Mod: CBM 1.7 released

[NooBliss]

I find it strange that while it's called a conceptual BALANCE mod it doesnt try to fix balance, focusing on micromanagement and flavor instead.
Take, for example, Sauromatian poison archers. They are bugged and impossible to fix, thus their unerring arrows became a feature. Shouldn't they cost more to reflect that?

[Zeldor]

Festin:

So compile a list of changes that should appear. I am going to prepare one too and try convincing QM that he should make them

I am not sure about forge bonuses on some national mages, but it may work. It'd be cool to have some nations with N magic forge bonus.

[Festin]

The changes I am referring to were discussed for a long, long time both here and on the other forum, and I tried to contribute to it. Now, instead of all those things that were proposed since it was assumed that the discussion will be noticed, we get a Hammer Ban From Nowhere. I'm sorry, but I currently feel a bit de-motivated.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by NooBliss

I find it strange that while it's called a conceptual BALANCE mod it doesnt try to fix balance, focusing on micromanagement and flavor instead.
Take, for example, Sauromatian poison archers. They are bugged and impossible to fix, thus their unerring arrows became a feature. Shouldn't they cost more to reflect that?

What mod are you playing? Androphag archers have a gold cost two thirds times higher than their baseline.

[NooBliss]

Ah. Indeed; its just that (almost nothing) * 3/2 = (still incredibly cheap for unerring poison arrows). My bad.

[Dimaz]

I feel CBM goes to the wrong direction starting with gemgen removal in 1.6. I never fully agreed to that change as it only removes from the game and adds nothing. I agree however that gemgens had to be nerfed for large games where there were hundreds of them on each side; still there are solutions to that problem that I think are more acceptable. House rules for example. Usually each starting game has some rules like not abusing LaD or not preventing movement with scouts etc. One of them could be not to build more gemgens of each type than the current turn number. Or not more than 50. Whatever. And the winner has to upload the turn archive for everyone to see that he wasn't cheating.
But when CBM removed them completely, it was too much. They represented the concept of economic investment in the game along with generating globals, SDRs and hammers. You either spend your gems now to get immediate result or invest them to get more later. And it was an important strategic choice as overinvesting can leave you without gems to deal with immediate threat.
As I said, this investment in gemgens wasn't really balanced as after initial wars it was an optimal choice in 99% cases to build more of them instead of spending. But CBM removed the choice at all instead of dealing with the problem in subtler ways.
Now the same thing happened to SDRs and hammers. I think this items add important part to gameplay as economic investment; without them we have less strategic choices. Again, I agree that after gemgen removal blood became a bit too powerful; however dealing with it in such manner is too much I think. When I played blood nations I had a choice to move into blood or research const 4 first; now it's gone. Perhaps SDRs are too cheap for what they do so maybe they should be moved to b2 - this way they will be fogeable only by more powerful mages and the mageturns for them will enter the equation; more choices as the result. As for DH, I think they are perfectly fine as they are, being the only investment in 1.6 that gives back gems of all kinds and not only of it's own.
And the MM argument is the strangest thing I've ever heard. I spend hours on late game turns and about 30-90 mins on midgame when I'm in a war - directly to click things, and who knows how much time during work day to make plans. And even with blood-heavy hations it's only about 10 minutes on huge maps to transport slaves and give items to guys that need them - I tend to forge items when I already have the unit for them. Most of the time goes into watching battles, planning, scripting and moving armies around, counting gems to give for bf spells and to scouts... Honestly, I don't think moving hammers around takes more than 5% of all the time on the turn.

[Corinthian]

I kind of agree with Dimaz that the two most recent versions have made way to big changes. The only gem gen that was problematic was the clam of pearls. The fever fetish caused disease and fire gems are rather worthless anyhow. The bloodstone was overpowered but also extremely hard to get. In fact, I can't think of a single nation that can build them without empowering or designing your pretender to build them.

All these balance problems could have been fixed by changing their cost or their build requirements. Removing them was much to drastic.

The latest version have the same problem. If an item is problematic, make it more expensive. Make it less of an must have item. That way nations that really need them can still have them and those that felt forced to use them can consider if it's worth it.

If you want to make MA Ulm more competitive you could make their black knights cheaper. As it stands even sacred cavalry like that of EA ermor and MA T'ien Ch'i cost less then the black knights and sacred cavalry is way powerful with a big fire bless.

I also did not like the general archer nerf. It made some archers, like Jomon longbows and agathar crossbows less useful then many indys.

Otherwise it's a great mod. Keep up the good work.

[TheConway]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

I kind of agree with Dimaz that the two most recent versions have made way to big changes. The only gem gen that was problematic was the clam of pearls. The fever fetish caused disease and fire gems are rather worthless anyhow. The bloodstone was overpowered but also extremely hard to get. In fact, I can't think of a single nation that can build them without empowering or designing your pretender to build them.

All these balance problems could have been fixed by changing their cost or their build requirements. Removing them was much to drastic.

The latest version have the same problem. If an item is problematic, make it more expensive. Make it less of an must have item. That way nations that really need them can still have them and those that felt forced to use them can consider if it's worth it.

If you want to make MA Ulm more competitive you could make their black knights cheaper. As it stands even sacred cavalry like that of EA ermor and MA T'ien Ch'i cost less then the black knights and sacred cavalry is way powerful with a big fire bless.

I also did not like the general archer nerf. It made some archers, like Jomon longbows and agathar crossbows less useful then many indys.

Otherwise it's a great mod. Keep up the good work.

The issue with gem gens is that A- the nations that "needed" them weren't necessarily the ones that got them easily (ulm, agartha, BL) and while they might make a legitimate choice in the early-mid game, they were quite seriously no brainers in the end game and made for ridiculous situations where nations would be casting multiple wishes for gems to forge more gem gens to wish for more gems. SDRs work in almost the same way as gem gens, are far easier to produce, and are even more of a no-brainer. Sure you could up their paths to b3 and cost 15 slaves, but you'd still probably end up making them since it only takes max 4-5 turns for that to pay off. Hammers are definitely a somewhat different case, but I'm wary of immediate condemnation until some testing is done, regardless of any theorycraft-driven alarmism.

Agree that MA Ulm buffs could go farther, there's really no way to raise them above bottom tier unless qm is willing to break some thematic eggs, which doesn't seem to be the case.

I have no idea what you mean about a general archer nerf. Explain?

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

The bloodstone was overpowered but also extremely hard to get. In fact, I can't think of a single nation that can build them without empowering or designing your pretender to build them.

There's a fair amount of nations that can do it with recruitable mages, or using nothing but path boosters.
A full list would be: Marignon, Hinnom, Gath, Abysia, Vanheim and and Pangaea. For all these nations mass-constructing blood stones was a dominant strategy.

Anyway, if you want gemgenerators brought back in it is very easy to mod it back and it (like all changes in the mod) are the houserules visualized by a few players, it's a given that it isn't going to be a perfect fit for all games. My opinion is that the gemgenerators always become problematic in longer games (PBEMs almost by definition!)

Your comments on MA Ulm is fair, Ulms troops might be superior in some ways but it isn't actually a strength when their units cost so much (Royal Guard to Black Knights?)

Although, I think there's plenty of other nations that perhaps should be buffed before (or at the same time) Ulm.

[Redeyes]

I'm glad that the dominant magical sites were removed (e.g Ultimate Gateway) but from the last discussion we had about them I thought it would be more controversial.