Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Valerius]

This comment is based on bbz's post (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=48567) in the main forum.

Sidhe Lords in EA and MA are different units and in MA they have the same golden lance that Ri/Tuatha use and to which false fetters was added. I'm not sure if recruit everywhere units having this weapon was intended?

In any case, I think it would be good to remove the AOE 1 and make the effect be on hit as was done with the vine whip. I'm just not a big fan of things that autohit - the opponent should have a chance to avoid it.

In the above thread bbz also wondered about the price of sidhe warriors. I use them for thematic reasons but they aren't really worth 35 gold. You could safely price them at 30 but really I'd just go with 25 since they're cap only.

In the same thread Shangrila00 also mentioned making the hoof attack on the mounted commanders the warhorse hoof attack, which I think is also a nice idea.

[Nightfall]

As it is, CBM growth only breaks even with vanilla growth on turn 20.

Not sure what your talking about, since vanilla growth is 2%/.2%, CBM growth is flat out superior at the moment.

Adjusting growth from it's current point gives you a range of options, depending on what you want to achieve, for example.

Drop to 1%/.3%, income inferior to current CBM breaks even with vanilla growth around turn 23.
Change to 0%/.35%, income breaks even with vanilla around turn 29 and current CBM about turn 73.
Change to 0%/.4%, income breaks even with vanilla around turn 23 and current CBM about turn 40.

I also think the current production/sloth needs to be toned down to +-3% income, sloth is almost unpickable at the moment.

[Shangrila00]

My mistake. Too used to the older and less controversial CBMs. Certainly, if the latest CBM supposedly makes scales too good, while earlier ones didn't, it needs to be compared with earlier CBMs.

And no, I still disagree. Production should not be a dump stat, and neither should growth, which is the whole point of the CBM changes in the first place. Having resource cheap, yet effective units is an advantage, but it should not be worth hundreds of points, and neither should having good, non-old mages. Some nations, Mictlan, Ry'leh, etc still pick sloth 3 and are not even close to being underpowered. For other nations to have to think before choosing sloth is a good thing. I mean, really? Sloth is unpickable? I guess nobody ever picked a temperature preference other than their prefered, since that's so much worse?

[rdonj]

Yeah, temperature hurts, but it's still the first thing I dump... sloth is hardly unpickable now, it's still easier to take than losing order is in many cases. You just are going to think hard before going sloth 3 now. Having to think is the entire point.

[Nightfall]

Sloth is unpickable? I guess nobody ever picked a temperature preference other than their prefered, since that's so much worse?

And your wrong again, because of the way summer and winter work, a 0 preference nation that takes temperature 0 still loses between 1.5% and 3% average income per turn; higher dominion scores lose less.

Again, due to summer and winter, a 0 preference nation _actually_ loses between 12% and 13.5% average income per turn when they pick Heat or Cold 3; higher dominion scores lose more.

This makes the real income loss suffered between 9% and 12% for taking a temperature scale at 3.

So, in all cases other than dom 10, which is about equal, in the current CBM, picking sloth 3 is a worse hit to your income than taking a temperature 3 pick.

So yes, sloth is almost unpickable in CBM at the moment, and this is seriously hurting the low resource nations, since they still have to deal with the down side of being low resource, no decent armoured troops.

[Valerius]

Yeah, temperature hurts, but it's still the first thing I dump... sloth is hardly unpickable now, it's still easier to take than losing order is in many cases. You just are going to think hard before going sloth 3 now. Having to think is the entire point.

As per kianduatha's point earlier I think it may be more of an issue in the opposite direction - turmoil/production/luck to get the benefits of luck but also have prod offset most of the income hit form turmoil (and the bonus to resources is nice because you can ramp up your forces quickly when needed). Kianduatha also mentioned growth in that comment, but I think even without growth this should work out favorably.

It's not really a big deal to me and the changes have certainly altered my approach to designing pretenders but it would be worth assessing the effects. My gut instinct is that it might be best to have a three point difference between prod and order (whether it's 4 and 7 or 3 and 6).


And no, I still disagree. Production should not be a dump stat, and neither should growth, which is the whole point of the CBM changes in the first place. Having resource cheap, yet effective units is an advantage, but it should not be worth hundreds of points, and neither should having good, non-old mages. Some nations, Mictlan, Ry'leh, etc still pick sloth 3 and are not even close to being underpowered.

Well neither is Niefel and they get 120 free points from cold 3. ;)

[Nightfall]

I know this one's going to cause a rukus. :angel

It's becoming more and more obvious to me that the biggest problem with making dwarven hammers unique is that the first person to research construction 8 gets both unique hammers and a much bigger advantage than in vanilla; where it was already a huge advantage.

Is it possible to move the Hammer of the Forge Lord to construction 10?

That way, as I understand it, it could be wished for but not forged.

[Soyweiser]

Nightfall,

yeah, every nation has access to the paths for the hammer of the forge lords. And getting 50%/25% reduction on two items each turn isn't that great. (Sure it helps getting the artifacts).

There is already a wishable only hammer:
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Hammer_of_the_Cyclops

[Shangrila00]

And your wrong again, because of the way summer and winter work, a 0 preference nation that takes temperature 0 still loses between 1.5% and 3% average income per turn; higher dominion scores lose less.

Again, due to summer and winter, a 0 preference nation _actually_ loses between 12% and 13.5% average income per turn when they pick Heat or Cold 3; higher dominion scores lose more.

This makes the real income loss suffered between 9% and 12% for taking a temperature scale at 3.

So, in all cases other than dom 10, which is about equal, in the current CBM, picking sloth 3 is a worse hit to your income than taking a temperature 3 pick.

So yes, sloth is almost unpickable in CBM at the moment, and this is seriously hurting the low resource nations, since they still have to deal with the down side of being low resource, no decent armoured troops.

So I guess people never, ever take non-prefered, and nonextreme temp scales, right? Even extreme temp with its corresponding encumbrance issue is so close as to be no difference, yet somehow you think it's a crushing argument for sloth being unpickable, despite temp being picked all the time.

And I'm sorry, you don't get to turn an advantage on its head like that. Having decent low resource troops is an advantage. Some of them also have decent armored troops, which they can choose not to use to maximize that advantage. Again, needing to think before deciding is a good thing. Mictlan doesn't need to think, since its armored troops are crap. I'm trying to see the downside there, but it's just not hitting me.


As per kianduatha's point earlier I think it may be more of an issue in the opposite direction - turmoil/production/luck to get the benefits of luck but also have prod offset most of the income hit form turmoil (and the bonus to resources is nice because you can ramp up your forces quickly when needed). Kianduatha also mentioned growth in that comment, but I think even without growth this should work out favorably.


It doesn't, unless you 1)take a very high dom, and 2) don't take turmoil beyond 1. Unlike Order which gain you most of its benefits just on your cap, luck only works out if it's everywhere, besides the chance at heros. And you can't offset more than turmoil 1 with production because of all the awful poploss events opened up by turmoil 2. Unless you can fortuneteller all your high pop provinces at low cost, which would be a national advantage.

High turmoil is a still a viable build of course, more so than it was before, for nations with low gold requirements, but there's no sense in pretending it's viable with the boosted production for gold hungry nations. Certainly, Pan still has to think long and hard before taking turmoil.

[kianduatha]

So yes, sloth is almost unpickable in CBM at the moment, and this is seriously hurting the low resource nations, since they still have to deal with the down side of being low resource, no decent armoured troops.

This is very nice feedback, but it seems rather abstract. Could you tell us which nations in specific you are thinking of?

[Tarrax]

I was able to cast "Awaken Kelp Ancient" from a land province to a land province (the spell description says it can only be cast from a land province to a water province). The next turn I got the message that the Kelp Ancient has drowned. Is this a bug or WAD?

[Soyweiser]

I would assume WAD. As the spell clearly states that it doesn't work on land.

[Nightfall]

Nightfall,

yeah, every nation has access to the paths for the hammer of the forge lords. And getting 50%/25% reduction on two items each turn isn't that great. (Sure it helps getting the artifacts).

There is already a wishable only hammer:
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Hammer_of_the_Cyclops

I know that already, and the Hammer of the Forge Lords is worth 20-30 gems a turn.

The dwarven hammer is worth another 10-15.

30-45 bonus gems a turn is HUGE when the only other way to generate gems is globals.

[Shangrila00]

I know that already, and the Hammer of the Forge Lords is worth 20-30 gems a turn.

The dwarven hammer is worth another 10-15.

30-45 bonus gems a turn is HUGE when the only other way to generate gems is globals.

What in the world are you forging? 2 Rings of Wizardry every single turn? Or just every single artifact without any concern for whether or not you could actually use it as a part of your strategy? Once you have all the artifacts, what then? 2 Standards of the Damned a turn? That saves you 20 gems per turn from both artifacts combined, but it'll suck to be you when you run into someone fielding lifeless things.

[Tarrax]

I would assume WAD. As the spell clearly states that it doesn't work on land.

Yes, it does state that but usually the game prevents you from even casting the spell in most of those cases. That's why I wanted to double-check.

[Soyweiser]

iirc that isn't moddable.

[Immaculate]

golden naga needs the swamp survival tag (and maybe also amphibious like other nagas)

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Not a balance issue, but i'd like to see a special spell or two added to LA Ctis. "Keepers of the Tombs" have flavor text that they light banefires in braziers in the tombs, but none of the can cast banefire. So how about letting them use some banefire by giving Ctis a special version of firebolt (and/or fireball) that has some area decay? Call it "banefire bolt", make it f1d1, keep damage the same, but add AOE1 decay. That wouldnt be overpowered, would it? I think it would be cool and thematic, like the "Cursed Shards" spell given to Manchaka.

[Admiral_Aorta]

golden naga needs the swamp survival tag (and maybe also amphibious like other nagas)

Wait, when is the golden naga even used? iirc it's an unused pretender chassis from dom2 and doesn't appear unless you wish for it.

[Corinthian]

Currently it serves as a hero for LA Patala. A fitting purpose as I'm not sure Patala even have any heroes in Vanilla.

[Immaculate]

I got it in an MP game. The flavor text says its from the 'swamps of patala' (i thought they were jungle but oh well) and all other nagas have swamp survival and amphibious but this one has neither.

also- give the monkey casters stealth (even poor stealth) to make up for their morale and tactical movement.

(poor monkeys- can't run away from stampeding c'tis undead chariots- what a blood bath- RIP gorus- you really should have uncrossed your legs to make your get-away)

[ghoul31]

Well Ashdod is completely unplayable in this mod. Please don't destroy any more nations.

k thnks

[llamabeast]

Is that because of the 1 enc increase on their sacreds?

kthxbai

[Calahan]

Well Ashdod is completely unplayable in this mod. Please don't destroy any more nations.

No, it's just you can't play them in no-brainer fashion like you want to anymore. As being able to get fatigue neutral SC giants from turn 1 is not a good gameplay feature in any way. Ashdod and their SC giants are just as good as always, it's just that now you are pretty much forced to forge at least some light gear for them before they can be sent to trash armies. And that is a bad change why exactly?


And in general, how about learning how to play the game properly before offering criticism. As you only ever play SC nations with EN blesses, and you are always useless at it. So you know nothing about the wider aspects of the game, and even the style of play you use religiously, you're completely hopeless at. So maybe it's good for you overall if you are forced into playing nations another way. As then there may actually be some hope of you realising how the game is really played, because right now you are clueless/


Oh wait I forgot, you only ever get beaten because people gang you, as your own poor play in every game is never the problem. How absent minded of me.

[Shangrila00]

Can we at least make Anakite armor encumbrance 2 instead of 3? As it is, it's the worst heavy armor in the game, even worse than the heavy samurai armor which is protection 17. At Encumbrance 2, Anakites still can't be made fatigue neutral, and you don't have to explain why armor enchanted by the descendants of angels is worse than purely mundane armor. I mean, Jomon equips all their samurai with mundane armor strictly better than the stuff Rephaite kings get.

I don't play Ashdod, and I'm mentioning this because of Gath's Seren. Nobody ever buys them, and CBM has lowered their price, so clearly the problem is known. Except the only reason anyone would buy them over a Kohen Gadol is that they come equipped. The Anakite armor renders that moot, since it's so terrible that Serens still need replacement armor. They also really need a point of holy so they can self bless, then people might actually consider buying them.

[ghoul31]

Well Ashdod is completely unplayable in this mod. Please don't destroy any more nations.

No, it's just you can't play them in no-brainer fashion like you want to anymore. As being able to get fatigue neutral SC giants from turn 1 is not a good gameplay feature in any way. Ashdod and their SC giants are just as good as always, it's just that now you are pretty much forced to forge at least some light gear for them before they can be sent to trash armies. And that is a bad change why exactly?


And in general, how about learning how to play the game properly before offering criticism. As you only ever play SC nations with EN blesses, and you are always useless at it. So you know nothing about the wider aspects of the game, and even the style of play you use religiously, you're completely hopeless at. So maybe it's good for you overall if you are forced into playing nations another way. As then there may actually be some hope of you realising how the game is really played, because right now you are clueless/


Oh wait I forgot, you only ever get beaten because people gang you, as your own poor play in every game is never the problem. How absent minded of me.

You can't forge gear for them when you get wiped out by turn 20.

And the rest of what you are saying is just personal attacks, so I'll just put you on my ignore list

[ghoul31]

Is that because of the 1 enc increase on their sacreds?

kthxbai


no you increased it by 2, one in an earlier mod, and one here.

[kianduatha]

It's true though; Anakite armor can definitely be dropped at least to 2 encumbrance without breaking anything. Might as well, no need to be vindictive against the poor bastards. And Zamzummites need at least part of their second (E/D only) random back, even if it's just 25 or 50%. That would give them some legitimate non-thug options, really. That change has always bugged me because it just drives people to play Ashdod more one-dimensionally.

As an alternate for Gath...if anyone could use a boost via obtaining a revenue, Seren are pretty high on the list. Their whole schtick is that they lead the Gittites in battle--so why not let them come with a few giants?

[Shangrila00]

Oh yeah, agree on the Zamzummites. Death battlemagic is heavily dependent on common D3s. With only 1/4 having D3, that completely changes their role, which is unthematic, as is completely eliminating the chance at D4. Surely, price hike, old age, making the second random 50% chance at D instead of 100% at E/D, or some combination would be better than giving Ashdod yet another recruitable thug that can't do anything except thug.

[Ragnarok-X]

I feel like Ashdod got overnerfed, too. The problem is twofold.

1. Ashdod was too strong and they beaten by the nerf-stick too hard
2. People STILL gang on up Ashdod or rush them, because they still feel like Ashdod can only be stopped early game. This is wrong, because in everyones mind ashdod is still as strong as ever, when it actually isnt.

Since we cant alter the consciousness of the community, at least parts of 1. (nerfstick) should be reversed.

[Executor]

Well, I still don't like Ashdod in a game. I don't have a problem with their base troops or mages or sacreds but I do object to Adons.

I wouldn't mind playing against Ashdod if they lost Adons. For that matter, I don't think Ashdod can ever be balanced.
IMO, they are the best recruitable unit in the game and quite overpowered. They are much better than both Neif and Fomorian giants for many reasons.

-They have better base paths for gear (as a nation). E/F/S are the most common forging paths. The Jarl have a problem with MR and they have no good buff spells like Adons. Kings have better buffs but still not as good as Adons on the count of diversity, and they also have a MR problem and protection too.
-There is more diversity on Adons than Jarls and Kings, (F/S/E). Phoenix Pyre Adon, Teleporting/Lucky/Ethereal/Astral Shield/High MR Adon, and a Tank like earth Invonerable/High MR/Reinvigorating Adon.
And than there is the extra misc slot. And that additional misc slot is not a minor thing as it opens up quite a few more options. Luck Pendant/AMA/Girdle/Braces of Protection/Burning Pearl depending on which Adon you get. And if you really want to get crazy communion the Adons or forge the communions and cast a dozen buffs and make them literally unstoppable.

So, IMO, other than removing Adons Ashdod will never be balanced.

[Valerius]

And than there is the extra misc slot. And that additional misc slot is not a minor thing as it opens up quite a few more options.

The thing that amuses me about Hinnom/Ashdod are the small touches. Like the three misc slots on Adons you mentioned. And unlike most units where getting an extra slot of one type means you lack another type, Adons just get the extra one. Or Hinnom having recruitable healers - because they wouldn't be playable without having Arco-style risk free mindhunts on their recruit everywhere S2s. ;)

Having said that, reducing anakite armor to enc. 2 seems reasonable since it's mainly a troop buff. Presumably you'll put better, lower enc., armor on your SCs at first opportunity anyway.

Buffing zamzummites I'm more wary of. Boosting their spellcasting ability without a corresponding nerf in their thuggability is a net gain for Ashdod and I just can't see this as a weak nation that needs a buff.


Since we cant alter the consciousness of the community...

Sure you can. How many people still think MA Ulm is weak? I don't think settling for a nation being OP is the way to go and will as often as not just result in them being banned. If you like a nation it's in your interest that it be perceived as balanced and allowed in games.

[Shangrila00]

So, IMO, other than removing Adons Ashdod will never be balanced.

Adonim were overpowered because with an E10N4 bless, they were SCs from turn 2 when few have counters. (though heavy cavalry and elephants can still do quite a number on them)

Simply making that impossible, which bumping base encumbrance up to 3 already does, makes Adonim no more overpowered than Gath's Kohen Gadols, which are pretty much just unequipped Adonim, but with more magic and no research malus. Fully equipped, Adonim have the advantage of one more miscellaneous slot (meaning more expensive to outfit), but with hp on the low side.

I mean really, by your argument, Yomi must be the most ridiculously overpowered nation ever. Phoenix Pyre, Soul Vortex, and earth buffs on one commander, and no astral to be magic dueled unlike 1/3 of Adonim.

Buffing zamzummites I'm more wary of. Boosting their spellcasting ability without a corresponding nerf in their thuggability is a net gain for Ashdod and I just can't see this as a weak nation that needs a buff.


It certainly doesn't make a damn bit of sense to nerf their spellcasting instead of their thuggability as CBM did. In any case, I'm not really convinced their thuggability is even that big of an issue. Unless you are playing in some crazy rich setting or some ridiculously big map, the bottleneck will always be equipment, not thug chasis. And if you are playing in super big maps with super rich settings, that's ridiculously unbalancing to everything, and not something CBM should specifically be catering to.

[Executor]

Really? More slots is worse since you spend extra gems?

Adons still are SC from turn 1. The change of 1 enc doesn't alter that. Saying that is just silly. You can still expand perfectly with them though if you happen to see a heavy cavalry province or one with a lot of stuff in it god forbid you'll have to use something other than an Adon to take it, that is, before you manage to get a girdle of might on turn 15 and have zero enc again... In the meantime you just may have to use regular troops.
I don't get why people are obsessed with zero enc. You don't need zero enc to use Adons, or their regular sacreds for that matter. With E10 they will have enc 2 which is perfectly acceptable.
Research malus? What now? Who in their right mind would keep Adons in a fort researching anyway?

I don't see how having teleporting Adons are a problem for that matter either.

Kohen Gadols are not as dangerous simply because they are unequipped Adons, with more or less the same stats. And they don't really have more magic until you hit blood 9 or want to use a communion a bit more effectively though not efficiently.
The thing is, Kohen Gadols need quite a few more items than Adons. Their do have a better base enc by 1 but their armor sucks, their weapon is terrible and they don't have an extra gore attack. They also have slightly worse stats, lower attack, defense and protection. And the HP difference, that's 2 HP.

[Shangrila00]

Did you read what I actually wrote? Extra slot is an advantage. Low hp is a disadvantage. And have you actually tested? I did, when this debate came up. Adons cannot reliably expand against dual dagger tribals and barbarians as well as heavy cavalry and elephants. Larger numbers (less than the 50 you could buy with the cost of an Adon) of heavy infantry will also kill them with fatigue. Honestly, I don't even mind that, though Jarls certainly would never have that problem. Nor do I mind the research malus, though you're being purposefully obtuse if you don't see a disadvantage in your cap not producing any RP. (I guess Ermor's longdead horse are free too)

The point is this. The fact that Adons are equipped is an advantage only in the early game, and by that, I mean before Ashdod even gets minimal reinvig gear at construction 2. Once they can be fatigued out by the same cost in heavy infantry, much less dedicated attempts with markata or more suitable chaff in that period, calling them overpowered (or SCs from turn 1) is absurd. Armor of Achilles is Alt2, Lightning Bolt and Rust Mist are Evo2. Adons without replacement armor and shield are mere thugs, since a single mage casting whichever one of the above you have paths for (and the E1 requirement for AoA is hardly hard to reach) and PD will kill Adons with just minimal reinvig gear. If you don't give them a brand, they'll go down to Swarm too, and without a Golden Shield, elephants and heavy cavalry will still kill them. Fully equipped Adons are good SCs, no question there, but they are no better than a fully equipped Kohen Gadol. And people will laugh at you if you claim Gath can never be balanced unless Kohen Gadols are removed.

[Memento]

Hi.

Can we potentially add 25% blood on mictlan priests? Currently, with the elimination of SDR and tlahuepulchi cost increase, the only effective way to blood hunt as mictlan is to use their cap only mages - and since Mictlan is all about blood it seems to be pretty ineffective.
Just my 2 cents

[Executor]

Shangrila00, I was being sarcastic since you were being cute. I have no taste for pointless arguing.

Yes, I did actually test it, and I've had the misfortune of playing against Ashdod several times so far, both now and pre-nerf, and pre pre-nerf, so I'm not blowing this out of my ars.
Nothing can reliably expand against anything, IMO at least, and not even Giant commanders. (though dual dagger tribals are probably the best indies out there now :) )
Though it's no trouble clearing out barbarians and tribe warriors either. You could place an Adon in front, place 20 slingers behind with guard commander on a second commander and there you go.

The fact that Adons are equipped is an advantage only in the early game. It certainly is. So you have an advantage the first 15 ish turns there. And I don't think it's a small advantage.
Yes you can outfatigue them early on with crap troops like markata. But than again why would anyone actually send a lone Adon to his death like that?
Most if not all of the early game where you don't have access to construction is just expansion, and once you actually have to face someone you will probably have some gear to forge and level the encumbrance.

And you know spells have a range problem. All that sounds good in theory but when you place the Adon in the back with self buffs and waiting 5 times the spells are not gonna hit him. Or at least not unless you get sneaky and place your troops on guard commander or something. But I'm not stating that Adons are invinsible, but OP, and much better than Jarls, Fomo Kings, Kohen Gadols and Oni Kings. And I doubt you'd disagree with me here either.

And like I said, Kohen Gadols are not as nasty simply cause you can't use them early on like Adons.

[Shangrila00]

Again, you can fatigue them out with heavy infantry now. And if you've managed to solve the supporting troops routing your SC problem that has been in the game since the beginning, please do share. And without major supporting troops, there are endless ways to counter hiding SC in the back, starting with the attack one turn order. I thought that was what half the game was about, outscripting your opponent?

And no, I don't agree they are better than the other premier recruitable SCs. Ungeared, Jarls are now better. Geared, Kohen Gadols, Fomorian Kings, and Dai Oni all have better access to buffs, as are, for that matter Jarls that can soul vortex.

Honestly, it's pretty clear that Ashdod gave you the bad touch in a few games, and you are now on a crusade of vengence or some such ridiculousness. "Ashdod can never be balanced as long as they have Adons" sounds pretty much exactly like Adons are invincible, and is so overwrought that it's difficult to take seriously. Can you point to Ashdod winning lots of CBM games besides your personal anecdotes of how overpowered they are against you? Certainly, a cursory search of the multiplayer forum suggests quite the opposite.

[GFSnl]

Dai Oni, Jarls and Fom. Kings are much, MUCH better then Adons.

[Executor]

Perhaps you should calm down a bit.

There are endless ways to counter anything in the game, I've never stated othervice so I'm not sure what you're getting at?

Adons are better from start that all their giant opposition, which was the whole point of my argument. It's sort of like why I'm opposed to the ridiculous Agartha PD, near impossible to deal with early on but gets easier as the game progresses, though Adons are not nearly as extreme of course.
Yes some Jarls can get soul vortex mid game (level 6 spell), as can Fomorian Kings, and mistform and mirror image, and other stuff. Dai Oni have the best buffing options. Fact. But by that time you'll have plenty of counter measures.

In my opinion Jarls are nearly as deadly as Adons, nearly. They still have a huge disadvantage when fighting in heat dominion where they are pretty much useless. The other thing where I feel Adons have an advantage is the diversity among Adons. Namely you get teleporting Adons, while Jarl don't really get any buffs from water. Quickness is hard to use. And last, Adons have better low level forging options.
Though I agree fully kitted Jarls can be better, but that's beside the point.

My point is that it is ridiculous that you can get a 36 prot/28 def/ regenerating/ reinvigoration (earth) Adon by the end of year 1. None of the other Giant nations can get anything nearly as good. Astral Adons are even better of course. There are many (as deadly) variants of Adon which you can easily get by turn 15.

Further more, I don't thing that anything is clear to you. What I said was more of a side comment. No I don't expect Adons to really be removed of course, that would be silly. Nor do I have a vendeta or crusade against them as I would have probably mentioned this sooner. I was just trying to state that they can't be balanced, which they bloody well can't. The problem was never in their sacreds or mages, at least for me. And uping enc by 1 doesn't make them any less deadly or useful suddenly.

As for actual wins. They don't count for anything. Everyone knows Ashdod always gets ganged upon. You rarely see any vets take Ashdod since they know they'd be doomed from the get go. And for example, EA Mictlan, which everyone can agree is an awesome nation, had lesser wins than MA Oceania or Cealum until relatively recently. So I don't credit the HoF with any sort of useful information of that sort.

Now I'm going to drop this matter because you're, for what ever reason, taking this personally and I have no interest in being dragged into a flame.

[Shangrila00]

Wait...as far as I can see, I've been calmly debating. Pointing out how overwrought "Ashdod can never be balanced if they have Adons...because Ashdod kicked my butt!!!!" isn't itself overwrought except in magical projection land.

Your arguments are easy to see as a crusade of vengence because they are rather silly. Teleportation (at construction 6) being overpowered, when every Fomorian King can teleport at Enchantment 4, and without dying to magic duel. Completely and repeatedly ignoring that nonfatigue neutral Adons lose to their cost in completely normal heavy infantry, and yet still claiming that the encumbrance change does nothing to rein them in. You can't simultaneously argue that Adonim are super because they don't need equipment, and also that you can fully equip an SC year 1, and that's why Adonim are super.

I mean, really, arguing on the one side that the Adon research malus means nothing since they should be out fighting, and simultaneously claiming that an Ashdod doing that will have Conjuration 3 and Construction 2 year 1? Where in the world is all that research coming from? The awake research pretender Ashdod took that also has E10N4+ and decent economic scales right? No doubt using that -100 point Ashdod only E3N1 chasis called "I win."

Please, share the build you know Ashdod can use to do what you claim it can. Or if you don't want to because you can't, admit it. Trying to abandon an argument by claiming nonexistent flaming though...that's bad form.

[Executor]

LOL. You're funny. I wonder what you're like when you get all fussy.
Well, for the record I've never lost to Ashdod. But I get that you like to pull things out of context.

And I don't see why you have to recruit an Adon every turn? Oh, yes, 300 research in 12 turns is absolutely unimaginable. While, you'd have to recruit a mage every turn almost!

Heck no, I'll not abandon this now, it's fun. Do I do think you need some manners.

[ghoul31]

LOL. You're funny. I wonder what you're like when you get all fussy.
Well, for the record I've never lost to Ashdod. But I get that you like to pull things out of context.

And I don't see why you have to recruit an Adon every turn? Oh, yes, 300 research in 12 turns is absolutely unimaginable. While, you'd have to recruit a mage every turn almost!

Heck no, I'll not abandon this now, it's fun. Do I do think you need some manners.

why don't you actually play Ashdod in the new cbm. Then you can talk. Because the stuff you are talking about now can't be done.

[Executor]

It most certainly can when you play your cards right.
And I have no intension of proving any point by playing them in game. What I say comes from experience, like the **** storm with Agartha.
Besides, I dislike Ashdod, there are many other nations I'd sooner play then them.

Though I wouldn't drop the opportunity to do just that if I got them in a random game.

[Shangrila00]

Hey, perhaps you should calm down a bit.

For whatever reason, you seem to be taking this personally, and I have no interest in...okay let's get serious.

So present your build that allows Ashdod to do what you claim. It doesn't take a great deal of math to demonstrate Ashdod can have at most 321 rp by the end of year 1. That's by recruiting one 200 gold or 310 gold sacred mage per turn, with no site searching, and no Adons. What kind of troops are you recruiting for expansion, and when is your second fort going up? Do so, and I will concede that point, though it would be nice if you responded to the others as well.

[Valerius]

It certainly doesn't make a damn bit of sense to nerf their spellcasting instead of their thuggability as CBM did.

My point is that if you do buff their spell casting without any other penalty that is a bonus to the unit/nation. So then the question becomes whether Ashdod as a whole is a weak nation that needs a buff. If the nation doesn't need a buff and you'd prefer to see a change in emphasis from zamzummites as thugs to them being spellcasters (with a corresponding nerf to their thuggability), well that's llama's call and I don't have an opinion either way.


In any case, I'm not really convinced their thuggability is even that big of an issue. Unless you are playing in some crazy rich setting or some ridiculously big map, the bottleneck will always be equipment, not thug chasis.

But that logic applies to any thug chassis. I play a lot with Sidhe Lords, one of the best (maybe the best) thugs out-of-the-box. But even they need some gear if you want them to handle more than a few points of PD. So gems are always an issue.

And even out-of-the-box zamzummites have some nice crowd control capabilities - fire shield, invulnerability, soul vortex, BE and luck all being in their repertoire or easily castable on them by other national mages.

As far as spell casting goes, 1 in 4 can skelly spam with reasonable fatigue, another 1 in 4 can participate in communions and cast nether darts, the 1 in 4 E randoms act as army buffers, and the one in four F randoms can cast flaming arrows with a booster. Also worth noting is that they can all cast disintegrate which, quite usefully, is something the AI will actually cast off-script. So basically half of them are suited for evo. work and the other half are more suited for thug work. I don't think that's a bad mix.

Now if you implement kianduatha's suggestion of a 25% chance of an extra DE pick I don't think that would be unbalancing but personally I wouldn't go past that percentage.

It's been a while but IIRC zamzummites were a considerable part of the complaints about Ashdod. You've got some leeway with cap only units because they don't scale but I think with non-cap units extra caution is warranted. And again, Ashdod is hardly in dire straits.

[Executor]

Well don't reedit so I can't see.

Okay,
Didn't say teleportation is OP, just that they too have that option. And I'd rather have an astral teleporter than air, magic duel or not.

"Completely and repeatedly ignoring that nonfatigue neutral Adons lose to their cost in completely normal heavy infantry and yet still claiming that the encumbrance change does nothing to rein them in."

It doesn't as you don't need zero reinvigoration against indies. That is if you even chose to use only Adons for expansion which I don't see why you would. You don't lose much even if you don't recruit a single Adon until turn 15. Wait and build an extra fort and a research force by that time. Expand with national and indies and mercs and than start poping out Adons.
Against a human opponent you wouldn't risk an Adon like that.

"You can't simultaneously argue that Adonim are super because they don't need equipment, and also that you can fully equip an SC year 1, and that's why Adonim are super."

Why can't I? They are great if you chose to expand with them at which point they don't need equipment. Sure you'll need to stay clear of some provinces but that's always been the case and you'll need some extra help on others. And than you get to the point where you face a human opponent at which point you throw in items to make those Adons really nasty.

You don't need to take the end of year 1 literally though even that can be done. Turn 15? Certainly.
As for a build, take a standard Cyclops, E10N4, dominion 6. Order 3, production 0-2. Misfortune 2. Magic 1 or 3. Death 1. Heat 3.
Build a sage every turn and you can have 2 Adons and const 2 and conjuration 3 by year 2.
For expansion use regular Ashdod troops. Use indie commanders to led them. Use mercs. Dominions is a game of chance and luck, you can't take every word or guide literally. **** you can get stamped by knight on turn 2 and game over, or you can get 3000 gold and a robe of the mage and go crazy.

[Shangrila00]

But that logic applies to any thug chassis. I play a lot with Sidhe Lords, one of the best (maybe the best) thugs out-of-the-box. But even they need some gear if you want them to handle more than a few points of PD. So gems are always an issue.

Well, as you say, Sidhe Lords are about the best. They just need brand and shield with a high bless. Zamzummites need that, plus armor and helmet and a ton more research. And opportunity costs of course, it's hardly unlikely for the number of Adons to outstrip equipment availability. There's a legitimate choice between deploying Sidhe Lords as thugs or your cap only's if you don't have the resources to field both, not so much with Ashdod.

CBM has already changed the emphasis of zamzummites from spellcasters to thugs, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Like I said, I think the second random should become just death. Disintegrate is not really an argument, no more than storm of thorns. Death battlemagic needs D3s and 1/4 is too few for serious death battlemagic.

Well don't reedit so I can't see.


I editted 13 minutes before your response. Did you really spend 13 minutes writing that?

Didn't say teleportation is OP, just that they too have that option. And I'd rather have an astral teleporter than air, magic duel or not.

Do you have any actual justification for this? A 500 gold cap only with only S2 is about the ideal target for magic duel, and the MA is the strongest age for astral.

It doesn't as you don't need zero reinvigoration against indies.

You have repeated claimed the increase in encumbrance does nothing to Adons. Are you saying that too, like your claim about year 1 geared Adons was not intended to be taken as an actual claim?

Against a human opponent you wouldn't risk an Adon like that.

If Adonim can't be risked against humans before the human can field counters, why exactly are they OP?

Why can't I? They are great if you chose to expand with them at which point they don't need equipment. Sure you'll need to stay clear of some provinces but that's always been the case and you'll need some extra help on others. And than you get to the point where you face a human opponent at which point you throw in items to make those Adons really nasty.

Everybody has to be careful against heavy cav and elephants. Adonim have to be careful against something like half the indy provinces you are likely to see in an initial expansion. And if you are recruiting Adonim for expansion, they aren't going to be notably nasty until well into year 2 thanks to your awful research. If you aren't, you are leaning on expensive regulars, expensive mercenaries, and expensive researchers while your scales are not exactly great (combining misfortune and death, how fun) thanks to a high bless that you aren't even using. Unless of course, you just decide not to take a high bless for a unit that you won't even field until year 2. How exactly are they OP again?

Moreover, you seem to be forgetting your initial claim, that Ashdod can field fully geared and buffed SCs year 1, and nobody else can, and that's why Adon are OP. You've now admitted that's not actually true, that Ashdod can gear up SCs no earlier than anybody else. At which point, how exactly is an Adon superior to the geared, mistformed/mirror imaged Fom King, or fireshield/earth buffed Dai Oni that would also be fielded at the same time?

It's pretty clear that you tried to argue that Adonim are OP by combining all the things they can do in all possible strategies and pretending it's all possible in the same game, which is manifestly false.

[Valerius]

Death battlemagic needs D3s and 1/4 is too few for serious death battlemagic.

Well, I think you have to do a peer comparison and in the MA the leading death nations (Ermor, C'tis, Shin) all max out at D3 (outside of the 1 in 40 chance of D4 with their 10% randoms). Now you have to take the total package into account when judging a nation: Ermor has its free spawn, C'tis has its miasma, Shin has its excellent battle magic and Ashdod has its SCs/thugs. If Ashdod didn't have something "extra" like the other nations I could maybe see boosting their magic but given the context I don't really see a case for Ashdod to have higher levels of D magic.

Really, the more I think about it, the more I think changing zamzummite's magic paths is a bad idea (the armor change seems fine, though). I think Ashdod is a solid nation that there isn't a need to ban or dogpile and that's a good change both for people playing other nations and for people who want to play Ashdod.

[Shangrila00]

Ermor is a communion nation, and Shinuyama's a nation with battlemagic and death magic, not a nation whose battlemagic is death magic. MA C'tis, I admit is a nation I've never figured out how to play. Thematically speaking, MA is when C'tis turned away from necromancy and when Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath turned to necromancy, so it makes sense that Ashdod's would be better.

In any case, every age must logically have a single strongest nation. For MA, I'm pretty sure that's Pythium, before and after Ashdod got nerfed. Even if Ashdod was the strongest nation in the MA, that's not reason in and of itself to nerf it (remember we are talking a unit that was nerfed and whether that's justified, not whether a unit should be buffed). Only tactics that cannot reasonably be countered at an equal skill level would be that (and I agree turn 2 0 fatigue Adons are that), and common D3s are definitely not overpowering. If simply being second strongest is reason for nerfing to middle of the pack, that would just result in endless shuffling to no purpose.

[Executor]

"Do you have any actual justification for this? A 500 gold cap only with only S2 is about the ideal target for magic duel, and the MA is the strongest age for astral."

Justification? It's a personal matter so I doubt I need to justify myself. I find teleporting/returning more reliable than having a commander stuck.

Nitpick, twist and turn...

"If Adonim can't be risked against humans before the human can field counters, why exactly are they OP?"

You serious? What counters? What are you talking about?
I'm saying why would anyone send an unfitted Adon against a human player? Or any other Giant for that matter.

"Everybody has to be careful against heavy cav and elephants. Adonim have to be careful against something like half the indy provinces you are likely to see in an initial expansion. And if you are recruiting Adonim for expansion, they aren't going to be notably nasty until well into year 2 thanks to your awful research. If you aren't, you are leaning on expensive regulars, expensive mercenaries, and expensive researchers while your scales are not exactly great (combining misfortune and death, how fun) thanks to a high bless that you aren't even using. Unless of course, you just decide not to take a high bless for a unit that you won't even field until year 2. How exactly are they OP again?"

So kill half the indies with Adons and the other half with something else.
Yes, if you recruit as many Adons as you can they aren't gonna be as nasty. But, again, why would you recruit them every turn? Make one or two for expansion (again, if you take that road) and build up your economy and nation.
Play them like you'd play C'tis. Make a war machine and start recruiting them after you establish an economy. I've never once recruited a mage with C'tis before turn 15. It's all a matter of opportunistic cost.
Once you have established yourself start recruiting them every turn.
Expensive regulars, which clear indies nicely.
Expensive mercs which clear indies nicely. (Othervice I doubt anyone would bid for them)
You scales are good enough. Better than average I'd say. BTW, ammmm, don't use death if you don't like it???
And yes, taking a bless you effectively start using around turn 15 when you start facing real opposition. Sort of like when you play Yomi, or don't you take a bless since you can't reliably expand with them from turn 1?

"Moreover, you seem to be forgetting your initial claim, that Ashdod can field fully geared and buffed SCs year 1, and nobody else can, and that's why Adon are OP. You've now admitted that's not actually true, that Ashdod can gear up SCs no earlier than anybody else. At which point, how exactly is an Adon superior to the geared, mistformed/mirror imaged Fom King, or fireshield/earth buffed Dai Oni that would also be fielded at the same time?"

How have I admitted this is not true? Oh, excuse me, it's not turn 13 but turn 14, mybe 15 in some cases? How silly of me...
Like I said, Dominions is a game of chance and opportunity. But yes, you can get them aroundish year 2. Maybe a bit sooner maybe a bit later.

Ashdod certainly can't gear up sooner than anyone else. I've never said as much. I've said once they gear up they're better than anything else. Please follow.

[Shangrila00]

Justification? It's a personal matter so I doubt I need to justify myself. I find teleporting/returning more reliable than having a commander stuck.


Wait what? That makes no more sense that your claim about year 1 geared and buffed Adons. Are you casting Ritual of Return on your Adons so they fly back home every time they take a hit? Or scripting returning round 5, so they only fight 3 rounds (or 2, or none depending on your buffs). What exactly is that supposed to achieve? How exactly would an astral Adon be able to both fight, and not be stuck whereever it teleported same as a cloud trapezer?

It's increasingly obvious that you are just making up nonsense because of some crazy vendetta against Adonim. I mean, really?

You serious? What counters? What are you talking about?
I'm saying why would anyone send an unfitted Adon against a human player? Or any other Giant for that matter

So..did you somehow forget an entire line of argument? You know, about how if you don't replace armor, shield, and weapon, Adonim are subject to very low research counters, and if you do, you can't exactly argue about how Ashdod can't be balanced with Adonim without also arguing the same about Gath and Kohen Gadols. You do remember your extremely strong claim about Adons right? Surely, you wouldn't be attempting to backpedal? Admittedly, to a more reasonable general argument about Ashdod being OP, but have the spine to say so outright.

You scales are good enough. Better than average I'd say. BTW, ammmm, don't use death if you don't like it???
And yes, taking a bless you effectively start using around turn 15 when you start facing real opposition. Sort of like when you play Yomi, or don't you take a bless since you can't reliably expand with them from turn 1?

So are you claiming Yomi cannot be balanced without removing Dai Oni? You aren't forgetting what you are arguing are you? Demonstrating that high bless Ashdod is playable is pointless and trite.

How have I admitted this is not true? Oh, excuse me, it's not turn 13 but turn 14, mybe 15 in some cases? How silly of me...
Like I said, Dominions is a game of chance and opportunity. But yes, you can get them aroundish year 2. Maybe a bit sooner maybe a bit later.

Ashdod certainly can't gear up sooner than anyone else. I've never said as much. I've said once they gear up they're better than anything else. Please follow.

Yes, indeed, quite silly of you to make obviously false claims in hopes nobody calls you on them. Also silly to claim without backing that geared up Adons are better than geared up Kings, Oni, etc and continue doing so after being called on it, and yet have to temerity to suggest that hasn't already been responded to.

[Executor]

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

[Valerius]

Ermor is a communion nation, and Shinuyama's a nation with battlemagic and death magic, not a nation whose battlemagic is death magic. MA C'tis, I admit is a nation I've never figured out how to play. Thematically speaking, MA is when C'tis turned away from necromancy and when Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath turned to necromancy, so it makes sense that Ashdod's would be better.

In any case, every age must logically have a single strongest nation. For MA, I'm pretty sure that's Pythium, before and after Ashdod got nerfed. Even if Ashdod was the strongest nation in the MA, that's not reason in and of itself to nerf it (remember we are talking a unit that was nerfed and whether that's justified, not whether a unit should be buffed). Only tactics that cannot reasonably be countered at an equal skill level would be that (and I agree turn 2 0 fatigue Adons are that), and common D3s is definitely not overpowering.

Thematically, you can always argue things different ways but I don't see a thematic reason for Ashdod to have stronger D magic than the rest of them.

As for the other aspects of nations, another thing Ashdod has (like other giant nations) is commanders that won't crumble under a casting of rain of stones or flames from the sky. I think we'll just have to disagree on this as I don't see those other nations "extras" as being superior to Ashdod's and I do think giving Ashdod common D3s is a mistake. Now I'm certainly not going to say that kianduatha's idea of maybe a 25% chance of an ED random is a disaster but giving a 50% chance of just D as you propose is IMO a mistake.

Btw, I don't think things are so well defined that each age has (or should have) a single strongest nation - I think there's a top tier. And as I mentioned recently I'm certainly not looking to nerf all those top nations. But if a single nation stands out as head and shoulders above the rest then, yes, nerf it.

I think we just look at it from different perspectives. You want Ashdod to resume their former position (with a proviso that they shouldn't be able to run over people early on) whereas I think they're a solid, playable nation that no longer changes the game just based on their presence and that's a good change.

[rdonj]

Justification? It's a personal matter so I doubt I need to justify myself. I find teleporting/returning more reliable than having a commander stuck.


Wait what? That makes no more sense that your claim about year 1 geared and buffed Adons. Are you casting Ritual of Return on your Adons so they fly back home every time they take a hit? Or scripting returning round 5, so they only fight 3 rounds (or 2, or none depending on your buffs). What exactly is that supposed to achieve? How exactly would an astral Adon be able to both fight, and not be stuck whereever it teleported same as a cloud trapezer?

This one is easy, actually. Your astral adon enjoys having returning available in a couple of circumstances. For example, that makes it impossible to teleport anything in to kill it as it will just vanish in a puff of smoke when you try. Then next turn it can teleport into another province. It makes it a lot harder for your adon to get stranded and unavailable if you need it somewhere else as well.

[ghoul31]

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

You did well playing against nobody. Lets see you play other people....

[Executor]

You're right, I'd probably do better in a competitive MP game, more incentive.
I'd use mercs and expand faster, wider. I'd blitz the weakest bastard who'd border me and double my nation in almost no time, with very little loses probably.
That is if everyone didn't decide to gang up on me from the start. But why should they since Ashdod is ruined now?

I have no doubt a gang would kill me instantly in the first 15-20ish turns of course, but, if I were left to kill my first neighbor which would have no chance in hell what so ever to fend off from this, even a 3-4 side gank would have trouble putting me down at that point.

Any nation that is unstoppable in a no diplo game should perhaps get some changes. I count Ashdod as such a nation personally. Not because of the mages, sacreds, summons, good national troops, but the absurdity that Adons can become very early on. And as such I don't think they can be balanced at all, nor Ashdod for that matter.
And this is why it will continue to be ganked upon always, whatever nerfs are implemented.

[ghoul31]

You're right, I'd probably do better in a competitive MP game, more incentive.
I'd use mercs and expand faster, wider. I'd blitz the weakest bastard who'd border me and double my nation in almost no time, with very little loses probably.
That is if everyone didn't decide to gang up on me from the start. But why should they since Ashdod is ruined now?

I have no doubt a gang would kill me instantly in the first 15-20ish turns of course, but, if I were left to kill my first neighbor which would have no chance in hell what so ever to fend off from this, even a 3-4 side gank would have trouble putting me down at that point.

Any nation that is unstoppable in a no diplo game should perhaps get some changes. I count Ashdod as such a nation personally. Not because of the mages, sacreds, summons, good national troops, but the absurdity that Adons can become very early on. And as such I don't think they can be balanced at all, nor Ashdod for that matter.
And this is why it will continue to be ganked upon always, whatever nerfs are implemented.


no, a bless nation like Van with their 24 defense 0 enc troops would just slaughter all those junk troops and you would be dead by turn 20

and if you are too scared to actually play them in a real game, then please stop posting.

[Shangrila00]

OK,
Here's my impossible Adon. End of year 1, year 2 early spring. With no mercenaries used. With my terrible scales and expensive expansion units. Second fort under way also.

Place those items on the earth Adon and attack a province. That 24 protection becomes 36. Give me a nation that can match that.

Now go away little silly troll and bother someone else.

Perhaps you should calm down a bit. You're, for what ever reason, taking this personally and I have no interest in...wait something sounds familiar. I mean, some people like all in strategies with dom 5 and no strong priests and hoping they don't get hit by a plague in the cap, and go AI if it doesn't work out, and it does sometimes work out for them.

But aren't you forgetting what you are arguing...yet again? You've admitted that Ashdod can't gear up faster than the other SC nations, so why don't you get to actually arguing why that Adon is better than other geared up SCs.

A Fomorian King with same equipment and research will be mistformed and mirror imaged, which is a lot safer than raw protection. A Dai Oni will still have sky high protection protection and fire shield shortly. But we've been over this. Are you really arguing the one additional slot to fit a bracer makes Adonim unbalanceable?


This one is easy, actually. Your astral adon enjoys having returning available in a couple of circumstances. For example, that makes it impossible to teleport anything in to kill it as it will just vanish in a puff of smoke when you try. Then next turn it can teleport into another province. It makes it a lot harder for your adon to get stranded and unavailable if you need it somewhere else as well.

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying cast ritual of return on an SC, launch a teleport attack, hope to not take any hits winning, at which point you are immune to counterattack and can indeed use the counterattack to return to a lab for further attack? I mean, I guess, but that's not exactly a huge thing that's likely to be exploitable...for anything really. Nor would it actually do anything against magic duel.

Perhaps Executor can just come out and say what he meant.

[Executor]

LOL
You're right ghouly, I will stop posting, but for entirely different reasons. A man has only so much sanity and sleep he can spare.
Good night trolls, it's been... something else entirely.

[Shangrila00]

Good night trolls, it's been... something else entirely.

Hopefully, you'll calm down after a good night's rest and stop taking things personally. That and actually responding to points made would be nice...

Or you can just call everybody who disagrees with you a troll and run, that works too.

[bbz]

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying cast ritual of return on an SC, launch a teleport attack, hope to not take any hits winning, at which point you are immune to counterattack and can indeed use the counterattack to return to a lab for further attack? I mean, I guess, but that's not exactly a huge thing that's likely to be exploitable...for anything really. Nor would it actually do anything against magic duel.

Perhaps Executor can just come out and say what he meant.

They are not talking about ritual of returning, they are talking about the spell returning. You give your commander 2 astral gems, kill the PD with a normal script(bless body ethereal bla bla attack) and then the next turn you set your commander to cast returning instead. And yea it gives you better strategic value than cloud trapeze. (at a higher price but I feel that loosing the thug + the gear costs much more so better 2 astral gems than that)

[Shangrila00]

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

As if elephants won't still squish a 36 prot Adon, or any earth nation with piercers, or any nation that can cast lightning bolt, which is like half the nations in the MA.

[bbz]

Yea I found the thread about the bracers. thx for the info:)

About burning perls I think there was a thread somewhere explaining when a mage will use more perls(something like if the spell requires less than 50 fatigue or makes the overall fatigue less than 50 then the mage won't use gems to increase casting lvl) but I can't be bothered to find it. Point is with body ethereal you can take on most PD without worries.Same goes for unexpecting thugs/SCs.So they make their kill and the enemy canno't even mind hunt them, so its a pain having to deal with them.

[kianduatha]

Heh...I learned just now that Spine Devils are actually pretty good counters to fully tricked out Adons, amusingly enough. Them poison spines are killer when half your attacks are length 0. It might take a dozen or so of them to take him down, but it's totally worth it. Also it should be noted that the sample Adon you gave had super-nice prot on his body but only 17 on his head, which is rather a lot worse than 36 prot in general. That is admittedly because bracers of prot give body armor these days; I forget if that is going to get reverted.

[Valerius]

Lol. I had forgotten about bracers stacking. Nice use of those three misc slots, Executor. Though I might sacrifice one of those bracers for a pendant of luck.

Another nice piece of Constr. 2 gear forgeable by Ashdod is lantern shields. While the opponent chases around the corpse candles you can buff in peace. Added bonus: fear.

And, if facing Aby or an F9 bless you can use fire plate instead of black plate for 100 FR.

Also, if you build a temple/lab and can scrape together 5 N gems you can forge a raw hide shield so that you will be fatigue neutral with just the E5 bless.

I've never faced off with Ashdod. Tuatha vs. Adon would be an interesting matchup.

[Nightfall]

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

[P3D]

LOL. The fun thing is that IMHO both Hinnom and Gath are much more scarier in their era than Ashdod in the first 30 turns or so. Hinnom has size-5 MR-12 tramplers to clean up all indies (well, with two exceptions). And by the time they are obsolete, you are recruiting Melqarts.
And Gath had already rushed their nearest/weakest neighbor, and switched to turtle mode for the next, say, 30 turns.

Compared to them, Ashdod struggles with both expansion and research. The giant they have are neither tramplers, nor affordable, nor (en)durable. Asdod has two cap-only giant sacreds that are expensive. The Hinnom ones are both cheaper and just better (Fear). The Gath Gibborim, while not spectacular individually, are affordable to mass in critical quantities.
The nonsacred regular Ashod giants are worse than what Hinnom and Gath could do. They just... can't kill stuff fast enough?

Research: Hinnom recruits Ammi - kinda overpriced for researcher, but they are awesome fortune teller (10), and provide A2 access. The Horite Shaman is adequate to start up the Death ladder (with a native RoW). Gath has not that expensive (120g)options that provide diversity (ED, FD, ES, SD, D2, E2) - if a 80gp S1 caster would not also be available. What does Ashod have?
1/ Overpriced Emite that can't be used as thug - at that point just spend the gems on a Zamzummite. Wait, 1/4 of them can forge flaming skulls, too bad you don't really need more than one of those. Another 1/4 of them are actually useful as communion slaves, and could cast Nether Darts at Evo7. Unfortunately, researching that would take an eternity.
2/ Sages. They are just too expensive for research. The magic they provide (E2/S2/F2) is overpriced at 200gp. Nor are they providing any spectacular magic on a reliable basis. This leaves you, out of capital, the
3/ Zamzummite. Yes, he can be thugged (for gems). Yes, half of them can skellispam giant skellies (1/2 chance for doing that effectively). But no E3 access (boosts/casts/forge). F randoms give you nothing besides forge access. Token ES access that you should already have on the Sphynx, and 310GP is to expensive for communion slave. Gath can do it all except the skellispam.
But as it is in CBM 1.92, I'd make three or four changes:
2/ Change Sage random to 3 F/E/S. Those guys are supposed to know more than what could be learned in a human lifetime.
3/ Reduce the cost of Talmai Elders 400GP. That's about what they worth, without H3 or cross-paths.
4/ maybe, give them a semi-decent size 2 unit.

Ah, and make their national evocation castable by their mages.

[Executor]

P3D, yes Hinnom is better. I agree, it can do anything Ashdod can better, though I've never played against Gath so far so I won't make any claims for them. Personally, Ashdod seems better to me than Gath at a glance.
Generally, the unrest and pop eating is a large deterrent when taking Hinnom. I know it's not a big MM problem but people still dislike dealing with it. Well, me first anyway.

Kianduatha, you can even use ghouls to kill such SCs. Cast a few Arouse Hungers. A few successful attacks will ramp up his fatigue due to that paralyzing claw.

Valerius, you could use faithful for luck. A level 2 construct as well.

Anyway, do sole Adons make Ashdod unbalanced? No. They have an array of other nice stuff too. A lot of small things combined does. Like the recent boosts to MA Ulm.
Are Fomo Kings better for example? They can be. Certainly. But their sacred giants suck compared to Ashdod. And their mage force is near nonexistent. Anyone who's played them knows what I'm talking about.

Do I think Adons are OP? Yes. Do I think Adons are unbalanced? That too. I've seen what these things can do and I don't like what is Ashdod early on.
Do I think everything can and should be balanced? I don't for that matter as that would take out much of the flavor out of Dominions. But I still do stand by my earlier, mock comment, that without removing Adons, Ashdod couldn't be balanced. But like I said, I don't actually expect or advocate any changes to them. Some things just can't be balanced as they're built like that. Like Amos nations.
Are there better SCs than Adons? Yes, their EA bothers are much better. Does having one better OP thing make another OP thing less good? It does not.
Is Ashdod unplayable now since they got an increase of another point of enc? It isn't. Is it weak? It certainly isn't. Is it OP still? It is. Can the nation be adequately balanced? I don't think so.

All of this is my personal point of view. A lot of you probably disagree with me, which is a good thing, as if everyone advocated the same thing we'd have a much sorrier version of CBM now.

And one last thing. I get that people will, and should, have different points of views. I respect other peoples opinion. But I don't think if I state certain things ( even something radical like when I said why Agartha PD is hopelessly OP, or make a mock comment about Adons and state why they are still a killer unit ) that my comments should be argued in such a way or ridiculed. There's a fine line between debating and what's been going on in this thread.
So, I apologize for all my comments from last night. And if anyone else wants to have a normal debate of why Ashdod is far from ruined I'd be happy to.

BTW, I agree Zamzummite are fine like Valerius said. 1/4 will have D3 and 1/4 will have astral which can be as good or even better than D3. Though I find them slightly overpriced.

[Calahan]

Hmm, that can be useful. Seems the SC is likely to burn some of those pearls if you script him to buff though. Guess I owe Executor an apology. Not that his "Adons are impossible to balance" nonsense isn't still silly.

Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.
Busted!!! :lol:

[kianduatha]

Is Ashdod unplayable now since they got an increase of another point of enc? It isn't. Is it weak? It certainly isn't. Is it OP still? It is. Can the nation be adequately balanced? I don't think so.

Enc-3 is a huge shift--even with an E5 bless it is impossible to get net-0 on your F2 and S2 Adons until either Const-4 for Girdles or scraping up an indy shaman with some nature income(or alchemizing and it just costing 10S) to make birch boots. And that's a pain--especially if you were going Conj-3 for your Earth guys. I'm tempted to say that Ashdod should only go E9 instead of E10 nowadays because you're not going to get quite there either way.

[bbz]

I don't understand why is everybody so obsessed with getting fatigue down to 0. Gaining 1 enc a turn is not that much of a big deal until turn 25-30 of the battle. The problem with enc 1 is undead spam and thats where fatigue 0 is important but since you are talkin about expanding I don't see where is the problem.

Edit: they do get 2 enc with earth 10 my bad. But still that is not too bad until turn 15ish of battle.

[Olive]

I'm sure this was already reported but just in case;
There's a site that enables recruitment of Wild Ettins, Metropolitus Nautilus.

Just found it - in the same province than a plaguewater stream where I built a fort a few turns ago, once again. :D

Certainly unbalanced for mp games because the Wild Ettins can be bought for 0 gold.

[llamabeast]

Don't worry, the ettin bug is probably the most reported bug ever. I've already fixed it in the early draft of CBM 1.93.

While I'm mentioning 1.93, a sneak preview: LA Pythium will be gaining a nice line of serpent-themed spells. Mainly for reasons of fun and theme rather than balance. I was working on them over Easter and have completed the sprites and the hard bits of the code (the spells include a few new mechanics such as a "Serpent Form" spell the priests can use to turn into giant snakes). I also went through all this thread and the dom3mods thread and compiled all the bugs and suggestions. There are lots and lots!

[Olive]

Amazing. Gotta try LA Pyth again when 1.93 is out. :)

[Makinus]

Is there any way to add a lower research level Transformation spell (maybe as a national spell) without breaking balance? I find it a very fun spell that is used only for reducing upkeep of nature mages in late-game (when upkeep is nearly irrelevant)...

It would be fun to have a version that shows up early in the research tree and could be used to field some combat mages with the better animal forms...

[Makinus]

Would this one be too unbalanced?

#newspell
#copyspell "Transformation"
#name "Astral Transformation"
#descr "The jungle shamans discovered a spell where mages could change their physical forms to an animal form that mirrors their inner soul. The spell has its risks, including the possible death of the mage and, even if sucessfull, not even the mage casting the spell can really know if their soul is powerfull as a Lion or as weak as a Ant."
#path 0 4
#pathlevel 0 2
#path 1 6
#pathlevel 1 1
#school 1
#researchlevel 3
#fatiguecost 400
#end

[WraithLord]

Wow. 1.93 draft sounds most promising. I too am looking fwd to playing LA Pyth.

Did you make up your mind what to do w/ MA Ulm?

Do you think giving MA Pyth some more Byzantium flavor is advisable?

Re. the Adonim discussion. It was my impression that IW specifically wanted the Nephilim nations to be ubber. It makes sense thematically and theme is pivotal to dominions (and makes it fun too). So I personally am ok w/ some small nerfs but I would find it not thematic to make them mediocre.
(For the record I never played any of them in MP and not much interested neither so I'm not emotionally biased. )

If I were to make a balance suggestion I'd say that better target availability rather than quality.
I mean that (for example) instead of making Adonim weaker make them harder to recruit. This can be done in various ways: like up their gcost, up their resource cost, do both or apply some more creative mechanism (like make them units and force GoR to make use of them).
The end result should be player can field small amount of OP Adonim.
In dominions lots of counters exist to small number of OP units.
IMO The balance breakage problem happens when OP things hit critical mass.

[Shangrila00]

Personally, Ashdod seems better to me than Gath at a glance.


Consider your test game. Put the gear you forged on a Kohen Gadol, which as mentioned already, is basically an unequipped Adon with better magic. If you think your test game demonstrates an imbalance in Ashdod, why do you not think it demonstrates an even greater imbalance in Gath?

So, I apologize for all my comments from last night. And if anyone else wants to have a normal debate of why Ashdod is far from ruined I'd be happy to.

Odd, you say your ridiculousness on Adons was mock, but then you still stand by it. That you want a serious debate on why Ashdod is still playable or even that it's still powerful...which nobody has disputed except Ghoul, and is a far cry from that mock claim you stand by. You even say it's not Adon's per se that make Ashdod OP still, but lots of little things that add up...and still stand by your claim that it's impossible to balance Ashdod by looking at the little things, but instead Adons must be removed for that to happen.

Whether or not anyone wants a normal debate would have to depend on whether you only want to claim something not much disputed, or still everything you claimed last night, even if you take back the personal attacks.


Lol, managing astral SC's is one of the easiest areas in which it's obvious to spot whether someone is a decent player or a complete scrub.

I wouldn't worry about it Executor, it's obvious to most readers who knows what they are talking about.

Hey Nightfall, surely you agree that Ashdod is only middle of the pack. After all, Man is the strongest bless nation in the MA right? But even you didn't claim that Man was massively OP.

[earcaraxe]

my opinion is that the statement "asdod is unplayable" is obviously false.

I wanted to clear that up if we are arguing about "unplayable" or "not strong enough".

Someone already expressed something like some peoples panchant for confusing "unplayable" with "unplayable by the previously working methods". In ashdods case (one of) the previously working method was stomping the opponent by nearly irresistable brute force (something like niefel jarls can do even now against some nations/builds).

I was the witness of what i consider the event that inspired ghouls original post about the topic. This is how i saw it: in the early game he was conquering indies with adons using a super-bless E10W6F6N4, then when the indies got eaten up, he got in war with shinuyama, using his expansion army of 6 or 7 adons. After the intial defeat, shinuyama assembled a huge army, with lots of O-bakemonos (among lots of other things, goblins, dai bakemonos) and managed to beat the adon platoon, suffering great casualties in the process. the O-bakemonos were key in that as they did hit hard enough.

i dont see any problem making an expectable strategy defeatable, in fact i much prefer it. (so i wont ban these kind of nations from my games)

[Shangrila00]

I wanted to clear that up if we are arguing about "unplayable" or "not strong enough".


Actually only Ghoul was arguing either unplayable, or not strong enough, and he really didn't say much beyond that. Executor was (and still is?) arguing that Ashdod is impossible to balance with Adonim because it was and still is massively OP, and I was arguing against that. There was also a side argument on whether or not some of the nerfs against Ashdod were justified, with the understanding that no, the nerfs don't make Ashdod weak, but neither would the lack of them make Ashdod OP, and so CBM didn't really have any business making those changes for thematic reasons.

Edit: somewhat lost in the shuffle was how Seren can be made useable. Which is related as Anakite armor being the worst heavy armor in the game is one reason nobody would recruit them, as cheap as they are.

[rdonj]

Dude, shangrila, for as much as you claim executor was making personal attacks it is hard not to read a large amount of hostility from you in what you're directing at him. You are making this excessively personal. Can we back this up a couple of steps?

[Valerius]

There was also a side argument on whether or not some of the nerfs against Ashdod were justified, with the understanding that no, the nerfs don't make Ashdod weak, but neither would the lack of them make Ashdod OP, and so CBM didn't really have any business making those changes for thematic reasons.

I'll agree with the first part, that the nerfs don't make them weak - but not with the second. Ashdod was originally nerfed because it was viewed as OP. I understand you may not view it that way but the fact is it was commonly banned from games. And it's most certainly CBM's business to address that since I view CBM as being MP focused (at least with regards to balance decisions). Really, the question is do you want the nation to be playable or banned half the time?

As for the nerfs, they mostly had to do with gold cost. I'd agree some of those are now too high, in particular the Talmai Elder at 600 gold. I'd also agree with Executor's comment that it wouldn't be out of line to reduce the cost of zamzummite's.

But none of the changes were unthematic, unless you consider the theme to be "IW created an OP nation deliberately." But in that case I'd say balance trumps "theme" - at least in a MP setting.

[ghoul31]

Ashdod is the only nation that can't get 0 enc sacreds. So nations with 0 enc sacreds can just slaughter them in the early game

I am the only one here who has actually played ashdod in 1.92, so I'm the only one that can comment on it.


Why don't some of you actually play them before you keep spouting nonsense?

but of course none of you will, and will just keep spouting nonsense with no real experience to back you up.

[Calahan]

in the early game he was conquering indies with adons using a super-bless E10W6F6N4
That's the most ridiculously expensive and stupid bless I've ever seen. W6 for an extra 3 def on an SC chassis?!? So that’s 170 points to negate 1.5 attacks. Awesome value!! And then another 170 points to get an extra 3 attack on a unit that doesn't struggle to hit.

I really love it when players take an absolutely atrocious build for a game, get trashed in 20 turns, and then complain about how rubbish a nation and/or mod is based on the game they just played. And never once looking at their own failings in both design and play style, or even think about blaming themselves in any way for a single moment. The other great thing about Ghoul's performance in that game is that Ghoul is well known for always having the worst Dominion and Research in every game he plays, but even so...

(these were the llamascores the turn Ghoul went AI as Ashdod)

LlamaServer Scores, Game_of_Dorian turn 21

Research
Nation Research
Independents 0
Ermor 655
Pythium 305
Mictlan 757
Abysia 1472
Shinuyama 1191
Ashdod 36
Eriu 1524

How is it possible to have done just 36 points of research by turn 21? I mean seriously, how the hell is that even possible. You hire a mage turn 1, set it to research, and that single mage alone will have generated 100rp by turn 21. So WTF?!? To have done just 36rp you would literally have to be sending out every mage you ever recruit every turn. Christ any and every nation in the game is unplayable if you trash your scales to take a pointless bless, on top of intentionally doing no research at all ever. If anyone plays like this then they seriously need to go back to SP games and learn the very basics of how to play.


And I just tried a quick and messy test game as Ashdod. By turn 12 I had 19 provinces, 3 forts and however many expansion armies I wanted. I took a Dormant Master Druid with A1W1E9N4 (you don't need more bless than that) and Dom5 O3P1H4G0Mis2M1, with 54 points remaining (so points left for more scales or Dom or Magic Div). I don't see why I wouldn't get that in a MP game if I wanted (note that's a big if!). I expanded no problem with almost no losses (Indy 5) using a mix of small armies of Gileadites backed with Indy archers when needed.

Ashdod is in no way weak at all, and in most cases have all the options available now that they did before. If you can't get a decent game with Ashdod then there's something wrong with your play. Sure they can and likely will be in danger of ganging, due to players knowing about Ashdod's mid-late game potential. But I can't see why they are more or less likely to be ganged than the other top nations in the game. As that is the danger (or should be the danger in a sensible game) of playing top tier nations.

-------------------------
Since we cant alter the consciousness of the community, at least parts of 1. (nerfstick) should be reversed.
Please don't tell me you have any important responsibilities in life, because that is one of the stupidest bits of logic I have even seen. "We've gone a long way to solving the problem, but people are unaware of what we've done, and how we've tried addressing the problem. Therefore we should undo all the fixes we made, just accept the problem, and never try to fix it ever again."

--------------------------
Hi.

Can we potentially add 25% blood on mictlan priests? Currently, with the elimination of SDR and tlahuepulchi cost increase, the only effective way to blood hunt as mictlan is to use their cap only mages - and since Mictlan is all about blood it seems to be pretty ineffective.
Just my 2 cents
I agree completely. Removing SDR's has made Mictlan UNPLAYABLE! and they have been completely overnerfed as a result of the CBM changes. Mictlan were one of the weakest nations in the game to begin with, and I can not see them ever winning a game again, or even getting to turn 20, unless their priests get B3 minimum. As using cap mages to bloodhunt is an exploit, and it's impossible for Mictlan to summon any hunters who are efficient or cheap. Therefore the nation is now worthless IMO (which is the correct opinion). Plus removing hammers has not helped them in any way. Indeed it has made them far worse compared to other nations.

[Executor]

Shangrila00,
You refuse to even really hear anything I have to say and make any attempt to have a civil debate about it. For whatever reason, which I won't get into, you have taken this far too personally and continue to be excessively hostile towards me, and not only me (I have no peoblem with that btw). But yet in the end, it's me that's making the personal attacks...

I think I'll refrain from making any comments regarding anything on this forum from now on as dealing with the likes of you makes that rather unpleasant.
In the future, please don't address me and do not attempt to join my games.

Calahan, I finally get why you stopped posting anything or trying to be of help.

[Ragnarok-X]

Please don't tell me you have any important responsibilities in life, because that is one of the stupidest bits of logic I have even seen. "We've gone a long way to solving the problem, but people are unaware of what we've done, and how we've tried addressing the problem. Therefore we should undo all the fixes we made, just accept the problem, and never try to fix it ever again."



Chill. I didnt say roll it back, i said it was overnerfed and i suggestion to UNDO the overnerf.

[Calahan]

Ashdod is the only nation that can't get 0 enc sacreds. So nations with 0 enc sacreds can just slaughter them in the early game

I am the only one here who has actually played ashdod in 1.92, so I'm the only one that can comment on it.


Why don't some of you actually play them before you keep spouting nonsense?

but of course none of you will, and will just keep spouting nonsense with no real experience to back you up.
Ghoul you've never played any nation in the game, simply because you have no idea how to play the game at all. Therefore any opinion you have on anything is meaningless. And as evidence of your inability to play, I present your above bless for Ashdod, and your complete failure to compete in any game you've ever played past the mid game (when 0enc super giants can no longer survive against magic).

This happens in every game you play (and you know it does) because you have no concept of the power curve, you never do research, you never build several strong mage bases, you always over-commit to every war you fight (top tip, vet players often use less than 50% of their forces to win their first war, and also try to win their first war without using any mages). With most of these points being the reason you keep getting ganged. ie. it has othing to do with players beign "****ing cowards" as you keep claiming. As the reason is they scout your lands, notice you have no troops or mages anywhere in sight. As you've committed everything you have, and ever have had, into just one war. Then they check the graphs and note you are bottom on research, so have no way of defending yourself with mages. they then add 1+1 together, and get the answer that they can take over your entire empire very quickly and very easily. So why the hell shouldn't they do it? (top tip, if your first war lasts more than 20 turns, you've already lost the game. And if you win your first, and your second lasts longer than 10 turns, then again you've lost the game. Quick wars are essential to staying on the power curve)

If you think how you play the game right now is how the game should be played, then I can assure you that you will not only never win a game ever, but you will not even get close to winning a game ever. As you are trying to play in a way that makes failure a 100% certainty. In chess terms (since it's the worlds most widely played strategy game) you are moving your queen out on move two of every game you play, trying to capture as many pawns as you can with her, and then crying like a girl when you lose your queen or you get checkmated (due to your opponents superior piece development), and then blaming either the game or your opponent for your loss. Rather than facing the truth which is that you have no idea at all how chess is really played. And until you accept you have no idea, accept you have to change how you play, and start learning the basics of playing properly, then you will never improve regardless of how many games you play, as it is impossible to improve with that play style. You could play 24/7 for 10 years and be no better than when you started.

But I couldn't care less if your Dom play improves at all, and you'll just ignore all this advice like you have done every single time anyone has tried helping you play better. And several players have tried helping you in the past, but you refuse to accept any criticism of your play because you always convice yourself that something else is the sole reason for you losing (****ing cowards!!!). As at the end of the day all I care about is that people realise how clueless you are as a player, and as such automatically ignore any assessment you make about a nation/mod/whatever.

----------------------------
Calahan, I finally get why you stopped posting anything or trying to be of help.
Glad to see you've finally seen the light. Maybe you should set up a sig. to commemorate it, like the one I have over on Dom3mods.

"Don't ever try to help pig-headed douche bags, as it's never worth the trouble. Since some people are just too stupid and arrogant to listen (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=708122#post708122)"

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



Please don't tell me you have any important responsibilities in life, because that is one of the stupidest bits of logic I have even seen. "We've gone a long way to solving the problem, but people are unaware of what we've done, and how we've tried addressing the problem. Therefore we should undo all the fixes we made, just accept the problem, and never try to fix it ever again."



Chill. I didnt say roll it back, i said it was overnerfed and i suggestion to UNDO the overnerf.
I'll chill when people stop posting rubbish. Which by recent evidence suggests never.

[llamabeast]

I hope you won't actually stop posting Executor, as your comments and discussion are much appreciated and I read them carefully. I may be fairly quiet on here but I read the forums constantly (I don't post so much since I'm generally either at work or on my phone).

[llamabeast]

And actually I generally appreciate your comments too Shangrila. I have no idea what happened on here in the last couple of days!!

[Valerius]

I also hope you don't stop posting, Executor.

Obviously people will have differences when it comes to subjective things like balance but a little civility can go a long way. And sometimes you just agree to disagree and hope llama takes your side when reviewing the matter. And be glad you don't have to deal with all this like he does. ;)

[kianduatha]

I think the takeaway from all this is that Ashdod can expand quite handily with its non-sacred giant troops--which is really awesome.

I don't understand why people would want Zamzummites to be cheaper rather than better mages. Especially if expansion is starting to be from actual troops instead of Adon power-hour, the next step seems to be adjusting balance to be roughly equal between Zamzummite mage-power and Adon thuggery.

Frankly, though, I have no idea how powerful Ashdod is at the moment. Nobody plays them in legit games.

[Valerius]

I think the takeaway from all this is that Ashdod can expand quite handily with its non-sacred giant troops--which is really awesome.

This is definitely worth pointing out since CBM made those non-sacreds cheaper than vanilla. And this combines nicely with the current scales making prod more appealing than ever.

I don't understand why people would want Zamzummites to be cheaper rather than better mages. Especially if expansion is starting to be from actual troops instead of Adon power-hour, the next step seems to be adjusting balance to be roughly equal between Zamzummite mage-power and Adon thuggery.

Because discounting their price a bit lets you afford more of them; making them better mages increases their power considerably more because you don't have to use those all important gems to open up things like banefire and drain life and even summon earthpower (combined with an E bless) for a mage that has incredible staying power. And as I mentioned, these aren't fragile mages that can't survive a late game battlefield.

Now I realize your proposal of a 25-50% chance of an extra DE pick is very different from the 100% chance they have in vanilla but those are the concerns I have about going that route.

[Executor]

I hope you won't actually stop posting Executor, as your comments and discussion are much appreciated and I read them carefully. I may be fairly quiet on here but I read the forums constantly (I don't post so much since I'm generally either at work or on my phone).

Oh no, I'll be around Sombres forum as always, any real modding discussions and projects are done there anyway. The fact you go though these threads regularly and have the unpleasant job of sorting out all comments, suggestions and rants for further projects is well known to me. That is much appreciated as always. We all do out part to contribute something to this game which borders addiction.
I just don't know why I even bother here. I know I can be an ars or overstate myself sometimes but damn, at least I come around...

[Torgon]

Playing a game with Marverni and just noticed something.

With the new buffs to animals marverni's boars now have berserk. However, the boars they get with the spell iron pigs do not (yep, cool little thing about iron pigs with marverni, you get sacred iron boar versions instead of just normal iron pigs).

For consistency it seems like they should also get berserk if the normal boars now have it. Iron pigs explicitly says that it doesn't effect the minds of the animals.

However, obvious problem is that berserk (with the buff to prot and most importantly the unroutability) might actually be a little overpowered on the iron boars. Marv would now be getting 10 unroutable, super high protection, sacred tramplers for 4 E gems apiece.

[kianduatha]

Playing a game with Marverni and just noticed something.

With the new buffs to animals marverni's boars now have berserk. However, the boars they get with the spell iron pigs do not (yep, cool little thing about iron pigs with marverni, you get sacred iron boar versions instead of just normal iron pigs).

For consistency it seems like they should also get berserk if the normal boars now have it. Iron pigs explicitly says that it doesn't effect the minds of the animals.

However, obvious problem is that berserk (with the buff to prot and most importantly the unroutability) might actually be a little overpowered on the iron boars. Marv would now be getting 10 unroutable, super high protection, sacred tramplers for 4 E gems apiece.

It was not an oversight; that is exactly why the Iron boars do not have berserk.

[Valerius]

I was wondering what people use the great eagle for (Conj. 7, 4 A gems). It's not expensive, but the research level seems high for what it does - especially because the Roc is available at Conj. 6 (though of course it costs more and requires A4 to summon). Do they have a niche that I'm not seeing? The main thing that stands out is that they have map move 4.

Edit: I guess maybe to ferry gems and misc items around since they are actually cheaper than flying boots?

[Torgon]

Playing a game with Marverni and just noticed something.

With the new buffs to animals marverni's boars now have berserk. However, the boars they get with the spell iron pigs do not (yep, cool little thing about iron pigs with marverni, you get sacred iron boar versions instead of just normal iron pigs).

For consistency it seems like they should also get berserk if the normal boars now have it. Iron pigs explicitly says that it doesn't effect the minds of the animals.

However, obvious problem is that berserk (with the buff to prot and most importantly the unroutability) might actually be a little overpowered on the iron boars. Marv would now be getting 10 unroutable, super high protection, sacred tramplers for 4 E gems apiece.

It was not an oversight; that is exactly why the Iron boars do not have berserk.

Okay. Good to know. Still not a huge fan of the consistency problem. To bad you can't fix it with a price change since it would effect the spell for every other nation as well.

Maybe just add some flavor text to the iron boars explaining why they no longer berserk. Perhaps they're smart enough to realize that their skin is now made of steel.

[Boksi]

Playing a game with Marverni and just noticed something.

With the new buffs to animals marverni's boars now have berserk. However, the boars they get with the spell iron pigs do not (yep, cool little thing about iron pigs with marverni, you get sacred iron boar versions instead of just normal iron pigs).

For consistency it seems like they should also get berserk if the normal boars now have it. Iron pigs explicitly says that it doesn't effect the minds of the animals.

However, obvious problem is that berserk (with the buff to prot and most importantly the unroutability) might actually be a little overpowered on the iron boars. Marv would now be getting 10 unroutable, super high protection, sacred tramplers for 4 E gems apiece.

It was not an oversight; that is exactly why the Iron boars do not have berserk.

Okay. Good to know. Still not a huge fan of the consistency problem. To bad you can't fix it with a price change since it would effect the spell for every other nation as well.

Maybe just add some flavor text to the iron boars explaining why they no longer berserk. Perhaps they're smart enough to realize that their skin is now made of steel.

Maybe they can't feel pain anymore because their skin is made of steel?

[Torgon]

It was not an oversight; that is exactly why the Iron boars do not have berserk.

Okay. Good to know. Still not a huge fan of the consistency problem. To bad you can't fix it with a price change since it would effect the spell for every other nation as well.

Maybe just add some flavor text to the iron boars explaining why they no longer berserk. Perhaps they're smart enough to realize that their skin is now made of steel.

Maybe they can't feel pain anymore because their skin is made of steel?

haha. Good point.

[Immaculate]

Medallions of vengeance are now on the 'attack' line and can be used to cause a massive area of effect fire damage effect. not sure if its meant to be like that but it definitely seems broken. am i wrong? Its a construction zero item that has a five gem construction cost and it works even without the user dying now? or twice if the user does die?

[Snacktime]

Is there a way to run only a part of CBM? I am a relatively noob player (coming back to the game after a couple years off). I want to correct the balance of the pretenders but leave the spells and units vanilla as I have a terrible time figuring out what spells and units are good without referring to the manual and with CBM it's all different.

Anyway I seem to recall the ability to download or use only the pretender part of CBM, but that was a number of patches and versions ago.

Thanks!

[kianduatha]

Medallions of vengeance are now on the 'attack' line and can be used to cause a massive area of effect fire damage effect. not sure if its meant to be like that but it definitely seems broken. am i wrong? Its a construction zero item that has a five gem construction cost and it works even without the user dying now? or twice if the user does die?

It is indeed meant to be like that. Do you have interesting tales of someone winning a game with it?

[Immaculate]

i am getting my *** kicked by it- seems very powerful for 5g and construction zero.

[kianduatha]

i am getting my *** kicked by it- seems very powerful for 5g and construction zero.

Could you give some actual details? What nation are you? Who is using them against you? With what commanders?

[bbz]

Yea I assume its harder to actually make decoys for it. If someone has fire resistant army + 2-3 commanders wielding it attacking from the back. 16 AP on a AOE-8 seems to be quite a lot. (a possible suggestion tune it down to 8AP(as much as flaming weapons iirc) instead of 16) this way its not gonna be an army killed just a chaff killer.

[Immaculate]

A demonbred with one of these (available third turn???) can destroy almost any PD or initial expansion party. It is VERY hard to counter and VERY cheap. The problem i have especially is that it can be crafted without any research for only 5 gems. Its a great item but it should not be available so early or for so cheap.

[earcaraxe]

isnt it a suicide mission for the 270 gold cap-only demonbred?

[Executor]

And how useful is it if you're not Abysia? Judging any single thing from a single point of view in Dominions is very wrong.

Spending 5 gems to (possibly) get a double explosion is not that great mind you, I'd go as far as saying it's a waist.

What would you say about LA Agartha Flame corpse constructs than? Those cost only 1 gem.

If the medallion is finally getting some use after being overlooked since it was introduced into the game than I say great.

[earcaraxe]

actually its 260 gold, but the EA version is only 60.

now i have run some test, with the ma demonbred. without bless - according to my tests - and only equipped with a medallion he loses to 21 (independent) light infantry+heavy infantry nearly always. i didnt use any spells, but we are talking about early game, arent we? and he doesnt have much buffs to use with F2B2H2.

if i research a little to get to constr 2 and fire plate and helmet, then he becomes a little more succesful, about half the time he beats the 21 heavy inf+light inf. how are u (or ur opponent) doing ur thing?

[bbz]

yea same tests here, they don't seem to be too overwhelming.

[Immaculate]

Okay, maybe i was just upset to be facing it unexpectedly. I did play-test them though and they seemed very powerful. Lots of stuff runs when they lose so many of their buddies. Routs were very common.

[kianduatha]

Okay, maybe i was just upset to be facing it unexpectedly. I did play-test them though and they seemed very powerful. Lots of stuff runs when they lose so many of their buddies. Routs were very common.

Could you give details on what exactly you were facing(and how it worked against you)? If you commented in a game thread, feel free to link to your post there(or just copy-paste!)

I know it looks really powerful on paper. We need actual MP game experiences to use as examples, though, and the more detail we get, the better.

Sure, EA Abysia can use them fairly effectively. But in the end...they already have recruitable salamanders and guys with heat auras, so getting yet another way to deal fire damage isn't terribly a big deal for them.

[bbz]

I'd say hinnom can use these quite effectively.

[Immaculate]

two demonbreds use them on my commanders during assinations and the amulet kills all my bodyguards and my guy runs. thats not too OP... well, yeah, sometimes it is... but its my SP experience that made it look pretty tough.

[kianduatha]

two demonbreds use them on my commanders during assinations and the amulet kills all my bodyguards and my guy runs. thats not too OP... well, yeah, sometimes it is... but its my SP experience that made it look pretty tough.

Remember that every Demonbred he makes is one non-fire caster he will never see, which is huge for EA Abysia.

I think some fancy scripting on your part can also help to deal with this--don't have one group of bodyguards then. Arrange it so the demonbred will hit a single target first to deal with his aoe and you will suddenly stop having problems.

[legowarrior]

I am curious, do people use the Ryujin a lot as the LA Jomon. We have a MA Mod which allows people to hire them from the capital, and people argue that they don't see much need for them. I'd like to point out, that the MA Jomon also has only slow moving mages, like LA Jomon, and are similar in many way, so the Ryujin play the same role for the MA Jomon as the LA Jomon.

[rdonj]

It's harder to use them as LA Jomon because of the UW fort requirement, but they're absolutely used and useful, in both nations. Having super-mobile battlemages is a Big Deal, and ryujin give you access to a couple of powerful spells that are difficult for you elsewise. Saigu are a better deal for you for just plain path access, but make no mistake that Ryujin are a powerful, if pricy, aspect of the jomonese arsenal.

[Mightypeon]

actually its 260 gold, but the EA version is only 60.

now i have run some test, with the ma demonbred. without bless - according to my tests - and only equipped with a medallion he loses to 21 (independent) light infantry+heavy infantry nearly always. i didnt use any spells, but we are talking about early game, arent we? and he doesnt have much buffs to use with F2B2H2.

if i research a little to get to constr 2 and fire plate and helmet, then he becomes a little more succesful, about half the time he beats the 21 heavy inf+light inf. how are u (or ur opponent) doing ur thing?

Acutally, how does the amulet interact with Phonix pyre?

[Bat/man]

.02: I 've always thought that gem generating globals that give bonuses in the same gem type were destabilizing.

ie., the Oak costs nature gems and returns nature gems -- if you keep it up for a few turns, you are strongly likely to be able to keep it up.

Has any thought been made to making global gem generators cross typed.. Ie., a casting a 30 water global might generate you air....

[earcaraxe]

wow, i find it a helluva idea!

(edit: not sure it would make the game "better", but its kinda idea that spawns interesting discussions)

[Corinthian]

Funny you should mention that Bat/man, because the water global: "The Maelstrom" already works like that. Although most gems(15) you get are water gems, you also get 5 astral pearls and one of each other gem types I think.

Also gem gen globals are not as destabilizing as gem gen items as they are not anonymous and they can be stopped much easier. Furthermore, a nation with many globals might get ganged upon because of it. And because there can only be one global of the same kind in a game it can shake up a stalemate.

[llamabeast]

It is a design principle of dom3 (as opposed to dom2), and of CBM in turn, that diversification should in general not be trivial. This helps to maintain the thematic differences between nations.

A gem generator which required one gem type to produce another would undermine this design principle.

The same principle also explains the generally limited paths available to EDM summons.

[Torgon]

It is a design principle of dom3 (as opposed to dom2), and of CBM in turn, that diversification should in general not be trivial. This helps to maintain the thematic differences between nations.

A gem generator which required one gem type to produce another would undermine this design principle.

The same principle also explains the generally limited paths available to EDM summons.

Seems like a good principal, but it doesn't really seem to be applied consistently. Why is it that diversity is hard, except for death nations? The only summon-able mages in the game with any diversity are all down death or have some death component.

[Finalgenesis]

I think the key word is "non-trivial". Diversification is still present, just non-trivial. most path more or less have some and it's definitely non-trivial.

Diversity summons are mostly combinations of high research, high cost, cross path. Death's diversification specialty definitely have these elements in spades.

For example, Spectral mage, which can be verrry expensive rolling paths you need for a relatively low path level. The hiddens are all cross path and a bit out of the way. Tarts which are probably foremost in people's mind is both cross path (nature), end research, and somewhat expensive to get paths you want (all them restore soul and rolling good titans add up). Still, I see that as death's specialty, raising the dead with knowledge of other paths.

That's one aspect of dom3 I really like, that the 8 paths are so diverse from each other and each with useful/meaningful specialties of their own.

[Torgon]

I think the key word is "non-trivial". Diversification is still present, just non-trivial. most path more or less have some and it's definitely non-trivial.

Diversity summons are mostly combinations of high research, high cost, cross path. Death's diversification specialty definitely have these elements in spades.

For example, Spectral mage, which can be verrry expensive rolling paths you need for a relatively low path level. The hiddens are all cross path and a bit out of the way. Tarts which are probably foremost in people's mind is both cross path (nature), end research, and somewhat expensive to get paths you want (all them restore soul and rolling good titans add up). Still, I see that as death's specialty, raising the dead with knowledge of other paths.

That's one aspect of dom3 I really like, that the 8 paths are so diverse from each other and each with useful/meaningful specialties of their own.

I guess its just sort of a pet peeve of mine regarding dom 3. I wouldn't mind it if this was death's specialty, raising makes with knowledge of other paths. The problem is that it's not like death can do it particularly well, and the other paths just have middling success at it. Its that death is the only way to do it, period. There is no cross path magic diversity outside of death (or a spell with death as some component). It forces a bunch of nations that otherwise would have really no reason to go into death down that path. It often forces you to put death on a pretender when if there were even the barest of options outside of death you'd never take it. Heck a nature summons with even a 50% chance of an astral pick would cover a lot of the reasons that many nations need to pick up death in some way.

Take a nation like tir na nog. About as close as you come to a 'good' nation in dominions and thematically they definitely shouldn't be summoning up dead mages from beyond the grave and awakening dead gods. However, unless you want to be shooting gallery for mind hunts you'd better find some way to get astral mages. If you're lucky you'll find some lizard men or crystal amazons. But if you get an unlucky indi roll, you find yourself having to (rather un-thematically) crawl up death for a few specters for AMA and mind hunt cover.

I'm not saying that the other paths need tartarians or even specters. But it would be nice if they got a couple summons that would give them a couple random picks here or there that didn't require a pretender with D-magic.

[Torgon]

I think the key word is "non-trivial". Diversification is still present, just non-trivial. most path more or less have some and it's definitely non-trivial.

Diversity summons are mostly combinations of high research, high cost, cross path. Death's diversification specialty definitely have these elements in spades.

For example, Spectral mage, which can be verrry expensive rolling paths you need for a relatively low path level. The hiddens are all cross path and a bit out of the way. Tarts which are probably foremost in people's mind is both cross path (nature), end research, and somewhat expensive to get paths you want (all them restore soul and rolling good titans add up). Still, I see that as death's specialty, raising the dead with knowledge of other paths.

That's one aspect of dom3 I really like, that the 8 paths are so diverse from each other and each with useful/meaningful specialties of their own.

I guess its just sort of a pet peeve of mine regarding dom 3. I wouldn't mind it if this was death's specialty: raising mages with knowledge of other paths. The problem is that it's not like death can do it particularly well, and the other paths just have middling success at it. Its that death is the only way to do it, period. There is no cross path magic diversity outside of death (or a spell with death as some component). It forces a bunch of nations that otherwise would have really no reason to go into death down that path. It often forces you to put death on a pretender when if there were even the barest of options outside of death you'd never take it. Heck a nature summons with even a 50% chance of an astral pick would cover a lot of the reasons that many nations need to pick up death in some way.

Take a nation like tir na nog. About as close as you come to a 'good' nation in dominions and thematically they definitely shouldn't be summoning up dead mages from beyond the grave and awakening dead gods. However, unless you want to be shooting gallery for mind hunts you'd better find some way to get astral mages. If you're lucky you'll find some lizard men or crystal amazons. But if you get an unlucky indi roll, you find yourself having to (rather un-thematically) crawl up death for a few specters for AMA and mind hunt cover.

I'm not saying that the other paths need tartarians or even specters. But it would be nice if they got a couple summons that would give them a couple random picks here or there that didn't require a pretender with D-magic.

[bbz]

I think the key word is "non-trivial". Diversification is still present, just non-trivial. most path more or less have some and it's definitely non-trivial.

Diversity summons are mostly combinations of high research, high cost, cross path. Death's diversification specialty definitely have these elements in spades.

For example, Spectral mage, which can be verrry expensive rolling paths you need for a relatively low path level. The hiddens are all cross path and a bit out of the way. Tarts which are probably foremost in people's mind is both cross path (nature), end research, and somewhat expensive to get paths you want (all them restore soul and rolling good titans add up). Still, I see that as death's specialty, raising the dead with knowledge of other paths.

That's one aspect of dom3 I really like, that the 8 paths are so diverse from each other and each with useful/meaningful specialties of their own.

I guess its just sort of a pet peeve of mine regarding dom 3. I wouldn't mind it if this was death's specialty, raising makes with knowledge of other paths. The problem is that it's not like death can do it particularly well, and the other paths just have middling success at it. Its that death is the only way to do it, period. There is no cross path magic diversity outside of death (or a spell with death as some component). It forces a bunch of nations that otherwise would have really no reason to go into death down that path. It often forces you to put death on a pretender when if there were even the barest of options outside of death you'd never take it. Heck a nature summons with even a 50% chance of an astral pick would cover a lot of the reasons that many nations need to pick up death in some way.

Take a nation like tir na nog. About as close as you come to a 'good' nation in dominions and thematically they definitely shouldn't be summoning up dead mages from beyond the grave and awakening dead gods. However, unless you want to be shooting gallery for mind hunts you'd better find some way to get astral mages. If you're lucky you'll find some lizard men or crystal amazons. But if you get an unlucky indi roll, you find yourself having to (rather un-thematically) crawl up death for a few specters for AMA and mind hunt cover.

I'm not saying that the other paths need tartarians or even specters. But it would be nice if they got a couple summons that would give them a couple random picks here or there that didn't require a pretender with D-magic.

The thing is nations like T'ir Na N'og are not supposed to be sending mind hunts every where, so while they are brave soldiers I don't really see them as Nation that gazes at the stars to gain power:). Also what about golems? E2S3 You need as little as S2 on your pretender and you are sorted. Heck even S1 works if you can get someone to forge you one astral cap.And voila you get your mind hunter. Also none of the paths doesnt require Death to get them. Yea death can be a way of achieving all of them at once, but as It was said you have high research requirement and its at high risk (not getting the chalice) and nature as cross path.

Also back on T'ir Na N'og, you get a really strong middle game nation, that has decent expansion rate(fir blogs are amazing) so you don't even need an awake pretender, for the 100 extra design points you get from that, you can get f4 e2 s2 d2- those paths are enough for you to get into fire astral and death. While at the moment the fire bless attack +2 is a bit redundant due to the fact that Ri's lances always hit hopefully that will change in the future(cough cough):).

If every single nations was mind hunting, summoning zmeys, and use Fog warriors everywhere, then they wouldn't be different at all. And the diversity is what I love most in Dominions, because every nation has a different way it is played(and heck it even has 20 different ways it can be played). If you give every nation a spell to diversify them into the paths they don't have using as you suggested their natural income. Then you reduce the strategical depth of the game. If everyone could use the best Sc's the best assassination spells, the most cost-effective troops, why bother with other spells? The way it is at the moment: you are not strong in astral but you have strong earth what can you do instead of mind hunt - Earth attack ,sure it takes 5E gems and its less cost effective than mind hunt but to compensate, on the field of battle you get army of lead/gold weapons of sharpness pertrify and loads of other nice buffs.

[Soyweiser]

There is no cross path magic diversity outside of death (or a spell with death as some component).

The Faery queen hates you for forgetting her. As do the demon lords and heliophagi.

And tarts are not a good diversification strategy. Way to random, you need a level of death that is almost impossible to get. research level 9, etc. (The earlier you get access to secondary paths the better (why is left as an exercise to the reader))

If you want diversity, play patala or kailasa, or get a rainbow mage.

Not every nation should play like every other nation. (Which was the objectives of CBM, not all games should end in tart fests with armageddons sprinkled in).

[Snacktime]

Is there a list somewhere of all the changes CBM 1.92 makes to all spells/units/items etc. as compared to vanilla? The changelog seems to me to be referring to changes 1.92 made from the last version, but tracking all changes back through the versions is hard.

I've been away from Dom3 for a while and I don't want to devise a research strategy etc. that leads to a spell that has been moved or whatever.

Thanks!

[llamabeast]

Unfortunately not Snacktime - the list would be extremely long. However, browsing spells in-game is quite easy and probably quicker than a changelog anyway.

Items are easily viewable using Momfreek's excellent browser: http://dom3-mod-inspector.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/index.html?mod=CB1.92.dm . Also there's the PDF packaged with CBM 1.92.

Units: I'm afraid there's no easy way, sorry. The best thing is to quickly test out your strategies in single player games.

[Soyweiser]

Aha, the famous list of changes question.

No there has not. People have started it, feel free to help them out.

[Torgon]

The thing is nations like T'ir Na N'og are not supposed to be sending mind hunts every where, so while they are brave soldiers I don't really see them as Nation that gazes at the stars to gain power:). Also what about golems? E2S3 You need as little as S2 on your pretender and you are sorted. Heck even S1 works if you can get someone to forge you one astral cap.And voila you get your mind hunter. Also none of the paths doesnt require Death to get them. Yea death can be a way of achieving all of them at once, but as It was said you have high research requirement and its at high risk (not getting the chalice) and nature as cross path.

Also back on T'ir Na N'og, you get a really strong middle game nation, that has decent expansion rate(fir blogs are amazing) so you don't even need an awake pretender, for the 100 extra design points you get from that, you can get f4 e2 s2 d2- those paths are enough for you to get into fire astral and death. While at the moment the fire bless attack +2 is a bit redundant due to the fact that Ri's lances always hit hopefully that will change in the future(cough cough):).

If every single nations was mind hunting, summoning zmeys, and use Fog warriors everywhere, then they wouldn't be different at all. And the diversity is what I love most in Dominions, because every nation has a different way it is played(and heck it even has 20 different ways it can be played). If you give every nation a spell to diversify them into the paths they don't have using as you suggested their natural income. Then you reduce the strategical depth of the game. If everyone could use the best Sc's the best assassination spells, the most cost-effective troops, why bother with other spells? The way it is at the moment: you are not strong in astral but you have strong earth what can you do instead of mind hunt - Earth attack ,sure it takes 5E gems and its less cost effective than mind hunt but to compensate, on the field of battle you get army of lead/gold weapons of sharpness pertrify and loads of other nice buffs.

Never said that Tir should be spamming mind hunts. Said mind hunt cover, meaning protection from mind hunts. And yes, tir does need this. As tir, or man, or pan, etc. if you're not thinking about how to protect yourself from mind hunts at a very early stage you'll get fried. Unfortunately, as it stands now the only way to reliably get cover (outside or lucky indi mages) is death.

I have no desire to give every nation access to the best spells in the game, and don't want to see everyone spamming mind hunts and banes. Thats sort of my point, and I thought sort of one of the point of CBM, to make thematic national paths viable options, and open up alternative strategies for nations to pursue. I'm saying that I think that one barrier to this goal is the fact that death remains the only path with any sort of magical diversity. Once again, exactly what I don't want is every nation spamming tarts, I don't even want tarts for the other paths. What would be nice however is a summons that got a couple random picks here or there outside of death.

And no I'm not forgetting about the Fairy Queens, Demon lords, and Heliophagi. Heliophagi and Demon lords are both limited in number so not really reliable. Fairy queens actually do provide some diversity and probably should be discussed. But I'd actually say that they're the singular example of what I wish were more common. A way, even if its difficult (and fairy queens are difficult) to diversify in some way using national paths. A nation that summons a fairy queen is never going to be an air power. They'll still play very differently than Caelum or Tir. But the queen at least gives someone the option to get into air using nature, even if its in a very small way and late in the game. Aesir are another good example and a good unit. Just wish this design principal were taken a little further.

[Torgon]

The way it is at the moment: you are not strong in astral but you have strong earth what can you do instead of mind hunt - Earth attack ,sure it takes 5E gems and its less cost effective than mind hunt but to compensate, on the field of battle you get army of lead/gold weapons of sharpness pertrify and loads of other nice buffs.

And I think this is good design principal. I'm just saying that I think it should be extended.

What you are saying is exactly right. Sure earth doesn't have mind hunt, but it does have an assassination spell. Its not as efficient, has different counters than mind hunt, etc. But it does have some way of remotely attacking commanders. If you really need to assassinate someone you have the option within earth. Most of the paths, and thus most of the nations have some way of pulling a remote assassination off. They all do it differently, with different strengths and weaknesses, but they all have the option.

All paths have thugs in some way, shape, or form. Some are better than others, some are more efficient than others. But they exist in each national path.

Most of the paths now have SC in some form. EDM makes a good effort at given all of the paths some sort of SC or equivalent, and does a great job of it. Once again, they're all different, with different role and that's great.

All paths can throw out evocs in some way. Sure, fire and air do it better and differently than water or nature. But Water and nature, if the the need arises, have options for throwing out battlefield damage. One thing CBM has explicitly tried to do is bump up nature in this regard.

All paths have troop summons of some sort. Some are better than others, some more efficient than others. But every path has some way to summon up stuff that hits things with swords, teeth, or other. It seems like one thing CBM has tried to do is to enhance the parity on this factor.

Then we come to summons with magical diversity. Which I'll argue is just as important as the other dimensions I've listed above. Not so that everyone can just beeline for the best of the best, but for key forgings, a few key spells, etc. If you want to use a summons to diversity magically you only have death. Its not that death does it better than the other paths, its not that death does it more efficiently, or that death does it differently in some way. Its that death is the only path that has the option. Giving a little magic diversity to other paths isn't going to turn Caelum into a fire nation, or Tir into an astral nation. It would simply give them the option for a little diversity without having to conjure up mages from beyond the grave.

[llamabeast]

EDM summons with paths outside the summon paths include at least Ember Lords, Treants, Asynjas and Krakens (I will admit Krakens are rubbish).

[Bat/man]

Is Ulm's encumbrance in heavy plate 2?

Is Mictlan's encumbrance in furs 3?

Does this make sense to anyone?

[Amhazair]

Is Ulm's encumbrance in heavy plate 2?No. Ulm's encumberance naked is two. To that they add whatever encumberance their equipment gives.

Is Mictlan's encumbrance in furs 3?Yes. (if you mean the two very specific sacreds who wear furs, since their regular warriors don't.)

Does this make sense to anyone? I agree it wouldn't make sense if it was true. Luckily, it isn't.



Now, because I'm a kind person I'll expand a bit and also address the issue you were trying to point out with that false argument:

Partly for balance reasons*, partly bacause of "thematic reasons"** the base encumberance for Ulmish units was decreased from 3 (standard for most humans) to two. On top of that MA Ulm's heavy armors were also reduced in encumberance, as Ulm's armorsmiths were supposed to be some of the best ever. (Again balance and theme go hand in hand here.) This does mean that MA Ulm heavy infantry has 4 encumberance, (or 5 with shield.) which is indeed very good for heavy infantry. Did those two changes at the same time overdo things? I don't know. I haven't played Ulm (with or against) since. If you think it's unbalanced make an arguement as to why, preferably with a concrete ingame excample, and I'm sure Llama will look at it.

*Ulm's heavy infantry was really poor, and in fact easier to kill them in regular melee engagements than more lightly armored troops & the heavy infantry of many other nations, this while their heavy infantry was supposed to be their strength.

** From EA Ulm's Barbarians, to MA/LA professional soldiers and LA forresters all mention or at least imply great strength and endurance, so giving them 1 point less endurance (again, naked) than the average human seemed to make sense.

[Calahan]

Is Ulm's encumbrance in heavy plate 2?

Is Mictlan's encumbrance in furs 3?

Does this make sense to anyone?
Which units are you talking about? Please give exact unit numbers, as what you wrote doesn't provide enough info.

(open the unit window and press Shift+I, and make note of the monster number of the units you refer to)

[Valerius]

Then we come to summons with magical diversity. Which I'll argue is just as important as the other dimensions I've listed above. Not so that everyone can just beeline for the best of the best, but for key forgings, a few key spells, etc. If you want to use a summons to diversity magically you only have death. Its not that death does it better than the other paths, its not that death does it more efficiently, or that death does it differently in some way. Its that death is the only path that has the option. Giving a little magic diversity to other paths isn't going to turn Caelum into a fire nation, or Tir into an astral nation. It would simply give them the option for a little diversity without having to conjure up mages from beyond the grave.

Going in the opposite direction had occurred to me at one point. Currently 3 of 7 tarts have fixed paths, with the lightning cyclops getting the prize for the excellent AE combo. What about limiting the randoms on the other four? Maybe they would have access to all paths, maybe they wouldn't. But they wouldn't have access to all combination of crosspaths as they do now. I'm not really suggesting this be done but I do think a variety of summons, each with their own limited sets of magic, is more interesting than giving units a chance at any path/path combination.

In any case, it seems to me your concern is with the thematic side of things. You don't want to have to use death to get access to S magic (though in all fairness, golems wouldn't be in contradiction to TNN's theme - of course you'd have to have your pretender be able to summon them). I can understand wanting to play within a nation's theme but it's a difficult thing to do.

For instance, TNN has two national heroes with D magic (one with D3, the other with D4 and immortal to boot). Will you use them to site search if you get them? If you do and you turn out to have a surprisingly strong D income will you use it? Even if you don't site search for D sites, if you conquer a nation that has will you make use of those D gems?

If gem income were tied to a nation's paths it would be one thing but that isn't the case (aside from the fact that you'll have some starting income from your cap and this will give you a jump on getting a gem generating global) so in each game you have to make do with what you get, even though it may not be thematic.

An idea that had occurred to me was to try a game where magic site frequency was set very low and compensate for that by a series of gem generating national summons such that your gem income would largely match your national paths. Such settings would emphasize playing within a nation's theme without putting you at a disadvantage by doing so.

[llamabeast]

An idea that had occurred to me was to try a game where magic site frequency was set very low and compensate for that by a series of gem generating national summons such that your gem income would largely match your national paths. Such settings would emphasize playing within a nation's theme without putting you at a disadvantage by doing so.

I was considering a game where there were 7 free or almost free remote commander summon spells, one for each gem type. The resulting commander would produce a gem of the appropriate type. A house rule would limit players to one such commander per province. However there would be 0% site frequency, or at least very low.

The effect: Each player could choose their own gem income, with the limitation that their total gem income would equal their number of provinces. Completely removes some of the main reasons to diversify and allows highly specialised nations. I reckon it might be fun.

[rdonj]

Potential difficulty - would you intend to have to put them out into each individual province, or to allow them to hide in forts? In the former case, it would mean huge networks of scouts running around your lands every turn delivering gems to labs, or building a laboratory in as many of your provinces as possible to avoid having to run the scout network.

Alternatively, you get a similar situation to gem gens where you can hide all of your gem producers in one or two forts and keep your extra gem income from being raidable, and still relatively difficult to assassinate (but at least a lot more possible than it would be in a gemgen environment). It would be pretty hard to police either way as well, due to scout reporting inaccuracy, especially inside of forts. You could let players police each other, or just play with trustworthy people, but it does seem like a lot of work either way.

[llamabeast]

Uh... I guess you could fill the map with labs using map commands to avoid the scout network.

The producers couldn't move and would be distributed one per province, so they could easily be killed by raiding.

You raise some good points. Maybe not such a great idea! But still I think it might be interesting.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

I think your idea sounds really interesting, but definitely some balance issues. In addition to what rdonj said, I also wonder if it wouldn't give an extra advantage to blood. Because your gem-gen summons would only produce 1/gem per turn, but many magic sites produce 2 or more, players in this game would have overall lower gem income than normal, even though they have higher than normal income in certain paths. Blood income wouldn't be affected, though, so it would be proportionately higher than gem income in your game.

Or at least that's what I think :confused:. Does that make sense?

[llamabeast]

It does make sense, *although* actually it turns out that blood hunting income is related to site frequency (clever Illwinter!). So actually probably blood nations would do unusually badly if the site frequency was set very low. That could be compensated for by making a blood slave-generating special commander as well.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Wow, I had no idea that blood income was affected by site frequency. I had always thought that population and unrest were the only determinants. I tried briefly to test it, and sure enough blood hunting success does seem to be higher at higher site frequency, but I couldn't really be sure. But I'll take your word for it. However, you can still get slaves with magic sites set to zero, so the ratio doesnt correlate perfectly. Anyway, good to know!

[rdonj]

You actually can still get magic sites with magic site settings at 0, too IIRC from when we did Overlords. They're just quite a lot more rare, so your cap income matters a lot more. And you really can't remote search at those settings, it's manual or you're just throwing gems away.

[Torgon]

EDM summons with paths outside the summon paths include at least Ember Lords, Treants, Asynjas and Krakens (I will admit Krakens are rubbish).

I know.

Bottom line is that I wish there was something equivalent to the specters in paths other than death. Somewhat high research level but not too far out of the way, expensive for what he is as just as chassis, but provides a limited amount of magic diversity. If you really want to get into another path you'll need more than just him, but if you really need some rings of lighting, or some AMAs, or frost brands, or crystal shields, etc. You have some way of pulling it off without getting lucky on indi mages. It will cost you a lot, the results will be random, buy you at least have a shot at getting what you need.

[Corinthian]

I think this is because some terrain types count as having a higher magic setting than the one you chose for the game. Notably wastes and swamps will get + 20. Forests and mountains are thought to get +10 and farmland is though to get -20. Dont think this affect bloodhunting but you never know.

Anyway, does anyone know at what magic setting bloodhunting is considered to be neutral? This is important in order to calculate return rates from bloodhunting bloodsummons and such.

[Soyweiser]

It does make sense, *although* actually it turns out that blood hunting income is related to site frequency (clever Illwinter!). So actually probably blood nations would do unusually badly if the site frequency was set very low. That could be compensated for by making a blood slave-generating special commander as well.

While it is certainly true the different ages get different amount of blood slaves. I was never able to determine how much the site settings influenced blood hunting.

So while there are effects, how much it is effected is not known. (Setting the settings to 75% does not increase the amount of blood slaves by a huge amount, and iirc it also doesn't increase the chance of finding slaves, but I might be wrong there).

[earcaraxe]

also altering the finding chance for blood slaves doesnt alter the slave income the same way as gem income, since it is dependent on other factors, number of "huntable" provinces being a prominent one. for instance if the frequency setting changes only the number of slaves a hunter gets a turn, one can just send more hunters to that province to achieve the same income as with a different frequency setting.

[Corinthian]

Backtracking a bit, how many people have ever seen anyone cast the "Iron Pig" spell? Because I agree with who ever it was that said that the situation with Marverni is currently absurd for any nation that use size 2 units. And rather dire for any nation that use size 3 or larger.

Look!
http://i.imgur.com/MuVwC.jpg

A better price for these for marverni would be 15E for 10 or something. Maybe even more. The thing is, no other nation is using the Pigs so we might as well raise the price to be competitive. Currently its almost like buying Ettins from that nautilus place.

[Calahan]

I've used Iron Pigs several times. A great little cost efficient spell IMO (and probably too efficient), especially for small raiding forces. I used them extensively as Bandar Log in a game I subbed into (when Bailz bailzed) last year, and was raiding high PD on my borders with just 7 pigs and a S1 mage.

[Corinthian]

I guess we can (and by we I mean someone other than me that can actually mod) replace the Iron Boar unit with a unit that is identical with the iron pig. Then we can make a new national spell that gives units that are identical to iron boars, with a proper price on it.

[Torgon]

Backtracking a bit, how many people have ever seen anyone cast the "Iron Pig" spell? Because I agree with who ever it was that said that the situation with Marverni is currently absurd for any nation that use size 2 units. And rather dire for any nation that use size 3 or larger.

Look!
http://i.imgur.com/MuVwC.jpg

A better price for these for marverni would be 15E for 10 or something. Maybe even more. The thing is, no other nation is using the Pigs so we might as well raise the price to be competitive. Currently its almost like buying Ettins from that nautilus place.

But its not like Iron pigs (or the fact that Marverni get iron boars) is a new addition to the game. It's always been there. Are a lot of games being dominated by herds Marverni iron boars? It's a useful spell, but so are a lot of national spells.

The current price of 4 E gems is reduced from the 10 of vanilla. It could probably use a small boost in price, perhaps back to closer to the vanilla cost of 10 E gems, but 1.5 times the vanilla cost is a bit extreme. I'm guessing that there was at least some logic behind the reduction and that they weren't seeing much action at the original price. Marverni still has a TON of other uses for E gems.

And yes the boars are more useful than the regular pigs. Much higher moral, and so less likelihood of a route through your own troops. But they still share that terrible MR stat. Is a just a higher moral really enough to justify a large price difference between the Marverni version of the spell and the regular version?

I'll admit that I'm a bit biased, I like Marv as a nation and don't like seeing them nerfed. I just think that as long as we're swinging the nerf bat there are probably other nations that still need it more than Marverni.

The main reason I originally brought it up was as a consistency issue. Since boars all have berserk now, the Iron boars should have it too. Now that would be overpowered at the current price. I would suggest doing two things, give the Iron boars berserk just like all the other boars and the boost the price (or decrease the amount). I still think about 1 E gem per boar is about the limit. Just remember what they're competing with: earth boots, earthquakes, crystal gear, armor, end game earth attacks and cyclopes, etc.

[Admiral_Aorta]

I guess we can (and by we I mean someone other than me that can actually mod) replace the Iron Boar unit with a unit that is identical with the iron pig. Then we can make a new national spell that gives units that are identical to iron boars, with a proper price on it.

I dunno, that's actively removing a cool, thematic thing unique to marverni just because there's a perception that they're overpowered without any evidence.

[Corinthian]

Admiral, I am not saying that we should remove them. Read again. I *am* saying we should move them to a separate spell that is priced differently than the current spell. Because the current spell gives hugely different outcomes depending on witch nation is casting it and is thus making the spell hard to balance.

And Torgon, its not only the extra morale that is powerful, although it helps. They have boosted almost every stat except MR. The main thing is that they have gotten 1 size larger and that they are tramplers. So they are prot 20 size 3, sacred tramplers for a nation with a national haste spell, that cost 0.44 E gems a piece.

And weather or not these things actually dominates games is irrelevant because I dont think most Marverni players are even aware of it. The spell does not show up as changed in the list unless you cast it. I did not even know of it before Torgon told me truth to be told.

[Torgon]

mistake

[Bat/man]

I don't see giving iron boars berserk.
Iron skin = no nerve endings...

If Marverni wants them to berserk, they have access to the area effect madness spell..(Touch of Madness?) - which has a huge area of effect, no gem cost, and its low research level.

This spell is over powered as-is. Making them berserk conserves a mage action unnecessarily, and makes the spell even MORE useful to other nations.

Leave it as is and raise the price to 6 e. (minimum).

[Torgon]

And Torgon, its not only the extra morale that is powerful, although it helps. The main thing is that they have gotten 1 size larger and that they are tramplers.


Incorrect. Iron pigs are also size 3 tramplers. If they weren't it would be an altogether useless spell. Here are the actual stats of both units.

Iron pigs Iron Boars
Size 3 3
HP 15 25
Prot 20 20
Moral 10 15
MR 5 5
En 5 2
Str 12 15
Att 8 12
Def 7 7
AP 10 14
Trample Trample
Forest Suv Forest Suv
Sacred

Yes. There's an HP gain, a boost to attack, and a decrease in enc, and a boost in moral. I'll assert, as I stated before, that the real significant change is the boost to moral (and obviously the sacred). I'd argue that the others are pretty trivial for the purposes your really going to use them for.

[Torgon]

Admiral, I am not saying that we should remove them. Read again. I *am* saying we should move them to a separate spell that is priced differently than the current spell. Because the current spell gives hugely different outcomes depending on witch nation is casting it and is thus making the spell hard to balance.

But that's sort of the point. This is a cool thematic easter egg that the developers put into the game. A useful spell (and Iron pigs for other nations that can cast it is useful spell) becomes even more useful for the guys who worship pigs. This is not some new addition of CBM. The devs very much intended for Iron Pigs in the hands of Marverni to be powerful. Changing cool thematic easter eggs should require a little more evidence than you're mustering.


And weather or not these things actually dominates games is irrelevant because I dont think most Marverni players are even aware of it. The spell does not show up as changed in the list unless you cast it. I did not even know of it before Torgon told me truth to be told.

Just because you did know about it doesn't mean others don't. It doesn't take long to figure out. As I and others have said, Iron pigs is a useful spell. Every nation that has E and N mages should be keeping at least a small herd of metal pigs around, Marverni included. Play one game with Marverni, or just make the pretty obvious guess that a spell dealing with pigs might have a different effect in the pig worshiping nation, and you'll find the change.

I agree that its a useful spell, but easily counter-able; the boars still have craptastic MR. Marverni has A LOT of other uses for E gems.

[Corinthian]

Huh? Well what do you know. They did not like size 3 i the sprite and the wiki was down. Though looking at them in the game I notice that the iron pig have a base morale of 8 not 10 though. And the boars are useful blockers even against bigger enemies.

[Bat/man]

Thus, in my opinion even if it were possible to make mobile domes (which, as previously stated, it is not), I can't see how it ...

I personally think allowing mages to cast spells while *not* at a lab would be cool and fun. They'd still have to carry their gems with them...

I suspect that would be a developer question.

What might be possible is to create a spell that either puts a site in a province, or puts a lab in a province.

[Torgon]

Huh? Well what do you know. They did not like size 3 i the sprite and the wiki was down. Though looking at them in the game I notice that the iron pig have a base morale of 8 not 10 though. And the boars are useful blockers even against bigger enemies.

Oops. I had the moral of both 2 too high because I was looking at them in the home pov in friendly dom. Pigs are 8 boars are 13.

[rdonj]

I dunno... are you really saying that a difference of 10hp, 3 encumbrance and 4 AP are irrelevant to the usefulness of a trampler? That's a pretty huge difference in efficiency here. It lets them trample better for longer, and take more evocations to the face before dropping.

Edit: Also wow, that must be an insanely old post you're quoting bat/man, I barely remember having made it.

[Valerius]

FWIW, I think Blood is horribly broken and OP in CBM (Edit - Removing SDR's is nothing more than a flesh wound), and not far off that in vanilla. But as least in vanilla Blood was kept in check with Gem Gens (Edit - And no, fixing a broken game feature with another broken game feature is not a good idea, in fact it's a truly awful idea. Thought I'd point this out before any Gem Gen lovers jump on this quote and use it for their stupid argument). But without Gem Gens Blood can just rule the game once you get a mega Blood economy going, since every Blood spell/ritual is either ridiculously cheap, ridiculously powerful, or both in most cases. And Blood summons are not exactly bottom of the food chain. But I've ranted about all this before in many CBM chats and nothing's been done about it, so I've just stopped moaning about it now (the community cheers :clap:)

Calahan made the above comment in an exchange regarding claws of kokytos and I thought I'd use it as a jumping off point to talk about the current state of blood magic. I think I'm definitely more optimistic than him as there have been some significant CBM nerfs with regards to blood magic recently (jade knives unique, vampire lords more expensive and infernal disease more expensive) but blood is certainly still very powerful - especially once you reach the late game.

The great (and problematic) thing about blood is that it basically alchemizes gold into "gem quality" summons and powerful battlefield and ritual magic. In this sense blood nations have gems + blood, while non-blood nations have only gems to work with. Now initially of course there is an opportunity cost involved. Individual demonic summons may be cheap but they also require a turn of mage time (in addition to the lost gold from the provinces being blood hunted). But as the game goes on this opportunity cost starts to disappear while at the same time you get access to spells that summon large numbers of a demons at a time as well as powerful battlefield spells.

The utility of gold late game depends on the nation you're playing. Giant nations have mages that are tough enough to survive the late game battlefield. Stealth nations can pick their fights. And of course magic paths factor in. If your mages are throwing around elemental magic that has less utility than if they have S/D/B. If they need a lot of boosters to reach effective levels of magic then gems are the limiting factor, not gold.

So while I don't think gold is useless late game, its utility does go down as the game goes on. Unless you are a blood nation - then you can translate that gold into magic power. And as your need for recruitment decreases, the more of that power you can access.

I'll start the conversation by focusing on one aspect of blood: demonic troop summons. Some highlights of these troops:

High HP and MR (these two are key for late game use)
Morale 30
Low encumbrance
Not effected by darkness
Mobility (usually flight)
Magic weapons
Varying elemental immunities
Specials such as fear, auras, dark power
No upkeep

When you consider the fact that they can stand up to late game magic ranging from master enslave to rain of stones better than national units and that they don't cost a single gem to summon (meaning you can save those gems for forging, summoning SCs and global casting) I'd say these are the best troops in the game.

And it's not just that they're good - they're massable. Even if you haven't gone the route of soul contracts or don't have a trick such as beast bat spawning onaqui, you can still generate large numbers of top flight troops quickly, meaning you can recover quickly from setbacks.

I had a funny situation in a recently completed game where utterdark was up. While everyone, including myself, had their gold income largely eliminated, as the only blood nation in the game I didn't mind this turn of events at all since my blood hunting continued unimpeded - and it was actually an incentive to flip more provinces to being blood hunted to increase my advantage. Btw, in this same game I did most of my blood hunting in just three provinces. Two were in the typical 7-8,000 pop range and another had around 14,000. Under growth 3, in 30 turns of hunting the two smaller provinces with 4-5 B2/3s (and with patrolling to keep down unrest) each province lost only around 1,500 pop. The 14k province was hunted with up to 10 B2/3s for 20 turns (again with heavy patrolling) and only lost about 2k pop during that time.

In another game I had GoNB up and was recruiting mages like crazy. Of course my upkeep shot up as well but my plan was that if I lost GoNB I'd just switch all my provinces to blood hunting and still get value from them despite operating at a loss. But you don't need GoNB for this mechanic to apply - if your upkeep gets too high just convert as many provinces as possible to blood hunting and once again get full value from them.

In short, blood gains strength as the game goes on. Once you reach the endgame I think blood nations have a significant advantage over non-blood nations of equal research and (especially) equal gem income. They are certainly not undefeatable (only MA Ulm is undefeatable ;)) but since the mechanics of blood magic are what they are I think there's a case to be made for some price adjustments to high end blood magic along the lines of what was done with vampire lords.

[Bat/man]

Aren't lances one shots?

Shouldn't ermors cavalry have some weapon beside lances?

[Calahan]

Aren't lances one shots?

Shouldn't ermors cavalry have some weapon beside lances?
Check again, as they have Light Lances not Lances, and the former are not one shot like the Lance is. (both get a Charge bonus)

[Calahan]

Edit: Also wow, that must be an insanely old post you're quoting bat/man, I barely remember having made it.
Get with the times rdonj, as this is all the rage amongst the new crowd right now. The cool kids also go a step further by splicing it with some tabloid skullduggery to edit what you previously said to create a juicy sound bite that makes you look like a complete idiot!

...tartarians should cost 100+ gems...
Groovy!

[Soyweiser]

After looking at a game from, I think Executor, I have realized I have been playing blood nations all wrong. I now tend to agree with Calahan. They are way broken. Even more so when you have a Air/Blood nation.

Air gets a fantastic summon that is the best synergy with blood.

Call of winds. Patrol the unrest away, put as many hunters in the province as you want, if the unrest rises, throw more birds at it. You only need one high pop province. (If you manage to get a unrest reducing pretender this is even easier).

I'm also starting to think that blood sabbath is to easy to cast now.

(Edit: being able to start ritual of the 5 gating at turn 14 is surely nice).

[Calahan]

Tbh I haven't played or tested blood hunting under CBM 1.92's new Growth scale settings. But if the sort of results for patrolling pop loss that Executor and Valerius have been posting are true (and I have no reason to believe that they're not), then blood is no longer OP, as now it's just completely f*cked instead.

As if under G3 you can blood hunt any high pop province with insane numbers of hunters for an insignificant pop loss, then that just totally screws any game with a blood nation in it. The income mechanics of blood hunting and patrolling with taxes are pretty fuzzy (your income numbers lie to you), and it's usually the pop loss that's the problem with mass hunting and patrolling a single province. But if that's gone then it appears the sky's the limit. Blood for everyone! and CBM might need to add a few cloned mod nations to meet the demand. Lanka 1, Lanka 2, Lanka 3.

[Soyweiser]

Lanka is OP because the Dakini are to easy to get. With a awake pretender with high magic + magic 3 you can easily reach blood 6 within year 2. Then switch to blood hunting + patrolling with marakata (yeah, Go Monkeys). Start the Diakini factory. Research misform + cloud trapeze. Or anything else you think will help.

My suggestion, switch the summon Samanishada and the summon dakini spells. (lvl 7 vs lvl 6)

(75 slaves is still pretty affordable)

Or mess with the paths. Currently all the cap only mages can cast summon diakini, as can they themselves. If you want to **** with the nation, make it blood 4, not blood 3. (As is normal, the vampire lords and la ulm vampires cannot summon themselves without boosters, this prevents them from being able to be summoned to early in the game (you need const4 first, or empower, which is also expensive if you have to do it for each factory))

So my lanka suggestion (to make them a little bit "TAH BAST BLLLOOOOTH NATION") switch the research levels on the summon spells around, and make diakini summon spell blood 4).

This takes away a lot of the normal mid game Lanka power. But little of the end game power. (as you will still be able to summon the diakini, but just need to get a booster or empowerment first). It also puts the diakini spell on par with the vampire lords.

[WraithLord]

Not that I disagree w/ you. I just think it's worth mentioning that blood + gr8 scales get pawned by Armeggedon spam.

I wonder how much of blood's perceived OP actually translates to MP game wins. For instance, do blood nations dominate the HoF?

For reference here's the HoF nation wins statistics:
Early(88.500000)

EA Sauromatia : 10.00
EA Lanka : 8.00
EA Fomoria : 6.50
EA Mictlan : 5.50
EA Caelum : 5.00
EA Niefelheim : 5.00
EA Kailasa : 5.00
EA Ulm : 4.50
EA Helheim : 4.00
EA C'tis : 3.50
EA Pangaea : 3.00
EA Agartha : 3.00
EA Hinnom : 3.00
EA Atlantis : 3.00
EA Arcoscephale : 2.50
EA T'ien Ch'i : 2.33
EA Yomi : 2.33
EA Marveni : 2.00
EA Vanheim : 1.50
EA Oceania : 1.33
EA R'lyeh : 1.00
EA Abysia : 1.00
Nieflheim : 1.00
EA Arco : 1.00
EA Tien Chi : 1.00
Kailasa : 1.00
Yomi : 1.00
EA Rlyeh : 0.50

Mid(85.000000)

MA Pythium : 9.00
MA R'lyeh : 6.50
MA Shinuyama : 6.00
MA Abysia : 6.00
MA Jotunheim : 5.50
MA Pangaea : 5.50
MA Ulm : 4.33
MA Ermor : 4.00
MA Mictlan : 4.00
MA Caelum : 3.00
MA Marignon : 2.00
MA Oceania : 2.00
MA C'tis : 2.00
MA Vanheim : 2.00
MA Atlantis : 2.00
Itza : 2.00
MA Bandar Log : 2.00
Nehekara : 1.50
MA Machaka : 1.33
MA Man : 1.33
MA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
MA Arcoscephale : 1.00
MA Arga Dis : 1.00
MA Ashdod : 1.00
MA Nehekhara : 1.00
Vanheim : 1.00
Man : 1.00
Eriu : 1.00
Abysia : 1.00
MA Abyssia : 1.00
Pangaea : 1.00
Haida Gwaii : 1.00
MA T'ien Ch'i : 0.50
MA Agartha : 0.50

Late(57.000000)

LA Ermor : 10.00
LA Mictlan : 4.00
LA R'lyeh : 4.00
LA Midgard : 4.00
LA Utgard : 3.50
LA Ulm : 3.50
LA Patala : 3.50
LA T'ien Ch'i : 3.00
LA Jomon : 3.00
LA Agartha : 2.00
LA Marignon : 2.00
LA Pangaea : 2.00
LA Abysia : 2.00
LA Man : 2.00
LA Atlantis : 1.50
LA Ulm Reborn : 1.00
LA Pythium : 1.00
LA Gath : 1.00
LA Bogarus : 1.00
LA Marginon : 1.00
Agartha : 1.00
Jomon : 1.00

[Soyweiser]

Well, as the HoF wins are games with all kinds of mods, this is kind of hard to check. Armageddon spam is also a lot harder now that there are no gemgens.

[Valerius]

Yeah, I'm guessing many of those wins were either vanilla or pre CBM 1.6 so clams are a significant factor. Much tougher now to chain cast armageddon and I haven't seen it cast in quite a while but I also no longer play large games so maybe it's still a factor there?

But even given that context I think B nations are well represented at the top of the EA and MA lists (can't really comment on LA since I almost never play it), with a strong showing by S nations as well in the MA.

Seems to me if you go the armageddon route you can reduce the game largely to a battle of gems but unless you have a decisive advantage in that area to begin with you've only equalized things with the blood nation, not gotten the upper hand (and of course you've poured a lot gems into casting wish in the first place). And if the blood nation has invested in, say, vampire lords, those units still exist and will continue benefiting him.

The funny thing about those stats is MA Ulm with 4.33 wins. Are those all since CBM 1.92? :p

[WraithLord]

No arguments from me. After all it's clear that blood benefits add up to gem income (and in late game the gold/pop loss is a minor factor).

I'm not sure how this can be balanced.
Maybe make more non B nations uber?- like MA Ulm ;)

On a serious note. Perhaps change the B to gems hidden factor from 2:1 to 3:1?- Or maybe 5:2?

[Valerius]

I'm not sure how this can be balanced.
Maybe make more non B nations uber?- like MA Ulm ;)

AwesomeCBM? ;)

On a serious note. Perhaps change the B to gems hidden factor from 2:1 to 3:1?- Or maybe 5:2?

I'm not sure I understand you. Do you mean in terms of how things are priced? Personally I've always viewed it as at least a 3:1 ratio in terms of the value of blood slaves to gems but I know 2:1 has been the more frequently used ratio.


These are areas I can think of in terms of balancing blood vs. non-blood.

Boost non-blood nations - This could certainly be done but I'd prefer not to go this route since my preference is to tone down the power level. And also, something nice I've noticed with this release of CBM is a marked lack of "nation x is hopeless" comments which is a really nice change and I don't know that I'd want to start another arms race where people feel their favorite nation now can't compete.

Nerf blood summons/spells - You could do things like have blood summons not have morale 30. I'm open to this but I think there would be considerable resistance.

Blood income - There's only so much you can do here. I guess you could play on low pop maps to inhibit blood hunting and double gold income to make up for the low pop but that's a matter of game settings, not CBM. I will say that even though I said earlier in the thread that I liked the changes to the rate of growth/death scales after seeing how it synergizes with blood magic I think this isn't a good thing.

Blood prices - Probably the most palatable way to make changes and I think you can actually get pretty far with cost changes.


So along the lines of price changes I'll throw out some specific ideas.

Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison - What about making them cost 2 blood slaves again? They were reduced to 1 blood slave with CBM 1.6, which was odd timing as that release also marked the removal of gem gens. I can't see any reason for these spells to have received this buff. Now it's one thing if you're MA Aby and a little over 1 in 4 cap only mages can cast this but if you're MA Jotun and 1 in 4 recruit everywhere mages can cast this out of the box and the other 3 with a single booster ... well that's a different matter. This seems like a pretty reasonable change to me.

Ritual of the Five Gates - increase cost to 30 slaves. This spell really caught my eye when D3 was released. Because it's a mid level spell that let's you summon a group of demons (and so is efficent in mage time) but also because it let's you summon demons that your mages normally couldn't. I especially like it with MA Aby but it's nice for any blood nation. I propose a 25% increase in cost.

Level 9 demon summoning spells - How about an increase from 50 slaves to 65 (a little over 25%)?

I have to say that neither of those proposed price increases for the summoning spells would put me off using them at all. Maybe that means the changes are not enough but I lean towards incremental changes so I don't think it would be a bad start.

[WraithLord]

Yes. I meant pricing.
I like your specific ideas re. pricing. There's something that comes to mind though. For all their strengths the demons just can't withstand opposition using many cleansing bells. Perhaps bells are the perfect counter to demons?

[bbz]

Yes. I meant pricing.
I like your specific ideas re. pricing. There's something that comes to mind though. For all their strengths the demons just can't withstand opposition using many cleansing bells. Perhaps bells are the perfect counter to demons?

What about nations that don't have/can't forge bells? Undead have counters in fire,water, astral and death for example.

Against Blood there is 1 global that is not a direct counter bc its too weak for late game countering blood(still quite interesting:The Kindly Ones)and especally if you have more than 1 blood nation. You can not even compare that to Purgatory.

[WraithLord]

So why not sprinkle some bell like counters over more paths. Like astral (naturally) and nature.
No need to have counters in all paths so as not to compromise diversity by distinction.

[bbz]

So why not sprinkle some bell like counters over more paths. Like astral (naturally) and nature.
No need to have counters in all paths so as not to compromise diversity by distinction.

Yea I completely agree with that it doesn't have to be in every path, just something else than water might be nice, as you said nature and astral might do fine. Maye fire item that casts demon cleansing at cons 8? Although I've never used Demon cleansing so I'm not sure how effective it is.

But yea those are the two options I see to balance it either higher up the prices a bit. Or put competent counters in more than 1 path.

[bbz]

On the second thought, direct counters might not be the best idea, This will directly affect Lanka/Yomi troops(and other nations that have recruitable demons). I don't see any problem in those troops being used, since they are not that strong(relatively speaking), and the goal here is balancing blood, so upping the prices might be a better choice.

[WraithLord]

direct counters should be hard to research and/or forge sufficiently so their availability targets mid to end game phase. The phase in which normal troops RoI drops and mid-high end blood summons start to come into play, such that has a significantly higher RoI.

Upping costs will work as well.

A combination of both approaches in small measures may be the optimal way to cont. addressing blood balance.

[Finalgenesis]

Cut the Kindly one's cost by a lot and buff the erinyas =D, maybe move it up the research.

Also agree with giving more paths anti-demon stuff, whether anti demon damage or anti demon summons.

Apotropaic sword looks like a good weapon to hand out to cost effective summons, or summons with built in cleansing bell equipped, which solves the item modding problem and allow for path customization. Of course, it'll have to be of sufficiently high research.

[Soyweiser]

Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison - ... MA Jotun and 1 in 4 recruit everywhere mages can cast this out of the box and the other 3 with a single booster ...

All Skrattir can cast it in vanilla currently. They have b2, so they can use one slave to boost their path to b3, and one slave to cast the spell.

With sabbaths not requiring slaves it is a bit easy to create communions with blood.

One balancing thing we must not forget about blood is that they will usually be lacking in research. They need more magetime finding slaves, and summoning, and they have an additional path to research.

[Redeyes]

Blood slaves can't be used to boost your path level to cast more demanding spells the way other gems can be used. You need B3 at least to cast all B3 spells.

[Soyweiser]

Seems you are right. My bad.

[bbz]

Cut the Kindly one's cost by a lot and buff the erinyas =D, maybe move it up the research.


Regarding the kindly one's its cost is already quite low 30F gems I think, getting it lower might mean a cheap way to dispell someone else's global. Having more of them would not be thematic. Making them stronger is irrelevant, but I guess it can be worth it when killing high-end blood casters/weak blood thugs.

I really like the Idea of cleansing bell summons:D The way I see them they should have low attack and decent HP/protection to stay in battle for longer.

[PavlovianCat]

Hey,
I was messing around with EA Agartha recently, which is one of my favorite nations, and I really like what CBM has done with it, but it strikes me as kind of underwhelming how boring their underwater recruits are. It feels like a nation that's almost entirely amphibious should have something besides Wet Ones to recruit down there, even if it's just for completion's sake.

So I was wondering what the thought is about giving them some sort of Olm recruit in their underwater forts. I think Olms have a really cool aesthetic, so I'd love to see more of them, and you'd think that an underwater Agarthan fort is where you'd find them.

I'm not entirely sure what form they would take though. The wiki is down so it's tricky to check exactly what Olms are already present in the game. I know there's the Ageless Olm pretender, and the sacred Olmspawn it generates. There's also a non-sacred Olm mage hero and some Olmspawn priest-mage heroes.

Does anyone else know of any other Olms present in the game, or have an opinion on EA Agartha getting Olms in general?

[Soyweiser]

I think it would be possible to make some sort of mini olm sprite. The olm spawn are more of a crossbreeding between olm and agarthians. According to the lore there should be smaller olms.

[PavlovianCat]

Actually looking at it again, the Olm hero appears to just be a scaled down Ageless Olm sprite anyway, so there's probably no harm in scaling it farther if needed. The hero's description also says that it has "huge proportions", which being size 3 would mean that a normal sized Olm would probably be size 2. (I was also wrong before, he Olm hero is sacred, but normal Olms probably wouldn't be, as the Agarthan idea of "Sacred" seems to be "Bigger than normal")

Also thinking about it more, having Olms as normal troops would probably be a bad idea, because they have mind blasts, and giving Agartha mind blast troops would just be silly. So maybe a low level mage recruit would work better, something like 1W1E or 1W+1WE. It wouldn't open any new paths up, but it would give Agartha something to recruit if they manage to take a fort from an actual water nation.

[Calahan]

Attached is a modified version of CBM 1.92 that fixes the recruitable Wild Ettin bug, and replaces it with (what I believe to be) the correct unit (2855 Shambler Chief)

This mod is on the llamaserver under the name "CBM 1.92 - Ettin Fixed (with download link)", and this post is here to provide a download link for it.


Edit - Please note that you still need to download the full CBM mod to get all the new unit sprite files that you need to use and play CBM. The attached file is only the .dm file. (ie. only the mod file, not the support files)

[Peter Ebbesen]

A quick check:

For jokes and giggles in SP testing as EA Ermor, I just tried to wish for a Grigori under CBM 1.92 with latest Dompatch and no other mods... And got a non-commander clone of Azazel rather than the old man Grigori as I expected.

6 Nature Gems later and Attalus the Grigori was ready to kick arse and take names.

Oops.


Can anybody verify this aberrant behaviour? I believe it is still the intention that the Grigori remain unique, unwishable, and limited to Hinnom?

I hope it is due to a user error on my part, but I can't think of what it could be. I've checked installed mods, activated mods, and that it is the latest domversion.

[Corinthian]

I can confirm Peter Ebbesen's findings. You do indeed get Azazael, the strongest of the lords of civilization. And looking at the mod file I can not explain why.

I dont think I have a vanilla game were I am capable of casting wish, but if someone would like to try this in vanilla I would be grateful.

Though I dont think people use the spell wish all that often in CBM any more so maybe this will give people a reason to use it again.

You can not summon more than one Azazael though as he is unique.

[Calahan]

Just tested with CBM 1.92 and the mega powerful Grigori does indeed turn up as Peter Ebbesen and Corinthian say.

And attached are two save games (before and after) from a vanilla game I just did that shows that in vanilla the old weak Grigori turns up as normal. So it certainly looks like a CBM issue.

[Valerius]

When I was working on making some changes for an experimental game it occurred to me that iron bane is surprisingly cheap to cast. Compare to other battlefield-wide E spells:

Earthquake - 3 gems
Rain of Stones - 2 gems
Curse of Stones - 3 gems
Army of Gold - 3 gems
Army of Lead - 3 gems

Of course iron bane, unlike destruction, still requires a hit in order to destroy the armor but destruction has a much smaller AOE and requires proper scripting/placement.

In the experimental game I ended up increasing the gem cost and making it MRN easily, like curse of stones. I'm not proposing that but given that it is battlefield-wide and there's no resistance roll it seems reasonable that it should cost more than 1 E gem to cast. How about 2 gems? Though even at 3 gems it would still be perfectly usable by an E1 mage with earth boots and summon earthpower (since unlike the spells listed above, especially the offensive ones, there's no need for iron bane to be cast the first round to get the full benefit from it).

[Admiral_Aorta]

I think the question we should be asking before changing it is 'is iron bane causeing problems in games?'

[Valerius]

Well, if it were causing problems my suggestion would do little to fix that since it doesn't make it any more difficult to use effectively (in the way that increasing the cost of rain of stones from 1 to 2 gems did make that spell more difficult to use effectively).

If I had thrown out the idea of making it MR negates (and I'm not suggesting that as I don't know that it would be a good idea) then that would be completely different and I agree that would need serious debate as you get into questions about the balance between armored (usually recruitable) and unarmored (usually summons or freespawn) troops.

It's really just a price adjustment, as it seems to me that it should cost a bit more than one gem to weaken all the armor on the battlefield. It's not really a significant change - but of course if it isn't significant then you could argue why bother making it to begin with.

[decourcy]

I think CBM needs some adjustment. I agree that vanilla EA Agartha is weak. However, in CBM just build 35g, 1r stone throwers. Maybe add giant strength. Yea, you just won.

Lances are effective. I just encountered this in a MP while playing Tir. early second year, i have no lances. I tried the best tactic i could think of, i started a force of 45 sacred infantry a bit back from the front, blessed with my prophet, then used quickening song. We charged. We died. He had maybe 30 throwers, nothing else.

I started a small SP with me playing Agartha, i conquered a 116 province map in 3 years, slightly faster than i can do with Niefel. Far faster than anyone else i have tried.

[decourcy]

It was suggested by a twit on Invision that i try thugs with brands against stone throwers. Just tried, doesn't work in anything resembling a decent return on gold. The stones hit glamoured thugs just as easily as militia. And insta kill.

Hopefully this is something that can be fixed, there is much good in CBM, but this is way overpowered against anyone but giants.

[kianduatha]

Wait, the naked stone throwers?

Did you try using slingers? I'm afraid stone throwers are specialized at dealing with expensive troops like the sacreds you used, so you sort of played to his strengths. Also certain scripting tricks can easily make the boulder throwers run forwards instead of throwing boulders.

[decourcy]

nah, i tried slingers... numbers just make it worse, the slingers can't get past even low level regen, while every rock hits and kills several slingers. And i am sure some had armour, i was being cranky about the no armour.

In my test game i built naked throwers for the first year but after that all armoured or at most 1 naked. The armoured largely don't get hurt from slingers. And it is easy enough to build pale one spearmen to attack slingers. They die to anything.

I also find that if you use enough boulder throwers in a single group the front rank does not throw but everyone behind does. And Agartha is uniquely suited to casting strength of earth at the start of every battle. Ouch.

Helheim might beat an incompetent Agartha player. Valks surround stone throwers, valks die but distract him. Helhird rides in and lances them. But easily countered with pale one blockers. Then rocks rain down on helhird.

Maybe a sauromatia player could beat them with arrows and light lances but sauromatian troops are expensive as far as human troops go, not sure.

[kianduatha]

Other things you can do: send in fliers on "attack archers". The fliers will die but will also kill a bunch of boulder throwers from friendly fire--as TNN you have great access to Call of the Winds, which gives you a bunch of convenient hawks to throw at him.

Also amusingly enough Ghost Wolves would be a nice counter in a desperation situation--ghost wolves trickle up to the blockers, causing boulders to be thrown which will damage the blockers too.

[Valerius]

Have faith! The awesome thugs of TNN can handle those clumsy boulder throwers. ;) I ran a few quick tests of a Ri with a heros blade, silver hauberk, bracers and girdle of might with an E9N6 bless and scripted Bless-->Barkskin-->Mistform vs 36 of the armored boulder throwers buffed with strength of giants and an E4N4 bless and the Ri won every time.

Usually mistform held up but even if it breaks you still have a chance since your body prot of 30 is going up against 12 damage from a strength of giants boosted boulder. Your head prot is 24 so you can forge a helmet if you want to boost that higher.

If you didn't go for an E9 bless you can make up for it by going with black steel armor and casting stone/ironskin instead of barkskin.

Usually brands are great weapons for glamoured thugs but in this case I'd lean towards a heros blade since it will one shot a giant and you want to kill them as quickly as possible to reduce the number of hits you take. The silver hauberk wasn't because air shield will help against the boulders but because it has good prot and low encumbrance, which means you'll have less fatigue post-buff. But you could certainly go with other heavy armors.

Note that this was a simple test where I just had the two sides fight - the main thing I was testing here was to see if the thug could survive sustained boulder fire. Depending on the blockers you're facing another option could be a snake bladder stick with an eye shield to take advantage of Agarthans only having one eye.

I'll also mention the really scary thing is Agartha's H3s. If you don't yet have access to MR boosting gear/spells sooner or later (probably sooner) smite will pop your mistform and the next smite may well kill the thug.

Btw, kianduatha's point about friendly fire is a good one. The same thing will happen if the thug is surrounded by enemies. Swarm can also be an effective way to cause friendly fire casualties.

PS - Cold blooded creatures suffer absurdly large penalties when operating in cold so leverage that as soon as possible.

[Redeyes]

nah, i tried slingers... numbers just make it worse, the slingers can't get past even low level regen, while every rock hits and kills several slingers. And i am sure some had armour, i was being cranky about the no armour.Something odd must have happened when you fought as the boulder attack of the Agharatan stone thrower has a damage modifier of -16: their boulders do 8 damage per attack.

Tir Na Nog units have fairly high hit points at 13-14 each. Slingers have body protection of 6, and the sacreds 9. On average it should take about 4~ boulders to kill a slinger, 6~ to kill a sacred. The numbers are slanted such that the sacred should take 4 boulders if the stone throwers have strength of giants. If you use an equivalent defensive spells, protection, your sacreds get protection 17 - which is enough to weather even a large amount of boulders.

[decourcy]

This was year 2 on a small map, i simply did not have any of these things.

Ghost wolves is a good idea i should have thought of that, thanks.

I did try splitting slingers into 17 groups of 6 vs 30 throwers. That worked, Tir won, but this games worst point is the micromanagement, this tactic just makes it worse, and i simply have no interest in micromanaging myself to death to win a gamey battle.

Boulders do 1 damage on their own, i had no idea what boulder effect meant, but 8 damage you say. The kills come because it hits every unit in my square, 8 points each.

I had actually fiddled around with an earth 9 bless pre-game, it certainly helps both the Tuatha and Sidhe lords and Ri, but it did not seem like enough to justify it's cost. Out smarted myself there, it would have stopped the boulder damage.

thanks for all of the ideas, but i talked with my 2 friends who also play dom3 and they also feel that CBM is poorly balanced, so we are going back to vanilla.

[llamabeast]

Hum, sorry to hear that. You will easily find many many things in vanilla which are unbalanced on a far larger scale, if you look for them. QM (the previous and main author) and I have done our best to tune the balance in CBM and I think we're quite confident that it is significantly more balanced than vanilla, although there will always be quirks in a game like dom3.

The boulder throwers are meant to be a powerful feature of CBM Agartha, but I'm yet to be convinced that they are OP. The game is full of apparently OP things. Almost every nation has one. Elephants are a perfect example - if you build an army of ten or even twenty elephants you will probably feel invincible. But a competent opponent would quickly deal with them.

However the boulder throwers are a new thing to CBM (only made powerful in the last version), so it is possible that their balance is off. I am always happy to hear other opinions.

Actually EA Agartha definitely is overpowered in the current version, but it is its Darkness PD which turned out to be much more powerful than was foreseen. That will be fixed in the next version. I also made a mistake in giving MA Ulm a little bit too much of a boost, so it will be toned back too.

As for the boulders, their effects are a little obscure unfortunately. Actually they have two effects: a direct impact hit, and some splash damage. The direct impact is quite powerful (I forget how powerful), but only hits one target. The damage can be reduced by shields and armour, and I think Air Shield works. The splash damage is quite weak (8 damage, as Redeyes says), but it's true that it does add up and unarmored units like Slingers will quickly be wiped out.

So, the boulders are pretty powerful, but I don't think they're on the scale of, say, powerful sacreds. Fighting E9N9 blessed Niefel giants really would make you angry.

[decourcy]

No, i actually have found ways to fight Niefels, there will not be very many in the early game and you just need to keep them not moving and whittle them down. Extremely tough but i can see options, the problem i have with hurlers is that they are as cheap as they are and are doing more damage than Niefels at the moment.

I am a modder myself in other games, EU3 for one, and i see this all the time. A mod starts out small and focused and quickly grows out of control and incorporates many features beyond its original focus. I think it is great that you are making this mod but my friends and i feel that it is unbalanced at the moment. Worse than vanilla.

[Redeyes]

As for the boulders, their effects are a little obscure unfortunately. Actually they have two effects: a direct impact hit, and some splash damage. The direct impact is quite powerful (I forget how powerful), but only hits one target. The damage can be reduced by shields and armour, and I think Air Shield works. The splash damage is quite weak (8 damage, as Redeyes says), but it's true that it does add up and unarmored units like Slingers will quickly be wiped out.I went back and looked at the code just to check that I had the right numbers again.

What happens is: 1 primary attack that hits at 1 damage max.

1 attack following up the primary attack that can't be stopped with a shield that hits at 10 damage (34 total)

An attack that hits everyone in the square (still can't be parried with a shield) that hits at -16 damage (8 total).

I didn't think the 34 damage direct attack was as big as it was and perhaps it should be dialed back, but I'm not passing any judgement on it.

It looks like an ideal weapon to kill elite infantry like Tuatha Warriors anyway. The way the attack is setup with secondaryeffectalways to make it so it can't parried might also negate the glamour?

[decourcy]

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

[Redeyes]

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.The biggest difference is that vanilla stone hurlers' boulders are stopped by shields. The vanilla and cbm hurlers should perform fairly similarly until you run into elite infantry, like the Tuatha warriors you used.

[llamabeast]

The trouble with shields in the base game is that the shields stop the boulders completely, which obviously doesn't feel right.

decourcy: Since I don't really agree with any of your observations about in-game balance there's not much to be said really. If you think Agarthan hurlers are tougher than E9N9 Niefels then I'm at a loss (though if you just meant that hurlers are tougher when played by the AI then that's fair enough; any balance discussion involving the AI is pretty much irrelevant I'm afraid since it doesn't know how to play). Sorry CBM isn't for you! I will bear your observations on the hurlers in mind though, if other players also report similar feelings.

[Amhazair]

[...] but this games worst point is the micromanagement, this tactic just makes it worse, and i simply have no interest in micromanaging myself to death to win a gamey battle.While I (and most everyone) agree that the micro is the great downside of this game I'm afraid that if you're not willing to put the 'work' in and finetune your battlefield placement and scripting to gain the biggest possible benefit from it you'll allways be at a disadvantage against someone who does, regardless of which units are brought to the table. There's just too many little tricks you can get an advantage from.

I have no opinion about the boulder throwers themselves since I have never used nor faced them, in vanilla nor CBM, but it seems to me that if careful use of a basic units like slingers solves your problem with them there isn't much to worry about, no? In any event a balance mod like CBM shouldn't be concerned about what the results are if you take "blob of unit A" and "Blob of unit B" and throw them at each other, but instead about what happens when you try to counter something the best way you know how.

Also I know I'm simplifying your argument to the absolute bare bones, just wanted to get my point across. As said, no opinion on the hurlers themselves.

[decourcy]

I understand your point and blah blah blah, and don't get me wrong i am attempting to fine tune placements and orders and what not. But, when it comes down to it, i play games to have fun, and creating 17 groups of 6 slingers to have a chance against Agartha grenade throwers, that rapidly turns into not fun. If you have to be anal retentive and obsessive compulsive to enjoy this game, maybe it is not for me.

Llamabeast, you missed all of my points. I did not say that grenade throwers are better than Niefels, i said for the price they are better. Later in the game killing the grenade throwers is do-able, but as an early game rush Agartha can send out 4 or 5 grenade throwers for every 1 Niefel.

I have found that i can play BOTH sides SP, 2 player game, and do better with EA Agartha than EA Niefel in CBM. Um, to clarify, 2 player Tir vs Agartha, and then 2 player Tir vs Niefel.

In an early age fight between Agartha and Niefel in CBM, as Agartha i would have earth 6-9 and air 3 or so, maybe some nature for regen. In the early game if Niefel rushes you with frost giants it is going to be one fairly small group. Use your pretender in battle to cast wind guide and retreat. Use 3 small waves of glaive wielding pale ones to weaken and slow the Niefels, your fairly large number of rock throwers with wind guide go to town on the Niefels and you win.

Later in the game Niefels are even less of a threat to Agartha as you are using golems and undead against them. And any EA Agartha player that does not take heat 1 is an idiot.

So, yeah, i think FOR THE PRICE, niefels are not as good as grenade throwers in CBM

[llamabeast]

Rereading my comment it looks slightly rude; sorry if it came across that way. I'll review the boulder throwers but I think I disagree with you.

[Valerius]

I understand your point and blah blah blah, and don't get me wrong i am attempting to fine tune placements and orders and what not. But, when it comes down to it, i play games to have fun, and creating 17 groups of 6 slingers to have a chance against Agartha grenade throwers, that rapidly turns into not fun. If you have to be anal retentive and obsessive compulsive to enjoy this game, maybe it is not for me.

To enjoy the game, no; to do well in MP, yes. You can play SP and not have to deal with any of that or perhaps even play against like-minded human opponents but Amhazair summed it up perfectly: if you aren't willing to fine tune your placement/scripting you will be at a disadvantage against players who do, regardless of whether you play vanilla, CBM, or another mod.

[Redeyes]

Rereading my comment it looks slightly rude; sorry if it came across that way. I'll review the boulder throwers but I think I disagree with you.It might be appropriate to adjust the direct hit damage of the boulder slightly. In vanilla it was at 28 damage, now it's at 34 due to heightened strength and using another base weapon for it (with 10 instead of the old 10 damage.)

Other upgrades the boulder received is greater default range for the stone hurler, from 6 to 8, and it circumventing shields (as we have both repeated.)

[kianduatha]

It might be appropriate to adjust the direct hit damage of the boulder slightly. In vanilla it was at 28 damage, now it's at 34 due to heightened strength and using another base weapon for it (with 10 instead of the old 10 damage.)

Other upgrades the boulder received is greater default range for the stone hurler, from 6 to 8, and it circumventing shields (as we have both repeated.)

Yes, Agarthan boulder throwers got better in a few key ways. Granted. Are they overpowered now, though? It would be nice to have better evidence than from a single player with little MP experience, especially as the traditional weakness of boulder throwers has been their susceptibility to clever scripting.

[decourcy]

And remember every Agartha player is going to use giant strength/strength of earth whatever. I noticed in my looking at SP vanilla Agartha, it is not just splash effect, they are better in every way.

Valerius, Don't think i am arguing with your good advice, i do spend a fair amount of time working placement, etc.
Also, i feel many players on here surrender to the demands of technique. I am an experienced gamer, and i win a fair amount concentrating on different elements of warfare.

We will see how i do in Smiting season.

[Admiral_Aorta]

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

you could have armies of nothing but markata in SP and not have problems, this is meaningless

[Executor]

Stone Hurlers have some preposterously big disadvantages.
The first one being terribly short range, meaning you can`t safely place them in any scenario and against any troops. Any sort of cavalry is just going to cut trough them as they can close the distance without the Hurlers firing.
The second one being their dreadful mushiness. There`s really no point in taking a bless for them either. Earth means nothing for archers and regen means nothing to monsters that can`t sustain themselves on the battlefield a few rounds for the regen to take effect.
And in the end they have no protection, no shield, no defense, so any combination of cannon fodder + archers will kill them.

They`re good and they have many uses now, but I doubt they need fixing. Besides, there are better nations with much better sacreds for the same gold ratio.

[Bat/man]

Well, in the other thread on Agartha I was pretty hardily lampooned.

I made the notes that the boulder throwers are very good.
Personally, I *like* the changes.

Is Agartha overpowered. Perhaps, although I never thought I'd say that. I really like the feel of the national buff (song of the mournful?)

I think the upcoming change to PD might be sufficient, to make them a simply relatively balance, interesting race to play. Agartha under CBM 1.9 can definitely surprise people. I think the idea of darkness is great, and I think your new proposal to implement it is good llama.

Mitigating against the stone throwers: you can take an AWEFUL lot of friendly fire casualties unless you find one of various ways to avoid.



[Aside: As an interesting mechanic, llama: I think the capital (and perhaps other cave citadels) should spawn darkness always.
Perhaps the way to do this is a free unit spawn (high protection, high mr, no slots, no movement, and diseased with 1 hp). Have this unit free cast darkness?

This way agartha would have darkness in its capitols (caves?) and yet could not move these units out to achieve darkness in other areas (as they die).]

[decourcy]

Admiral Aorta, Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I don't want to start another fight, but if one more person on these forums sticks their nose in the air about SP entire populations of cicadas are going to disappear into this forum. Quit being snobs, it is uncool.

Aorta, SP is quite valuable because i can set up identical starting situations and see how one race does compared to another both in ease of expansion vs indeps, and in winning the game vs the ai players.

Also, another person said there is no hope for Agartha grenade throwers vs cavalry due to lack of armour... um, go one more space in their build list and build that unit, it is the grenade thrower with armour.

Again, i ran a test Agartha vs Helheim with me playing both, and Helheim certainly fared better than Tir but i was able to keep a positive ratio of gold cost of lost units vs Helheim as Agartha. Blessed 30 defense, glamored units die from 1 boulder.

[Redeyes]

Admiral Aorta, Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I don't want to start another fight, but if one more person on these forums sticks their nose in the air about SP entire populations of cicadas are going to disappear into this forum. Quit being snobs, it is uncool.Just please don't ask that CBM be balanced around SP in any form. It is directly counterproductive towards CBM's role and function.

Attempting to deal with the stone hurlers using high defense troops is always going to be a failing prospect, ranged weapons never care about the target's defense. This won't, and can't, be changed.

Using the worst possible matchup for a unit as a direct means of balancing it doesn't work.

[GFSnl]

I think I should just add that I think Single player is not a very good measurement for Value.

Single player is not like multi player. It's much different.

Just my two cents.

[llamabeast]

They're not being snobbish. I'm sorry if you feel people are being rude - it's just that there's a many-year history of new players turning up and saying that some aspect of the game is broken and massively OP. It's the nature of dom3 - it's absolutely full of such things, but skilled players can counter all of them. So there is a tendency, when a new player comes along with such a statement, to assume it's another such case. And in that case the real answer is "sorry, the reason you think it's OP is because you're a new player, and in a year or so you won't think so". That's very rude I know, which is why I haven't previously said it explicitly, but having been on the forum almost six years it's hard not to think it.

Now, of course it could also be that you're absolutely right about the boulder throwers, and you have indeed sparked a debate on the other forum on the issue. Maybe I will make some changes and I appreciate you bringing the matter up.

On the other hand there are warning signs in the way you post which are causing people to doubt the worth of your points: you're quite aggressive, and you quote SP results (which frankly are worth nothing apart from the initial expansion against indies, where obviously they are useful), and you seem to be think that the OP nature of one unit might make CBM less balanced than vanilla. We could point out *many* units which are massively unbalanced in vanilla. I'm not claiming CBM is perfect and many players do prefer vanilla, which is fine of course. But still, Agarthan hurlers are definitely not huge in the grand scheme of things.

As for SP results being worthless: I can see that's annoying, but again there are very many units which are effectively invincible in SP. Equip and script an Eriu thug properly and he will live forever and kill thousands of AI troops. Lots of nations have powerful sacreds which properly blessed can wipe out AI nations without casualties. However these things are not OP because in multiplayer other players could handily counter them.

[Executor]

I`ll second what Llama said. Especially the sp part. Any testing done in sp means very little to nothing in mp, I think every vet is going to agree on this.



Also, another person said there is no hope for Agartha grenade throwers vs cavalry due to lack of armour... um, go one more space in their build list and build that unit, it is the grenade thrower with armour.



Even the armored ones are bad, protection vice I mean.
That`s a medium protection armor and they still don`t get a helm and no shield. They are still rather easy to kill, and their size is a another weakness too.
Hurlers are still going to die to the same amount of cavalry, gold vice.

[Valerius]

Redeyes, thanks for the info on the damage of 34 on the primary boulder attack - missed that when quickly glancing at the mod file. That's certainly a lot more threatening than the 8, boosted to 12 with strength of giants, that I had mentioned. ;)

Having said that, my tests of thugged Ri vs. boulder throwers still hold true.

Decourcy, I thought it might be helpful if I posted my test files. You can run the attached save game both with an E9N6 bless and without it (using spells and magic items to get the necessary reinvig and regen).

My test results were as follows (ran 10 tests for each setup):

Ri with a heros blade, silver hauberk, bracers and girdle of might with an E9N6 bless and scripted Bless-->Barkskin-->Mistform
vs
36 of the armored boulder throwers buffed with strength of giants and an E4N4 bless
90% success rate (effective prot was 30 body, 24 head)

Ri with a heros blade, black plate armor, bracers and amulet of resilience scripted Air Shield-->Stoneskin-->Mistform and with a Tuatha Sorceress casting Regeneration and Soothing Song x 3 before retreating
vs
36 of the armored boulder throwers buffed with strength of giants and an E4N4 bless
90% success rate (effective prot was 31 body, 24 head)

Ri with a heros blade, black plate armor and amulet of resilience scripted Air Shield-->Stoneskin-->Mistform and with a Tuatha Sorceress casting Regeneration and Soothing Song x 3 before retreating
vs
36 of the armored boulder throwers buffed with strength of giants and an E4N4 bless
80% success rate (effective prot was 29 body, 24 head)

A few comments:

* I was purely testing thug vs. boulder throwers. Obviously a smiting H3 knocking off mistform will cause things to go south quickly.

* I had air shield scripted on tests two and three to mimic the silver hauberk from the first test but you could probably dispense with this (but I'm too lazy to run the test again without it ;)). Also, the AI will cast armor of achilles (and of course a player might script it) so even though I didn't bother equipping the thug with a helmet you might want to do so since sometimes his armored was destroyed dropping his head prot to 15 IIRC.

* TNN is vulnerable early on and needs some research in order to really start becoming effective. They are not Mictlan, who can lean on cheap, powerful troops from the beginning of the game. The traditional openings are Alt./Constr. for thugging and Evo. for thunderstrike. I generally go for thugs first because I like the flexibility they offer (more than ever with the current CBM) but both approaches have their uses and it depends on the opposition you're facing.

* With the current CBM there is more of a case than ever to go with a light bless rather than a full E9. But I do recommend at least E4N4. Thugging is an important aspect of this nation (and a very fun one at that). A light bless will save on gem costs and you'll get your money's worth out of it. If you really don't want to do that then at least get an N4 bless since regen gear is more expensive than reinvig gear and it lets you spread your forging costs over different gem types instead of having it focused in N (though this may not be the ideal situation for it you will typically be forging a lot of N shields and rainbow armor is also excellent).

* Advertising message: Doh! I really need to pay more attention to what mods I've got loaded when I run test games. So I recommend everyone check out GFSnl's Dystopia mod (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=48850) - you'll need it in order to open this save game. :)

[decourcy]

craptacular, i was looking at the E9 bless and its effect on Tuatha infantry, which was not terribly effective, especially since they are still vulnerable to armour of achilles.
Thugs certainly did better.

The one problem with this example is you are giving Tir E9. Well, if they have E9 give Agartha N9 or F9. What will happen then?

Llama, i am sorry if i seem aggressive to you.

I, and my friends, are still going back to vanilla. Again, there are many great features to CBM, but also many poorly thought out features.

I don't want a fight or to anger you, i was just expressing my opinion. And i know thugs can stomp AIs and
are easily stoppable by humans, i am not saying anything about that. All i said was that i feel that CBM EA agartha is now overpowered, to the point that i have no interest in CBM.

[Valerius]

The one problem with this example is you are giving Tir E9.

No, in tests two and three I didn't cast bless and did everything with spells and magic items. It will cost you more gems and require more mages and more research in order to get the same effect - but you can do it without any bless.

But one important note: air shield is key since it will deflect the primary 34 point damage attack. I ran 10 tests without air shield and in each case the Ri lost. Typically mistform stayed up but the accumulated 1 HP damage from the boulders caused him to be wounded more quickly than regeneration could compensate for and this would cause him to rout.

[decourcy]

I wonder why air shield works on the 34 point attack but a physical shield doesn't? That is one those things i am going to need to learn. There is a lot in this game to study.

I hadn't tested air shield since Llama said the 34 point attack was not stopped by shields. (?) or was it just the 8 point splashes?

[llamabeast]

No worries at all, decourcy. Honestly I think I managed to come across as a bit of an arse myself in this thread - I'm sorry about that. I normally make it a priority to be welcoming to new players. I just got a bit frustrated.

The isn't-affected-by-a-shield thing is a really weird quirk. Basically normally all single-target missile weapons can be stopped by shields, and all AOE weapons completely ignore shields. However when a single-target missile weapon is stopped by a shield it is stopped 100% - even a hide shield is completely effective at stopping boulders in vanilla. Sombre found some quirk where a particular weapon number (which I think is a different boulder, maybe from a fortress or something) breaks the normal rule and bypasses shields. So he and qm modified the normal boulders to use the same weapon number and hence also bypass shields.

So to summarise: the direct hit ignores shields, but is basically the only single target missile weapon in the game to do so. The AOE also bypasses shields, but that is standard behaviour.

Of course the preferred behaviour would have been for the direct hit to have its damage reduced by shields, but not completely stopped. Unfortunately that's not possible. The new behaviour seems preferable to the vanilla behaviour, where for example troops with Tower Shields were almost completely invulnerable to boulder throwers.

By the way decourcy, if you are interested in mods but aren't a fan of CBM, take a look at the Expanded Nations Packs linked in my signature (they're mostly not by me). Some of the new nations are pretty awesome. Generally they have as much content as the richest of the vanilla nations.

[decourcy]

We are already using a bunch of the expanded nations. One friend wants to play an all Warhammer game, but i am waiting for dark elves!

So i can blame sombre for the whole 'shield thing'? :)

[Redeyes]

So i can blame sombre for the whole 'shield thing'? :)If we can drop hyperbole: you shouldn't blame anyone. Next time you'll know that shields do not stop boulders and can adjust your strategy accordingly.

[llamabeast]

You can indeed credit Sombre. :)

I think you may be waiting years for Dark Elves... unless you want to make them yourself, of course.

[decourcy]

Thanks Dad, i mean redeyes....

[Admiral_Aorta]

Admiral Aorta, Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I don't want to start another fight, but if one more person on these forums sticks their nose in the air about SP entire populations of cicadas are going to disappear into this forum. Quit being snobs, it is uncool.

Aorta, SP is quite valuable because i can set up identical starting situations and see how one race does compared to another both in ease of expansion vs indeps, and in winning the game vs the ai players.
No I'm being realistic. Everyone else has already told you, but SP is only good for testing expansion. It has no bearing on balance because the AI cannot counter things that players can. Also if you dislike some of CBM's changes so much why not make a mod of your own? Dom3 modding is not difficult or particularly time consuming apart from making sprites, and that's outside the scope of what you'd be doing anyway.

[decourcy]

See, this is why i am confused about being called 'aggressive'... Why are you so angry Aorta? Did someone step on your clique?

I may mod Dom3 as i said i am an experienced modder, but i have not played enough to know what needs to be modded. Maybe some day.

[Admiral_Aorta]

lol at your posts, you're not experienced enough to mod the game but are totally experienced enough to tell others how they should mod it. cool

[Soyweiser]

I may mod Dom3 as i said i am an experienced modder, but i have not played enough to know what needs to be modded. Maybe some day.

What other games did you mod btw? (Just so me and my other high school girls can stalk you further. Not to check if you are a good modder or not ;P ).

[Valerius]

I saw there was some discussion on Dom3mods regarding the forge bonuses for glamour nations and I wanted to add my thoughts. I've now had the chance to play TNN/Eriu a few times and EA Van once (not yet gotten to MA Van). I haven't changed my opinion about cheap gear being important to the thug focused glamour nations (especially to TNN/Eriu where it's a central aspect of the nations and one that I am obviously very intent on preserving). But I have to be honest in that I figured the forge bonus would be limited to cap only units so I was (pleasantly :p) surprised when Bean Sidhe gained a forge bonus along with Tuatha Sorceresses.

I guess the first question is, have the changes turned out to be OP? I would say (mostly) not. IMO TNN is a mid-ranking power in the EA - certainly not among the top tier of nations. They have an effective midgame but given the level of competition they can't count on excelling during that phase of the game to the degree Eriu can. Eriu is now one of the top midgame powers in the MA. Late game they still fade but based on the potential of their midgame I'd consider them an above average MA nation. Van is a different story - they are back in the blood game in a big way. As mentioned, I've only played one game with EA Van but it did confirm my suspicion that a 50% chance of B2 is better than a dousing bonus would have been since not only can you blood hunt somewhat cost effectively but you now have non-cap B2 mages - which makes a big difference in using battlefield blood magic outside of a sabbath and, like any non-cap unit, it scales. On top of that, Vanjarls are 40 gold cheaper. So while it's true I've only played one game with Van, and haven't noticed them posting a string of victories like MA Ulm, I think they can certainly take the hit of dropping dwarven smith's forge bonus to 15%. Likewise, I think Eriu can get by with just a 5% bonus on the Bean Sidhe. TNN is probably least deserving of taking a hit but they'll still have a 15% bonus on their cap only mages.

I do think gameplay should be the most important consideration in changes so if, at least in the case of TNN/Eriu, the nations aren't OP why make them? It's mainly to preserve Ulm's niche as the nation that can build a forge economy based on having the largest forge bonus and having it on recruit everywhere mages.

So, I'd like to propose a modification of iRFNA's 5% forge bonus suggestion:

Bean Sidhe: forge bonus from 15% --> 5%
Tuatha Sorceress: keeps 15% forge bonus
Dwarven Smith/Svartalf: 25% --> 15% forge bonus
Dwarf Elder: 25% forge bonus (note that unit currently has no bonus)

Some of the things I like about these changes:

* Preserves effective 20% discount for TNN/Eriu on the 5 gem items that are the bread and butter of thugging but limits to Ulm the ability to create a forge economy based on recruit everywhere mages.

* Cap only mages have more of a forge bonus but you'd have to make decisions as to how to allocate your limited numbers of these mages (and even if they are devoted to forging they can't match Ulm's discount).

* I think the progression from the skilled crafting of the Bean Sidhe to the mastery of the powerful Tuatha Sorceresses is a nice one. By the time the MA rolls around the Tuatha Sorceresses have left the scene and Eriu only has a 5% forge bonus to work with.

* Despite CBM improving them, Dwarf Elder heros are still kind of underwhelming (I always find myself wishing I'd gotten one of the glamoured heroes). Giving them a 25% forge bonus while reducing the smith bonus to 15% both fits in nicely (they are more skilled than their peers) and makes getting them very worthwhile.


On a different note, the guaranteed E pick on Ri has made them much more appealing than before (previously they were mainly useful if you needed a thug before you got your second fort built) but once you have the ability to forge earth boots you'll almost completely switch to Tuatha Sorceresses since with E boots they can match the E magic of Ri and they otherwise have better magic. I'd like to suggest giving Ri a base of A2E1N2 instead of A2E1N1. Tuatha Sorceresses still win out as being a better choice based on their superior A magic, forge bonus and the useful ability to use a crystal shield (so you can have divine blessing casters where needed) but it makes the Ri a bit more appealing.

[llamabeast]

Do the forge bonuses really need changing? I don't really understand the objection to the current values.

[Valerius]

Based on the most important criteria - game balance - no, I don't think they need changing. I don't think it's just my affection for TNN/Eriu that is coloring my opinion that they are not OP. As far as Van goes, I suspect MA Van or maybe Helheim (neither of which I've played under 1.92) are the strongest of the bunch but I haven't heard complaints about them being OP.

My thoughts were basically prompted when it occured to me that starting with 10 gem items bean sidhe could forge items cheaper than other nations could and still make a profit in trade. And since they are recruit everywhere you wouldn't have to make any tough decisions as to how to use them. It seemed like this infringed a bit on Ulm's territory and I thought this was a compromise - keep the forge bonus to facilitate thugging but reduce it to the point where you can't really use it to make a profit in trade.

I gather iRFNA thought the 25% forge bonus on dwarfs/svartalfs was too much. Generally speaking, I think some people think glamour nations shouldn't have a forge bonus at all. Obviously I don't share that opinion and think a forge bonus is important (and not unthematic) to TNN/Eriu in particular but at the same time I'm fine with the non-cap forge bonus being small and mainly benefiting 5 gem magic items.

Leaving things as-is is fine in terms of balance and just adds a new aspect to the nations in terms of them having the ability develop an "Ulm light" forge economy. I was mainly thinking in terms of not infringing on Ulm's angle of having a forge economy.

Also, my comments are just along the lines of fine-tuning - the nations themselves are the most fun and interesting versions yet of TNN and especially Eriu (which had more significant changes). :)


On the topic of making Dwarf Elders more interesting, any chance of changing the extra E pick CBM gave them to a 50-100% random pick?

[Valerius]

There's been much discussion of the zmey but I wanted to add my thoughts since I've been thinking about them recently. They can be quite a pain to deal with but the particularly thing that prompts me is I'm tired of seeing wars begin with each side launching their squadrons of zmey at each other. I want more variety! :p

I think there's a few things that contribute to their frequency. First, they are close to an optimal use of F gems. Aside from their fellow EDM summons, the Ember Lord and the (unique) firebird, I believe the entire list of F summons is fire drakes, scorpion beasts, summer lions and fire snakes. These aren't horrible summons and in fact the fire snake used to be quite a popular summon and was the big loser in the zmey's rise to prominence. But something that's notable about the list is the lack of any commander, let alone mage, summons. Compare that to its opposite element of water (a path that I think has a fairly comparable usage patter in terms of forging and spellcasting) where you have several mage commanders as well as troops that have a variety of situationally useful abilities such as amphibious, cold aura, recuperation, awe, regeneration, high HP, magic weapons.

Later on, you'll presumably be able to summon ember lords and you might think at that point you'll start seeing fewer zmey but I'm not sure if that's the case because of the second, and more important, point: namely that zmey are best in class in their raiding category. Because of that there's a strong case to keep using your F gems to summon zmey and use other paths to summon SCs, despite the fact that Ember Lords are excellent units.

There are some nations (glamour nations come to mind) that will still find it cheaper to use other units for raiding but for many nations you won't be able to beat the cost/utility of zmey (and even raiding capable nations may find zmey a useful supplement to their own units). Compare the cost of a zmey with a minimally equipped bane lord with flying boots and a frost brand. The bane lord is far more vulnerable for almost the same cost as the zmey. And of course if he's killed, your opponent may well recover some of his equipment. Don't like the bane lord example? Feel free to substitute another unit but I think you'll be hard pressed to come up with something that has the toughness and crowd clearing capability of the zmey for the same price point. Your best bet may well be the zmey's fellow EDM summon, shishis. Unlike the zmey they can cloud trapeze into enemy territory but they lack flight so once there they can't jump around like zmey. But I think even in this comparison the zmey comes out ahead because of their toughness (including multiple lives) and large AOE attack. It's also worth noting that A gems have a different usage pattern. I frequently play A nations and the last thing I want to do is spend A gems on summons given their value for fueling cloud trapeze and battefield magic. I think F nations wouldn't have the same hesitation using F gems for zmey.

Another advantage of zmey over shishis is their synergy with lychantropos' amulet (disclaimer: I despise this item ;)). You will likely want your shishi's to cast some buffs, particularly mistform. The zmey has no such need, making it a perfect candidate for the lych. amulet. Not only do you get regen at half the normal price but being berserk removes an angle of attack that could otherwise be used against you. Sure, there might be times when you'd prefer to hold back before attacking but overall this item is a perfect fit for zmey. If no other changes were made to zmey I'd advocate making lych. am 10 gems just because I've come to identify them so much with zmey.

I gather zmey will likely receive a price increase and be harder to summon and this can definitely help but I think it's also worth keeping in mind ways to promote other units as situationally useful raiders.

Calahan suggested removing their misc slots and I think that would neatly solve the problem. If that's too drastic you could reduce them to 1 misc slot. So they could still choose to equip a lych. amulet but since it would be an irrevocable decision there might be more hesitation to do so. In any case, with 0/1 misc slots it would no longer be possible to make them immune to all elements.

Another possibility is making them slow flyers that only have map move 2. This would encourage using other units to penetrate deeper into enemy territory.

Basically I think there's a value in keeping them as first class raiders - but not necessarily in most situations, as they are now.

[Mightypeon]

One of the few things with about as much flexibility for the cost as a Zmey is an Iron Angel under Forge of Ulm.

[Valerius]

Pythium has come up in a couple of recent conversations which reminded me that I wanted to ask if it would be reasonable to nerf MA Pythium's starting gem income. I understand that it's thematic that Pythium represents a height of magical power but the EA is considered more magical than the MA and this is represented by a 1 gem higher starting gem income. Three gems higher than their peers seems like overkill (especially considering they are far from a weak nation to begin with).

This is hardly a new situation so if it has been suggested in a previous CBM thread and rejected please ignore.

[Valerius]

Ok, so I don't expect this suggestion to be taken seriously but I've thinking about reconciling blood magic costs with gem based costs and it occured to me what if they used the same metric and non-unique blood summons cost gems, not slaves? Because so many blood summons are cross path it would be easy to assign the appropriate gem type for most of them. Then you could ask, for instance, how many E gems is a demon knight worth compared to the other available E summons? For single path cases like fiends of darkness you could have a couple of versions of the spell using different gem types to keep the spell available to most/all blood nations. Ritual of the five gates maybe just go with S gems (probably do the same for send horror even though it's not a summon).

National blood spells could take the same approach, generally matching single path blood spells with that nation's dominant paths.

Added bonus: reduced micro since you'd only have to blood hunt to the extent of fueling battlefield magic, blood sacrificing and summoning uniques. Sure, blood nations would have to pay "real money" for their summons but OTOH they'd have some extra gold from not hunting quite as many provinces. Though if they did keep hunting to the same degree it would be interesting to see how that translated to additional power on the battlefield (more life for a life casters, etc.)

And yes, they likely wouldn't have the gem income to mass the numbers of blood summons they have now, but that just puts them on the same footing with non-blood nations. ;)

Like I said, I'm not seriously suggesting this as a CBM change but maybe one day I'll run an experimental game with these settings. :p

[Redeyes]

Ok, so I don't expect this suggestion to be taken seriously but I've thinking about reconciling blood magic costs with gem based costs and it occured to me what if they used the same metric and non-unique blood summons cost gems, not slaves? Because so many blood summons are cross path it would be easy to assign the appropriate gem type for most of them. Then you could ask, for instance, how many E gems is a demon knight worth compared to the other available E summons? For single path cases like fiends of darkness you could have a couple of versions of the spell using different gem types to keep the spell available to most/all blood nations. Ritual of the five gates maybe just go with S gems (probably do the same for send horror even though it's not a summon).I would price most troop blood summons as being worth 2 gems.

[Shardphoenix]

what if they used the same metric and non-unique blood summons cost gems, not slaves? What for? Just to nerf all blood powerhouses to the level of pre-CBM EA Agartha?

[Redeyes]

what if they used the same metric and non-unique blood summons cost gems, not slaves? What for? Just to nerf all blood powerhouses to the level of pre-CBM EA Agartha?

Isn't the question mostly something like "just for fun?" I mean, the suggestion is anti-good and the gem cost system has a large dose of arbitrary already (why does ghosts initially cost 4 death gems when you get a troll for 1 earth?) No blood summons seems more like a house-rule for specific games than anything else.

I don't know why you figure blood nations would be close-to-useless (I figure that's what you were describing when comparing it to old Agharta) even without blood summons, some of them still have large enough strengths to go around.

Comparing blood summons to the others isn't easily done either, as you can usually get a lot more blood summons from a province than you can get other summons, even as things are now. At 2 gems I compare the blood summons to the individuals summons others get. I think blood deserves a reduction in the amount of units it allows you to field, but different strokes and all that, some people seem to not just bother with setting up decent-sized parallel blood economies.

[Shardphoenix]

Isn't the question mostly something like "just for fun?" Why in CBM thread then?