Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

As for the boulders, their effects are a little obscure unfortunately. Actually they have two effects: a direct impact hit, and some splash damage. The direct impact is quite powerful (I forget how powerful), but only hits one target. The damage can be reduced by shields and armour, and I think Air Shield works. The splash damage is quite weak (8 damage, as Redeyes says), but it's true that it does add up and unarmored units like Slingers will quickly be wiped out.

I went back and looked at the code just to check that I had the right numbers again.

What happens is: 1 primary attack that hits at 1 damage max.

1 attack following up the primary attack that can't be stopped with a shield that hits at 10 damage (34 total)

An attack that hits everyone in the square (still can't be parried with a shield) that hits at -16 damage (8 total).

I didn't think the 34 damage direct attack was as big as it was and perhaps it should be dialed back, but I'm not passing any judgement on it.

It looks like an ideal weapon to kill elite infantry like Tuatha Warriors anyway. The way the attack is setup with secondaryeffectalways to make it so it can't parried might also negate the glamour?

[decourcy]

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by decourcy

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

The biggest difference is that vanilla stone hurlers' boulders are stopped by shields. The vanilla and cbm hurlers should perform fairly similarly until you run into elite infantry, like the Tuatha warriors you used.

[Bat/man]

Well, in the other thread on Agartha I was pretty hardily lampooned.

I made the notes that the boulder throwers are very good.
Personally, I *like* the changes.

Is Agartha overpowered. Perhaps, although I never thought I'd say that. I really like the feel of the national buff (song of the mournful?)

I think the upcoming change to PD might be sufficient, to make them a simply relatively balance, interesting race to play. Agartha under CBM 1.9 can definitely surprise people. I think the idea of darkness is great, and I think your new proposal to implement it is good llama.

Mitigating against the stone throwers: you can take an AWEFUL lot of friendly fire casualties unless you find one of various ways to avoid.



[Aside: As an interesting mechanic, llama: I think the capital (and perhaps other cave citadels) should spawn darkness always.
Perhaps the way to do this is a free unit spawn (high protection, high mr, no slots, no movement, and diseased with 1 hp). Have this unit free cast darkness?

This way agartha would have darkness in its capitols (caves?) and yet could not move these units out to achieve darkness in other areas (as they die).]

[decourcy]

Admiral Aorta, Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I don't want to start another fight, but if one more person on these forums sticks their nose in the air about SP entire populations of cicadas are going to disappear into this forum. Quit being snobs, it is uncool.

Aorta, SP is quite valuable because i can set up identical starting situations and see how one race does compared to another both in ease of expansion vs indeps, and in winning the game vs the ai players.

Also, another person said there is no hope for Agartha grenade throwers vs cavalry due to lack of armour... um, go one more space in their build list and build that unit, it is the grenade thrower with armour.

Again, i ran a test Agartha vs Helheim with me playing both, and Helheim certainly fared better than Tir but i was able to keep a positive ratio of gold cost of lost units vs Helheim as Agartha. Blessed 30 defense, glamored units die from 1 boulder.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by decourcy

Admiral Aorta, Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I don't want to start another fight, but if one more person on these forums sticks their nose in the air about SP entire populations of cicadas are going to disappear into this forum. Quit being snobs, it is uncool.

Just please don't ask that CBM be balanced around SP in any form. It is directly counterproductive towards CBM's role and function.

Attempting to deal with the stone hurlers using high defense troops is always going to be a failing prospect, ranged weapons never care about the target's defense. This won't, and can't, be changed.

Using the worst possible matchup for a unit as a direct means of balancing it doesn't work.

[GFSnl]

I think I should just add that I think Single player is not a very good measurement for Value.

Single player is not like multi player. It's much different.

Just my two cents.

[Executor]

I`ll second what Llama said. Especially the sp part. Any testing done in sp means very little to nothing in mp, I think every vet is going to agree on this.

Originally Posted by decourcy

Also, another person said there is no hope for Agartha grenade throwers vs cavalry due to lack of armour... um, go one more space in their build list and build that unit, it is the grenade thrower with armour.

Even the armored ones are bad, protection vice I mean.
That`s a medium protection armor and they still don`t get a helm and no shield. They are still rather easy to kill, and their size is a another weakness too.
Hurlers are still going to die to the same amount of cavalry, gold vice.

[Admiral_Aorta]

Originally Posted by decourcy

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

you could have armies of nothing but markata in SP and not have problems, this is meaningless