Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Trumanator]

Before the nerf they were considered the only good thing about Jomon. I don't really agree, but that's why they were nerfed. This was also quite a ways back when Jomon was even weaker.

[Maerlande]

Personally, I would like to see the Lord of Rebirth available for TNN and Eriu. It would provide a nice alternate chassis for the E9N? type builds with adding enough death to have a late game. And I think it's quite thematic.

[kianduatha]

Sad though I am about it, Sombre is right--as per the stated goal of CBM, changes are mostly for the purpose of giving nations multiple strategies. Jomon longbows were nerfed because at the time it was the only thing Jomon players even got, turning them into a rather boring one-trick pony. Now at least Jomon has a lot of options that are fairly equivalent in effectiveness, even if it is a weaker nation overall.

Similarly, Ashdod is in reality quite one-sided with cheap Adons. They're simply so good there's no reason to do anything else. It also helped balance Ashdod compared to other nations, but it came from in-nation balance.

Unfortunately, this is why something like Ichtycentaurs getting a hoof attack will never happen--because those are already their best troops, and buffing them further would make Oceania a one-trick pony(haha). Trident Knights, however, might get the extra attack(and even maybe one flavor of ichtysatyr to give a Reveler analogue).

[Festin]

Are there any good reasons to _not_ increase the gem cost of Tartarian Gate? Because I fail to understand why this was not done a long time ago. It would be very nice to have some diversity in the endgame (which is the most boring part of a game as it is, in my opinion).

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Festin

Are there any good reasons to _not_ increase the gem cost of Tartarian Gate? Because I fail to understand why this was not done a long time ago. It would be very nice to have some diversity in the endgame (which is the most boring part of a game as it is, in my opinion).

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, tarts are really good at 12d and 15n for the GoR. And I'd really like to see GoR at 5n so you can use it a little more frivolously without shooting yourself in the foot.

On the other hand, increasing their gem cost isn't going to do much to change the ideal endgame, because there are no options that compete with tarts in terms of performance. So all you do is raise the bar to be able to play the endgame, making Well of Misery even more essential to winning, etc...

Basically, tarts need a non-unique alternative that is competitively good in terms of performance. Preferably one that involves one of N,W,F to summon. This would make balancing tarts much easier, and diversify end-game strategies.

[Maerlande]

Tartarians are so cool that increasing the cost would be a coolness factor reduction.

QM is totally into coolness factor. It's really not hard to comprehend the changes in CBM if you use the coolness ration. For example, Jomon archers are uncool so they get nerfed. Androphag archers, while cool, are bugged so get nerfed.

Devala are cool so they get buffed. Armless dom spreading prophets for pearls are way cool.

Kydnides are cool so get cost reduction.

Dragon master is super coolio so gets cost reduction.

I don't know why you guys spend so much time debating QM's motivation. It's simple. It's the cool factor.

[Festin]

I am all for SC diversity, especially for the said paths. Unfortunately, there seem to be no suitable candidates for this role. Nature has some top-level summon which is never ever used. I think it is a dragon of some kind, so it is probably hopeless, since it does not have enough item slots to be a SC.

It would be interesting to see how a game would go if Tartarians were banned.

EDIT: Oh, and what actually is "Abomination"? I do not have Dominions here on the netbook with me, but I recall there is a high-level SW summon named like this.

[Trumanator]

Abominations are decent army killers, bad SCs. They are summoned as a unit, have only misc slots, and several life drain attacks plus gaze of death.

[Stavis_L]

Note that astral pearl income reduction has the side effect of reducing wished-for SC chassis units in play.

A list of SC units, aside from pretenders:

1) Tartarians, various flavors
2) Angels (wishable for all or summonable for some) - Chayot, Seraph, Grigori are definite SC, some others are high end thug/low end SC (iron, vengeance, fallen angels)
3) Giant nationals - Hinnom, Ashdod, Niefel, and to a lesser degree Fomoria, Gath, Yomi, possibly some more
4) Rudra, Mandaha, and Davana for Indian themed nations
5) Elemental royalty
6) Unique demons/devils
7) Golems
8) Wraith Lords
9) Tarrasque (nature dragon summon)
10) Iron dragon (earth construction summon)
11) Abomination (SW summon)
12) Eater of the Dead (SD summon)

Now, I've probably missed some, and obviously not all of these are of equivalent value - some of these are more borderline for "SC-ness", but it seems to me that reducing the ubiquity of Tartarians in the end-game would mean leveling the opportunity costs and/or effectiveness of some of these options relative to Tartarians.

This is a hard problem in that many of these are restricted to particular nations or require otherwise less useful paths to summon (vs. general utility of high Death), while any nation may use Tarts, and a high Death caster is always valuable. Also, if Tarts were overnerfed or eliminated entirely, it would cause a large shift in nation to nation balance- nations with easier access to the "unlimited" chassis options above would be effectively boosted (this is probably bad for e.g. Ashdod.)

I think that the main issue is that the game is designed for a smaller endgame (and probably smaller fields of players in general) than seems to be currently typical on these forums. If you have e.g. 3-4 nations left, the fact that the uniques are "used up" is less of an issue.

To that end, something that limited the number of Tartarians, or, taken the other way, removed limits on e.g. unique elementals, would be a way to see more variety. Not sure you could do the former, but the latter would probably be doable.

Wasn't someone (llamabeast??) working on an elemental thug/sc mod?

[Belac]

I have no idea if this is possible, but what if Shattered Soul increased over time (eventually reaching 100%)? So the utility of each Tart declines, until you have to retire them and summon another one. That would nerf them a bit without making them weaker when usable.