Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[kianduatha]

Wait, the naked stone throwers?

Did you try using slingers? I'm afraid stone throwers are specialized at dealing with expensive troops like the sacreds you used, so you sort of played to his strengths. Also certain scripting tricks can easily make the boulder throwers run forwards instead of throwing boulders.

[decourcy]

nah, i tried slingers... numbers just make it worse, the slingers can't get past even low level regen, while every rock hits and kills several slingers. And i am sure some had armour, i was being cranky about the no armour.

In my test game i built naked throwers for the first year but after that all armoured or at most 1 naked. The armoured largely don't get hurt from slingers. And it is easy enough to build pale one spearmen to attack slingers. They die to anything.

I also find that if you use enough boulder throwers in a single group the front rank does not throw but everyone behind does. And Agartha is uniquely suited to casting strength of earth at the start of every battle. Ouch.

Helheim might beat an incompetent Agartha player. Valks surround stone throwers, valks die but distract him. Helhird rides in and lances them. But easily countered with pale one blockers. Then rocks rain down on helhird.

Maybe a sauromatia player could beat them with arrows and light lances but sauromatian troops are expensive as far as human troops go, not sure.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by decourcy

nah, i tried slingers... numbers just make it worse, the slingers can't get past even low level regen, while every rock hits and kills several slingers. And i am sure some had armour, i was being cranky about the no armour.

Something odd must have happened when you fought as the boulder attack of the Agharatan stone thrower has a damage modifier of -16: their boulders do 8 damage per attack.

Tir Na Nog units have fairly high hit points at 13-14 each. Slingers have body protection of 6, and the sacreds 9. On average it should take about 4~ boulders to kill a slinger, 6~ to kill a sacred. The numbers are slanted such that the sacred should take 4 boulders if the stone throwers have strength of giants. If you use an equivalent defensive spells, protection, your sacreds get protection 17 - which is enough to weather even a large amount of boulders.

[decourcy]

This was year 2 on a small map, i simply did not have any of these things.

Ghost wolves is a good idea i should have thought of that, thanks.

I did try splitting slingers into 17 groups of 6 vs 30 throwers. That worked, Tir won, but this games worst point is the micromanagement, this tactic just makes it worse, and i simply have no interest in micromanaging myself to death to win a gamey battle.

Boulders do 1 damage on their own, i had no idea what boulder effect meant, but 8 damage you say. The kills come because it hits every unit in my square, 8 points each.

I had actually fiddled around with an earth 9 bless pre-game, it certainly helps both the Tuatha and Sidhe lords and Ri, but it did not seem like enough to justify it's cost. Out smarted myself there, it would have stopped the boulder damage.

thanks for all of the ideas, but i talked with my 2 friends who also play dom3 and they also feel that CBM is poorly balanced, so we are going back to vanilla.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by decourcy

[...] but this games worst point is the micromanagement, this tactic just makes it worse, and i simply have no interest in micromanaging myself to death to win a gamey battle.

While I (and most everyone) agree that the micro is the great downside of this game I'm afraid that if you're not willing to put the 'work' in and finetune your battlefield placement and scripting to gain the biggest possible benefit from it you'll allways be at a disadvantage against someone who does, regardless of which units are brought to the table. There's just too many little tricks you can get an advantage from.

I have no opinion about the boulder throwers themselves since I have never used nor faced them, in vanilla nor CBM, but it seems to me that if careful use of a basic units like slingers solves your problem with them there isn't much to worry about, no? In any event a balance mod like CBM shouldn't be concerned about what the results are if you take "blob of unit A" and "Blob of unit B" and throw them at each other, but instead about what happens when you try to counter something the best way you know how.

Also I know I'm simplifying your argument to the absolute bare bones, just wanted to get my point across. As said, no opinion on the hurlers themselves.

[kianduatha]

Other things you can do: send in fliers on "attack archers". The fliers will die but will also kill a bunch of boulder throwers from friendly fire--as TNN you have great access to Call of the Winds, which gives you a bunch of convenient hawks to throw at him.

Also amusingly enough Ghost Wolves would be a nice counter in a desperation situation--ghost wolves trickle up to the blockers, causing boulders to be thrown which will damage the blockers too.

[Valerius]

Have faith! The awesome thugs of TNN can handle those clumsy boulder throwers. I ran a few quick tests of a Ri with a heros blade, silver hauberk, bracers and girdle of might with an E9N6 bless and scripted Bless-->Barkskin-->Mistform vs 36 of the armored boulder throwers buffed with strength of giants and an E4N4 bless and the Ri won every time.

Usually mistform held up but even if it breaks you still have a chance since your body prot of 30 is going up against 12 damage from a strength of giants boosted boulder. Your head prot is 24 so you can forge a helmet if you want to boost that higher.

If you didn't go for an E9 bless you can make up for it by going with black steel armor and casting stone/ironskin instead of barkskin.

Usually brands are great weapons for glamoured thugs but in this case I'd lean towards a heros blade since it will one shot a giant and you want to kill them as quickly as possible to reduce the number of hits you take. The silver hauberk wasn't because air shield will help against the boulders but because it has good prot and low encumbrance, which means you'll have less fatigue post-buff. But you could certainly go with other heavy armors.

Note that this was a simple test where I just had the two sides fight - the main thing I was testing here was to see if the thug could survive sustained boulder fire. Depending on the blockers you're facing another option could be a snake bladder stick with an eye shield to take advantage of Agarthans only having one eye.

I'll also mention the really scary thing is Agartha's H3s. If you don't yet have access to MR boosting gear/spells sooner or later (probably sooner) smite will pop your mistform and the next smite may well kill the thug.

Btw, kianduatha's point about friendly fire is a good one. The same thing will happen if the thug is surrounded by enemies. Swarm can also be an effective way to cause friendly fire casualties.

PS - Cold blooded creatures suffer absurdly large penalties when operating in cold so leverage that as soon as possible.

[llamabeast]

Hum, sorry to hear that. You will easily find many many things in vanilla which are unbalanced on a far larger scale, if you look for them. QM (the previous and main author) and I have done our best to tune the balance in CBM and I think we're quite confident that it is significantly more balanced than vanilla, although there will always be quirks in a game like dom3.

The boulder throwers are meant to be a powerful feature of CBM Agartha, but I'm yet to be convinced that they are OP. The game is full of apparently OP things. Almost every nation has one. Elephants are a perfect example - if you build an army of ten or even twenty elephants you will probably feel invincible. But a competent opponent would quickly deal with them.

However the boulder throwers are a new thing to CBM (only made powerful in the last version), so it is possible that their balance is off. I am always happy to hear other opinions.

Actually EA Agartha definitely is overpowered in the current version, but it is its Darkness PD which turned out to be much more powerful than was foreseen. That will be fixed in the next version. I also made a mistake in giving MA Ulm a little bit too much of a boost, so it will be toned back too.

As for the boulders, their effects are a little obscure unfortunately. Actually they have two effects: a direct impact hit, and some splash damage. The direct impact is quite powerful (I forget how powerful), but only hits one target. The damage can be reduced by shields and armour, and I think Air Shield works. The splash damage is quite weak (8 damage, as Redeyes says), but it's true that it does add up and unarmored units like Slingers will quickly be wiped out.

So, the boulders are pretty powerful, but I don't think they're on the scale of, say, powerful sacreds. Fighting E9N9 blessed Niefel giants really would make you angry.

[decourcy]

No, i actually have found ways to fight Niefels, there will not be very many in the early game and you just need to keep them not moving and whittle them down. Extremely tough but i can see options, the problem i have with hurlers is that they are as cheap as they are and are doing more damage than Niefels at the moment.

I am a modder myself in other games, EU3 for one, and i see this all the time. A mod starts out small and focused and quickly grows out of control and incorporates many features beyond its original focus. I think it is great that you are making this mod but my friends and i feel that it is unbalanced at the moment. Worse than vanilla.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

As for the boulders, their effects are a little obscure unfortunately. Actually they have two effects: a direct impact hit, and some splash damage. The direct impact is quite powerful (I forget how powerful), but only hits one target. The damage can be reduced by shields and armour, and I think Air Shield works. The splash damage is quite weak (8 damage, as Redeyes says), but it's true that it does add up and unarmored units like Slingers will quickly be wiped out.

I went back and looked at the code just to check that I had the right numbers again.

What happens is: 1 primary attack that hits at 1 damage max.

1 attack following up the primary attack that can't be stopped with a shield that hits at 10 damage (34 total)

An attack that hits everyone in the square (still can't be parried with a shield) that hits at -16 damage (8 total).

I didn't think the 34 damage direct attack was as big as it was and perhaps it should be dialed back, but I'm not passing any judgement on it.

It looks like an ideal weapon to kill elite infantry like Tuatha Warriors anyway. The way the attack is setup with secondaryeffectalways to make it so it can't parried might also negate the glamour?