Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[PvK]

Cainehill said:
...
There's been a lot of us who've mentioned that we'd love the option of limitting research the way it is in the demo : capping it at level 4 while avoiding the other limits of the demo. Even better would be an option to pick which is the highest research level (2, 3, 5, 7, etc) to be used. Not something most people would want to play regularly, but a very nice change of pace, with higher level magic and construction removed.

Best of all, something like this could be coded with minimal effort, since it would merely change the cap. Here's hoping to see something like it in Dom3

It is pretty easy to mod out (or up) the spells. I agree it'd be fun. I've been working on a Hard Magic mod for a long time (taking forever mainly due to lack of spare time).

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

PvK said:

It is pretty easy to mod out (or up) the spells. I agree it'd be fun. I've been working on a Hard Magic mod for a long time (taking forever mainly due to lack of spare time).

PvK

Be sure to check out the "Null Spell Mod " I just put out. It lists all the spells with unaltered paths and costs, in mod format. Could save you some time...

[Arralen]

Celestial Master (Standard and BK) gets +1 air, -1 water, +1 elemental, +15g. Result: F 2A W S ? #, 265g (sacred)
Celestial Master (SA) gets +1 sorcery, +15g. Result: F 2A W S 2$ # (linked), 265g (sacred)

1) you forgot holy-3 ...
2) having water-2 on them acutally makes sense (Acid-Spells, which are rarely used otherwise), while having another nation with lightning-tossing mages is rather boring.
3) S&A CM is FAWS 3R .. that's not what I read from above...

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And if you take away water from the CM, or if you really want to beef up S&A magic, replace Master of The Way's water with astral, so he can form communion with the CM, and summon water daemons.

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And "Spirit Mastery" is starting spell of S&A. There's little that S&A has in the first turns, and now with 8 instead of 4 gems it won't even have Disposessed (sp?) Spirits ..

[Saber Cherry]

Arralen said:

1) you forgot holy-3 ...
2) having water-2 on them acutally makes sense (Acid-Spells, which are rarely used otherwise), while having another nation with lightning-tossing mages is rather boring.
3) S&A CM is FAWS 3R .. that's not what I read from above...

---

And if you take away water from the CM, or if you really want to beef up S&A magic, replace Master of The Way's water with astral, so he can form communion with the CM, and summon water daemons.

---

And "Spirit Mastery" is starting spell of S&A. There's little that S&A has in the first turns, and now with 8 instead of 4 gems it won't even have Disposessed (sp?) Spirits ..

...ahhh... I hope I didn't similarly break any other nations... I can sort of feel my reputation falling into a black hole... makes me want to play Space Empires IV... but I'll live

I realize water-2 plus fire is more interesting that air-2, but I was trying to make their national spells accessable. Having never played SA, I didn't realize the national sites gave water gems...

So that's fixed in version 7.1 (available at the first post). Thanks for noting the problems! As for giving MotFE astral, that seems sort of wierd (violating their name). You can do communions with only Celestial Masters, anyway, which (with this mod) cost about the same.

[Arralen]

Don't confuse "Master of The Way" (100gp/WR2H) with "Master of Five Elements"(whatever) ...

[Saber Cherry]

Arralen said:
Don't confuse "Master of The Way" (100gp/WR2H) with "Master of Five Elements"(whatever) ...

Oh, hmm, I did exactly that. At any rate, I will take that suggestion under consideration (and probably accept it, considering how worthless Master of the Way is) for the recruitable rebalance mod v8, but I'm going to lock the current iteration (7.x) to balance changes unless bugs or major problems (like national spells becoming inadvertently nerfed) are noted... to avoid additional confusion. Hopefully TC has been boosted enough to compete in MP without communion, but we'll see...

[Saber Cherry]

Mod test game recruitment phase ended. Hopefully, valuable balance data will be gleaned for version 8 of this mod

[PvK]

Saber Cherry said:

Be sure to check out the "Null Spell Mod " I just put out. It lists all the spells with unaltered paths and costs, in mod format. Could save you some time...

That is extremely useful - thanks!

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

PvK said:
Ulmites being a favorite of mine, I'll comment just on what I've read in recent posts here, since I haven't gotten time to try this yet.

* Giving Ulm troops a helmet that doesn't reduce defense will in fact be helpful, at least to some of the troops (e.g. Chain/Hammer/Shield), particularly when they start gaining experience, at least against average regular troops.

* I second thinktank's suggestion to give Ulmites higher MR. If it were moddable (tis not), I'd have every level of drain scale add to their MR, but failing that, +2-4 MR for Ulm would be neat IMO, and I'd do that rather than improving their helmet design.

* Did you look at Ulm morale? Anyone know why Ulm pikeneers get +1 morale compared to the other troops? +1 morale would also be useful for the other troops, but IMO +MR is better - there are ways for Ulm to deal with their morale - not so much for their MR.

PvK

I've been thinking about Ulm's MR problem for a while, and various other things, like why armor is totally ineffective against many of the game's spells. And I had an idea...

I'm sort of morally opposed to giving Ulmians a high base magic resistance in their default theme, because the goal of this mod is to change the balance of Dominions II while keeping Illwinter's themes and races intact. However, Ulmians are afraid of magic, and wear specially smithed armor... and now, in my mod, they wear black steel full helms, too. Wouldn't it make sense for the Smiths to use special materials, and inscribe special runes into the helms blocked harmful magic from soldiers' brains?

So, I'm thinking of keeping Ulm's base magic resistance at 9, but giving +1 or +2 MR to all Black Plate units (Full Plate of Ulm and Full Helmet of Ulm), bringing them up to 10 or 11. The description would be altered, of course, to mention that costly materials and laborious techniques are used... justifying a price hike. At 10 MR, 12g sounds reasonable, and at 11 MR... 13 or 14g, possibly with a resource hike as well. Black Plate units are currently 11g by virtue of having higher morale, HP, and more armor compared to Chain units.

This change would essentially divide Ulm Infantry into two distinct lines:

Cheaper Chainmail units (10g / 20-25 resource / 12 HP / 10 MOR / 9 MR), good against indies, Lightning (armor-negating) and Water magic (which is either armor-negating, in which case cheaper units are always better, non-armor-negating, and unlikely to kill any Ulm units), and Nature magic (again, poison is armor negating).

Elite Black Plate units (12-14g / 35+ resource / 13 HP / 11 MOR / 10-11 MR), good against Heavy Cavalry (absorbing lances), Crossbows, Fire (armor-piercing, but unlikely to kill Ulm units), Astral and Death (both MR-save) magic.

I could even make Black Plate Armor more special, with protective runes against elemental magics (+ 25, 25, 25 or + 35, 35, 35), making them some of the most battlemage-resistant troops around.

Do these sound like good changes for Ulm? They're pretty major, but still completely thematic for a nation that fears magic and entrusts both magic and forging to masterful smiths.

[Endoperez]

I also think that having extra magic resistance would help Ulm, but that just increasing their magic resistance would make them play very differently from what Illwinter meant.

I could agree on the magic resistance, or elemental resistances, but not both. I also think elemental resistances would suit them better, but that would be quite a large jump in game balance.