Mod Adept's Mod (weapon, magic and monster changes) [Archive]

Adept

October 4th, 2011, 03:27 PM

Updated to version 1.10. Name shortened to Adept's Mod to avoid confusion.

1.01
Minor pricing and weapon adjustments for Jomon, fear removed from Aka-Oni samurai.

1.10
I had forgotten to bring Hatchets to the same standard as other things (left the damage to just +1 on shortswords here). Gave werewolves back the head slots. If dragons get to wear helmets, so should they.

Mod feels ready now. Some day I'll try to bring Hinnom and the rest of that nation path to some sanity, but that can wait for a while. For now we just don't play them.

-Adept

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Hello everybody, sorry that this took so long. Many things were more tedious to do than I anticipated, and I wanted to test things extensively before making this public.

But here it is. Click on the banner to download.

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/adeptsmodbanner110.jpg (http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/adeptsmod110.zip)

I'll try to summarise the mod without going into every tedious detail. This is not in order of importance, just the order in which I built the mod.

1) Adjusted weapon balance, mainly for the sake of realism, but also for game fun reasons. The weapon modelling in Dominions has had some oddities since the original game. I have some passion for archaic weapons and history, so I got together with like minded friends and have done my best to address the oddities.

The game reason is that in Dominions it has often seemed that swords are the best all around weapons, and most of the others are inferior or even horribly inefficient chioses. This isn't historically true and not very interesting in the game. The attempt here is that weapons have strengths and weaknesses, and the combination of their stats and resource cost should make them all feel like valid choises (for the cultures equipping their soldiers).

Here are some general principles. All in all we tried to leave well enough alone, and not over adjust. Swords and the spear were used as the yardstick for determining values for other weapons.

Two handed weapons have +2 damage to the equivalent one handed weapon.

Axes have less reach, no defence bonus and +2 damage to swords.

Jotun giant weapons adjusted accordingly. Jotun axemen and such should now suck a bit less.

Mace is a cheap res 1 weapon. Reach 1, damage 7 (one point more than on a sword). Decent low tech weapon.

The hammer is now modelled after the medieval warhammer. Higher resource cost and less damage than the mace (5), but it's armour piercing.

Glaive, which in Dominions represents many polearms should be a pretty good polearm. It and it's relatives were used a lot over history. The accuracy and defence penalties made it stupendously bad previously. The glaive is by nature a defencive and versatile polearm, so we went with that. The damage was brought down to a still respectable 8, att 0, def 1. All other glaives adjusted accordingly.

Halberd is the offensive polearm. The impact of a twohanded battleaxe with reach 4. Att 1, Def -1.

The giant's hurled boulder now has the standard acc -2 of thrown weapons.

Slings have damage 7, range 25 and acc -1. (2 points from the rather high damage were given to accuracy and range, if you will.)

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The japanese weapons of Jomon and it's earlier incarnations had very strange values. I can't blame Kristoffer too much, since looking for information on them one is swamped by orientalist hype. We made a decision to go with closest european equivalents, adjust for credible research results and make the weapons "offensive" instead of defensive where appropriate to reflect different approach to martial arts. For instance the katana's attack and defence values are those of the greatsword, but swapped around. Where the greatsword has att +1, def +2, the Katana has att +2, def +1. Damages were are based on european equivalents, with the +2 added for being used two handed.

The Naginata, being basically a Japanese glaive has the defence bonus moved to offence, to keep the flavour of the nation.

The bamboo longbow called Yumi was created for the samurai archers to differentiate from the generic longbows. As in real life it has less damage than the Welsh longbow, but to compensate we upped it's attack to +2. Considering the samurai archers have a prec of 11 already, this makes them excellent at long range archery.

The japanese spear (or Yari) inspired me to fix something that has long bothered me. Dominions has a generous handful of troops with spear and no shield, but they all use the normal one handed spear stats. As yari is just japanese for spear, I decided to use it in fixing this. I turned the Yari into "War Spear", which is just a more atmospheric way of saying a-spear-used-with-both-hands. With the usual logic this ends up being a polearm with dam 5, att 1 and len 4. It also meant I had to go through the unit list looking for all the troops armed with spears only, and create a war spear version of any exotic spear used in this way. This took some months as it was very slow and frustrating. Do tell me if (when) you find some that I've missed.

The shuriken is capped at one point of damage, and can't take anybody's head off anymore. Still quite efficient with the strong poison.

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Magic adjustments:

Items that create magic gems out of thin air have been removed or turned into unique artifacts. Forge of the Ancients has been removed from play, as has the Hammer of the Forge Lord and Dwarven Hammers. Aside from the few gods and units that have built in forge bonuses, magic items will cost the full amount.

Frost Brand cost 10 water gems, to be better matched with fire brand.

Sanquine dowsing rod is now unique, so blood income will require more honest work as well (and there won't be the pressure on blood nations to drive for construction).

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Creatures:

Werewolves now have 2 claw attacks and a bite, and they don't have weapon or head gear slots. I hope I found every werewolf.

Dragons have 2 claw attacks and a bite.

The Kindly Ones, The Damned Admiral and Lord of the Hunt have no item slots. Especially the Lord and the Erinyas suffered from stupid effects when they happened to pick up some gear after a fight, often rendering them practically harmless and easy to kill (see what happens when one of the Kindly Ones finds a skull amulet).

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Unit changes:

All samurai have have a gold cost of 11 to reflect their skills and morale as veteran troops (att 10, def 11, Mor 11). The prec has been brought down to 10 on non archer samurai for neatness (no actual game effect).

Ronin adjusted to the same standard, as they are just masterless samurai with different armour.

The higher level Samurai were brought in line with the elite troops skill / cost levels from other nations.

Samurai cavalry prec brought to 8 as they are mounted.

Sacred Sohei and Yamabushi priced at 30 gold. The yamabushi's attack and defence swapped around at att 11, def 13. They make a great defensive line with their naginatas.

The ninja gets the standard att 13, def 13 of any assasin. Other stats and price kept.

Hatamoto and Mounted Daimyo get standards (at 6 and 10), as a nod towards the banners in their graphics, and to add flavour.

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There you go. Feedback is welcome.

kianduatha

October 4th, 2011, 04:39 PM

Mm, Samurai Archers have two copies of their weapons. You need to #clearweapons before giving them your own.

You may wish to rethink the 'werewolves have no weapons' thing, as this basically destroys Skratti thugs.

Fantomen

October 4th, 2011, 05:19 PM

Fear on a 20g troop is definately underpriced. Fear auras stack, so fear 0 on massable troops is extremely cheap. I'm not sure you can balance it actually.

Adept

October 4th, 2011, 05:21 PM

I definitely don't want to rethink it, as Skratti are supercombatants not thugs with a bit of thought. The mod is all about removing cheese.

Samurai archers don't show up with extra weapons in my game, nor do any of the others..

Adept

October 4th, 2011, 05:25 PM

Fantomen, I do have some worry about that. I was hoping to give them a fear -2 or so, but couldn't figure out how to do it.

It's possible they can't have fear. It's the bit of the mod I'm least sure about. Jomon just needs more character, rather than just a long list of tougher and tougher samurai.

Soyweiser

October 4th, 2011, 06:02 PM

So you remove options from the skrattir to force them to be used like you envision?

elmokki

October 5th, 2011, 02:13 AM

The weapon changes here are strange to call as balance. Weapon ones might turn weapons more realistic - I honestly have no clue - but it doesn't achieve that much in reality. The thing with buffing axes and maces is that it does not really buff many units. Most of the infantry in the game just happens to have a sword of some kind. I mean, seriously, all I can think of is is this improving the monkey nations' terrible infantry very slightly and making Marverni's berserk infantry more desireable. If you want to see more mixed units in field, you need to actually give most nations options to begin with: human nations in general only have swordsmen and some two handers to begin with.

Two handed weapons need a lot to be worth using. You're after all losing a shield in most cases, and that's arrow protection and 3 def in most cases. I generally consider that worth more than a couple of points of offensive stats at least since if you lose an unit, you'll have to rehire it and besides, two more turns of one handed weapon hits due to survivability are a lot to catch up for for any two handed weapon. Twohanders have their niche uses, but I bet small changes won't make people use halberd infantry etc too much more.

Nerfing Jomon by making their weapon stats more realistic is in general pretty stupid in my option. It's not a strong nation to begin with and has serious lack of shields. That said the fear 0 20g samurais are bat**** insane and probably way more than make up for the change. Now any Jomon player will only spam those.

Magic item changes are roughly in line with CBM, no comments on those.

Making werewolves pretty much useless seems dumb and removes a really fun aspect of Jotun nations. If they needed a nerf (I don't think they did since there are many other roughly equally easy options of just fine thug chassises too, but I'm no expert) they should've gotten a slight stat nerf at most.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 06:35 AM

I don't aim to please everybody Elmokki. Leaving unbalanced weapons as they are "because everybody just uses swords anyway" is a very silly way to go about things. There are quite a few troops in the game armed with axes and maces for instance, and there is no reason for them to be unduly nerfed.

The choise of using two handed weapons is now a bit more realistic and a real choise, as for instance the main polearms aren't nerfed to hell.

I suspect I'll bring the jomonese things up to western standard (with the reversed attack / defence), even though the japanese metallurgy and blade harmonics really don't justify it. But, it's a game, so I shouldn't go into too much real world detail. I was reluctant to up the damages from those used by Kristoffer, but I think in game terms it will make more sense to just treat the katana as a broadsword sized 2 handed sword, for instance. I'll do that.

As for the fear effect, I suspect it will have to go. I didn't bother using those troops much in my test games, as samurai archers, samurai cavalry and naginata armed samurai as the defencive line worked perfectly well. The lack of shields naturally hurts Jomon in many situations, but that is the style of the nation. If you don't like the challenge, pick something else. Their masses of summoned creatures (I'm especially looking at the tengu) more than even up the score I believe.

Werewolves are not useless. They are better right off the bat and in line with the original werewolves (like the Vanir skinshifters and Mictlan jaguar warriors). Werewolves should claw and bite, and with 3 attacks, built in regen, a strength of 25 and the ability to quicken self the Skratti is a good thug without any gear at all. You still get to beef them up with misc, feet and armour items. What you can't do it spam supercombatants with no weaknesses.

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Oh, I forgot something. I fixed the chariots that have been broken since the original game. Now the Arco chariots have enough ambidexterity to actually use those spear and shortsword attacks if they run into something too big to trample.

As for the fear produing Samurai, I guess this is the unit we should be looking at: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Nightmare

80 gold for a fast, sacred, fear +5 cavalry soldier. Do you guys think there is any way to price the Aka-Oni samurai with fear 0, or do I need to do something entirely different with them?

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 07:20 AM

If anybody has ideas on how to differentiate the high end samurai from each other other than increasing cost and ability I'll be glad to hear it. The Aka-Oni samurai description talks of them infiltrating the besieged city (stealth? siege bonus?) and being the most feared troops of Jomon (fear is indeed maybe too effective, or the price should be kicked to 40 or so).

The on-foot daimyo looks exactly the same as the Aka-Oni, so if they were turned to special troops neading their own type of leadership, the Daimyo is the commander to adopt.

Corinthian

October 5th, 2011, 10:14 AM

Adept, you missed one important part of the Nightmare. They have encumbrance 15! They better hope that the fear scares away the enemy on the first try because if it takes two turns then they are dead. They are the ultimate glass cannons! Note that I would have no problems with 50g Aka-oni that have enc 15.

But no, there is a reason that fear is only given to recruitable commanders and not troops. Its because fear auras stack with each other. So 4 Aka-oni samurai would have stronger fear than a prince of death. Its hard to mass commanders in that way however.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 10:23 AM

I'm afraid you guys are right. I can't find a formula that would work.

By the pricing used in other Dominions nations the units should be a touch more expensive than they are for their skill, but I guess the reduced hitpoints give an excuse to ignore that.

I've adjusted the prices like this:

samurai: 11 gold (veteran troops, defence 11, morale 11)
(should be gold 12)

O-ban: 14 gold (11 / 11 skill, mor 12)
(should be 15 gold)

Go-Hatamoto 17 gold (att 12 / def 11, mor 13)

Aka-Oni Samurai: 20 gold (att 12 / def 12, mor 14)

***

They get a progression of +3 gold each which is nice and consistent. I'm gonna leave the Aka-Oni samurai as generic tough guys. Too bad, but I just can't find a way to fit any ability with their description.

An updated 1.01 version will be out in a few hours.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 10:29 AM

Skrattir in wolf form no weaknesses? Have you even played with them in MP? They have enough weaknesses. (ps, I think CBM reduced the HP a bit). Sure they are powerful, but removing the hand slots really takes away they usability as thugs. 250gold is way to expensive for a unit without shields, or the ability to hold shields, or a head slot. Against any opponent even with shields and head slots they usually die like flies. (They do not have a lot of MR for example, without hand slots they are stuck at reasonably low damage and attack (for thugs/sc anyway), defense and only normal damage, not AP or AN. Which removes large swaths of jotun and urdheims midgame strategies). And without head or hands you cannot even give them enough resistances against attacks. Using them against a skilled opponent is now a big mistake.

Nobody will ever use them in wolf-form anymore. As you get more mage bang for your buck in normal form. (Fallen frost spam for example, blood gives easy access to communions).

Fear on recruitable units is a big no no. Fear is way to good massed. That is what makes the demon knights so good. The massed fear on the super heavy cav. Also the nightmare is not recruitable in the base game, and I think they have never been balanced for ingame use. (The 15 enc is a bit strange for example).

Other stuff you could try with the samurai, give them patrol and pillage bonuses. Make them auto remove unrest. (Doesn't work on troops iirc).

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 10:45 AM

Also, without gemgens, the monkey nations (except lanka, which is more an ape nation anyway ;)). Are a lot weaker. As all require a lot of S gems. Same for LA R'lyeh.

kianduatha

October 5th, 2011, 01:12 PM

What nations are you using as a baseline for this pricing scheme you have going on for Jomon? Gath? Because those troops are largely overcosted themselves and have thematic reasons for their costs(see: Asherite Soldier).

As an example: LA Arcosephale. 10 gold for utterly average Peltasts. 11 gold for 11 hp, 12 morale, 11 str, 11 attack, 11 defense Phalangites/hoplites. Hypaspists are 15 gold but only different from Phalangites etc. by 14 morale instead of 12.

LA Man has 11 HP 12 morale 11 attack 11 def 11 precision crossbow-wielding Tower Guards for 13 gold. 15 gold to bump hp and morale to 13 and def and precision to 12.

Gath: 13 gold for 13 morale, 11 attack 11 def on Zebulunite Soldiers, 15 gold for Asherite Soldiers with *worse* stats than that for thematic reasons. The only troops so far priced similar to yours--and at least they have shields.

I'm also very confused about increasing the gold cost of the sacreds--were you finding people using them too much?

Overall, it feels like instead of making the various weapons more unique or fitting, they are all homogenized. For instance, all of Jomon's weapons are more or less the same. You can use a Katana for 7 damage 2 attack...or a No-Dashi for 8 damage 1 attack. Not enough of a difference to recruit one over the other for different situations. Or the Naginata, which used to be a good option for dealing with high-protection targets. Now it is no different from a No-Dashi damage-wise. Everything is either 7 or 8 damage and...boring. Your changes have reduced the amount of strategy that you can use recruiting Jomonese troops.

kianduatha

October 5th, 2011, 01:23 PM

Oh, and the Hammer change only affects two things: it makes Claymen super-powerful and makes MA Ulm not purchase any other kind of infantry. I suppose there's also one mercenary band of heavy infantry that is now really good too.

rdonj

October 5th, 2011, 01:30 PM

The hammer change also affects hoburgs and siege golems iirc but yeah, the main change is to make ulm's hammer troops the only unit they ever use.

Executor

October 5th, 2011, 01:48 PM

Nightmares are bollocks. One or two death mages or a swarm or two and they're gone.

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 02:25 PM

Executer, never heard of the axe wielding samurai then?

Or the knights of the round axe.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 03:53 PM

Skrattir in wolf form no weaknesses? Have you even played with them in MP?

Heh, indeed I have, and they are a royal pain in the arse. Way too good for their price. Shields you say? I say etherealness, luck and as many attacks as you can pile on them... like this, with cheap early game magic items: (The etherealness and luck come from vaetti hags buffing them at start of battle).

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/wolfman.JPG

<snip>
Other stuff you could try with the samurai, give them patrol and pillage bonuses. Make them auto remove unrest. (Doesn't work on troops iirc).[/QUOTE]
Pillage bonus could be a good idea for feared troops. For now I think I'll just leave them as straight elite tough guys.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 03:57 PM

Nightmares are bollocks. One or two death mages or a swarm or two and they're gone.

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

You think it's superior form the stats here? No, it definitely isn't. What it does is do _more_ damage than a sword.

Compare:

Broadsword. dam 6, len 2, def +1
Axe dam 8, len 1

The sword is definitely the better all around weapon, but at least the axe has something going for it. If you manage to get into range 1 and land a hit, it will hurt more. It's "point" is the low resource cost. Compared to a sword an axe is a low tech affair.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 04:09 PM

For those who missed it, the Ashigaru are semi professional soldiers with 9/9 skill, and full 10 in morale. Gold cost 9.

Corinthian

October 5th, 2011, 04:36 PM

To be fair, historically the axe was an excellent weapon. It was easy to forge, and you could use the down-hook to pull shields and people off balance. Not a very defensive weapon though. Real life war axes were much smaller and faster than in fantasy pictures. Easier to hit with, but doing less damage.

A realistic stat would prob dmg5, atk2 def -1, len 1 and costing only 1 resource. Real axes probably used as much metal as a dagger and a dagger cost resource 1.

Not that you should implement these stats of course. Changing only weapon stats would unbalance every unit that uses these weapons.

kianduatha

October 5th, 2011, 04:36 PM

kianduatha

October 5th, 2011, 04:37 PM

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 04:46 PM

By the way, your example Skratti is wearing 40+ gems of gear and supported with extra casters. I would hope that it would take at least a handful of mages to take him down. Looks like orb lightning or just plain some fireballs would fatigue him out and then make short work of him. But none of that matters because he has an army with--you can just cut off retreat routes and rout the surrounding army without even having to take him out. He's only a problem if you don't expend somewhat comparable amounts of resources taking care of him.

Supported by a 55 gold-recruit-anywhere vaetti hag doesn't exactly rate the comment of being supported by "extra casters". They become fearsomely powerful with construction lvl 2 items, and you can create more at will. You can have these guys out really early in the game, and only a few nations have credible magic options for countering them. They are so good that in most cases it's much better for the Jotun player to focus on the mage werewolves than spending his gold in recruiting an army of giants. Granted taking out the forging bonuses makes spamming such SCs harder, but you don't need many to roll over somebody in early game. One pretty much needs tartarians and very good magic items to match recruitable SCs Jotunheim can have out in _early_ game. No thanks.

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 04:57 PM

Adept, I don't think you understand the purpose of a *balance* mod.

Call it a historicity mod if you must. I don't care to argue about the metallurgy or whatever. But the only 'changes' you've made that have anything to do with *balance* are ones CBM already made.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 05:11 PM

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 05:11 PM

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

Not that i really want to get into an argument about historicity, but historically an axe had an advantage in penetrating power, because it had a heavy head that came to an 'edge' (not actually that sharp in practice, but momentum helps) at the end of a shaft, so the Force per square inch was really high. On a solid hit it was much more likely to punch through armor than a swung sword was.

FWIW, swords aren't historically much of a slashing weapon either. Sure, if you could bring it to bear on an unarmored target it could slash just fine, but a knight in full armor in the late medieval/early renaissance was mostly immune to a swung sword. Which is why thrusting became the dominant attack mode with a sword, because against an armored foe it makes a much better piercing weapon. And thus developed a number of swords which were focused on using the tip as a weapon rather than the blade per se. Note that a sword has a much smaller area of contact if it strikes with the tip rather than the blade, and since it doesn't get much of a momentum bonus from a swing (because its not end-weighted), its just a very poorly designed weapon for swinging.

(Similarly, the mace was more effective as a swung weapon against a well-armored foe than a sword was).

But lets be honest, the dominant weapon during the heaviest armored periods was the pike, and well-drilled battalions of pikemen dominated the wars in europe.

Swords as a swung weapon (eg, the cutlass) became more popular again as armor got lighter with the growing dominance of gunpowder.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 05:13 PM

Also consider that I have not done any work on this mod to specifically please you squirrellord, nor do I require your approval. I only post it here incase others are interested in trying it out. The mod has been created for my multiplayer groups continued enjoyment of this fine game.

Now returning to our regular mod discussion, hopefully.

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 05:28 PM

Updated to version 1.01

Try to be a little less insulting Squirrellord. This forum used to be such a polite and grown up place. You even manage to use the word changes in a "sarcastic" manner. What you claim above is simply not true.

a) There is a lot of weapon balance that CBM doesn't do put in here. Check out the effects of the War Spear for one.

Which has nothing to do with balance. CBM alters the units directly because it preseves the weapons as distinct options with their own advantages and disadvantages, and tries to make sure the *units* using them are balanced. (To the extent it succeeds or fails is not the point, its targeting the right thing to balance).

If your efforts are anything to go by, you've homogenized jomon to the point that differences in weapon are totally meaningless. That's boring, and its not balance in any real way, and it certainly doesn't give jomon any interesting choices (this is still a game).

b) CBM, at least when I last looked didn't categorically remove forging or gem creation items, nor does it remove forge of the ancients.

Forging and gem creation items are made artifacts in CBM, since 1.7 and 1.6 respectively.

Forge of the Ancients doesn't need to be removed. Its a Const 9 (in CBM) global spell whose purpose (like a number of other level 9 globals) is to break stalemates.

c) CBM doesn't fix the problem of Lord of the Hunt or the Furies being neutralised by picking up items in combat.

Which doesn't actually make them more useful or balanced, since they're really bad spells even if they don't pick anything up.

On the flip side, if they managed to pick up any good items, they would have been more dangerous. (Not likely that they'll kill anything carrying *an* item in teh first place, but as long as we're playing what if).

So you didn't actually improve their balance, but you might have decreased their variance a little bit.

Many of the changes and fixes I've done change the game's balance point. It may not be a change you agree with (though I seriously doubt you've had time to test it). but it does effect the balance addressing things that consern me.

You don't have a vision for the game's balance point. You don't even seem to know what the game's balance point currently is, since you seem hell-bent on nerfing a weak nation into the ground, which is hardly a balance-oriented change.

Hint: if you're making changes for a reason other than balance, you're probably not making a change that improves balance.

A balance mod needs to boost nations and spells that are underperforming and rein in those that are overperforming. Your obsession with Jomon is hilariously misplaced, and I'm not actually convinced they're playable in your mod.

I really need to ask: How much MP experience do you have? Because you can beat the AI by doing horribly inept things, so 'it works against the AI' is not a test of balance. To have any clue about balance in this game you need to routinely play against the best players in the game.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 05:48 PM

[QUOTE=Adept;785189]Updated to version 1.01
Which has nothing to do with balance. CBM alters the units directly because it preseves the weapons as distinct options with their own advantages and disadvantages, and tries to make sure the *units* using them are balanced. (To the extent it succeeds or fails is not the point, its targeting the right thing to balance).

If your efforts are anything to go by, you've homogenized jomon to the point that differences in weapon are totally meaningless. That's boring, and its not balance in any real way, and it certainly doesn't give jomon any interesting choices (this is still a game).

I feel like I'm feeding a troll, so this is probably my last reply to you. You are being massively impolite.

You seem to have an issue with using the word balance in the name of the mod. This is a linguistic fixation. My mod is it's own thing, not a rival to anybody elses work. I am familiar with the CBM, but I do not like the approach personally.

Your comment about Jomon is just dickery. If you want to be qualified to make such comments, you need to try it out.

Forge of the Ancients doesn't need to be removed. Its a Const 9 (in CBM) global spell whose purpose (like a number of other level 9 globals) is to break stalemates.

This is your opinion and preference. You are entitled to it, but it doesn't make it the only right one. I'd go into detail on what is wrong with the FotA in detail, but I have no interest in further "discussion" with you.

Your comments on the Furies and Lord of the Hunt don't merit a comment.

<snip a lot of patronising waffling>
Your obsession with Jomon is hilariously misplaced, and I'm not actually convinced they're playable in your mod.

Like I said originally, I fully intend to play Jomon in the next multiplayer game of my group under this mod, unless somebody else insists on having it.

I really need to ask: How much MP experience do you have? Because you can beat the AI by doing horribly inept things, so 'it works against the AI' is not a test of balance. To have any clue about balance in this game you need to routinely play against the best players in the game.
This form a grashopper who has joined these forums in 2009. The arrogance and personal attacks probably give me a pretty good clue about your age.

I've played the dominions games since the original game out, and been a member of these boards since 2003. I could have called the mod anything. Your obsession with the name doesn't do you any favours.

#description "Fixes weapon oddities, addresses unbalancing magic items, global spells and broken summoned creatures."

Here's a hint about language for you young grasshopper. Balance can refer to the balance between weapons, balance between magic items... anything like that. You seem to think it is automatically about balance between nations. Dominions is complex enough that a fine balance between all the nations is impossible. Mostly one can aim for consistent pricing of skill.

For me the feeling of verisimilitude and realism is important. Jomon has a significant and historically accurate weakness in not using shields. It doesn't mean they need super weapons or boosted skills to counter that, it means it's a challenging nation which needs creative tactics and use of it's summons and indies in the war of the gods. This is a good thing.

If you have anything further to say, learn some manners. Othervise just go away.

Deathblob

October 5th, 2011, 06:09 PM

Anyway, I was wondering how an axe is superior to a sword historically?

Not that i really want to get into an argument about historicity, but historically an axe had an advantage in penetrating power, because it had a heavy head that came to an 'edge' (not actually that sharp in practice, but momentum helps) at the end of a shaft, so the Force per square inch was really high. On a solid hit it was much more likely to punch through armor than a swung sword was.

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly. Are you saying a longer shaft, and a heavier head, aid in penetration?

FWIW, swords aren't historically much of a slashing weapon either. Sure, if you could bring it to bear on an unarmored target it could slash just fine, but a knight in full armor in the late medieval/early renaissance was mostly immune to a swung sword. Which is why thrusting became the dominant attack mode with a sword, because against an armored foe it makes a much better piercing weapon. And thus developed a number of swords which were focused on using the tip as a weapon rather than the blade per se. Note that a sword has a much smaller area of contact if it strikes with the tip rather than the blade, and since it doesn't get much of a momentum bonus from a swing (because its not end-weighted), its just a very poorly designed weapon for swinging.

(Similarly, the mace was more effective as a swung weapon against a well-armored foe than a sword was).

But lets be honest, the dominant weapon during the heaviest armored periods was the pike, and well-drilled battalions of pikemen dominated the wars in europe.

Swords as a swung weapon (eg, the cutlass) became more popular again as armor got lighter with the growing dominance of gunpowder.

Wow that's almost tldr.

But I think what you are saying here is that for better penetration, thrusting is better than swinging. And pikemen are dominant because their weapons have really long shafts. Is that right?

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 06:20 PM

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 06:27 PM

@Deathblob

I am getting the same thing from squirrelloid's post. He prefers long shafts and a heavy heads for his armor penetration. I am admittedly unlearned on the subject, so IDK if it makes a difference whether the weapon is an axe, long shafted spear, or sword. Maybe some LARPer will come along and enlighten us.

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 06:33 PM

I really need to ask: How much MP experience do you have? Because you can beat the AI by doing horribly inept things, so 'it works against the AI' is not a test of balance. To have any clue about balance in this game you need to routinely play against the best players in the game.

This from a grashopper who has joined these forums in 2009. The arrogance and personal attacks probably give me a pretty good clue about your age.

I've played the dominions games since the original game out, and been a member of these boards since 2003. I could have called the mod anything. Your obsession with the name doesn't do you any favours.

I have made no personal attacks. My comments are almost wholly directed at the mod. I have no opinion on you as a person. If you can't separate yourself from things created by yourself, that's your problem and not mine.

I did challenge your authority to know what balance was. Since a balance mod implicitly makes a claim to authority ("I know what balance is, because i'm writing a mod to 'fix' it"), its a relevant challenge.

How long you've played the game isn't very relevant. There are people who have only ever played SP yet played since it first came out. Expertise is something that needs to be worked at, it doesn't automatically come from doing an activity haphazardly for a long time. Gandalf, who did beta testing of dom3, can't even get the mechanics right (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47849). Gandalf has done a lot for the community (such as run a server which hosts direct-connect games), but I wouldn't use a *balance mod* written by him. (Its my impression he has no interest in balance mods, so there's no problem there).

I'd be happy to compare:
(1) Number of MP games played
(2) Quality of opponents
(3) Mechanics knowledge
(4) Significant MP game wins (>= 6 players)

ie, real measures of experience and skill.

And finally, words have meaning. When you use the term 'balance mod', people expect certain things. Being surprised when they call the mod on it not improving gameplay balance at all is disingenious. Yes, maybe i'm hung up on teh word. I looked at this thread *expecting* a balance mod. I didn't find one.

Deathblob

October 5th, 2011, 06:37 PM

Thanks Foodstamp!

You are obviously an expert on penetration, having joined these forums in Oct 2006, whereas I only joined in May 2011. I am just a very young grasshopper. A nymph, in fact.

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 06:45 PM

Here is an example of how the Skratti werewolf thug is far form extinct despite not having weapon or helmet slots.

I'm sure you all know how to do this. All you need is enough vaetti hags (which you'll want anyway for cheap researchers) to score one or two with astral. Then You need to rush Alteration 4 for Quicken Self, Body Ethereal and Luck. Since the Hag fits in the same square as the giant werewolf after two rounds of buffing your totally unequipped early game überthug looks like this:

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/moddedwolf1.JPG
(in the picture 2 of them are tearing apart experienced heavy cavalry).

In the other picture you see the rest of the indie lvl 9 defenders. As can be expected in the battle nobody lands a single hit on the werewolves.

http://users.utu.fi/mikrin/Dominions/moddedwolf2.JPG

Why are we using indies as a measure of balance? Especially indies vs. *4 turns of mage recruitment* which requires two 1/4 hags (so we're looking at 18 turns of recruitment time on average to even see that), by which point there aren't going to be any indies? (Ok, your second fort coming online is going to speed that up, maybe, but indies are mostly gone by turn 12, you'll be lucky to have this ready to go before then).

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 06:58 PM

Squirrelloid

October 5th, 2011, 07:00 PM

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 07:02 PM

Thanks Foodstamp!

You are obviously an expert on penetration, having joined these forums in Oct 2006, whereas I only joined in May 2011. I am just a very young grasshopper. A nymph, in fact.

I don't know that my forum experience has helped me with penetration at all. That is why I was hoping someone with more real experience on the subject would come along and tell us which implement is best for penetration so the balance mod can be modified accordingly. If using a long shafted spear actually results in more penetration, it would be useful to know.

There is such a thing as too much penetration. It isn't always a good idea to break through protection.

I don't understand how too much penetration could be a bad thing? Are you afraid a long shafted spear would get stuck? If that is the case, maybe a long shafted spear could be used as a high penetration weapon that is rendered useless after the initial thrust. This could be achieved by using the #charge tag or something.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 07:14 PM

Also, s1 random hags are not that easy to get. You never have enough of those. (You want them sneaking around to prevent mind hunts, sitesearch, research (you are a blood nation, these suck at research), forging etc).

Also, the rainbow armor is not standard forgable by any of the heims. You need to work for that. (or put it on the pretender, which takes away a lot of pretender turns (who needs to be everywhere at once, and could even be sleeping/imprisoned if you have a bless (and you probably need one else your sacreds are worthless in the early game)). Pretender turns are never cheap.

Also, you put 20 nature gems on this unit alone, which are the best gems. And he isn't even fatigue neutral (3+3 from the quickness) quicken self already adds 21. But who gets 20 N gems to use like this each turn? You cannot outfit that many like them. Or you at least use up a lot of other gems.

And like people said, any fire/air spells kill them. Flaming arrows? And they are gone. Sure you can swap in an elemental protection ring. But where are you going to get additional fire and air magic? Without poison resistance you can stop their regen. Which also works nicely. (And tends to afflict).

Also, luck+eth only works cheaply for jotunheim, nief and utgard have less cheaper ways of getting astral. (nief has gygjas and utgard needs to build additional labs to build the mages). The hags are also easily sniped away (archers at front set to shoot large target/rear). And if you set them to cast cast retreat, you can only use the trick every other turn (And your retreat routes could get wiped). Also body eth+luck tends to miss if you do use gygjas. As they buff themselves first.

And if somebody starts raiding you back they can raid a lot quicker than you can with this setup. As you can only create one each turn. (and it uses a pretender turn, five fort turns (1 for the skrattir, 4 for the hag (at average)), and 6 mage turns, and 40 gems).

Without eth they get killed by cavalry charges.

A blood nation with lvl 8 blood can life for a life them. Or just wound them with with a flesh eater. +10 fatigue each turn. Bye bye!

Death nation? Hand of death! 40AN damage. Almost enough to one shot them. (A bit hard to use btw, but every once in a while you get lucky). But piling on enough fear might also do it. Morale 17 isn't great (according to the manual lone units get a penalty). Wailing winds, terror, fear aura's! Brave sir robin!

They get hit a lot, so they get afflictions rather quickly, and some really wreck them. (chest wound like above, blindness, armloss, crippled, never healing wound, etc). A chest wound deep in enemy territory just means you lose all the items. (as you transform to wolf form and sneak away, sure you could add scouts, but that is even more stuff you must recruit before your guys are workable).

And they can also be countered with the standard skelly spam, or put a lot of cheap chaff between them and the important stuff. Bigger SC with AP/AN weapons.

But yeah, they work, unless you go up against a fire/air nation, a death nation, or raiding nation, a heavy cav nation, a fire bless nation, a blood nation, etc. They can dish out a lot of damage but can't really take it. Sure they arrive early at the game. But so do niefel giants, or other recruitable SC chassis. Sure these are usually more expensive, but also have one other distinction. They are always sacred. Which adds even more powers.

Removing the hand slots just means one more thing. They do even less damage. I would then only use them as falling frost casters who cannot be killed easily. (give skrattir a water ring, and they can always cast falling frost, do they get hit bad? they transform into werewolves that run away).

You just don't like the skrattir do you?

On a different topic? Furies useless? I disagree, they did a number on my bloodhunters in Bootcamp. I lost a lot of blood random hags, high blood gygja's, and skrattir in that game due to these *****es. But that was using CBM, where the spell is moved waaaaay down in cost and research (lvl 6, 30 f gems, f4 n3). They poison like crazy, auto cast darkness. Lot of stuff dies to them. And them picking up a blood thorn did not improve things.
Also, how do you make them worse by letting them pick up items? Sure if they pick up 2 shields it is bad, but then they still have high fear and a poison aura. But most other items either don't do anything or they add to their abilities. And trying to kill somebody with 2 shields is hard, and the poison and fear aura make you run.

And squirreloid has a point. By putting fear on cheap recruitable unit you prove that you don't really understand balance. Or at least the fear mechanic.

And I don't think he is that insulting. Balance? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Squirreloid has a valid complaint there.

You brought up the insults and age thing.

Edit: I take way to long to type this stuff)

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 07:18 PM

Deathblob

October 5th, 2011, 07:21 PM

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 07:27 PM

I don't understand how too much penetration could be a bad thing? Are you afraid a long shafted spear would get stuck? If that is the case, maybe a long shafted spear could be used as a high penetration weapon that is rendered useless after the initial thrust. This could be achieved by using the #charge tag or something.

That would leave your unit very vulnerable and exposed!

I suggest dual-wielding in this case, so your unit is not impotent after the weapon's charge is expended. If both weapons have long shafts, then ambidextrous units should probably get a double penetration bonus. Can you mod this in?

Yeah, I think so. Especially if the unit is size 6 or has multiple arms.

The best way to implement it would be to give the unit two long shafted penetrators with the #charge tag. It's a bit abstract, but imagine that the enemy unit would receive double penetration that causes an immediate shock, but then the melee settles into your typical blow by blow. It would be awkward wielding two long shafted weapons though, so there would have to be penalties to compensate for loss of balance, lack of defense etc.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 07:51 PM

I'm sure you all know how to do this. All you need is enough vaetti hags (which you'll want anyway for cheap researchers) to score one or two with astral.

Also needed to sitesearch, sneaky protect vs mind hunts (blood hunters for example), and forging. You also want 2 so you can let the one run away, and the other to sneak into your next target province (or waste another turn).

(in the picture 2 of them are tearing apart experienced heavy cavalry).

So you use 4 mages against heavy cav? most of the cav should die then. Try a rematch against more cav, 20 for example. It does not really have critical mass here. (I did some tests myself, with only one skrattir with luck and eth, it didn't go that well. The long combat resulted in fatigue, the massed attacks overcame the eth+luck. Crits -> afflictions -> meant the end of the wolf).

Also, as soon as you hit research lvl 4 there will usually not be any indies left. Then you start to face the real enemies, the other players. (And your tactic of rushing to alt 4 means one problem. If a bless nation rushes you. You do not have a good magical counter. Only numbness. (After getting alt 2 (quickness!), I would either get con 4 for some serious magical items on the skrattir thugs (wha.. no hands!) or falling frost. Depending on the other nations I expect to face.

And other players have good troops. Attack 16 might not even be enough to dent the enemy troops reliably. Lets say marignon royal guards for example. defense 19, recruitable everywhere.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 08:03 PM

I don't understand how too much penetration could be a bad thing?

Just look at this image:
**This link has been removed by the Shrapnel obscenity auto-detection. Do NOT post obscene links. You now have 10 additional infraction points**

For anybody interested, use this as a google search term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piquerism turn of your safe search!

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 08:14 PM

Removing the hand slots just means one more thing. They do even less damage. I would then only use them as falling frost casters who cannot be killed easily. (give skrattir a water ring, and they can always cast falling frost, do they get hit bad? they transform into werewolves that run away).

You just don't like the skrattir do you?

Don't like = it's too good for it's price and the synergy it has with the nation.

I have nothing against thugs and SCs, but the super werewolf skratti is cheese and a half. I never claimed they are unstoppable, just that they are too good. Again, this is my preference, and I don't expect it to be shared with everybody.

On a different topic? Furies useless? I disagree, they did a number on my bloodhunters in Bootcamp. I lost a lot of blood random hags, high blood gygja's, and skrattir in that game due to these *****es. But that was using CBM, where the spell is moved waaaaay down in cost and research (lvl 6, 30 f gems, f4 n3). They poison like crazy, auto cast darkness. Lot of stuff dies to them. And them picking up a blood thorn did not improve things.
Also, how do you make them worse by letting them pick up items?
You missed it the first time I guess. All they need to do is pick up an item that let's the cast a spell, and they are neutralised. A fury that picks up a skull amulet will sit in place, summoning one skeleton / turn.

I _like_ the Kindly Ones spell. It's very atmospheric and can be quite effective. What I don't like is the creatures being neutralised by such sillyness, especially as it's this easy to fix.

***

I guess I should have re-stated the goals of the mod in this thread. Ignore the name, think of it as Adept's Mod if you are confused by the word balance in the name.

What the changes are meant to do: The weapon changes are easiest to understand. Many of the weapons in vanilla Dominions are prevalent, but really horrible choises. I've gone for a combination of getting closer to historical weapons in effectiveness, and making sure that better weapons have higher res cost. It's not very important as weapon res costs in Dominions are rather low anyway compared to those of armour. Still it has some effect, and at least one can now get a bit more use out of polearms.

The removal of forge boosters and gem production moves the emphasis a little towards armies, and away from magic. More importantly it lessens micro management. No spending time moving forging hammers from mage to mage over your empire, nor flushing out gems from people carrying fever fetishes, bloodstones and the like.

Making Jomon be more in line with rest of Dominions is a personal fancy of me and my friends. Blame it on an interest in history and martial arts interests if you will. I'm quite keen to see how Jomon will stand up now in our next match. A part of the motivation is that Dominions is actually one of the best (pseudo) historical wargames out there. It is interesting to see how a more realistic take on the samurai squares up with it's European rivals.

Fixing the people who only carry a spear will give a little more punch to some units in sore need of it. It won't come up that often, but like the chariot fix when it comes up it will be nice.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 08:24 PM

Happerry

October 5th, 2011, 08:26 PM

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 08:29 PM

You missed it the first time I guess. All they need to do is pick up an item that let's the cast a spell, and they are neutralised. A fury that picks up a skull amulet will sit in place, summoning one skeleton / turn.

I _like_ the Kindly Ones spell. It's very atmospheric and can be quite effective. What I don't like is the creatures being neutralised by such sillyness, especially as it's this easy to fix.

Skull amulets? Who even uses those? On valid kindly targets I would expect more powerful stuff. (actually, I would expect no spellcastable items, these are usually used by non casters, mages have their own magical power.

I think you are solving a problem that simply does not happen in normal games.

I've gone for a combination of getting closer to historical weapons in effectiveness, and making sure that better weapons have higher res cost. It's not very important as weapon res costs in Dominions are rather low anyway compared to those of armour. Still it has some effect, and at least one can now get a bit more use out of polearms.

So, you want historical effectiveness, but use resources as balance? You understand you are getting your messages a bit mixed here.

Well it doesn't really matter that much. defense +2 or defense +1 does not matter when you get hit in the face with a frost blast, burn yourself to death on a banefire aura. Get killed by an earthquake, get eaten by a skrattir in werewolf form. Or any of the other milions of ways normal troops are obsolete from turn 12 onward.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 08:31 PM

[QUOTE=Adept;785204]
So you use 4 mages against heavy cav? most of the cav should die then. Try a rematch against more cav, 20 for example. It does not really have critical mass here. (I did some tests myself, with only one skrattir with luck and eth, it didn't go that well. The long combat resulted in fatigue, the massed attacks overcame the eth+luck. Crits -> afflictions -> meant the end of the wolf).

I didn't lose either wolf or take any afflictions in taking 10+ indie provinces. My point is that they still work quite well. I disagree with this mod "killing the skratti as a thug". It's still an excellent thug. If one want's to go nuts, one can always get an appropriate blessing and kit them out with shrouds among other stuff.

Still it's a werewolf. It should claw and bite, and now it does. With str 25, it is more than enough.

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 08:31 PM

...Right.. Look, I just have to ask. If this sin't actually a balance mod, and you aren't actually trying to balance things but are just making things make more sense to you.. why did you call it a balance mod in the first place and complain when people pointed out it doesn't actually balance anything?

Happery,

Welcome to the community! It's always wonderful to see that Dominions is still attracting new players. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask!

Sometimes navigating around a new community that you have absolutely no experience with can be a real pain; so if you need any help at all let us know!

Happerry

October 5th, 2011, 08:39 PM

Thanks for the welcome! Been mainly hanging out over on the Dom3mods forums, but was been lurking over here for a bit, just know the people over there more and all that.

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 08:50 PM

The name made sense to me Happerry, but I may as well just change it to Adept's mod. I put in everything I felt needed fixing or tweaking, so it's not a focused "balance" mod in the sense that some here seem to understand the term. It's not meant to buff weak nations and boost strong ones as such. It does change balance in many things, but it seems the name clashes with some expectations.

I'll change it when I find time to tweak the banner.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 08:53 PM

And other players have good troops. Attack 16 might not even be enough to dent the enemy troops reliably. Lets say marignon royal guards for example. defense 19, recruitable everywhere.

Er... the werewolf has 6 attacks due to being quikened. You did notice that they get _two_ claw attaks now? While the 50 gold royal guard may parry one or two, it's pretty much given that the werewolf will still tear up two of them / turn, and quite often four.

Nicely done, remembering that huge defence and kite shield. But that is the point anyway, the thing can be brought to bear very quickly, and shouldn't be super hard to counter. What is is is excellent value for money, especially as it's an excellent mage with movement that effectively approaches that of flying units due to the survival skill.

50? Ow right, 30 in CBM. I tend to use CBM. (I lie. I use CBM, always. Except when I test stuff for the wiki).

Of course, you also use a fire mage to cast bonds of fire on the skrattir. Causing damage, and making him lose a turn.

I don't agree with you on the movement. It is good, but flying really wins for a lot more reasons. Flying is way better. Attacking from a few provinces away is not comparable to movement the Skrattir has.

And 250 gold for a w2b2 1?wbnd mage isn't great actually. Horrible upkeep. Not super paths. (sure B gives options as a communion, but you need a few of them then). It is actually a bit overpriced then. The nature and death randoms have little use.

But why remove the slots? Why not just increase the cost to 300 gold?

Why remove the mid game options of gearing up the skrattir and say they are still very useful in wolf form by giving early game evidence that will never occur. (at the moment you have luck as a spell, and spare s1 hags, there will not be any indies left. Unless you play against horrible newbies, or gargantuan maps). Killing 10+ indy provinces doesn't mean that much. Try the same against mage supported heavy cav.

Heck try raiding with your skrattir + hag support. The hag will only be there every other turn, or it will get killed by archery or attack rear troops. So you cannot even rely on having eth+luck against players. And if you really piss somebody off with the eth/luck. 2 seeking arrows means you do not have a hag anymore. (And if you are in all out war, taking out a relatively rare s1 hag is a nice bonus, they are the most useful hag variants).

Try to use the skrattir without hag support. It will not work. Give them a vine shield, and it will work again. That isn't cheesy, it is just basic thug usage. And skrattir are one of the best thugs around. (Perhaps shishi are better :)).

Adept

October 5th, 2011, 09:33 PM

[QUOTE=Adept;785238][QUOTE=Soyweiser;785233]
it is just basic thug usage. And skrattir are one of the best thugs around. (Perhaps shishi are better :)).

In that sentence you can see the reason why I wanted them more giant werewolf, and less super thug. You think they are fine as they are, I think they are over the top and overshadow the actual giant troops.

You don't agree. I don't feel the need to convince you. Experiences are based on multiplayer games and research into the precice mechanics. Try them out if you're interested, if not just let it be.

PriestyMan

October 5th, 2011, 09:57 PM

My only question is why you asked for feedback. I've read the entire thread and what i see is you criticizing everyone who tries to give you any feedback that isnt praise. If you want feedback, dont tear people apart when they give it.

Foodstamp

October 5th, 2011, 10:03 PM

Adept,

The main thing to remember is that these people wouldn't be so passionate about critiquing your mod unless they intended to use it as a substitute for CBM.

Happerry

October 5th, 2011, 10:17 PM

[QUOTE=Soyweiser;785246][QUOTE=Adept;785238]

In that sentence you can see the reason why I wanted them more giant werewolf, and less super thug. You think they are fine as they are, I think they are over the top and overshadow the actual giant troops.

You don't agree. I don't feel the need to convince you. Experiences are based on multiplayer games and research into the precice mechanics. Try them out if you're interested, if not just let it be.

I'd just like to note that I'm playing in Multiplayer as the Jotuns right now, and that wolfnerf would be enough to make me flat out not use them as werewolves because they'd be pretty much useless. By the time I got them ready to be worth hitting independents there wouldn't be any left, and they'd be overpriced fodder verses any player who ran into them. At least as falling frost spammers they'd be able to break even gold wise with their cost.

Soyweiser

October 5th, 2011, 11:04 PM

I'm happy that you do not feel the need to convince me how reducing the power of unit X improves the power of unit Y.

And did you just tell me to test out more mechanics? While you didn't even think that it might be a bit overpowered to have fear on 20 gold units?

And I played around with skrattir to know that without handslots their usage will be severely limited. So much that any usage of them in this form against non pd is a waste. No need to test that in MP. As I have never really fielded skrattir without weapons in MP.

I think magic on pretenders is to strong. So my next mod has removed that. Don't say anything bad about it! Research the precise mechanics in MP first!

Ps: one thing that must be said, kudos for modding all the different weapons everywhere. What a horrible task to do. And it doesn't even matter that much ingame. I would have given up, the time cost vs the effect would be way to small for me :D.

Fantomen

October 6th, 2011, 08:07 AM

You guys are so ****ing anal.

Adept

October 6th, 2011, 09:58 AM

Adept,

The main thing to remember is that these people wouldn't be so passionate about critiquing your mod unless they intended to use it as a substitute for CBM.

Ah, I guess that makes sense. :) Sorry, I react quite poorly to poinlessly confrontational stuff.

For what it's worth I'm starting to see that putting the word balance in the name really did confuse people.

I was thinking about different things than balance between nations.

Adept's tweak Mod? Adept's consistensy mod?

The point was to fix things that have annoyed me and my friends over the years.

The biggest change in gameplay is getting rid of non-site gem production and forging discounts. What discounts remain (from special units and pretenders) will be non stackable, and hence not an issue.

I find the gem economy to be a very interesting and important part of Dominions, and the stackable fraction based (percentage) discounts as a disruption. I could write a long essey on the game theory of this, but I bet it would quickly move to TL:DR territory ;)

So basically if you want to try what the game is like with those things removed, try the mod. If that doesn't interest you, you probably won't enjoy it.

I'm eager to hear from those who do choose to try it, and I'll report on what my own Dominions group things about it after our next game.

Adept

October 6th, 2011, 10:05 AM

And did you just tell me to test out more mechanics? While you didn't even think that it might be a bit overpowered to have fear on 20 gold units?

I was still testing that. It was an attempt to get some personality into Jomon. The point about why it was unbalancing was well made (I would have noticed it too, I had just forgotten that fear auras stack), so I removed it. It was exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for.

And I played around with skrattir to know that without handslots their usage will be severely limited. So much that any usage of them in this form against non pd is a waste. No need to test that in MP. As I have never really fielded skrattir without weapons in MP.

Well of course you wouldn't as they previously only had 2 natural attacks. Using them without gear would have been folly of the worst sort. With their built in quickness giving them _any_ two weapons raises their attacks from 4 to 6.

Ps: one thing that must be said, kudos for modding all the different weapons everywhere. What a horrible task to do. And it doesn't even matter that much ingame. I would have given up, the time cost vs the effect would be way to small for me :D.
Yes, it's the reason it took months >.<

Like many things in the mod, it's partly an aesthetic change. Still, I think you'll find it makes all those glaive and poleaxe armed troops a somewhat better deal. Polearms should stand up well to cavalry, and they really are better at it now.

I rather like the naginata armed samurai, but that may be just me being stubborn ^.^

Jiggymike

October 6th, 2011, 03:18 PM

Doesn't CBM already fix the whole 'gem economy' problem by removing generators? I do like the ideas of long weapons being more effective against mounted troops, but I was sort of under the impression that they already had an innate bonus against them. Like I thought that I read "all pikemen get a bonus against mounted units" but that may have been from a different game. Maybe I just got that idea because cavalry tend to have short weapons and therefore longer weapons like spears and pikes are more effective at repelling their attacks.

Doo

October 6th, 2011, 04:23 PM

Chill to some Strawberry Alarm Clock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfB70r9DrHE)

Always good to see people tweaking games the way they see fit. Personally I'd like to see a buff to Phantasmal Wolves.

Adept

October 6th, 2011, 05:25 PM

<snip>
I thought that I read "all pikemen get a bonus against mounted units" but that may have been from a different game. Maybe I just got that idea because cavalry tend to have short weapons and therefore longer weapons like spears and pikes are more effective at repelling their attacks.
Pikes don't have any hidden perks in Dominions. Their advantage over cavalry is their long reach, which means they get repel checks vs. everybody. Unfortunately at least the top level cavalry (knights, royal guard...) have such high morale that they press their attacks anyway, just taking the occasional 1 point hit from the repel check.

Glaives had very high damage (10), but -1 to both attack and defence. This mod brings the damage down to a still respectable 8 and makes them attack 0, defence +1 weapons in handiness.

rdonj

October 6th, 2011, 06:10 PM

Making glaives and other two handed weapons do less damage is not necessarily a good thing. It's already very hard to get troops that do enough damage to beat the highest protection recruitable units. For example a 20 protection heavy cavalry with a shield is nearly impervious to a glaive troop. It can only be defeated by bizarre DRN rolls and criticals from fatigue. If these are fatigue neutral sacreds with 20+ protection, it will take a LOT of glaive wielders to kill one. Two handed weapons barely did enough damage in dominions as it was. I have a very hard time imagining using them in your mod unless I absolutely had nothing else worth recruiting.

elmokki

October 7th, 2011, 07:14 AM

I haven't read this thread in a while and now I read it as a whole.

The critique about the weapon changes is that it doesn't really do anything meaningfully beneficial to the game unless you happen to get gratification out of percieved weapon realism. Weapon balance when comparing weapons between each other matters in situations where you choose a weapon for a troop and don't touch anything else. Now the thing here is that in dominions those choices aren't available for many nations and often when they are it's not a ceteris paribus situation.

When you blanket change weapons without looking at units themselves you open Pandora's box: there's no telling how exactly it changes nation balance without going through a lot of stuff. For example Marverni has currently rather viable situation dependant choice between Ambibate and Carnute noble warriors. First wields a broad sword and second an axe. Buffing axe might shift people's focus towards carnute nobles enough to monopolize them more.

Simply said, Dominions is a game where you should compare balance between nations, not balance between units or weapons. Sure, MA Arcoscephale Hoplite (11g, 30res) is considerably less desireable than MA Ulm Black Plate Infantry (11g, 36res), but then again what magic does Ulm have available and what magic does Arcoscephale have available? Same goes for weapons. Sure, a mace is generally not considered worth it compared to a sword of any kind, but usually mace is added to an unit to make it worse so that the nation as a whole hits the level of balance it's wanted to hit.

What I'm saying is that you have in my opinion totally wrong design philosophy. A philosophy which would suit more for a game like Mount & Blade or a clone version of Dom3 where you actually design your units by yourself.

Now, those japanese weapons are only used by Jomon/Yomi/Shinuyama and their summons and I consider balancing those nations by slightly modifying weapon stats viable, but you'd still have to be careful since as far as I know Yomi and Shinuyama aren't as underpowered as Jomon. The direction of the balance should consider balance between nations and not balance between weapons though: weakening japanese stuff just makes a bad nation worse.

EDIT: I also agree that 2h weapons should actually be fairly powerful in terms of damage, possibly even slightly more powerful than they are in any mod that touches them that I've seen.

Adept

October 8th, 2011, 01:29 PM

I like consistency elmokki. I seriously doubt anything will be thrown to disarray with this. I will really _like_ it if axe armed troops are actually worth something now. Same goes for the poleaxe armed troops of Ulm.

As for overall balance I can comment on that much better after the next (few) multiplayer games.

I still don't know if I should change the name of the mod, or if I do, what should I call it. Damnations.

Adept

October 8th, 2011, 01:39 PM

Btw elmokki, I don't quite understand your example. Are you saying you think things are better so that axes are useless and Marverni only stick to sword armed troops?

thejeff

October 8th, 2011, 03:07 PM

No, he's saying the troops are balanced now. Swords may be better than axes, but the axe troops are cheaper or have better stats to make up for it.

Make axes better and now you have cheap troops with better weapons, or better troops with better weapons.

Actually with Carnutes, they have berserk, IIRC, which makes them good even with poorer weapons. With better axes, they're probably too good.

Making a change to a weapon across the board means you're changing the balance of every unit that uses that weapon and you really should look at each one individually, in the context of the nation and see whether it's still ok or whether it should have it's stats or cost tweaked to make up for the change.

elmokki

October 8th, 2011, 04:47 PM

Currently (CBM 1.92) Marverni has two very viable choices since the axe wielding unit is different in other ways (berserker 3, more hp, less att/def). By buffing the axe you'll risk making Marverni only want to use the axe wielders.

That's the first example that I got to my mind really and you should not open a game with Marverni and look at the units. What I mean is that when you change balance of weapons by comparing only weapons themselves you risk changing balance in ways you can't anticipate without looking at every nation's unit selections.

I consider the werewolf nerf horribly stupid. The spell and forging changes I like. Those are at least things changing actual percieved balance problems. Weapon changes on the other hand - unless you get gratification from playing with percievedly more realistic weapons - are just a big box of surprises. It's hard to say what the weapon changes even achieve. You'll mostly see the same kind of units in the field since nations don't really have alternatives. In some rare cases you might've achieved more variety, but in general what you did is give random buffs/nerfs around to nations. Awesome balancing!

Simply said: the balance in this game is primarily balance between nations. Weapon changes in general are a blanket changes which buff/nerf relative powers of nations fairly randomly. That's not balance, that's just err... pointless tweaking?

If you want to give players options regarding weapons, you'll want to start editing sprites to give nations more options with their troops. The weapon changes would be more understandable if all nations had the ability to actually choose between the weapons, which they generally don't (Marverni does not, the berserking on Carnute Noble Warrior is the differentiating factor)

Oh, also, generally nerfing Jomon is something I would not put under mod with "balance" on title either, or do you really think Jomon as a nation is more in line with other nations in terms of power now, in which case I guess you can call it balance.

Adept

October 8th, 2011, 06:22 PM

I guess I should put the head slots back for werewolves in the name of consistency. If a dragon has a head slot, I suppose a werewolf should keep his. Still gonna leave them with 2x claws instead of hands.

Re checking the pricing I did on Jomon. It fits the pattern of the pricing (most of these are from Late Age).

at/df mor gold
defender 11/12 13 15
t-guard 11/11 12 13
sweihand 11/11 12 14
man-at-arms 11/11 12 14
entrance guard 11/12 14 18
Iceclad 11/10 12 15 (prec 11)
Iron Crow 12/11 12 15
Raven Guard 13/11 13 17
hirdman 11/11 11 12
vanara swordsm 11/11 10(+1) 13
Ice Warrior 11/10 12 13
Ice Guard 12/11 13 16
Meteorite guard 11/10 12 13
milite 9/9 8 8
Limitane Prim 10/10 11 12 (guard)
Hastatus 10/10 11 12
principe 11/11 12 15
Emerald Guard 13/12 14 25

---

Ashigaru 9/9 10 9
samurai 10/11 11 11
O-ban 11/11 12 14
Go-hatamoto 12/11 13 17
Aka-Oni 12/12 14 20

Adept

October 8th, 2011, 06:33 PM

Making a change to a weapon across the board means you're changing the balance of every unit that uses that weapon and you really should look at each one individually, in the context of the nation and see whether it's still ok or whether it should have it's stats or cost tweaked to make up for the change.

Unit costs in Dominions (vanilla anyway) are based on the training level of the troops. Their resource cost comes from the gear. This is logical and consistent, and has been so since the original Dominions with very little change.

http://illwinter.com/dom2/modinstructions.html

Adept

October 8th, 2011, 06:43 PM

The original values for Axes and such are bizarrely bad. The units haven't been built to compensate this with balance in mind. Kristoffer has talked about his creative process, and it definitely isn't to balance everything like that.

The original axe:
Damage 7 one point higher than a broadsword
Range 1 shorter reach, with all the problems that gives
Attack -1 hard to land a blow
Defence -1 Not only does it not give a defence bonus, it hinders you

Where as I compared it with a sword so it does a bit more damage (8 to the broadswords 6), has no special bonus or penalty for fighting and still has the harsh but fitting shortness of range.

It's hardly a miracle weapon. Actually it's still pretty bad in comparison to a sword except it can help you get through heavy armour... which btw was the point why knights quite often used axes as armour got better (and later warhammers).

Jiggymike

October 8th, 2011, 07:10 PM

What I don't understand is why people are so up in arms about this mod if they have no intention of using it when I think it became clear pretty early on that most people aren't particularly interested in it. Adept set about to make a mod that fixed problems he saw with Dominions, namely that weapons weren't accurately in line with their historical use. He also didn't think that werewolves should have hand slots because, traditionally (as in popular media and not necessarily in your backyard), you don't see werewolves fighting with shields or weapons. And finally, he had what I would personally consider a slightly strange obsession with nerfing Jomon, which is the game's version of feudal Japan, because he also wanted to make them more historically accurate. Does the lay population overrate the effectiveness and awesomeness of Japanese samurai? Maybe...but they have a cool name, wear awesome-looking armor, and thrust swords into their own stomach when they dishonor themselves, so I'm okay with people thinking they are bad asses. In fact, the addition of fear to those units was, in a way, the ultimate "eff you" towards Jomon/samurai warriors, because they're generating fear even though they've been weakened to the point where it would be ridiculous to fear them. His mod wasn't made with nation-wide balance in mind but was designed so that "historic" conflicts could be recreated in the game.

Some of his ideas are pretty good, in my opinion. Sometimes I think it would be cool for weapons to have slightly more niche uses, as opposed to basically different points on a sliding scale of attributes (damage vs. length vs. attack and defense bonuses/penalties). However, these are more necessary for balancing the game as a whole, which most people prefer. Adept's mod seems effective for what it was supposed to accomplish, but it's simply not for everyone, or possibly even most players of Dominions. I respect him for sharing it and I think people should be a little less critical/harsh; if you don't want to use the mod, then don't.

Soyweiser

October 8th, 2011, 07:18 PM

Unit costs in Dominions (vanilla anyway) are based on the training level of the troops.

So a giant with lesser training is cheaper than a normal human with more training?

Deathblob

October 8th, 2011, 07:55 PM

Well, it should be obvious that "training level" excludes giants, troglodytes, mounted units, units with glamor, elephants, sacred units, hydras, minotaurs, mammoths, shamblers, and demons. It's implicit!

Squirrelloid

October 8th, 2011, 08:28 PM

Scaramuccia

October 9th, 2011, 02:13 AM

There is only one problem with this mod - it's name. It isn't balance mod, it is "realistic" mod or something similar.

rdonj

October 9th, 2011, 03:49 AM

It's hardly a miracle weapon. Actually it's still pretty bad in comparison to a sword except it can help you get through heavy armour... which btw was the point why knights quite often used axes as armour got better (and later warhammers).

But knights don't use axes in dominions, they use broadswords.

Adept

October 9th, 2011, 08:43 AM

Unit costs in Dominions (vanilla anyway) are based on the training level of the troops.

So a giant with lesser training is cheaper than a normal human with more training?
No, bigger units have a higher baseline cost. Are you just trolling here?

Adept

October 9th, 2011, 08:45 AM

There is only one problem with this mod - it's name. It isn't balance mod, it is "realistic" mod or something similar.

Thanks. I have to agree. I meant a slightly different thing with the name than let's say the CBM use of the word. I was also debating the name of the mod with myself until the very end of making the banner.

I'll fix that today and post that. Sorry about the confusion. I feel the not-quite-well-thought-out name caused much needless drama.

I guess "realism mod" in all it's pretentiousness will give people the right idea?

And thanks for the support :)

Adept

October 9th, 2011, 08:47 AM

[QUOTE=Adept;785520]
But knights don't use axes in dominions, they use broadswords.
This is true, but the weapons are the basis of nation mods as well. This makes it more fun, at least for me, to create nations with more varied weaponry.

I'm going to want to make a late age (and early age) version of the Independent Kingdom mod for instance, and now that you mention it, axe armed heavy cavalry sounds like something I should try ;) ...not to mention anti-heavy-armour troops using hammers.

The Sonnenkinder mercs are quite interesting under this mod. Their effectiveness is mostly unchanged, but the anti armour weapons can come handy occasionally.

Adept

October 15th, 2011, 05:37 PM

There we go. Name shortened to Adept's Mod to avoid confusion. v 1.10 should be definite now, unless somebody finds and reports a bug.

If somebody can tell mow how to change the name of the thread, I'll fix it there as well.

Fantomen

October 17th, 2011, 09:37 AM

First press edit, in the edit window there is a button named "go advanced" next to the save button, press that and you can edit the title of teh thread.

Adept

October 19th, 2011, 07:22 AM

Thanks :)

Adept

November 17th, 2012, 12:40 PM

Hmm, I think I missed out something obvious when doing this.

Currently I think that the price of hiring militia should be dropped from 7 to 5 gold. That way it would actually be worth it sometimes to get militia instead of properly trained infantry. Currently militia is just practically never worth the purchase and the upkeep.

Admiral_Aorta

November 18th, 2012, 01:25 AM

i've longed for the pivotal moment when militia rush would become a viable strategy

Ragnarok-X

November 18th, 2012, 04:18 PM

Do i smell sarcasm or is it just the pair of socks im wearing ?

Admiral_Aorta

November 18th, 2012, 05:41 PM

no, i am completely serious, reducing the price of militia(one of the most unfairly underutilized umits in the game) by 2 gold is a massive change that will shake the metagame to its core. maybe this daring mod will even go so far as to increase their strength stat by a single point to represent militia being mostly conscripts from rural areas. who knows, or dares to dream?

momfreeek

November 19th, 2012, 04:49 AM

Did he ruin your favorite mod? sadface :(

Admiral_Aorta

November 19th, 2012, 05:29 AM

on the contrary, this mod is my favorite, now and forever

momfreeek

November 19th, 2012, 05:54 AM

Then I vote to rename this mod to "Admiral Aorta's favourite balance mod". To be clear its purely a rebalancing mod rather than a content mod.

Admiral_Aorta

November 19th, 2012, 06:50 AM

that's fine with me, i would be honoured to give my name to such a wondrous mod

Redeyes

November 19th, 2012, 06:53 AM

The non-apparent use is that militia become very gold-effective at patrolling and sieging (defense, offense).

CBM made the same change and the CBM world didn't implode.

Adept

November 26th, 2012, 06:00 PM

You really think 7 -> 5 gold change would massively change the metagame? I was gonna go with 7 -> 6, but it seems like needless pussy footing.

I'll set it at 5 (and the little Markata at 4) for the latest multiplayer match with my local Dominions group. I guess I'll have funny stories to tell if it means things get out of hand.

Adept

November 26th, 2012, 06:26 PM

A little addition. I feel the metagame, when it comes to militia probably needs to be changed. I've never met anybody willing to buy militia, except in truly bizarre one-off circumstances. You pay full food cost for the "soldiers" with weapon skills and morale 8. Mostly they are more a liability than an asset.

jBrereton

November 26th, 2012, 09:32 PM

Making Militia NNE could help.

Adept

November 27th, 2012, 12:33 PM

Nne?

Soyweiser

November 27th, 2012, 01:56 PM

Need not eat

Wrana

February 10th, 2013, 12:19 PM

Making Militia NNE could help.
But would be completely illogical! :p
Actually, militia has the following uses:
1. Patrolling
2. Defending/besieging forts
3. Absorbing missile & spell fire instead of your good troops
All this they do cheaper than normal troops. And against SCs (or strong sacreds) they have the same survivability! ;)
Of course, if you use them on offense, they eat the same supplies as good units while providing less utility (as the latter can actually fight!). But... militia isn't normally used on offense. :angel

Wrana

February 10th, 2013, 01:25 PM

Sorry for necromancy...
[B][COLOR="DarkRed"]
1) Adjusted weapon balance, mainly for the sake of realism, but also for game fun reasons. ...

Quite commendable idea! Thank you!
Realization is good enough, except maybe for some particulars..

...Halberd is the offensive polearm. The impact of a twohanded battleaxe with reach 4. Att 1, Def -1.

Not sure about defense penalty. From my own almost 20 years of on-and-off experience, I would not say that it is more difficult to defend with halberd. Stats you offer are probably more close to those of a bardiche/Lochaber axe, which are heavier with broad blade. Halberd's narrower blade + hook may be better depicted with stats like those you propose for warhammer, i.e., slightly lower damage, but armor-piercing.

...Slings have damage 7, range 25 and acc -1. (2 points from the rather high damage were given to accuracy and range, if you will.)

Well, here I have no actual experience, but sources from antiquity often mentioned sling bullets punching through armor and completely entering body. At the same time it always took much time to learn to actually hit things with them. I'd say that high damage with low accuracy are valid enough here. If we could make them resistant to wind...

...The japanese weapons of Jomon and it's earlier incarnations had very strange values. I can't blame Kristoffer too much, since looking for information on them one is swamped by orientalist hype. We made a decision to go with closest european equivalents, adjust for credible research results and make the weapons "offensive" instead of defensive where appropriate to reflect different approach to martial arts. For instance the katana's attack and defence values are those of the greatsword, but swapped around. Where the greatsword has att +1, def +2, the Katana has att +2, def +1. Damages were are based on european equivalents, with the +2 added for being used two handed.

Good idea in general. Though katana as such is an one-handed weapon. Maybe call 2h-version no-dachi, as appropriate?

...The bamboo longbow called Yumi was created for the samurai archers to differentiate from the generic longbows. As in real life it has less damage than the Welsh longbow, but to compensate we upped it's attack to +2. Considering the samurai archers have a prec of 11 already, this makes them excellent at long range archery.

Well, actually they were poor at long range. :p English longbowmen tournaments started at 200 yds, while Japanese ones were performed at 130 iirc. Mongols and Turks had record aimed shots at over 500. ;)
If you don't want to completely revamp bows (and I understand this as quite thankless task!), I'd offer to leave samurai archers with longbows. Otherwise, their bows should probably have both less damage and range than Welsh longbow, maybe higher accuracy (at short range) and - especially - provide less penalty while shooting from saddle! After all, this was the reason they were asymmetrical. (as this can't be made a weapon property in-game, mounted samurai should retain precision of 10 or at least 9).

...The japanese spear (or Yari) inspired me to fix something that has long bothered me. Dominions has a generous handful of troops with spear and no shield, but they all use the normal one handed spear stats. As yari is just japanese for spear, I decided to use it in fixing this. I turned the Yari into "War Spear", which is just a more atmospheric way of saying a-spear-used-with-both-hands. With the usual logic this ends up being a polearm with dam 5, att 1 and len 4.

Actually, the main bonus of a two-handed spear I'd name a very good parrying ability, coupled with a decent attacking one. So some 2 defense is probably in order, with maybe slightly lower damage. After all, main attack with spear is a thrust, and it isn't so heavy as to being difficult to reach good speed with just one hand...

...The shuriken is capped at one point of damage, and can't take anybody's head off anymore. Still quite efficient with the strong poison.

Actually, I'd just remove poison. It can punch through a skull, but leaves wide-open wounds, from which any poison is quickly washed out with blood.

...
Items that create magic gems out of thin air have been removed or turned into unique artifacts. Forge of the Ancients has been removed from play, as has the Hammer of the Forge Lord and Dwarven Hammers. Aside from the few gods and units that have built in forge bonuses, magic items will cost the full amount.

As I already said to CBM authors, to remove a whole range of strategy paths from the game is to castrate that game.
Of course, you are free to do so in your mod - as I am free to just comment this out as soon as I save it on my computer.

...Frost Brand cost 10 water gems, to be better matched with fire brand.

Actually, it's a wrong decision. Note that in this game, undead are both the most common and easy-to-obtain chuff and the most common thugs/SCs. And they are (almost) all immune to cold. So while Frost brand is (almost) as good as Fire against human chaff, it is significantly weaker mid-game. So it should either remain cheaper, or become obtainable earlier. But at Construction 2 I think it would be too good.

...Sanquine dowsing rod is now unique, so blood income will require more honest work as well (and there won't be the pressure on blood nations to drive for construction).

See above

...Werewolves now have 2 claw attacks and a bite, and they don't have weapon or head gear slots. I hope I found every werewolf.

I think not necessary. Actually, without weapon slots they become almost useless. And generic werewolves are weak enough already.

...Dragons have 2 claw attacks and a bite.

Again not necessary. They are good enough against independents at start, while after some research is reached, they become more of mobile artillery in any case.

...The Kindly Ones, The Damned Admiral and Lord of the Hunt have no item slots. Especially the Lord and the Erinyas suffered from stupid effects when they happened to pick up some gear after a fight, often rendering them practically harmless and easy to kill (see what happens when one of the Kindly Ones finds a skull amulet).

Good workaround.

...All samurai have have a gold cost of 11 to reflect their skills and morale as veteran troops (att 10, def 11, Mor 11). The prec has been brought down to 10 on non archer samurai for neatness (no actual game effect).

Reasonable. Though I'd leave precision as is - they are trained, they just don't have bows! ;)

...Samurai cavalry prec brought to 8 as they are mounted.

As I said, it is what their bows are good for - leave them good firepower!

...Hatamoto and Mounted Daimyo get standards (at 6 and 10), as a nod towards the banners in their graphics, and to add flavour.

Reasonable, too.

Sorry if I repeated critics on something that has already been fixed - I have no time now for reading the whole thread.
Thank you for an idea and realization!

Also, what do you think on pikes? In my Tilea mod (in progress) I made pikemen a composite unit with 2 #secondform's - so in first form we have 6 effective pikemen per square, then less until we get a single pikeman with normal human size. This is a workaround, however. But I don't see how else we can keep pike both effective and (relatively) realistic. Maybe damage bonus vs larger opponents?