Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
So the current mod left aside do you think that in dom3 vanilla magic is too weak now or do you think it is still useful enough?

I think that, as has been the case since Dominions 1, that the low level battlefield evocations are far too weak. Everytime a mage casts flying shards or fire flies I cringe, because the spells are completely useless.

[Endoperez]

Graeme Dice said:
I think that, as has been the case since Dominions 1, that the low level battlefield evocations are far too weak. Everytime a mage casts flying shards or fire flies I cringe, because the spells are completely useless.

My Kailasan army was defeated by bunch of EA Ulmish mages casting Flying Shards in Slow Game MP. Well, I won THAT battle, but couldn't advance to take his capital, he had time to recruit archers, and then his archers decimated my army. Still, Flying Shards makes an E1 mage comparable to four archers. with even few archers, against enemies that are weak against missiles but would devastate you in melee, Flying Shards can be better than, say, Legions of Steel. There aren't MANY situations like that, but Evoc 0 spell isn't supposed to be always useful.

Now, if you'd complained about Farstrike... 17 + strength damage at long range is just nice. However, you will have very few mages, and can't script him to aim at the important enemies, and even if he does choose a nice target, with precision of just 5 he'll miss more often than hit.

[Nerfix]

Graeme Dice said:

I think that, as has been the case since Dominions 1, that the low level battlefield evocations are far too weak. Everytime a mage casts flying shards or fire flies I cringe, because the spells are completely useless.

They're 0/1 level spells so they're supposed to be largely useless.

[Graeme Dice]

Nerfix said:
They're 0/1 level spells so they're supposed to be largely useless.

Then your mages should also never cast them once you've researched higher level spells. This is part of the problem with making all of the battlefield summons unavailable. Mages will waste fatigue on zero effect spells instead of being able to summon something that could actually be useful.

[Nerfix]

Graeme Dice said:

Then your mages should also never cast them once you've researched higher level spells. This is part of the problem with making all of the battlefield summons unavailable. Mages will waste fatigue on zero effect spells instead of being able to summon something that could actually be useful.

Mmm, that is a good point.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Then your mages should also never cast them once you've researched higher level spells. This is part of the problem with making all of the battlefield summons unavailable. Mages will waste fatigue on zero effect spells instead of being able to summon something that could actually be useful.

Hm if you would remove those spells from lvl 0 then but improve them a bit and make them lvl 1-4 spells would you think that would be interesting?

This way weak schools like water could be made slightly more useful too probably.

[Nerfix]

Water needs something else than an anti-undead spell (which is less effective than banishment in most cases) and underwater only motion inhibitors to make it better.

[Cainehill]

Regarding BladeWind, may I point out that Dom3 _already_ gave it (and a few other battlefield spells) a pretty big nerfing? It does _mundane_ damage, meaning that it's now useless as pissing in the wind for dealing with hordes of ethereal critters, which was imo its main niche in Dom2.

[Endoperez]

AFAIK, those might've been in the game from the times of Dom:PPP. 52+ blades will still decimate Summer Lions, because (if they all hit) 13 will pass ethereality, and prot 0 ensures that they all do damage. There are so many CHANCES at damage that something is surely dealt. One Blade Wind won't be enough, but I doubt it ever was. 3 will hurt and 6 will still kill ethereal units.

[Morkilus]

Thanks for what must have been alot of work.

I'm not much for multiplayer lately (maybe soon), but I've always appreciated most of the CB changes. Admittedly the sitesearching nerf will be the most difficult to get used to, but it seems like I'm always swimming in gems anyway due to the increased research costs of schools. I'm curious why you decided to up the resource cost of archers rather than the recruit cost. It always seems like gold is more of a limiting factor than resources, especially considering upkeep of the always useful "crossbow horde armies" running around. It seems realistic to have the training cost of archers more than regular footmen.

Regarding Blade Wind: I've had this used as the only spell in my Ulm armies; in the old CB mod it was completely worth it to have a half-dozen or so smiths with boots to deal with vine ogre/skeleton/maenad hordes. I've yet to tool with it now, but that spell was ridiculously useful compared to other spells in that research level.