Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Quitti]

Well, certainly you can't give +1e just to all ulm mages. Nor Agartha.

Here. Have some rambling about the tome, nature and blood magic.
Currently from what I've gathered, the best way to get your bloodstone economy going on ulm would've been to take a forge lord with blood or something similar - now it would only change to force the forge lord take some nature instead of blood. For agartha I've always just hunted with indep scouts for the slaves, though I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar with blood access -pretender. Do also keep in mind that if you are taking nature on your pretender(+n4), your sacred units will get regen, boosting your sacreds usability a lot (priest smiths for ulm, ancient ones/lords/oracles etc for agartha). It would be an indirect boost. Combined with the fact that you'll be having earth on your pretender also - that's reinvig (and perhaps prot if you go all the way to 9 or 10). Again that synergies with your sacreds well. No-one will force you to take such a pretender though.

Now with blood - You'll still need earth (e1b3 is the suit in vanilla, can't remember if CBM modifies the values), You don't really need to invest to anything else than b3 on your pretender with e1, and the path isn't very useful for you for the rest of the game than simply few pebble skin suits just to replace the bloodstone economy it awarded before - the paths would effectively go to waste. Having b4 would grant a point or two of strength - while not useless, it's far from regen5 or whatever you'd be having with nature. In late game nature also awards you with GoRing wished sc's/summoned tartarians, which agartha nor (ma) ulm have no national access to. Granted - they neither do have high death mages (exception being la agartha and la ulm) or high-astral casters. MA Ulm could probably suit their SC need with Iron Angels, should they have the earth income. It's not the best chassis around, but it isn't too shabby either.

So. Should the pebble skin suit be made non-unique, it'd "hurt" the nations in comparison to the tome of gaia. Being cursed and turning the user into troll (not a very bad thing for ma ulm though), it'd see little use. Tome of Gaia is not cursed - it'd see probably more use, though the point to consider is if we would want another cheap earth booster, or something a bit more rare than the ubiquitious earth boots. Tome would also basically force them to have a pretender designed for it (whereas the suit doesn't explictly need it, but it very much hastens the process of making them), but it complements to their sacred units and/or mages. It also opens up the possibility of getting into race to gift of nature's bounty / oak / gift of health. For example, Nature's bounty is in enchantment, which I believe ma Agartha likes, and I don't see it as too bad a path for ulm either, with earth well in the end, and fire fend in the way.

Just points to consider. /ramble off

[Kheldron]

Well, if the point is that nations that could make bloodstone should still be able to access an earth booster, why not change the bloodstone into E1B1 : +1E. constr 4.
Simply remove the gemgen part and make it cheaper. It would cost the equivalent of 10 gems, same as the +1E boots.
done.

[rdonj]

Gemgen part can't be removed. That's why everyone is talking about the unique earth boosters. Making one of them non-unique is the only way to get a new earth booster.

[Starshine_Monarch]

Hm... What about making empowerment in Earth cheaper for those that need bloodstones? I know you can't mod the cost of empowerment, but how about this?

Take MA Ulm for example. Create a national spell for them at Construction 6 called "Empower Smith". Using the same idea from a Dragon's or Skratti's mage/monster forms, this spell would permanently change the caster into a new "Empowered Smith" unit with the stat-line of a Master Smith, but the new unit would have #magicboost 3 1 and one less Misc. Item slot, thus giving the smith a boost in Earth Magic for roughly the cost of a second Earth booster, the downside of course being you can't pass this around like a normal booster. This of course couldn't be cast twice, because you'd be changing into the exact same unit number, so trying to boost a second time would have no effect.

A few downsides I can see from here would be this spell would be completely pointless to be cast by anyone with a better physical statline than a Smith, such as Earth Kings and the like. Other mages however can only dream of the Smith's statline and, if they meet the path requirements, would be able to cast the spell. This wouldn't be that bad if the mages only had paths that they could pass off as being from a Master Smith, but when your enemy starts seeing Empowered Smiths with N2 or some other path that Smiths don't get as randoms that he might get suspicious. These however, are unavoidable drawbacks of this method.

As for Agartha, just take the above and replace "Ulm" with "Agartha" and "Smith" with "Oracle" or "Golem Crafter" The same Spell could be used to empower Oracles of both EA and MA Agartha I believe, though we would need a separate one for Golem Crafters, Ktonian Necromancers and Tomb Oracles... Though I hate to take away Burnsaber's precious Spell Slots, it wouldn't need very many to do this if it's just a few nations that really need them.

[Sombre]

You can't mod transformation spells cleanly.

[Fantomen]

Possible or not it would be a bad solution IMO. Too complicated and cluttering, and only adressing specific nations.

I´d prefer a new earth booster with funny side effects to that, but as I stated before I don´t think it is needed from a balance PoV.

Can you copy the effect of another item into a new modded item? I mean: is it possible to duplicate the earth boots into a misc item? I suppose not since this discussion looks the way it does, I just thought about it...

[rdonj]

I think that would be possible, yes. However, I'm also pretty sure that doing so wouldn't help because you'd be wearing two items giving the same ability... so it would be like wearing two pairs of earth boots, just one of them happens to be hanging around your neck.

[Fantomen]

Worth trying isn´t it?

[Fantomen]

I´m not talking of the possibility to forge hammers, I´m talking of the opportunity to make enough hammers. Most nations will get their cruical one or two hammers, but how many can match the rumbling gemsaving engine of ulm or agartha?

If you expect to have fewer gems (with no gemgens) the relative advantage of using those gems effectively will increase. This is true even if you´re only looking at the closed economy of individual nations. And they do increase in value with scarceness. The example of Niefel Jarl is good because it illustrates how different ways to save gems now become more important. The relative advantage of recruitable SCs is increased now, as is the value of gems and the advantage of hammers.

[Sombre]

I don't agree hammers are more valuable now. They save a proportional amount so unless you have too many gems to conceivably spend in a turn or too few gems to do anything, their value doesn't change based on gem quantity.