The one change Dom2 really needs.....

[archaeolept]

I'm much happier w/ the new numbers for the gem generating items. they seem about right; expensive enough to prevent heavy hording strats; not too expensive for them to be absolutely worthless.

[Graeme Dice]

Arryn said:
I agree that flying is what makes the SCs so dangerous, but the shoes are presently only 1A and 5 air. Zen doubled it. But it's not enough. I'd make them at least 3A and 20 air gems.

A pair of flying boots has far less impact than a single staff of storms, and this change would effectively limit flying to only the three air 3 nations.

[Kel]

While life draining is prevalent enough to limit the weapons and SC's you might use, I am afraid that nerfing it will greatly weaken SCs overall. I realize that lately, there has been an influx of people who want the game to be more focused on national troops but I am certainly not one of them...I have always liked the evolution of the game from national troops to a combination to a majority of SCs.

Is it your intention to nerf SC's, overall, or are you planning to keep the same balance in some other way ? And I am not talking bane lords who, as you pointed out, can be used cost efficiently as thugs with their starting weapon, but the more expensive SCs.

I realize that making them more expensive and/or having higher path requirements doesn't make them impossible to use or useless (how do I know someone will say that?) but making them less accessible or less prevalent does clearly alter an overall balance (that I already like) if there is no plan to improve them in some other way.

- Kel

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:
A pair of flying boots has far less impact than a single staff of storms

Generally true, but the boots are far cheaper also. And the boots are an "offensive" weapon (in that they enable certain strategies), while the staff is mainly a "defensive" weapon (in that it disables certain strategies). Overall, in Dominions, a strong argument can be made (and has been by some) that offensive strategies are more powerful than defensive ones.

Graeme Dice said:
and this change would effectively limit flying to only the three air 3 nations.

You expect flying from air nations, not from almost everyone. The air nations would have a far easier go at it than other nations, true. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Changing the cost of flying boots needs to be balanced out with changes to other items and nations. Everything in Dom is interconnected, everything has ramifications and repercussions.

[Soapyfrog]

I think these are steps in the right direction.

If clams/fetishes/blood stones were horror marked, this would be a good thing. This means even if you DO attempt to hoard you will suffer attrition. There should be no such thing as a free lunch.

HOWEVER I have noticed, and I am reminded becuase it just happened to me in an MP game, that horror marked hidden scouts are not killed by horror attacks.

You get the message of the horror attack, but if you attempt to watch the battle the game crashes with a "bad vcr header" error. Further inspection shows that the subject of the horror attack is still alive.

Note: I have only seen this bug occur with hidden, horror marked units (such as scouts with soul contracts).

The fact that the horror mark doesnt really work in this case kinda breaks soul contracts. Also I find horror attacks to be possibly a little bit too rare.

[Cainehill]

Ewww. I personally don't like the suggested new numbers / requirements for the gem-generating items; they're somewhat on the high side, imo, and cause problems for a number of nations that could previously make some limitted use of them.

IMO, not being able to have 2 clams / fetishes on the same commander probably provided enough counterbalance to the items. You now need to have more units to hold them (presuming that you're either going for massive clams or fetishes, and not both, which means more gold expense and/or more expenditure of death gems for each.

And, in any case, the jury was definately out on whether or not the clams and fetishes actually needed a fix, and I haven't seen anyone, ever, suggest that blood stones were broken.

Making some of the other items more expensive ( wraith swords, boots of flying, etc ) seems like a good idea though, albeit I'd think that most should have their required magic path levels stay the same, and only have the number of gems increased.

That way, the risk of upsetting balance by mucking up which nations can readily get what is eliminated, while still reducing the quantity of the items that will be used within a given game.

There's a couple of things I like about what Zen's proposed in this and the other thread. One is that rather than just complain, he's actaully got off his backside, thought through concrete proposals, and put them into a mod. The other is the focus on making un-regarded Pretenders and magic items more interesting.

But I think he's also given us an instructive example of why this process almost certainly cannot work. A few months ago everybody loved the VQ and it was nerfed as a result. Now a lot of people seem to have moved on to the Ghost King instead, and so Zen's proposal includes a nerf for that. If that proposal got into the next patch, I reckon that the majority of those players would agree on a new "best Pretender", and in a couple of months we'd be seeing nerf proposals for that. I'd like to make the following points.

1. There will always be a best tool for a particular job. The only way that can not be true is if all the tools are the same! Let's not kill the diversity that gives Dominions its unique flavour.

2. "I think that balancing these types of games when there is an active community is a matter of nerfing what people do a lot and then buffing what they do not use. And doing it in small steps." - Huzurdaddi. Sounds good in theory, except few of the actual proposals we've seen have been anything like small steps (Zen's Pretender changes excepted). Remove life drain! Double the gem cost and casting level of Clams! Such a process, if it had any chance of working, would require repeated, controlled testing, with detailed quantitative analysis of results. Any volunteers?

3. There's a distinct lack of argument based on evidence in these discussions. Does anybody even have numbers for how many games have been played and which nations have won them? How can we sensibly discuss play balance without that?

4. Generally "problems" or "broken tactics" are discussed as though they happen in isolation from the rest of the game, or in the face of purely passive opponents. Yes it's true that life-draining weapons are widely used; but anyone who unthinkingly uses them all the time is going to see their SCs killed by C'tis, Ermor, Pangaea CW or anyone else who has access to death magic (to name only one counter option).

5. Players follow fashions. I suggest that often a particular Pretender/Nation/Strategy is popular simply because everyone is talking about it, not because it's the only good one out there. They will also gravitate to what is cool. A Vampire Queen is cool; a human arch-mage on a horse is bleh. So just because it's popular, doesn't make it over-powered.

Now when we're talking about mods, all of that doesn't matter. Zen can freely disagree with me, write his mods, and find some like-minding players to play his Version of Dom2. Everybody's happy (ha! likely story...)

But lets leave the vanilla game alone. There are enough bugs and needed UI improvement for the devs to work on, should they be feeling generous enough to do so, without constant demands for nerfs to this and that "broken" feature. And should there be really be some sort of balance problem, let's see someone actually collect some evidence and present it to the community and the devs before they start the traditional wailing.

Mark

[Huzurdaddi]

Otherwise it is i think too hard to balance them because they become either totally cost ineffective or are still a good choice .

As I discussed with Zen the cost effectiveness of all hoarding stratgies is almost completely dependent upon the size of the map. On a 100 province map with 5 players you would have to be insane to hoard.

On a 400 province map you are crazy not to hoard.

Sadly the engine does not support items costing different amounts on different maps currently.

[Frosted Flake]

While i am not a big proponent of nerfing in general - this started out as a nerf lifedrain post by me- it seems warranted when only one stategy can work. The VQ is a good example. Its a viable god and cerain nations should/can take it. At previous cost you where a fool not to take it - thats the level that neeeds adjusting. I think LD weapons should cost more than they do. I'll still play dom nomatter what they do or dont do cause its my CRACK and I need to smoke a pipefull every day.

frosted flake

[Cainehill]

Amen. Not to mention that "nerfing what people do a lot, and buffing what they don't use" is ... stupid. People do what works, so, let's break what works. Next month, break something else that works. Oh, we've nerfed the VQ so much noone uses it? Time to beef it up a little."

Say - people build 1-11 PD a lot. Time to nerf it. People research things a lot - better half everyone's research points. Are we having fun yet?

And the clamming / fetishing? As I mentioned, there's no consensus on whether or not it's broken; there's a lot of people who claim that clams and clam hoarding is broken, sure. I haven't seen near as many people saying the same thing about fetishes, and none at all about blood stones.

I suspect that part of the reason is that generally speaking, people have a lot of other good ways to use fire and nature gems. Great forgings; solid summonings; good battlefield spells and global attack spells, Gift of Reason, etc, etc.

Which goes back to ... The theory that there just isn't enough to use water gems on. Very few of the summonings are particularly useful. Very few artifacts use water gems. Very few of the combat spells are useful / worthwhile, especially since almost all are either castable only in the water, or only out of the water, to the point where other areas of magic are more useful in an underwater battle (air) or close to it (fire, earth).

Instead of following computer gamings' ever-downward spiral of nerfing things for balance, just maybe water should be improved instead.

But I don't think that's something Zen can do in a mod, and while I'm dubious about some of the things proposed in his second big mod, I think his tweaks to the pretenders were great - largely because most were improved, with only a very few getting nerfs.

Thanks Zen!