Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Executor

Good night trolls, it's been... something else entirely.

Hopefully, you'll calm down after a good night's rest and stop taking things personally. That and actually responding to points made would be nice...

Or you can just call everybody who disagrees with you a troll and run, that works too.

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying cast ritual of return on an SC, launch a teleport attack, hope to not take any hits winning, at which point you are immune to counterattack and can indeed use the counterattack to return to a lab for further attack? I mean, I guess, but that's not exactly a huge thing that's likely to be exploitable...for anything really. Nor would it actually do anything against magic duel.

Perhaps Executor can just come out and say what he meant.

They are not talking about ritual of returning, they are talking about the spell returning. You give your commander 2 astral gems, kill the PD with a normal script(bless body ethereal bla bla attack) and then the next turn you set your commander to cast returning instead. And yea it gives you better strategic value than cloud trapeze. (at a higher price but I feel that loosing the thug + the gear costs much more so better 2 astral gems than that)

[Shangrila00]

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

As if elephants won't still squish a 36 prot Adon, or any earth nation with piercers, or any nation that can cast lightning bolt, which is like half the nations in the MA.

[bbz]

Yea I found the thread about the bracers. thx for the info

About burning perls I think there was a thread somewhere explaining when a mage will use more perls(something like if the spell requires less than 50 fatigue or makes the overall fatigue less than 50 then the mage won't use gems to increase casting lvl) but I can't be bothered to find it. Point is with body ethereal you can take on most PD without worries.Same goes for unexpecting thugs/SCs.So they make their kill and the enemy canno't even mind hunt them, so its a pain having to deal with them.

[kianduatha]

Heh...I learned just now that Spine Devils are actually pretty good counters to fully tricked out Adons, amusingly enough. Them poison spines are killer when half your attacks are length 0. It might take a dozen or so of them to take him down, but it's totally worth it. Also it should be noted that the sample Adon you gave had super-nice prot on his body but only 17 on his head, which is rather a lot worse than 36 prot in general. That is admittedly because bracers of prot give body armor these days; I forget if that is going to get reverted.

[Valerius]

Lol. I had forgotten about bracers stacking. Nice use of those three misc slots, Executor. Though I might sacrifice one of those bracers for a pendant of luck.

Another nice piece of Constr. 2 gear forgeable by Ashdod is lantern shields. While the opponent chases around the corpse candles you can buff in peace. Added bonus: fear.

And, if facing Aby or an F9 bless you can use fire plate instead of black plate for 100 FR.

Also, if you build a temple/lab and can scrape together 5 N gems you can forge a raw hide shield so that you will be fatigue neutral with just the E5 bless.

I've never faced off with Ashdod. Tuatha vs. Adon would be an interesting matchup.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

[P3D]

LOL. The fun thing is that IMHO both Hinnom and Gath are much more scarier in their era than Ashdod in the first 30 turns or so. Hinnom has size-5 MR-12 tramplers to clean up all indies (well, with two exceptions). And by the time they are obsolete, you are recruiting Melqarts.
And Gath had already rushed their nearest/weakest neighbor, and switched to turtle mode for the next, say, 30 turns.

Compared to them, Ashdod struggles with both expansion and research. The giant they have are neither tramplers, nor affordable, nor (en)durable. Asdod has two cap-only giant sacreds that are expensive. The Hinnom ones are both cheaper and just better (Fear). The Gath Gibborim, while not spectacular individually, are affordable to mass in critical quantities.
The nonsacred regular Ashod giants are worse than what Hinnom and Gath could do. They just... can't kill stuff fast enough?

Research: Hinnom recruits Ammi - kinda overpriced for researcher, but they are awesome fortune teller (10), and provide A2 access. The Horite Shaman is adequate to start up the Death ladder (with a native RoW). Gath has not that expensive (120g)options that provide diversity (ED, FD, ES, SD, D2, E2) - if a 80gp S1 caster would not also be available. What does Ashod have?
1/ Overpriced Emite that can't be used as thug - at that point just spend the gems on a Zamzummite. Wait, 1/4 of them can forge flaming skulls, too bad you don't really need more than one of those. Another 1/4 of them are actually useful as communion slaves, and could cast Nether Darts at Evo7. Unfortunately, researching that would take an eternity.
2/ Sages. They are just too expensive for research. The magic they provide (E2/S2/F2) is overpriced at 200gp. Nor are they providing any spectacular magic on a reliable basis. This leaves you, out of capital, the
3/ Zamzummite. Yes, he can be thugged (for gems). Yes, half of them can skellispam giant skellies (1/2 chance for doing that effectively). But no E3 access (boosts/casts/forge). F randoms give you nothing besides forge access. Token ES access that you should already have on the Sphynx, and 310GP is to expensive for communion slave. Gath can do it all except the skellispam.
But as it is in CBM 1.92, I'd make three or four changes:
2/ Change Sage random to 3 F/E/S. Those guys are supposed to know more than what could be learned in a human lifetime.
3/ Reduce the cost of Talmai Elders 400GP. That's about what they worth, without H3 or cross-paths.
4/ maybe, give them a semi-decent size 2 unit.

Ah, and make their national evocation castable by their mages.

[Executor]

P3D, yes Hinnom is better. I agree, it can do anything Ashdod can better, though I've never played against Gath so far so I won't make any claims for them. Personally, Ashdod seems better to me than Gath at a glance.
Generally, the unrest and pop eating is a large deterrent when taking Hinnom. I know it's not a big MM problem but people still dislike dealing with it. Well, me first anyway.

Kianduatha, you can even use ghouls to kill such SCs. Cast a few Arouse Hungers. A few successful attacks will ramp up his fatigue due to that paralyzing claw.

Valerius, you could use faithful for luck. A level 2 construct as well.

Anyway, do sole Adons make Ashdod unbalanced? No. They have an array of other nice stuff too. A lot of small things combined does. Like the recent boosts to MA Ulm.
Are Fomo Kings better for example? They can be. Certainly. But their sacred giants suck compared to Ashdod. And their mage force is near nonexistent. Anyone who's played them knows what I'm talking about.

Do I think Adons are OP? Yes. Do I think Adons are unbalanced? That too. I've seen what these things can do and I don't like what is Ashdod early on.
Do I think everything can and should be balanced? I don't for that matter as that would take out much of the flavor out of Dominions. But I still do stand by my earlier, mock comment, that without removing Adons, Ashdod couldn't be balanced. But like I said, I don't actually expect or advocate any changes to them. Some things just can't be balanced as they're built like that. Like Amos nations.
Are there better SCs than Adons? Yes, their EA bothers are much better. Does having one better OP thing make another OP thing less good? It does not.
Is Ashdod unplayable now since they got an increase of another point of enc? It isn't. Is it weak? It certainly isn't. Is it OP still? It is. Can the nation be adequately balanced? I don't think so.

All of this is my personal point of view. A lot of you probably disagree with me, which is a good thing, as if everyone advocated the same thing we'd have a much sorrier version of CBM now.

And one last thing. I get that people will, and should, have different points of views. I respect other peoples opinion. But I don't think if I state certain things ( even something radical like when I said why Agartha PD is hopelessly OP, or make a mock comment about Adons and state why they are still a killer unit ) that my comments should be argued in such a way or ridiculed. There's a fine line between debating and what's been going on in this thread.
So, I apologize for all my comments from last night. And if anyone else wants to have a normal debate of why Ashdod is far from ruined I'd be happy to.

BTW, I agree Zamzummite are fine like Valerius said. 1/4 will have D3 and 1/4 will have astral which can be as good or even better than D3. Though I find them slightly overpriced.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

Busted!!! :