Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00

[quantum_mechani]

After a lot of tinkering and testing, CB finally seems to be approaching the level of polish of it's Dom2 version. Many of the changes from 0.92 and other early beta versions have been reworked, though the only major change people who have been following the recent beta versions will notice is the addition of the readme.

[quantum_mechani]

Here is the mod split into sections (scales, items, etc.).

[Wauthan]

Thanks for sharing this mod Quantum mechani. It has obviously taken a lot of time to create, considering the immense scope and the subtle alterations to balance. I especially like the changes you've made to the spells.

I'm a bit curious about your motivation though. Some of the alterations are so subtle that I wonder why you made them at all? I assume that you've drawn a lot of inspiration from earlier rebalancing mods, since I sort of recognise bits and pieces from dom2 discussions. But what was your own reason for making this mod?

[quantum_mechani]

Wauthan said:
I'm a bit curious about your motivation though. Some of the alterations are so subtle that I wonder why you made them at all? I assume that you've drawn a lot of inspiration from earlier rebalancing mods, since I sort of recognise bits and pieces from dom2 discussions. But what was your own reason for making this mod?

The goal of the mod is very simple, to try and create as wide a variety of viable strategic choices as possible. Some of the changes are indeed so minor it is not clear they will have a very large effect by themselves, but since I believe they are all in the direction of balance my hope is they will have a cumulative impact.

[bgqsl]

Some GE so imbalanced,like Gift of Nature's Bounty,it gives a total income bonus 150%--200%,makes 100 gold become
250-300,a fire gem just worth 15 gold,think about it.I think that kind of GE should have a maximum value of 50%.
Also some spells so nasty,like master enslave,with this spell,AI can never have a chance to win,you can give you
god >15 lvl astral magic to cast it,it just can control
almost all you enemy's army...

[quantum_mechani]

There are so many options that leave the AI with almost no chance to win, I'd have to remove a good percentage of all spells, items, and sacred units just to make a dent. The speels you mention actually rate rather low, they are almost never key MP spells. I can tell you though, the AI does perform a bit better in CB than base game, since things like shades and light cavalry aren't just throwing gold/gems down the drain.

[Turin]

I disliked quantum´s earlier dom3 cbc versions, but looking over this one it seems like it is a true successor to the dom2 cbc mod.

The focus is back on improving things that are worthless/not costeffective in the base game and quantum´s understanding of the game mechanics is so good, so that nothing seems particularly imbalanced.

Of course I haven´t been able to test all the aspects of the mod, since it is an absolutely massive mod, but this version is really worth a download and will enrich the dom3 experience.

[bgqsl]

I just can play single player game,and 3.04 version isn't
that stable,it crushs a lot,i don't think it's a good idea
to play mp games.Think for a strategic game,u can base all
u stratage on a single spells VS ai,that means it's not a
successful game,and that spells just trashed the game,and
dom3 have more than one that kind of spells...

I think cb mod can do a lot about that,not just for MP,but
for Single as well.Now the fact is,even the impossible AI
sucks,u can beat them without any problems,there is nothing
interesting left when u palying at middle time,not even a
little challenge,i say i will give up that kind of game...

So dom3 is a good game,but it's not good enough to become
a classic game,there really have many things can improved..
i think that kind of post should post at other place,but i
post here,just hope that CB mod can do a better job...

[calmon]

bgqsl said:
I just can play single player game,and 3.04 version isn't
that stable,it crushs a lot,i don't think it's a good idea
to play mp games.Think for a strategic game,u can base all
u stratage on a single spells VS ai,that means it's not a
successful game,and that spells just trashed the game,and
dom3 have more than one that kind of spells...



As far i understand johan, 3.04 is only not stable if you use a cracked version of the game instead of buying it.

My version of 3.04 works very stable.

[Horst F. JENS]

Thanks quantum_mechani !
Gone are the days of playing dom3 unmodded :-)
I added an Cocetual Balance Mod link to the start page of the dom3 wiki:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening

[Jack_Trowell]

Edit : sorry , answered to wrong thread

[Morkilus]

bgqsl said:

I think cb mod can do a lot about that,not just for MP,but
for Single as well.Now the fact is,even the impossible AI
sucks,u can beat them without any problems,there is nothing
interesting left when u palying at middle time,not even a
little challenge,i say i will give up that kind of game...




Maybe you should divert some of the time you spend owning the AI to improving your grammar? I believe the CB mod's main purpose was for improving the multiplayer experience; if you need something to improve your AI battles, there are several other things to try. There are custom maps with preset indies and AI setups where they are allied and at an extreme advantage.

[KissBlade]

QM, TC MA still sucks. =(

[Morkilus]

Anyone looking to start a new game with the new version of the mod? I'm thinking LA at the moment.

[Horst F. JENS]

Morkilus:
as long as it is not too fast (>1day/turn) i'm interested..

[Manuk]

i've seen auspex lvl 4 playing with CB mod in a blitz but it's not mentioned in this text file.

[quantum_mechani]

Manuk said:
i've seen auspex lvl 4 playing with CB mod in a blitz but it's not mentioned in this text file.

Are you sure that's 1.00? That sounds like one of the beta bugs.

[Beorne]

Vanheim doesen't seem nerfed enough ...

[quantum_mechani]

That could well be, but I think more discussion/testing/consensus is required before I would up the nerf any more.

[Beorne]

In the main forum there has been a very long discussion about it ....
I'd like to re-allow Vennhein in my games, now it is simply not possible.

[quantum_mechani]

In the main forum there has been a lot of discussion about them being overpowered base game, much of which I completely agree with. I have not, however, seen a lot of discussion of their power in CB, following some direct as well as indirect nerfs.

[PashaDawg]

Good news!

The latest patch indeed fixes the bug that crashed the game if your mod was enabled. Yay. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Pasha

[Turin]

So we are clear to #clear? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[PashaDawg]

I hope so!

[KissBlade]

Hey qm, I think Van's are a bit too expensive right now. I know you're wary of the dual blessed vans but 110 IMO is too much. It pretty much axed the unit along with the fact that the rebalancing of the scales, indirectly balances the Van's a bit. Maybe 90 is a bit fairer price?

[calmon]

From the post above:

"Vanheim doesen't seem nerfed enough ... "

Seems there are very different oppinions here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Huzurdaddi]

It will be interesting to see how far you have to go to make the human pretenders a solid choice in MP.

[Sombre]

Edi made an excellent point in another thread that EA ulm warriors are very underpowered - they don't have very good ambi and they're using fairly long weapons so they end up making attacks at about 7 or 8 skill.

I'm going to try out this mod and I might update the modlist to consider whether nations are balanced to work with the CBM.

If I like the changes you've made I'll probably make versions of my own two nations (and maybe more) which fit the general balance scheme. Is there anywhere that I can see a summary of the kind of changes you've made? For example "cavalry generally made more useful, indy commanders made more expensive etc" ?

[KissBlade]

There's a read me that comes with the file. =) Also, there has been some debate and there is a strong chance that the chance to the raising of levels to the magic boosters will come down. Yay!

[Sombre]

I looked in the readme and there's a massive and detailed list of every single change,.. yes,.. which is very useful I'm sure. But what would be even more useful for people who haven't been part of the CBM debate would be a summary of the major sweeping changes and a brief rationale for them.

For example, "Indy commanders have all had their prices raised. This is to encourage use of national commanders" or "The resource costs of a great many types of weapon and armor have been increased making resources and castles more important generally" or whatever (I haven't played the mod yet so I don't know, that's just an example). If there was a summary of the broad changes like that it would certainly help people out. It would also help nation makers balance their mods to fit with CBM (as would a rough guide of balance - such as generally light infantry cost 8, heavies cost 10, elite humans 15 etc, base commanders cost 30 not 40, or whatever).

I just think it would be very useful to know the philosophy behind it all (a little more than just "to improve balance") as well as the specifics.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I really agree with Sombre here. I downloaded the mod, scanned the readme, and for the moment gave up. I'd still consider playing with it, but it would be really nice to have a general idea of what the mod's changed.

[Morkilus]

I've been following and using these mods for a while, though I'm not considered a very "hardcore" player. I could work something up and have QM look at it, since I know he's pretty busy. Is anyone else working on something like this, or should I go ahead and start writing?

[Edi]

Go on ahead. I was the one who did the original readme files for the Dom2 CB mod series, but I've got my hands full with the bug thread management at the moment and I still haven't gotten around to updating Faerun 283 and 424 for Dom3.

Never mind actually playing the game...

Edi

[Sombre]

Any progress on some sort of rationale/guide to changes?

[Wish]

am I the only one who thinks the demon bane should have 2x damage vs demons?

[mivayan]

Wish said:
am I the only one who thinks the demon bane should have 2x damage vs demons?


Is my manual wrong to say it already does that, or was it removed in cb?

[Edi]

It does have that, but when you look at the actual items with special damage properties, it does not show them in the item description. It DOES show them in the weapon properties when you equip the item.

[StrictlyRockers]

Does it do double damage or not?

[Edi]

In the vanilla game, yes it does. The weapon properties window is the determining factor, not the item description window display.

[Blitz]

Nice mod. I play with it all the time, though I do have a couple of nitpicks. The Dagon has seemingly been "nerfed" to put a crimp on awake SC/W9 bless mictan. Sadly, LA Atlantis feels this the most, as their weak heavy infantry mourns the loss. Previously it was possible to take a W9 awake Dagon without negative scales, now it is not. The combination of a rapid expansion pretender and W9 bless troops from turn 1 made LA Atlantis playable.

Other than that.... I was sad to see you make MA Ermor's Thamaturgs into H2 priests. I didn't think they were ungodly overpowered, and very few things in your mod were actually nerfed.

[quantum_mechani]

You're right that LE Mictlan was the main reason for the Dagon nerf. However, I think he is hardly a shabby pretender now, a great turn 2 expander with good prot, fear, and easy-to-acquire-awe, and the slots to keep him relevant later in the game. And besides he has the bit in the description about weak magic.

With the thoumaturgs, the problem was that their crazy levels of reanimation were (together with the great sacred troops) making the nation the juggernaut of ME, and greatly marginalizing the nation's normal national troops. The grand thoumaturgs actually weren't so bad as they were, being capital only, but the ones recruitable everywhere could just be scaled to insane levels. Providing troops, research, and great magic support (with nether darts) you could make a formidable nation even with no other recruitable unit. I probably would have left the grand ones as they were, but it I didn't want to leave a weird gap in available priest levels.

As for the change summary doc, I don't think I'll have time to work on it any time soon, but Mork did show me a preliminary version of one he made, so he might be working on it.

Oh, and yes, the demon bane works as Edi says in both base and CB.

[Sombre]

Then I'm rooting for Mork ;]

[Blitz]

You're right that LE Mictlan was the main reason for the Dagon nerf. However, I think he is hardly a shabby pretender now, a great turn 2 expander with good prot, fear, and easy-to-acquire-awe, and the slots to keep him relevant later in the game.



Better to simply remove him from MIctan then IMO, as LA Atlantis cannot pay an extra 64 points and remain competitive. While there are other pretender choices, the Dagon is clearly the best W9 chassis for this nation, and as stated before, LA Atlantis... with no heroes to speak of, poor national troops outside the reasonably useful Arssartut, and basicly two-path magic. One of these paths is water, arguably the least-useful... and the other is death, with which LA Atlantis starts with only 1 per turn for a total of 4 gems. OVerall, this is a fairly weak nation with three things going for it... amphibiousness, some nice high-damage sacreds and free design points from a cold scale. Nerfing their best pretender takes too much away from an already questionably balanced nation.


With the thoumaturgs, the problem was that their crazy levels of reanimation were (together with the great sacred troops) making the nation the juggernaut of ME, and greatly marginalizing the nation's normal national troops. The grand thoumaturgs actually weren't so bad as they were, being capital only, but the ones recruitable everywhere could just be scaled to insane levels. Providing troops, research, and great magic support (with nether darts) you could make a formidable nation even with no other recruitable unit. I probably would have left the grand ones as they were, but it I didn't want to leave a weird gap in available priest levels.



Perhaps I haven't seen the same level of Thamaturg abuse that you have, although I do feel that the transition from national troops to summons is a natural progression. If you disagree, I suggest you at least restore the power of the Grand Thamaturgs, as they are now quite a bit less useful in the early game, without their very useful smite vs knights and such while expanding.

I've restored the Grand Thamaturg and Dagon for single-player, and hope you will do the same to your mod so I won't be unhappy playing them in MP anymore. We use your mod, it's exceptional.

[quantum_mechani]

Blitz said:

You're right that LE Mictlan was the main reason for the Dagon nerf. However, I think he is hardly a shabby pretender now, a great turn 2 expander with good prot, fear, and easy-to-acquire-awe, and the slots to keep him relevant later in the game.



Better to simply remove him from MIctan then IMO, as LA Atlantis cannot pay an extra 64 points and remain competitive. While there are other pretender choices, the Dagon is clearly the best W9 chassis for this nation, and as stated before, LA Atlantis... with no heroes to speak of, poor national troops outside the reasonably useful Arssartut, and basicly two-path magic. One of these paths is water, arguably the least-useful... and the other is death, with which LA Atlantis starts with only 1 per turn for a total of 4 gems. OVerall, this is a fairly weak nation with three things going for it... amphibiousness, some nice high-damage sacreds and free design points from a cold scale. Nerfing their best pretender takes too much away from an already questionably balanced nation.


With the thoumaturgs, the problem was that their crazy levels of reanimation were (together with the great sacred troops) making the nation the juggernaut of ME, and greatly marginalizing the nation's normal national troops. The grand thoumaturgs actually weren't so bad as they were, being capital only, but the ones recruitable everywhere could just be scaled to insane levels. Providing troops, research, and great magic support (with nether darts) you could make a formidable nation even with no other recruitable unit. I probably would have left the grand ones as they were, but it I didn't want to leave a weird gap in available priest levels.



Perhaps I haven't seen the same level of Thamaturg abuse that you have, although I do feel that the transition from national troops to summons is a natural progression. If you disagree, I suggest you at least restore the power of the Grand Thamaturgs, as they are now quite a bit less useful in the early game, without their very useful smite vs knights and such while expanding.

I've restored the Grand Thamaturg and Dagon for single-player, and hope you will do the same to your mod so I won't be unhappy playing them in MP anymore. We use your mod, it's exceptional.


Both of your solutions seem fine balance-wise, I'm just not convinced that they would be thematic. The Dagon I feel especially adds spice to LE Mictlan. And I can't say I agree too much about LE Atlantis being so weak. I find the national units decent, and the best mages very durable and potent battle mages, Water may not be the best path, but it's not that bad either. At level 3 and above it is quite useful in battle with falling frost, and there things to spend gems on all thorough the game; winter wolves and claymen early, water queens later on, and very long term murdering winter. And all that aside, if I wanted to water bless them my choice would probably be an imprisoned son of the sea.

For the thoumaturgs... I suppose a solution might to make the lesser thoumaturgs capital only too, and give the cultist some death magic, then I could put the grands back as they were. However, I have a feeling people would overall find this approach even more annoying.

Anyway, I do appreciate the input, it's the kind of thing that really does help polish the mod.

[Blitz]

And I can't say I agree too much about LE Atlantis being so weak. I find the national units decent, and the best mages very durable and potent battle mages



I hate to semi-hijack your mod thread with individial nation balance discussions, but I may as well inject my thoughts regarding LA Atlantis anyway. Their Angakoks are good mages, with up to 3 levels of death and falling frost, but that is about where their usefulness ends. They cannot forge anything terribly useful with their 2 off picks except the odd feather or black steel item. Not having astral on the random list hurts a lot. No amulet of antimagic, no medallion of faith, no nether darts. You can get astral off of indies fairly easily, but the gem income will be slow and it comes later in the game. The Tungaliks, at WDH are frankly a terrible mage, for the most part good only as a researcher. They can lead 40 units, build temples and labs, and are cheap on research, but for 130 gold they are only used by default. Compared to other LA nation's secondary mages, they are easily overshadowed. Really only LA C'Tis's 120g Keeper of the Tombs is as poor, while LA nations such as Jotunheim get Seithkonas (NSD, 90 gold), Vamhiem get Volvas (SS, 120g) and Galdermen (AA?? 210g). These two are good examples because both are LA nations with free cold picks, and both have both better national troops and better secondary magic.

Blessings seem a no-brainer with LA Atlantis, as their sacreds (25g, 10 resources) are ideal for sloth. Additionally, Atlantis can take an extra cold pick and react well to a death scale for a total of 360 design points. Not using a bless strategy makes the sloth strategy much less appealing, as you will almost surely be forced to take order to support your high-resouece cost units. A strategy of massed mournfuls is possible, and can work under sloth, but as they are not resistant to cold, they are often taken out by the Angakok's falling frost, powered by their 8 precision of suckage. Additionally, neither the mournful or Arssartut have a shield, leaving the Ice warrior and Ice guard at 37 and 39 resources a pop respectively as the only LA Atlantis units with them. As an interesting side note, the Mournful's sprite has a shield, but the unit itself has only a halberd.

To wrap all this up, LA Atlantis is a good challenge. It can be an exceptionally powerful nation if it is allowed to control the seas... which it often can with only R'yleh (and ermor) as a challenge in the Era. Unfortunately, like Caelum, the heavy resource cost of it's best infantry units is a huge problem throughout the game. Unlike Caelum, LA Atlantis have 10-resource sacreds and the Dagon as a potential awake, awe-9, W9 trampler. This redeeming feature IMO was critical to the limited success I have had with them in MP.

[KissBlade]

You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.

[Sombre]

Just a random point - the blowpipe doesn't get the precision bonus because in the .dm it has #prec 2 instead of #att 2.

I just downloaded the individaul bits version of CB and I'm going to try it out a bit. I think the scales and maybe the spells will be my first port of call.

[Sombre]

Oh and one other thing - does someone have a list of all the new idnumbers used for sites, weapons, armor, monsters, nametypes etc? I could look it all up and write a list myself, but that would be somewhat pointless if one of you has this lying around.

It would help a lot with making CBM compatible mods.

[Blitz]

KissBlade said:
You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.



Angakoks are great, falling fires + skelle spam is good times, but Tungalisks? They can't cast anything of any importance except your ghost grip/frozen heart, (and frozen heart is level 6 alteration... a path not otherwise useful (except drain life which you cannot natively cast, and quickness, which comes very early). They also can't forge a damn thing either. About the only thing of importance that they can do is research and Dark Knowledge. Aside from the aforementioned Keeper of the Tombs, I challenge you to find a secondary mage from LA who is even close to as bad.

Ulm - Fortune Teller
Arcoscephale - Mystic
Man - Magister (this guy ain't that great either, but in a drain faction)
Ermor - Spectator
Marignion - Royal Navigator
Mictan - Take your pick
T'ien Ch'i - Choice of 4 better ones
Jomon - Shugenja + two main mages
Argathea - Servant of the Oracles (not amazing either, but at least it can forge and cast some national summon rituals)
Abyssa - Warlock Apprentice
Caelum - Caelian Seraph (prob the best 100-150g mage in the game, unless perhaps it's the Harab Seraph (145g, AD(AWED)
C'tis - Keeper of the Tombs (bad)
Pangaea - Black Dryad (not great, but they do get their choice of DDNNN or EENNN main mages, plus two rather weak dryads)
Midgard - Volva (A+)
Patala - Two 250g mages, plus a 160g Guru and a nice communion slave in the Yogi
R'lyeh - Star Child, Star Spawn

Only Man (drain nation), C'Tis (reanimator nation), and Pangaea (two 5 path mages, plus stronger nationals) have secondaries that are as poor as LA Atlantis. With that said, I'm a fan of these guys, especially the sailing and the amphibious nature. They can be a pretty big pain in the ***, tho I think their gimmicks are often not enough to make them a player in LA.

[Sombre]

I couldn't be bothered to wait to be told there's no ID usage list for the mod, so I went ahead and made one. After all, if you want something done,....


Counterbalance complete 1.00, new slots used up:

----Weapon slots used: 659, 708-10, 751-5, 768, 769
----Armour slots used: 252-264
----Monster slots used: 2851, 2877, 2888, 2890-2892
----Site slots used: 890

Despite the weird spreading around of monster numbers and weapons, this is actually compatible with quite a few things. Most importantly, Worthy Heroes. It's also 99% compatible with the Late modcombo 1 I posted, although those mod nations are balanced for use with vanilla, not CBM.

I still plan to make CBM versions of Ulm Reborn, Vaettihiem SE and Zepath's 4 late nations,... but I'm wondering if people are interested in seeing that or not, since most CBM users play strictly multiplayer and mods don't seem at all popular in MP games.

[Blitz]

Another issue that has arisen for me... this time with Marignion, and honestly all cavalry. The Royal Guard is so far superior to the infantry units that marignion has to offer now so as to render them almost completely obsolete. While not exactly Vans, the Royal Guard massed and backed with crossbows is fearsome. With the production costs lowered to half of what they were before on both gold and resources, there is no reason to build anything other than crossbows and these broadsword cavalry.

[Sombre]

Yeah it seems all cavalry in CBM was improved. This has resulted in heavy cav, which I thought was powerful enough already, becoming absolute monsters.

Of course light cav is now useful, which is a good thing.

[Morkilus]

Here's my overview and summary of the mod; to be edited and hopefully distributed with the ReadMe if QM desires in the next version.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats one of the better explanations of CB that Ive seen.

[quantum_mechani]

It's a very good summary, I don't quite agree with some of the explanations, but a slightly edited version will be in the next release for sure.

On heavy cavalry, I agree they were good base game, but they were very uneconomical to mass. So naturally the indies that have them are tough, but as far as the player recruiting them it was rarely if ever viable. Mostly because of the huge barding costs with no in-game effect.

I agree that Marignon basically only needs one kind of melee troop to go with crossbows, but I disagree that the royal guard is the obvious choice. One problem with heavy cavalry is that it tends to be significantly more vulnerable to battle magic than infantry because of the high gold density on a square, and easier to hit with single effect spells. In any case, it's certainly an improvement over base game where you pretty much only needed crossbows. That said, it's quite possible they need some price tweaking, but so far I haven't seen an eruption of heavy cavalry armies in CB games.

[Boron]

The Royal Guard Cav seems balanced to me now, but the marignon infantry seems now a bit too weak, mainly because of the high resourcecosts.

I think it would be fair to reduce their resourcecosts 20-30% too.
Then you would get 2 infantry or 1 royal guard.
Would seem fair, the 2 infantry would be slightly cheaper regarding gold costs and overall also be slightly more powerful compared to the royal guard probably, but have the mobility disadvantage.

Because i only share QMs opinion about battlemagic in the last post to some degree. My reason for that is that the Royal Guards have 23 AP, the infantries only 9-10.
So they are exposed to enemy artillery spells before they can do damage for a shorter while, usually only 1 turn before they engage in melee with the enemy troops.
Then the enemy troops might also get hit hurt by friendly fire battlemagic.

And if they survive they are fast enough to kill some mages if the enemy army routs whereas the infantry is too slow so they only rarely kill fleeing mages.

[Cainehill]

I've a quick question - was it intentional to add a spell, "Summon Spectral Infantry" to Early Abyssia, that none of the national mages can cast without empowering them? Fire and Death is fine and all, but I thought there was some consensus that national spells should be castable by national mages, and _none_ of EA Aby's mages can ever cast it - not even a 10% or 2.5% chance of it.

[Sombre]

They have a hero (smoulderghost dude) that can do it, I believe.

Also note that without empowering etc LA Ulm can't get its vampire counts.

[BandarLover]

If I remember right, Early Age Yomi has the same problem. Few (if any) of their national mages have the path requirements for their national spells.

[quantum_mechani]

Cainehill said:

I've a quick question - was it intentional to add a spell, "Summon Spectral Infantry" to Early Abyssia, that none of the national mages can cast without empowering them? Fire and Death is fine and all, but I thought there was some consensus that national spells should be castable by national mages, and _none_ of EA Aby's mages can ever cast it - not even a 10% or 2.5% chance of it.

Yes it was intentional... but it was also IW's doing not CB. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

That said, as Sombre says, if you have worthy heroes running too there is a pretty good chance of getting a fire/death hero.