Balance opinions

[sector24]

I think there's a world of difference between increasing the cost of something and increasing the path. A path increase to an item or mage changes the fundamental nature of what they can do. A mage with an additional path could open up the use of 10 additional spells, that synergize with the existing 20. Changing the requirement on an item can ruin your whole game if you didn't know about that requirement ahead of time. It makes you re-memorize what a potential enemy can and cannot do to you.

Changing the cost is different. For instance, increasing the cost of Tartarians seems to me like a reasonable change to consider because they are ridiculously powerful and cheap. When you try to compare the cost of something like a Tarrasque to a Tartarian, you can see just how good a Tartarian is. It's also a pretty safe bet that the player trying to summon the Tartarian isn't down to his last 10 gems.

On the other hand, early in the game sometimes you really are strapped for gems. Changing the cost of a Dwarven Hammer could totally wreck your well laid plans. I've had plenty of games where I've only found a single earth site by the time I wanted a hammer, so even an increase of 5 gems would equate to an unexpected 5 turn delay in my plans.

I can see both sides of it. There are situations where you definitely want to make some nerfs because it's easier and more prudent than boosting everything else in the game up to that level. Generally though, nerfs should be reserved for situations that occur later in the game, where they have a smaller effect on the fundamental identity of a nation.

[DrPraetorious]

If something is drastically broken, it is better to nerf it than to upgrade absolutely everything else.

But the example I keep coming back to is Shadowfist (which is an excellet game, by the by.) They hardly ever nerfed anything - any underpowered card would get minor flavor advantages until it was competitive.

In dominions, there are a huge number of relatively minor advantages you can give that would actually enhance the flavor of units, and you can balance them to the most robust, useful members of their type, rather than taking that unit and nerfing it. I think this is preferable even if it introduces more changes, especially if it only introduces changes in stuff people seldom use.

For example - pretenders. The Prince of Death, the Wyrm, the Dragons, the Cyclops and a a bunch of bless chassis (esp the Oracle), there is a general consensus, are better than the other base pretenders.

It is easier on the learning curve to boost all the other pretenders than it is to nerf those dozen which people with carefully refined strategies actually use, even though this is more changes. That way, I don't even have to look at the mod, I can show up with my unmodified prince of death strategy and keep using it without even learning the new and improved abilities of the Titan (who can hurl lightning at 5% of enemy units at the start of combat, or something.)

You can do the same thing with nations - give them national spells (or, if absolutely needed, boost their troops) until they are competitive.

Personally, I don't think that units within a nation need to be particularly balanced against eachother. If a unit is actually useless, this is a problem, but I think it's actually *important* that some units (likewise spells, but obviously not whole nations) be niche, useful only in specific circumstances, while other nations and spells are more robust and broadly useful.

All of this is also a lot more work, of course.

[Sombre]

If by 'nerf' we mean a tweak to reduce the power of something, I believe they are just as important and desirable as 'boosts', or tweaks to increase power. As Edi and many others have pointed out, if you have 100 units all costing 10 gold and 4 of them are hugely better than the other 96, it probably makes more sense to nerf the 4 than boost the 96. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but I think the sacred cavalry of the glamour nations was a good example - they were far and away the best units in the game and were so good at what they did that they took away a lot of the rock/paper/scissors/chainsaw/apple/ladybug/fhtagn strategy of countering and using 'combined arms', with different units playing different roles.

Not that I want to start that argument again ;P

CBM is more about boosts than nerfs for 2 major reasons.

1. People instinctively prefer boosts to nerfs.
2. Boosts allow for more modding creativity than nerfs, because boosts can come from a plethora of abilities and mod commands, whereas nerfs have a smaller pool of drawbacks available.

1 is clearly more important than 2. Personally I wouldn't mind more nerfs - almost an equal nerf to boost ratio is fine by me, as long as the nerfs are sensible (ie increase variety and use of strategy rather than just being something like copystatting some random averagey medium cavalry to overwrite Vans).

[quantum_mechani]

The key thing with nerfs is to not actually disrupt strategies, just bring them into a better cost/benefit ratio. Making a pretender chassis or recruitable unit cost a little more does not break any strategies as long as it is not overdone. Nerfs that change a option's functionality or accessibility are the ones that have to be really carefully examined. So those are what I've tried hardest to avoid, but sometimes the constraints of thematicness and modding tools make it difficult.

[llamabeast]

I would like to give CBM another go. To me the massive turnoff last time were the changes to dwarven hammers and boosters. Unlike with spells, you can't see the requirements for items until you can actually make them, so you can spend ages trying to empower e.g. an E3 mage so you can make a hammer, only to find you can't! Quite upsetting. To my mind there should be no nerfs to items at all, since there's simply no way at all of seeing the problems coming.

The other thing I didn't like was the lack of 'overview' documentation. I don't desperately need a load of documentation, but it didn't say anywhere what the overall thrust of the changes were - that would be really appreciated.

With a bit of explanatory documentation and no item nerfs though, I'd be really keen to give CBM another go (I have actually been intending for some time to try it, with the item changes off). I very much agree with Sombre that there's no end of interesting stuff in Dominions which is not feasible to use, and it would be amazing if it was.

[KissBlade]

I think that most issues brought up against CBM was one of the first versions made for Dom III where it was somewhat still untuned and untested. If anyone played the dom II final cbm draft, I really have a hard time picturing how anyone can not support cbm over base. I think the best idea is just to think of cbm as a "patch" of sorts since it generally requires a few drafts before it comes into it's own.

[Edi]

KissBlade's totally right on that. The Dom2 CBM is the one that should be looked at as the template here. Look at how that developed (starting with just the pretenders and then expanding from there). Dom3 is an order of magnitude bigger due to all the new nations, so it will take a while to settle. The Dom3 CBM is also cycling through drafts much slower than the Dom2 one. Give it time, people.

The DB wasn't built in a day and this is a far more ambitious project because instead of just listing stuff, it requires detailed knowledge of every aspect of the game and analysis of what each change entails as well as testing.

[Ironhawk]

Cor2 said:
2 "unbalanced" is subjective and therefore anyone elses attempt at balance will be unbalanced to someone else.

While I agree that balance is a matter of opinion, I think its unfair to just disregard the entire process of balancing as a result. After all the goal of a balance mod is not to have every single dom3 player out there consider the game balanced - but rather to find a happy medium where most of the players think the game is improved by the mod. I think that CBM does well at this as it currently stands and that each new revision will bring it closer to its theoretical goal.

[Cor2]

Point well taken Ironhawk.
I am likely one of those minorities, but last time I tried cmb I felt it was no more or less balanced than the standard game. If it pleases most people I say hurray, I still will only play it when i must for an MP however.

[Morkilus]

I pretty much only had issue with the path cost changes for boosters as well. It's by far the most complicated part of the game for me, and the manual is always open to that page - if I had a new boosting chart (yes, I'm lazy blah blah) I would be more likely to use it.

I was initially turned off by the MA Ermor priest nerf, but I realized once the "huge army of skeletal cavalry" strategy was better than, well... anything else, I couldn't agree more with it. It is instinctual to hate nerfs.