Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Zen]

The following is a Mod that deals with some of the Balance Issues you may be finding in Dominions 2 (as of 2.15).

This does not by any means say that this is a "perfect" Version of "absolute" balance. But it plays into the variability of strengths and 'niche usefulness' of certain aspects of play. It also has some thematic roots, though they are mostly applied after balance consideration. (Example: Nagas, from my imagination, classic literature, mythology, RPG (in general) are sneaky, or subterranean or in some way try to hide their true form in order to manipulate events/people/mysticality. So the Naga has been given Stealth because it is seen that Naga's are underpowered and don't have even a niche use.

Most of the reasoning of these changes is based off of MULTIPLAYER experience, as balance doesn't have an incredible impact on Single Player or Sandbox play. It has been long felt that the actual selection of pretenders is far less, for you could find or do better with another pretender what should be Pretender X's strength. You also were able to dismiss entire classes of Pretenders (Some Humans, Some Nagas, Some Dragons, some Immobiles) for being categorically unfeasible to use in a competitive strategy.

Note about Feedback: If you'd like to post your feedback, great. If you want to post your feedback in a manner that does not promote or follow a trend of discussion, don't. I will ignore your feedback totally unless you give /reasons/ for such. I will also ignore any feedback that is only based off of inexperience (you looked at the Readme and didn't even look at the full ramifications) or no experience. If you only want to rant or 'get your opinion in' please state it up front so I can ignore your comments for the sake of the mod and only take them as, just that, your opinion.

You can find the file as the attatchment, or here -> www.techno-mage.com/~zen/ (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/)

For those Mod Install Challenged, follow the following Process:

Download the Zip
Extract all files in the .zip to your (mydominionsdirectorypath)/dominions2/mods
Start Dominions 2
Go to "Preferences"
Go to "Mod Preferences"
Click on "Conceptual Pretender Gods" so that it says Enabled
Create a New God

Note: Only games started with the Mod in place will have the changes of the Mod in effect.

Copy of READ ME:

These are the following changes to the Pretenders.

There are some things which are limited by the Modding Tools availiable for Illwinter. One of which is a redistricting of Pretenders, along with other statistical, auto-summoning, battle-summoning, certain unit modifications, global modifications and others. The Conceptual Balance series is my concept of Balance of the Game to allow *everything* to be a viable and game mechanical worthy choice not specifically for theme. While there is no "best" there are certain Pretenders with certain nations better suited to various strategies. With this in mind, here are the changes.

Weapons: Fire Breath +2 AOE
New Weapon: Wing Buffet

Pretenders
(Red, Blue, Green) Dragons +Wing Buffet, +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +2 Def
Dracolich +Recuperation, +Wing Buffet
Manticore +4 Prot, +2 Att, +2 Def, +Wing Buffet
Ghost King Basecost: 110, Pathcost: 30
Cyclops +25% Forge Bonus
Golden Naga +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominon: 2
Naga +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominion: 2, Stealth 0
Lord of the Gates +100 CR, +Fear, Basecost: 75, +Earth
Scorpion King +Mounted, +Body Slot
Shedu +Earth, +2 Def, -1 Enc, +Wing Buffet
(White, Black) Bull Pathcost: 60, -2 Enc
Lord of Fertility +Awe +1, +Nature
Lich +50 FR
Master Lich = Arch Lich +2 Death Gems, +Disease Cloud 6
Lich Queen +50 FR
Saurolich +50 FR
Void Lord -Head Slot
Son of the Sun (First Variety) +Fire
Son of the Sun (Second Variety) +Fire, Basecost: 75
Ancient Kraken +50 PR, +50 CR
***** Queen +Stealth 0
Mother of Lions +Stealth 0, +3 Def, +Bite, +Nature
Asynja +Glamour, +Stealth 25, Pathcost: 40
Daughter of the Land +Earth, Basecost: 75
Divine Glyph +Immortal, Basecost: 75
Medusa +4 HP
All-Father Pathcost: 50
Master Alchemist +Earth, -2 Enc, +2 Prec, +9 HP
Fountain of Blood +10 HP, Pathcost: 30
Oracle +10 HP, Pathcost: 30, +2 Astral Gems
Titan (Female) +Nature
Wyrm Basecost: 50
Earth Mother -1 Enc
Sacred Statue Basecost: 30, -Astral, Pathcost: 20
Monolith +2 Nature Gems
Lord of the Wild Basecost: 125
Colossal Head +Nature, +Blood
Prince of Death Pathcost: 70
Titan (Male) Basecost: 110, +Mapmove, +1 Att, +1 Def, +1 Prec, +Mountainsurvival
Father of Serpents: +3 Def, +2 Prec
Lord of the Desert Sun: +3 Def, +2 Prec
Phoenix +Fire
Jade Emperor -1 Enc, +2 Prec
Freak Lord +Nature, -2 Enc, +11 HP
Arch Mage Basecost: 20, -2 Enc, +11 HP
Crone = Hag Basecost: 0, +6 HP, +3 Prec, +Iron Crutch, -2 Enc, +Heal Troops
Great Sage Basecost: 25, +8 HP, -2 Enc
Frost Father Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc
Master Druid Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc
Great Enchantress +Ethereal, Basecost: 45, +7 HP, -2 Enc
Smoking Mirror +5 HP, -2 Enc
Arch Druid +11 HP, -2 Enc
Arch Mage (Water) +9 11 HP, -2 Enc
Seer of the Deeps +9 HP, -2 Enc, Basecost: 45, +Water, Dominion: 2
Great Warlock -2 Enc, +Fire, +Quarterstaff, Dominion: 2
Divine Emperor -2 Enc, Dominon: 3
Divine Serpent Pathcost: 30
Serpent King -2 Enc, Dominion: 3
Son of the Sea +Water, +Mapmove
Virtue +100 FR

[Cainehill]

Ooorah! That looks awesome, Zen! Now to get some MP games going using it. Thanks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Boron]

Wow .
What's the reasoning for giving a virtue 100% FR as well ?
This way you don't need any resistence stuff at all .

May i ask what happened to your new spell references as well ?

[archaeolept]

blitz tomorrow

[Zen]

Boron said:
Wow .
What's the reasoning for giving a virtue 100% FR as well ?
This way you don't need any resistence stuff at all .

Because of the choice of picking the Virtue in the Mod is not as straight forward as it might have been before.

[Yossar]

Just glanced at the list. So everyone is improved except Ghost King, Prince of Death, and Allfather who are nerfed? And a few others (Moloch at least) are untouched? Interesting.

[Zen]

If you want to count the nerfs, you might also want to include the missing head slot on the Void Lord.

Though of course, I always thought he just stuffed his facesucker in the top of all his helmets, looking like an octopus trying to get through a heating vent.

[Thufir]

I like what you've done to the human pretenders, I'm looking forward to trying them out! I suppose you've considered stripping the Moloch of his imps, and decided not to?

[archaeolept]

you leave my imps alone you!

[Cainehill]

Yep, a number are seemingly untouched (Lady of Fortune, Carrion Dragon, etc). But it definately makes some of the "lesser" pretenders much more worth taking a look at, and makes the human pretenders a little less lame (they all have more HPs than a drowning kitten, for instance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ).

Using this mod, I think you can hope to see more than the same ten pretenders in every game (even if you still see 33% VQs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). Nice.

[Yossar]

Ya, I noticed the Void Lord but forgot to mention it. The Sacred Statue got an odd change that I'm not sure is a nerf or a bonus. I guess it's to differentiate the Oracle, Sphinx, and Statue a little more? Now Statue is the most versatile of the three and Oracle is the cheapest Astral 3.

[Cohen]

I'd agree with Moloch without Imps.

Virtue should have base cost of 75, and have +6 HP, +2 Att, Def and MR.

All Humans should have 1 more starting path except Great Enchantress that have etherealness.

Abysyan G.Warlock +8 Hp, because it should be with more life than humans.

Lich shouldn't have fire res ... they're immortal, and they're difficult to kill.

Overall good job, especially giving Asynya chances to be chosen instead of Odin.
And nice having GK nerfed.

EDIT: I'd agree with Cainehill, Skratti is similar to Aby G.Warlock

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.

[Zen]

Cohen said:
I'd agree with Moloch without Imps.

Virtue should have base cost of 75, and have +6 HP, +2 Att, Def and MR.

All Humans should have 1 more starting path except Great Enchantress that have etherealness.

Abysyan G.Warlock +8 Hp, because it should be with more life than humans.

Lich shouldn't have fire res ... they're immortal, and they're difficult to kill.

Overall good job, especially giving Asynya chances to be chosen instead of Odin.
And nice having GK nerfed.




I'll refer yout to the part about not even regarding your feedback unless you actually looked at the mod. Because if you haven't downloaded the mod you would know that the Lich was given +50 Fire Resistance, when you have -200 FR and you are given +50, the total is?

I want your feedback, even if it's suggestions, but you could do me the favor of actually looking a the mod instead of reading the Readme.

[Zen]

Cainehill said:

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.



I haven't really decided what role the Skratti is to play, if I could redistrict the pretenders, Giants would only have a very limited selection of Human Pretenders (Giants have a hard time calling any "Human" god).

In his current state, the Skratti has tougher stats, costs 50 and has 10/path, it's hard to not choose him if you are going for a Rainbow Pretender as Jotun, I feel.

[Zen]

Re: Human Pretenders -

Human Pretenders are a hard cookie to balance while remaining true to flavor. They should, in effect, be powerful casters of magic but bottom of the barrel fighters (with barely enough hp to survive direct applied force, as it is with the mod)

But the changes I would like to make (Enchantment Bonus, Global Research Bonus, Auto-searching, etc) are unavailiable at current. The only way I could simulate being consummate spellcasters without drawing away from the "Demi-Gods have more FOCUS, but less variablity" that giving them lots of paths would do (You can't change the scaling of paths or that would be another great factor to make it more realistic) was to make their Encumberance so low that fatigue was less of an issue (Especially if you look at getting 4Stars of experience, which makes their Enc 0, and a very real shift between Demi-Gods and Humans for casting encumberance).

If you have ideas with the current modding tools availiable for suggestions to make Humans fit into their Dominions 2 concept, please don't hesitate to mention it.

[Foom]

Looks great, thanks for all the work. I'll venture some suggestions, at the risk of being argued into a pulp.

The main problem I had with human pretenders so far was that their only advantage (lots of cheap magic paths) was at such high risk because they're so vulnerable. The higher hit points help that a lot, since now they're more likely to survive seeking arrows and stray shots on the battlefield.

I like the idea of giving the humans small unique bonuses so they don't all look the same, so here are some ideas: Forge bonus. I thought the Cyclops was pretty good without it, being the only chassis with good earth magic.
Blood hunting bonus. The only one so far is the Fountain o' Blood, could be very nice on a mobile pretender. Perhaps this would be something for the Skratti? Give me your offspring, midgets!
Starting equipment. Unlikely to make much of a difference though.
The much-maligned autosummon imps would actually be useful on human pretenders since they offer some protection from assassinations. Perhaps a master of the dark arts who sold his soul for Lifelong Protection and now needs to achieve godhood before Sheogorath comes to take him away. Or a mad scientist type who gets corpse men (not moddable, I know).
The Frost Father is a lot less sexy than, say, the Abysian Great Warlock or the Great Sage. He gets cold resist and the chill aura, but I don't think those are much good on a pretender who will hopefully never be in close combat. How about turning him into a "Great Conquistador" with the "can sail over oceans" ability? And maybe a pillage bonus for flavor.
I don't know if this is a valid comparison, but Pythium's Divine Emperor is a lot less interesting than e.g. the Serpent King of C'tis or the Arch Seraph of Caelum. Perhaps give him awe? Or even higher starting dominion?
It's kind of hard to come up with suitable ideas since pretender modding is still somewhat limited..

[Endoperez]

Wow, looks good... I am probably not going to use it, at least not yet, as I play SP and haven't yet found the IW-balance to be too far off. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif


For Foom:
Have you tried the chinese mod? I think it was called Kami. In it, there were Shrines carried by four swordsmen. They had four attacks with the swords! It was a great touch, and giving Divine Emperor four Emerald Lords to carry his palanquine could help it nicely... He wouldn't have the full protection and would be unable to use body armor, but he would have some ambidextercity and maybe three misc slots as well?

Awe and/or starting dominion would probably be too good for a mere human... Remember how rare Awe is, and how all the humans have low dominion. Divine Emperor might be able to be a mage of mysterious powers, but so would be all other wizards... Why is this one special, besides the fact that he won't touch earth on his own feet?

[PvK]

This looks very nice!

My main reservation is with the increased hit points on low-hitpoint pretenders, for thematic reasons. I don't mind it that much, but pretenders already get HP bonuses for dominion, and I don't like the D&D feel of people being able to take superhuman amounts of injury. In this case it's ok I suppose since they _are_ superhuman, even if they started human.

However I do like the idea of toughening the humans by adding some equipment to them. Ethereal Robes and missile protection items and/or reinvigoration to increase the "great wizards" theme you had in mind.

PvK

[Cainehill]

I prefer to think of it as being like Glen Cook's Black Company mages - some of the Taken survived being hanged, beheaded, emtombed for a thousand years, smashing into a castle wall at about 100 miles per hour (with no seatbelt, air bags, or, mmm, car http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ), and worse.

That's what I think of, when I think of human mages attempting to become gods. Not someone's grandmother who could be killed by 3 good papercuts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

That said, I also have some reservations about the human mages hit points, mainly because it seems that if an arch-mage has 21 hit points, a giant mage-godling should have more than 50% more. It's a scaling problem; not that the Skratti really needs improvement, but that it seems it should be substantially harder to kill than a crone.

So - maybe a couple built in magic items might help, in place of the hit points. Ethereality, air shield, lightning immunity, regeneration (on the druids especially, who also might still get higher HPs). No uber items - as a game went on, you'd quite possibly want to upgrade the items, but enough to give them an initial bonus. (Albeit I don't think pretenders / units can be modded for things like misc items.)

Anyways - the HP increase for humans isn't bad; for instance, it makes it rather more difficult to nail a human pretender with a single Seeking Arrow, which has always been an issue with sending them out site searching.

[Zen]

PvK,

Yes, those are all good suggestions. However, when you give them additional equipment (like say a Robe of the Magi), it doesn't transfer over the actual applies bonuses of the magic item (+Paths, or Resistance, or whatever), only the physical statistics and such.

I could give someone a wraith sword as starting equipment and it wouldn't make a big deal, but giving someone say, a Rune Smasher, would not give them a penetration bonus, or Elemental Armor would not provide any resistances.

This is where you run into the limitations of the Modding tools at current.

[archaeolept]

see? everyone thinks the skratti should just be given a wraith sword...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Zen]

The newest Version has been updated to 1.3

It has a few changes, from the original which are as follows:

Weapon: Plague Breath +1 Ammo

Dracolich +Recuperation, +Wing Buffet, +4 Prec, +5 Prot
Virtue +Astral, -Air
Skratti -> Elder Skratti +1 Att, +3 Def, +Blood, -1 Enc
Bog Mummy -> +25 FR

Please note, the Original Post Attatchment has been changed and updated to Version 1.3. If you have a hard time downloading it from techno, try the attatchment.

[Edi]

Zen, looks like you forgot to mark the Basecost for Naga and Golden Naga as changed in the readme, it's down to 90 from 100.

The Caelian Arch Seraph has also not been edited at all, so (other than flying + CR) it's currently far inferior to a lot of the other rainbow pretenders. Something sneezes too hard in its direction and it's toast.

If you (or anyone else) are interested in seeing it, I made some changes into the conceptReadme file (edited file attached). I edited out a couple of spelling mistakes and organized the changes on each pretender into a systematic order, the order of listing varied quite a bit.

I also organized the pretenders by type to the following categories: Monster, Giant, Immobile, Human (rainbow), and added an Unedited Category where the pretenders with no changes are listed. Makes it a bit easier to find what you want if you're looking for a specific pretender's changes.

There are a few pretenders that didn't really fit squarely into any one of the categories, and they are: Virtue, PoD, Medusa (listed under monsters), and Ghost King, the 3 Lich types and Bog Mummy (listed under humans despite being death specific).

Now, I might be ignorant of the finer points of balance issues, especially where multislayer games are concerned, but as of right now, your mod is getting permanent enabling on my Dom2, it makes so many previously useless pretenders attractive and even makes some of them more thematic. Great job! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Edi

[Tuidjy]

I really like these changes. I wish they could find their way into a patch.

There is something that puzzles me, though. Three of the pretenders got a
nerf. I am not going to argue against the logic of it, I will just take it as
a compliment for my taste in pretenders, as the only time I do not use the Ghost
King is when I use the Allfather.

But I wonder, how do people use the Prince of Death effectively? As early
as the middle game you have to stick him in the lab, because undead-specific
spells like Dust to Dust easily destroy him. This is not a big deal for the
Ghost king, because deep down under, he is a rainbow mage. But with the
increased path cost, the Prince of Death looks rather pointless to me.

[Cohen]

PoD is a very good choice as pretender IMO, before the Patch.

Good stats, flying, with massive fear for taking out indies.

[Thufir]

Tuidjy said:
I really like these changes. I wish they could find their way into a patch.




I like the changes, as well. But of course they'll need a good bit of playtesting (to which effort, I would be more than happy to contribute!) before it'd be reasonable to include in a patch. I'd bet IW would be quite open to incorporate these in a patch, after an appropriate level of testing.

[Cohen]

The best way would be to play MP games with them, not only SP games.
The problem is that I dunno if a server like Mosehansen's one could implement Mod usage. Even by default it could be pretty nice to have some new game started with that Mod.

I'd like it really, but Skratti and G.Warlock needs some more HP now that humans are close to them for HPs.

[Ironhawk]

Looks good Zen, thanks for the work!

I like the HP bonuses on the human pretenders. To me, it says that you will no longer be forced to take death magic if you choose them (for Twiceborn). It still makes a lot of sense to do so, of course. But you arent really *forced* to do so, anymore.

[PvK]

Twiceborn works on pretenders?

[Alneyan]

If the Pretender in question can be affected by Twiceborn, it will work on her. This spell does not work for lifeless Pretenders, Undeads and various Demons.

[Cainehill]

On animate pretenders, sure - not undead or most immobiles. Additionally, becoming a wight mage is only a good thing for a handful of pretenders - the human mages being the most prominent example.

[Zen]

Thanks Edi, that is a much better Readme than the one I had previously. I hereby make you my official editor! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Yes the Arch Seraph and a few others that have changes in mind have not been totally modified since I am looking for a little feedback on what people think or feel was a good change and what isn't a good change.

Re: PoD

The only reason this fellow didn't see more play for some people was probably because of the Ghost King. While he is the most affordable Death Pretender, he was also very easy to choose over comprable other Death Pretenders (Liches and Lord of the Gates, notably). I may end up changing him in another way while trying to retain the flavor that he is the PRINCE of Death. As of right now he's still a great choice for a Pretender but might not be viable for his preference (Death). I will have to think more on this.

Postnote: I used the PoD extensively. He was invariably always a good choice no matter the nation (baring Jotunheim), even with his weakness to Dust to Dust (especially since he has longdead friends).

[Edi]

You're welcome, Zen. I'll be happy to help in this capacity in the future as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

By the way, did you get my second PM regarding the MIQR? The one about the three items with non-obvious bugs?

Edi

[Zen]

Edi said:
You're welcome, Zen. I'll be happy to help in this capacity in the future as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

By the way, did you get my second PM regarding the MIQR? The one about the three items with non-obvious bugs?

Edi



No, I did not get that particular PM. Please send it again.

[Edi]

Done. Actually a good thing that you didn't get the first one, because the new PM has more comprehensive info after I checked the MIQR to confirm a couple of suspicions.

Edi

[tinkthank]

This looks interesting; I will try to check it out soon, but probably wont be able to give non-trivial feedback for a month or so, so I'll just keep quiet until then. But thanks for your effort!

[Zen]

This weekend will be another trial test for the Conceptual Pretender Mod along with a few updated deals based on feedback.

If you would like to participate in some of these blitzes, it will be during the weekend and most will be gathering in the Gamesurge.net IRC channel.

[Cainehill]

If one's going on Sunday, I'll probably be in; too much going on this Satyrday.

[Cheezeninja]

You could leave the human pretenders with their inferior stats but make them dirt cheap(er), possibly even making their basecost negative, if possible. I think of it as being able to take a rather unimpressive god to have points for dominion, just like you can cripple your dominion for points for your god. So what if a gust of air could take them out and they have high encumbrance, bad precision, and 1 tacitical movement, you can afford all the scales you want and still a couple paths of magic on them.

[Zen]

Cheezeninja said:
You could leave the human pretenders with their inferior stats but make them dirt cheap(er), possibly even making their basecost negative, if possible. I think of it as being able to take a rather unimpressive god to have points for dominion, just like you can cripple your dominion for points for your god. So what if a gust of air could take them out and they have high encumbrance, bad precision, and 1 tacitical movement, you can afford all the scales you want and still a couple paths of magic on them.



I thought about that approach. Or giving them a Pathcost of 0, so they don't need anything and every time you see a human it will at least be a 8 Path Raibow. In the end of my conclusions, it wasn't the fact that they were crappy, useless in battle, got owned by artillery spells, cast everything/search everything/have 1 hp in -1 dominion type of situations, it was the fact that you couldn't use your Pretender to swing the tide of a war because all his spellcasting strength lay in pure Rituals or Site Searching. With the negative impact of death (losing a level in all paths) that is *more* hurtful to Rainbows, this is a big "Uh, no" factor of them since not all of them have stealth and can avoid getting bombed by CT or Teleport if they are site searching/researching/ritual casting.

[Cainehill]

Hmm. That'd work for hags/crones, imo - give one incredibly flimsy pretender with 0 pathcost, for those who care to try it. In my opinion, it'd be iffy, but playable - even as a combat mage. One hell of an artillerist, with high skill in certain areas, and various spells reduce or eliminate the risk of dying and losing paths in a battle.

Also - getting owned by artillery spells? Unless / until the AI is changed, flyers might take out a judiciously setup pretender, but artillery won't, not before battlefield-affecting spells are researched.

Mind - I like the added HPs for the humans. But the one human pretender that is supposed to be fragile and weak could be left ... fragile and weak, but cheap and/or beefed up magically.

After all - if magic paths cost 0, it can afford 1 death and still be at least equal to any other human pretender in paths, depending on how it is set up. ( 8 1-point paths on a normal 10 point human is 80 points - 8 2 point paths on a 0 point human is 64? )

[Cainehill]

Oh - also, human pretenders _can_ swing the tides of war, I think. Yes, it's risky, but a high magic path human can do wonders. I once had great success with a human mage for one of the dead Ermors, and was in the HoF most of the game, since I got bored site searching. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Didn't even have TwiceBorn on him, as I recall.

[Graeme Dice]

Cainehill said:
Also - getting owned by artillery spells? Unless / until the AI is changed, flyers might take out a judiciously setup pretender, but artillery won't, not before battlefield-affecting spells are researched.



Artillery spells refers to murdering winter and flames from the sky.

[Cainehill]

Ah well - it's only fire and frost, relatively cheap to equip a single commander against.

Hmmm. Give all human pretenders either stealth or glamour? (Glamour, because who notices one more puny human amongst the peasants?)

[Alneyan]

Do you have an idea about when will the Magic item part of your mod be available for public usage? I am asking this because a game using your mod is to be started on the French Boards (Net4war), and so we may add your Magic item mod if it is available before the game starts.

Thanks!
Alneyan

[Zen]

If you'd like I can release a Beta Version (with only confirmed good idea changes) in place as well as the newly updated Pretender's portion. If you are starting your game tommorow I will have it avaliable for you to try out.

Thanks,

JB

[Alneyan]

The game will be starting Wednesday or so, so I think the full item Version is not needed yet. If the list of the changes is already available, it would be helpful however; otherwise, feel free to upload the Beta Version instead.

Thanks a lot!
Alneyan

[Zen]

Alright, a few changes!

The latest Version is 1.5

I will try to have the Readme out as soon as possible with the total changes, for those browsers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Find the mod here at www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp15.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp15.zip) or as the attatchment to this post (I will bring down the other after this one has gotten out)

Dagon - +6 Def
Manticore - +8 Prot (Total: 18, like a Kithartic Lion) (In addition to other changes)
Prince of Death - 100 CR, 100 PR (Replacing other changes)
Arch Mage - Dominion: 2, Basecost: 25 (In addition to other changes)
Hag - Basecost: 25 (In addition to other changes)
Frost Father -> Rime Mariner - +Sailing (In addition to other changes)
Son of the Sun (Non-astral) +2 Fire Gems (Replacing other Changes)
Neried - +Mounted
Void Lord - Dominion: 3 (In addition to other changes)
Arch Seraph - +8 HP, Basecost: 50 (In addition to other changes)
Master Druid - +Swamp Survival (In addition to other changes)
Lord of the Gates - -100 CR (In addition to other changes)
***** Queen - +5 Prec (In addition to other Changes)
Shedu - -1 Enc (In addition to other changes)
Lord of the Night - Basecost: 125

I will have my editor get back with you for the full readme. As well as my next post will try to do some of the explaination why certain things were given certain traits.

[Ragnarok-X]

Quite good, thanks for making this, Zen

[Zen]

Enjoy it and give me some feedback when you've had a chance to try it.

Additional Changes (that I forgot!)

Weapon: Bile - +1 AoE

Naga - -1 Enc (Total 3, now)
Golden Naga - -1 Enc (Total 3, now)

[Zen]

Please note the current Version 1.5. I went back and forth on a few changes and ended up just giving in to the (wait and see).

Reasons for this: The Mod tools limit your actual choices. Whereas things you would like to put in that might be thematically and strengthening, just don't work right now (I.E. Fountain of Blood cannot get Blood Slave income because #gemprod doesn't work with Blood Slaves).

You only need the latest Version of the Mod Enabled (and would be best to have only that one enabled).

Edit: The Attatchment has been removed from the first post, the Attatchment 3 Posts up, is 1.5.

[Edi]

All right, new readme is ready and attached to this post. All new changes have been documented. I've added some extra info as well so that those who might wish to know it will not have to look at other documentation (namely the Unit_ID and Weapons_&_Armor spreadsheets by yours truly) to find what they need.

Zen, a few comments and questions:

First and most important comment: I had a hunch when editing the readme and checked the mod file. You have forgotten to mod the secondshape monsters for the three dragons, dracolich, ***** queen, serpent king and smoking mirror.

These monsters (several of which are human forms) are very weak and simply crowbait if the pretenders assume those forms. The monsters you need to apply most or some of the same changes as you put on the actual pretenders are:
402 Crone - ***** Queen alternate form
267 Frost Father - Blue Dragon alternate form
226 Great Sage - Red Dragon alternate form
268 Master Druid - Green Dragon alternate form
645 Bog Mummy - Dracolich alternate form
858 Jaguar - Smoking mirror alternate form
654 Serpent King - Serpent form

Second, did you try to send me a PM yesterday? If you did, I didn't get it. I had the blinking envelope when I logged in, but there were no Messages in my inbox. Either resend, post here, or toss me an email (preferable, as the PM system seems less than reliable).

Third, have you considered commenting your mod? If anybody wants to take a look at the specific changed as implemented in the actual mod file, adding e.g. --[name] after the #selectmonster <nbr> or #selectweapon <nbr> commands will make the file a lot more readable (even to yourself, maybe?) I know from mapmaking that everything on a given line after -- will be ignored as commentary.

Edi

[Boron]

Edi said:
All right, new readme is ready and attached to this post. All new changes have been documented. I've added some extra info as well so that those who might wish to know it will not have to look at other documentation (namely the Unit_ID and Weapons_&_Armor spreadsheets by yours truly) to find what they need.



Where can i download your Weapons&Armor spreadsheets ?
And is there a document with all modding commands shown ?
Thnx for the info http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Balmoth]

(I.E. Fountain of Blood cannot get Blood Slave income because #gemprod doesn't work with Blood Slaves).



I have no any experience with making mods, so I might be way off, but Belphegor- King of Hell (I Think) has Blood Slave Income. So the game at least has some kind of commander setting for this.

[Pocus]

real good mod Zen, congratulations, I think its a step forward in godmaking for dominions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

I have a major problem though on the Blood Thorn that you modded to Blood 4 Nature 1 IIRC. If the purpose is to reduce its attractivness as a melee weapon, then you should lessen the damage, and not rise the cost. Because as it stands, you are making the life very difficult for blood nations just wanting the item for a second blood level boost. (In essence you forgot that the blood thorn has 2 usages)

[Boron]

Balmoth said:

(I.E. Fountain of Blood cannot get Blood Slave income because #gemprod doesn't work with Blood Slaves).



I have no any experience with making mods, so I might be way off, but Belphegor- King of Hell (I Think) has Blood Slave Income. So the game at least has some kind of commander setting for this.


Hm i tested it now and it seems no gemproduce command works http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Perhaps the command is wrong that it is not #gemprod but something else like #gemproduce ?

[Soapyfrog]

Leave the blood thorn as it is, just remove life-drain from it. Simple. Now it will be used for its proper purpose, and not as a melee weapon...

[Zen]

I didn't ignore it, but I haven't been able to find a happy medium. Blood is one of the few paths of magic with 3 Path Boosters (Brazen Vessel, Armor of Souls, and the Blood Thorn).

The Weapon and Armor portion of the Item Mod is not complete (it is still very much in beta) in order for me to find a happy balance between the Life Drain weapons and their secondary functions).

I might consider doing just that, lowering the damage significantly, this in and of itself might be just what it needs (I was thinking -3) and removing the Nature component to the cost.

So Pocus, thanks for Pretender portion of the series and I am going still looking at the Items portion and it's not near done.

I just gave a half-list of what I was currently working with in the mod to Alenyea if you wanted to try it out and it's not currently released. (Mostly if you have people over there in France who don't like non-site gem income)

As you have been able to see from the Pretender Mod, I go back and forth on a few things trying to figure out a proper balance while taking into consideration the intent and usage of the items.

[Zen]

Yes, I know there is alot in the game that is there that you cannot mod because they have not been 'unlocked' or made to mod. Belphegor produces Bloodslave and Turn by Turn summons Militia.

the #gemprod works for every other type of gem except for Blood Slaves, unless there is a different syntax for Blood Slaves than the standard

[Boron]

Zen said:
Yes, I know there is alot in the game that is there that you cannot mod because they have not been 'unlocked' or made to mod. Belphegor produces Bloodslave and Turn by Turn summons Militia.

the #gemprod works for every other type of gem except for Blood Slaves, unless there is a different syntax for Blood Slaves than the standard



Hm i tested it with #gemprod 6 1 which should produce after my understanding 1 nature gem / turn but it didn't work either .
Is my above mentioned syntax correct or did i do a typo there ?

A small suggestion : What do you think of making Ryleh freespawns upkeepfree and making maenads Neednoteat ?

And a question cause i haven't much modding experience yet : Is it possible to make e.g. Daugthers/Mothers of Avalon not capitol only ?

[Pocus]

Zen,

Do you plan to make changes to the units cost? We knows that less resources for lighter units (IW belief) is not enough to have them on par - interest wise - with the heavier ones (except in some special situations, there is always exceptions). A slight reduction in gold cost would do some goods, while we wait for new rules for light units (as we dont know if these rules will appears a day).

[Zen]

Boron said:
Hm i tested it with #gemprod 6 1 which should produce after my understanding 1 nature gem / turn but it didn't work either .
Is my above mentioned syntax correct or did i do a typo there ?

I don't see a typo. You can look on the Monolith in my mod to see that it produces Nature gems just fine. Though you could be filling up the 'special abilities' slots on a unit (there is a limit). Try testing it like this:

#selectmonster nbr
#clearspec
#gemprod 6 1
#end

If it doesn't work then, I don't know what's up.


A small suggestion : What do you think of making Ryleh freespawns upkeepfree and making maenads Neednoteat ?

I have ideas about Nation balance, but that is one I'm going to attempt to stay away from until I get the Pretenders where I like as well as Items more diversified (IMO). When doing nations my first target would be my favorite, which is TC http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


And a question cause i haven't much modding experience yet : Is it possible to make e.g. Daugthers/Mothers of Avalon not capitol only ?

No you cannot unless you totally remake and replace the Man Nation (no applicable Themes) Then make the nation list to include whichever one you'd like to be non-capital and make a new unit with the same sprite/stats as what your tryin to uncapital and put it in the nation selection. Then at the Capital you'd have 2 Daughter/Mother because the Magical Site is what allows them.

Final Answer Alex: More work than it's worth and still wouldn't seem right.

[Zen]

Pocus said:
Zen,

Do you plan to make changes to the units cost? We knows that less resources for lighter units (IW belief) is not enough to have them on par - interest wise - with the heavier ones (except in some special situations, there is always exceptions). A slight reduction in gold cost would do some goods, while we wait for new rules for light units (as we dont know if these rules will appears a day).



I have thought alot about this, I haven't found a happy place yet for this. I've considered trying a few things with morale and lowering their gold cost in order to make them more attractive as a screening force. I've also considered making them have more AP in order to have them engage the enemy significantly quicker than a main force in order to simulate skirmishing (sort of).

I'd need some devoted mod testers when I release this type of thing because it affects how the entire game is played and not just the selection of choices that you have (with the Pretender Mod and others). And it's a hard thing for me to gauge singly. I would love for there to be a way to make LI attractie and worth their cost for what they do, but it's a tough cookie for anyone (From IW to me) to figure out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Edi]

Boron said:
Where can i download your Weapons&Armor spreadsheets ?
And is there a document with all modding commands shown ?
Thnx for the info http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


You can find the W&A spreadsheet in the Modding projects sticky thread, it's there as an attachment in my post.

Afaik, there is no document that lists all of the modding commands. Most can be found in the modding.pdf, but some were introduced in a later patch and the documentation is not ready. IW made some noises about the documentation being forthcoming as soon as they can get it done, but I've no idea when that is.

Edi

[Edi]

Zen said:
I didn't ignore it, but I haven't been able to find a happy medium. Blood is one of the few paths of magic with 3 Path Boosters (Brazen Vessel, Armor of Souls, and the Blood Thorn).


Actually, most paths have three boosters. Not counting rings of sorcery and wizardry and unique items, all of the elements have two plus staff of elemental mastery, blood has the three you named, nature has four (thistle mace, moonvine bracelet and Treelord staff, which counts as two boosters even though it is incompatible with thistle mace, and Armor of Twisting Thorns, which boosts both nature and blood). Only astral and death have just two boosters each, but death has a large number of cheap artifact boosters (Sceptre of Dark Regency especially), more than any other path.

Edi

[Boron]

Zen said:

Pocus said:
Zen,

Do you plan to make changes to the units cost? We knows that less resources for lighter units (IW belief) is not enough to have them on par - interest wise - with the heavier ones (except in some special situations, there is always exceptions). A slight reduction in gold cost would do some goods, while we wait for new rules for light units (as we dont know if these rules will appears a day).



I have thought alot about this, I haven't found a happy place yet for this. I've considered trying a few things with morale and lowering their gold cost in order to make them more attractive as a screening force. I've also considered making them have more AP in order to have them engage the enemy significantly quicker than a main force in order to simulate skirmishing (sort of).




I would love a bit more useful national troops too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
I think making all Li like militia Need not eat would be good than the supply problem wouldn't be as severe .
I made a small mod today changing maenads to need not eat cause i think it is thematic and does wonders while not disturbing balance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
The base commanders should have all doubled - tripled normal leadership then that they can use e.g. 100 militia and you have no hidden costs for having to use 3-4 leaders with 200 militia instead of 1 with 30 knights .
Finally reducing the goldcost 3-5 gold for militia and light infantry would do wonders i think .

If there would be a command to make an unit cost e.g. 10 gold but only 0.1 upkeep would be awesome http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

[Boron]

Zen said:

Boron said:
Hm i tested it with #gemprod 6 1 which should produce after my understanding 1 nature gem / turn but it didn't work either .
Is my above mentioned syntax correct or did i do a typo there ?

I don't see a typo. You can look on the Monolith in my mod to see that it produces Nature gems just fine. Though you could be filling up the 'special abilities' slots on a unit (there is a limit). Try testing it like this:

#selectmonster nbr
#clearspec
#gemprod 6 1
#end

If it doesn't work then, I don't know what's up.




Yeah i tried it with the FoB without #clearspec . There neither bloodslaves nor (nature) gems were generated . Perhaps it is because of his douse ability http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

[Boron]

May i ask why you think lifedrain weapons are too good atm ?

- Lifeless troops counter them . 1 ghost rider spell has good chances killing a SC who relies on lifedrain and doesn't have additional damage via e.g. fire shield or regeneration .

- There are some not bad LL summons like especially living statues/mechanical men and all the longdead , which ermor gets for free and finally manikins/mandragoras .

- Herald lance costs 10 astral gems , flamebeau 20 fire gems . Especially the flamebeau is superb against any undead/demon if my understanding is right that fire resistence doesn't negate the damage from the flamebeau .

Vs. magical beings a Moon Blade isn't bad and it costs only 5 astral gems .

Finally there are the AN-weapons .

So the lifedrain SC rocks against common national troops but loses against Anti-SC SCs .

So imo the lifedrain weapons are ok because blood thorns are not that easy to get with nonblood nations and Wraithsword/Hellsword is 2-handed , so you are lacking a slot .

[Soapyfrog]

Bloodthorn is just kinda foolish. I mean, its a knife. You have a big hulking Ice devil equipped with a knife... its silly.

Sadly it a ubiquitous weapon, becuase it is single handed... so if you CAN make them you make them for combat on your SCs rather than for their purpose as sacrificial daggers.

At least the hellsword and wraith sword are balanced out by being two-handed. They are not SO bad! The blood thorn is just.. silly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Peter Ebbesen]

Soapyfrog said:
Bloodthorn is just kinda foolish. I mean, its a knife. You have a big hulking Ice devil equipped with a knife... its silly.



Sir Rathergood the Knight approaches the bar. Sighting an Ice Devil, he slowly draws his fire sword...

Alerted by the rasp of steel, the Ice Devil slowly turns to face the Knight. From its side it draws its athame, its bloody emblem of power, the bloodthorn... "That's not a knife... THIS is a knife", it hisses to the Knight and combat ensues.

See? Perfectly natural explanantion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Arryn]

An athame is a ritual knife, not a weapon of combat. Nice try, Peter. I'll give you points for pretty imagery, even if you did rip off "Crocodile Dundee".

[Cohen]

You can't make units generating slaves, but you can give

#douze

To give them a blood hunting bonus.
I'm working too on a general balance mod ^^ so I'm taking lessons of/studying modding
__________________________________________________ _________
Life Drain is good because however make useless the 95% of things you can recruit.
Why someone could take production? 120 design point, for a +6% income?
And the 30% bonus ... it could be useful at the start to pump more troops out, but later it's damn worthless.

And Life Drain is all purpose ... equip your SC with Flambeau, here my army of anything sacrificable I can throw at ... and I'll kill you by swarming, fatiguing you out ...
Life Drain weapon make the work of 2 items:
A regenerating one.
A reinvgorating one.
1 Slot for 2 Items, with blood thorns.
And usually works far better than the other 2 items combined.

[Zen]

Ahah! Yes, Edi is right (DAMN THE EDITORS!).

But Blood ones are particularly easy to come up with. The Thorn and the Vessel are only 20 Slaves (10 normal gems) and the Armor is 40 Slaves (20 normal gems). It's not too hard to bootstrap up to make these things and then have access to the entire selection of blood because of it's nature.

Like I said (again!) the mod hasn't been released at all, so that means any and all decisions haven't been thoroughly tested enough for me to keep them or adjust them based on the limitations of nations and so on. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I may just end up changing the Damage of Lifedraining weapons so that even if a high strength unit is using them they arn't causing enough lifedrain damage to keep them alive (though out of fatigue).

There are alot of ideas out there and I only want to tackle one at a time. This may open up alot more if/when IW adds a few more modding tools (especially Rate of Attack) for the modding community to try to use.

Back to Pretenders: Anyone have a chance to comment on that?

[Cohen]

As modding commands there should be a lot to be implemented.

Especially for items, and spells.
Adding new magical forgeable items, or spells under certain categories, chosing an already existing animation, or allowing to summon new creatures is a good thing.
Giving all skill range to be modded (I mean giving someone Banefire Shield, or Flaming Weapon, or Astral Shield by default could be nice)
Adding global spellcasting bonus (Like enchantment bonus and such).
Well I could continue with the list but I'd prefer to stop here, not wanting to say a too much stuff that probably I won't never see realized.

[PvK]

Zen, you were mentioning (I guess in a related thread about the item mod that I didn't see tonight), changing the requirements to forge magic items? Is that possible? Is there a new modding manual? I don't think my modding manual has been updated by a patch since 2.12, and I don't see a way to change those things in there.

PvK

[Zen]

Since I overlooked (or perhaps was crazy and neverlooked!) the Shapechanged forms I have rereleased the Mod to 1.6. Find it with the attatchment or here www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp16.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp16.zip)

(I'd like to apologize to anyone who was planning on using the mod for a game to test things out and the massive rerelease of Versions. I didn't intend for it to be like this, but I am a slight perfectionist. Again, I'm sorry)

For those starting games that have Dragons in them, or the Serpent King/Smoking Mirror this will be a slight improvement to their shapechanged portions.

Also I have added in the name breaks. I guess Edi wanted that in there so other people could copy the mod better?

I'm sure Edi will have a Readme for it as soon as is convienent.

P.S. I still wouldn't try to use some of the shapechanged forms for combat purposes (like the Jaguar or the Serpent forms) though I had some interesting results when they hit the 'near death' stage in human form and converted over. In particular this change helps out the Jaguar who had terrible MR for some reason (I guess shapechanged Jaguars are none to fond of magic).

[Zen]

Yes there are ways to change Magic Items Pathcost and Forgecost, as well as their Construction level. But the Modding Manual has not been released and I haven't asked for the "Okay" to kind of maul the thing out to everyone. I do know that Psi has been working dilligently on a new Modding Manual so I definitely don't want to release any of the commands without the O.K.

This is a factor to why I have the Item Mod on the backburner.

[Edi]

Zen said:
Ahah! Yes, Edi is right (DAMN THE EDITORS!).


Well, it's the editor's job to make sure the facts are kept straight, no? And you DID name me as your official editor... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Zen said:
But Blood ones are particularly easy to come up with. The Thorn and the Vessel are only 20 Slaves (10 normal gems) and the Armor is 40 Slaves (20 normal gems). It's not too hard to bootstrap up to make these things and then have access to the entire selection of blood because of it's nature.


This is certainly true. The blood boosters all require just blood magic to produce, while many of the other path boosters require more than one type of magic and often in combinations that are not particularly plentiful.
Skull of Fire is a death/fire combination, which aside from Machaka, T'ien Chi and Ermor (dusk elders) isn't all that common.
Moonvine bracelet is astral/nature, which is a bit easier to get, and usually requires either one random pick or indie lizards.
Bloodstones require the rare earth/blood combo, which is imo the hardest one to get at sufficient levels to make the stones.
Armor of Twisting Thorns is blood/nature, so availability is usually limited to Pangaea and Mictlan out of the box. It makes for a powerful ritual casting boost, but is in other ways limited (not the least by being cursed).
Crystal Coin requires the earth/astral (2/2) combination, which I've found to be annoyingly troublesome.
The Staffs of Elemental Mastery are pretty hard to produce, because they require combinations of opposite elements. T'ien Chi, Arco and Atlantis are almost the only ones who have mages that can produce them out of the box (assuming proper random picks)

Besides blood, this leaves only air, water and death as paths where all boosts are producable without combo paths, and air has the limitation that you need 3 air to produce the first one. Ditto fire, unless you get the death combo.


EDIT: nevermind, you posted an answer to a question while I was typing it.

I'll get working on the readme. I can also comment the pretender mod file for you, if you like, so you can concentrate on the items for a while longer. Unless somebody else has something important to add in the meanwhile, of course.

Edi

[Edi]

Zen, one more problem with the pretender modifications: The ***** Queen's crone form actually has base hit point value of 16 in the unmodded game, so your mod just cranked them down by 4 to 12.

I suggest keeping the original crone form HP and removing Heal Troops, because otherwise there is no sense at all taking Crone for those nations that have BQ available. A cost difference of 15 points is a laughable price for the capability to heal injured afflictions. This would keep the crone and the ***** queen more in their thematic niches, instead of making the BQ a buffed up crone with two less misc slots and an armor slot (BQ crone has normal humanoid slots instead of crone slots).

I've made the appropriate changes to reflect this, and updated the readme according to those changes, so that the BQ crone and the real crone differ from each otehr in these respects. I've attached that mod as v1.65 into this post. Includes mod file v1.65, graphic file and readme v1.65.

[Zen]

Hah, you caught that right as I was mulling over fixing the attatchment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So it's all good. 1.65 is the latest Version with new and improved shapechanged creatures.

Edit: The Readme says it's for Version 1.3. You might want to change that on the next Version.

SCORE ONE FOR THE WRITERS BABY!

[Edi]

Zen said:
Hah, you caught that right as I was mulling over fixing the attatchment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So it's all good. 1.65 is the latest Version with new and improved shapechanged creatures.

Edit: The Readme says it's for Version 1.3. You might want to change that on the next Version.

SCORE ONE FOR THE WRITERS BABY!


You can't prove anything! (Unless the witnesses who downloaded the attachment before I fixed it come forth...) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Yes, the attachment in my previous post has been updated so that the readme says it's for v1.65.

Edi

[Edi]

Zen said:
Also I have added in the name breaks. I guess Edi wanted that in there so other people could copy the mod better?


Actually, those make it a lot easier to both copy the mod or parts of it, and to troubleshoot and tweak and to do actual proofreading of the mod code. It'd have taken me a lot longer to catch the BQ/crone issue if the comments hadn't been there.

Edi

[archaeolept]

ok, guys, we need a set location where the latest beta of the mod can always be found - I'd suggest as an attachment to the first post of the thread, perhaps.

as it is, it looks like the only place to find Version 1.65 is the un-named attachment to Edi's post 4 Posts above this...

[Arryn]

Or Zen can have Gandalf or I host the file ...

[Zen]

Ahem,

Well I'll just go back to the Evil half-Genius labratory and concoct more diabolical schemes.

If you'd like to host the file Arryn, you can. I don't see how it can hurt. Though it seems to be going through quite a few revisions lately.

[Cainehill]

The mod displays "Conceptual Pretender Gods 1.6" when it should display 1.65, so people can more easily rest assured they have the proper Version.

Which perhaps means it should be 1.65.1? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Edit: Also, should the aquatic Version of the Arch Mage also have Dominion strength 2 now?

[Edi]

I doublechecked that, Cainehill, and for some reason or another, it snips that 5 off from the 65. The Versionis listed as 1.65 in both readme and mod file, but it just displays 1.6 in the interface. Go figure...

Edi

[Cainehill]

Umm - the 1.65 mod file contains "1.6" in the very first line, "#modname", which is what is displayed in the mod selection menu. If you right click on it, the mod info displays, "Conceptual Pretender Gods 1.6, Version 1.65". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But as should be obvious from my looking so closely at it, I think it's great stuff. Thanks to both Zen and Edi!

[Vynd]

I am one of the Mod Install Challenged that Zen mentioned in his first post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Your instructions are good, Zen. I'm sure I could install it now if I want to (and I do). But I was wondering: does this mean that all I need to do to switch between modded and unmodded Dominions is go back into Preferences and undo the steps you've listed? So there's no need for, say, an unmodded copy of the game so I could play with those who prefer to play with the unmodded game?

[Truper]

All you need to do to turn the mod on and off is to go into Preferences/Mod Preferences and then clicking on the mod will toggle it.

[Cainehill]

Truper said:
All you need to do to turn the mod on and off is to go into Preferences/Mod Preferences and then clicking on the mod will toggle it.



And when you're in the game at the main / start menu, look at the upper right corner to see what, if any, mods you currently have enabled. Then follow Truper's instructions if you want to turn one off/on.

[Tuna]

Also, if you are playing multiple games of which some are modded and some not, you do NOT have to go turn all the mods on/off everytime you load a turn. Just make sure that you have all the mods for all the games you play, and that you make the pretender and the game with right mods, and the game takes care of the rest.

[archaeolept]

yah just go into preferences>mods and click it to enable/disable it. easy as pie. well, ok, even easier.

[Cainehill]

Easier than making pie; not easier than eating Caelum, er, pigeon, pie. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Vynd]

I like pie! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Thanks guys!

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:

Easier than making pie; not easier than eating Caelum, er, pigeon, pie. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I prefer my fowl roasted, not baked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Zen]

Blarg, I changed the typo at the top

Here is the link:

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp165.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp165.zip)

Note: The only change is that one piece of text, that seems to be causing people issues http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Cainehill]

Zen, might I suggest that you leave the zip file's name static, possibly changing the names of the files inside the zip? Makes it a lot easier for people to DL the latest, without you having to update the links.

That, or keep changing the zip file's name, but leave the filenames inside the same, so people don't have to do the rename, copy, paste, rename shuffle?

[Arryn]

Ideally, what he should do is leave BOTH the zip filename and the internal filenames static and include a history.txt file in the archive.

[Graeme Dice]

Arryn said:
Ideally, what he should do is leave BOTH the zip filename and the internal filenames static and include a history.txt file in the archive.



That would screw up games that have already been started with older Versions of the mods.

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:

Arryn said:
Ideally, what he should do is leave BOTH the zip filename and the internal filenames static and include a history.txt file in the archive.



That would screw up games that have already been started with older Versions of the mods.

Since he keeps changing the .dm's filename, I hardly think that doing as I suggest for the next Version would cause any more inconvenience than has been experienced to date.

EDIT: by continually changing the .dm filename he's circumventing the mod system's built-in Versioning, as the game then treats them as different mods rather than different Versions of the same mod. Some players may actually like that, but overall it's not the way most other mods are handled. And by changing the archive filename he's making it needlessly harder for anyone that wants to host the file.

[Graeme Dice]

Arryn said:
Some players may actually like that, but overall it's not the way most other mods are handled.



It's necessary when modifying pretenders, as otherwise they will be turned into magicless archmages whenever the costs are changed.

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:
It's necessary when modifying pretenders, as otherwise they will be turned into magicless archmages whenever the costs are changed.

Really? I hadn't known that. Few mods tweak pretenders, hence my ignorance. Sounds like a seriously bad BUG in the mod system that should have a high priority in getting fixed by IW. Thanks for explaining it.

[Zen]

Woo!

Another Version based on some concrete feedback.

I have taken the liberty of updating the Readme to my limited extent, though you may want a final word from Edi. Since that's where the checks are signed!

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp17.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp17.zip)

In the near future I will release the Spells, Items, and Nations portion of this mod. It is sectional for the reasons that if you feel one portion of the mod fits your mood or your friend's idea of balance. Then you may mix and match, not adhering to the full "Series". Though most of the changes complement each other and certain changes in one mod reflect other things (Like this Version the Lance and Light Lance have been directly modified because of it's relationship to SC's and length issues. While this may affect nations in the game, it is for the purpose not to enhance those using these weapons, but to balance out the new concept of "Wing Buffet". It also has rational or logical/thematic roots as well).

Note: The Mod is also in the Attatchment.

Zen Approved and Tested

[deccan]

Zen, since the general approach that you have taken seems to be oriented towards eliminating "no-brainer" choices whe it comes to Pretenders and magic items, might you be enticed to do the same for scales, since at present it seems that a very limited combination of scale choices are considered by most to be "no-brainers"?

[Cainehill]

Well, there's already one or two mods for doing that with scales, I think - one by Saber Cherry (?) and possibly one more.

Oh, and I disagree that they're no brainers. After all - I still take Turmoil-3 Luck-3 sometimes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Zen]

I actually have a mod, already completed that does this. However, I don't feel it would be wise to release it just yet until I has sufficent testing to fit it where I like.

Certain issues that I feel should be adjusted is the reliance on the Order scale for gold, the very limited impact of the Growth Scale and that certain Luck events are blunted and placed into a Category of "Mildly annoying" and "Does not scale as the game progresses".

While certain things can be adjusted others cannot (You cannot even mod the Magic scale at all) and the scales are not interchangable in mod types (Like Giving Order +6% Income per scale and +.5 Growth along with -5% Event). So I am left with only running in the variables left to me to find a happy equilibrium that any effect, positive or negative has an impact, including certain scales that are required for nation/themes.

[Cainehill]

Hey Zen! You got the blood gem income working on the pretenders? Woohoo! Slonshal!

[Zen]

I *am* an evil genius, after all.

[Edi]

Okay, Readme for v1.7 is now edited. There was not much to do, just caught one mistake that had slipped by earlier (Frost Father had no mention of having Sailing added). Most of the new modifications were either adding something or removing something, not modifying existing values.

Also noticed one curious thing: If both 1.65 and 1.7 are enabled at the same time, the game combines them, at least as long as there is no conflict between them in the modification of a given stat. Creating a Dragon pretender with 1.7 and then additionally enabling 1.65 when starting a game will result in the modification made in 1.7 (removing the +2 def) being ignored, because there is no conflicting modification between the two Versions.

Don't know if this is an issue for MP purposes, but I was curious after Graeme's point about magicless archmages (I'd noticed it myself). Apparently non-conflicting modifications do not trigger that cheat detection.

Oh yes, the new readme file is attached.

Edi

[Cainehill]

Hrm. Never did get an answer to this - being as the land Arch Mage gets dominion 2 now, was the aquatic Arch Mage deliberately left with Dominion 1? (Possibly so, as the aquatic gets Water-1 and also trampling, albeit trampling is ... less than useful for human pretenders.)

[Zen]

He is left the same because he costs 0. A significant amount of points that he can apply to dominion or perhaps paths. The Lobster also allows the underwater Archmage to not be picked up by Wind Ride (when he ventures onto land) without the help of Earth or Ethereality.

I could raise his price slightly and give him a slightly higher Dominion in order to keep in theme with the other Archmage.

You also might notice that the Roar doesn't in fact do Fear, that is currently an unimplementable feature, but you should notice that it sounds hella cool when your Lord of the Desert Sun rawrs enemies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[deccan]

Cainehill said:
Well, there's already one or two mods for doing that with scales, I think - one by Saber Cherry (?) and possibly one more.




I'm aware of those, but how many MP games use them?

Zen's mod on the other hand, is already being used by a few games. So I guess that makes all the difference.

[PDF]

deccan said:

Cainehill said:
Well, there's already one or two mods for doing that with scales, I think - one by Saber Cherry (?) and possibly one more.




I'm aware of those, but how many MP games use them?

Zen's mod on the other hand, is already being used by a few games. So I guess that makes all the difference.



I don't know for Solomon Islands games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, but in France I've played a couple PBEM with SC scales. O3/M3 was clearly not a no-brainer anymore, I've had one nation literally razed by events in 12 turns in one of them ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[Daynarr]

So, where can I get the latest Version of this mod, to take a peek at it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Arryn]

Try post #301565, a few Posts above ...

[Zen]

Up here Daynarr http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But easier would be www.techno-mage.com/~zen/concept171.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp171.zip)

Or the Attatchment.

NEWEST VERSION 1.71

Changes from Version 1.7

I mistyped the Light Lance (#357) so it was not recieving it's length bonus.

That is the only change so if you are currently running a game with it, that is the only change.

Notes: I am pretty satisfied with the Mod as it stands right now until more Mod Tools are released. Though I am still taking feedback and very interested in some "Old Fashioned" pretenders that people have tried and if/how it's different and maybe new pretenders.

[Edi]

I'll get back to you on the Asynja, I've got to run a few checks on it, but I've not the time until tomorrow. That one might need some tweaking, it's now so unattractive compared to the male titan.

Edi

[Yvelina]

I do not know whether I should be openning my mouth in such august company, but isn't there a problem with changing the order/turmoil and luck/misfortune scale? The Marignon&Devils and Spring&Autumn themes would get a major boost. After all, Turmoil is supposed to be a bad scale that keeps these two themes down.

In the same way, some of the nations that are required to take Death and Misfortune would be influenced as well. The Vampire Queen nerf hurt Black Forest Ulm hard. I do not think the theme can actually survive increased penalties for death and misfortune.

[Zen]

Yvelina said:
I do not know whether I should be openning my mouth in such august company, but isn't there a problem with changing the order/turmoil and luck/misfortune scale? The Marignon&Devils and Spring&Autumn themes would get a major boost. After all, Turmoil is supposed to be a bad scale that keeps these two themes down.

In the same way, some of the nations that are required to take Death and Misfortune would be influenced as well. The Vampire Queen nerf hurt Black Forest Ulm hard. I do not think the theme can actually survive increased penalties for death and misfortune.

Good question. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Well the Order/Turmoil issue is not that Diabolic Faith and S&A (and BK, don't forget http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif will become overpowered unless not enough thought is done to the repositioning. But making Order less of a single impact (Gold, and that's all really). Because as it stands now, a Forced Turmoil 1 Nation does not lose 7% Income (A slight but significant impact nationwide), but instead loses 28% (Since if you can take Order and decide to take it (Safe bet) you will pick Order 3). If this scale had less of a single influence impact and some of it's single influence (Gold) was adjusted to other scales then it would still be "the Scale" for Gold, but if you were forced to take Turmoil, you could circumvent some of that gold loss by taking another scale.

Death on the other hand, I do not agree that adjusting it will hamper Black Forest (or Helheim), simply because I *always* take Death to some degree. Death 2 to be precise. And it may be because I don't play games past the 100 Turn mark, or that I don't want to rely on my Dominion to keep supply (Since it's hard enough to maintain). And it's a playstyle issue. However, the minute death of the death scale coupled with the minor loss of income makes Growth seem (to me) to be a waste of points.

On the Misfortune part: There are, I think, two schools of thought on this. The first being that you are going to have bad events even if you have luck, so you might as well get some Nation/Pretender points if you do (a valid opinion). The second is that even some of the Minor Luck events on the side of "Good Luck" tend to not give enough to be considered lucky (Milita don't get the ol' juices flowing), so taking Luck is a gamble (Perhaps Long shot), whereas taking Misfortune is playing the spread.

Like I said, I haven't rolled out the mod because I haven't tested it enough personally to feel comfortable with the changes (which are no, in fact standard changes of adjusting *just* the Scale adjustments).

[Edi]

Time to get in those Asynja comments:

With the Asynja's cost unmodified and her magic not increased, she is a totally useless pretender to take compared to the male titan.

Reasons why: The main point to take Asynja would be to get air blessing (Air 9, probably). However, it is cheaper to achieve Air 9 with titan, even though its initial cost is greater. Assuming same scales, same dominion strength and same castle, the titan is 21 points cheaper, and it is physically more powerful and has 100% shock resistance, which the asynja does not. The Asynja is stealthy and has glamour, which imo does not nearly compensate for the other shortcomings, especially when the titan only has a new pathcost of 50 vs Asynja's 40.

Furthermore, the point totals are set up so that typically the asynja will have an uneven number of points unspent that are not enough to afford anything useful, while the titan with the otherwise same everything will have 40 points, or one more scale left.

The titan's cost was lowered from the unmodded game, while the asynja is unchanged, and even in the unmodded game, to achieve the same effects (assuming Air 9), the titan was 6 points cheaper. As things stand right now, the Asynja is a complete and utter waste of resources unless one is fond of having a sneaking pretender leading an army of Vanheim holy units, but why take the pretender when you can have the Vanheimn commanders (glamour + stealth) do the same?

I would suggest either lowering Asynja's base cost or beefing her up a bit, or doing something to make her more attractive than the immediate competition for the same role.

Edi

[Zen]

Edi said:The titan's cost was lowered from the unmodded game, while the asynja is unchanged, and even in the unmodded game, to achieve the same effects (assuming Air 9), the titan was 6 points cheaper. As things stand right now, the Asynja is a complete and utter waste of resources unless one is fond of having a sneaking pretender leading an army of Vanheim holy units, but why take the pretender when you can have the Vanheimn commanders (glamour + stealth) do the same?

I would suggest either lowering Asynja's base cost or beefing her up a bit, or doing something to make her more attractive than the immediate competition for the same role.

Edi



Thanks Edi. I have run into the Asynja problem, but I wasn't really lookint at it in regards to the Titan, but rather in regards to the Allfather. She is the medium between them but doesn't seem to fit in either role. Though she is significantly cheaper with the same SC capability as the unmodded Allfather (without the intrinsic flying, or mounted, which does play a difference, as well as having to equip flying boots).

I haven't been able to find much information on the Asynja mythology (This is Freya?) as far as looking for ideas that do not conflict with other Gods.

This problem is run into with a variety of nations with Nation specific pretenders. One you'll see is Pangaea, as well as Ermor and Man have issues with this.

[Huzurdaddi]

so taking Luck is a gamble (Perhaps Long shot), whereas taking Misfortune is playing the spread.




Spoken like someone who lives in Vegas!

[Truper]

I wasn't able to find that much about the Asynja, but here's what little I did find: Asynja is not a specific deity, but the word for a female Aesir, one of the two pantheons of Norse gods, along with the Vanir.

Since the Allfather is Odin (who has a lot of names, including Wotan, whom I mistakenly thought was another deity), it might make sense to associate the Asynja with Frigg (or Frigga), the mother goddess and wife of Odin. Frigg and Freya are closely related, and may in fact be different aspects of the same deity. Frigg was considered queen of the heavens, the goddess of motherhood, fertility, love and housework. She was reputed to have the ability to forsee everyone's destiny without revealing it. She owned a necklace, the Brisingamen, which, besides making her irresistable to man or god, gave support to any army which she favored on the battlefield. She also possessed a cloak of feathers which allowed her to change into a falcon, or into the battle-boar Hildisvin (which she is also described as riding). She chooses half the slain on the battlefield, whilst Odin gets the other half (is this the justification for the Allfather's death magic?). As Freya, she also practised Seidhr, the form of magic practised by the Volva. There is speculation that Gullveg was Freya under another name, and if so, she was stabbed and burnt 3 times, but arose from the flames each time and transformed herself into Heidhr, the Glorious, mistress of magic. This started the war between the Aesir and Vanir.

Whew. Confusing stuff http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif But out of it, I can come up with some suggestions. 1) Give the Asynja some nature magic, since she's a fertility goddess. Problem is she basically becomes a Mother of Tuathas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif 2) Give her the ability to avert bad events, since she foresees destiny, and practises Seidhr. Not bad, and especialy thematic for Midgard. You'd probably even want to change her path to Astral. 3) Give her a standard, since she owns the Brisingamen. 4) Depict her as riding a great boar, and give her trampling. 5) Let her tranform into a falcon. 6) Make her immortal - but I don't know that Dom2 needs an immortal titan-class pretender http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I rather favor changing her path to 2S, or possibly 1S1N, and giving her a standard effect, while removing the glamor. It might be a bit much to give her bad luck prevention as well, but it might be thematic. She should remain a mighty warrior, as all the Aesir were apparently gods of war.

[Reverend Zombie]

...but don't touch her Friggin Volva!

[Daynarr]

So, basically, you need something to make Asynja different than Titan and Allfather and still a good choice for players?

[Zen]

Yes. Without stepping on the toes of any other pretenders (like the Tuatha). I am perfectly fine keeping her base stats the way they are now (Since Vanir have glamour, it says, and Valkyries).

Truper has come up with some great suggestions, a few of which I can't use (I can't have her prevent bad events, as of yet).

Also making her turn into a hawk would require significant image modding which I am more than lackluster with.

All suggestions are welcome.

[Wauthan]

I don't know it will help but I guess I could mention a few of the more anonymous asynjas from the myths. Trouble is that little is known about them or if they even survived ragnarok (which seems to have taken place in the Dominions setting).

Brynhild was the leader of the valkyrie. She is featured in the saga of Sigurd Fafnesbane. A pick in death magic and flying seems appropriate.

Eir was the asynja of the healing arts. She tended the wounded at ragnarok and thus is a possible survivor. Should get the healing ability as well as picks that give her access to atleast one healing spell.

Eldsborg was the asynja of the hearth, or lifegiving fire. I know next to nothing about her but giving vanheim access to firemagic is an interesting shift in gameplay.

Frigg as you mentioned had the power of foresight and the stories tell that she knew lore that was hidden even from Odin. She would have known the outcome of Ragnarok and might well have travelled to the vanir for protection.

Freya is perhaps the most famous asynja, being the godess of love (but not fertility since that her brother Freys domain). She wears the brisinggamen (the burning necklace) and is able to change into a falcon. Should have no picks in magic but high awe and most likely the seduction ability, with stealth to be meaningful. The sprite for the unit is not appropriate though, considering Freya was not a warrior in any aspect.

Fjorgyn was the mother of mighty Thor. She was the asynja of fertility until she retired and left the domain to Frey. Since the gods are ageless she fits the anonymous warrior role fairly well. One might guess that she would also want to return to full godhood since her she didn't retire in a very gentle fashion. It seems even gods have politics. She would be a powerful nature pretender if anything.

Gondul (Bearer of the sorcerous staff) is also very likely. She was one of the highest ranking valkyrie and famous for her skill in battlemagic. No starting picks but pathcost 10.

Groa only plays a minor role in one of Thors sagas but is described as a powerful magician, skilled in healing wounds.

Gullveig was a powerful valkyrie and it was her death that sparked the vanir-aesir war. Her name means "The power of gold" and she was known as a extraordinary skilled mage. She could be back with a vengeance now that the gates of the underworld have opened wide.

Hild was another valkyrie, keeper of the domain of neverending war. Her name means "battle" or "struggle".

Nierthys or Nerthus is the elder goddess of fertility, outdating even the aesir. Once the head of the whole pantheon she was replaced by Odin when the old religion shifted into a lot more patriarchial structure. She fits the role as a pretender well and would be accosiated with nature and earth. It's diety I shifted the Asynja into in my own mod.

Ran is the asynja of storms and the ocean. A grim warrior as well as a respected diety. Should get air and water.

Saga was the asynja of storytelling and the storytellers mead. The only daughter of the highest ranking aesir, Odin and Frigg. She was the first who saw the flames of Ragnarok billowing from the home of the elves. Saga means "She who watches".

Skade was not exactly an asynja. She was a jotun who married the aesir Njord. But nevertheless she had her own domains. Hunting and skiing. She is described as a very mighty warrior indeed and it was trough sheer intimidation that she forced the aesir to provide her with a husband.

Skuld was the most important of all the valkyrias, even more so than Brynhild. She was also one of the nornas and had dominion of time not yet passed. Skuld means "Future".

Trud was the daughter of Thor and Sif. Strongest of all the asynjas and even her own father, legendary for his great strength, was pushed to his limits when they wrestled. She must have been quite a handful as a child. Her name means "Strength". A fierce valkyrie who never met her match on the battlefield.

There are of course even more asynjas but these are the ones I felt most appropriate for the role. Illwinter seems to have been thinking along the line of a valkyrie pretender though. Only Ran is accosiated with airmagic though and she was hardly one to use illusions, being a "smite first and ask for prayers later" kind of diety.

[Kristoffer O]

Truper: Odin was a god of the dead. He collects dead warriors from the battle field and has a place for dead warriors to live. He also hanged himself to gain magical knowledge (thus his name hangatyr/hangadrott - the hanged god/king). Apart from being a god of the dead he is a god of wisdom, magic, poetry, berserker fury, war and rulership. He studied Seidhr and forbid the other aesir to practice it as it would make them 'girlish'.

Wautan and others: Norse mythos is quite incoherent. There are three categories of gods. Aesir, vanir and giants. They are rather interchangeable. When a god is evil or wicked he is a giant. When a giantess (skade) marries an aesir she is called a god.

Gullveig is also another name for Angerboda, the hag of the iron wood, mother of monsters (Fenrer etc).

Skuld was one of the norns. I haven't heard any reference to her as a valkyrie, but it is not improbable that she was called valkyrie at times.

The reason the asynja is given air magic is because we have given vanheim air magic and wanted to make her a pretender with the same magic as her nation uses.

The magic of vanheim is actually not appopriate mythologiacally. Vanir were gods of fertility and nature. Frey, Freya and Njord were vanir. The aesir that replaced most of the vanir were less 'primitive' and had roles as gods of war, rulership etc.

[Daynarr]

So, could Asynja get Healing (50) ability and recuperation (to heal herself)? It would give her something special and occasionally useful. It seems to be thematic as well.

The question is, would that made her desirable enough to be selected as pretender.

[Truper]

Recuperation is a good suggestion, since Vanheim has no access to any other recuperating pretender. Vanheim's choices overall are limited, in fact. Many's the time I've lamented that they don't get to choose the Prince of Death or the Fountain of Blood, to name just two.

[Zen]

I have done a change.

Newest Version 1.72

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp172.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp172.zip)

Changes:

Asyjna = -2Air, +Stealth, +Glamour, Basecost: 100, +Astral, +Nature, +Recuperation

Arch Mage (Lobster) Basecost: 10, StartDom: 2

[Reverend Zombie]

I'm hosting a game using 1.72 Version of Zen's Pretender Mod.

The thread (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=301746&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=31&fpart=1) with game details is located in the MP forum.

[Vynd]

Zen said:

Arch Mage (Lobster) Basecost: 10, StartDom: 2



How about we change the Arch Mage Lobster by getting rid of the stupid human rider guy and just making him the Lobster God! /threads/images/Graemlins/Lightning.gif

Or maybe... The Crawdaddy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Cainehill]

Yeh! I mean - how stupid is an archmage who can't figure out, "Hey, if I get off my lobster, I can go up on land"? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And if he's the Lobster God, or even the Crawfish .... He's better eating. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Turin]

Nice job you are doing there, here is a bit of criticism http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

1)the sacred statue is pretty useless compared to the oracle. She has +80 hp, poison resistance and gets new paths for 10 points less.

The oracle has + 1 astral, gets 2 magic gems and costs 30 points less.
hp and poison resistance aren´t that useful for an immobile pretender and as long as you take less than 5 magic paths the orcale is cheaper/equally cheap.
So the +1 astral and the two gems make the oracle pretty much a nobrainer.
I would suggest giving the statue earth 1 or 2.

2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.

nataraja has more leadership and attacks. At least give the nataraja some magic weapons.
a heroic quickness effect would be nice if that would be moddable.

[Zen]

Turin said:
Nice job you are doing there, here is a bit of criticism http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

1)the sacred statue is pretty useless compared to the oracle. She has +80 hp, poison resistance and gets new paths for 10 points less.

The oracle has + 1 astral, gets 2 magic gems and costs 30 points less.
hp and poison resistance aren´t that useful for an immobile pretender and as long as you take less than 5 magic paths the orcale is cheaper/equally cheap.
So the +1 astral and the two gems make the oracle pretty much a nobrainer.
I would suggest giving the statue earth 1 or 2.

Interesting feedback. My goal with the Sacred Statue was to give a, stay at home rainbow. With it's ability to Teleport it can get into battle if it so chooses. I may have to look at it more.



2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.

nataraja has more leadership and attacks. At least give the nataraja some magic weapons.
a heroic quickness effect would be nice if that would be moddable.



Interesting feedback. I don't agree with you on your point that the Wyrm vs the Natarajah (however the Wyrm is a good pretender, to be sure). The slotability of the Natarajah as well as the ability to upgrade throughout the game makes me feel he is priced right in comparison with the others. I would also venture to say that he is still within the top tier (if not the top slot) of SC pretenders.

If you feel he is 'useless' could you give me a little more feedback as to why?

[Graeme Dice]

Turin said:
2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.



The Nataraja can also wear boots, armour, and wield four weapons. The arms alone more than make up for the difference.

[deccan]

Turin said:
2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.




Heh? I thought nataraja cost 0 or did zen change that too?

[Daynarr]

Nataraja is just fine IMHO.

[Edi]

Nataraja needs a +2 attack or something like that, it has very weak attack skill compared to almost anything (just 11 attack natively, not much better than regular human infantry), but otherwise it doesn't need anything more.

Zen, did you get my emails with the CB:S readme files? If you've taken a look at it, some feedback would be nice? Also, if you have made no changes to the Pretender mod, do you want me to organize the mod code for you?

Edi

[Kel]

With 4 arm slots, if you don't use a lot of long weapons (thus over-reaching ambidexterity), your attack skill has a lot of room to improve, via the weapon bonuses.

- Kel

[Endoperez]

Kel wrote:
With 4 arm slots, if you don't use a lot of long weapons (thus over-reaching ambidexterity), your attack skill has a lot of room to improve, via the weapon bonuses.



Not any more than if you only had one weapon, or two. Attack is calculated for every weapon, and weapons' attack rating only affect its own attack rating. With many attacks you hit more often, but using Nataraja with eg. two-handed weapon, weapon and shield should be applicable too. I think his att/def Ratings could easily be improved a little, four arms do have lots of uses and he is quite skilled at using them all (just take a look at his ambidextercity value!).

[Peter Ebbesen]

Turin said:

2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.



Useless?

The only pretender who can happily wield a wraith sword, a charcoal shield, and a shield of valour at the same time, useless? (or any other number of devastating combinations? You can even make a four-shield variant with insanely high defense, trampling, quickness and high reinvigoration fairly early in the game if you want to; again, charcoal, luck, valour shields are favourites for this)

The Demi-god semi-archmage wanna-be who can dual wield the elemental magic boosting staves (one of each type) when needed for specific rituals, useless? [Nobody would take the Nataraja just for this, but is is just one of the many things the Nataraja can do]. There are a lot of path boosters that can be carried in the hands, and the Nataraja has more than his fair share http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The Wyrm is better at what it does best: Early-game expansion with extreme prejudice. On the other hand, it sucks at magic and can only wear few path-boosters. The Nataraja's strengths are entirely different - he is one of the most versatile pretenders since you have so many opportunities for equipping him due to his extra arms. Combat-melee, combat-magic, ritual magic - with the right kit he is excellent in each Category. The two extra arms are worth far more than the miscellaneous slot he loses.

The Nataraja is one of my favourite pretenders. Don't ask to make him stronger - he really does not deserve it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Daynarr]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Turin said:

2)nataraja is also useless.
Compare it to a wyrm. wyrm has twice as much hp/regeneration, far better stats, and costs the same.



Useless?

The only pretender who can happily wield a wraith sword, a charcoal shield, and a shield of valour at the same time, useless? (or any other number of devastating combinations? You can even make a four-shield variant with insanely high defense, trampling, quickness and high reinvigoration fairly early in the game if you want to; again, charcoal, luck, valour shields are favourites for this)

The Demi-god semi-archmage wanna-be who can dual wield the elemental magic boosting staves (one of each type) when needed for specific rituals, useless? [Nobody would take the Nataraja just for this, but is is just one of the many things the Nataraja can do]. There are a lot of path boosters that can be carried in the hands, and the Nataraja has more than his fair share http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The Wyrm is better at what it does best: Early-game expansion with extreme prejudice. On the other hand, it sucks at magic and can only wear few path-boosters. The Nataraja's strengths are entirely different - he is one of the most versatile pretenders since you have so many opportunities for equipping him due to his extra arms. Combat-melee, combat-magic, ritual magic - with the right kit he is excellent in each Category. The two extra arms are worth far more than the miscellaneous slot he loses.

The Nataraja is one of my favourite pretenders. Don't ask to make him stronger - he really does not deserve it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Amen! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Endoperez said:


Kel wrote:
With 4 arm slots, if you don't use a lot of long weapons (thus over-reaching ambidexterity), your attack skill has a lot of room to improve, via the weapon bonuses.



Not any more than if you only had one weapon



Nothing related to weapon ATT bonuses, but it should be pointed out that when fighting big critters (of the sort that won't bow to a single blow), every attack (even unsuccesful attacks - IIRC) will reduce said critter's DEF by 1. In that special case, this is equivalent to granting a +1 ATT bonus to the second Naty attack, +2 ATT to the 3rd, +3 ATT to the 4th.

[Huzurdaddi]

I think the best quote about the Natty is from Alex Podger:

"I give him 4 thumbs up!"

Pretty much sums up the Natty and why he is so good.



very attack ... will reduce said critter's DEF by 1




Are you sure about this? I thought it was -1 per ATTACKER. This makes a rather large difference.

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Are you sure about this? I thought it was -1 per ATTACKER. This makes a rather large difference.



It's -1 defense per attack, which is why sleep vines are so great.

[Turin]

ok didn´t really think about the extra slots and got the costs wrong too. Still I think the nataraja is somewhat lacking compared to other titan sized pretenders.

[Graeme Dice]

Turin said:
ok didn´t really think about the extra slots and got the costs wrong too. Still I think the nataraja is somewhat lacking compared to other titan sized pretenders.



Lacking what though? It's only real weakness is that it has only 1 miscellaneous slot, and everything else can be easily made up for with the extra weapons and the base cost of 0.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Turin said:
ok didn´t really think about the extra slots and got the costs wrong too. Still I think the nataraja is somewhat lacking compared to other titan sized pretenders.



Lacking what though? It's only real weakness is that it has only 1 miscellaneous slot, and everything else can be easily made up for with the extra weapons and the base cost of 0.


Yeah makes the natarajas imo a serious option to be wished for in lategame http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif . With 4 arms you can make a combo which has both lifedrain weapon , an - weapon or flamebeau and a shield http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif This way you are a normal SC as well as an Anti-SC http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Zen]

Voila. The Spell portion of the Mod series is complete enough for me to release.

The following post will be a semi-explaination of some of the changes, the reasoning and a few other tidbits.

Find the mod here: www.techno-mage.com/~zen/concepts14.zip (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/concepts14.zip) or as an attatchment to the post.

For feedback, please use the Pretender God's formula for it, and it's best if you prequalify your feedback with which mod you are giving feedback for (Pretender Gods or Spells).

[Huzurdaddi]

Nicely done Zen. I like a lot of the changes. Kudos.

[Edi]

Zen, a couple of things about the readme: I added the commentary to the beginning you had snipped, because it explains the notation just in case it isn't self-explanatory to everyone. Also, I changed the tab-separation you had used in your additions to single space separations (it's better to use contiguous spaces instead of tabs, or there will be display problems in different text editors), and I switched the national special summon monster modifications to the monster section where all the other monsters reside, so the format of both the readme and the mod file are internally consistent.

I replaced the files into the zip, and the updated ones are attached to this post.

Edi

[Beorne]

A little "thematic" note about CBS-Spells1.4:
For me is not appropriate to give to (981) Dying Treelord some death levels and to take a nature level. Dying Treelords have much experience and big nature power, but in no case they should be attuned to death. They are dying becuse they are very old (thus very experienced) not because they are death liking. Lastly, for me are obviously very appropriate the Forest Survival and NeedNotEat properties for all the TL.
My two cents.
I forgot to thank you for your wonderful support for this wonderful game.

[Zen]

Reasons for:

Celestial Soldier - To allow the Celestial Masters to cast this T'ien Ch'i specific spell without relying on the random system or having your pretender cast this spell.

Celestial Servant - These things are hard to cast in the first place, but are quickly a misuse of Earth gems as the game progresses. Even though you will (probably) not cast them when you get Mechanical Men, Clockworks or any other variety of Earth summons when you can get them, they are efficent with a blessing if you so choose.

Summon Sea Serpent/Cave Drake/Ice Drake/Fire Drake - These spells were not on par with the other reasonable use of gems in the "Summon Wyvern" spell. Now each has been adjusted to not be 'skipped' over and consideration for using these for early armies is a temptation. Inlcuded with this is an increase in Att and AP.

Summon Animals - A blatant misuse of nature gems. Animals in and of themselves are not very attractive, but paying 2 Nature gem per animal is even less attractive.

Summon /Elementals/ - This spell caused alot of contraversy in Dom1, it was also, I feel, nerfed into oblivion. While it does still retain some of it's granduer, the micromanagment of putting gems on casters that will or will not use your gems in the best fashion, even when you script their spells, makes this line of spells either a "Do it in communion or waste alot of gems" mentality that, more often than not, is ignored. I have kept the micromanagement of the one troublesome and most powerful elemental (Air) but I have reduced the micromanagement of all other elementals so that they can be (ab)used without nearly the hassle.

Bane Lord - He was too cheap and too prevalant. He is rarely used for his command ability so his primary role, as a SC he was reevaluated and cost was upgraded to reflect that.

Raven Feast - This was a loss of gems 90% of the time, the new cost is to allow the Raven Feast to have more of a niche use. Note: This also helps out Return of the Raptors in a slight degree.

Contact Harbinger, Angelic Host, Ether Gate - Astral Conjuration Summons have been lowered to reflect their use. I am still unsure if Ether Gate is a real investment, but that is to be determined.

Corpse Candle - See Elementals

Aim - I couldn't increase the AoE or make the caster target himself first, so I just made it accurate enough to hit where the caster wanted it.

Soul Vortex - Due to it's power, generic usefulness and widescope use, it was changed to reflect that. Since those that use this are mostly SC's in a melee fighting role, the gem use doesn't tremendously impact them.

Quickening - It's AoE is only 5. It was reduced from Gem use in order to allow armies more of a punch.

False Horror - Horror Spam still exists, just not in it's previously glorious form. By changing the fatigue I was able to stop low end casters from being able to horror spam, but let high end casters do so if they wish.

Iron Pigs - All the love of being animals with all the cost of earth gems. What's not to avoid? The Pigs are now more magic resistant and cost less per pig. Due to their smaller size and primary attack of oinking and trampling, this is a change that might garner a little interest for those looking for 'wacky' things.

Transformation - Without the real ability to change the forms assumed, chance of feeblemindedness or anything in the nature of the spell, I have changed it's cost so that if you do happen to try it there will not be as much of a loss of investment.

Army of Gold, Army of Lead - This change was in order to give the game more of a "Army with high powered Magic" feel to it. These spells have been made more accessible and less "Out of control pretender only can cast these spells". The gem cost and research level have been lowered as well to allow Armies to play a more significant role with the proper support of battle magic in the late game.

Magic Duel - Not a fix, but this can't really be fixed. Oh well, this increases micromanagment if you want to Mind Duel spam upper astral casters.

Breath of the Dragon - Minor Precision increase. When combined with Eagle eyes, might be semi-accurate.

Wrathful Skies - The big one. Put more in line with the other Battlefield spells. Not all nations can bootstrap up a Battlefield caster now, thus allowing armies to be semi-safer from instakilling. Air primary nations are still nasty with it, however I hope you will see a decline in the wrathing squads.

Bane Fire - A great spell with a huge range. Due to the targeting of the AI and the range of this spell it's rarely accurage. While this doesn't change this at long range, it gives midrange a slight boost and close range SC's should feel the burn while not too many friendly units are fried.

Stream of Life - This is another 'quirky' spell that can have a huge impact or go raw on you. Luckily most SC's have high MR and so it is patently less useful against them with that in account it's precision has been remarkably improved for use against units.

Shimmering Field - With Wrath's increase Shimmering Fields (which is a more devastating spell, but requires more magic) was lowered slightly as well as given a lower gem cost.

Niefel Flames - Modified to be comparable to it's opposite fire spell.

Heal - The fatigue cost was lowered so you might see the AI chose this spell significantly more when near only friendly injured units

Faery Trod - Modified to fit into the "Treelord" theme. See Treelords for more information.

Arrow Fend - Raised a Level in order to give Missile Units a little more shelf-life.

Ward(s) - The Ward spells only provide partial resistance. When gems were required they were rarely cast because of the micromanagment of carrying around extra gems then the magical attack/burn gems tactic that rendered them almost totally useless in the lategame. They are now castable and usable to protect armies at least partially from elements and poison. Expect armies to have a little more umph with proper magical backup.

Relief - The Fatigue change here was to trigger the effect of casting Fatigue for the AI. With the change the AI will have a greater chance to cast Relief without having to create and build special trigger troops to get your caster to cast his spell.

Serpent's Blessing, Storm Warriors, Muspelheim/Niefelheim, Gaea's Blessing - These were lowered in Research in order to provide a quicker counter to the army wrecking battlefield spells. Another change in order to try to make normal or elite armies more attractive and less likely to fall due to poor AI.

Sailors' Death - See Stream of Life

Touch of Madness - Growing Fury is 1 research level up and 1 Nature more. Yet costs the same as Touch of Madness while doing the Entire battlefield. While I can see why Touch of Madness might be more useful in certain situations (Like not wanting your mages to be Berserked, but if you could control where the bugger cast the spell, it'd work even better). Touch of Madness was reduced to allow it's effect to be cast without gem-managment.

Blood Boil - Less Fatigue for one of the only Blood battlefield spells. The AI actually tries to cast it once in a while.

Sabbath Slave/Master - Another effort to reduce micromanagment. Blood shuffling is a very real issue and Blood (from my perspective) is supposed to have the same type of Communion ability as Astral but more of a cost associated with it. I tried changing to straight 99's for fatigue but it didn't really change the dynamic of Sabbath. Sabbath is now twice as fatiguing as Communion but no longer requires you to give each slave and master a slave in order to cast it.

Bind Devil - A slight increase, I doubt you'll see this affect Devil Production at all. However it does make the lower devils slightly more attractive costwise, even if they are not abilitywise.

Hellfire - The only other spell to not require blood slaves to be cast. This might actually see some use as well, watch out!

Bind Ice Devil - Cost raised to be akin to Arch Devils. While already superior in Paths, stats and cost, they are now on equal terms. No more Turn 12 Ice Devils (I hope) and blood investment is more biting requiring more of a decision around them. Ice Devils have also been given an inherent weakness to fire akin to the Arch Devil. I never understood why they didn't have one in the first place. While still probably cast first, at least they share some of the same costs and vulnerabilities as their counterpart the Arch Devils.

Curse of Blood - Same cost as the Devil Commanders. This probably won't stop anyone from 'hoarding' them, but it does make their cost with Summon Allies vs the normal Curse of Blood spell seem in line.

Angels - All Angelic Beings have been given armor worth 9 Prot, this is in order to try to find a happy balance between what Angels should 'thematically' be strong against and what they are currently strong against. There is less of a trouncing that Devils will do to Angels (and with a half-decent blessing Angels will trounce Devils of equal or greater numbers depending on the situation). Hordes of undead will still kill an Angel, though they Last significantly longer than they used to (I.E. 1 round)

Trolls - Trolls have been given more attack in order to allow them to perform the role of SC mauler at least to a semi-decent degree.

Hama Dryad - In theme with charming unsuspecting souls, the Hama Dryads have become a little more attractive for their 'stay at home' abilities. I doubt they will see much play, but could be situationally very useful.

Vine Creatures - Given a free Barkskin.

Seasonal Spirits - Another overnerf of Dom1 days. The seasonal spirits without the Mod are extremely ineffecient use of gems. The only one being situationally useful being spring hawks because of their mobility and lightning attacks (stun damage and AP). Now Seasonal Spirits might have more of a place in your armies and cannot be countered with only a volley of arrows.

Corpse Construct - Hey, I tried, maybe you'll cast 'em.

Heliophagi - The poor weaker-than-the-other-two-devil-commanders heliophagi. Now they might be worth their extra cost. I had a hard time imagining the Commander Devil patterned after Fiends of Darkness being placed higher in the Research chain, more costly and being more unique (I.E. fewer summons) being weaker than the two spells in the previous research levels. Rather than moving it down I increased their power.

King's of Elemental Fire - More attractive. They still can't fly and they only have one spell in their primary path (fire) that they can cast as a SC (Phoenix Pyre).

King's of Elemental Earth - Reduced their Enc to 0, same as all the other Elemental Royalty.

Devil Troops - Reduced their morale to 18 for A.) Being under the effects of Awe and B.) Not fighting to the Last man. Even in myth, legend and folklore devils and such never seemed to take their stubborness to this extreme. Even now they won't break very often, you can mix them with normal troops (if you want) in order to increase the group morale.

Treelords - AH, the treelord. They have been totally revamped in order to put them into the "Ooooh, a Treelord, I want one" instead of "Hum, Treelord, I'll spend my Nature gems on something useful instead". There are alot of changes here, Most of them to allow Treelords to provide dominance of the treelands. Their gem income is there in order to allow them to chance to use their strengths (They can now Faery Trod if they wish) summon beings to help them and if/when they get into a fight, put up a decent fight.

[Zen]

Ah, Beorne. I forgot to add in the part about Forest Survival and Need not Eat. I had to clear them in order to make the Treelords able to be able to cast Faery Trod so I forgot to replace them in the original readme. 1.4 should have NNE and Forest Survival (if I didn't change them).

For the Dying Treelord:

I had a tough time with him. I think his name is mainly the factor here. I think a better name might be "Vengful" or perhaps "Angry". If you look through the spell lists you'll find some of references and uses of the Nature/Death Combo (Haunted Forest, Manikins, Mandragora). This was the feel I was trying to capture instead of the "Old" Treelord. Perhaps I should rename it to the "the Dead Treelord". Akin to Anthrax and Pedoseion, one who was either killed or has turned evil some how.

[Cainehill]

Or the "Undying Treelord", albeit given how long it takes trees to die, I can see how a Treelord dying for centuries would become attuned to death from being on the threshold for so long.

Trees and Forests are both life and death, so I think it is perfect thematically to have one of them with death, without being undead, thematically evil, etc.

[deccan]

Say Zen, couldn't you throw up a webpage at www.techno-mage.com/~zen/ (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/) listing the files that you have there? WIth all the different Versions and soon-to-be many modules, it can get kind of confusing to find what we need...

Edit: I like the list of changes! Haha, no more cheap false horror spam, no more easy ice devil SCs massacring entire armies...

[deccan]

Typographic error in the 1.72 Version of the pretender mod in the description of Son of the Sun (Fire)

It reads:

"The Son of the Sun is a demigod of immense size claiming the divine heritage of teh sun. Possessing considerable magical and physical might, the Son of the Sun is surrounded by an aura of splendor that strikes mortals with awe. The sun has gifted it's heir with such heat that once per season he recieves two Fire gems."

It should be "the" instead of "teh" and "receives" instead of "recieves".

[Daynarr]

Any changes to "Burden of Time"?

[Zen]

Not at current, no.

I actually stayed away from Globals since my personal experience is that Globals, their effect, and their 'strength' really depends on the players you are playing with.

I've been in situations where any global go up was brought down in a matter of a handful of turns, regardless.

I've also been in a situations where certain globals have stayed up much longer than I feel it should and am pulling my hair out that people are letting them stay up.

So with the variability of this I don't have the personal experience to adjust them one way or the other (the exception being Purgatory which is, to me, less of a game factor).

If you have suggestions, reasoning and such, please post them. As I said before this isn't just a pure "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" type of mod, I'm looking for reasonable feedback to create a better sense of balance. I just merely took the first step.

[Huzurdaddi]

Zen,

I love a lot of the changes. Here are a couple of I am a couple of questions about:

1. Soul Vortex. The new cost makes casting it from a wraith lord or a vampire lords very difficult. I assume this was the idea. However I now have a hard time thinking of why Wraith Lords are worth 40 gems ( perhaps the immortality is worth far more than I give it credit for ).

2. False Horror. I guess this is sufficient. I don't know. It's still not too hard to spam the crud out of them if you are Caelum. But perhaps that is more of a Caelum problem than a problem with the spell cost.

3. Love the Bane Lord fix. However I *do* use him for his leadership http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Not like it matters 15 gems is perfect.

4. Wrathful Skies/FireStorm/Battlefield spells. I'm still drawn to these spells even with the current costs. More play testing will be required ( and I will try to start one this weekend ) but I think that people will still attempt to blow armies up at this cost. Perhaps the requirements have to be boosted across the board for all battle field spells by 2 or so making them pretender only ( basically ). They are all far more powerful than the Shimmering Fields/Nifel Flames/FireSomething yet they are lower on the tech chart and they have similar requirements ( but lower gem costs it is true ).

5. I think that the angels may whomp on humans a little too much, but I think that the change is ( over all ) much for the better.

I have no other negative observations. This Mod is, IMO, fantastic. You have done a bang up job. I mean that. And no, I'm not sucking up I really think that you have done some good work here.

There are now so many good spells and so few less than useful spells it's freaking great.

[Boron]

Zen said:
I've been in situations where any global go up was brought down in a matter of a handful of turns, regardless.

I've also been in a situations where certain globals have stayed up much longer than I feel it should and am pulling my hair out that people are letting them stay up.

So with the variability of this I don't have the personal experience to adjust them one way or the other (the exception being Purgatory which is, to me, less of a game factor).

If you have suggestions, reasoning and such, please post them. As I said before this isn't just a pure "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" type of mod, I'm looking for reasonable feedback to create a better sense of balance. I just merely took the first step.



Did you talk after the game with the players ?
I just brought up a thread asking about ppls favourite global strats cause i am curious as well .

So when ppl brought down globals always i guess they wasted at least quite some amounts of gems by dispelling .

There is at least 1 global that you should change imo :
The forge of the ancients .

Maybe i am blind but i didn't find a weapon mod so far . So if you already modded artifacts then sorry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.


But with forge : If you play a blood nation and can bring up the forge of ancients with the current bloodstone EVERY B2 mage can forge a bloodstone .
Abysia / DF marignon can even forge a few bloodstones with their mages with good randoms .
If they time the forge a bit they will be able to forge 20-30 bloodstones / turn in midgame .
So if the opponents don't react immedeately and the forge is up only 3-5 turns Abysia / Marignon DF / Mictlan will have already 50-200 bloodstones .
Then they can bring the forge up again almost 1:1 in cost vs. pearls .

I remember that you wanted to change clams + fetishes to higher requirements that they can't be massproduced so much anymore .

So if you keep the Forge of Ancients as it is then you need either to make bloodstones harder to forge as well ( Maybe B5E ) or change something with the forge of ancients .

[Beorne]

A little typo in the pretender mod. Asynja is described as having air magic but now she has no more air.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:

Abysia / DF marignon can even forge a few bloodstones with their mages with good randoms .
If they time the forge a bit they will be able to forge 20-30 bloodstones / turn in midgame .



That is either quite a lot of slaves saved ahead of time for this purpose or an immense empire being bloodhunted dry, but no matter - assume the slaves are available. Even with the half-price FoA, the price to get 20 bloodstones is a respectable 200 slaves - enough to cast Astral Corruption, summon a Demon Lord, several Ice Devils, 28+ Storm Demons or to forge five FoA soul contracts for that matter.



So if the opponents don't react immedeately and the forge is up only 3-5 turns Abysia / Marignon DF / Mictlan will have already 50-200 bloodstones .



Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.

[Truper]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.



This seems an odd thing to say. A lot of nations aren't likely to have either an Astral 3 mage for dispelling, or enough of their own gems lying around to overwrite a Forge.

[Daynarr]

Well, as far as my MP games go, I have yet to see Burden of Time being cast. It’s probably due to the fact that such spell would turn EVERYONE in the game against you, which is next best thing to a suicide.

I was thinking that BoT needs fixing for SP since, apparently, AI still likes to cast it when he can. A simple increase in casting requirements (from death 5 to death 7-9) would be good, or making it higher-level spell (from 5 to 8-9) level would fix this in SP.

Personally I like the first method since it would limit the casting of the spell to powerful Death nations, which is quite thematic.

However, I have no idea how this would impact MP, so I'll leave it to your judgement.

BTW nice changes so far. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Peter Ebbesen]

Truper said:

Peter Ebbesen said:
Anybody who is unable to prevent an enemy from having the Forge of the Ancients up for 3-5 rounds deserves what is coming.



This seems an odd thing to say. A lot of nations aren't likely to have either an Astral 3 mage for dispelling, or enough of their own gems lying around to overwrite a Forge.


Honestly, I was thinking that people would cooperate immediately to get it dispelled. Admittedly, I have only played MP in games with few people rather than the 10-17 big games, but Forge of the Ancients is something like the ultimate war declaration since anybody who has it up for a significant amount of time is quite likely to win the game due to his access to cheap path-boosters, construction of most of the artefacts not already made, good weapons and armour, much that you could not even forge before FoA - it all adds up to greatly enhanced power. Under the standard rules, Fever Fetishes (everybody), Clams (W1), and Blood Stones (B2) are just one aspect of its power, and I find Blood Stones to be the least abusive of the three as it requires a specialise mages (no random sage is going to do this), still has a non-negligible cost even with FoA, and the output (gems) cannot be converted to its input (primarily slaves) easily.

It is one thing to argue that Fever Fetishes/Clams of Pearl should be more restricted because they can provide an easy ramping up of power from the very beginning of the game due to reinvestment and low pathcost; it is another to argue that Blood Stones should be restricted because they become economic to make when one of the best global enchantments in the game is in play.

[Tuna]

Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.


Unless somebody else has filled out the fifth slot or the FoA was taken down by another FoA rather than a dispel... I grant you that it is possible, but, honestly, I don't see that the danger of somebody using FoA to forge 80 bloodstones for 800 stored bloodslaves (enough for 20 Soul Contracts under FoA to put the price in perspective, or even 80 Lifelong Protection, for those who want to swamp the opposition with imps in battle LOL) and 80 B2 mage-turns of work (at least two rounds given the size of the magic item repository) is great enough that it should warrant making the bloodstone even harder to acquire in general.

If somebody does manage to pull it off, the more power to him. The fact that something can potentially pay off very well under the right circumstances is not in itself justification for preventing it from happening.

[Boron]

Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.


Yeah .

And with dispelling it requires some effort .
If you play in a game with 10-15 ppl and are at friendly relations with 2-3 while most others are engaged already in a war i think the chances are not bad that the forge stays up some time .

You still have to invest something like 60-80 pearls for the dispel attempt normally at least normally .
On turn 30-40 the forge is normally cast first .
If you are a clamhoarder (Pythium , Arco , Atlantis , Ryleh) you have probably an astral gem income of 15-40 .
If you are another nation your astral gem income though is probably much lower and used for forging .

So the chances are normally really good that your forge stays up a few turns cause at this stage of the game probably a lot of players don't want to invest a still rather big amount of their gem income to dispel the forge .

For a forge cast with 120 gems ( = 40 extra ) you could forge 7 2/3 dwarfen hammers or cast e.g. 6 times enliven statues / 8 times mechanical men .

Especially the items which cost only 5 gems are nice with the forge cause they only cost 2 gems then .

As i said if you are a blood nation then you forge as quick as possible as many bloodstones as you can .
Then you have probably soon higher earth gem income then others have pearl income .

Blood + Forge is imo Abuse .
On turn 30-40 when the blood nation first casts forge it has normally already a bloodincome of 100-200/turn so really enough to forge lots of stuff + profit from the forge immediately .

A nonbloodnation has probably not enough resources to profit from the forge when it is up only 1-3 turns but a blood nation has .

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron, you argue that the combination of FoA+bloodstones is so powerful that bloodstones should be increased in cost, yet, at the same time, you argue that people will not band together to take the FoA down, because they have better things to do with their astral gem income. While one should never underestimate the power of conservatism and the "let the others bleed to take care of the common nuisance", that does tend to argue that player mentality is a very real issue here rather than an inherently overpowered or easy to get bloodstone.

Moreover, your mathematics do not quite add up. Originally, you were talking about 20-30 bloodstones per turn in the middle game (turns 30-40), which adds up to 200-300 slaves per turn (you may get some reduction for dwarven hammers but you are unlikely to have mass produced them prior to the FOA). In your most recent post, you mention that it is not uncommon to have a slave income of 100-200 in the middle game - which is not enough. Now, I appreciate that it is possible that you have been saving up blood slaves for several rounds prior to casting the FoA, which in itself puts you in a weaker position for that period of time as you are playing a waiting game, but even so this will require the dedication of the majority of your mage force for a good number of rounds: both the B2 mages and all your bloodhunters. That is a very serious investment of resources, which will only really pay off in a long game. Doing it is a gamble that you do not need an army now, but gems later. An attractive result, no doubt, but not in itself overpowered.

Finally, as I have pointed out, there are several other very attractive investments you could be making with the same bloodslaves with the FoA. (1 extra Soul Contract for every 4 bloodstones, if you have B2 mages equipped with blood path boosters, and, given that this requires fewer mages to forge on a round by round basis, it is likely that you have dwarven hammers influencing a greater percentage of the total blood slave cost. E.g. Each dwarven hammer while forging bloodstones will save you 3 bloodslaves, while forging Soul Contracts each will save you 10 bloodslaves)

The real question, I guess, is one I should adress to those of you who play MP in large games: How often do you see a blood nation perform this FoA+ 20-30 bloodstones per turn feat in the midgame? If it is rare, then it would appear to be more of a theoretical worry than something that needs to be addressed. There are many good combinations in Dominions 2, and it is to my mind only if one of them becomes obligatory to use that one should worry about weakening it. If it is common, but it does not seem to exert a great influence on the actual game outcome, likewise.

If, however, it turns out that FoA+bloodstones is a great problem then perhaps one should increase the cost of the FoA rather than the bloodstone. After all, the FoA is an extremely powerful global enchantment, one of the most powerful in the game. It costs the same as the enchantments that give you +20 gems/turn, but no matter which theme you play, if you put it up you will be saving much, much, more than that each and every turn until you run out of gems or things to neat things to forge.

For every theme, blood and non-blood alike, favourite FoA forging for me is Jade Armour, Rainbow Armour, Lightless Laterns, amulets of luck and anti-magic, rings of regeneration, boots of flying, and, of course, artefacts and relevant path boosters. I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a non-blood nation will not profit from having a FoA up for just 1-3 turns. When I use it, I forge 40-50 useful objects the first round, typically cleaning out my gem storage or a very significant fraction thereof. It is very, very, difficult not to make a huge profit on it. Anything after round #1 is just an added bonus.

I am just bemused that you attach such an importance to the bloodstone issue, when (to my mind), the interesting FoA point is that the FoA is very cheap for what it does for everybody. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Huzurdaddi]

For every theme, blood and non-blood alike, favourite FoA forging for me is Jade Armour, Rainbow Armour, Lightless Laterns, amulets of luck and anti-magic, rings of regeneration, boots of flying, and, of course, artefacts and relevant path boosters.




They are all excellent things to build. I find though that building the gem producting items ( in particular fever fetishes since anyone can build them, and of course all of the clams I can make ) are particularly abusive.

*if* you think you can keep the the forge up for a couple of turns then going for the investment items really rocks. Oh and lightless lanterns of course!

[Argitoth]

Boron said:
I remember that you wanted to change clams + fetishes to higher requirements that they can't be massproduced so much anymore.



Clams and fetishes were meant to be put on commanders so they could carry a few gems with them to battle when needed. I say you higher the cost so they don't get mass produced and give them a bonus so they are worth carrying and so they are still worth building for the higher cost. The clam could be like 15 water, +2 MR... Fever Fetish 10 fire 5 death, +2 fear? something like that? I dunno.

[Endoperez]

Why should Fever Fetish require fire and DEATH? At the moment it is 1N1F. The fact that it works with undead is probably a bug, but even if it is not it should not be made any easier to use those two together. Even if the cost is increased. Also, because Fever Fetishes give you fire gems the increase shouldn't go to fire, but the nature cost. 1F2N or 5 fire and 10 nature gems would be more costly, and it would also make Fever Fetish not forgeable by all mages under the effect of FoA.

[Argitoth]

woops, I meant... egh, haven't played Dom2 in a while. Yeah, I meant what it's original cost was + 5 gems.

[Cohen]

I'd agree with Endorpez in fact 2N1F should be the right price.
I see gem generating items with the need to give essentially a different kind of gems of what you need to forge them. And this was my attitude as everyone can see from my post before someone point at me as thief =)

[Daynarr]

I think 1N 1F and a disease is a great price for an item that generates only 1 fire gem.
Note that one commander can carry only 1 of gem generators now (of the same type).

[Argitoth]

Daynarr said:
I think 1N 1F and a disease is a great price for an item that generates only 1 fire gem.
Note that one commander can carry only 1 of gem generators now (of the same type).




really?... I think the whole concept of these gem generating items have been totally screwed up with the way they are. Gem generating was meant as a way to generate a few gems before a battle, not extra gem income.

I think we should focus on making gem generating items for that strategy. I think it shold cost more gems but wearing it gives you a non-stackable bonus (because only one can be worn per commander) or both should give a non-stackable negative effect.

[Wauthan]

While it's a silly solution I put all gem generating items in the unique Category. It's not a good fix but it seemed to work fairly well in the Last MP session.

The only trouble was that noone got to keep the items for very long, since people kept pushing for control of them.

[Argitoth]

so you're saying only 1 clam and 1 fever fetish was allowed in the game and people kept losing it?

I'd like to know how people knew what to kill to take it.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Argitoth said:
really?... I think the whole concept of these gem generating items have been totally screwed up with the way they are. Gem generating was meant as a way to generate a few gems before a battle, not extra gem income.



Were they? Are you sure that that was what they were meant to be? I have always seen them as primarily a way to generate extra gem income for certain nations, specifically Atlantis, Caelum, and Jotunheim.

I mean, take a look at which nations can actually make clams fairly painlessly (i.e. have 2W)... The nations that have easiest access to Clams are Atlantis (strong capital-only astral), Caelum (non-astral), Jotunheim (non-astral), T'ien Ch'i (weak capital-only astral), and Pytium (strong astral), while astral nations like Arcoscephale (strong astral), Ermor (default, strong astral), Marignon (strong astral), and C'this (weak astral) have trouble making them.

The evidence suggests that the primary use is not providing astral nations with a few astral gems before battle, since the main beneficiaries of Clams are non-astral nations that cannot use the gems in battle and weak astral nations. Only Pythium of the strong astral nations that are likely to field astral mages on the battlefield get to make their own clams easily.

[Endoperez]

To make FEW clams one doesn't need many W2 mages. There are some Astral spells that are nice and require gem, but until the late game they mainly consist of Astral Healing and Antimagic, and maybe Power of the Spheres. And you don't need many mages casting those... Well, Arcos and Pythium could use PotS as their mages have many kinds of magic, but making clams is easy for both.

I also think that for the Astral nations you gave Arcos certainly is able to easily make clams, or atleast has a good change for it. Even without Constr.6 they will probably have W2 mage without anything better to do quite soon. Mystics are great! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

This leaves Ermor and Marignon as strong astral nations without clams. The strong astral nations *with* ability to do clams are Pythium, Arcos and Atlantis. The weak/non astral nations that can do clams are Caelum, Jotunheim and Tien Chi. 3 Astral nations that can do clams (easily) and three non-astral nations that can do them easily doesn't seem to be in favour of the non-astral ones.

Also, I think that clams were just added as a cool item without thinking how, exactly, they would be useful, and for whom. Maybe one of the developers was annoyed with micromanaging gems for his mages.

[Vynd]

Argitoth said:

Daynarr said:
I think 1N 1F and a disease is a great price for an item that generates only 1 fire gem.
Note that one commander can carry only 1 of gem generators now (of the same type).




really?... I think the whole concept of these gem generating items have been totally screwed up with the way they are. Gem generating was meant as a way to generate a few gems before a battle, not extra gem income.




I can sort of see the argument that Clams and Bloodstones "ought" to be primarily for the purpose of giving commanders on the move a steady supply of gems. But Fever Fetishes? C'mon man, they give your commanders Disease! If Fever Fetishes were changed so that they were somehow only useful for battlefield magic, who would use them? For that matter, who would invest in Bloodstones, or even in Clams, which I'd say are the cheapest of all gem producing items, if their purpose was for giving mages gems to use in battlefield magic?

[Cainehill]

It's been posted that Clams, in particular, were a strong component of Atlantis' design (as in, doing away with / tweaking clams would screw Atlantis, so it wasn't going to happen.) That rather conflicts with the "clams and fetishes were made so commanders could have a few gems with them" theory.

In particular since it's pretty easy to take gems (and not clams/fetishes) with armies - either on the commander, or on scouts.

Finally, it seems strange (given that most nations' mages aren't undead and would die from the diseases) to suggest that fever fetishes were meant to reduce micromanagement or allow the commanders to have a few gems with them, since the mage would _DIE_ from disease within a very short period of time.

I suspect the people advancing this theory of what the designers had intended are instead merely pushing their own theory of how the gems should be used.

[Soapyfrog]

Why does Atlantis need clams so? They can find astral sites as well or even better than many other nations...

[Truper]

Vynd said:
For that matter, who would invest in Bloodstones, or even in Clams, which I'd say are the cheapest of all gem producing items, if their purpose was for giving mages gems to use in battlefield magic?



I would http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif The gem-producing items can serve both puposes. I find it very useful to equip Astral mages who are out conquering with a Clam - it sure beats the micro-management of trying to get Pearls to them in any other way. And just about the only reason I ever build Bloodstones is to provide a steady supply of Earth gems for an Earth caster. After all, mages who can forge them are rather rare, unless you want to count special circumstances like Forge of the Ancients http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Zen]

Alright. There will be an update of the Conceptual Balance Series this weekend. If you have any feedback before I update it, I'd appreciate it. (In order to better serve those who don't like the rash of updates.)

The Spellmod will be adjusted due to a few issues. Most specifically with Fire Elementals, Wards, Angels.

[Kelan]

The only thing that I noticed in my new Niefelheim game is that the Son of Niefel pretender is a fair amount more powerful, at least against independents, because of the improvement in the Winter Wolf, which he gets one per turn in cold dominion.

(511) Winter Wolf +7 HP, +10 Prot, +2 Str, +Stealth

The extra protection and hit points make them pretty powerful while remaining ethereal. I am not saying they should be adjusted, but just wanted to mention that it was a result of improving the winter wolf. In games past I tended to lose my Winter Wolves in battles and never really did get them in big numbers. In my recent game, I have yet to lose one and have a group of 15 of them now on turn 19 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Truper]

First Pretender under the spellmod I tried myself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The seasonal spirits do bear some watching, IMO. I have summoned them in the unmodded game, despite a vague feeling that I was wasting gems. In the mod, they are probably very worthwhile, and possibly too much so. I need to try Abysia with fire-shielded Summer Lions...

[Zen]

Newest Version of the Spell and Pretender Mod can be found here: www.techno-mage.com/~zen/ (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/)

There have been some quality changes that you can find in the Readme's. All typos are fixed AFAIK.

[Edi]

I'll check the readmes for you, Zen. Let me know in advance when the item stuff is coming, so I can work on that, unless you prefer to do it yourself?

Edi

[Zen]

I'll let you know, so you can form them up. I'm no good at that portion of it. I just update the readme's you make and you can fix them how they need if they are wrong http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also, note the acknowledgements.

[Edi]

I've noticed, thanks. Just change the "Esko" to "Edi", I'll feel more comfortable that way. Or use my whole name, Esko Halttunen. But please, NOT just my first name! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In any case, check your email, there were some errors in both mod files, and the readmes have now been changed to eliminate all instances of tab-spacing, those have been replaced with single-space spacing and will now show up correctly in all plain text editors, regardless of settings. Suggest renaming the fixed Versions to 1.81 and 1.51.

Edi

[Zen]

Changed to 1.81 See latest Version on the Index

[Cainehill]

The 1.81 readme file says that the Father of Serpents now has a Poison Cloud, but it doesn't show up as an attack, nor as a cloud around the pretender in battle. Not sure if this is an error in the readme or in the mod (the .dm file doesn't appear to have any poison cloud either).

[Zen]

Oh yeah, forgot to remove that part. Yes. The Father of Serpents doesn't have a Poison Cloud anymore. It was found to be more of a hamper than a benefit (which I had hoped). I'm afraid I will have to feel that the Father of Serpents and the Lord of the Desert Sun are slightly expensive for their benefit but unable to change them to my 'thematic' desire.

Suggestions that are moddable at the current time would be accepted for those two. Suggestions should not include: Get more paths or Change the Path/cost but something to do with the "SC"ish role that they seem to be apart of. Also I can't mod in +summons for rituals or Summon Allies, otherwise I might have added a bonus to Summer Lions or all animals or something with them.

[Wauthan]

I gave the Father of Serpents the breathweapon of the Green Dragon. It's not much since, as for the dragons, spells quickly become more powerful as artillery support. But it gets him started a bit quicker as an SC.

I don't think I ever used Lord of the Desert sun. He's the lionheaded feller right? I guess one could remove his Bite attack and give him Consume Soul instead. He's a demigod predator after all. Or perhaps give him stealth and assassin abilities like Mictlans Batman? Would be lionish enough and would be a powerboost. Perhaps lowering his stats a bit since an autosummoning assassin is like a kick in the teeth (curse you Batman!).

[Huzurdaddi]

For the Lord of the Desert Sun you could just bump his Awe rating up to +4 or so. Should make him a *fine* early SC.

Oh wrt. the spell mod I was wondering why no change ( ie: nerf ) to mistform. It's considered to many to be the best early defensive spell in the game and it powers many of the early SCs. Bumping it up a few levels would put it out of reach of early SC's while keeping it for the people that want to protect their casters. Sadly this would eliminate yet another option from the early game. You could bump the path requirement by quite a bit making it only for Air SC's. Or you could do nothing!

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
It's considered to many to be the best early defensive spell in the game and it powers many of the early SCs.



Mistform isn't that spectacular. 25 damage will end it, or even less than that on low hitpoint units.

Body ethereal and personal luck are both quite a bit better than mistform.

[Huzurdaddi]

Body ethereal and personal luck are both quite a bit better than mistform.




LOL!

<EOM>

[archaeolept]

well, together I'd say they're better.


For the Lord of the Desert Sun you could just bump his Awe rating up to +4 or so. Should make him a *fine* early SC.

trouble is, the lord of the desert sun also suffers from the "moloch" syndrome; without, to my eyes, the Moloch's compensatory qualities.

[Huzurdaddi]

trouble is, the lord of the desert sun also suffers from the "moloch" syndrome; without, to my eyes, the Moloch's compensatory qualities.




Whoops I was thinking of the Son of the Sun. Yes the Lord of the Desert Sun is lacking I totally agree. So how do the allies work? Do he simply cast : Pride of Lions before the combat? Or is he hard coded to get some set number of a set monster number? In either case I would guess that the solution would be to bump the power ( substantially ) of his summons. If this also requires you to rework the cost ( and/or level ) for the spell which summons the troops then so be it. I guess. You may even have to rework the text ( since maybe now it summons something of the power of Kithaironic Lions ... if that's what you are looking for ).

[Edi]

The Lord of the Desert Sun has hard-coded great lions, like the Moloch has imps. Kithaironic lions would be too powerful by a lot, unless he had only one or two. I'm not sure if battle auto-summons can be modded (other than being removed) at this point. Boosting Great Lions is also problematic from another point of view, which is that they can be summoned with Summon Animals. True enough that you would also get useless chaff like wolves, black hawks and giant spiders, but if great lions become Kithaironic equivalents, it'll be worth it with the new lower cost for Summon Animals.

It'd be better to just remove the lons altogether, it's not as if they can actually accomplish anything, and the LotDS isn't that spectacular on its own (unlike the Moloch).

Edi

[Huzurdaddi]

Well they would not have to be the full power of Kithaironic lions. They could be somewhere in between.

[Wauthan]

Still think assassin ability works better. He gets normal lions as a meatshield. Fire and Nature magic are very potent spells for one on one battles. I tried this configuration out and it seems fairly interesting. A Pretender Assassin is powerful in the early game when he can fight inside his own dominion. Later this ability become more of a gamble since the lions provide little support against higher tier commanders with bodyguards.

Also gave the Moloch the assassin ability. I didn't try it out for any longer period but it seems imps are a lot more powerful in one on one combat.

Anyone got a clue on how to make the Mother of Lions useful? I haven't come up with a reason to select her as a pretender (and the graphics are odd. I can't make out her head). In the end I simply removed her from the Pretender pool together with other "hopeless cases".

[Truper]

Both the Moloch and the Lord of the Desert Sun have to be used differently from other pretenders, which to my mind is a *good* thing. I find both useful just as they are. If you must have a pretender who operates strictly solo, then choose something else by all means, but that those two come with auto-summons is interesting for variety's sake.

[Zen]

This weekend will be a new release of the SpellMod as well as the initial Release of the ScaleMod. If you would like to try out a blitz with them try the IRC channel during the weekend.

[Cainehill]

No preview of the mods so people can prepare (and thus possibly get a blitz started a little more quickly)? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Truper]

I think Zen is still putting the finishing touches on things, but we are planning a blitz using the mods at 3pm today at the usual place - irc.gamesurge.net #dominions

[alexti]

Truper said:
I think Zen is still putting the finishing touches on things, but we are planning a blitz using the mods at 3pm today at the usual place - irc.gamesurge.net #dominions


It sounds interesting... But 3pm in what timezone?

[archaeolept]

well, IRC isn't the most precise place anyways http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

but trupe's in the same time zone as you are...

[Truper]

Whoops. Yes, 3pm EST (GMT-5). Sorry not to have posted that in the 1st place...

[PDF]

Another balance topic : I've experienced in several PBEMs the power of flying armies - usually Caelum and Demon armies totally dominate strategically any landlubber nation.
The only "counter" to fliers is magic transportation, which is way more expensive.

I think that reducing the strat move of fliers - let's say to 2 at most, and 1 for "heavy" troops, be they SG/IG or Gargoyles - will balance things a little.

After all this can even be rationalized by considering that fliers can't fly all day, they aren't usually birds (except hawks, but these ones are not too powerful lol).

[Chazar]

PDF said:
I think that reducing the strat move of fliers - let's say to 2 at most, and 1 for "heavy" troops, be they SG/IG or Gargoyles - will balance things a little.



What is the difference of an ordinary move of 1 and a flight-move of 1? Maybe PerpetualStorm should just be made a little bit more accessible if strategical flight is to be nerfed at all (which is a thing that I do not want to judge here).

[Cainehill]

Reducing the strategic movement of flyers would have the very bad effect of allowing troops that move on foot to move as far or farther than flyers in some conditions (such as when the terrain is plains). I don't think that light infantry is supposed to "run like the wind", or that cavalry should be running faster than creatures can fly.

That strategic mobility is very nice, yes. But it's one of the main benefits of Caelum (who doesn't necessarily even bring armies along), and I'd disagree that the "only" counter was magic transportation (which is, barring artifacts, more expensive, but also goes further). There's also remote summons, remove evocations (murdering winter for devils, fires from the sky against Caelum), stealth units being used to surprise them, and otherwise strategically deducing where they're going next (ie, blind guessing) and attempting to move an army there.

And arguably PD ought to be more effective in warding off such things, but as I believe the devs want an offense oriented game, it seems unlikely that PD is going to be boosted much.

[Huzurdaddi]

murdering winter for devils




Have you tried this? It does not work. I have casted 2 in one turn in a cold province. Nada. They have too many HP. Further there is no remote summon which is cost effective against them ( unless you are using Zen's mod ).



but as I believe the devs want an offense oriented game




I don't know if they wanted one however it sure is played that way.



very bad effect of allowing troops that move on foot to move as far or farther than flyers




Hey it's hard to fly long distances when you weigh as much as a human. Perhaps you spend all of that time eating since your metabolism is so high? No idea. Anyway it's only bad thematically it is not bad wrt. game balance.

[PDF]

To previous replies :
Flying has a *big* advantage over overland strat move, it allows to pass any terrain without having to have "xxx survival" ability.
So any Caelum/Devil player can use 1 army to as much effect as 3 or 5 landlubber armies, attacking the weakest one in turn without possible retaliation. And if the landlubbers regroup you can wreak havoc everywhere else and use mass damage spells against them !
And no, M Winter hasn't any noticeable effect on devils, nor against Caelum? Only FftS is effective and only against Caelians.

As 1 turn is 3 months long, I don't suppose strat move represent any unit running/flying for the whole season, but is rather an estimate of an army ability to move in an organized fashion, with supply train and so on. So "Flying" shouldn't be that much of an advantage .

Powerlessness of PDs is another balance issue indeed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Have you tried this? It does not work. I have casted 2 in one turn in a cold province.



I assume you used it against a garrison of a castle. It doesn't kill more than about 10% of the troops there if they are in a castle.


Hey it's hard to fly long distances when you weigh as much as a human.



That's obviously not a problem for these beings.


Anyway it's only bad thematically it is not bad wrt. game balance.



Except that it's not bad with respect to game balance.

[Endoperez]

I thought 1 turn represented 1 month... (early/mid/late spring/summer/fall/winter = 3*4 =12)

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with you. For Caelum, I think buffing PD up a bit and making false horrors not spammable for a long time without severe fatique would be enough - it's not their military strength that people are worried about. If something needs to be done, maybe a magical net (NN, Hunter's net, supply bonus + 'lost wing' affliction for those hit, dmg 0 + entangle in AOE 1). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

About devils, I think boosting up their classical counterpart, the angels, would deal with them quite nicely. If a small group of angels was able to devastate devils as well as small group of them is able to devastate independents...

[The Panther]

The single biggest problem with strategic flying is the fact that it allows you to fly over a province or two and also attack in the same turn. This is the true problem with the game imbalance of flying, imho.

Even if land troops have the movement to go through your own farm land and move into the next neutral or enemy controlled province, it is not allowed. This should work for both walking and flying, or work for neither.

My opinion is that the only change needed to bring flying back into balance is to never allow a flying troop to attack an uncontrolled province unless the army startes the turn adjacent to the desired province, just like a walking army. You can still use flying to quickly bring reinforcements to the front lines through your owned territory, so it would still be a good ability to have.

But the nearly unbeatable, cheesy flying strat of taking 10 provinces on one turn two deep into enemy territory would be nerfed, just as it needs to be. My only win in an MP game was accomplished as Caelum with a lot of thanks to using this cheap flying strategy.

It even causes people to take the cheap castle and spam them everywhere to try and stop this. Which is yet another cheesy strategy that works well.

[Cainehill]

Huzurdaddi said:
Have you tried this? It does not work. I have casted 2 in one turn in a cold province. Nada. They have too many HP. Further there is no remote summon which is cost effective against them ( unless you are using Zen's mod ).




Ghost Riders tend to do quite a nice number against devils, and it's relatively cheap and easy to cast. You can also gateway an army in, again taking care of the devils fairly easily.




but as I believe the devs want an offense oriented game




I don't know if they wanted one however it sure is played that way.




They've commented that they wanted it that way - if defense was as strong / stronger than offense, it'd lead to a boring stagnant gameplay. (Think mad castling made stronger.)




very bad effect of allowing troops that move on foot to move as far or farther than flyers




Hey it's hard to fly long distances when you weigh as much as a human. Perhaps you spend all of that time eating since your metabolism is so high? No idea. Anyway it's only bad thematically it is not bad wrt. game balance.



Obviously people disagree. Personally, I see it as quite easy for fliers to go that far in a month - after all, they're flying, and can easily see where to land and rest each day that'll be far away from enemy troops. And I don't think it's particularly unbalanced. It is one of those irritating things to deal with, and people tend to dislike things they find difficult / irritating to deal with (hence, people hating gem producing items, flying troops, cheap castles, wrathful skies, SCs, etc).

Just to help illustrate solutions to flying troops: the Mechanical Militia global spell. Yep, it's an expensive spell, only available to one nation at a time, but having the 10 or so MMs added to any province with a single point of PD wreaks havoc with a lot of fliers, stealth troops, and even most remote summonses.

Another way to go: station a mage in each province commanding some statues and mechanical men. Zero upkeep, if you use a summoned mage to command them.

Another possibility: get enough scouts out to see when someone is starting to grow devils, and see about disrupting their plans. It's easier to see if someone's building soul contracts (the usual way of generating large amounts of devils) than it is to see if someone is hoarding clams and fever fetishes.

[Chazar]

Huzurdaddi said:
Hey it's hard to fly long distances when you weigh as much as a human. Perhaps you spend all of that time eating since your metabolism is so high?



Indeed, Caelians spent most of their time eating because of their high metabolism: They are size3, thus they eat twice as much as humans do.

Supply is provided by a supply chain from the closest fortress (up to 4 squares), however not through hostile provinces!

The requirement for cold+3 reduces the available supply in non-cold climates dramatically.

This works out remarkably neatly: When I played Caelum and used my fliers to attack behind enemy lines, my Caelians usually starve badly. Of course, commanders never starve, so as the game progresses and when mages start to pull out entire armies out of their pockets (living clouds, etc.), food is not a concern. I think food balances flight pretty neatly. Maybe its enough to have WineSkins having 2N requirement for forging, so that Caelum cant do this. Do Devils eat? No? Oops!!!

(I rather think supply is sort of ridiculous with all those easy wine skins and need-not-eat summons, which can be stacked to huge armies...)

[Cainehill]

Just to be perverse and go back on topic : How'd the game go Satyrday with Zen's newest mods? I've been checking, but haven't seen even the beta Versions up on his webpage, so I'm reduced to mere curiousity what people thought of the latest spell mod and the scale mod.

[alexti]

Cainehill said:
Just to be perverse and go back on topic : How'd the game go Satyrday with Zen's newest mods?


I think it hasn't happened.

[PDF]

To Cainehill, back on the Flying balance :
I don't think the Flying issue is comparable to SCs, Hoarding or many other in that Flying is a nation-specific huge advantage right from the start (for Caelum) or relatively early in the game(for blood nations).
Mech Militia et al. are not an option before mid-game, and not an option at all for many nations.
To illustrate this, in a pbem game, I (as TC) allied with Marignon and Ermor (BE) vs Caelum on turn 30-some. My allies+me were overall much stronger (in terms of income, research, gems, provinces) an yet Caelum manages to hold for 10 turns and bLasted most of Marignon and my armies.
And the game is on Hard research !

In another I'm playing Caelum (turn 25), just eradicated Arco main army (with Pretender), and on the next turn I turn against Machaka with all of my armies...
This is a just an unfair and unbalancing advantage, Caelum opponents just have no effective counter.

[Endoperez]

No effective counter against what? Masses of Caelian Archers backed up by few mages, masses of Caelian Infantry backed by some mages or lots of seraphs backed up by some archers/infantry?

Caelum's archers are quite good, but still die quickly if anything gets next to them. And they eat a lot. Fast Caelian infanty is quite bad, too. And the good ones are not only expensive but slightly slower as well. And the "lighter complexion" of Caelians that enables flight also makes them weaker than their human counterparts. I haven't tried them in MP, but I quess they will be quickly decimated if your enemy manages to surprise you in any way. And the mages are excellent, as they should.

I can see mountains blocking flyers, but I don't think swamps or forests would be much of a hinderance to them. Maybe in Dom3...

[The Panther]

The real problem is that once Caelum gets false horrors, which is not all that far into the game for the fastest researching nation, it gives that race a supreme advantage. A single Seraph can kill up to 10 PD reliably, except perhaps for Ulm or Jontunheim. And a Seraph with 2 archers can take those two nations too, losing maybe one archer in the first volley to Ulm and losing nothing to Jontun. Even if you lose one raiding force and take only 9 of 10 desired provinces, so what?

In what is still early game, Caelum can therefore take pretty much any province against ANYBODY that can be reached. Want three enemy provinces? No problem! How about 6? Getting harder, but sure. Ten? Yup, I have done that and more in a single turn in an MP game. It cannot be stopped without having a castle in every province.

As long as fliers can jump over provinces AND attack in the same move, flying will be an unbalanced ability. Thus making Caelum the best race for the early game and deep into the middle game. As for the end game, it may no longer be best, but will still be in the top 5 because of the early game advantages.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
It cannot be stopped without having a castle in every province.



This is when you take your armies ans smash down his undefended watchtowers.

[The Panther]

Graeme Dice said:
This is when you take your armies ans smash down his undefended watchtowers.



Of course you can always strike back. But the fliers can strike three deep into enemy territory and the stronger land army can strike only one deep back.

I was getting 5-10 provinces and losing 0-8 each turn for like 15 turns against three opponents. I was also taxing many of those at 200% for multiple turns and using the money to get even more Seraphs and plenty more cheap archers to keep reloading. Everything I lost was easily replaced and then some. Everything my opponents lost was gone for good.

It was surprisingly easy to overrun my opponents with about 10-20 separate armies composed of one Seraph spamming false horrors plus 5 archers. I lost many of those sacrificial strike forces, but it simply made no difference in the long run.

And EVERY SINGLE TIME any one of my three opponents seiged one of my towers, I simply hit him back with a real army composed of my flying pretender, AQs as needed, draconians, hawks, and up to about 20 seraphs and maybe 40-60 archers from many strike forces, which I could fly in from every conceivable direction over amazingly far distances. I never once lost any of my own towers. Even better, it was typically easy to cut off the retreat path with my annoying fliers and poof any enemy who might have survived the battle.

Strategic flying is definitely overpowered. I have been on the receiving end of this strategy more than once and the dishing end but this one time. It is far more pleasant to be doing it than having it done to you.

[Cohen]

I'd completely agree with Panther.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
And EVERY SINGLE TIME any one of my three opponents seiged one of my towers, I simply hit him back with a real army composed of my flying pretender, AQs as needed, draconians, hawks, and up to about 20 seraphs and maybe 40-60 archers from many strike forces, which I could fly in from every conceivable direction over amazingly far distances. I never once lost any of my own towers.



You must not have been facing a very competent opponent then, since there are plenty of spells he could have used to destroy all of your seraphs and normal troops, thus leaving only your tougher troops to deal with. It's very easy to make units that Seraphs can't hurt, and that can also deal quite well with air queens and the like.


Strategic flying is definitely overpowered.



I've yet to see any kind of convincing argument for this.

[alexti]

The Panther said:
And EVERY SINGLE TIME any one of my three opponents seiged one of my towers, I simply hit him back with a real army composed of my flying pretender, AQs as needed, draconians, hawks, and up to about 20 seraphs and maybe 40-60 archers from many strike forces, which I could fly in from every conceivable direction over amazingly far distances.


You're expected to lose all your seraphs and archers to a competent player in such a battle though...

[Tuidjy]

Cohen said:I'd completely agree with Panther.


Amazingly enough, that does not make Panther completely wrong.

It's phases like 'fastest researching nation', 'draconians, hawks, and up to
about 20 seraphs and maybe 40-60 archers', 'supreme advantage' that do. Whom
was he plaing against? Someone with neither a clue, a long term plan, nor
even superficial knowledge of Caelum's tricks.

One thing's for sure. I have never had a problem with fighting Caelum when I
have played Pythium, Vanheim or C'tis. I hate Jotunheim, but I think that they
would also easily deal with Caelum. Yes, Caelum is among the top nations,
especially if diplomacy is forbidden, but I stopped played them when I
realized how limited they are in the late game. The one time I have fought
a strong Caelum nation with Vanheim, I was winning only one battle in three,
but six turns after the war started, he did not have a castle that could
produce anything... and he had not killed a single mage of mine. Afterward,
a few cold immune Vanadrotts trapezed on top of his province-taking squads,
and he went AI.

Do not get me wrong. On a small map, or with clear teams, I would like to play
Caelum. But on a decent sized map with ten players, I would pick a race with
no glaring weaknesses, and that excludes Caelum.

[The Panther]

alexti said:
You're expected to lose all your seraphs and archers to a competent player in such a battle though...



I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs. 40 false horrors on the second move, then 80 on the third. Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead. Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.

In particular, Ulm had no chance. His smiths always targeted his own troops once the horrors appeared. His best strategy was scripting fire shield on his commanders where he could.

Jontunheim did quite a bit better, simply due to the sheer Lasting power of the infantry plus bane lords. Surprisingly enough, the seraphs frequently switched to frozen heart against the bane lords and Jontun infantry once the script ran out, which was very good.

Arco was a rookie in his second MP game, that much was true. He could have beat me with the astral mind spells which ignore the horrors. But he had too many priests and not enough astrologers.

Still, at most, I can see losing some archers in a big battle. Certainly not 20 seraphs. Especially since Caelum can get false horrors so very quick if they want. Most specific counters take a lot longer to research than Caelum going straight to Alt 6. Also, the seraphs are so incredibly cheap for their power that Caelum will always have more fighting mages than any other race.

I will agree that Caelum becomes somewhat limited late game, but I have not played past about turn 70 in any MP game as yet.

[alexti]

Tuidjy said:
One thing's for sure. I have never had a problem with fighting Caelum when I
have played Pythium, Vanheim or C'tis. I hate Jotunheim, but I think that they
would also easily deal with Caelum.


Not sure, I've played Caelum vs Jotunheim and Jotunheim vs Caelum and every time it was Caelum's advantage. I think there're few contributing factors. Jotunheim's usually decent PD is nearly useless vs Caelum. Those giants have well-developed self-preservation instincts, so they quickly retreat when face false horrors - who knows, one of those horrors may roll triple-6 and hurt somebody. Jotuns don't have cheap mages capable to deal with Caelum's raiders either (except, maybe Utgard). Lighting is bad news for Jotuns, because even when it doesn't kill their giants it cripples them. (For other nations, life expectancy of the troops is not that high and they're easier to replace). Jotuns can't counter Caelum's dominion push either. Despite all said, it's not hopeless to fight Caelum playing Jotunheim, but some other nations could be better. For example, Pangaea. Or Ermor. Or Atlantis.



Tuidjy said:
Yes, Caelum is among the top nations,
especially if diplomacy is forbidden, but I stopped played them when I
realized how limited they are in the late game. The one time I have fought
a strong Caelum nation with Vanheim, I was winning only one battle in three,
but six turns after the war started, he did not have a castle that could
produce anything... and he had not killed a single mage of mine. Afterward,
a few cold immune Vanadrotts trapezed on top of his province-taking squads,
and he went AI.

Do not get me wrong. On a small map, or with clear teams, I would like to play
Caelum. But on a decent sized map with ten players, I would pick a race with
no glaring weaknesses, and that excludes Caelum.


Strength of Caelum in the late game significantly depends on initial planning, with the right plan and pretender Caelum can be pretty good in the late game. But the same probably apply to the most nations. And it comes at the price of somewhat less efficient mid-game.

[Cainehill]

Just to chime in - on the one paw, I'm not sure Caelum is all that overpowered. But on the other, I'm not sure that it's all that limited in the late game, given a well designed pretender. I suspect it's a top-5 nation if not top 3.

False Horror : Overrated, imo - Seraphs using lightning bolt and/or frozen heart are about as effective.

Wrathful Skies - in my first two Caelum games, I haven't used it a single time. Both games I've one of the top two nations, without _ever_ using WS, and both games are post turn-50 now. I even had my pretender killed fairly early in one by a blitch (a B of a glitch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) which he is still crippled from, and in that game, turn 70ish, I haven't even found any good sites - enchantresses are the only recruitable non-nation mages I have. ( Spectres, Lamia Queens, etc, compensate quite well and don't require any luck in finding sites. )

If I hadn't used my somewhat limited charm and tact to manage some diplomacy, I wouldn't be a prime challenger in either game, despite the "huge" benefit of Caelum, and the decent benefit of being a strong intermediate player.

So - given that the game is meant primarily for MP, if all nations are supposed to be 100% equal, Caelum might get tweaked down. Then again, stronger players might let ... newer players have the nations like Caelum, Pythium, Arco, Atlantis and R'lyeh; maybe the Jotuns too and Vanheim. This lets the fresh blood experiment with the mightier nations, and allows the old dogs to prove that nation doesn't count for all that much by crushing them with Ulm and T'ien C'hi. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Something that might be nice, though, would be a game setting tweak that could be used to give a bonus / hindrance to a particular player. Say I get a 10% penalty to research and upkeep, while Cohen gets 20% extra gold, gems and research. Something like that might make mixed games with newbies and pros more interesting.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs.



Rain of stones for Arco and Vanheim. Raise skeletons for C'tis. Howl for Man and Pangaea. Machaka can use all three of these at once. Growing fury if you really are short on mages and need to keep your troops from routing. Acid rain for T'ien C'Hi and Atlantis. Vanadrott's and the like for Vanheim or Tuatha. Devils, devils and more devils for Abysia or Mictlan. Add in fireshielded lightning immune Archdevils and falling fires to clear away false horrows. Astral tempset for anyone with golems.


Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead.



Or vine ogres or mechanical men or living statues.


Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.



You didn't bring storms? Devils will kill your archers on the first turns, then quickly move on your seraphs and other troops. They won't rout either.


In particular, Ulm had no chance. His smiths always targeted his own troops once the horrors appeared. His best strategy was scripting fire shield on his commanders where he could.



Ulm versus the air nations is always uneven. This isn't a particularly good comparison point.


Surprisingly enough, the seraphs frequently switched to frozen heart against the bane lords and Jontun infantry once the script ran out, which was very good.



No, they certainly didn't switch to frozen heart, since bane lords and Jotuns are both immune to cold.


Arco was a rookie in his second MP game, that much was true. He could have beat me with the astral mind spells which ignore the horrors. But he had too many priests and not enough astrologers.



He brought priests to a battle with Caelum. That tells you that the Arco player didn't really have a good grasp of how to defeat Caelum. He'd have been better off throwing around the elemental battlefield magic that arco is good at.


Certainly not 20 seraphs.



How are you planning to defend them against a spell like rain of stones, which is especially devastating against physically weak mages? Or howl, that brings wolves up behind your troops?


Also, the seraphs are so incredibly cheap for their power that Caelum will always have more fighting mages than any other race.



They certainly won't research much faster or have more mages than C'Tis, nor Utgard, nor Machaka.


I will agree that Caelum becomes somewhat limited late game, but I have not played past about turn 70 in any MP game as yet.



Late game is about turn 20-40 onwards, depending on when people have developed magical paths other than what their nation easily provides.

[alexti]

The Panther said:

alexti said:
You're expected to lose all your seraphs and archers to a competent player in such a battle though...



I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs. 40 false horrors on the second move, then 80 on the third. Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead. Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.



How many seraphs are going to live through turn 1? It's pretty hard to defend them. If you're attacking the army that siege your fort, the opponents move first, so you have no chance to defend seraphs at all. Pretty much any mass-destruction will decimate them. If you're defender you have better chances because you can cast some protection spells on your mages first. Though most of them are difficult for Caelum, so pretender needs to be constructed to keep this scenario in mind. Even with that there're few problems. Do you cast global protection or local area? Global protection is costly and harder to cast and enemy's attack may be a fake. If you cast on local area you need to put mages close together which will make them more vulnerable to opponent's local area damage spells. Even if you get it right, enemy may cast some global damage spells, which may not kill seraphs right away, but it may hurt them overtime while killing false horrors en-masse. And if the opponent brings some determined troops (undead, vine men/ogres etc), false horrors don't do any good. Lighting is not very good either vs cheap undead/vine men. Particularly nasty opponent will cast few swarms as well. And opponent has an option of lifting the siege and raining some nasties on your concentrated forces next turn.

So this idea of concentrating all seraphs together seems quite risky. Besides, to be a defender one have to sit with this force in the fortress (which makes it vulnerable to remote mass-destruction spells) and contradicts with raiding plans.

While being one of the top nations, Caelum is not straight-forward to play. They need to branch out their development to have some capable armies that don't rely on seraphs too much. Some kind of balance between defenses and raiding is needed.

[Cainehill]

alexti said:
While being one of the top nations, Caelum is not straight-forward to play. They need to branch out their development to have some capable armies that don't rely on seraphs too much. Some kind of balance between defenses and raiding is needed.



Exactly - same with Pythium and Arco, etc. The top tier nations (for anything but a tiny map blitz, where simple nations like Ulm or New Era Pangaea shine) tend to be complicated and require more thought and strategy.

A little bit of a boost for defense (PD, etc) might be nice to see, likewise a little bit of a nerf for raiders, so that they can't _always_ move before being counterattacked. (Vanheim was a huge PITA in one of my Caelum games; took 10-15 turns to deal with his raiders. Only another 5 or 10 to finish his nation after that though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

[deccan]

Graeme Dice said:
Rain of stones for Arco and Vanheim. Raise skeletons for C'tis. Howl for Man and Pangaea.



Hmm, I was the Jotunheim player Panther referred to. Howl is a good idea. I wish I had thought of it.

I tried some things which I detailed in the Newbie Slugfest thread. Mostly, I've found that having mindless tanks doesn't work too well unless you have good mages able to kill the false horrors / mages. The mindless stuff (vine ogres, skeletons) can actually be killed by false horrors fairly reliably because of the horrors' very good combat stats and ethereality. Making chaff to tank horrors costs gems too while making false horrors doesn't cost any. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif And I've had my mages get scared away by false horrors (even without any horrors attacking them), thus causing the mindless chaff to dissolve.

I also watched some of Ulm's battles. I expected "Blade Wind" to work against the horrors, but they missed most of the time.

How about some more concrete advice? Panther never did need to go there far, but it seems to me that if I ever did build a significant force of mindless stuff, mages, etc., Caelum could just pop in a seraph to cast Wrathful Skies and blow things up. And just how could one defend against an air queen set to cast Wrathful Skies before attacking? *Sigh*

[PDF]

Looks like the thread degenerated into Yet Another "Caelum overpowered" thread http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
From my experience Caelum is unbalanced from turn 6 to at least 50, because of :
- Good cheap mages everywhere
- Mammoths against indies
- Lightning spells quite early, then effective Ghost/False summons
- And ability to shift front in one wing buffet - The same army can take out an enemy army, then fly to another point, make a raid, come back, giving Caelum a power multiplied bu its number of enemies eventually http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

A typical Caelian army is my games is like 12 Seraphs, 30-40 archers, and 20-25 infantry. Archers can take out light troops using Wind Guide (BTW, main use of WG is indeed to give +5 prec to the Seraphs, an exploit IMO), Inf main use is to buy time when the enemy try to get to contact and/or disrupt the archers.
Supply is not a real issue, a simple couple Bags done by Nature A Seraphs, Sage, Druid etc solve it even if fighting in deserts.
A Storm+WS+Air blessing strategy give different layout, but is rarer.
Such an army uses only national standard troop end is possible from turn 15 on, quite before summons become common, and no comparably priced army stands much of a chance against. I've seen TC, Marignon, Ermor, Arco, Machaka all been beaten neatly, even when allied...

There are surely ways to counter Caelum, but the only effective one I've seen is to gangup against in MP. Sure it rebalances things, but not from a design standpoint ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Chazar]

PDF said:
Such an army uses only national standard troop...


Cool! And I always thought people complained about the uselessness of national troops! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[PDF]

Chazar said:

PDF said:
Such an army uses only national standard troop...


Cool! And I always thought people complained about the uselessness of national troops! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Still early game armies have to use national troops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif, and anyway you got to use national mages for all the game.
The trick with Caelum is that this combo is effective, but mostly due to the mages; the main usefullness of the troops is to have chaff, but this on eis flying along the mages ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[alexti]

PDF said:
Looks like the thread degenerated into Yet Another "Caelum overpowered" thread http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
From my experience Caelum is unbalanced from turn 6 to at least 50, because of :
- Good cheap mages everywhere
- Mammoths against indies
- Lightning spells quite early, then effective Ghost/False summons
- And ability to shift front in one wing buffet - The same army can take out an enemy army, then fly to another point, make a raid, come back, giving Caelum a power multiplied bu its number of enemies eventually http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

A typical Caelian army is my games is like 12 Seraphs, 30-40 archers, and 20-25 infantry. Archers can take out light troops using Wind Guide (BTW, main use of WG is indeed to give +5 prec to the Seraphs, an exploit IMO), Inf main use is to buy time when the enemy try to get to contact and/or disrupt the archers.


You're making good points why Caelum is very powerful early on (I may only disagree about Mammoths - too expensive and not reusable), but that advantage won't Last until turn 50. I think it's more like until turn 25-30 (standard research). Nothing good will happen to such army if it gets into the rain of stones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Effectively, enemy's pretender alone can stop this kind of army. And with cloud trapeze available it will mean that such army can not be used in the open anymore. Caelum will still have their superior raiding ability (with lone seraphs), but it brings back the defense problem).

[PDF]

Alexti,
I agree with you, things change when global battlefields spells come into play - in my experience it's rather after turn 40 (but I'm in peaceful Old Europe, so maybe .. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif ).
But when this happens Caelum gets no special drawback - their mages won't survive RoS (does Mistform not protect ?), but neither will most other mages and troops : if Caelians have SG/IC/TC they won't be scratched.
Same goes for most global BF spells, once they're in summons are needed.

[The Panther]

I did not intend for this to be a nerf Caelum post. Sorry about that. Everybody seems happy with Caelum being one of the most powerful races, as I found out in my nerf-Caelum post. So be it.

What I did intend is for the devs (or the folks doing the mods?) to hopefully fix the flying imbalance. Because land troops cannot go over even one friendly province to attack an enemy, flying troops should also be prohibited from doing this too. Ergo - flying is far superior to walking by a much too wide of a margin. Especially the flying SCs, which is a huge problem for nearly all races.

For the Dice man: you are correct. My frozen heart was how I killed the Ulm Black Knights, not the giants. I remember this now, watching the knights frozen in place while they died. It sure all runs together after a while!

[archaeolept]

well, look - technically this thread is about Zen's conceptual balance mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

now, the mod does not address flying, whether or not flying is overpowered. But the caelum problem resides in a combination of synergistic effects: flying + false horrors + wrath, for the most part (exceptionally cheap mages, able to easily get by w/ the watchtowers and sloth-3, also). Zen's mod at least cuts out false horror spam and makes wrathful skies more difficult to cast. both of these, in and of themselves, help balance out the problems. (the scale mod should also end up making caelum pay a bit more for taking sloth -3 as well).