Mod: CBM 1.7 released

[Gandalf Parker]

ahh thanks for that.
The Armor Revamp seemed new to me. Now I understand.
The only reason I didnt list it in the request for separation is that Ive never had a game request it separately yet

[llamabeast]

Actually I'm pretty sure Mark of the Champion turns the arena reward into a helmet rather than a misc item. This is good as generally the helmet slot is not particularly useful. The Mark of the Champion, by contrast, has good protection, grants Quickness, and gives a floating trident companion as a bonus attack to the wearer.

[Joelz]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Actually I'm pretty sure Mark of the Champion turns the arena reward into a helmet rather than a misc item. This is good as generally the helmet slot is not particularly useful. The Mark of the Champion, by contrast, has good protection, grants Quickness, and gives a floating trident companion as a bonus attack to the wearer.

Just tested this myself. The Mark of the Champion is indeed a helmet.

[chrispedersen]

My personal opinion is that the arena item now is too strong.
Having had to kill the wielder of it, I can tell you its real difficult in the early to mid game.

Essentially it allows many nations to field about an SC quality cmdr real early in the game. Suggest you prophetize a dai oni, or ulm lord - or even a man warden - give him 5-10 gems worth of items - and then try to bring him down.

In the armor revamps - I think Jomonese armor offers too much protection, for its encumbrance/defense penalty/map move.

I find ulm too strong. Never thought I'd say that. The combination of forge, plus having forge bonuses when no one else can access dwarven hammers is strong.
Throw in the changes to the armor and the astral .....

[llamabeast]

I find it unlikely that the Mark of the Champion is too strong, simply because it is so risky to acquire. If it motivates people to fight hard to win the Arena fight, I think that's awesome!

[iRFNA]

An interesting thing to note about the dwarven hammer change... You've actually nerfed forge bonus units that were given dwarven hammers. Consider how it is now, where we have the typical forge bonus nation with 25% reduction vs normal forging. So they pay 75% cost for items, other nations pay 100%: 25% forge bonus nations get 4 items of the same cost for every 3 that a normal nation can forge. If both nations have access to hammers, forge bonus nations are paying 50% cost while normal nations pay 75% cost. That means, with access to hammers, forge bonus nations get 3 items of the same cost for every 2 that a normal nation can forge.

Not saying it's right or wrong, just pointing out something that could be overlooked.

Also, I think the no research forge of the ancients is where balancing ulm veers into overkill territory.

[Valerius]

I'll preface this by saying that I've only looked over the change log, not yet tested the mod, and that I'm in biased in favor of anything that reduces micro. At first I wasn't too enthusiastic about the changes (especially because they hit my favored glamour nations hard) but after thinking it over I think there are some good things here - though I do have some concerns.


SDRs: the thing with SDRs isn't the additional blood slave on a successful check but the fact that the chance of a successful check for a B1 mage is dramatically increased. So nations that are rely on non-cap B1 mages for blood hunting take a much bigger hit with the elimination of SDRs than nations that rely on B2+ non-cap blood hunters. Nations with cheap B1 mages (Mictlan) can more easily compensate for the lack of SDRs than nations with expensive B1 mages (Vanheim) but they are still impacted. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as I'm in the camp that thinks blood magic is OP. My concern is with a blood nation like Niefelheim that relies on B2+ non cap blood hunters and isn't really hurt much by this - they actually gain in power relative to other blood nations. So I'd like to see what is effectively a nerf to blood magic applied evenly. The solution can vary depending on the nation in question. As far as Niefel/Jotun go I rather like the idea of changing Skratti paths from W2B2 +100%WDNB to W2B1 +100%WDNB (which has the added bonus of making it harder for them to cast thug/SC killing Life for a Life and Claws of Kokytos in the late game).

Note: I'm assuming the elimination of SDRs wasn't just intended to reduce micro but to nerf blood. If it was only intended to reduce micro then giving dousing bonuses to blood mages would equalize things again (though it would make a nation like Mictlan in particular more powerful by eliminating the need for the time/cost of making SDRs for their massed blood hunters).


Dwarven hammers: Just as with SDRs the elimination of hammers does not effect all nations equally. Sure, every nation ends up using them for forging but not all nations suffer equally from their removal. Nations that need to equip thugs or forge boosters cheaply are impacted much more than nations who don't rely on those things as much. Now of course, everyone eventually needs SCs but here I don't think eliminating hammers has as much impact. The additional forging cost as a percentage of total summoning/forging cost without a hammer is smaller than the 50% increase in cost in equipping a Sidhe Lord with a frost brand and vine shield.

Still, I do like this change as long as the fact that it hurts some nations more than others is taken into consideration. I think forge bonuses ranging from 10-15% to 25% on the appropriate mages of nations that are most effected by the lack of hammers can be both thematic and differentiate them more than hammers ever did. In cases where it really isn't thematic to grant a forge bonus another boost could be considered.


Fire/Frost Brands: I don't really get the nerf of these, especially in conjunction with the elimination of hammers making them more expensive to forge. Sure, they're popular multi-purpose weapons but I don't think that in itself qualifies them for nerfing. And this change, like with hammers, impacts thugs (especially human strength thugs) more than SCs. The frost brand nerf is particularly grievous since that weapon isn't even armor piercing. At the old damage level a Sidhe Lord's chances if they ran into a bane lord weren't good - with this change they are pretty much non-existent. Heck, their chances against any kind of decently armored troop go down sharply. And when a nation only has one trick having that trick nerfed is painful... Really, this change seems like it's intended to solve a non-existent problem.


Ulm's FotA: If I had to pick one change I think will not last this is it. Sure, Ulm has problems but giving them a level 0 version of one of the most powerful spells in the game doesn't seem the way to solve it and I think will just be abused. Though it will work against Ulm in one sense: the logical thing to do would be to dogpile them before they can get a chance to really start reaping the benefits of their FotA. If I were starting a game today this is the one thing I would definitely change.


Last thing: all of the above is intended to be constructive input. I certainly appreciate the work QM has put into the mod and major changes are always going to need some testing and balancing. And of course I've got my own biases: changes that hurt my favorite nations are going to prompt me to respond but when CBM 1.6 eliminated the clams I disliked so much I didn't have any complaints.

[Executor]

Some thoughts on the new CBM,

I think the problem with removing the hammers is that it will make certain items ridiculously overpriced. For example, it will be much easier to forge the Chalice than to forge a ring of wizardry.
I think this will make even wishing or getting access to Tartarians a very demanding task. (not that a harder access to Tarts is a bad idea)
No doubt it will greatly downsize the usage of mid game thugs which already pretty much only concentrates on nations that can utilize their commanders as thugs (Eriu/Van/Jotun...).
I rarely see summonable thugs such as Bane Lords, Firbolg etc... and this will just make it harder for them to use.

Now I suspect all of this can be compensated with games being created with a higher site frequency, but than again, better diversed nations would get much greater benefits from this.
I'm getting off track a bit, so with removing the hammers, some other items need price changing too.

As for brend weapons, why not change the Shadow brend too than? It's the best out of the 3, it's far superior to the water brend which has taken a hit as it seems as, and isn't even AP. And besides, water brend remains still the easiest one to counter with using just a little undead chaff, so I don't see the point in reducing its damage.

And I agree with Valerius about the SDR. Nations like Van already have a much harder time blood hunting with the expensive mages that require both a lab and a temple, and now with removing SDR you're just giving too much power to Mictlan, Jotunheim, Lanka... Maybe giving certain commanders a blood hunting bonus, or increasing paths, or adding a random paths, or reducing blood paths to some other nations.

Infernal disease is still way under priced, any other assassination spell are far more expensive than this one, and even harder to acquire, be it seeking arrow, manifestation, earth attack... 7 blood slaves is still very little, since even with the blood nefr empowering and forging blood booster is much cheaper than for other magic types.

And last, the fire summon Zmey is still pretty much useless it seems.

[Zeldor]

Even QM admitted Infernal Disease is too cheap, so it should be changed for final version of CBM [1.7 looks like beta, so there is hope for change, so we should make suggestions ].

And yeah, some items need price fixes [but that means lowering paths needed to forge them - it may be not so bad with more expensive boosters though]. It will be mostly 25 and 40 gem items, which were very expensive and rarely used even with 25% forge discount.

Would anyone now forge Stymphalan Wings, Bone Armor, Jade Mask, Armor of Invulnerability or even Gate Stone?

[iRFNA]

On the mark of the champion... Would it really "not be worth it" if the weapon part was removed and it became a 5 prot helmet with quickness? In most cases for thugs/SCs, there isn't even an artifact you can forge that is as useful. It would certainly be worth fighting for. Why add so much extra power to a single item? I understand the argument that you want people to really try for it, but if you really want people to do anything for it, you might as well give it every stat bonus from every item in the game. Surely the prot and quickness would be easily sufficient without being so insanely overpowered?