Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Executor]

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

[ghoul31]

Originally Posted by Executor

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

You did well playing against nobody. Lets see you play other people....

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Executor

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

Perhaps you should calm down a bit. You're, for what ever reason, taking this personally and I have no interest in...wait something sounds familiar. I mean, some people like all in strategies with dom 5 and no strong priests and hoping they don't get hit by a plague in the cap, and go AI if it doesn't work out, and it does sometimes work out for them.

But aren't you forgetting what you are arguing...yet again? You've admitted that Ashdod can't gear up faster than the other SC nations, so why don't you get to actually arguing why that Adon is better than other geared up SCs.

A Fomorian King with same equipment and research will be mistformed and mirror imaged, which is a lot safer than raw protection. A Dai Oni will still have sky high protection protection and fire shield shortly. But we've been over this. Are you really arguing the one additional slot to fit a bracer makes Adonim unbalanceable?

Originally Posted by rdonj

This one is easy, actually. Your astral adon enjoys having returning available in a couple of circumstances. For example, that makes it impossible to teleport anything in to kill it as it will just vanish in a puff of smoke when you try. Then next turn it can teleport into another province. It makes it a lot harder for your adon to get stranded and unavailable if you need it somewhere else as well.

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying cast ritual of return on an SC, launch a teleport attack, hope to not take any hits winning, at which point you are immune to counterattack and can indeed use the counterattack to return to a lab for further attack? I mean, I guess, but that's not exactly a huge thing that's likely to be exploitable...for anything really. Nor would it actually do anything against magic duel.

Perhaps Executor can just come out and say what he meant.

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying cast ritual of return on an SC, launch a teleport attack, hope to not take any hits winning, at which point you are immune to counterattack and can indeed use the counterattack to return to a lab for further attack? I mean, I guess, but that's not exactly a huge thing that's likely to be exploitable...for anything really. Nor would it actually do anything against magic duel.

Perhaps Executor can just come out and say what he meant.

They are not talking about ritual of returning, they are talking about the spell returning. You give your commander 2 astral gems, kill the PD with a normal script(bless body ethereal bla bla attack) and then the next turn you set your commander to cast returning instead. And yea it gives you better strategic value than cloud trapeze. (at a higher price but I feel that loosing the thug + the gear costs much more so better 2 astral gems than that)

[Shangrila00]

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

As if elephants won't still squish a 36 prot Adon, or any earth nation with piercers, or any nation that can cast lightning bolt, which is like half the nations in the MA.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

[P3D]

LOL. The fun thing is that IMHO both Hinnom and Gath are much more scarier in their era than Ashdod in the first 30 turns or so. Hinnom has size-5 MR-12 tramplers to clean up all indies (well, with two exceptions). And by the time they are obsolete, you are recruiting Melqarts.
And Gath had already rushed their nearest/weakest neighbor, and switched to turtle mode for the next, say, 30 turns.

Compared to them, Ashdod struggles with both expansion and research. The giant they have are neither tramplers, nor affordable, nor (en)durable. Asdod has two cap-only giant sacreds that are expensive. The Hinnom ones are both cheaper and just better (Fear). The Gath Gibborim, while not spectacular individually, are affordable to mass in critical quantities.
The nonsacred regular Ashod giants are worse than what Hinnom and Gath could do. They just... can't kill stuff fast enough?

Research: Hinnom recruits Ammi - kinda overpriced for researcher, but they are awesome fortune teller (10), and provide A2 access. The Horite Shaman is adequate to start up the Death ladder (with a native RoW). Gath has not that expensive (120g)options that provide diversity (ED, FD, ES, SD, D2, E2) - if a 80gp S1 caster would not also be available. What does Ashod have?
1/ Overpriced Emite that can't be used as thug - at that point just spend the gems on a Zamzummite. Wait, 1/4 of them can forge flaming skulls, too bad you don't really need more than one of those. Another 1/4 of them are actually useful as communion slaves, and could cast Nether Darts at Evo7. Unfortunately, researching that would take an eternity.
2/ Sages. They are just too expensive for research. The magic they provide (E2/S2/F2) is overpriced at 200gp. Nor are they providing any spectacular magic on a reliable basis. This leaves you, out of capital, the
3/ Zamzummite. Yes, he can be thugged (for gems). Yes, half of them can skellispam giant skellies (1/2 chance for doing that effectively). But no E3 access (boosts/casts/forge). F randoms give you nothing besides forge access. Token ES access that you should already have on the Sphynx, and 310GP is to expensive for communion slave. Gath can do it all except the skellispam.
But as it is in CBM 1.92, I'd make three or four changes:
2/ Change Sage random to 3 F/E/S. Those guys are supposed to know more than what could be learned in a human lifetime.
3/ Reduce the cost of Talmai Elders 400GP. That's about what they worth, without H3 or cross-paths.
4/ maybe, give them a semi-decent size 2 unit.

Ah, and make their national evocation castable by their mages.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

Busted!!! :