Balance opinions

[Jazzepi]

Ironhawk said:
I only ever play with CB Mod. As Kissblade says above, playing vanilla is just asking for exploits to be brought into play which always ruins things for me.

I'm surprised to find that people feel there is a "learning curve" to the balance mods tho? I mean, you just plug it in and go. Do you seriously memorize every unit from every nation and every spell? It seems a better strategy to me to just abstract your knowledge of dominions - what values make a unit or spell good/bad and then you are ready to play any game with any mod. Just glance at the units and spells that fall into line with your strategy and you are good to go.

I'm not sure what "exploits" exist in vanilla that don't in CB.

The learning curve comes from these sorts of things...

"What gets me are the dozen or so "gotcha's", like when you forget that a key path booster has jumped a level and you can't reach it anymore. Or when a key unit is changed enough to be strategy-changing. They come up very infrequently, but they are frustrating when they do."

What ends up happening is that you have to forget everything you knew about the races in vanilla, and learn them new in CB. Even changing one level path on a nation's mage can make a huge difference in the strategies that are viable with that nation.

Jazzepi

[quantum_mechani]

Jazzepi said:
Even changing one level path on a nation's mage can make a huge difference in the strategies that are viable with that nation.

Actually, I very much agree on that particular tweak. It is my feeling that magic paths almost define a nation, and I am very reluctant to tweak national mages.

As for relearning the entire game, I have a very hard time imagining this, CB is designed with the goal of keeping all base game strategies viable. There are actually very few nerfs, and any of them I'm open to changing given some convincing.

EDIT: I think what Ironhawk means by exploits are simply strategies veteran player find it difficult to not apply at every opportunity, being so universally applicable. A good example might be spamming crossbows with Marignon. Even in CB this remains a default strategy, but at least now there are other options worth considering in specific situations.

[Cor2]

I don't play CBMs because (in order of importance to me):

1 I like the game the way it is, more or less

2 "unbalanced" is subjective and therefore anyone elses attempt at balance will be unbalanced to someone else.

3 the learning curve and lack of documentation

[Ironhawk]

Cor2 said:
2 "unbalanced" is subjective and therefore anyone elses attempt at balance will be unbalanced to someone else.

While I agree that balance is a matter of opinion, I think its unfair to just disregard the entire process of balancing as a result. After all the goal of a balance mod is not to have every single dom3 player out there consider the game balanced - but rather to find a happy medium where most of the players think the game is improved by the mod. I think that CBM does well at this as it currently stands and that each new revision will bring it closer to its theoretical goal.

[Cor2]

Point well taken Ironhawk.
I am likely one of those minorities, but last time I tried cmb I felt it was no more or less balanced than the standard game. If it pleases most people I say hurray, I still will only play it when i must for an MP however.

[Morkilus]

I pretty much only had issue with the path cost changes for boosters as well. It's by far the most complicated part of the game for me, and the manual is always open to that page - if I had a new boosting chart (yes, I'm lazy blah blah) I would be more likely to use it.

I was initially turned off by the MA Ermor priest nerf, but I realized once the "huge army of skeletal cavalry" strategy was better than, well... anything else, I couldn't agree more with it. It is instinctual to hate nerfs.

[Meglobob]

Morkilus said:I was initially turned off by the MA Ermor priest nerf, but I realized once the "huge army of skeletal cavalry" strategy was better than, well... anything else, I couldn't agree more with it. It is instinctual to hate nerfs.

Lowering MA Ermors priest levels really hurts the nation.

A better solution would perhaps be to reduce the number of undead horseman reanimated from 5 (currently I think for a lvl3 priest), to 2 or 3 if this is possible.

[Morkilus]

I'm almost certain reanimation isn't moddable, and that would affect the other reanimating nations as well if you could do it. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but I've tried it and Ermor seems to work on the same level as they did in Dom2. With recruitable Shadow Vestals, you could hardly call them weak.

[DrPraetorious]

I have several issues with CB.
1) Too many changes that don't do any good. For example, the increased cost of indie commanders.
The problem this is meant to address is legitimate (you hardly ever use your national commanders), but as QM himself has admitted, boosting the price of indie commanders doesn't actually acheve this, but it *does* penalize you for fielding large armies - it also has an effect on bloodhunting, and attaches a larger economic penalty to a failure to properly micromanage a blood economy. This particular example may not be the best as QM may change it back in the next version.
Now, I've had this argument with QM many times on IRC - QM doesn't see what's "special" about the default values or why I would want to keep changes to an absolute minimum.
I think Jazzepi has already expressed my opinion on why change should be avoided where not absolutely needed; QM may not agree but I'm certainly not the only person who feels this way.

2) Too much nerfing.
I think you get very little objection to making presently non-viable, and fun/cool, strategies more viable.
So if CBM improves units, makes units cheaper, gives more spells and units, this is broadly acceptable, especially with weak/underdeveloped nations people will accept the learning curve for a buffed nation relatively easily.
Playing a game and discovering some option is non-viable is a very different play experience that people won't tolerate. Also, in general, people *know* how to play the stronger nations (there's something to know) - few people know how to play Marverni well. It's more possible than you might think, but....
Also, it can be difficult to nerf a (supposedly overpowered) strategy in such a way that you don't ruin it entirely, which is undesirable.

3) CBM is over-optimized for blitz games.
The game has many 4X strategies so I am generally a defender of the proposition that strength in the early game translates to strength in the late game.
But this has limits, and you really test the extremes of those limits on the blitz maps for which CBM seems to be optimized.

In order for me to use a CBM mod, it would need to fit the following philosophical criteria:
a) Minimal changes. If a change does not clearly and successfully address one of a small number of major issues, leave it out.

b) Extra-minimal nerfing. Even if a change *does* clearly and successfully address a major issue, if it's a nerf, only keep it if the issue it addresses is really critical.
Half-measures that minorly inconvenience a strategy (like raising the death gem cost of a tartarian) are an example of something I just won't use.

c) Nothing that raises micromanagement requirements, *even if it fixes a critical flaw*. Turns take too long already - anything that punsihes a strategy which is easy to script, or which adds overhead to manage an existing strategy, is a non-starter.

I don't want to come across as over-critical, however - I have been unable to make a mod that meets the criterion I've described, so I can hardly fault QM for failing to make a mod that he doesn't even want to specifications which I can't myself achieve (although I have hopes for the new spell modding engine.)

But since you ask, this is why I don't use CBM myself.