New Mod Nations Game: Mods over Europe (finished)

[Sombre]

lch said:
Nations taken so far:

• Sombre wants to play Kharam Dzu
• Tuidjy wants to play Sanguinia
• Shovah32 wants to play Avernum
• Ferrosol wants to play Skaven
• Cor wants to play Hoburg Alliance
• Jazzepi wants to play Urdheim
• Xox wants to play ??? (Ulm Reborn?)
• LoloMo wants to play Haida Gwaii

That means we're ready to go, people!

Right so basically you gits have picked new nations and given me an assload of CBM balancing to do

This is how I see it.

CBM Kharam Dzu: Just a tweaked version of the one from the previous game.
CBM Sanguinia: Same as Kharam Dzu. Just tweaks.
CBM Avernum: Shouldn't take long as they have no cav. No astral pearl spawning for you though Shovah.
CBM Skaven: Will be basically unchanged from the vanilla one I'll release today. So no prob there.
CBM Hoburg Alliance: Tricky. Like most first CBM versions I'll just take a stab at balancing it. I will not be following the vanilla hoburg stats though, they are mad.
CBM Haida Gwaii: Haven't played them much, but don't forsee them being that hard to balance.
CBM Urdheim: I haven't played them much and they're huge with tricky to balance units. This will take up the most time.

After I've got these together, then comes the inevitable sorting out of conflicts etc, checking out the map,...

[lch]

Jazzepi said:
The last map we played on was... thematic, but not balanced at all. [...]
I'd much rather play a randomly generated map then another one like the one was just played.

It isn't less balanced than Parganos, for example. But particularly the big uniformly distributed wasteland in the south made me want to use another map, too. I have a map now which features Europe again, but is different in many aspects. In fact, I think there is way too much farmland in there... 134 provinces, about 100 land, 34 water. Does that sound okay for 8 people? Otherwise I could raise the province count by artificially adding some more provinces.

Sombre said:
Right so basically you gits have picked new nations and given me an assload of CBM balancing to do

Take the time you need. We don't have to start by the 9th of August but as you know it would be desirable because then I'm leaving. I could start the game while I'm traveling, too, but I couldn't help as much with the mod stuff.

Sombre said:
After I've got these together, then comes the inevitable sorting out of conflicts etc, checking out the map,...

I'll take care about the map and I can do all the stuff regarding conflicts of ID numbers before I'm leaving.

[Shovah32]

CBM Avernum: Shouldn't take long as they have no cav. No astral pearl spawning for you though Shovah

You sure you couldnt just give them a big price-hike instead? Without a way to generate ALOT of pearls S4, immobile, capitol only mages(who are currently one of avernums big strengths) arent much use.
Avernum has only a slightly above average military outside their capitol and lack any great non-capitol(particularly battle) mages - F2E1 being inferior to E2F1 for example.

With no completely dominant units, no national summons and their only high end units being capitol only, removing their pearl spawning - atleast to me as it is what I have used as them and why I picked them - seems to remove their main shot at late game viability.

[lch]

We talked about it in the IRC channel, Sombre wanted to keep the gem thing and make them a national summon instead... We convinced Sombre that the gem generating thing is too heavily unbalanced, but if he'd drop it they'll be fine. S4 still has many uses. Immobility is no problem considering Teleport and Gateway, and after all you can use them to Mind Hunt out of the box. Maybe the price could drop a bit, but gems for free is way too dangerous.

[lch]

Jazzepi said:
Urdheim, The Infinite Horde please!

Could we ask you to pick some other nation? Sombre asked me to have a look at the Kobolds, and they do seem like a "cool" nation, but just too heavily unbalanced for MP. Sombre said that he'd make them balanced, but considering all their units and national spells it's probably going to take a long time.

I might prepare another mod nation game with all those overpowered nations like those Kobolds and Amos' creations, if you would be interested in that...

Sombre said that he has the Hoburg Kingdom balanced out, maybe you're interested in them? They have some similar concepts to the Kobolds, and we have them ready right now...

[Jazzepi]

I'm so sad

I picked Urdheim just because they had a neat name. I would like to comment to Sombre that I think the dragon pretender is a little unbalanced. It's flying, immortal, has its own AoE attack through posion, fear, amphibian, and just absolutely ridiculousness written all over it. The first thing I did was try out this guy with dominion 9 + decent scales.

If sombre reads this I would suggest that he find a way to weaken the kobolds, boost their morale much higher so that they don't break when taking huge losses (or give them high levels of beserk), and then cut their food intake below 1 per unit if possible. Like if you could make them eat 1/4 a unit of supply or something so that you could move truly massive hordes across the board that would be very cool.

Otherwise it's impossible to do anything with all those guys considering they don't have any nature mages =\

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

I'll look at the available nations listed below to pick one. Are there any others that I'm missing? I don't want to play Jomon again.

* Arga Dis, Blood and Bronze

* The Hoburg Kingdom, Crossbows and Butter
* Teutanion, Age of Honor
* Sylvania, The Last New Dawn
* Vaettihiem, Exiled Tribes

Jazzepi

[lch]

Jazzepi said:
I would like to comment to Sombre that I think the dragon pretender is a little unbalanced. It's flying, immortal, has its own AoE attack through posion, fear, amphibian, and just absolutely ridiculousness written all over it.

Yeah, "a little" is a little understatement. Even if he'd lose the immortality that thing is out of whack. The Scion of Sirrush would make a nice national summon, or unique hero, but as a recruitable he's too much, too, in my opinion. Have you noticed the friggen auto-summon that the Warchief has? The "Summon Allies" from the summoner alone would be enough to fuel an army if you get some 5-10 of them, but with warchiefs you wouldn't even have to pay gold to enlist recruits, just send them zerging at your enemies. Then I had a look at the spell list... I didn't try them out, but the names and descriptions alone suggested that they'd be no less ridiculously powerful.

As I said, I think that the nation is definitely "cool" and very beautiful, but for Dominions multiplayer it's just way too powerful. Do you think any of the standard nations would stand a chance against them? I'm sorry for suggesting them in the first place, but Sombre said he'd balance them out (and he'll do, but it would take an awful lot of time) and I didn't look at them before. Do you accept my apology?

[lch]

Jazzepi said:
* Arga Dis, Blood and Bronze

* The Hoburg Kingdom, Crossbows and Butter
* Teutanion, Age of Honor
* Sylvania, The Last New Dawn
* Vaettihiem, Exiled Tribes

yup, those are available and already balanced out aswell.

[Shovah32]

lch said:
after all you can use them to Mind Hunt out of the box.

Sure they can use mind hunt - but without a huge gem income it wont be used alot and the change will atleast put one of avernums staple units back from important to a minor support role.