Conceptual Balance Mod 1.5

[Sombre]

No, it's not ironic. You may think I'm overestimating the utility of mr against blindness, soul slay etc, but I think you're underestimating it.

You said any fire mage could easily counter SCs with blindness. I simply don't believe this is true with the mr check. The math with mr checks has never really seemed to match what actually happens in the game, but I think you'd need a LOT of mages casting blindness to make 25 mr 'very poor protection'. We're not talking about anything more than 'one mage casting it twice' working here.

[Kuritza]

Math with mr checks never matched what actually happens in game indeed.
Sometimes you will need a lot of mages casting blindness, but sometimes first casting penetrates magic resistance and kills SC.
My friend once ran some VotD checks. It took him lots of tries to actually penetrate MR of a pretender God, just as math suggests. Later his opponent killed 2 of his SCs within three turns, with three to five attempts, dont remember exactly. Etc, etc.
Thus, rather high possibility of a F1 mage with Alteration 2 researched crippling/killing your pretender or equipped raider is hardly a good thing. Random element must be under control; imagine chess where Pawns can retaliate, killing attacking Queens and Castles by rolling 20. Pwns!

[Burnsaber]

I think blindness is fine the way it is. Even in CBM, fire is the second weakest path in the game. Why should all tricks of fire magic be negated by fire resistance?

[Kuritza]

Fire is not THAT weak. Its a very good evocation path, also some of the best items require fire (firebrands (hell yeah), dragon helms, flambeaus/holy scourges, lightless lanterns, fever fetishes, rune smashers, charcoal shields, shields of gleaming gold, several nice arts etc). The only thing it lacks is good summons - but hey, no one is perfect.
And even if fire was as weak as some of us believe, its not a reason to make fire better than astral at countering SCs. At the very least blindness should be Alt 4, as high as Paralyze.
Imho, of course.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

I am posting a list of heroes that I think still need improving in CBM/WH. For the most part, they are non-mage heroes, as I think that they are the most problematic and least scalable. I am going in the order that they appear in the saved game attached to the WH thread that shows them all.

(list snipped)

The EA Atlantis hero who's basically a map move 0 living pillar. Give the guy some map move. I mean, he's a commander LP, so he's prime thug material, but he can't fricking go anywhere!

[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.