Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5

[Squirrelloid]

Suggestions for EA Agartha:

Look at the encumbrance for Oracles. 7 with no armor is ridiculous, imho, especially with cold blooded. These guys pass out after like 2 spells if their province gets hit with a snowstorm. And as the only really playable commander option...

Remove the attack penalty. Seriously. Its not like they had two eyes and lost one - they've had one eye their entire life. numerous other animals can only use one eye to see something at a given time, and are remarkably good at 'attacking' (most animals have one eye on either side of its head, which means there is little to no overlap in the field of vision of each eye). I can understand the precision reduction, but the attack reduction makes no sense.

[vfb]

Are you sure you're not looking at some guy with old age, or in a heat-3 prov? Oracles are base 5. You've also got super-easy access to Girdles, and can Summon Earthpower, and they are holy so you can get an earth bless too. You don't really need to wear armor either, just buff with Ironskin.

[kianduatha]

I've been wondering about boulder throwers, and I still haven't seen hardly anyone use them. It seems that even with the (greatly) improved attack, there's simply no real use for them(besides chumping down unsuspecting Adons, I suppose). Boulder throwers are supposed to improve damage outlay and help deal with high-defense troops. Of course these are very critical goals, especially for Agartha. But then why do we not see such a crucial niche filled, more often than not?

1. Range. Str/3 means that you can only have a very limited number of boulder throwers useful at any time--especially with their large sizes. Thus you cannot ever get a critical mass of them, even though there are several other considerations that would prevent such a thing(cost, for one, and friendly fire)

2. Ammunition. Two ammunition is fine on troops such as javeliners, who are also meant to be frontline troops. And if boulder throwers were meant to ever touch melee, that would be fine. Unfortunately, they have abysmal defense and easily die to even mediocre troops.

I'd suggest at least considering upping the range to maybe str/2 and/or pumping ammunition up to 3. It just seems that with a bit of tweaking, Agartha can get some of the killing power they need from stone hurlers.

[chrispedersen]

I use bolder throwers; I use them as hp sponges, in combination with a nature regen. Going from memory the units above them have fewer hp.

It would be fun to see the boulders increased, and made AoE1

[Fantomen]

They ARE AoE 1 in CBM, and quite effective. A minor blood bless pushes the range to 7, enough to throw them over a front rank of Ancient ones or other melee troops.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

They ARE AoE 1 in CBM, and quite effective. A minor blood bless pushes the range to 7, enough to throw them over a front rank of Ancient ones or other melee troops.

Hey thats a neat factzoid to remember. Thanks fant!

[Frozen Lama]

what about Jotun boulder throwers? they are pretty useless too

[kianduatha]

Minor blood bless, with Agartha? Egads. Never thought about doing that before. Blood stones would be nice to have, though. Given the metagame's tendency towards no gem generator games, though, I'm a bit leery of using that as a reason to keep them as-is.

They are indeed quite effective in CBM--at least when they're not hitting your own troops or wading into melee with their fists.

Edit: Jotunheim doesn't really feel the pain with boulder throwers(except for niche uses and sieging), mostly because they could recruit a javelin thrower instead; 20 range on their weapons, and a perfectly acceptable melee combatant to boot!

[Squirrelloid]

While i understand the desire to remove bloodstones because of gem gen, earth really needs a miscellaneous slot booster to replace it if its becoming unique.

Thinking on some different topics:

Magma Eruption - this should be castable underwater. seriously.

Bone Melter - this needs something done to it. AoE 1 means it tends to get dropped on worthless chaff by your mages, rather than high value targets. For a W3N2 spell that requires alteration 5, this is underwhelming. Either make it single target (so autotargetting will choose large monsters) or give it improved AoE. Possibly 1+ rather than 1 (so it kills enough chaff that you don't feel like you're wasting mage turns). I suppose another alternative is to make it W1N1 or W2N1 so you don't need to put boosters on most mages with W and N to be able to cast it. (Basically, the effect is not commensurate with the necessary investment of research time, gems for gear, and mage turns in combat).

Bone Melter is of course a natural spell for MA Oceania, and useable UW, so this improves their UW combat options (probably works for EA Oceania too). Magma Eruption is a natural for EA Atlantis's BKs. And having some alternatives to cold attacks, bad water offensive spells otherwise, and buffs would make UW combat less stupid.

[Sombre]

To make it target single high hp targets wouldn't be hard. You make a single target version with a nextspell of the aoe version.