things.

[Sombre]

ABYSIA MA - Same as Abysia EA

CAELUM MA - Same as Caelum EA.

CTIS MA - Same as Ctis EA.

PANGAEA MA - Same as Pangaea EA.

VANHEIM MA - Did I forget Vanheim EA? Anyway, all they get is Pack of Wolves, which I've discussed. They can't cast it with recruitables anyway.

JOTUNHEIM MA - Same as Niefelheim EA.


BANDAR LOG MA - Get all of Kailasa EA's summons AND all of Lanka EA's too, plus these.


Summon Nagas - 6 / 20 - W2E1, RL3 - All the water and earth naga summons are virtually uncastable by Bandar Log recruitables. They also all require gold upkeep, which is a bit unfortunate. In terms of fighting ability, Naga Warriors fall short of Ghandharvas but are better than Apsaras. Bandar Log is the only nation that gets these Naga summons and the only realistic way to use them is either with pretender magic to get a Naga Commander who then searches for water gems and summons the troops,.. or with 1 in 4 of your Yakshini. Because of this the Naga troops are effectively higher in research than they appear and are very hard to cast. They should therefore be considerably cheaper, to compete with the astral summons. I suggest 6 / 10.


Contact Nagini - 1 / 25 - W2E1, RL4 - These give access into water and earth, but only 1/4 have E2 and 1/4 W3. They can seduce in their second form, which is fairly useful, though they are expensive for just that. Considering the trouble Bandar Log will have getting water gems to cast them, the fact they cost gold upkeep, their relatively underwhelming stats/magic and the fact that the Yaksha/Yakshini provide better and easier access to water and earth, I think they should be 1 / 20.


Contact Nagaraja - 1 / 30 - W2E2, RL5 - I'm not sure why these should ever cost more than Nagini. They have worse magic in exchange for another level of holy and better thug/leader stats and they are harder to cast. Gotta be 1 / 20 or maybe even lower. The difference is largely cosmetic though. I think reducing the requirement to W2E1 to match the Nagini would would also be fair.


Contact Nagarishi - 1 / 40 - W3E3, RL6 - The problem with Nagarishi is that they are very hard to cast and for 50 nature gems you can get a Yakshini AND a Yaksha who provide you with roughly the same amount of magic, with guaranteed W3 and E3 and are more versatile. Yaksha /Yakshini are far easier to cast - you can get them with your Rishis. So what should be done with the Nagarishi? It could be reduced to 1 / 30 but it would still be a complete pain in the arse to actually cast. Perhaps at 1/30 but with the requirement of W3/E2. That way you'd have more chance of getting one using a Nagini, if for some reason you actually have water gems rather than nature.


NB. In CBM1.1 the Nagini and Nagaraja were swapped in terms of research level, the Nagaraja was reduced to 1 / 25 and the Naga warriors were 6 / 10 already.

[DrPraetorious]

Do you really have nothing better to do with pearls than make angels with them?

I almost always make a couple of the thug angels, and the heavenly host is great to diversify into fire (although - who really cares about fire?), but give me an extra hundred astral pearls, I'm not going to spend them on more angels.

[Szumo]

Sombre said:
Summon Morrigan - 1 / 4 - D2A1, RL6 - Like the Umbral (for EA and MA Agartha anyway) the Morrigan is rather hard to mass because the recruitables capable of casting it are all cap only. I therefore suggest a change to 3 / 10 or 12. Badass troops though.
[...]
Summon Umbral - 1 / 2 - D1E1, RL5 - Same as the EA Agartha spell. Like EA, MA Agartha has problems massing these.

Small correction here, 25% of EA Agartha's Earth Readers (recruitable everywhere) can summon Umbrals. Which is quite enough to mass them easily in midgame.

[Sombre]

Ah, thanks. You're quite right.

I stand by my suggestions for the spell though.