Vote

[PriestyMan]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Personally, I would be quite interested in knowing how much opposition to the hammer change is on principle, vs unaddressed balance repercussions.

I think a lot of the votes are the balance reason. the SDR change hurts some nations a lot, but the hammer change utterly annihilates a few nations. unless they get massive boosts, i think there will be massive opposition to this. my vote for example was not based on principle bu balance

[Gandalf Parker]

Id rather not see anything removed. A tactic or a strategy is just that.
A balancing tweak has been, and I feel should continue to be, about how MUCH it gets used. Not the fact that it gets used.

Usually pretenders, units, equipment, etc have been tweaked to make them appear less or more in the game. Cant such items be made more expensive? Make it so that using the strategy takes more dedication and investment to get it, to the detriment of other factors (such as defense and research) so that opponents strategies have more of a chance against it.

[quantum_mechani]

Actually, calling them 'removed' bugs me a bit. All things mentioned here (except the sites) have simply been made unique.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Personally, I would be quite interested in knowing how much opposition to the hammer change is on principle, vs unaddressed balance repercussions.

I'm around 90% against the Hammer ban due to my opinion that it removes an entire area of strategy from the game (balance issues can likely be modded), while also punishing good players who are capable of thinking ahead, and rewarding stupid players who can't. (with regards what items they might want in a few turns time)

As without hammers you can just mass forge whatever you need the turn before you need them, without any forethought required at all to ensure you've forged what you need before hand at maximum efficiency. And I don't think I could ever support a change in a non-broken mechanic that dumbs the game down. (gem-gens in theory is a strategy, as you're investing gems for a long-term gain. But were simply broken in the form they were in)

And all the talk of no hammers cutting MM is BS IMO. Since at least for me, hammer time in late game only accounts for about 1% of the time spent on doing turns. In fact, as yet I haven't actually seen any creditable argument for removing hammers that I agree with.


I was writing a post for the CBM thread explaining in more detail this problem, but paused it when I realised I didn't have much interest for the changes CBM 1.7 made in general. So personally I will be sticking to 1.6 for quite some time, as 1.7 is a step backwards for the mod IMO, and goes against what I thought the aim of the mod was in making more strategies viable. (and not about removing MM from the game). As now all strategies involving non-essential items are almost all unviable IMO

(All just my opinion of course, and I think as long as the creator of the mod is happy with any changes, then that is really all that should matter)


Edit - Changed 99% to 90%, as I am concerned about balance issues as well, especially how non-earth uber nations now don't need awake/dormant pretender to stop wasting gems on forging without hammers. As I see no easy way to fix this.

[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Personally, I would be quite interested in knowing how much opposition to the hammer change is on principle, vs unaddressed balance repercussions.

I don't think the major opposition is due to principle, otherwise SDRs and gem gens would also be more popular to stay. the way I see it there are 2 main balance repercussions though, the first is national balance, by giving nations with mainly earth magic another advantage over the blood and death powerhouses, who usually lack in earth magic for early mass hammer production. the second is item balance, as some items either become too expensive or redundant altogether by forging them without hammers. other items become even better, especially the cheap effective items such as the brands, basic shields like vine and eye, etc, by taking their more expensive alternatives out of reach for most nations, especially in mass quantity.

[Gandalf Parker]

I understand the irritation of unique being referred to as removed.
But on the other hand it might also be worth noting how many people do seem to consider unique=remove as far as the usefulness of these items.

[nerozero]

Couldn't hammers just be made more expensive, if they cost 50 gems or something then they would be a little rarer, so it would be difficult to get a large amount of them.

The investment in a hammer in the game repays itselfs after just a few turns, it just seems like a no brainer to make them, with a higher gem cost you might be forced to decide between short and long term gains. This could really go for all the items we are talking about here to be honest.

[rabelais]

Does unique mean just that they are lvl 8 or that there can be only one in existence? are the costs of the item affected?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by rabelais

Does unique mean just that they are lvl 8 or that there can be only one in existence?

Both are true: level 8 makes the item unique.

Originally Posted by rabelais

are the costs of the item affected?

Forge cost is independent of construction level.

[GrudgeBringer]

Just my take on hammers...

I voted to keep them. At the same time, if your Abysia, Sauro (for the most part) and a number of other nations you are pretty well screwed OR you have your pretender forging them when he could be doing a lot of things better suited.

I would say to make 3 kinds of hammers (just a number), if you were going to change anything and keep the (hammers). Have them in different pathes so that most if not ALL could forge 1 of the 3. You could make them different, say...you make the normal Hammer give Earth 5% more benifit. Hammer 2 might get Fire or death an additional 5% or some perk. And the same for hammer 3.

THAT would open up a lot of different pretender designs and not have the Earth nations get a HUGE jump.

(Me, I usually play Earth nations anyway, but I just thought that might be a neat idea. Of course, someone with some idea of what is going on (which does NOT include me), would have to make the choices, and then a mod etc etc. Sounds like a hell of a lot of work)