Mod: Adept's Mod (weapon, magic and monster changes)

[Adept]

For those who missed it, the Ashigaru are semi professional soldiers with 9/9 skill, and full 10 in morale. Gold cost 9.

[Corinthian]

To be fair, historically the axe was an excellent weapon. It was easy to forge, and you could use the down-hook to pull shields and people off balance. Not a very defensive weapon though. Real life war axes were much smaller and faster than in fantasy pictures. Easier to hit with, but doing less damage.

A realistic stat would prob dmg5, atk2 def -1, len 1 and costing only 1 resource. Real axes probably used as much metal as a dagger and a dagger cost resource 1.

Not that you should implement these stats of course. Changing only weapon stats would unbalance every unit that uses these weapons.

[kianduatha]

By the way, your example Skratti is wearing 40+ gems of gear and supported with extra casters. I would hope that it would take at least a handful of mages to take him down. Looks like orb lightning or just plain some fireballs would fatigue him out and then make short work of him. But none of that matters because he has an army with--you can just cut off retreat routes and rout the surrounding army without even having to take him out. He's only a problem if you don't expend somewhat comparable amounts of resources taking care of him.

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

To be fair, historically the axe was an excellent weapon. It was easy to forge, and you could use the down-hook to pull shields and people off balance. Not a very defensive weapon though. Real life war axes were much smaller and faster than in fantasy pictures. Easier to hit with, but doing less damage.

A realistic stat would prob dmg5, atk2 def -1, len 1 and costing only 1 resource. Real axes probably used as much metal as a dagger and a dagger cost resource 1.

Not that you should implement these stats of course. Changing only weapon stats would unbalance every unit that uses these weapons.

Too late! Though from what you say atk 0 and #flail would be more appropriate.

[Adept]

Originally Posted by kianduatha

By the way, your example Skratti is wearing 40+ gems of gear and supported with extra casters. I would hope that it would take at least a handful of mages to take him down. Looks like orb lightning or just plain some fireballs would fatigue him out and then make short work of him. But none of that matters because he has an army with--you can just cut off retreat routes and rout the surrounding army without even having to take him out. He's only a problem if you don't expend somewhat comparable amounts of resources taking care of him.

Supported by a 55 gold-recruit-anywhere vaetti hag doesn't exactly rate the comment of being supported by "extra casters". They become fearsomely powerful with construction lvl 2 items, and you can create more at will. You can have these guys out really early in the game, and only a few nations have credible magic options for countering them. They are so good that in most cases it's much better for the Jotun player to focus on the mage werewolves than spending his gold in recruiting an army of giants. Granted taking out the forging bonuses makes spamming such SCs harder, but you don't need many to roll over somebody in early game. One pretty much needs tartarians and very good magic items to match recruitable SCs Jotunheim can have out in _early_ game. No thanks.

[Squirrelloid]

Adept, I don't think you understand the purpose of a *balance* mod.

Call it a historicity mod if you must. I don't care to argue about the metallurgy or whatever. But the only 'changes' you've made that have anything to do with *balance* are ones CBM already made.

[Adept]

Updated to version 1.01

Try to be a little less insulting Squirrellord. This forum used to be such a polite and grown up place. You even manage to use the word changes in a "sarcastic" manner. What you claim above is simply not true.

a) There is a lot of weapon balance that CBM doesn't do put in here. Check out the effects of the War Spear for one.

b) CBM, at least when I last looked didn't categorically remove forging or gem creation items, nor does it remove forge of the ancients.

c) CBM doesn't fix the problem of Lord of the Hunt or the Furies being neutralised by picking up items in combat.

***

Many of the changes and fixes I've done change the game's balance point. It may not be a change you agree with (though I seriously doubt you've had time to test it). but it does effect the balance addressing things that consern me.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Executor

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

Not that i really want to get into an argument about historicity, but historically an axe had an advantage in penetrating power, because it had a heavy head that came to an 'edge' (not actually that sharp in practice, but momentum helps) at the end of a shaft, so the Force per square inch was really high. On a solid hit it was much more likely to punch through armor than a swung sword was.

FWIW, swords aren't historically much of a slashing weapon either. Sure, if you could bring it to bear on an unarmored target it could slash just fine, but a knight in full armor in the late medieval/early renaissance was mostly immune to a swung sword. Which is why thrusting became the dominant attack mode with a sword, because against an armored foe it makes a much better piercing weapon. And thus developed a number of swords which were focused on using the tip as a weapon rather than the blade per se. Note that a sword has a much smaller area of contact if it strikes with the tip rather than the blade, and since it doesn't get much of a momentum bonus from a swing (because its not end-weighted), its just a very poorly designed weapon for swinging.

(Similarly, the mace was more effective as a swung weapon against a well-armored foe than a sword was).

But lets be honest, the dominant weapon during the heaviest armored periods was the pike, and well-drilled battalions of pikemen dominated the wars in europe.

Swords as a swung weapon (eg, the cutlass) became more popular again as armor got lighter with the growing dominance of gunpowder.

[Adept]

Also consider that I have not done any work on this mod to specifically please you squirrellord, nor do I require your approval. I only post it here incase others are interested in trying it out. The mod has been created for my multiplayer groups continued enjoyment of this fine game.

Now returning to our regular mod discussion, hopefully.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Adept

Updated to version 1.01

Try to be a little less insulting Squirrellord. This forum used to be such a polite and grown up place. You even manage to use the word changes in a "sarcastic" manner. What you claim above is simply not true.

a) There is a lot of weapon balance that CBM doesn't do put in here. Check out the effects of the War Spear for one.

Which has nothing to do with balance. CBM alters the units directly because it preseves the weapons as distinct options with their own advantages and disadvantages, and tries to make sure the *units* using them are balanced. (To the extent it succeeds or fails is not the point, its targeting the right thing to balance).

If your efforts are anything to go by, you've homogenized jomon to the point that differences in weapon are totally meaningless. That's boring, and its not balance in any real way, and it certainly doesn't give jomon any interesting choices (this is still a game).

b) CBM, at least when I last looked didn't categorically remove forging or gem creation items, nor does it remove forge of the ancients.

Forging and gem creation items are made artifacts in CBM, since 1.7 and 1.6 respectively.

Forge of the Ancients doesn't need to be removed. Its a Const 9 (in CBM) global spell whose purpose (like a number of other level 9 globals) is to break stalemates.

c) CBM doesn't fix the problem of Lord of the Hunt or the Furies being neutralised by picking up items in combat.

Which doesn't actually make them more useful or balanced, since they're really bad spells even if they don't pick anything up.

On the flip side, if they managed to pick up any good items, they would have been more dangerous. (Not likely that they'll kill anything carrying *an* item in teh first place, but as long as we're playing what if).

So you didn't actually improve their balance, but you might have decreased their variance a little bit.

Many of the changes and fixes I've done change the game's balance point. It may not be a change you agree with (though I seriously doubt you've had time to test it). but it does effect the balance addressing things that consern me.

You don't have a vision for the game's balance point. You don't even seem to know what the game's balance point currently is, since you seem hell-bent on nerfing a weak nation into the ground, which is hardly a balance-oriented change.

Hint: if you're making changes for a reason other than balance, you're probably not making a change that improves balance.

A balance mod needs to boost nations and spells that are underperforming and rein in those that are overperforming. Your obsession with Jomon is hilariously misplaced, and I'm not actually convinced they're playable in your mod.

I really need to ask: How much MP experience do you have? Because you can beat the AI by doing horribly inept things, so 'it works against the AI' is not a test of balance. To have any clue about balance in this game you need to routinely play against the best players in the game.