Conceptual Balance Mod 1.84

[Deathblob]

Originally Posted by rdonj

If it's severe enough I guess we could leave them out and just keep using boosters to do it instead (which is totally worth it even at 25 slaves)

Thanks. Initially it seemed to me like it wouldn't be worth it.

For a B3 or higher, your booster will give just 1 extra slave per turn, so 25 turns to payback.

For a B2, your avg slave income goes from:
8(x+2)/10 to 10(x+3)/10,
So you get .2x + 1.4 more slaves per turn.

x is supposedly a d6 according to the manual, but since I've had a b0 hunter pull 11 slaves in one month, I think that's full of crap. It's got to be open-ended, so it's 4.2 not 3.5, on average.

B2 to B3 is then 2.24 better per month, payback in 11 turns with a 25B cost booster.

For a B1, your avg slave income goes from:
4(x+1)/10 to 8(x+2)/10,
So you get .4x + 1.2 more slaves per turn, @x=4.2 = 2.88, payback in 8.7 turns.

For a B0, your avg slave income goes from:
x/10 to 4(x+1)/10,
So you get 1.66 more slaves per turn, but booster cost is 50B (empowerment), payback is 30 turns.

For comparison, summoning a B3 Vamp Lord for 66 slaves has full payback @ 7.2 per turn in about 9.1 turns.

So, if I'm right about x == 4.2:

A 25B booster is worth it for a B1 hunter. (Unless you get national B2 hunter summons like Mictlan for 25B).

But if you can make Vampire Lords, it's more cost effective to spend your blood on them instead of boosters for B2+'s. Since Vamp Lords are actually useful in combat, I'd make them, instead of boosters for B1s to hunt with.

Payback is really slow for empowering to B1, so don't do that unless you're going to take the extra step of making a 25B booster. (And definitely don't do it if you can make Vamp Lords).

[thejeff]

Well, I don't think you'd empower to B1, unless you don't have any Blood access. Why would anyone who has enough blood to summon & afford Vampire Lords need to empower someone to B1 to hunt?

The only other factor is that Vamp Lords are Blood 7. If you're not a full on Blood nation, you'll likely have Construction4 before you have Blood 7. You may also have blood, but no Blood Death combination.

[Executor]

I'm also in favor of rebalanced blood prices and bringing back SDRs. These last few posts sum up perfectly why removing them was a bad idea.

As for the blood prices, I think the main problems are vampire lords. Frankly, any blood summon compared to them is hardly worth it. I find them completely OP, I'd increase their price by say 1/3, to 99.
With enough vampires lords you sort of become unconquerable, and with the current price of 66 you can very easily summon 2 to 3 of them a turn meaning that I pity the fool trying to go up against a few dozen vampire lords, probably backed up by a few hundred vampires as well on top of anything that nation might have besides blood.
Also, bone fiends are still OP even with 7 for 3 slaves. It's not really hard to completely trample a nations with them early unless they have powerful archers. Instead of lowering their number I'd suggest an increase in price, say 5.
With their current price you can mass hundreds of them pretty fast even in early game.

[Psycho]

Vampire lords are terribly overpowered at 66 blood slaves. I should know, I've been using them in almost every of my games. The completely useless succubus costs 66 blood slaves FFS.

All devils, both lesser and greater are underpriced as well. The greater ones at least all have limited numbers, so they're not as overpowered as vampire lords. Bone fiends are especially OP among devils with nations with non-capital-only BD mages.

The remaining blood spells are pretty much ok. Maybe dark vines and disease demons could be a bit more expensive, but that's about it.

[Deathblob]

National blood summons (Tlahuelpuchi, Vampire counts) are undercosted too, the Tlahuelpuchi more so than the count.

[kianduatha]

Don't forget Dakini. Ugh.

[Samhain]

I'm having an odd issue with Ember Lords. For at least three turns, two in the same province have refused to move. I've tried for three turns to get them to budge, the last turn attempting to a new location. I've looked at the log file with three levels of debug and nothing jumps out at me. Though, I don't really know what I am looking for. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do here?

[llamabeast]

I think this is a generic dominions bug rather than anything to do with Ember Lords. Occasionally units refuse to move like this. It can be extremely frustrating.

[Executor]

Hmm, that explains some pretty strange moments for me...

[Samhain]

This issue, Ember Lords failing to move, has only happed with Ember Lords and only when moving two provinces the same turn. They always succeed when moving 1 province. It has happened several times now including two occasions when the Ember Lords were moving along with other units. In those instances, the other units succeeded to move, only the Ember Lords failed. I have experienced the failure to move issue Llamabeast mentioned in the past. But, when I have, it has always affected all the units in that province making the same move. So, it seems different here to me.

I have also experienced another bit of strangeness, at least to me. A Zmey equipped with a Lycantropos Amulet, Girdle of Might, and Amulet of Antimagic has dropped afflictions during combat. It started the conflict with a chest wound. It then was also blinded. It next dropped the chest wound. Then, blindness changed to lost an eye. Furthermore, it was either regenerating health at much too high a rate or occasionally receiving negative damage. I'm not sure which.

I can provide the log.txt of the Zmey fight along with the trn and 2h files if you are interested.