KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!

[Xietor]

I think the more interesting results is no one takes dragons.
Perhaps it is time to give them recuperation and maybe raise their dominion to 2. Everyone favors the wyrm over the dragon, and when that happens, maybe the dragon needs twinked.

One reason i have never taken a dragon is the low slots, low dominion, and high cost for a 2nd magical path.

[Zeldor]

cleveland:

There are surely more PoDs than in that poll.

Oracle and Monolith are so popular because S9 bless is probably best for so long game. And S9 pretender in late game is really great. Wishes! Master Enslave!

Next Kingmaker should be with CBM

[Xietor]

Maybe QM will have to host next year's mega game and use his famous MOD!. In fact, there are many things i like about the CBM, and one of them is making less used pretenders cheaper.

In fact, given how easy it would be to patch the costs of the pretenders, and KO's hate of cookie cutter ways to play nations, maybe we can actually see a merger of some of the Pretender CBM ideas with the Vanilla game.

Perhaps if the immobile pretenders could not teleport, like the sphinx, limiting their use offensively(master enslave),
we would see less of them.

You just NEVER see some pretenders. Not all magic paths are equal, and some titans have no resists, which in my book puts them behind pretenders with resists.

Father of Winter is a good Titan type pretender because he is cheap 75, has good dominion 3, has the best resist(100 cold), forest and mountain survival, 2 water and maybe the best chill aura. Contrast him to say the Lord of War.

Both of these pretender are available to MA Ulm. Lord of War costs 50, but for 25 less points, you also get a guy with only 2 dominion, 1e(a path you do not need), no resists, no terrain bonus like the Father of Winters,
no aura, and to top it off, he only has 75 hps compared to father of Winters 88! He has 2 less str, but has 2 more att, def, and prec.

So who in their right mind takes the Lord of War for 50 when you can get a Father of Winters for 25 points more? If the Lord of War in fact lived up to his name, maybe 100 hps,
Nice Magical 1h Weapon/shield, give the guy some type resist, maybe thematic with a magical shield or boots, then he would be worth buying as a sc pretender ready to take provinces on turn 1.

Now Ulm could forge the stuff for the Lord of War anyway, but if they are going to go to the trouble of forging a sword of sharpness and a shield on turns 2 and 3, they may as well get the Father of Winters, who is superior.


So maybe part of the solution is not just a cost adjustment but tinkering a bit with some of the pretenders to add a resist or magic item etc to those that are overpriced and never used.

[Zeldor]

Xietor:

So why didn't we use CBM Pretenders for that game? Not complete CBM, just that part?

[llamabeast]

I think because you always get less players for anything CBM-related, and obviously we wanted _lots_ of players.

I may try to start some CBM games soon. QM has put a lot of work into it, and I think it deserves some more MP action.

The trouble is there are always some bits people don't like. For instance, I really dislike the fact that magic-3 gives +3 to research. Just seems far too much. Personal taste I guess.

[Xietor]

Agree with LLama. If I do in fact host next year's mega game, and nothing is done with Pretenders(in the vanilla game), I likely will put that up for a vote with a strong lean towards using it.

The problem of using the entire CBM mod is the learning curve. I invited new players to play in this game, and CBM is a lot to take in. That is the same reason I did not include any of the very good mod nations in the game either. Learning curve grows every time you add a mod to the game.

There is no real learning curve with Worthy Heroes as that basically means you get a tougher hero. Kingmaker Mod did throw a few curves in, like increasing the cost for gem producing items, but nothing compared to the scale of adding the entire CBM.

And while I agree with most of QM Pretender changes-some I do not. I think the Master Lich is fine as is, and many use him at his current cost. He is not an underused pretender, and I have in fact used him to to great success in 2 of my past 4 mp games on large maps.

[JimMorrison]

Well personally I think the 1rp/M is a bit steep as well, but if you really think about the reasoning behind it, I think it makes sense as the best solution, really.

The thing with magic scale, is that like 90% of pretenders now are either M1 OR D2. Sometimes it's left even, but why leave it even when only 40 points gets you that extra rp? And likewise, if you are not in dire need of the extra rp, going drain2 gains you 80 points (120 net over the nations that have poor researchers and NEED the M). So in CBM, the paradigm is shifted, such that the choice is not so easily defined.

Ultimately though, I think a deeper change is needed in order to make the magic scale work out better. The problem is that the range of rp available on researchers, sort of works best when most people operate in a range of +/-1. It's rare to see M3 or D3, and with good reason. So in realistic terms, if CBM added 2 rp to most mages (or a bonus of 3 if they were 7/8+ already), and then recommended that for "normal" research speed you play on hard, and for "hard" research speed you play on very hard, I think you would strike the best balance for the scale.


As for pretenders, they're hard to tweak properly without testing afterwards, which isn't always going to tell the story. It does make sense not to buff a pretender that frequently gets used already though. And perhaps bumping the Lady of Rivers to 4W gems/turn was a bit much, especially considering the value of clamming. I tried her once, and I was swimming in water gems..... literally. :O

[Xietor]

i feel sorry for anyone who took d2 this game. heh. good luck
outfitting your thugs with items-unless you can trade for everything which is possible in a game of this magnitude.

[Hoplosternum]

I would have liked CBM. As a fairly new player I think it actually helps people like me. It makes other strategies/ spells/ pretenders reasonable alternatives. And as I don't yet know all the 'correct' / power gaming moves now it helps me that the others are less bad.

Although many of the experts seem to know CBM well I probably have more chance of surprising them with that mod than in Vanilla. Plus if I haven't picked the 'proper' paths CBM may well boost the sub optimal path I have picked giving me a better chance. Be that troop builds, spell choices, pretenders etc.

[Unoptimized]

How...terribly off topic. HOWEVER, while we are talking about this, I figure I will throw in my two cents. It is my opinion that you folks are talking about the magic/drain scales only from the perspective of the research bonus it provides. Now, don't get me wrong, research bonuses are nice. They give you the spells.

However, a component of the magic/drain scale which is at least as important is the fatigue bonus on spells cast. Even though going from magic 1 to magic 2 does not give you more research, it DOES allow your mages to sling around more spells. Meanwhile, the drain scale makes it harder to cast spells in your domain.

In other, game related news, my etheral virgins wound up attacking barbarians blind turn two, but they turned out all right. In case anyone was wondering .