Mod: Conceptual Balance 1.3, updated documentation

[cleveland]

Xietor said:
Though not many of the players responded to the poll here is a random sampling of pretenders players took in Kingmaker
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=614101

The war-profiteers of Arcoscephale are advised to brush up on their statistics.

54/62 nations = 88% response rate, and the poll was even created after several nations went AI. 2 Master Lichs were chosen (2/54 = 3.7%).

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Great work, QM, as always. Perhaps we can change the topic to Carrion Woods?

I've now survived to turn 69 in a very long CBM 1.21 game as LA Pangaea. I put Carrion Woods up on ~turn 15 and have had it up continuously ever since (save a 1-turn dispel incident).

Of course I've loved it, but objectively it seems a bit disruptive...a Level-0 Nature-gem-generating Nature spell. Plus badass freespawn.

Anyone else care to chime in? Zeldor?

[DonCorazon]

I'd be curious to know what everyone's gem incomes now are all-in in Alexandria. We should jot it down and reveal once the game is over. Anwyay, I didn't know Carrion Woods gave you N gems as well but it hasn't seemed overbalancing, though I didn't fight you early on. And when we did clash, I had undead mastery which helped take the fear out of the manikin horde.

I really have no idea how LA Pan plays - isn't your population dying off and your gold income and thus ability to buy mages hurt by carrion woods?

[DonCorazon]

Btw thanks QM - I love CBM!

[cleveland]

Yeah my population has been dying off, but with all those freespawn, I never had much need to recruit any rank-and-file troops. Further mitigating the problem is that I took Growth-3 to complement Carrion Woods (increases freespawn), offsetting the pop death. Consequently, my ability to buy mages really wasn't hindered too badly.

There was a time when money was really tight, mainly because I'd racked up like 45 Pans @ 23gold/turn...with turmoil 3, dom10. To free up cash, the great Trans-Across-Pangaea Campaign was swiftly implemented, wherein all Pans were immediately ordered to cast the 3N spell Transformation. Hilarity ensued (stealty Moose death mage leading a bunch of Shades, feebleminded 4-clawed foul-spawn-of-doom patrolling down unrest with the help of black hawks, etc). Problem solved.

All-in-all, Growth-3 with Carrion Woods is probably comparable to taking Death-3, except there's no supply penalty, you get free gems, and a crap load of respectable chaff.

[Horst F. JENS]

Thanks for the mod !
I guess i have as much fun studying the readme files as creating lot's of testgames to try out all the changed pretenders.
Bye-bye, free time :-)

[Aezeal]

I was wondering what the general thoughts where considering CBM and yomi.. I was looking into thos combination since I might play it in MP and....

most seem to agree that yomi is weak as it was and that one of it's best strategies would be bakemono archers and fire arrows.

So it seems an already weak nation has gotten one of it's few viable strats nerved by the CBM, which can hardly be the intention.

(in my test game the starting army aumented by some bakemono archer saw those archer running while we where outnumbering weak indies and bashing their brain. running even while we are WINNING???)

the morale change for those archer should maybe be increasing it instead of lowering it (7 morale is really terrible)

[quantum_mechani]

Aezeal said:
I was wondering what the general thoughts where considering CBM and yomi.. I was looking into thos combination since I might play it in MP and....

most seem to agree that yomi is weak as it was and that one of it's best strategies would be bakemono archers and fire arrows.

So it seems an already weak nation has gotten one of it's few viable strats nerved by the CBM, which can hardly be the intention.

(in my test game the starting army aumented by some bakemono archer saw those archer running while we where outnumbering weak indies and bashing their brain. running even while we are WINNING???)

the morale change for those archer should maybe be increasing it instead of lowering it (7 morale is really terrible)

The thing about CB is, it is less about nation balance per se, and more about option balance. In the case of the archers, the idea is to create some incentive recruit the melee bakemono. That said I'm certainly open to looking at other way to try and solve that problem. And of course fire arrows has much more far reaching need of a nerf than relates to Yomi.

Even taking both those things into account though, I think it's difficult to argue Yomi was made weaker in CB. Demon troops are across the board cheaper, and even one of thier mages. And perhaps more significantly, other very strong nations/options Yomi had to be afraid of were taken down a notch (helhirdlings, niefel giants, some super sc pretenders).

[Sombre]

As I always suggest - make Bakemono size 1. Apart from making sense on the common and thematic levels, it will significantly improve them in melee.

[HoneyBadger]

Hopefully at some point we'll have a National Balance Mod. CBM seems to be more about strategic balancing than the more tactical aspects of nation-tweaking.

[quantum_mechani]

I have thought about making optional add on to CB that's more about nation balance. I doubt it would be that popular though, since it would necessitate a lot of nerfs.