Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Executor

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.

Enc-3 is a huge shift--even with an E5 bless it is impossible to get net-0 on your F2 and S2 Adons until either Const-4 for Girdles or scraping up an indy shaman with some nature income(or alchemizing and it just costing 10S) to make birch boots. And that's a pain--especially if you were going Conj-3 for your Earth guys. I'm tempted to say that Ashdod should only go E9 instead of E10 nowadays because you're not going to get quite there either way.

[bbz]

I don't understand why is everybody so obsessed with getting fatigue down to 0. Gaining 1 enc a turn is not that much of a big deal until turn 25-30 of the battle. The problem with enc 1 is undead spam and thats where fatigue 0 is important but since you are talkin about expanding I don't see where is the problem.

Edit: they do get 2 enc with earth 10 my bad. But still that is not too bad until turn 15ish of battle.

[Olive]

Originally Posted by Executor

I'm sure this was already reported but just in case;
There's a site that enables recruitment of Wild Ettins, Metropolitus Nautilus.

Just found it - in the same province than a plaguewater stream where I built a fort a few turns ago, once again.

Certainly unbalanced for mp games because the Wild Ettins can be bought for 0 gold.

[llamabeast]

Don't worry, the ettin bug is probably the most reported bug ever. I've already fixed it in the early draft of CBM 1.93.

While I'm mentioning 1.93, a sneak preview: LA Pythium will be gaining a nice line of serpent-themed spells. Mainly for reasons of fun and theme rather than balance. I was working on them over Easter and have completed the sprites and the hard bits of the code (the spells include a few new mechanics such as a "Serpent Form" spell the priests can use to turn into giant snakes). I also went through all this thread and the dom3mods thread and compiled all the bugs and suggestions. There are lots and lots!

[Olive]

Amazing. Gotta try LA Pyth again when 1.93 is out.

[Makinus]

Is there any way to add a lower research level Transformation spell (maybe as a national spell) without breaking balance? I find it a very fun spell that is used only for reducing upkeep of nature mages in late-game (when upkeep is nearly irrelevant)...

It would be fun to have a version that shows up early in the research tree and could be used to field some combat mages with the better animal forms...

[Makinus]

Would this one be too unbalanced?

#newspell
#copyspell "Transformation"
#name "Astral Transformation"
#descr "The jungle shamans discovered a spell where mages could change their physical forms to an animal form that mirrors their inner soul. The spell has its risks, including the possible death of the mage and, even if sucessfull, not even the mage casting the spell can really know if their soul is powerfull as a Lion or as weak as a Ant."
#path 0 4
#pathlevel 0 2
#path 1 6
#pathlevel 1 1
#school 1
#researchlevel 3
#fatiguecost 400
#end

[WraithLord]

Wow. 1.93 draft sounds most promising. I too am looking fwd to playing LA Pyth.

Did you make up your mind what to do w/ MA Ulm?

Do you think giving MA Pyth some more Byzantium flavor is advisable?

Re. the Adonim discussion. It was my impression that IW specifically wanted the Nephilim nations to be ubber. It makes sense thematically and theme is pivotal to dominions (and makes it fun too). So I personally am ok w/ some small nerfs but I would find it not thematic to make them mediocre.
(For the record I never played any of them in MP and not much interested neither so I'm not emotionally biased. )

If I were to make a balance suggestion I'd say that better target availability rather than quality.
I mean that (for example) instead of making Adonim weaker make them harder to recruit. This can be done in various ways: like up their gcost, up their resource cost, do both or apply some more creative mechanism (like make them units and force GoR to make use of them).
The end result should be player can field small amount of OP Adonim.
In dominions lots of counters exist to small number of OP units.
IMO The balance breakage problem happens when OP things hit critical mass.

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Executor

Personally, Ashdod seems better to me than Gath at a glance.

Consider your test game. Put the gear you forged on a Kohen Gadol, which as mentioned already, is basically an unequipped Adon with better magic. If you think your test game demonstrates an imbalance in Ashdod, why do you not think it demonstrates an even greater imbalance in Gath?

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.

Odd, you say your ridiculousness on Adons was mock, but then you still stand by it. That you want a serious debate on why Ashdod is still playable or even that it's still powerful...which nobody has disputed except Ghoul, and is a far cry from that mock claim you stand by. You even say it's not Adon's per se that make Ashdod OP still, but lots of little things that add up...and still stand by your claim that it's impossible to balance Ashdod by looking at the little things, but instead Adons must be removed for that to happen.

Whether or not anyone wants a normal debate would have to depend on whether you only want to claim something not much disputed, or still everything you claimed last night, even if you take back the personal attacks.

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.

Hey Nightfall, surely you agree that Ashdod is only middle of the pack. After all, Man is the strongest bless nation in the MA right? But even you didn't claim that Man was massively OP.

[earcaraxe]

my opinion is that the statement "asdod is unplayable" is obviously false.

I wanted to clear that up if we are arguing about "unplayable" or "not strong enough".

Someone already expressed something like some peoples panchant for confusing "unplayable" with "unplayable by the previously working methods". In ashdods case (one of) the previously working method was stomping the opponent by nearly irresistable brute force (something like niefel jarls can do even now against some nations/builds).

I was the witness of what i consider the event that inspired ghouls original post about the topic. This is how i saw it: in the early game he was conquering indies with adons using a super-bless E10W6F6N4, then when the indies got eaten up, he got in war with shinuyama, using his expansion army of 6 or 7 adons. After the intial defeat, shinuyama assembled a huge army, with lots of O-bakemonos (among lots of other things, goblins, dai bakemonos) and managed to beat the adon platoon, suffering great casualties in the process. the O-bakemonos were key in that as they did hit hard enough.

i dont see any problem making an expectable strategy defeatable, in fact i much prefer it. (so i wont ban these kind of nations from my games)