Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[quantum_mechani]

This version is coming out a little early (some games are waiting for it) so an up to date readme and a split version of the mod will be along later. The change log posted here is fairly complete though, so combined with the old readme there shouldn't be any problems.

General changes:

*Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items.

*Lord of Corruption stealth boosted.

*Midget Masher revamped: now does AOE 1 damage but needs lots of strength to work at all.

*Dancing trident 2a to forge -> 1a.

*Serpent king given more dominion.

*Great warlock given astral magic.

*Vampire queen got another -10 to new path cost.

*Gorgon 150 points.

*Herald lance cheaper.

*Tartarians -25% hp.

*The Sharpest Tooth, Percival the Pocket Knight, Holger the Head, Fenris' Pelt, Trident From Beyond, Carcator the Pocket Lich, Jade Mask all cheaper/easier to forge.

*Claymen 5 gems -> 3 gems.

*Hidden in Sand, Hidden in Snow cheaper again (this is partly due to trying to give water gems better value, and make earth help earth summons having trouble even with bloodstones involved).

*Naiad Warriors cheaper (this is also related to the clam change, the aim is to make them not just an OK deal but a great deal to help fill the void).

*Burnsaber's underwater mod water breathing item changes adopted (breathing items drastically cheaper).

*Juggernauts got awe.

*Many heroes given special weapons (either named after the hero or called hero's spear/morningstar/etc.), which are magic and most also have a bonus vs larger beings.

*Many heroes improved by autocasting personal luck in battle, you can tell they get the luck in battle if they have one of the weapons mentioned above.

*New forgable item added: Hero's Blade, 2e, const level 2 to forge. Mostly similar to sword of sharpness except on hit it does 15 extra ap damage to most enemies, and 45 ap to larger enemies.

*Treelords generate vine men instead of nature gems.

*Bell of Cleansing takes 2w, research 6.

*Umbrals cost 3 gems and are back at research level 5.

*Dragons and dragon scale mail got +2 protection value.

National Balance:

*Sounder of Boars, Sloth of Bears, Pack of Wolves, and Ambush of Tigers (one of the spells, the other one can't be accessed with mod commands) all research 0.

*MA Agartha got crossbows, capital only stone hurlers, a 10% random on golemcrafters, and lower research level on enchantment summons.

*EA and MA Agartha oracles 50 gold cheaper.

*Pans, Pandemonics, Panic Apostles and Capricorns all cheaper.

*Centaur archers 25 gold -> 22 gold.

*MA Oceania now gets mermages in coastal forts, and Capricorns only lose 1w when out of water.

*EA Atlantis coral priests now have a chance at magic, mages of the deep are cheaper, basalt pillars improved, and given a starting fort with more admin.

*Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold (given the bug with them is unlikely to be fixed).

*MA man crones got improved randoms, cheaper knights of avalon, wardens and lord wardens everywhere.

*LA Bogarus Khlysts and Skopets cheaper.

*LA C'tis tomb wyrms got fear, grave consort slightly cheaper.

*Marverni druids 40 gold cheaper and cheaper boar warriors, board lord got 1 holy level.

*C'tis priest kings cheaper.'

*Tiger Riders, Wind Riders and Black Hunters cheaper.

*Kailasa capital only mages cheaper, and all sacred troops -5 gold.

*EA Arco engineer recruitable everywhere, mage engineer better at sieging.

*Niefel Jarl, Baal, Adon, Talmai Elder and Melquart increased prices.

Bug fixes:

*Chi shoes attack now a bonus weapon.

*Ry'leh hybrid trooper with -4 from two weapons got ambidex.

*Shade beast price fixed.

*Farm of plenty removed from game (it is bugged and has no effect).

*Thrown boulders have 5 ammo (it was an unintended nerf that they were 2 ammo last version).

[P3D]

Now MA Man will be interesting to play with for sure. Sacred recruitable everywhere stealth troops, ouchie.

Kailasa now have more affordable sacreds. Less Ghandarvas, and reason to recruit monkeys at all.

MA Agartha Golem Crafters should get the random at 25-50% not at 10%.

[Trumanator]

Very nice, many thanks to qm!

[kianduatha]

Very nice job. I'm kinda terrified by the MA Agartha changes though, just because there were so many. I know the blood stone change nerfed them a fair amount, but there's so much going on here I can't help but think it's an overcompensation.

Mostly I'm afraid of the Golem Crafter random--giving them critical mass in fire and water is pretty good. You get even better sitesearching, rune smashers with a water bracelet, and staffs of corrosion, as well as the standard evocations. Native astral access is another beast entirely. One booster and your astral forging is self sustaining; You get Gift of the Heavens, ethereal crossbows, and mind hunt immunity. Even better, you don't have to desperately rush for specters/hidden in sand to defend yourself.

Add on top of that the reduced level and cost of your statues, plus umbrals down to level 5 again, and it seems like you have an absolute powerhouse.

All that being said, the earthstone nerf is pretty major; we'll see how things pan out. And if all those buffs turn out to be justified...what about Ulm? What does it get to compensate?

[Trumanator]

I just can't wait to mass LA C'tis tomb wyrms now :D

[Squirrelloid]

wow, a sacred serpent chassis (admittedly undead) that might actually be playable as a sacred? Inconceivable!

[Sombre]

No compensatory earth booster? Interesting. Earth as a path just got a bit weaker. So did astral, arguably.

[rtyffg]

These lines in LA Pan seem to be a typo as it makes them cost 330g (more then MA version):
-Panii
#selectmonster 706
%gcost 300
#end

[llamabeast]

Looks awesome, thanks QM!

I don't suppose you squeezed Mark of the Champion in there did you?

[Zeldor]

Did you fix/add stuff you forgot in beta version? As it's surely not in the readme.

[Kuritza]

Sigh. Bye, CM, hello again, vanilla. :(

[Jazzepi]

I'm still a bit wary of the clams being made unique items. I'd rather just see them made more expensive so that the return on investment is slower.

Otherwise a good update.

Could you provide a version were the clams aren't completely removed from the game and just nerfed instead?

Jazzepi

[chrispedersen]

changing the clams itself is trivial jazz.. but it begs a lot of other questions.

Bloodstones were nerfed - do you want them fixed too?
Naiad warriors were made dirt cheap as compensation... include the compensation or no....

[Trumanator]

Sigh. Bye, CM, hello again, vanilla. :(

Thats too bad, but if you still want to use it in SP you could always take out the gemgen part. Though MP might be more difficult, you can still start a game with your rules!

[Kuritza]

Heck, I dont even know.
Vanilla - back to useless Titans and overpriced rainbows. CBM - 'bang them hard with lotsa troops' as the only endgame strategy; nations with weak troops start weak and end up even weaker. Grim choice. I really hope this change will be undone in future updates, as boosters price hike before.

[Trumanator]

Its not like you can't use summons? You just don't get to have ridiculous numbers of rituals/forging/whatever.

[Fantomen]

@Kuritza: Wait and see a few games with this mod. I dont think the endgame will turn out that way, rather that we´ll see some new interesting strategies rise from the gutter.

Sure, I´m worried about balance too. Mostly that blood nations will get more dominant now as they are the other way to get obscene levels of "gems", but we´ll see.

[Kuritza]

Yea, you will be able to summon and forge. Just not enough to make difference, if you play as an underdog against a powerhouse.
Oh, and Astral Nexus will be even more imbalanced than it is now, because with your tiny gem income you will never ever come close to dispelling / replacing it.

New strategies wont arise out of *lack* of something. Heavy nerf of summons will make national troops more powerful and controlling territories with magic sites more important. This is the goal of this nerf, as far as I understand.

But then, your neighbour you just defeated in a decisive battle will turtle in his castles, sending black minions with bane venom charms everywhere (calling it 'fighting till the bitter end'), while somebody else will just go AI letting others claim their lands easily. I bet it sounds all-too-familiar. That other lucky dude, having suffered much less casualties and reaping much tastier reward, will continue to grow, while you will fall behind - and there will be no other resources to draw upon, just land and magic sites.

Or take LA Ermor and LA Rlyeh, for example. They get thousands of troops for free; at the moment you can try to use summons and SCs against them. Remove gemgens, and its your laughable recruitable troops against their endless hordes. Right, you might have one or two SCs, but so will they. Game over?

As for 'compensation'... Naiad warriors made cheaper? Oh please.

But in the end, its not my decision to make. I just stated my point - perhaps enough people will agree, and some consensus will be made (like two separate mods, which I'd love). Perhaps not - then I'm just wrong and should join vanilla games instead.

[Squirrelloid]

Yea, you will be able to summon and forge. Just not enough to make difference, if you play as an underdog against a powerhouse.
Oh, and Astral Nexus will be even more imbalanced than it is now, because with your tiny gem income you will never ever come close to dispelling / replacing it.

Their tiny gem income put it up, and they had to pass 150s benchmark to do so. Certainly your similarly tiny gem income can afford the 30s for dispelling + whatever boost you feel is appropriate - that's like a 1:5 advantage in your favor!


New strategies wont arise out of *lack* of something. Heavy nerf of summons will make national troops more powerful and controlling territories with magic sites more important. This is the goal of this nerf, as far as I understand.

But then, your neighbour you just defeated in a decisive battle will turtle in his castles, sending black minions with bane venom charms everywhere (calling it 'fighting till the bitter end'), while somebody else will just go AI letting others claim their lands easily. I bet it sounds all-too-familiar. That other lucky dude, having suffered much less casualties and reaping much tastier reward, will continue to grow, while you will fall behind - and there will be no other resources to draw upon, just land and magic sites.

and... what stops that from happening now? I mean, even now with gemgens the same stuff happens, and your opposite is surely clamming/bloodstoning/fetishing just as hard as you are. There's no difference in comparative advantage here.


Or take LA Ermor and LA Rlyeh, for example. They get thousands of troops for free; at the moment you can try to use summons and SCs against them. Remove gemgens, and its your laughable recruitable troops against their endless hordes. Right, you might have one or two SCs, but so will they. Game over?

Troops which are just so much chaff... Surely any LA nation can do something about those with national recruits. Strategic and tactical use of your mages may also be more important in such a scenario.

How did they not end up with just as many SCs as you before, as well? I mean, Rlyeh gets a great clamming mage on an N random, so its not like they're going to lack for clams. Ermor has great access to death magic for all that crazy death thugging/SCing without alchemizing. I'm just not seeing how lack of gem gens means you no longer have an SC advantage against them.

---------

Its not that I necessarily agree with removal of gem gens, but I don't think it has the consequences you do, because everyone is affected equally. This means equal reduction in the number of SCs on both sides, assuming the two sides are actually evenly matched. (Otherwise, the stronger side should still tend to defeat the weaker side if they fight straight-up).

[Kuritza]

Their tiny gem income put it up, and they had to pass 150s benchmark to do so. Certainly your similarly tiny gem income can afford the 30s for dispelling + whatever boost you feel is appropriate - that's like a 1:5 advantage in your favor!

Even if you have stored 100+ astral to dispel Nexus immediately, which doesnt happen all the time, he will just cast it again next turn. Did you ever cast Nexus in an intense MP game? Its 200+ astral pearls per turn.

and... what stops that from happening now? I mean, even now with gemgens the same stuff happens, and your opposite is surely clamming/bloodstoning/fetishing just as hard as you are. There's no difference in comparative advantage here.

Of course there is a huge difference. No gemgens rule makes land much more important, which makes any gap wider. I think its too obvious to explain in detail.
Also, there's a fat chance that other dude didnt even start clamming yet. Imagine that its Mictlan. He can rush like no tomorrow, but he cant start clamming out of the box.

Troops which are just so much chaff... Surely any LA nation can do something about those with national recruits. Strategic and tactical use of your mages may also be more important in such a scenario.

Say again? Ermor troops are useless chaff? With natonal unholy blessing? Really? Thousand of longdead legionaires with 16+ attack and high MR anyone? With darkness? Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre, anyone?
Rlyeh spawn is useless chaff? Void creatures, tramplers, huh? Not to mention that Rlyeh also has recriutable troops to support this chaff, which happen to be identical to MA RLyeh troops. And MA RLyeh is a very solid nation.

So yes, surely and LA nation can do something about these with just national recruits, which is why even with gemgens these two nations won most games so far.


How did they not end up with just as many SCs as you before, as well? I mean, Rlyeh gets a great clamming mage on an N random, so its not like they're going to lack for clams. Ermor has great access to death magic for all that crazy death thugging/SCing without alchemizing. I'm just not seeing how lack of gem gens means you no longer have an SC advantage against them.

Ermor's got a weak research, so its gonna take a while before he can get SCs and clammers of his own.
Rlyeh... Well, in my opinion LA RLyeh is just crazy, in all meanings. But when X > Y, X/Y < X + a / Y + a.
In other words, when national troops dont matter as much as SCs and summons do, advantage in national troops also doesnt matter as much.



Its not that I necessarily agree with removal of gem gens, but I don't think it has the consequences you do, because everyone is affected equally. This means equal reduction in the number of SCs on both sides, assuming the two sides are actually evenly matched. (Otherwise, the stronger side should still tend to defeat the weaker side if they fight straight-up).

Affected equally doesnt mean equally hurt. Reduction in the number of SCs will strengthen some nations and weaken others. Also, see above about widening all gaps.

[Jarkko]

I think Machaka got the short straw with this version.

With Flaming Arrows being so difficult to cast in CBM the only hope for Machaka has been to burn gems for evocations (or to get Flaming Arrows up), craft items and summon stuff early on in the game, and expand rapidly, because their late game *sucks*. Except now there are too few gems available (this is *good*, it just hurts Machaka mid game a lot, and they already do suck in early game and late game...).

Everybody and their dog can enter the seas now, which is good. Well, except of course Machaka. Their troops are useful only to slow down the opponents before the fire evocations save the day; except of course the fire evocations can't be used under the waves.


Machaka desperately needs some help now.

Maybe a national version of flaming arrows with a lot less demanding requirements would be nice. Don't know if it would be possible have a flaming arrows with limited duration (like say one turn, so that the caster would have to recast it each round) or limited area (like AoE 10 or 20 or something), but it sure would help Machaka a lot.

Or perhaps the Black Sorceror could have Dragon Master as innate ability (to be able to summon fire drakes early on to bolster the lines in the early moments).

[WingedDog]

*Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items.


If the Blood Stone now is a unique item, then the Earth Boots are the only reasonable earth boster remaining. Maybe just removing gem generating effect from the Blood Stone was enough? Or perhabs creating an alternative booster?

[Sombre]

Can't remove just gem generating.

The topic of an alternative booster has been much discussed. It basically comes down to either pebble skin suit or tome of gaia.

[Burnsaber]

*Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items.


If the Blood Stone now is a unique item, then the Earth Boots are the only reasonable earth boster remaining. Maybe just removing gem generating effect from the Blood Stone was enough? Or perhabs creating an alternative booster?

You are not the first one to come up with this idea. It's a good idea, but not possible to implement with the current modding tools. We can't change any special properties of magic items (expect for the weapon and armor stats alonside with cost and researchlevel).

The closest "replacing" earth booster would likely be the artifact "Pebble Skin Suit", moved to construction 6 for example, but it has a lot of other effects, like being cursed and giving stoneskin, +2 str and regeneration. It also has a chance to turn the wearer into a troll each month.

The early Days game is currently testing the Pebble Skin Suit as an con6 item with a cost of E4B1. After giving it some tought, I think that it would have been better to make it E5. With a whopping cost of 40 earth gems, you would only use it as a booster when you really need it (seriosuly, how many Treelord staves have you forged?), so there won't be any "troll" spam happening. Also the "Troll" transformation is more useful for human nations than to giants.

[calmon]

*Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items.


Nice changes!

Please consider to change the global gem generation spells too. They were strong before but now even stronger to cast them early on (usual nobody dispels until lategame).

This would balance the globals somehow because we already have a very strong focus on gem generation globals and only few others like gift of health.

[Kuritza]

Half measures. Just get rid of gems! Well mabye leave these from your capitol, for minor forging, but no magic sites.
Then national troops wont get obsolete till the very late game :)

[vfb]

Are you talking about Forge of Godhood? I'm finding it very enjoyable! :)

[hunt11]

And we all know that astral corruption and utterdark are so weak:).

[quantum_mechani]

These lines in LA Pan seem to be a typo as it makes them cost 330g (more then MA version):
-Panii
#selectmonster 706
%gcost 300
#endThanks, I missed that typo.

Zeldor and llamabeast: Quite a few things that I wanted to put I didn't make it in this version, but the gem changes are pretty major so I'll let that issue settle before doing more changes I think.

Kuritza: I understand the change to gem gens is probably the most radical single thing CB has attempted. However, the suggestions and feedback I have gotten back on it has been overall very positive. It is of course possible that after some games with it people will come to find it has more drawbacks than anticipated, but I hope you will at least consider trying game or two with it.

As far as LA Ermor and Ryleh are concerned I think it is mostly matter of an already existing problem that gem gens just obscured a bit. It's possible other changes might be undertaken to work on them.

And yes I realize naiad warriors is a fairly token boost in comparison, but I think it goes to show a bit how broken clams were.

On mackaka: They did get something of boost for their hunter spiders in this version. Also, they can get underwater just fine with the new manual of water breathing (1n). And their death, nature and earth magic is actually not band under there.

Boosting their PD is one thing I meant to do and didn't get around to though.

[Sombre]

I would love to one day see spider riders either not yield permanent spider units upon death, or regrow their riders if you don't kill the entire unit (because it feels very silly to buy the riders and get them killed in order to get the spiders, upkeep free). Of course this would require cost balancing as the units would then be very different. I'd just prefer if they mechanically fit in with other mounts like wolves, horses, serpents etc.

[archaeolept]

machaka pd is the worst in the game. their unarmored warriors rush you, and are then decimated by the slingers, which often causes their whole army to then break :D

also, make pebbleskin const6 already :judge:

it uses the right paths, and any extra benefits it provides are easily balanced out by the lack of transferability due to being cursed :)

[Valerius]

I like the changes to gem gens but I think Fantomen brings up a good point that reducing the supply of gems in the late game while not making any changes to blood gives blood magic a boost. Probably worth keeping an eye on to see how that plays out.

On a completely biased note: thanks for making Cu Sidhe more affordable. They are a cool unit but hard to justify summoning. They're still hard to justify but not as much so.

[Fantomen]

Great update to CBM. I like all of it. I think MA machaka is the most heavily nerfed by this, improvements to the Hunter spider isn´t really helping unless good enough to warrant a bless strategy. Perhaps make the spider warriors more useful and recruit everywhere? The suggestion of innate dragon master for black sorcerors seem unthematic to me.

I beleive the Naiad warriors may have gotten too cheap even, we´ll see. But 15 such formidable units for 10 gems seem very good. Good boost for Oceania though...

I agree to make pebble skin suit construction 6, keep it Earth/blood and it should be quite expensive.

I wouldn´t worry *at all* about earth nations getting weaker actually. Look at it this way: What is the other way to multiply your gems apart from gemgens? Thats right, hammers. And without the blood stones hammers are going to be even more valuable and harder to forge. Strong earth evocations and buffs will be rarer, which is a great and well needed boost to EA Agartha, Kailasa and Bandar log.

Btw a stronger chance of high earth (means 3) for Machaka might be the right boost for balance.

[Trumanator]

I still think that CBM should reduce the paths required to cast a number of the high level E spells. I mean, how many nations get 4E out of the box? With only boots, E attack is going to be ludicrously tough to cast. So will petrify, army of lead, riches of beneath, melancholia, even father illearth and the kings. Petrify and the armies you might communion, and some of the others could be boosted w/staves or rings, but it still seems ridiculous to have your only options be ridiculously expensive and requiring paths that a lot of E nations don't have.

[Squirrelloid]

I'd much rather favor Tome of Gaia as the replacement booster. Its only really going to matter if for some bizarre reason you need to squeak an extra misc booster for N out of a fountain, since there are already 3 misc slot N boosters available (moonvine, rings). And it doesn't have the crazy downside of turning into a troll.


Also second the call for lower path reqs on high earth spells. Petrify might as well not exist at E5, and the army of spells are pretty inaccessible barring a few rather specific nations (most of whom probably won't survive long enough to ever cast it).

[Gregstrom]

I'd much rather favor Tome of Gaia as the replacement booster. Its only really going to matter if for some bizarre reason you need to squeak an extra misc booster for N out of a fountain, since there are already 3 misc slot N boosters available (moonvine, rings). And it doesn't have the crazy downside of turning into a troll.


Downside? Well, it is for Abysia I guess. I'd think most nations would call it a perk though.

[P3D]

Inaccessible?
For combat spells everything is fine, E1+boots+Earthpower+crystal shield = E4, then throw in a few more gems.
For rituals and summons, there's still like 4 nonunique E boosters around (Robe, Staffs, RoW), even if a bit on expensive side.

[Squirrelloid]

P3D: One of Army of Lead or Gold is E5, as is Petrify, as is Weapons of Sharpness. Not everyone has easy access to crystal shields, and gems are going to be rare enough as it is. And *excess* earth to keep fatigue down to sane levels might be necessary (I'd have to actually look at the specific spells again to confirm).

Considering these are also spells which can let armies compete in the endgame, and people are already complaining about lack of gemgens = fewer SCs, this could go a long way to filling the power void for those nations who can't straight up compete with nationals.

Also, virtually every other path is easier to boost, and by more, than earth is. And then it is in the running for highest average path level of its combat spells... not a well-balanced combination.

[Valerius]

Army of Gold and Weapons of Sharpness are E4. Weapons of Sharpness in particular is arguably too low. An E1 mage with earth boots and summon earthpower can just burn a gem to cast a powerful AOE 25 spell. That's the thing with these high end earth spells - they have a large/battlefield-wide AOE so you don't need many of them. That also means fatigue is not an issue the way it is when you want to spam a spell. Petrify has a high requirement and you would want to spam it but I'm not sure why it has to be easy for non-E nations to cast.

The problem with Tome of Gaia is ideally you want to keep the same forging paths as for the blood stone. If you do that you are giving nations access to an N booster they wouldn't otherwise have.

[iceboy]

If I wanted to edit out all of the troops and heroes abilities to freely spawn troops in CBM how would I do this? Also the units that have no movement make them be able to move? I have found the pretenders and this is easy but having a hard time with others. Such as the Niefel Jotun hero that spawns troops. I dont see anything to edit that out of his stats in there? I want to make all of the EA Rhley troops and heroes be able to move but I cannot find these either. Such as the commanders and heros. Any tips would be appreciated!

Or in other words how would I edit every pretender, unit, hero, etc. that can spawn stuff and/or that cannot move to not be able to spawn and to be able to move...


Sorry a total newb at modding this game!

[Trumanator]

Valerius: its not a matter of non-E nations casting petrify, its that even nations that are supposed to be good in E can't with any effectiveness. You could more easily build a soulslay communion out of indy lizard shamans than get a decent petrify spam going. Besides, its not like a lot of non-E don't cast a bunch of E spells already, so there's not exactly a lot of change.

[Sombre]

You can find out the ID number of a unit from Edi's database (found in his sig) or by pressing shift I on the right click screen of a unit.

You can then use mod commands found in the modding manual to alter the unit.

[cleveland]

I've updated the online Forging Reference to include CBM 1.6

In the process, I found 2 small errors:

- Lycanthropos' Amulet not implemented as intended due to a spelling error.
- Dragon Scale Mails not implemented as intended due to coding oversight.

Correct code should be:

#selectitem "Lycanthropos' Amulet"
#mainlevel 1
#end

#selectarmor "Green Dragon Scale Mail"
#prot 17
#end

#selectarmor "Red Dragon Scale Mail"
#prot 17
#end

#selectarmor "Blue Dragon Scale Mail"
#prot 17
#end

Enjoy!
cleveland

[Squirrelloid]

QM, would you please make the dragon mails constr 2? They're not very good at constr 6, and all those magic types could really use a passible armor at construction 2 rather than having nothing until construction 6, with the sole exception of fire. (I think i've seen a dragon scale armor made all of once).

[cleveland]

Ah, my mistake...the Dragon Scale Mails are just fine as-is. Kindly ignore.

[Endoperez]

New Conceptual Balance, *drool*...

I'm starting to consider getting out of my hibernation.


While Blood Stones were very nice, and were required for reaching better Earth spells, they were too good. ANY Earth nation should consider taking up Blood, just to get the Blood Stones, even if they never use it for anything else... and they might not, since Blood Stones were so great.

The change hurts some nations more, and I'm worried about MA Ulm especially. E2 Smith + boots + stone + earthpower could reach E5 in a fight, giving Ulm access to Petrify, which would give them a counter to SCs. A Crystal Shield is a poor alternative, even with 50% forging bonus. Their Iron Angels might be a bit better under the new CB though, since they're relatively cheap and the competition was slightly nerfed.

[Edi]

I think the gem generator removal is a good idea most of the time. It forces a more active role on everyone and does remove some emphasis from massively boosted globals and huge hordes of summoned armies that are not in any way tied to actual gem income.

It does make the position of underdog more challenging, but there must be other ways to compensate for that, such as diplomatic efforts.

Of course, that depends on what you like, but I have no objection to less gem gens, especially less clams.

[iceboy]

You can find out the ID number of a unit from Edi's database (found in his sig) or by pressing shift I on the right click screen of a unit.

You can then use mod commands found in the modding manual to alter the unit.

Thanks! How would I get the Son of Niefel to stop spawning wolves? He is not in CBM mod but in game.

[quantum_mechani]

You can find out the ID number of a unit from Edi's database (found in his sig) or by pressing shift I on the right click screen of a unit.

You can then use mod commands found in the modding manual to alter the unit.

Thanks! How would I get the Son of Niefel to stop spawning wolves? He is not in CBM mod but in game.You would select his monster number, #clearspec, then add back in all of his other abilities (like cold res, etc).

Also note the Vampire Queen, Ghost King, and Prince of Death spawn a few troops. Not to mention a bunch of summons with spawn.

[kianduatha]

The change hurts some nations more, and I'm worried about MA Ulm especially. E2 Smith + boots + stone + earthpower could reach E5 in a fight, giving Ulm access to Petrify, which would give them a counter to SCs. A Crystal Shield is a poor alternative, even with 50% forging bonus. Their Iron Angels might be a bit better under the new CB though, since they're relatively cheap and the competition was slightly nerfed.

I think not having the gems to spam Iron Angels nerfs them in comparison far more than, say, Tartarians(who are comparable price-wise).

[quantum_mechani]

MA Ulm could probably use some more help, but they can now equip black lords with Hero's Blades to counter a lot of stuff.

[Endoperez]

I think not having the gems to spam Iron Angels nerfs them in comparison far more than, say, Tartarians(who are comparable price-wise).

Iron Angels are weaker than they would be with Blood Stones, obviously, and they aren't as good as I remembered them as. :(

Tartarians are more expensive (in both initial and summoning costs), but Iron Angels can't withstand much damage at all... Well, at least QM's last comment reminded me about a nifty little thing: Iron Angels are size 4! That could work well with the hero's blade.

[Valerius]

QM, any chance of some help for Eriu? I play them a lot so I'm biased but a while back you rated nations and I think on your own scale you rated them as weak. Great raiders only take you so far...

Edit: and Eriu is a clam capable nation so they should get compensation for eliminating gem gens. :)

[iceboy]

You can find out the ID number of a unit from Edi's database (found in his sig) or by pressing shift I on the right click screen of a unit.

You can then use mod commands found in the modding manual to alter the unit.

Thanks! How would I get the Son of Niefel to stop spawning wolves? He is not in CBM mod but in game.You would select his monster number, #clearspec, then add back in all of his other abilities (like cold res, etc).

Also note the Vampire Queen, Ghost King, and Prince of Death spawn a few troops. Not to mention a bunch of summons with spawn.

Thanks Q! Is there a list somewhere of all the units that spawn stuff?

[Squirrelloid]

Thanks! How would I get the Son of Niefel to stop spawning wolves? He is not in CBM mod but in game.You would select his monster number, #clearspec, then add back in all of his other abilities (like cold res, etc).

Also note the Vampire Queen, Ghost King, and Prince of Death spawn a few troops. Not to mention a bunch of summons with spawn.

Thanks Q! Is there a list somewhere of all the units that spawn stuff?

What's the big deal with a handful of freespawn? None of them make them in sufficient quantity to really matter.

Mother of Lions and Lord of the Gates both freespawn. I'm sure there are more.

[chrispedersen]

Depending on the version of cbm, the spawn by the Lord of the Gates is *not* trivial.

[iceboy]

You would select his monster number, #clearspec, then add back in all of his other abilities (like cold res, etc).

Also note the Vampire Queen, Ghost King, and Prince of Death spawn a few troops. Not to mention a bunch of summons with spawn.

Thanks Q! Is there a list somewhere of all the units that spawn stuff?

What's the big deal with a handful of freespawn? None of them make them in sufficient quantity to really matter.

Mother of Lions and Lord of the Gates both freespawn. I'm sure there are more.

Im trying to balance out the AI's for my single player games. All of the nations that have pretenders and units that spawn such as Lord of the Gates for Ermor just steam roll over all of the other nations.

It would not be a big deal if it were just a few free spawn but unfortunately a lot of these units begin to pile them up in droves after the game gets going.

Another example if you get two Jotun heroes as Niefel and you are cranking out 4 free hirdmen a turn. No AI nation can handle that unfortunately.

Lots of other examples like this. Ctis, Sauromatia, Ulm, among others...

I began to notice this pattern when the same nations were strongest in every single game I played.

[Squirrelloid]

Well, some nations are supposed to run on 'free' units. LA C'tis and LA Ermor are prime examples - its not free if it takes mage turns to call them. (Ie, animating undead with undead priests, or calling gibbodai with the EA Rlyeh priests).

[iceboy]

Well, some nations are supposed to run on 'free' units. LA C'tis and LA Ermor are prime examples - its not free if it takes mage turns to call them. (Ie, animating undead with undead priests, or calling gibbodai with the EA Rlyeh priests).

Yes I have no problem with these type of situations...

[Jarkko]

QM, any chance of some help for Eriu? I play them a lot so I'm biased but a while back you rated nations and I think on your own scale you rated them as weak. Great raiders only take you so far...

Edit: and Eriu is a clam capable nation so they should get compensation for eliminating gem gens. :)

Eriu can now take advantage of the wonderful naiad warriors. While not replacing the end-game clammin ability, a front of 30 naiad warriors who have fog warriors cast on them is just *mean*, and gives Eriu helluvalots of staying power.

[Kuritza]

Yea, all the way to the first Golem they encounter. :)

[Kuritza]

P.S.

Oh well. Actually, I am tempted to play one game with CBM 1.6 after all, to check Eriu with no gem gens. It may well be that Eriu will actually be stronger without them, with recruitable thugs and all.

[Jarkko]

Yea, all the way to the first Golem they encounter. :)
Seems that Golems are just a waste of 30 astral gems unless supported by a proper army. Hero bladed thugs everywhere, and they just *love* to meet Golems (have your Golem yet met five flying banes with hero blades? it's not pretty if you're the golem...). It's not good to be a lone Golem these days, and without clams it is quite hard to amass Golems, so the only way is to have a real army along the few golems you can afford.

[Kuritza]

Didnt see these 'hero blades' yet. New weapon, custom made to slay SCs?

[Jarkko]

Didnt see these 'hero blades' yet. New weapon, custom made to slay SCs?

From the first post of this thread:
New forgable item added: Hero's Blade, 2e, const level 2 to forge. Mostly similar to sword of sharpness except on hit it does 15 extra ap damage to most enemies, and 45 ap to larger enemies.

[chrispedersen]

Lets hear it for Hoburg Champions!

[Tmoe]

Good work with the new CBM QM,

Something that caught my eye couple of weeks ago is why the Clockwork Horror exhaust "ability" hasn't been changed in the CBM so far. Maybe it has been discussed in some of the earlier version release notes.. Recently I've just been wondering with friends if the whole exhaust 15 is really necessary for them and would the drop to exhaust 10 or even 5 make them that much more powerful?

[Kuritza]

Wow. :)

Let me know if any nation with weak military ever wins without gemgens and SCs. :)

[Sombre]

I don't really see how cbm removes SCs. The hero sword is good but I think there were already comparable forges available. It still requires a delivery system - probably,.. well,.. another SC.

[Psycho]

There are a few thing I don't like here:

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.

2) Tartarians -25% hp. I'd rather see reducing their numbers in games, than nerfing them further. I think that increased gem cost would be a better thing to do.

3) Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.

5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.

6) Tomb wyrms got fear - this could be overpowering.

7) Kailasa capital only mages cheaper, and all sacred troops -5 gold. Kailasa doesn't have money problems, I could always buy all the troops I needed. And besides, their sacreds work better in small groups, you don't need many of them. Reducing prices of celestial summons is what is needed because of the clam nerf.

8) Naiad Warriors too cheap, could be overpowering.


So as not to appear to be just criticizing, I will state some of the changes that I particularly liked:

- Clams, Blood stones and Fever Fetishes Unique items
- Midget Masher doing AOE damage
- Juggernauts with awe
- Heroes improvements
- MA Oceania now gets mermages in coastal forts and Capricorns only lose 1w when out of water
- MA man wardens and lord wardens everywhere.
- EA Arco engineer recruitable everywhere

[Jarkko]

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.
I have to disagree. I play Pangaea, a lot. Over half of all the games is with Pans... Anyway, in vanilla I would be an idiot if I didn't take the Gorgon. Not because I *need* it, but because it is ridiculously cheap, and it would be pure idiocy (or pure role-playing :) ) to take anything else.


Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.
Just out of curiosity, which is the nation that uses hoburg champion thugs to overrun enemy provinces? I fail to see how any other thugs would benefit against PD's using a two-handed anti-SC weapon (it is my experience thugs usually avoid two-handers like the plague, and prefer Vine Shield + one-hander to take provinces), but I am known to be slightly dim and slow at figuring things out... Hero's Blade is *nice* against big SC's, but even then it is more or less the weapon of a kamikaze warrior (especially if the opponent happens to field a proper army instead of the SC you expected to meet, as without a shield those thugs of yours are just deat meat walking if confronted by a (more or less) "traditional army").

[archaeolept]

Some good concerns there, Psycho. I too am worried about possible unbalancing effects from hero blade; but that remains to be seen.

however, 5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.20gp may well be too much, as Sauro traditionally depends so heavily on these guys, but equating them w/ c'tis slingers is way off base. C'tis poison slingers have low range, and then tend to rush forward when the opposing forces retreat, right into their own clouds, and then die. I have yet to see this happen w/ Anthrophag archers :)

[Sombre]

Poison archers also benefit far more from buffs and deal a greater amount of poison damage in my experience. The main difference is the range/friendly fire issue though.

[Stavis_L]

A few miscellaneous question/observations.

1) You specify 2 different cold aura values for Niefel giants, one right after the other:

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 8
#end

-Niefel Giant
#selectmonster 844
#cold 10
#gcost 600
#end

2) Why remove the Living Pillar hero?

3) Summon Likho cost bump - was anyone actually summoning these? Please do tell? At 2D, I *might* summon one in a pinch as a scout/black-heart chassis...though still probably not.

4) Why the size increase for cyclops + corresponding Tartarians? Is this because of the Hero blade changes?

5) If you want to make the headless hoburg marginally more useful, you could equip it with one of the new hero blades instead of the sword of sharpness it has now.

[Psycho]

@Jarkko: Gorgon has the same starting paths as pans. She will bring almost no magic diversity to the nation. That is why there are many other good choices. As pangaea you especially miss astral. I don't see the Gorgon as being so uber powerful.

I didn't mean that hero's blades will be used to conquer pd. :) Just that they will make those nations with good thugs even stronger, because in addition to their ability to make huge-scale surprise attacks, they will be much better against SCs.

@archaeolept: OK, probably not a good comparison, but the point remains. Like you said they are Sauromatia's driving force.

[Burnsaber]

@archaeolept: OK, probably not a good comparison, but the point remains. Like you said they are Sauromatia's driving force.

And sauromatia is just sooo weak. With these nerfs I just can't see any reason they'd be competive in MP. [/sarcasm]

[Psycho]

Why shouldn't they be competitive and a top nation? I am sure everybody sees Sauro as a very powerful nation and it wouldn't be hard to convince someone into dogpiling Sauro. It could be a problem for a Sauro player if this conviction remained and the nation got nerfed.

[Squirrelloid]

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.

Actually, this makes more sense than boulder throwing. The crossbow is a compact ranged weapon capable of being fired from one hand and used as a shoot-and-discard weapon for moderate distances. The crossbow saw extensive and preferential use historically by otherwise melee troops because you didn't have to load it before hand, and could quickly drop it after firing to grab your melee weapon. (see accounts of the crusades, for example).

Not needing to be drawn meant it could be used in confined spaces, including inside castle interior spaces (which, let me tell you, aren't any bigger than tunnels most of the time).

So the use of a crossbow by cave dwellers is perfectly sensible, although underground they should tend to prefer more powerful or more compact crossbows with less accuracy over long distances. Joining the surface world could easily have taught them to reload in combat (greater distances involved), volley fire, and the essential aspect of long range accuracy.

edit: Dropped an 'h', stopped making sense

[quantum_mechani]

1) Gorgon 150 points - it's too much. Pangaea needs their Gorgon.
This is a big reason behind cheaper pans.


2) Tartarians -25% hp. I'd rather see reducing their numbers in games, than nerfing them further. I think that increased gem cost would be a better thing to do.
I considered lower gem cost, but I was convinced that would give tartarian troops less of a niche, and make GoH and the chalice that much more critical.

3) Hero's Blade - this one scares me the most. It seems such a huge boost to thug nations, the ones that can already take 90% of your provinces in one turn.
Well, thugs could already holy scourge vs. a very large percentage of SCs. The aim here is to give human-sized nations an option against giant nation's natural SCs, which lack weaknesses like magic being or undead.

4) MA Agartha got crossbows - seems unthematic, they are living in caverns.
LA Agarthan humans use them, and frankly 4 types of troops (all infantry) outside the capital is just not enough troop variety.

5) Sauromatia poison archers increased to 20 gold. I think this is too much. Firstly, they are a capital only unit and secondly they are not better than Ctis poison slingers which cost 15 gold.
As Arch said, poison slingers are not a good comparison. 20 gold is maybe slightly much, but they were definitely abused at the old CB price.

6) Tomb wyrms got fear - this could be overpowering.
I would be extremely surprised if this were the case- 20d gems for a unit that spawns one per turn.

7) Kailasa capital only mages cheaper, and all sacred troops -5 gold. Kailasa doesn't have money problems, I could always buy all the troops I needed. And besides, their sacreds work better in small groups, you don't need many of them. Reducing prices of celestial summons is what is needed because of the clam nerf.
I could look at the summons too, but gold boosts are always helpful.

8) Naiad Warriors too cheap, could be overpowering.
It's possible... but I can think of very few traditionally strong nations that can make good use of them.



1) You specify 2 different cold aura values for Niefel giants, one right after the other:

That looks to be a rather nasty bug.


2) Why remove the Living Pillar hero?
Because he was neither very interesting or very good. Hopefully I'll replace him with something better eventually.

3) Summon Likho cost bump - was anyone actually summoning these? Please do tell? At 2D, I *might* summon one in a pinch as a scout/black-heart chassis...though still probably not.
This was a request by Baalz. He found the event causing quite severe.

4) Why the size increase for cyclops + corresponding Tartarians? Is this because of the Hero blade changes?
Yes, because of the blade.

5) If you want to make the headless hoburg marginally more useful, you could equip it with one of the new hero blades instead of the sword of sharpness it has now.That is a very good idea.

[kianduatha]

If you wanted to buff Ulm just a little bit, you could make it so that Iron Angels' Divine Grasp attack is bonus, so you can actually equip them with weapons without losing it. As is, even putting on a different one-hander gets rid of it.

[quantum_mechani]

If you wanted to buff Ulm just a little bit, you could make it so that Iron Angels' Divine Grasp attack is bonus, so you can actually equip them with weapons without losing it. As is, even putting on a different one-hander gets rid of it.

That's a good suggestion.

[Micah]

The MA Agartha Kin-Breaker hero has some good flavor regarding Agartha getting completely owned on the surface world due to their outmoded cave battle tactics, so I think it makes a lot of thematic sense for Agartha to have adopted ranged weapons in response. Plus they really need the help.

[Micah]

Oh, and I disagree that no gens makes it harder for a lagging nation to come back, since the leading nation(s) will be able to break into wish cycling and Forge of the Ancients abuse much sooner than a lagging nation, furthering their lead. Gens do force more reliance on national units and gold though, so weaker nations do take a hit, but the solution to that is to buff the nations to get to a point of balance, which also leads to a lot more of a flavorful late game, since tart hordes and armageddon spam won't be the order of the day.

[Jarkko]

@Jarkko: Gorgon has the same starting paths as pans. She will bring almost no magic diversity to the nation. That is why there are many other good choices. As pangaea you especially miss astral. I don't see the Gorgon as being so uber powerful.

Err... Isn't this exactly what I said? Pangaea does not *need* the Gorgon, but at the price in vanilla it would be simply stupid to take anything else but an awake Gorgon.

I mean, if you are buying car and can choose a brand new Volvo for 50 bucks or a Ferrari for 2 millions, which one would you choose? Sure, Volvo isn't anything super fancy, it's "just" a comfortable, good and reliable car which is bound to get you where ever you are going, and if you'd get it practically for free...

[Master chief]

Hopefully it is a bug, but Pangaea's CW costs now 90 nature gems and takes 6nature 5death to cast it. I thaught that it was ok in 1.5 to have it cost 50N and to be able to cast it 5n4d. In readme file there is nothing about this change.

[chrispedersen]

Agreed. I liked the 1.5 version.

[Frozen Lama]

yeah, i hope qm addresses this soon. if its a bug, i really hope he fixes it very soon

[Micah]

Blame Jarkko for abusing it in Forge, I think that might be behind the nerfing. =)

[chrispedersen]

he abused it in magellan too I thought it rather smart of him = )

[Jarkko]

Ohohoh, look, my name is mentioned! :)

Anyway, CW in CBM prior to 1.6 was slightly over the top, I just wonder why it hasn't been used more before :) Anyway, it's not like Pangaea needs it, but it certainly did open up totally new options for EA and MA Pangaea :)

[llamabeast]

I'm intrigued. I tried abusing it in SP and found it rather ineffective. What was your trick?

[Fantomen]

I think the CW cost was fine.

But I think it shouldn´t be available until LA, both balance wise and thematically.

[llamabeast]

Oh right yeah, I was trying it in LA. Maybe it's more powerful in the hands of the earlier Pangaeas.

[Jarkko]

Oh right yeah, I was trying it in LA. Maybe it's more powerful in the hands of the earlier Pangaeas.

The "trick" is that in EA and MA Pangaea got (with earlier CBM's) Carrion Woods up on turn 10, latest. 5 nature gems per turn, and with high luck scale (there is absolutely no reason why EA or MA Pangaea shouldn't take Turmoil 3 and Luck 3) the 50 nature gems were collected even before turn 10. In fact, you could take your pretender sleeping, as with Luck 3 he is practically bound to wake up on turn 10. Add to that Pangaea absolutely *needs* Growth 3 in EA and MA (while the maenads are free, they still like to eat, damnit, and a horde of naked skinny women eat more than one would believe to be possible); incidently having Luck3 and Growth3 results in more of the better manikin, and you will be dancing in joy as those manikin elephants keep rolling out from the forest temples.

Now imagine you mix masses of maenads and manikin. The maenads basically autoberserk and rip apart the targets stunned by the manikin. Free stuff with high morale and stunning ability mixed with free stuff who go berserk but with crappy weapons (and when the opponent is already stunned, who cares what sort of weapon you are hitting with?). It doesn't get any better than that.

Carrion Woods is *much* less effective in LA in my opinion. First of all, fewer nature gems per turn, so you will get it up much later. Secondly, no maeanads to mix with the manikin (so either you send the manikin in alone and watch in horror the slaughter when the massed arrows and x-bow bolts hit your oh-so slowly moving dead plants, or you mix them with dryad hoplites and/or black centaurs and wonder why the heck you are spending so much effort on crap because the centaurs and dryads do just fine alone). Thirdly, dryad hoplites and black centaurs really ask for a (minor) bless strategy (and at the same time Pans get diversified to the other magic paths too, say for example W4F4A4 (plus 2 or 3 in earth and death) is excellent, as it gives access to all the astral stuff, staff of elements etc).

Summoning Carrion centaurs instead of getting CW up in LA is much more efficient in my opinion. The carrion centaurs will summon enough manikin to keep any snotty hostile SC's from walzing over your lands without proper support (becase killing lone thugs and SC's is the use for manikin in LA, if you ask me; incidently they are pretty good at that too).

Carrion Woods is an excellent tool *early* in the game. Later on the effectis minimal and even hampering (your population keeps dieing, and you really would need the tax-money for more of your dryad hoplites and black centaurs). But before others have massed evocations available, and especially in the not-so missile-troop-infested EA and MA, massed manikin mixed with massed maenads rock. So, in LA you can't get CW up early enough and you won't have the synergy with maeanads.


As it is now in CBM1.6, Carrion Woods is perhaps not worth going for; in EA or MA you can get it up on 18 (unless you get lucky with nature sites and/or random gem events), in LA you can't get it up until year three. It would be better IMO if CW was only available for LA Pangaea but at a reduced cost, as it would make thematically sense; being able to cast CW in year three makes absolutely no sense in my opinion, as by then you'd much rahter get up Mother Oak and Gift of Health. I seriously doubt anybody would seriously claim Carrion Woods is as good as Mother Oak and Gift of Health *combined*, but that is the situation where CW is in CBM 1.6 :(

[Jarkko]

Incidently, can globals have requirement for two types of gems? If Carrion Woods required 50 nature gems and 10 death gems for example, it would be basically impossible to get it up with EA or MA Pangea (alchemy could become handy though, but that would still push the first opportunity to cast), while not scewing LA Pangaea that much.

[Fantomen]

I don´t think there is any way to make any spell cost more than one type of gems. It´s too bad really, would open a lot of possibilities.

Why not simply reset the gem cost and remove it from EA and MA?

[Amonchakad]

Why not simply reset the gem cost and remove it from EA and MA?

In my opinion, it's always better to try and fix/balance a specific strategy, instead of completely removing it:)

[Sombre]

It feels kind of a weird spell for EA and MA but I guess if they can cast haunted woods, it's fair game.

[Fantomen]

In my opinion, it's always better to try and fix/balance a specific strategy, instead of completely removing it

Sure it is, in general.

But Carrion Woods and manikins is kind of the theme of LA Pangea, if it is available in all eras you remove the depth of the storyline IMO.

I think it is more important to make it worthwhile where it is thematically supposed to be, than making it "balanced" and half assed in all eras. Otherwise you´re breaking the game a bit.

An alternative would be to keep it low cost and no research for LA, and make another version for EA and MA requiring research and some more gems.

[llamabeast]

You could just #copyspell it and make it available for all ages but cheaper for LA Pan.

[Amonchakad]

An alternative would be to keep it low cost and no research for LA, and make another version for EA and MA requiring research and some more gems.

You could just #copyspell it and make it available for all ages but cheaper for LA Pan.

That's pretty much what I was thinking about.

[Master chief]

Hopefully we hear the conclusion from QM. If it is a bug then I'll love the new CBM but if it is a feature new version just killed my game :D

[quantum_mechani]

A nerf was intentional, but not as drastic as it turned out (I forgot just how sucky it was unmodded). Next version it will probably go back as it was for LA, and +10 gems +1n/d needed for other eras.

[Fantomen]

Now that sounds just about perfect.

[HoneyBadger]

Has anyone noticed how quantum_mechani is a genius?

[Psycho]

I have a suggestion about buffs. Not a balance thing, but something that could improve battle scripting. Reduce range on some buff spells, so caster will cast them on the squad that you intended the spell for and therefore put the caster close by.

Example: I had an army with two groups of centaurs that I placed on flanks with attack rear and a bunch of archers in the middle. I had two pans intended to cast haste on the two centaur groups. But, since haste has a range of ten and there were much more archers, pans chose to buff them, which is completely illogical. If the range for the spell had been five or less, I could have positioned them to cast on centaurs.

[Fantomen]

That might be a good idea! Not sure how it would play out but certainly worth trying.

On the other hand there are many situation where I love the AOE buffs having some range. Like Earth mages casting weapons of sharpness on my frontline after their script has run out etc...

[Squirrelloid]

Yeah, lack of range in AoE buffs leads to annoying situations.

Like needing to risk your caster to archer fire to buff your front-line forces.

Frankly, that just means you needed to place your casters farther back so only the centaurs were in range. Surely there was *someplace* on the field where the caster was only in range of the centaurs. (Otherwise, place units differently?)

[Psycho]

No, there wasn't and I did not want to place them differently, why should I? Exposing casters to archer fire is a risk I am willing to take in order to get the needed buffs going.

[Fantomen]

I think it could be nice and thematic if you needed to risk putting mages in danger near your troops to buff them.

[kianduatha]

In order to compensate for the loss of blood stones, would it be appropriate to lower the cost of Mechanical Men, perhaps to 10 gems per cast? It's always been sorta balanced around having well-nigh infinite earth gems, which frankly is no longer true.

I've also been thinking about Ulm, and I wanted to throw out an idea for your consideration. Maybe up just Guardians' MR? They're already the elite anti-blessed troops...and their commander is MR 10(unlike the other non-caster Ulm commanders, Spy notwithstanding). If nothing else, a change just to MR 10 or 11 will make their squad less likely to be targeted.

[Sombre]

Agree with guardians mr buff.

I like the sound of boosting mechanical men and clockwork horrors, but I think they have their place still currently.

[chrispedersen]

QM: Can you do somthing about ghost wolves? Costs ridiculous fatigue for the effect.... and is ai cast far too often.

[Squirrelloid]

QM: Can you do somthing about ghost wolves? Costs ridiculous fatigue for the effect.... and is ai cast far too often.

It gets cast when the mage is out of range to cast anything else, they definitely prefer lightning bolt or other directly offensive spells when in range.

And considering spamming them is a really good anti-thug measure, it probably is appropriately fatigue-costed.

[Calahan]

I have a suggestion about buffs. Not a balance thing, but something that could improve battle scripting. Reduce range on some buff spells, so caster will cast them on the squad that you intended the spell for and therefore put the caster close by.

Example: I had an army with two groups of centaurs that I placed on flanks with attack rear and a bunch of archers in the middle. I had two pans intended to cast haste on the two centaur groups. But, since haste has a range of ten and there were much more archers, pans chose to buff them, which is completely illogical. If the range for the spell had been five or less, I could have positioned them to cast on centaurs.
Is it possible to create new buff spells based on existing ones? If so, then one solution to the problems of long range causing unintended units to be targetted is to have standard and short range versions of certain buff spells. As that way the short range one could be used in scripts to aid targetting, and the long range ones could still be used by the AI when scripts run out.

Of course if buff spells can't be copied, then this post can just be ignored :)

[rdonj]

I have a suggestion about buffs. Not a balance thing, but something that could improve battle scripting. Reduce range on some buff spells, so caster will cast them on the squad that you intended the spell for and therefore put the caster close by.

Example: I had an army with two groups of centaurs that I placed on flanks with attack rear and a bunch of archers in the middle. I had two pans intended to cast haste on the two centaur groups. But, since haste has a range of ten and there were much more archers, pans chose to buff them, which is completely illogical. If the range for the spell had been five or less, I could have positioned them to cast on centaurs.
Is it possible to create new buff spells based on existing ones? If so, then one solution to the problems of long range causing unintended units to be targetted is to have standard and short range versions of certain buff spells. As that way the short range one could be used in scripts to aid targetting, and the long range ones could still be used by the AI when scripts run out.

Of course if buff spells can't be copied, then this post can just be ignored :)

This should be completely possible. Actually I like that more than the idea I was going to suggest.

[Burnsaber]

I have a suggestion about buffs. Not a balance thing, but something that could improve battle scripting. Reduce range on some buff spells, so caster will cast them on the squad that you intended the spell for and therefore put the caster close by.

Example: I had an army with two groups of centaurs that I placed on flanks with attack rear and a bunch of archers in the middle. I had two pans intended to cast haste on the two centaur groups. But, since haste has a range of ten and there were much more archers, pans chose to buff them, which is completely illogical. If the range for the spell had been five or less, I could have positioned them to cast on centaurs.
Is it possible to create new buff spells based on existing ones? If so, then one solution to the problems of long range causing unintended units to be targetted is to have standard and short range versions of certain buff spells. As that way the short range one could be used in scripts to aid targetting, and the long range ones could still be used by the AI when scripts run out.

Of course if buff spells can't be copied, then this post can just be ignored :)

This should be completely possible. Actually I like that more than the idea I was going to suggest.

No. Just no.

Not that it's a bad idea, it would just have unseen consequenses. Writing a new spell for each buff with range would make CBM eat many precious golden spell slots, limiting the amount that other mods can add.

Since CBM is basically the new vanilla, all mods basically have to be compactible with it, so there really isn't any workaround. Please, don't take my precious spell-slots! I need them!

[Fantomen]

I agree with burnsaber, we need those slots for other mods. I also don´t like the idea of having multiple spells doing almost the same thing, it would disturb my sense of immersion.

I think the idea of reduced range is worth testing though, but don´t put in CBM until tested in a separate mod.

[rdonj]

What about giving "defensive" buffs, and the ones that really need to go on specific things have low range, but "offensive" buffs keep the range they have?

[Psycho]

I never meant for all buff spells to have short range. This is something that will have to be decided on a spell by spell basis. It should be done only in cases where such reduction in range increases the spell's performance and outweighs the negative effect of a shorter range.

[Quitti]

A small conversation with few people on IRC led me to post my(/our) ideas here. We were talking about giving a new earth booster (perhaps to not make MA Ulm complitely useless again, and such), and what came up was that since Pebble Skin suit has it's own problems (giving regen and str boost in addition to earth magic), the ideal candidate would be to turn Tome of Gaia into non-unique item, perhaps with paths of e4n2/e3n2 or something along those lines. Nature already has moonvine bracer as a misc booster which isn't very hard to get. This change would of course translate into basically giving a new free misc booster for pangaea of pretty much any era in addition to giving an access for it to ma Ulm, which again would have to work towards it (Like the case with bloodstones were for those nations, with perhaps the exception of la pan).

[llamabeast]

I like the idea of using the pebbleskin suit. I think it's a nice one.

The trouble with the tome of gaia is that it creates a strong link between nature and earth, and is rather better for some nations (e.g. Pan) than others (e.g. Ulm).

[Burnsaber]

I find it rather odd why people just don't go behind Pebble Skin Suit. If you are seriously concerned that it would be the next best SC gear or something, just make cost it E4 (or E5 if you really want be concervative). That way you can climb up to the high level earth spells like in the blood stone years, but it will just cost you so much as to prevent spam. I mean seriuosly, how many Air Helmets have forged in a single game? How many would you have forged if it was cursed?

The str boost is neglible (+2! big difference!), regeneration is pretty useful I admit, but really not big of a deal since it's not really a SC item. The stoneskin will often just hinder you with the -50cr penalty associated with it and it will stay even if you cast invulnerability/iron skin. Getting turned into a troll might be awesome, if you are human mage, not much so if you are a tartarian.

[Fantomen]

I´m also behind the pebble skin suit rather than tome of gaia.

But honestly I don´t think Ulm or any other strong earth nation is weakened by the loss of a second earth booster.

I think of it this way: With no gem gens the only way to "generate gems" is to use dvarwen hammers. This favours earth nations, a lot. And without a second earth booster it will be even harder for non earth nations to forge enough hammers, increasing this advantage.

For Ulm this is even more significant with their innate forge bonus, Ulm is now the undisputed master of gem saving in a world where gems just became a lot more valuable.

It will be a little harder to cast the high end earth spells, but weren´t those a little too easy to cast before anyway?

[Squirrelloid]

Fantomen: No, they weren't too easy to cast before.

Weapons of sharpness and army of X needs to be able to be cast by national mages lategame to retain usefulness. Otherwise they are too deep in the research tree for any real return. (And not just one national mage somewhere - but capable of fielding one with each army)

Petrify is totally useless if you can't spam it. Earth attack also isn't very good without being able to put national mages on it.

So either a new earth booster is needed, or the path requirements of these spells need to come down 1 each (minimum). Arguably, petrify was too hard to cast even with blood stone.

[kianduatha]

The str boost is neglible (+2! big difference!), regeneration is pretty useful I admit, but really not big of a deal since it's not really a SC item. The stoneskin will often just hinder you with the -50cr penalty associated with it and it will stay even if you cast invulnerability/iron skin. Getting turned into a troll might be awesome, if you are human mage, not much so if you are a tartarian.

Yep. The pebbleskin suit just seems to be the least disruptive of the available options. Its drawbacks are numerous enough that I don't think you'll see them exactly mass produced, but they will be used whenever people really need that extra Earth level. I mean, Armor of Twisted Thorns is pretty awesome too, but nobody spams those.

Really, the best part about the Pebble Skin Suit is that it gives just enough protection to justify a round-one Rain of Stones from a guy wearing it and no other equipment(especially if you have the 35 hp from turning into a troll).

But really, the Pebble Skin Suit is just fine as a replacement for an earth booster. Non-blood nations will really have to think hard about whether or not they feel justified getting blood on their pretender or spending the resources to use scouts to bootstrap into blood for the thing. Don't underestimate either of those costs. There's no need to make it artificially expensive. Even keeping it E1B3 will not make these things common as flies, except perhaps on MA Abysia.

[Fantomen]

Fantomen: No, they weren't too easy to cast before.

Weapons of sharpness and army of X needs to be able to be cast by national mages lategame to retain usefulness. Otherwise they are too deep in the research tree for any real return. (And not just one national mage somewhere - but capable of fielding one with each army)

Petrify is totally useless if you can't spam it. Earth attack also isn't very good without being able to put national mages on it.

So either a new earth booster is needed, or the path requirements of these spells need to come down 1 each (minimum). Arguably, petrify was too hard to cast even with blood stone.

Weapons of sharpness and army of gold is just E4. So any e2 mage gets there easily. I guess petrify, army of lead and earth attack could be lowered to e4 if there´s no new booster.

I still maintain that the removal of gemgens, including bloodstones, is a relative boost to strong earth nations.

[Psycho]

Why does nobody mention the boots of antaues? They seem like the least disruptive option to me. Just some regen and reinvigoration on top of +1 earth.

[Psycho]

I am convinced that Boots of Antaeus are the best option for replacing blood stones. Here are two possible solutions, but paths and gem costs should be discussed. I prefer the second, but think that gem costs should be higher due to reinvig and regen effects which make it a good SC/thug equipment item.

1) Same paths and cost as boots

#selectitem 201 -- Boots of Antaeus
#constlevel 6
#name "Stone of Antaeus"
#descr "Some flavor text"
#copyspr 255 -- Blood stone sprite
#type 8 -- Misc item
#end


2) With blood stone's paths and cost

#selectitem 201 -- Boots of Antaeus
#constlevel 6
#mainpath 7 --
#mainlevel 3 -- B3
#secondarypath 3 --
#secondarylevel 2 -- E2
#name "Blood Stone"
#descr "Some flavor text"
#copyspr 255 -- Blood stone sprite
#type 8 -- Misc item
#end

[kianduatha]

Nice, but I don't understand how making it a perfect caster/SC item would be inherently superior. People would put that Stone of Antaeus on commanders that didn't even have earth magic. And it basically means that nature is no longer necessary to get regen on your SCs.

[Burnsaber]

Why does nobody mention the boots of antaues? They seem like the least disruptive option to me. Just some regen and reinvigoration on top of +1 earth.

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

The idea of the Pebble Skin Suit is that it has drawbacks and is in general an intresting item. If the options are Tome of Gaia/Boots of Antaneus/Pebble Skin Suit, the suit will have smallest effect and is hardest to abuse. Remember that getting turned into a troll isn't that awesome in all cases, not even for humans. Your mr gets reduced, you lose all other innate abilities (like the innate forgebonus for Ulm or FR and heat for Abysia). You become a bigger target with that additional hp, allowing the opponent to pinpoint your casters with spells (try incinerate with that -50% FR) or "attack largest" commands. Also remember that when you are a troll with the suit, you have base -50% in both FR and CR in all battles.

And even if the Troll transformation gets somehow abused (although I'm not seeing it), we can just edit the "Troll" unit to have -1 magicskill in all paths.

[Squirrelloid]

See, i'd say ToG has the smallest effect because the existence of *yet another* way to boost N in a misc slot has almost no effect on the game, since only an oracle/blood fountain has enough misc slots to use them all. (moonvine, RoS, RoW current - and for oracle/fountain there's no hand slot so still no ability to exceed current maximum boost across all chasses). And for single boosting of N you still go to the thistle mace because its cheaper. ie, it has little effect on common needs for an N booster (doesn't change 1 boost level choice or max possible boost).

At which point the only real reason to forge it will be for the earth booster.

Keep in mind that 'drawbacks' are not something we should be actively seeking out - Earth has *1* non-unique booster without bloodstones (2 if you count the staff of the elements, which is remarkably hard to forge without earth boosters!), compared to at least 2 such boosters for every other path of magic. This is a shortcoming that should be rectified.

So arguably the ToG adds less value than the bloodstone did (both have E, +1e/trn vs. +1N), and doesn't really change the metagame situation substantially for N boosters. Sure, its different paths than bloodstone, but that's not the most important part. (People can and will trade for items, the important part is that a second *non-cursed* non-unique earth booster exist)

[Psycho]

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

[Sombre]

I'm of the opinion that the best thing to do is to change the tome of gaea into an exact replica of the bloodstone (same graphic, same costs, same paths, same RL). The nature boosting part of it can make up for the loss of the gem genning.

[Burnsaber]

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

And making the second booster cost 30+ gems would kind miss the point completely (why not just forge elemental staves then?). The idea is to allow the nations that were hit hardest by the Blood Stone nerf (Ulm and Agartha) access to a secondary earth booster. How in the heck can they forge E4N3 item? Getting into blood 2 for stones is easy, just send scouts to hunt and empower. Not so much for nature.

Anyways, this argument is quite moot, since Squirreloid has a good point about the N boosting of ToG being a bit rebundant. It would likely have the least effect on the game and can be inexpensive enough on N to be somewhat forgeable by Ulm and Agartha.

I'm still for Pebble Skin Suit, thought. It's such an intresting and intriguing item and I just simply love it. Forged it everytime I've been able to do so.

[chrispedersen]

My solution was to change agartha and ulm.

[Psycho]

Well I thought the point was to get those E5 spells like earth attacks and earth kings. If that is the use for the booster then it needn't be cheap.

I agree with Chris here. Some nations are hit more badly then others by the lack of blood stones. The same goes for clams and fetishes. The idea should be to change those nations in some way to compensate for it, not add an item forgeable by everyone to do it.

I don't like the tome idea as it lets you get +3 nature too easily. Now everyone can do mother oak and gift of health etc.

[Quitti]

Well, certainly you can't give +1e just to all ulm mages. Nor Agartha.

Here. Have some rambling about the tome, nature and blood magic.
Currently from what I've gathered, the best way to get your bloodstone economy going on ulm would've been to take a forge lord with blood or something similar - now it would only change to force the forge lord take some nature instead of blood. For agartha I've always just hunted with indep scouts for the slaves, though I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar with blood access -pretender. Do also keep in mind that if you are taking nature on your pretender(+n4), your sacred units will get regen, boosting your sacreds usability a lot (priest smiths for ulm, ancient ones/lords/oracles etc for agartha). It would be an indirect boost. Combined with the fact that you'll be having earth on your pretender also - that's reinvig (and perhaps prot if you go all the way to 9 or 10). Again that synergies with your sacreds well. No-one will force you to take such a pretender though.

Now with blood - You'll still need earth (e1b3 is the suit in vanilla, can't remember if CBM modifies the values), You don't really need to invest to anything else than b3 on your pretender with e1, and the path isn't very useful for you for the rest of the game than simply few pebble skin suits just to replace the bloodstone economy it awarded before - the paths would effectively go to waste. Having b4 would grant a point or two of strength - while not useless, it's far from regen5 or whatever you'd be having with nature. In late game nature also awards you with GoRing wished sc's/summoned tartarians, which agartha nor (ma) ulm have no national access to. Granted - they neither do have high death mages (exception being la agartha and la ulm) or high-astral casters. MA Ulm could probably suit their SC need with Iron Angels, should they have the earth income. It's not the best chassis around, but it isn't too shabby either.

So. Should the pebble skin suit be made non-unique, it'd "hurt" the nations in comparison to the tome of gaia. Being cursed and turning the user into troll (not a very bad thing for ma ulm though), it'd see little use. Tome of Gaia is not cursed - it'd see probably more use, though the point to consider is if we would want another cheap earth booster, or something a bit more rare than the ubiquitious earth boots. Tome would also basically force them to have a pretender designed for it (whereas the suit doesn't explictly need it, but it very much hastens the process of making them), but it complements to their sacred units and/or mages. It also opens up the possibility of getting into race to gift of nature's bounty / oak / gift of health. For example, Nature's bounty is in enchantment, which I believe ma Agartha likes, and I don't see it as too bad a path for ulm either, with earth well in the end, and fire fend in the way.

Just points to consider. /ramble off

[Kheldron]

Well, if the point is that nations that could make bloodstone should still be able to access an earth booster, why not change the bloodstone into E1B1 : +1E. constr 4.
Simply remove the gemgen part and make it cheaper. It would cost the equivalent of 10 gems, same as the +1E boots.
done.

[rdonj]

Gemgen part can't be removed. That's why everyone is talking about the unique earth boosters. Making one of them non-unique is the only way to get a new earth booster.

[Starshine_Monarch]

Hm... What about making empowerment in Earth cheaper for those that need bloodstones? I know you can't mod the cost of empowerment, but how about this?

Take MA Ulm for example. Create a national spell for them at Construction 6 called "Empower Smith". Using the same idea from a Dragon's or Skratti's mage/monster forms, this spell would permanently change the caster into a new "Empowered Smith" unit with the stat-line of a Master Smith, but the new unit would have #magicboost 3 1 and one less Misc. Item slot, thus giving the smith a boost in Earth Magic for roughly the cost of a second Earth booster, the downside of course being you can't pass this around like a normal booster. This of course couldn't be cast twice, because you'd be changing into the exact same unit number, so trying to boost a second time would have no effect.

A few downsides I can see from here would be this spell would be completely pointless to be cast by anyone with a better physical statline than a Smith, such as Earth Kings and the like. Other mages however can only dream of the Smith's statline and, if they meet the path requirements, would be able to cast the spell. This wouldn't be that bad if the mages only had paths that they could pass off as being from a Master Smith, but when your enemy starts seeing Empowered Smiths with N2 or some other path that Smiths don't get as randoms that he might get suspicious. These however, are unavoidable drawbacks of this method.

As for Agartha, just take the above and replace "Ulm" with "Agartha" and "Smith" with "Oracle" or "Golem Crafter" The same Spell could be used to empower Oracles of both EA and MA Agartha I believe, though we would need a separate one for Golem Crafters, Ktonian Necromancers and Tomb Oracles... Though I hate to take away Burnsaber's precious Spell Slots, it wouldn't need very many to do this if it's just a few nations that really need them.

[Sombre]

You can't mod transformation spells cleanly.

[Fantomen]

Possible or not it would be a bad solution IMO. Too complicated and cluttering, and only adressing specific nations.

I´d prefer a new earth booster with funny side effects to that, but as I stated before I don´t think it is needed from a balance PoV.

Can you copy the effect of another item into a new modded item? I mean: is it possible to duplicate the earth boots into a misc item? I suppose not since this discussion looks the way it does, I just thought about it...

[rdonj]

I think that would be possible, yes. However, I'm also pretty sure that doing so wouldn't help because you'd be wearing two items giving the same ability... so it would be like wearing two pairs of earth boots, just one of them happens to be hanging around your neck.

[Fantomen]

Worth trying isn´t it?

[Illuminated One]

I´m also behind the pebble skin suit rather than tome of gaia.

But honestly I don´t think Ulm or any other strong earth nation is weakened by the loss of a second earth booster.

I think of it this way: With no gem gens the only way to "generate gems" is to use dvarwen hammers. This favours earth nations, a lot. And without a second earth booster it will be even harder for non earth nations to forge enough hammers, increasing this advantage.

Hardly any nation ever needs blood stones to forge dwarven hammers.
Either you get to earth-2. Then you can forge dwarven hammers with earth boots. Or you don't. Then you can't make bloodstones.
Theoretically if you get to earth-1 you can trade for earth boots, make a bloodstone and forge dwarven hammers. In my experience people are asking for dwarven hammers directly if they don't want the bloodstones for gem genning.
The uses that I got out of the booster part of bloodstones was really only to reach high level earth spells or have some more in need. For that reason I'm against a cursed replacement booster.

For Ulm this is even more significant with their innate forge bonus, Ulm is now the undisputed master of gem saving in a world where gems just became a lot more valuable.

Gems are not more valuable through scareness, since they are not a market commodity (you usually don't compete with other people buying gems for money).
With 40 gems Ulm's forge bonus saves theoretically 10. With 80 20.
Compare this with Niefel where are Jarl saves you ~ 25 (assuming that it is roughly on par with a Bane Lord + ring of regen + boots of the messenger) while costing 500gp, it is clear that forge bonus is better the higher the gem to gold ratio is.

[Fantomen]

I´m not talking of the possibility to forge hammers, I´m talking of the opportunity to make enough hammers. Most nations will get their cruical one or two hammers, but how many can match the rumbling gemsaving engine of ulm or agartha?

If you expect to have fewer gems (with no gemgens) the relative advantage of using those gems effectively will increase. This is true even if you´re only looking at the closed economy of individual nations. And they do increase in value with scarceness. The example of Niefel Jarl is good because it illustrates how different ways to save gems now become more important. The relative advantage of recruitable SCs is increased now, as is the value of gems and the advantage of hammers.

[Sombre]

I don't agree hammers are more valuable now. They save a proportional amount so unless you have too many gems to conceivably spend in a turn or too few gems to do anything, their value doesn't change based on gem quantity.

[thejeff]

I noticed in an SP game that MA Oceania has a Mermage (1416) without magic as a PD leader instead of a Turtle Chief, at least on land. That wasn't intentional, was it?

Looking through the code, I can't see how that happened, but I'm not much of a modder.

[Redeyes]

Is there any reason in particular that the Caelum Eagle King multihero gets Air 5 instead of 4?

I just had one who also got the air random (2.5 % chance) - 6 Air seems like overkill on a hero, even for Caelum.

[Turin]

I agree that getting an air 6 hero roughly once every ~666 turns with luck 3 is problematic and should be addressed immediately ;).

More seriously the design philosophy was that the heroes should always be at least as good as the recruitables. Getting an air4 eagle king hero when you just randomed a recruitable air 5 would be pretty boring.

[WingedDog]

I found an issue that had changed since CBM 1.5 and I didn't find it in the description on the first page.
EA R'lyeh Polypal Mother can no longer call Gibodai, but Gibodai may appear in the province with Polypal Mother. The chance increases with the dominion strength.

[Squirrelloid]

I found an issue that had changed since CBM 1.5 and I didn't find it in the description on the first page.
EA R'lyeh Polypal Mother can no longer call Gibodai, but Gibodai may appear in the province with Polypal Mother. The chance increases with the dominion strength.

QM had mentioned making that change at one point, although apparently not in this thread. I guess he decided EA Rlyeh needed a little nerfing? Not sure why - its not like they win that often.

[quantum_mechani]

QM had mentioned making that change at one point, although apparently not in this thread. I guess he decided EA Rlyeh needed a little nerfing? Not sure why - its not like they win that often.You've got me- I just can't feel satisfied with a CB version without a little bit of random nerfing.

Apart from that though, there is the fact that as things stood gibodai were quite silly as a recruitable, and I found giant late game swarms of them (but not other aboleth stuff apart from spawn) unthematic.

[llamabeast]

Do you mean polypal mother was silly as a recruitable?

[Redeyes]

I think Machaka got the short straw with this version.

With Flaming Arrows being so difficult to cast in CBM the only hope for Machaka has been to burn gems for evocations (or to get Flaming Arrows up), craft items and summon stuff early on in the game, and expand rapidly, because their late game *sucks*. Except now there are too few gems available (this is *good*, it just hurts Machaka mid game a lot, and they already do suck in early game and late game...).

Everybody and their dog can enter the seas now, which is good. Well, except of course Machaka. Their troops are useful only to slow down the opponents before the fire evocations save the day; except of course the fire evocations can't be used under the waves.


Machaka desperately needs some help now.

Maybe a national version of flaming arrows with a lot less demanding requirements would be nice. Don't know if it would be possible have a flaming arrows with limited duration (like say one turn, so that the caster would have to recast it each round) or limited area (like AoE 10 or 20 or something), but it sure would help Machaka a lot.

Or perhaps the Black Sorceror could have Dragon Master as innate ability (to be able to summon fire drakes early on to bolster the lines in the early moments).If you want to find a solution in line with has been done recently the Bane Spiders/Spider warriors could be made recruitable everywhere. The regular spider warriors are almost identical to man's wardens, except they aren't sacred and therefore have twice the upkeep.

The anywhere Bane Spiders might make the nation "assassination-centric", wouldn't call that entirely a bad thing - new dynamics are interesting and if the new strategy is more viable than the old one it's a "win".

[Redeyes]

I agree that getting an air 6 hero roughly once every ~666 turns with luck 3 is problematic and should be addressed immediately ;).

More seriously the design philosophy was that the heroes should always be at least as good as the recruitables. Getting an air4 eagle king hero when you just randomed a recruitable air 5 would be pretty boring.
Well, the chance for getting a A5 High Seraph is 0.625%. Right now you are more likely to get A5 from an Eagle King than if you recruit 3 High Serpahs a turn (under luck 3).

It isn't much of an issue, but I feel it is an oddity, especially as it makes the MA Eagle Kings quite a bit better than the EA (okay, they are heroes, but even a baseline Eagle King is a jackpot, they are first class thugs besides the considerable magic).

[llamabeast]

0.625% means about one in 150, no? So if you recruit 3 a turn then you should get A5 once every 50 turns or so. That is much more often than the one every 660 or so turns from the Eagle King hero.

[Redeyes]

0.625% means about one in 150, no? So if you recruit 3 a turn then you should get A5 once every 50 turns or so. That is much more often than the one every 660 or so turns from the Eagle King hero.

From what I recall, MA Caelum has three different heroes. Two of them are multiheroes, the Harab Seraphine and Eagle King, and one is a unique hero - some leader of the temple guard, I don't recall the specifics. My assumption was that you had an equal chance of getting one of the three - a 2% to get an eagle king per turn. As the MA Caelum Eagle kings have A5 unlike the EA ones, that's a 2% to get an A5 hero perturn. If you recruit three High Seraphs you have 1- (1 - 0.00625)^3 = 1.833056640625% per turn to get a A5 (or more than one) High Seraph.

The 1 in 666 turns to get an A6 hero is a separate issue, and not one I have verified the maths for. I am only discussing A5 - and where the chance of a getting a hero with is larger than if you recruit 3 High Seraphs per turn.

The Eagle King by itself is certainly good enough that it doesn't need the A5 to be competitive.

[Seve82]

I just had to pop in to thank this wonderful stopping of clam/gem whoring in cbm 1.6

There sure has been no problem of having too few gems in our games(I've been playing in small circle of ppl outside lamaserver forumgames) or atleast I have had no gem shortages with no gemgens. There sure has been plenty of tartarians/elemental kings/queens fully kitted on our games. All it takes is just focusing yer usage of gems to "right" places.

[llamabeast]

Redeyes - right, sorry, I got confused between the A5 and A6 statistics.

1.833056640625%

:)

[Peter Ebbesen]

As we all know, Alexander the Great did not exist and he had an infinite number of limbs. That isn't the topic for today. The proof hinges on the fact that forearmed is forewarned, so let us turn to today's topic: the 4-armed pretenders. Known by their titanic size, their 1 miscellaneous slot, their 3 strength dominion and, yes, their 4 arms.

Specifically for Lanka, which is the nation I have examined them most in in CBM, it seems there is a minor issue, but an annoying one - the thematic pretenders are completely outclassed by the generic pretenders and, even worse, by pretenders that are just about as unthematic as they can get. (Which isn't the general case: See e.g. T'ien C'hi's Jade Emperor)

The thematic ones are:
- Destroyer of Worlds (100): Whose A2D2 makes the price tag reasonable and along the general lines of cost but makes for a poor chassis for just about all occasions because just about all recruitable commanders and national summons for Lanka are air/death mages already and neither air nor death makes for strong blesses and Lanka is, usually, all about having a strong bless. He has better attack/defense values than the Nataraja (+3/+2), but for Lanka pretenders aren't chosen for their melee SC abilities as a general rule.
- Deva (75): Whose single-path B2, the single cheapest path for other pretenders to acquire when running a blood nation, seems grossly overpriced compared to the other titan sized pretenders (and especially the Nataraja, who costs 25; Ok, the Deva has 2 higher base attack skill, but she really feels overpriced). With the correct amount of blood magic to invest in on most pretenders being 0 or 1 since 1 is all that is needed to start the blood process for non-blood nations, one is actually paying 75 points for what anybody else could pick up at their basic path cost.
- Nataraja: (Who really ought to side with the opposition) has a good S2 to start with and a very cheap 25 price tag.


And the Nataraja, despite its very cheap cost, is completely overshadowed by the generic Lady of Fortune pretender that Lanka also has access to, who, for a mere 50 points (25 more than the Nataraja), gets a point of water magic and good luck events in her province thrown in. The Natarajas 2 extra hands at the cost of a miscellaneous slot is probably a wash overall - better SC melee and defense but no option to use the standard sorcery/wizardry ring combination so common for high level spellcasting.


When considering the rest of the available pretenders, the vast majority have either no magic or overlap at least in part with the national magics - out of the 29 possible pretenders for Lanka, with Lanka having only ADNB as national magics, there are 15 who bring some new path to the table but only 6 (Fountain, Nataraja, Mother of Rivers, Lady of Fortune, Cyclops, Dragon (red)) that focus on non-national paths. As the strongest blessings for Lanka tends to be two (or three) of F, W, E with optional S or N components thrown in, that means that as of 1.6, it is likely that the vast majority of pretenders made by human players for Lanka, Land of Demons, are Mothers of Rivers or Ladies of Fortune with the rare Great Mother or Cyclops thrown in.

Ideally, changes would be made to make the Nataraja competitive with the Lady of Fortune and to make the Destroyer of Worlds and Deva of some interest other than choosing a bad pretender for the nation with a whiff of flavour.

------

I'll throw some suggestions into the ring to start with, but as there are many nations I don't have a strong feel for, they are probably not the most appropriate - feel free to come up with better changes: The intention is not to make the currently rarely seen thematic ones overshadow the generic ones but to make them competitive whether by equal magic, better generic effects, or whatever:

Now, the Nataraja is shared with Arcoscephale, Kailasa, Caelum, and T'ien C'hi (if I recall all of them and in most ages of the nations), so balancing him may take a bit of work - otoh, almost all of those get the Lady of Fortune as well, so it is really a Nataraja (S2, 25) vs. Lady of Fortune (WS2, 50) balancing for those nations too in his current form; My suggestion would be to focus on his role as Lord of the Dance, Destruction leading to Creation, in the Dom3 Death and Rebirth interpretation: Have him autocast relief in battle as the world rejoices at his dancing. This won't make him a popular choice for Lanka due to the need for a heavy bless, but it will, perhaps, make him compete with the Lady of Fortune for some of the other nations - a mobile auto relief could come in quite handy for those relying on national armies. Alternatively, make him an FS2 caster to more closely mirror the destruction/creation aspect or do both and boost him to the 50 price tag (same pirace as Lady of Fortune, Jade Emperor, and many other of the non 2/2 path pretenders)

The Destroyer of Worlds sees action for Caelum and Kailasa (all ages), and Yomi - ironically, the only nation to whom he really brings something truly useful is Kailasa when the goody-two-shoes are in charge and neither air nor death are national magics (though a rainbow mage is probably more useful). His magic is entirely appropriate but it just doesn't make him a good choice for those for whom it would be thematic the job. I would suggest making him E2D2 or AED2 (just as thematic: hey, he's armed with both iron and lightning) rather than A2D2 or perhaps as an alternative, give him an autocasting battlefield wide Wind of Death... if there was a reasonable way to make him not take damage himself One day, I'd love to see a pretender autocast battle fortune in battle just for fun - a martial pretender whom soldiers love to follow, but that is probably much too strong due to its likely crippling impact on blitz games.

The Deva is shared like the Destroyer of Worlds and visits two ages of T'ien C'hi as well. Nobody likes her. Let's face it: The Deva is a zero cost throwaway combat pretender that comes with blood 2 and a 75 point cost. Perhaps the best thing to do would simply be to set her cost to zero - an equally but different terrible alternative to the terrible manticore for those who have her as an option. Now, that might be boring. As an alternative, make her a FEB2 caster and keep the current price tag. That's 3 magic paths for 75 and a possible bless chassis. For Lanka one is probably going to stick with the cheaper Lady of Fortune if going for a standard major FW bless or WE (or WN), but it might be used for blesses including minor E components and major F components or vice versa - and the ability to cheaply add a B4 bless is worth something (though not much).


So, any other opinions on the 4 armed pretenders as they exist in CBM 1.6 given the pretenders they compete against for selection choice? Am I off my rocker? Do you guys use them all the time? If I actually do have a poitn, what should be done with them to better balance them versus the competition? :)

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive been watching for the initial post to change. But I guess since I have to restart all the games on the Dom3 server anyway, I will go ahead and ask. Has this shifted from an early version to the official one? Should I download this one and use it, or wait?

[Jack_Trowell]

Demon Knights still use the normal "hoof" attack, it seems they should get the improved "warhorse hoof" attack that other knight type units get in CBM (or maybe something like a specific "nightmare hoof" attack as they are riding demon steeds).

[HoneyBadger]

I'm wondering that too, Gandalf.


I like your Nightmare Hoof idea, as long as it makes demon knights more expensive/harder to get. A lot of strategies seem to eventually boil down to "and then summon demon knights at your leisure".

Maybe the hoof attack could have a small chance of feebleminding their target? It seems rather appropriate for a kick in the head.

[Squirrelloid]

The Allfather pretender seems really overpriced. Not only that, but his innate magic paths offer nothing really to any of the nations that can choose him. There was complaint about the Destroyer of Worlds above, and the DoW is a much better buy than the Allfather.

I'm tempted to recommend halving his price to 75 pts, but 100 would be a decent step in the right direction.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Is the Destroyer of Worlds really such a clear better buy at 100 (for those who can buy him) than the Allfather is at 150? (for those who can buy him). I would tend to think not, though I agree that 150 sure feels like an awful lot when creating the pretender. :)

While he is obviously inferior to the DoW in starting magic (AD vs A2D2) and thus for blessing purposes of less use, additional paths cost 30 rather, useful for those going for smaller blesses or a touch of rainbow magic. Moreover, the reason people take the Allfather (when not just in order to be thematic) is usually to get a powerful awake or dormant SC with minimal research and equipment needs, and he certainly fits that role very well, considerably better than the DoW does, operating at a very strong level early on while providing some magical coverage later in the game; while the DoW may have 4 arms, the Allfather is flying, has glamour, and gets his own extra attacks (from 2xHoof(20)) (not to mention being extremely stealthy to boot). He can also sail huge armies across oceans, which can be anything from worthless to quite good depending on map.

His eyeloss and lack of foot slot hurts, but being mounted is fairly useful, so it is not all bad news.

For me, the reason not to take him is more that he doesn't provide the sort of power bless that is common for those very few who can get him (3 ages of Vanheim and one of Helheim) than because of his price for what he does, and for that reason alone I am tempted to think that lowering his price alone isn't going to make him a more popular pretender in general: At a whopping 150 points, he remains the most powerful early-game SC of the available chassis for Vanheim and Helheim (and one of the most powerful SC chassis amongst pretenders in the game in general).

For the games I like to play (60-80+ turns), he probably ought to have a lower cost (given the general CBM changes), but what, if any, would be the impact on blitz games from having a 75 points Allfather as you suggest? (I don't know).

What is the true value of glamour on an SC chassis? (Most of us would kill for it, but what's that in points? :D) What is the true value of having path costs of 30 rather than, say, 50? What is the true cost of starting with an affliction that puts one just one eyeloss from blindness, even if the stats have been adjusted to compensate for it?

I find the Allfather devilishly hard to set a point value for because he just has way too many options available to him and several really good base abilities that everybody wants to get (such as flying) or wish they had (glamour).

[Squirrelloid]

Is the Destroyer of Worlds really such a clear better buy at 100 (for those who can buy him) than the Allfather is at 150? (for those who can buy him). I would tend to think not, though I agree that 150 sure feels like an awful lot when creating the pretender. :)

While he is obviously inferior to the DoW in starting magic (AD vs A2D2) and thus for blessing purposes of less use, additional paths cost 30 rather, useful for those going for smaller blesses or a touch of rainbow magic. Moreover, the reason people take the Allfather (when not just in order to be thematic) is usually to get a powerful awake or dormant SC with minimal research and equipment needs, and he certainly fits that role very well, considerably better than the DoW does, operating at a very strong level early on while providing some magical coverage later in the game; while the DoW may have 4 arms, the Allfather is flying, has glamour, and gets his own extra attacks (from 2xHoof(20)) (not to mention being extremely stealthy to boot). He can also sail huge armies across oceans, which can be anything from worthless to quite good depending on map.

His eyeloss and lack of foot slot hurts, but being mounted is fairly useful, so it is not all bad news.

For me, the reason not to take him is more that he doesn't provide the sort of power bless that is common for those very few who can get him (3 ages of Vanheim and one of Helheim) than because of his price for what he does, and for that reason alone I am tempted to think that lowering his price alone isn't going to make him a more popular pretender in general: At a whopping 150 points, he remains the most powerful early-game SC of the available chassis for Vanheim and Helheim (and one of the most powerful SC chassis amongst pretenders in the game in general).

For the games I like to play (60-80+ turns), he probably ought to have a lower cost (given the general CBM changes), but what, if any, would be the impact on blitz games from having a 75 points Allfather as you suggest? (I don't know).

What is the true value of glamour on an SC chassis? (Most of us would kill for it, but what's that in points? :D) What is the true value of having path costs of 30 rather than, say, 50? What is the true cost of starting with an affliction that puts one just one eyeloss from blindness, even if the stats have been adjusted to compensate for it?

I find the Allfather devilishly hard to set a point value for because he just has way too many options available to him and several really good base abilities that everybody wants to get (such as flying) or wish they had (glamour).

Have you actually tried to play with him against real people? (everything works against the computer, after all).

He's not that exciting as an early SC. Actually, he's pretty craptastic. His starting gear is pretty bad. His stats are sort of ho-hum for a titan chassis. He has terrible early buffing potential with his innate paths. (Nothing useful until alt3 for mistform). See below for glamour. He has neither fear nor awe, so D5 and Dom9 are mandatory additional expenses on top of his 150pt pricetag. That's another 227 points *minimum* on just basic SC necessities, for a starting price of 377 points, and you haven't even tried to use that 30pt/new path yet.

Glamour is just free mirror image. Its really not all that, I don't know why people get so worked up about it. Yeah, its exciting when your basic troops have it. But your commanders with air magic can just *cast mirror image* - of course, you rarely do this because its a situational buff. (In fact, for an SC its not a very good one because they're supposed to be fighting *armies* - its most useful for anti-SCs who expect to be fighting one creature). Value of glamour on an SC chassis? Almost nothing.

That he has sailing is irrelevant. So does every fricking commander for the nations that can choose him. And if he's an SC, he's not taking an army with him. The ability is flavor and nothing more.

He flies, great. He also has no boots slot. So basically he gets free boots of flying - which costs what, 10a? 7a with a hammer? And it means you can't give him any different boots instead.

Compared to the Destroyer of Worlds, he's down a boots slot and 2 hand slots, and up 1 misc slot. Ie, net down 2 slots. As you noted, he's A1D1 instead of A2D2, so he's down 2 paths. His paths are also totally useless for Helheim or Vanheim, who have air magic and death magic already, and don't want air or death blesses - not even minor ones. And the DoW is available to Kailasa, who can actually want an A9 bless, and with sacred archers and mages a D8 bless could be entertaining. Ie, the DoW has better paths for the nations that can take it than the Allfather does, even assuming those path lengths were equal.

At 150pts awake, the fact that he can get new paths for 30pts doesn't actually mean much because you *don't have many points to spend*. Even asleep 30pts is a really expensive rainbow, and 150pts is a really expensive opening for a rainbow.

If you take him asleep he's no longer an early expander SC. Which means any advantage he might have had of having flying early is gone, because you could just make boots of flying for your other cheaper pretender at this point.

Lets compare him to some other pretenders Vanheim/Helheim/Midgard have:

Father of Winters:
Adv: Better stats (+1 defense/str), better protection (by one), better weapon out of the box, Cold Power, Chill Aura (of large), a magic path Van/hel might actually want to use for a major bless (Water), a boot slot, 6 more base hp, 50 points cheaper, +1 additional total paths (3 vs. 2)
Disad: Doesn't fly. We can fix this with his boot slot. More expensive new paths - at 50 pts cheaper the first new path is free by comparison, and we have a much better innate path for a bless anyway.

Asynja (this one's going to be embarassing):
Adv: Vastly better stats (8 more defense, 3 more att, mere 1 less str, even better precision fwiw), better weapon, much better armor (chainmail of displacement!), 3 more base hp, 2A vs. 1A1D, bootslot, 125pts less
Disad: Doesn't fly. We can fix this with boots. 50 pts/new path, but at 25 pts the first *2.5* are effectively free by comparison.

Blue Dragon
Adv: Also flies, better str/att (worse base def, but magic path will fix that), much better protection, better attack routine, breath weapon, magic path we actually care about on the pretender, 100points cheaper, innate Fear +5
Disad: Fewer slots, Much more expensive additional paths (yeah, but we saved 100 points on the chassis, and we get a good bless to boot)

Keeper of the Bridge
Adv: +1 att, much better protection, magic path we actually care about (E), 100 pts cheaper
Disad: 1 less str, 2 fewer base hp, more expensive new paths, doesn't fly (hey, these are actually comparable - too bad one's 100 pts cheaper)

Wyrm:
Adv: 78 more base hp!, Much higher str, att, prot (lower defense), regeneration of awesome, fear +0, amphibious, better attack routine, 100 pts less, extra head slot
Disad: Doesn't fly, fewer slots, no magic, more expensive paths

Totally owns Allfather as an early SC. At the point savings, can afford a magic path (or two!) trivially by comparison.

------
The allfather is worse than all of those, maybe comparable at best (the Keeper of the Bridge has E, which makes it arguable, although for the nations in question i'd say the Keeper is marginally better), and that's before even considering relative point cost. At 2-3x the point cost of the other options, the fact that he is *worse* than them is just appalling. The two things he routinely does better are flying and cheaper new paths. Of course, the first is only relevant if you take him awake (easy to solve with forging for nations that have abundant air), and the second is impossible to get any relative advantage out of because his base cost is so expensive you don't have the points left to really use it - especially if you take him awake to use the early flying.

And of course, the allfather should also be balanced against the opposition as well. Consider Moloch/PoD/Gorgon. All of which come with Fear (often powerful fear), 3 total paths, flying, full slots (no missing boot slot), and other abilities. in current CBM their point costs are 125/125/150 respectively, and they all are much better than the allfather as early SCs, and 2 of them are better as bless chasses.

He even compares unfavorably to the vampire queen, who, while physically unimpressive, does have a host of useful abilities, the same new magic path cost and flight, and is immortal.

If the allfather was as good as a gorgon (equal to it in combat potential, equally useful magical paths for the nation it belongs to), it would be worth 150 points. Neither its magic paths nor its combat ability live up to that comparison.

[kianduatha]

I'm here to talk about Glaives(and their bastard son, Coral Glaives).

I would posit that in fact, all troops who use glaives are inferior. Now, I recognize that there are sometimes instances where one really does just need to punch through 20 protection or so. Unfortunately, most high protection troops have at least average defense scores(and many even have shields). Because glaives have an attack penalty, most of the time you are better off using a different troop that has a better attack score to score more hits(and get more chances at a crit), get past shields, and soforth.

Moreover, the only nations who use glaives don't need high-damage troops, as they use 15+ strength troops.

[Graeme Dice]

I think that the Allfather's high price is a holdover from the Dom2 days, where the differences in mechanics really did make him close to being worth that cost.

[LDiCesare]

Moreover, the only nations who use glaives don't need high-damage troops, as they use 15+ strength troops.

T'ien Ch'i has 15+ strength troops? At the price of their glaive bearers?

[hunt11]

When people object to gem generators, do they have a problem with all of them, or just with clams?

[Stavis_L]

When people object to gem generators, do they have a problem with all of them, or just with clams?

1) Different people object for different reasons. See any number of threads.
2) Generally - people who object for micromanagement reasons object to them all.
3) Generally - people who object for game balance/power distribution reasons are more heavily focused on clams...but that's more varied.

Feel free to choose your own reasons for liking/disliking them :-)

[llamabeast]

All of them!

[Redeyes]

Moreover, the only nations who use glaives don't need high-damage troops, as they use 15+ strength troops.

T'ien Ch'i has 15+ strength troops? At the price of their glaive bearers?

T'ien Ch'i uses its glaive troops?

[Festin]

LA Mictlan also has glaives.

[Maerlande]

QM,

We were discussing LA Ulm strategies on IRC and I noticed what I think is a balance issue.

Black Templars are useful troops for LA Ulm especially with a rainbow light bless which also suits LA Ulm as a viable build. However, I think they are badly overpriced. The comparisons I made are Midgard Vans and TC Ancestor Vessels.

Vans at 90/16 are 10 gold more and 29 resources less. I think the gold price for vans is suitable and resources are based on equipment if I understand correctly so that suits.

Ancestor vessels at 60/31 are 20 gold cheaper and 14 resources cheaper.

Black templars at 80/45 gain a lot of protection but have generally inferior stats to the above and have no special abilities besides sacred. The resource price is for gear so makes sense but the gold price seems at least 20 too high if not 30 too high. My understanding is that protection should not be included in gold price because it's in the resource price. Also, they have terrible MR which is potentially an issue in some situations.

Clearly a build to use Black Templars must account for production and that's fair. But burning that much gold on a decent but not special sacred cavalry unit is painful. You could buy 8 infantry for that.

That's my opinion anyways. I'm not sure LA Ulm needs help in late game, but it does have a bit of a fragile expansion depending on the strategy. And also the consensus on IRC is that LA Ulm is rush bait because their late game is so good. Black templars are one of the best equilizers for stopping a rush. And I don't think they have much late game value so it's really only a boost to Ulm's expansion and early game.

Cheers,
Maer

[Micah]

"And I don't think they have much late game value so it's really only a boost to Ulm's expansion and early game."

Stronger early game translates directly into stronger late game...

[Maerlande]

Fair enough

[Illuminated One]

That's actually one thing I have to disagree with.

Firstly, it's limiting strategies to "expand fast" (with a chance to outresearch and use research advantage in some situations).

Secondly I really don't see where Ulm can squeeze out a bless for templars.
You need d3b2-3 on your god and you need him at least dormant if you want to get into the vampires quickly, you want high dom, s4 is necessary for RoW, nature isn't.

Giving the vampires back their earlier lower cost might be better imo. They are (leaving the immortality out) weaker than the recruitable mages of many nations (Scratti and Mictlan Rain Priests for instance).

[Maerlande]

I think that's a bit of taste involved. I've been playing them with a nice rainbow bless on the light side with sleeping master lich and some 4's while keeping decent scales. Obviously it includes D4 and B4 and other variations. There are a lot of options which play a bit different.

But, the point was that they compare unfavourably to other LA sacred cavalry. Not an analysis of playing style or build although I agree I brought that into the discussion myself.

Speaking of limiting strategies, assuming that Ulm can't use a bless strat is limiting. It's possible. It may not be effective. I think it works well with 4's and synergizes with the need to diversify magic.

[Illuminated One]

Well, I'm not talking about limited in one nation (of course a nation must be limited or it's simply overpowered, see Hinnom, Sauromatia).
I mean that balancing nations should not be done by just giving them better sacreds imo.

[Squirrelloid]

Having just played LA Ulm recently, i'm not convinced the templars are unplayable. But they probably are overpriced for their stats, at least slightly. Their real problem is their bad MR - i had them dying like flies to smite spam, which for an 80 gold unit is not cool, especially when they're otherwise the only unit Ulm has that can stand against a lot of the LA bless rushes. I'd probably advise an MR boost before a drop in the gold cost.

I do think the rainbow Ulm bless is perfectly playable and fulfills a lot of Ulm's needs.

[Kuritza]

Have you actually tried to play with him against real people? (everything works against the computer, after all).

I have, and it went great. But I was really lucky in that game.
Allfather's main flaw is that he doesnt cover Vanheim's main weaknesses (which is limited magic).

[chrispedersen]

I think you are missing a huge contributor to their value.

If I am palying a sacred nation: Mictlan, Lanka.. etc. I choose a different target. Period.

Lowering the cost would mean ulm doesn't have to make choices. I've had a lot of experience with MP, and a fair amount of success. I just had my butt handed to me by Fantomen in a straight up fight with ulm as is.

[Maerlande]

I think you are missing a huge contributor to their value.

What would that be Chris? Don't get me wrong. I think the Black Templars have value and I buy them depending on the strategy. I just think they are overpriced. I know you have lot's of MP experience and I'm interested in your analysis.

I doubt I would play a build based on them, but it's possible.

An MR boost would sure help. A suggestion on IRC was made to use them with Legions of Steel which is great except that it's very hard for Ulm to get many LoS casters with only 1/4 of black priests having the capability and only after Conj 3 research. Still, 20 protect +3 is very very nice.

[Squirrelloid]

The problem Ulm has against sacred rushes is they're likely to be accompanied by a smite spamming priest (the prophet, if nothing else).

At which point Ulm has the choice of the Templars, who might actually be able to fight the sacreds but will die horribly to smite spam, and in their rather limited numbers can't really survive that. Or they can choose regular units (none of which they can mass especially fast, but faster than templars), who will have the numbers to withstand some smite losses, but won't survive the sacreds. And it really is a one or the other choice, because even with Pr3 Ulm will always find itself resource limited.

[Squirrelloid]

Have you actually tried to play with him against real people? (everything works against the computer, after all).

I have, and it went great. But I was really lucky in that game.
Allfather's main flaw is that he doesnt cover Vanheim's main weaknesses (which is limited magic).

I would say thats *a* problem with it, but its main problem is its horribly overcosted, which makes it impossible to really benefit from any of its advantages.

[chrispedersen]

I think you are missing a huge contributor to their value.

What would that be Chris? Don't get me wrong. I think the Black Templars have value and I buy them depending on the strategy. I just think they are overpriced. I know you have lot's of MP experience and I'm interested in your analysis.

I doubt I would play a build based on them, but it's possible.

An MR boost would sure help. A suggestion on IRC was made to use them with Legions of Steel which is great except that it's very hard for Ulm to get many LoS casters with only 1/4 of black priests having the capability and only after Conj 3 research. Still, 20 protect +3 is very very nice.

Hey Maerlande,

The fact that because they *can* build guardians, sacred nations don't choose ulm as a target.

I disagree completely with squirrel that bless nations tend to field large armies of smiters. In fact, very few nations field large numbers of H3 priests. Abysia comes to mind.

Secondly; Ulm has a 25% production bonus. This means that it is easier to have dump stats, and translates into a bonus on pretender design.

Finally, I *like* the low MR of ulm units. I don't believe accurate stats are tracked since the recent changes to ulm. However I definitely do not view it as one of the weak nations.

Ulm has a national spell that boosts MR. I would rather increase the AoE of that spell than make any fundamental changes to ulm units.

I won the all ulm civil war (admittedly late age), but I think many of the same principles carry through for ulm from beginning to end.

To me, ulms low MR is a guide that ulm needs to transition from national troops to other things. But due to its forge bonus, or national spells (la) ulm has pretty good options in those areas.

[Trumanator]

Ummm, they're talking about the cavalry, not the guardians Chris. LA Ulm is the one in question here.

[Maerlande]

I see quite a bit of Chris's analysis that points to the templar discussion. We've been hashing out ideas on the ghouls in IRC today.

I guess to put it simply, I'd like the templars to cost less gold to fit with the competition for sacred cavalry. I strongly agree that the low MR is thematic and fits. If the templars cost less gold it would provide another strategic option, neither the best nor worst, just another one.

[Squirrelloid]

The fact that because they *can* build guardians, sacred nations don't choose ulm as a target.

Ghoul guardians are neither especially fast nor especially strong defenders. So they are likely to get attacked before attacking, and likely to die when attacked. Defense 6 is pitifully easy to hit, and Protection 19 isn't spectacular without decent defense to keep the number of hits low. Especially since many sacreds used for rushing are going to be offensively powerful, like F9W9 jags or Gibborim with ~20 strength, and so on. The best defense against many of these sacreds is the Templars because they combine good defense with good protection in addition to a good offense.

The problem, of course, is having them get eaten by the opposing prophet (or other H3 priests if they have them) while they are stymying the sacreds. The ghoul guardians might survive smite-spam, but they just keel over and die when anything with plausible offense gets near them.


I disagree completely with squirrel that bless nations tend to field large armies of smiters. In fact, very few nations field large numbers of H3 priests. Abysia comes to mind.

It only takes one smiter to ruin an reasonable force of Templar, since they kill about 3 templar for every 4 smites, and a reasonable force is ~10.


Secondly; Ulm has a 25% production bonus. This means that it is easier to have dump stats, and translates into a bonus on pretender design.

...

Neutral production scales with *turmoil 3* and *cold 3* found me definitively resource limited. Ulm's troops individually take a lot of resources and not much gold with the exception of Templars, who take a lot of both.


Ulm has a national spell that boosts MR. I would rather increase the AoE of that spell than make any fundamental changes to ulm units.

Thaum 4 is kind of late to be fending off a rush, especially as Ulm is not going to be blazing fast in the research department. And only gets E2 on 25% of black priests.

[chrispedersen]

Neutral production scales with *turmoil 3* and *cold 3* found me definitively resource limited. Ulm's troops individually take a lot of resources and not much gold with the exception of Templars, who take a lot of both.

Sorry. I can't imagine taking turmoil-3 with ulm. You have hearty, expensive units. Get the scales to buy them.

More or less you have units with good protection, good precision or strength, good hit points. Your weakness is mobility and magic resistance.

So unit for unit your units compare well in straight out combat against other nations.


Thaum 4 is kind of late to be fending off a rush, especially as Ulm is not going to be blazing fast in the research department. And only gets E2 on 25% of black priests.

Since all of my researchers are black priests.. E2 is never a problem. I like the lower upkeep costs. Reserve the others for blood hunting.

I also like to take an awake or dormant pretender at the worst to take care of the holes in magic paths, act as a deterrent to rushes, and to start using my forge bonus as fast as possible.


Finally, you decried the ghouls defense adn mobility. Once you're going to get hit (def 6) the point is don't try to compensate for it.

Either boost their protection up (legions of steel) or get them berserking - find a shaman.

19 protection isn't great?? huh? Barkskin em, or whatever and most usual troops will take 2-3 hits to kill em. Whereas the converse is not true.

[Graeme Dice]

Sorry. I can't imagine taking turmoil-3 with ulm. You have hearty, expensive units. Get the scales to buy them.

I think you missed his point. Even with turmoil 3 cold 3 limiting his gold income, he was still limited by resources in producing black templars, not their gold cost.

[chrispedersen]

I got his point. I just don't agree with it.

You *shouldn't* be building black templars significantly, let alone exclusively.

For example, EA-Ermor has some of the cheapest, most cost effective cav in the game. I *still* don't buy them. Early game you want cost effective expansion. Ermors roti's, and lixard auxiliaries and other troops are much more cost effective. Likewise for Ulm, except in a handful of niches - black templars aren't it.

If you try to expand using a round peg to drive a square hole - yes, you will be limited. Villains, rangers, and various footmen are much more cost effective.

Generally ulm units cost a few gp more than other nations. So I stand by my comments that you need $$ for units, and cannot envision a setup where turmoil-3 works.

[Kuritza]

Have you actually tried to play with him against real people? (everything works against the computer, after all).

I have, and it went great. But I was really lucky in that game.
Allfather's main flaw is that he doesnt cover Vanheim's main weaknesses (which is limited magic).

I would say thats *a* problem with it, but its main problem is its horribly overcosted, which makes it impossible to really benefit from any of its advantages.

Vanheim has cold scale, and can perfectly live with some sloth, so they have free points to buy Allfather. But they cant buy him enough extra magic paths to really diversify with him.
So yeah, you can say its his high cost that is a real problem.
Make him much cheaper, and he will be terribly overpowered though. With Awe, Allfather can solo indies on turn 3 (with an earthen kite shield). Having a stealthy, awake SC-God which also diversifies you into death and, I dont know, astral may be a bit too much.

[Fantomen]

Generally ulm units cost a few gp more than other nations. So I stand by my comments that you need $$ for units, and cannot envision a setup where turmoil-3 works.

In the game where I just beat you, Zebra, I had turmoil 3;). And if I could start over I would probably have taken some sloth too and swapped the fountain for a WQ.

I expanded using my starting army + a couple templars(!) for the weak indies and second tier mages casting call horror+retreat with indy scouts following to capture for the moderate to hard ones. Lots of micro but worked like a charm.

Extra bonus is that after initial expansion you already have those mages sprinkled out to blood hunt.

[Squirrelloid]

It wasn't i was limited on templars by resources, i was limited on *any* troops by resources. With adjacent mountains.

Ulm's troops take so many resources its hard to imagine them being *gold* limited no matter what you do to your scales (except maybe take sloth 3, which sounds like a terrible idea).

Also, since 4 Black Templars + a Black Priest make a great expansion party that doesn't take losses, and you can combine these into larger parties when you need to, Black Templars would seem to be ideal for 'efficient expansion' - especially since your infantry do take losses and are less effective against things like HC (which are common in LA).

[Squirrelloid]

I have, and it went great. But I was really lucky in that game.
Allfather's main flaw is that he doesnt cover Vanheim's main weaknesses (which is limited magic).

I would say thats *a* problem with it, but its main problem is its horribly overcosted, which makes it impossible to really benefit from any of its advantages.

Vanheim has cold scale, and can perfectly live with some sloth, so they have free points to buy Allfather. But they cant buy him enough extra magic paths to really diversify with him.
So yeah, you can say its his high cost that is a real problem.
Make him much cheaper, and he will be terribly overpowered though. With Awe, Allfather can solo indies on turn 3 (with an earthen kite shield). Having a stealthy, awake SC-God which also diversifies you into death and, I dont know, astral may be a bit too much.

So lets see, you're advocating 150 pt chassis + 30 pt new path + at least 72 pts boosting the new path (S4 or you'll just get mage dueled to death, and even that is somewhat risky) + 21x7=147 points on dominion, or 399 points, and that's still a pretty minimal allfather. You're also advocating awake, so we're already 2 scales in the hole from balanced (ok, so that covers C2 of the C3 you're going to take). Now, we desperately need Mg1 and O3, and you've advocated Sl3, so our points balance. We have 31 points left which is A3 or D3 or A2D2. And you know what, that's a really crappy pretender for the points we just spent. We can pile on some misfortune (2), which gives us enough to get up to D5 for fear (from D3) plus give us A3. Of course, now we'll be fending off indie barbarians all game long, with our non-existent armies since Van's troops require non-trivial amounts of resources, so we can't mass troops very fast with Sl3. And our sacreds have no bless worth caring about. And our sacred mages/thugs have no bless worth caring about. And its not even a very good allfather.

I mean, I confess, you can just play the Allfather. You have to basically give up on all your national units, but you'll get an allfather worth caring about. Of course, you'll lose since the only thing you have going for you is the Allfather, but you can do it.

The ability to solo indies on turn 3 is actually rather pathetic for a titan chassis. Most Titans can do it on turn 2, at least if they're sufficiently careful about who they attack. (I imagine he can too. But he's not as good at it as say, the Wyrm at 1/3 his cost).

-------------

Because, you know, taking a cheap SC pretender like the 25pt Asynja, and paying 50points each for new paths would also get you Astral and Death and *still* be cheaper than the Allfather... And did I mention she has better stats and equipment like a *chainmail of displacement* to start with, so she can be SCing from turn 2? And a boot slot to slap some Boots of Flying in?

And because, you know, Vanheim does get D1 randoms I'm reasonably sure. Or can just gain access to death via blood summons. So access to death is not exciting. So we can just save another 50 points and skip death on the pretender.

[Kuritza]

So lets see, you're advocating 150 pt chassis + 30 pt new path + at least 72 pts boosting the new path (S4 or you'll just get mage dueled to death, and even that is somewhat risky) + 21x7=147 points on dominion, or 399 points, and that's still a pretty minimal allfather. You're also advocating awake, so we're already 2 scales in the hole from balanced (ok, so that covers C2 of the C3 you're going to take). Now, we desperately need Mg1 and O3, and you've advocated Sl3, so our points balance. We have 31 points left which is A3 or D3 or A2D2. And you know what, that's a really crappy pretender for the points we just spent. We can pile on some misfortune (2), which gives us enough to get up to D5 for fear (from D3) plus give us A3. Of course, now we'll be fending off indie barbarians all game long, with our non-existent armies since Van's troops require non-trivial amounts of resources, so we can't mass troops very fast with Sl3. And our sacreds have no bless worth caring about. And our sacred mages/thugs have no bless worth caring about. And its not even a very good allfather.

I mean, I confess, you can just play the Allfather. You have to basically give up on all your national units, but you'll get an allfather worth caring about. Of course, you'll lose since the only thing you have going for you is the Allfather, but you can do it.

The ability to solo indies on turn 3 is actually rather pathetic for a titan chassis. Most Titans can do it on turn 2, at least if they're sufficiently careful about who they attack. (I imagine he can too. But he's not as good at it as say, the Wyrm at 1/3 his cost).

-------------

Because, you know, taking a cheap SC pretender like the 25pt Asynja, and paying 50points each for new paths would also get you Astral and Death and *still* be cheaper than the Allfather... And did I mention she has better stats and equipment like a *chainmail of displacement* to start with, so she can be SCing from turn 2? And a boot slot to slap some Boots of Flying in?

And because, you know, Vanheim does get D1 randoms I'm reasonably sure. Or can just gain access to death via blood summons. So access to death is not exciting. So we can just save another 50 points and skip death on the pretender.

Well actually, I have won as MA Vanheim with Allfather. It didnt make into HoF because its not updated anymore, but I did. And I am not exactly advocating him - it was quite a relaxed game with little competition, so I took him just for the sheer beauty of taking a real Norse God, not for powerplaying. And still, I liked him even if he is not the *best* thing you can take.

First off, I didnt take Astral. I just took A3D4, domain 10. When I mentioned Astral, I meant that if you make Allfather cheaper, it will be possible to take some other endgame path as well, and that may be too much.

My scales were Order 3, Misfortune 2, Sloth 1, Cold 3 and Magic 1. Pretty decent.
Vanheim doesnt require 'nontrivial' amount of resources by the way. Skinshifters are just 7 resources each, and they form the bulk of Vanheim's armies.

Vanheim has high air and earth, they have blood hunters - and with such Allfather you also have D4, which is enough to summon demiliches etc. The only thing I really missed was an earth bless for Vanjarl thugs. And, of course, Astral.

If you dont mind, I will discard your concern about Astral Allfather being vulnerable to magic duels. Allfather picks his fights - he is stealthy, and he can teleport.

D1 is tooooooo slow to get into death magic soon enough, by the way. Its enough, sure, but its really slow. Allfather can conquer an indie province (nearly any indie province, including heavy cavalry) and search it, rinse and repeat. Once you have some death income, your D1 dwarfs can start casting dark knowledge.
A boot slot is also something you wont miss. Because, you see, Allfather has his boots of flying built-in.

So all in all, Allfather is decent. Not great, but decent. Make him much cheaper, and he might get too strong. Maybe he should cost about ~100 points instead of 150 though.

[Trumanator]

There's at least a reasonable chance that you'll get some D2 dwarves, since they're about all you'll be recruiting in your cap for the first 10-15 turns.

[Kuritza]

One dwarf in 4 has D1. One dwarf in 10 has another random. Out of these, only 1 in 4 will have another death random. So its 1/4, 1/10 and then another 1/4.
Somebody who doesnt such at math as much as I do can tell us the chance of getting such a mutant.

I've seen one D1F1 dwarf once in my life. Counting on a D2 dwarf is not something I'd advise.

---

But were Allfather to become cheaper, I'd probably pick Earth over Astral, of course... I hate starting with no astral, but Vanjarls really need at least a minor earth bless. And Earth is one of the best paths for an SC, too.

[Redeyes]

One dwarf in 4 has D1. One dwarf in 10 has another random. Out of these, only 1 in 4 will have another death random. So its 1/4, 1/10 and then another 1/4.
Somebody who doesnt such at math as much as I do can tell us the chance of getting such a mutant.Multiply the factors together, it's a 1/160 to get a d2 Dwarf.
You have twice the chance of getting D1F1, so that's a 1/80.

You are bound to have plenty of D1 dwarfs however, so if you use those to start a death economy you should soon be able to empower one and bootstrap down Death through that road.

Of course, having Death on your Pretender is "really" helpful.

[Trumanator]

True I suppose. I guess I'm just being spoiled in my game. I've already gotten 2 D2s and some other 10%s and its like turn 20 or so.

[Trumanator]

Is there a reason why Knights of Avalon don't get a hoof attack?

[Trumanator]

Another oddity, Jomon's Ashigaru, Samurai archers, basic Samurai, and Ninjas all have only 9 HP for some reason.

[kianduatha]

There's been a lot of discussion about how to rebalance Machaka, and it seems almost entirely there. The latest Black Hunter goldcost change was huge, and I've been seeing people actually use them for expansion(and be justified doing so, too!). I think the nation isn't quite where it needs to be still, though. I'd propose just a handful of minor changes for the next version.

I'll start with the most obvious: for some strange reason, currently Hunter Spiders(once they lose their rider) have a strength of only 11. This is frankly criminal, and it is the reason they deal no damage once their rider is gone. In order to have the same damage with their fangs as they do with a rider, they should have 16 strength.

Province defense can also be easily improved. Simply change the commanders to a Witch Doctor(for the first) and Voice of the Lord. The changes are both thematic and effective--Sermon of Courage makes your masses of Militia no longer so much of a disadvantage, and the Witch doctor can put down some fairly random but occasionally effective magical support. Wandering thugs will occasionally get blinded, combusted, Decayed, and once in a blue moon a Witch Doctor might even get off a lucky Flaming Hands. It's also perfect thematically--Witch doctors even have in their flavor texts that they hide in the wilderness to potshot enemies.

[Micah]

1 point of PD shouldn't get mages, ever. The only exceptions currently are EA Van and Hel, who literally have no non-mage commanders in their rosters. (Possibly some of the expansion nations have one, though I can't think of any...I just glanced at the lineups in the book)

[Kheldron]

LA Marignon at least gets a chartmaker AS 100% random with PD as 2d commander...and they do have other types of leaders

[Squirrelloid]

LA Marignon at least gets a chartmaker AS 100% random with PD as 2d commander...and they do have other types of leaders

I think Micah is objecting to one as *first* commander.

Plently of nations get a weak mage as 2nd commander (often because its also a priest). Ermor gets a Pontifex (F1H2) for example.

But as a *first* commander its incredibly rare, and only because the rosters of those nations have no non-mage commanders.

[Kheldron]

Ok my bad, I answered before the question reached my brain :)

[Tolkien]

regarding the LA Ulm debate (templars and templars vs. guardians)

Just a quick question Fanto: what kind of bless did you put on the templars? I've been running some tests with your 4 templar+priest expansion parties (with a 4N4E4D4S4B bless: I compromised my scales more then I'd like to). They do great against light infantry/archers/light barbarians, but the parties die when put up against barbarians (regular barbarians), HC, or large numbers of HI. I can see using Call Horror+scout against these types of indy provinces, but Call Horror is blood-4, which, if you're going to start blood hunting early (like you should), you're going to be tight in research (as well as unable to touch evocation/construction for some time). I can see the strategy working pretty well, I just think it cuts into Ulm's other research priorities, and leaves Ulm somewhat vulnerable to attack. What was the pretender build you used (since the build has a big impact on the optimal strategy for a nation)? Now that I think about it, you can probably incorporate parties of templars in a general infantry/ranger/villain expansion to make the whole thing go quicker and smoother. I'm going to have to look into that.

Squirrelloid: I ran some tests with the black templars and the ghoul guardians (with the same bless) versus the bless-rush units of other nations (with prophets casting banishment on the ghoul guardians). Against Utgard woodmen with E9N9 bless, I sent 6 templars+prophet vs 6 woodsmen+prophet. The templars are slaughtered every time, while the woodsmen suffer low casualties (1-2, 3 at the most) (a very bad attrition rate, considering woodsmen are cheaper, more resource friendly, and generally more useful). Against 12 ghoul guardians+S1D1 fortune teller (which just cast frighten the entire time) vs. 6 woodsmen+prophet (casting banishment), the guardians win every time (with casualties of 1-5 vs 6), in despite of the banishment. With 6 templars vs 6 F9W9 Vans, the Vans win everytime with barely a scratch. With 12 guardians vs 6 Vans (again with a prophet spamming banishment), the guardians and Vans win some of the time, depending on whose dominion they fight on. If on opposing dominion, guardians generally kill 3-4 Vans (and leaving the remaining Vans with 90ish fatigue) and suffer 7-9 casualties before routing, while on friendly dominion, they kill all of the Vans, while suffering 7-9 casualties. Against Mictlan, I sent 12 Jaguar Warriors (F9W9N4) vs 6 Templars. The templars die to the jags every time, while the jags suffer 1-2 casualties. When I sent ghoul guardians, they won every time (0-3 casualties vs 9-12 casualties). Also note, I omitted smite from the tests against the templars. Banishment played a fairly minor role from the prophet in the attrition of the ghoul guardians. So in conclusion, Squirrelloid, I find your claim that ghoul guardians aren't effective, while templars are effective, against common sacred-rushes to be erroneous at best. Templars are slaughtered every time in the sacred-vs.-sacred battles without the interference of smite, while dealing negligible damage against sacreds themselves. Ghoul Guardians, although being undead (which, on the other hand, makes them an awesome counter against hydras), generally don't suffer all that much against banishment, and will still eat sacred for lunch, dinner, breakfast, and brunch, in no particular order. They completely destroyed Mictlan's jaguars, contrary to your claim that the jaguars would prevail. I'm going to have to test Gath's giants, but I foresee a slaughter along the lines of Utgard, in terms of casualties, as a N9E9 bless would be similarly optimal for them.

In conclusion, while I think the Templars have a niche for LA Ulm, and you can definitely expand with them, I don't think they're ideal by themselves as a method of expansion, or warrant a bless strategy. They could definitely benefit and and should receive a slight 10-20 reduction in price, but I don't think it'll be too major, or will allow Templars to really flourish. They'll still be a niche unit, albeit now a more cost-effective niche unit. Really it comes down to the age old question: ghoul guardians, or black templars? When it comes down to that, guardians will win out in most situations.

tl;dr: cheaper Black Templars=good. Some Black Templars in expansion=good(?). Templars=/=anti-sacred. Ghoul Guardians>>sacreds. Ghoul Guardians>>Black Templars.

[kianduatha]

1 point of PD shouldn't get mages, ever. The only exceptions currently are EA Van and Hel, who literally have no non-mage commanders in their rosters. (Possibly some of the expansion nations have one, though I can't think of any...I just glanced at the lineups in the book)

So basically you're saying it's a bad idea because it would give something unique to Machaka?

I mean, I know it's a bit different(though not entirely unprecedented, as you mention). Frankly, Machaka can justify having a caster in relatively undefended provinces way better than Helheim or Vanheim can. After all, it's just the village witchdoctor seeing if he can disease the invading army.

It above all makes Machakan province defense unpredictable--and that might be a bad thing, admittedly. I'd personally be less likely to try and use single thugs against Machaka, knowing that there was even a 10% chance my raider would end up decayed or blinded or otherwise taken out by 1 province defense.

[Micah]

No, I'm saying it's a bad idea because getting a mage for 1 gold is a bad idea.

[kianduatha]

I'm just trying to think of a way to make Machakan province defense not become an actual liability, to the detriment of the nation. There are only a few ways to make a pile of Militia useful--it seems the most elegant way to do so is to give them a caster. It's more fitting than a priest to start, or even bumping up to a better noncaster commander.

Either way, a Voice at 20 PD would do a lot of good. You might even stop routing when your first javelin barrage kills 30 of your own militia.

[vfb]

Well, ~30 Machakan PD killed my (unbuffed, naked) D5 Wyrm in Forge of Godhood.

[kianduatha]

With Dom10, or without?

[Illuminated One]

You could change it so that the 1st commander is a priest and the 2nd a mage.


edit:

Some other thing - why have you made carcator so cheap?
I've always found him perfectly useable (he's basically a better demilich without the ability to cast gemcosting spells but with the ability to teleport for free on defense and practically immortal outside your dom if you let the commander carrying him return/retreat - and he can beat PD on his own unless that's focused on archers).

[Fantomen]

Just a quick question Fanto: what kind of bless did you put on the templars? I've been running some tests with your 4 templar+priest expansion parties (with a 4N4E4D4S4B bless: I compromised my scales more then I'd like to). They do great against light infantry/archers/light barbarians, but the parties die when put up against barbarians (regular barbarians), HC, or large numbers of HI. I can see using Call Horror+scout against these types of indy provinces, but Call Horror is blood-4, which, if you're going to start blood hunting early (like you should), you're going to be tight in research (as well as unable to touch evocation/construction for some time). I can see the strategy working pretty well, I just think it cuts into Ulm's other research priorities, and leaves Ulm somewhat vulnerable to attack. What was the pretender build you used (since the build has a big impact on the optimal strategy for a nation)? Now that I think about it, you can probably incorporate parties of templars in a general infantry/ranger/villain expansion to make the whole thing go quicker and smoother. I'm going to have to look into that.


Call horror is now blood 2 in CBM, but before the last update it was blood 1. So you can get it pretty quick. In that game (cbm1.5) I used a f2d4b6 awake blood fountain, with the intention to go for vampires and soul contracts. Worked out well enough but If I could start over I would have used a a4d4b4 vampire queen probably.

I don´t advocate heavy use of templars anyway, but during expansion just two templars flanking makes a big difference. The thing is you can buy them right away and they don´t require undead leadership like the guardians. Past early game I´d say the templars are too expensive in most cases. So quite handy as flankers during early expansion but little else, definately not worth spending any extra points for a blessing.


In conclusion, while I think the Templars have a niche for LA Ulm, and you can definitely expand with them, I don't think they're ideal by themselves as a method of expansion, or warrant a bless strategy. They could definitely benefit and and should receive a slight 10-20 reduction in price, but I don't think it'll be too major, or will allow Templars to really flourish. They'll still be a niche unit, albeit now a more cost-effective niche unit. Really it comes down to the age old question: ghoul guardians, or black templars? When it comes down to that, guardians will win out in most situations.
Agreed 100%

[Tolkien]

Oh, you mean lesser horrors. I thought you meant regular horrors. :x

[vfb]

With Dom10, or without?

Can't check now, I think it was 10. Small chance it was 9. Attacking from a friendly dominion province (2 or 3 IIRC) into Machaka's cap. Ate a ton of javelins, got a limp (or crippled), and some Hoplites made it through the crowd to finish the Wyrm off.

[Frozen Lama]

i wish i coulda seen that battle. :( trumanator was subbing for me that particular turn. lol.

[Trumanator]

Forgive me if I'm displaying my lack of modding knowledge, but there seems to be a lot of instances where you have #__ immediately followed by #end. Is there a reason for this? Also, when can we expect a full changelog?

[kianduatha]

What do people think of the midget masher, now that there's been some time to use it? Has anyone bothered to use one?

I keep on thinking it'd be a great idea to put on something big, like a giant or a Basalt King. Then I realize that 22 strength -15 is only 7, and 7 doubled is only 14 damage--not enough to punch through anything's armor. Add to that it being a 2-handed weapon...why would you use it? I mean, it sounds perfect for an Ettin(now there's an idea, boost Earth by letting us summon Ettins!), but that's about the only thing that would use a Midget Masher.

Compare it to Gloves of the Gladiator, which just wrecks entire squares of troops. I think Midget Masher can be buffed to at least -10 damage instead of -15. That way you could maybe kill Militia (or Burgmeister Guards) in one hit. Armor piercing(or even armor negating) would also make a lot of sense, seeing as you are just smashing the entire square and armor doesn't really help against that.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I also think -15 makes it a bit disappointing. I can see qm was trying to be careful not to make an overpowerful monster of a weapon, but being as it's two-handed and rather situational I reckon there's some room for increasing the damage slightly.

[Trumanator]

Its good for a fair number of SC pretenders.

[kianduatha]

Could you enlighten me as to which SC pretenders? I mean, it'd be just fine for a Colossal Fetish or Cyclops or something, but it's still not as good as just putting on Boots of the Behemoth. You would need to be hitting smaller targets anyways--might as well trample multiple squares of them(and deal more damage!)

[Trumanator]

Trample will rack up your fatigue very fast. I find its useful for really any large SC chassis w/hands, such as Risen Oracle, Cyclops, Father of Winters, etc.

[vfb]

Does the new EA multihero actually work?

---new multihero : early capricorn
#newmonster 2828
#copystats 1038
#copyspr 1038
#descr "Halfmen, like humans, have underwater counterparts. Capricorns have the upper part of a pan and the lower part of a fish. Capricorns can transform and leave the sea by removing their fishtails. They are mages of water and nature, but lose some of their powers when leaving the sea. They live in shallower waters and do not have much contact with the people of Oceania. With the arrival of the new god some of them have decided to travel to the Palace of Pearls and offer their service."
#end

#newmonster 2829
#copystats 1039
#copyspr 1039
#descr "Halfmen, like humans, have underwater counterparts. Capricorns have the upper part of a pan and the lower part of a fish. Capricorns can transform and leave the sea by removing their fishtails. They are mages of water and nature, but lose some of their powers when leaving the sea. They live in shallower waters and do not have much contact with the people of Oceania. With the arrival of the new god some of them have decided to travel to the Palace of Pearls and offer their service."
#stealthy 0
#end

#selectnation 26
#multihero1 2828
#end

There's nothing in 2828 to say the landshape is 2829 (and vice-versa). So I suspect you'll get a 2828, he'll go on land and become a 1039, and go back in the water and become a 1038. Not that it really matters, except for the descriptions.

[Sombre]

Another oddity, Jomon's Ashigaru, Samurai archers, basic Samurai, and Ninjas all have only 9 HP for some reason.

Ever been to Japan?

[vfb]

Perhaps a visual would be helpful:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=9119&stc=1&d=1260494277

[Trumanator]

indeed, a visual would help. I don't see one though :P

[Frozen Lama]

really sorry man, but it doesn't work either. says its forbiddon

[Trumanator]

Well, in that case they should all have like def 16 because of pr0 kung fu skills!

[vfb]

Definitely awe. They should have awe. And a new sprite.

[KissBlade]

If that's the case, doesn't the hp reduction on Jomon's troops seem a bit racist then?

Also from a balance and thematic perspective it doesn't seem to make much sense that your average samurai is less hardy than some stock militia ...

Also Jomon troops suck enough as it is.

[vfb]

Exactly, Dom3 is teh racist, towards Vaetti. Get me the UN on the phone!

[Sombre]

I don't know if that's the reason they have 9 hp. I just suspect it is. If it is then it might be nice if the description mentioned that Jomonese (not japanese) are a bit smaller than your average people, much in the same way that Ulmish are a bit brawnier.

Changing it could help Jomon's samurai I guess but there are better ways to do that. Like giving them all better morale, since they're based on samurai myths.

[Squirrelloid]

QM:
Smoking Mirror is a really overpriced yet crappy pretender chassis. The chassis could cost 0 pts and it would still be bad.

Maybe drop it to 30-40 pts and increase the innate dominion to 4? It might at least be playable then (assuming you wanted to play Mictlan without a big bless).

[Sombre]

I remember a guide stating how awesome and broken it was.

Admittedly since I don't remember who wrote the guide it could have been an effort by one of the vocal but awful players.

[Micah]

I think the CBM rainbow pretender buff bypassed it and made it a bad choice compared to the human pretenders, but that it's fairly nice in vanilla.

[Squirrelloid]

I would love someone to point out how in the world that pretender is broken. Its got a thug alternate form with only misc gear slots... if you're using your pretender as a thug you're probably doing something wrong. And its a *bad* thug - it can't even kill independents. Any independents. It dies to militia. (Later in the game when you can cast soul vortex and phoenix pyre it might be pretty awesome. Of course, then you run into like 6 Dai Oni doing the same thing...).

Micah: it would still be bad in Vanilla. For its entrance cost you could make a vanilla sage better than it in almost every way, ignoring the thug alternate form (which is pretty ignorable, since it sucks).

[Sombre]

I believe it was a double or triple bless strat. But like I say, I can't remember who came up with it or any more details. Just that they reckoned it to be very powerful.

[KissBlade]

You nailed it about the bless.

[Squirrelloid]

You nailed it about the bless.

So, Sombre doesn't actually believe it, he just said he saw someone else post about it. So maybe you can explain how?

D is a crappy bless for Mictlan

B6 is ok, but not great. Kind of redundant with F.

F is good.

The chassis costs 60 points, meaning you could do a bloodfountain at the same dominion with F9B6 and cost less, plus net 3 blood slaves/turn from the fountain.

Heck, you could probably use any random rainbow that gave you 2 paths you actually wanted, and be as cheap. Like great sage which has FS, both of which you want.

So i'm really not seeing it being uber for blessing. Its got only one good path, and its got a high extra path cost (for a rainbow), and a high chassis cost (for a rainbow). Since we're looking at 9 blesses, the one higher dom doesn't really save you anything because the paths will cost you more.

But by all means, explain why its so uber.

[KissBlade]

It used to be a lot cheaper (in fact I think it was exactly what you suggested) and also started with dom 4 which made it pointless to take any other bless chassis.

[chrispedersen]

No. As the first to suggest the double bless strategy for mictlan, I have followed them since the beginning. Smoking mirror has never been the best platform for mictlan - although many have said so.

But the F9W9 is much better than D9W9 or whatever.

[Sombre]

So what is the best bless platform?

[vfb]

I like S9 from the bidet, and either F9 or F4E4.

I played one game with teh bird too, I think before the MA mictlan air patch. F9Asomething, and it was quite fun, especially once teh bird got his studying done so he could teleport around and cast Fog Warriors on my hordes.

I just can't bring myself to go W9, because it doesn't stack with Quickening.

[Sombre]

Should the life drain attack used by rlyeh commanders, for instance, be #bonus to allow them to use weapons at the same time and avoid losing it if they lose an arm, given that they life drain using their facetacles.