Conceptual Balance Mod 1.41

[quantum_mechani]

Damn you :O

Address the global I mentioned!

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

Jazzepi

Heh, sorry, I didn't mention Fata Morgana because I had already buffed it for next version. I don't think Gift of Nature's Bounty is boosted any more though, seems to see a lot more use than in dom2 even without the buff.

About leprosy and black death- while they are superb at screwing somebody over they are less useful for the ultimate goal of winning. Strategies evolving around them take simply too long to come to fruition, and in black death's case ruins your spoils as well. As far as destroying armies leprosy is many times less scary than other options the late game can lob at them (any battlefield damage spell, flames from the sky). And for the purposes of any reasonable length conflict, the effect can be 90% offset simply by castings of astral healing... of course once the war is over having lots of diseased things is a mm nightmare. Given that, it will probably be 8 gems next version.

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.

The problem with this analysis is that it totally ignores mage time, which is the critical factor far more than 2-3 slaves difference.

[Horst F. JENS]

Originally Posted by VedalkenBear

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

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.

The point of auto-summon instead of summon-allies (as far as i understand) is that auto-summon let your pretender do other valuable things with his time, like search, forge, cast etc.

Maybe the auto-summon should be dominion-strength-dependent like with the ghost king ?

I find a batch-summon-allies Lord of War scary because i would strip him of magic and use him as a mobile troop-factory. But maybe that is exact what he need to become more popular.

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by VedalkenBear

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.

I can't imagine a pretender being given "summon allies". Usually when you have a pretender you do one of four things.

1. Invade PD provinces. (cyclops, wyrm, PoD)
2. Site Search (Rainbow mages / mages with high levels in off paths)
3. Research (primarily rainbow mages)
4. Forge (Any god can do this)

Summoing allies is almost always strictly worse than any of the above 4. Basically the last thing you would ever want your pretender to do is sit around summoning chaff, or even regularish units. To balance something like this, your pretender would have to spit out 20+ units a turn. Probably more, actually. 25 infantry, 5 calvary, and 10 archers could be good. The idea is that you would literally want him to summon a small raiding force each time he is used.

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

Heh, sorry, I didn't mention Fata Morgana because I had already buffed it for next version. I don't think Gift of Nature's Bounty is boosted any more though, seems to see a lot more use than in dom2 even without the buff.

I meant you buffed Gift of Nature's Bounty from vanilla version

I think it's fine as you have it now. It's difficult to research, and expensive castings of gift of health are more in vogue these days then extra money.

Jazzepi

[Zeldor]

QM:

I think that both Leprosy and Black Death would be viable at 8-10D gems per casting. Black Death is level4? Huh, I thought it's level 7[which it definetely should be, well, at least 6]. And QM knows why the cost of Black Death can be not so big

There are wars you don't win. Or those where you don't care for spoils. Black Death is a nasty spell, but not really great against bigger enemies, as their income is really distributed.

And could you maybe add a small item pack? Water and fire could really use more items. Especially water. Use of W gems is really boring

[JimMorrison]

[quote=quantum_mechani;684751]

About leprosy and black death- while they are superb at screwing somebody over they are less useful for the ultimate goal of winning. Strategies evolving around them take simply too long to come to fruition, and in black death's case ruins your spoils as well. As far as destroying armies leprosy is many times less scary than other options the late game can lob at them (any battlefield damage spell, flames from the sky). And for the purposes of any reasonable length conflict, the effect can be 90% offset simply by castings of astral healing... of course once the war is over having lots of diseased things is a mm nightmare. Given that, it will probably be 8 gems next version.

Flames From the Sky is 50 gems. For this, it tends to kill less units outright, than Leprosy will Disease. The overland kill spells are HP+Prot dependent, while Leprosy is only an MR check - many more later game and elite units can survive multiple fire/ice bombardments, and yet still more than likely die to the first penetration boosted Leprosy that touches them. The spell truly is a bargain at 10D, I've seen it used to great effect multiple times now - including the current situation, where it is being entirely abused at 5D/cast.....

The problem with this analysis is that it totally ignores mage time, which is the critical factor far more than 2-3 slaves difference.

It hardly ignores mage time. To cast the big batch spells usually requires you to use your pretender, a summoned Demon Lord, or a special hero, and the use of artifact boosters. Building just 1 castle where you pump out cheapo low path demon spammers allows your big guys to do other things. For a little bit of gold and effort, you've allowed someone to exchange 7 nearly useless little no name mages, for the use of their most powerful mages. I'd do that in a heartbeat any chance I got. Dropping the cast from 7 to 2 makes that choice feasible, and economical - and it makes it virtually impossible to boost the single caster high enough to justify using the batch spell over the single spam.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Flames From the Sky is 50 gems. For this, it tends to kill less units outright, than Leprosy will Disease. The overland kill spells are HP+Prot dependent, while Leprosy is only an MR check - many more later game and elite units can survive multiple fire/ice bombardments, and yet still more than likely die to the first penetration boosted Leprosy that touches them. The spell truly is a bargain at 10D, I've seen it used to great effect multiple times now - including the current situation, where it is being entirely abused at 5D/cast.....

Firstly, Flames from the Sky has been 35 gems in every version of Dom3, including every CB version. Secondly, the spell can be stacked in one turn to kill even higher hp things. Thirdly, for the most part the things that escape other artillery also laugh off leprosy. You also seem to be saying failing the mr check = death which is an extreme exaggeration. It's a rare situation you don't have healing spells to prolong the effected units almost indefinitely, or access to some kind of healing to solve the problem completely.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

It hardly ignores mage time. To cast the big batch spells usually requires you to use your pretender, a summoned Demon Lord, or a special hero, and the use of artifact boosters. Building just 1 castle where you pump out cheapo low path demon spammers allows your big guys to do other things. For a little bit of gold and effort, you've allowed someone to exchange 7 nearly useless little no name mages, for the use of their most powerful mages. I'd do that in a heartbeat any chance I got. Dropping the cast from 7 to 2 makes that choice feasible, and economical - and it makes it virtually impossible to boost the single caster high enough to justify using the batch spell over the single spam.

It would indeed make a lot of sense to just build a fort, pump mages there to use the low level spells. Except, people are _already_ generally putting the maximum amount of gold they can into produceing mages. Which means that in general, sacrificing a bunch of mages for that is going to put you far behind in research of where you would be, and all the demons you can muster are probably not going to be a big help if you are behind in research. It's especially compounded if you already are using up a significant portion of your mages to sustain a blood economy.

Of course, as I was saying, once research is done, the whole situation changes. Suddenly you are rolling in more mage time than you know what to do with. So I certainly see the problem with the spells, I just do not see it being any kind of issue in the early/middle game (which is where they should be being cast). The real issue is that mage time goes almost instantaneously from being indispensable to almost worthless, it's very hard to make the spells account for both stages.

[chrispedersen]

In small to medium maps, one third of your income can be derived soley from the capital. Hence *two* castings of Black death are sufficient to drop income 20%.

Way more than an adequate return for mage time.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

In small to medium maps, one third of your income can be derived soley from the capital. Hence *two* castings of Black death are sufficient to drop income 20%.

Way more than an adequate return for mage time.

This is quite true... however I think you are actually perhaps safer from this in CB than base, considering how much easier domes are.

[chrispedersen]

Typically, you get two castings in before someone realizes... damn I should have put a dome up.

I think the spell is great - however in terms of power I think it should be d6-7 instead of d5