Hoburg Alliance Special Edition, now complete with hoburg heroes

[ywl]

BTW, I'm picking on the game balance because I like Hoburg and think that this mod would be fun to play against other nations in an MP game .

For SP, it's more than fine enough.

[Adept]

Interesting reading ywf. I must say I hadn't noticed that.

Since I play multiplay with three other RPG enthusiasts, our games tend to be more thematic and minimaxed.

What you said does check out, so those guys seem to be rather dangerous. The low damage (and weak poison) still limits their punch, however.

[Teraswaerto]

Volkfreunds currently have slightly better "physical" stats than other hoburgs. Strenght and hit points are 7 instead of 5. If they had a gold cost of 20, instead of the current 18, and 6 strenght and hp, would they still, in your opinion, be overpowered?

I don't want to make them capitol only, since it wouldn't be thematic, and I've always thought more nations should have access to holy troops beyond what can be produced in one province.

[ February 05, 2004, 16:47: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[ywl]

Originally posted by Adept:
Interesting reading ywf. I must say I hadn't noticed that.

Since I play multiplay with three other RPG enthusiasts, our games tend to be more thematic and minimaxed.

What you said does check out, so those guys seem to be rather dangerous. The low damage (and weak poison) still limits their punch, however.

Volkfreund - not the Tierfreund.

[Adept]

Hmm... I have to say hoburg alliance with a fire 9 pretender sounds very strange to me.

Then again, it may not sound so strange to others, and there of course musn't be easily exploitable loopholes in any mod. But doesn't the fire 9 blessing make monsters out of any holy unit?

[Teraswaerto]

Not really. What makes it so good with the Volkfreund is that they can be recruited in great numbers from any castle.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Volkfreunds currently have slightly better "physical" stats than other hoburgs. Strenght and hit points are 7 instead of 5. If they had a gold cost of 20, instead of the current 18, and 6 strenght and hp, would they still, in your opinion, be overpowered?

I don't want to make them capitol only, since it wouldn't be thematic, and I've always thought more nations should have access to holy troops beyond what can be produced in one province.

I'm not claiming Volkfreunds being overpowered, which requires more people to test it. I've just found one particular way to make them very powerful. I haven't really tested that much for Dom 2 but Volkfreunds are strong only in number with Fire bless effects. Most other bless effects probably won't help them too much. Individually, they're just some nice, cute, little infantries.

It's very hard to compare with the other regular nations since the only non-capital holy units (as far as I can remember) is Marignon's Flagellants, which are weak versus missles.

So, I guess to make than less powerful, the better way is to give them less protection, 10 or less will be more appropriate. But, even with that, spells like "Protection" or "Mass Protection", which is accessible by this mod, can easily increase their protection by 7. "Legions of Steel" and "Strength of Giant", both requires only Earth 3, are also available.

If I were to choose, I'll definitely make them capital only. If you check around in the newsgroup and Posts, one idea to explain building national units in the castles is because their administration and infrastructure help equiping your national units. It is *not* because your natives have moved to the new castle - not a colony. If we follow this line of thought, restricting Volkfreunds to capital, or at least to non-Hoburg provinces, is reasonable.

If not, I'll probably take out the holy bit, increase the hitpoint and strength to 8, increase the gold a little bit as they're rare.

Alternatively, if I want to keep the holy bit, I'd increase the gold to 40, resource to 28 (similar to Man's Wardens). Keep the original stats. But even that, for agreesive, physical players, 40 golds is not unaffordable.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Adept:
Hmm... I have to say hoburg alliance with a fire 9 pretender sounds very strange to me.

Then again, it may not sound so strange to others, and there of course musn't be easily exploitable loopholes in any mod. But doesn't the fire 9 blessing make monsters out of any holy unit?

It's strange but sometimes the game is played like a competitive strategic game. Or we can image that the Hoburgs are enslaved and driven by a Moloch or Fire Dragon. Possible? For game balancewise, we can take Moloch out of the pretender list but it'll be kind of odd as every land nations, even Caelum has it.

Flagellants would be a nice candidate for Fire blessing but they could be slaughtered by missle. A Fire 9/Air ? pretender for Marignon could cover this vulnerability but it'd be expensive. A Marignon army with an Air mage casting "Arrow Fend" is a strategy yelling "try me". I guess we'll need MP players who've seen it to describe their experience.

[Teraswaerto]

I think you overestimate their power. 7 is pretty low as far as hitpoints are concerned.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
I think you overestimate their power. 7 is pretty low as far as hitpoints are concerned.

Could be.

That's why I stressed that it's only some rough impression of a single person . More veteran players need to test and get a feeling of it.

But on the other hand, Flagellants have only 9 hitpoints, 0 protection and lower attack and defense skills - though they're in fact cheaper and require less resource.

But in my testing, I haven't put the Boots of the Behemoth, Ring of Regeneration and Fire Shield on my Moloch and use him as a super-combatant yet. Even without the super-combatant, it was already expanding faster than what I could with the best of my other regular nations.