Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41 - Page 13

iceboy · #**121** April 7th, 2009, 03:44 PM

Is it me or do some of the heroes and pretenders need balancing with all of the troops they spawn? Such as the Lord of the Gates with all of the shades it spawns it becomes unstoppable!

Trumanator · #**122** April 7th, 2009, 04:33 PM

Well, I would say that the only really concrete reason for reversing a change would be if it becomes a problem in-game. AFAIK there haven't been any killer strategies using the LotG... That said, go ahead and see if you can put one together.

quantum_mechani · #**123** April 7th, 2009, 04:44 PM

Leprosy: I'm not entirely convinced it's unbalanced at 5 gems... but I can certainly see that the effects can be rather annoying and mm inducing, so maybe it would be for the best if it were cast less.

Early Blood summons: It's a tough situation, on the one hand I'm not sure even for current prices they will see much use early, on the other hand I can see the point that they might abusable late game (and by that I mean displace other spells). The issue is, mage time is too valuable to waste on them when you first research them, but once you have everything researched all the sudden you have a huge glut of mage time. I'm not sure there is a real solution to this, but I suppose I can mess with the prices a bit again.

Lord of the Gates: I'm actually really pleased to actually get a compliant about him... he has been stacking up boosts in vain since dom2.

Out of all the troop generating pretenders/heroes he gets by far the most, but I'm not quite convinced it's overkill. I've played against several people trying to leverage the shade spam, and it's usually not to hard to use the usual undead counters on them.

Wrana · #**124** April 7th, 2009, 04:49 PM

By the way, do you see any possible use for Lord of War? Soldiers generation has little real effect on his performance...

Trumanator · #**125** April 7th, 2009, 08:58 PM

Okay, I went into SP to see what the Lord of the Gates was capable of. He is definitely a capable expander when given dom9, and likely would be even with ~dom 7. The shades do a lot to reduce hits to him, and are actually excellent units against indies. The main issue is that only Ermor and C'tis get him, and his paths aren't really anything they need. If I want more death with them I would probably go with a lich/ML. However, I might give him a shot as C'tis, since they have slightly more problems with expansion than Ermor. Past indy clearing, he does drop off in usefulness. Though he is still fully equipable, he just doesn't measure up to an E9 cyclops, or one of the multi-armed pretenders. Perhaps adding 1E? That seems thematic, and would make me seriously consider him for a low level E-D bless for my mages. Though even as is, you can get E4 D4, dom9, and decent scales without too much trouble.

After all the above meandering, I suppose I would conclude that his lack of use has more to do with his narrow availability than anything else, and I can easily see him as simply a pretender who just needs someone to take a second look at him.

VedalkenBear · #**126** April 8th, 2009, 02:56 PM

I love the Lord of the Gates. I (personally) like the auto-summoners, except those that produce troops that require upkeep.

Here's a theoretical question. For the Lord of War (or the Celestial General), what is the tipping point for a summon that you have to actually command? E.g., would a Lord of War that auto-summoned nothing, but could use Summon Allies to summon 25 infantry and 5 cavalry be balanced? What about 15 and 3? I would much prefer a design that used 'Summon Allies' over auto-summon, because of the control it allows.

fungalreason · #**127** April 8th, 2009, 03:55 PM

I found the Lord of War to be a reasonable choice as an awake SC for Bogarus. The units are only slightly worse than their national ones, but it lets you you get away with sloth scales without severely hampering early expansion efforts

JimMorrison · #**128** April 8th, 2009, 07:40 PM

Leprosy is not just micro management. Even a single cast against a large army can death sentence 1000g worth of mages and many gems worth of summoned elites. Cast that 3x a turn, every turn on an invader and if you can stall him for a few months, he's completely screwed - unless he is just totally outplaying you otherwise.

Even at 10 gems a player with a small stockpile can ruin an enormously expensive army at relatively little cost - at 5 gems that ruination is easy just off of your monthly income. As if Death nations needed less expensive tools of destruction.

The Demons are a complicated issue - I do cast the individuals sometimes in Vanilla, but only in rare cases, otherwise I shoot for the batch summons if I intend to use them in my strategy. But 2-3 slaves apiece is just wow for some nations.

For example, with a strong Blood income, over 14 turns you can make a raw Empowerment + Booster (total = 68 slaves w/hammer) outperform base batch spell casting. So if you get Blood started early, and take a long view, even a nation without cheap B+? mages can do better with the single casts at 2 slaves per demon. Even 3/demon isn't too bad, it's not until they cost at least 4 apiece that it's just not worth it in a reasonable amount of time.

chrispedersen · #**129** April 8th, 2009, 08:58 PM

Well, I like giving gems the possibility of being used for something other than SC's

(thanks QM). However, I am concerned that Black Death at 6 too cheap. Try boosting it to 8? Or perhaps better, keep it at 6 but make the path requirement 7, instead of 4.

The problem isn't the casting of it, its the spamming of it.

Jazzepi · #**130** April 8th, 2009, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Leprosy: I'm not entirely convinced it's unbalanced at 5 gems... but I can certainly see that the effects can be rather annoying and mm inducing, so maybe it would be for the best if it were cast less.

Early Blood summons: It's a tough situation, on the one hand I'm not sure even for current prices they will see much use early, on the other hand I can see the point that they might abusable late game (and by that I mean displace other spells). The issue is, mage time is too valuable to waste on them when you first research them, but once you have everything researched all the sudden you have a huge glut of mage time. I'm not sure there is a real solution to this, but I suppose I can mess with the prices a bit again.

Lord of the Gates: I'm actually really pleased to actually get a compliant about him... he has been stacking up boosts in vain since dom2.

Out of all the troop generating pretenders/heroes he gets by far the most, but I'm not quite convinced it's overkill. I've played against several people trying to leverage the shade spam, and it's usually not to hard to use the usual undead counters on them.

Damn you :O

Address the global I mentioned!

You buffed Gift of Nature's Bounty, but left Fata Morgana useless!

Jazzepi