Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

After a few months of work, the Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9 is hereby released!

I have attached a full changelog below, but here's the short version to give you an overview of what's been done.

- Huge review of items, with the intention of making every item have at least a niche use. Quite a few items recosted (generally downwards in view of the hammer change), others given boosts or even new effects in a few cases. Two-handed weapons are much better. Item descriptions have been updated - there should be no non-obvious changes.
- A PDF Forging Reference is included with the mod - this was a bit of a monster to create, but hopefully will prove useful. This may be worth printing out - I have tried to choose colours so that it will be comprehensible even in black and white. The reference is based on a previous document by Cleveland - thanks Cleveland!
- Boosts to a number of weak nations. EA & MA Agartha, MA Ulm, MA Man, EA Vanheim and EA Helheim in particular benefitted. Other nations to receive some changes include Marverni, Tir na n'Og and Eriu. Great effort has been put in to make the changes interesting and thematic. For example with MA Agartha the challenge was to increase the power of the nation while maintaining an overall theme of sorrow and loss. Hopefully this has been successful. These nations should have gained not only raw power but also diversity of choices.
- Full incorporation of Burnsaber's Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod. Hopefully interactions between land and water nations should be much more interesting. The water nations also receive some new content. Playing Oceania or MA Atlantis should no longer feel so frustrating.
- "Unfun" spells, e.g. Burden of Time and Arcane Nexus, made harder to cast or more expensive
- Small scales tweaks - Production a little better, Order a little less good
- A large number of miscellaneous changes - see the full changelog for details. For example Storm Demons can no longer throw lightning underwater, Tartarians can be Gift of Reasoned again (via a new spell, Restore Soul), Tarrasques and Treelords are better, and some of the most powerful EDM summons got slightly more expensive.
- A lot of bug hunting and miscellaneous fixes.
- Thanks to quantum_mechani for comments and of course having done the huge majority of this mod, Sombre and kianduatha for contributing some code, Larz for his dom3editor which helped with bug hunting, and above all lots of you for the huge number of helpful comments I went through in preparing this update.

I really hope people enjoy this, it's been a lot of fun to create.

Comments are as always extremely welcome.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Thanks a lot llamabeast!

One small thing I noticed: Curse of Blood still appears to be 66 slaves even though changelog says it should now be 99.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Army of statues agartha alt4 spell has no description.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Inevitably, a quick bugfixing release, motivated mainly by the Ulmish Tower Shield bug.

v1.91 fixes the following bugs:
- Ulmish Tower Shields were obscenely good (I had been using them for tests of spells which were stopped by shields)
- Army of Statues had no description
- Erroneous spells "Paralyze Statues" and "Heal Statues" were visible
- Curse of Blood still costs 66 slaves, was meant to be changed to 99
- Medallion of Vengeance used the bearer's strength to determine damage
- EA Agarthan netters had wrong stats

In addition a couple of design changes:
- Polypal Spawn no longer sacred. An earlier CBM had made them sacred but that no longer seems good with them being amphibious.
- Fay Boars have reduced rather than zero upkeep.
- Locus of the Seal has misc slots only.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

How about a movable dome statue? Like a Juggernaut.

Im getting tired of four flames from the sky in one turn which just destroy any human army outside of their dome. :re:

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Well you would hope that spending 140F gems would do some damage.......

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I don't think three SCs can do the same effect. A movable dome really open up and enrich the late game gameplay. I'm really tired of SCs vs SCs and those giant troops and mages, which are the only army type u can bring out of your domes safely late game. QQ

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

For ma Oceania, there are two mermages, one of them cost only 30 golds.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Sounds interesting, but can't be done!

Thanks.

That reminds me, I like to take a perfectionist approach to this kind of thing. Bugs are inevitable, but before releasing any future versions I will make sure to go through this thread (and the one on dom3mods) and fix any bugs or typos people have spotted. So please do report them!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I really don't think mobile domes would open up anything. Quite the contrary in fact. Let's assume we have mobile domes now. Well, any conceivable overland ritual you can cast is now effectively dead and useless. No need to spend gems on these. What else can we spend them on? Summons and SCs. People would still build lots of SCs, maybe even more now that a good deal more spells become more or less useless in the lategame and there's nothing else to spend gems on. Perhaps SCs would see more use in armies sitting under domes but... consider SC raiders hiding under mobile domes now. They're protected from rituals, so if you want to kill one you have to take a gamble and pray that your spells pierce the dome and then get lucky with whatever spell you were casting to kill it. Coincidentally this would make intercepting SCs even harder, as now you can't rely on teleporting anti-thugs to do the job.

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 would do anything other than make matters worse.

Also if you're worried about flames from the sky, try using an army made of fire-immune troops. No you can't bring out a human army without it being potentially exposed to ruin, but if your opponent is spending huge amounts of gems killing your regular armies in that fashion, he's not doing something else with those gems, and is helping you win the gem war. But really in the late game gold is for buying mages, not armies.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

The new MA Man Woodsman are nice! You put then at the front with Fire Closest orders and they will fire their bows until the enemy closes and then use their axes... They are also useful as bodyguards for bards that will have a better survivability if discovered in enemy territory during their unrest missions...

Edit: they are also very useful as screens for longbows with the Fire Closest orders and put in front of your longbows... assign Fire Archer orders to the longbows and you will be nearly unbeatable in archer duels as the enemy archers will normally target the woodsmens instead of the longbows and the woodsmen shields give them a better surivability against archers than Man longbowmen.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I'm skimming through CB1.91.dm and noticed a tiny typo for the Lord of Agartha.

#newmonster 2917 -- Forge Lord from the Seal
#name "Lord of Agartha"
#spr1 "./CBM_Sprites/lord_of_agartha_1.tga"
#spr2 "./CBM_Sprites/lord_of_agartha_2.tga"
#descr "In the time of the Sunderer, the Lord of Agartha dwelled deep beneath the earth and was a being of great power. But the might of the Sunderer was reater still, and slowly his power crumbled.

Should be "was greater still,".

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Llama, I haven't had a chance to look over all the changes yet but want to say thank you for the forge bonuses for the glamour nations and for restoring blood as an option for Van. I think this release really helps keep some of the traditional strategies for these nations viable.

And the other changes for these nations are also fun. The price reduction on Vanherse is great - I will actually recruit these as research mages as they are now only 10 more gold than the indie mages I typically use to fuel Van's research. Price reductions on the troops are helpful and the low upkeep on the fay boars is interesting.

Also, making bean sidhe recruit everywhere is a big help to Eriu. And in my opinion makes them more fun to play. As much as I like the thugging aspect of the game, it's nice to have some other options. Really like this change.

I also like the changes to problematic blood spells like vampire lords. What do people think about the price/mechanics of onaqui? I'm not much of a fan of freespawn units (especially good units as opposed to chaff) and onaqui can generate huge numbers of beast bats. But, I've never actually fought a Mictlan player that was using them. Any experiences with this?

Regarding spell requirements (and my grudge against skratti ;)) what about making claws of koyktos, and maybe infernal prison as well, have a B4 F/W1 requirement? It just doesn't seem like these spells should be so easily castable by a recruit everywhere unit.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Thanks Valerius, interesting comments.

By the way I have just realised I omitted two new spells from the changelog : "Return from Valhalla" for EA Van, and "Return from Hel" for EA Helheim.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Very nice; that definitely falls into the fun category! I'm already looking forward to bringing back a magma eruption or rain of stones casting dwarf as a vanadrott. :)

I like this idea of copying and modifying spells to make national versions of them. Return from Valhalla/Hel is certainly a nice example but even something like the more straightforward Quickening Song is useful as it lets those A1N1 Sidhe Champions cast a spell that would normally be beyond their abilities. National spells/summons help differentiate nations and make the game more interesting.

Speaking of fun things, making tarrasques commanders falls in that category. This seems to be a growing category: non-humanoid monsters that have some nice built-in abilities but limited slots. The most successful examples that come to mind are EDM's shishis and zmeys. It's an interesting change and hopefully tarrasques will find a place in that group.

The Treelord changes are also good and I think they're worth summoning (maybe one research level lower, though?). And the kithaironic lion change is interesting as well; mixing some of those into a formation could be useful.

About the changes to scales, I think it's good that Order/Sloth is no longer a default combination. Tough to say if the spread between order and production should be two or three points. I lean towards the current two point spread, though. I think with a three point spread I'd still go with Order/Sloth. Two point spread I'm not sure... It's also nice how Growth is differentiated - less income upfront but paying off a lot later on.

I've only started to look over the magic items but so far it looks good. One thing that I think is helpful is the increase in protection on some of the lighter armors. For instance, increasing the protection on shambler skin hauberk means that if the commander has mid-range armor built-in he's no longer ending up with lower protection by using this item than if he used one of his misc slots for a water breathing item and kept his built-in armor.

I also like the 15 gem pricing of more powerful items like wraith crowns, robes of invulnerability and bone armor.


So far I've looked over the glamour nations and Man. A couple of things that I think are worth keeping an eye on to see how they play out are:

* Man's Hex spell. Nature has gotten some (welcome) strength on the battlefield recently with improved MR resists spells but this one could be particularly nasty. It's instakill on a failed MR roll just like polymorph but it only has half the fatigue and if it's AI friendly and gets spammed even after the script runs out it could be brutal.

* Vanjarls at 240 gold. I'm certainly not complaining about the boosts to Van but it occurs to me that with dwarves having a forge bonus to help with thugging and half of Vanjarls having B2 a cost of 260 gold or even the original 280 gold might be reasonable. I never thought it was feasible to give two blood boosters to a B1 Vanjarl for a late game cloud trapezing life for a life caster. But one blood booster? That's feasible. I don't think the change to Vanjarls is OP (especially not in EA) but 240 gold may be too cheap a price, all things considered.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Excellent work. Thanks. The PDF is also great. One small suggestion I'd make for next version is to indicate unique items in some way such as using an underline font.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Thanks!

Unique items are the purple ones (all Const. 8 items are unique).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Haha thanks. I don't know what I was thinking. For some reason in my mind I thought as Const. 8 items and unique items as separate. Nevermind. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Thanks, Llamabeast!!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I've tried out the new EA R'lyeh, only having given it a cursory look earlier, and two minor things struck me right away:

The Polypal Queen pretender appears to only spawn Polypal Spawn, unlike the recruitable Polypal Mothers, that also spawn the occasional sacred Gibodai at high levels of dominion (#domsummon20 1522 in CBM1.91).

The Polypal Queen, the reason and the fate of the Aboleth race, seems an exceptionally poor choice of those available to EA R'lyeh. Amongst the immobile pretenders she competes with the Monolith (dom4, S1N1, pathcost 40) and the Void Lurker (dom2, S3, pathcost 15) with her own (dom2, W1S1, pathcost 25). She's worse for blessings, worse for magic, and her sole unique benefit is a stream of Polypal Spawn that is equaled in magnitude by two recruitable Polypal Mothers at low dominion and in quality by one at high dominion.

She'd really benefit from spawning a few Gibodai (and perhaps even the occasional rare mind lord?) as well as the Polypal Spawns or from having better magic or something. Immobile pretenders tend to need something special that isn't easy to cover elsewhere to make them worthwhile using, and she's severely lacking in that respect, being easily replaced in her unique ability by a few cheap recruitable commanders.

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

A quick look at Vanheim and Helheim reveals that the Allfather pretender is *gone* in all ages. Surely, that can't be right? [this is 1.91]

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Any chance you have other mods active? I just started a test game with EA Van and was able to select the Allfather as a pretender.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Mine has the Allfather for all the Heims...must be something on your end.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Thanks for the quick response.

I didn't have any other mods active, but upon checking I discovered I had been performing testing with a version 3.26 Dom3 install together with CBM1.91; In this combination, the Allfather is gone.

Using my 3.27 install with CBM1.91 the Allfather is back in business.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

I was looking at R'lyeh pretenders yesterday and came to the same conclusion about the Polypal Mother. I'll give her a little boost. Maybe she needs a big boost, but I'll save that for a later version (I intend to do a proper pretender review at some point).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Agartha's Earth Communion spell is giving seperate results for each type of gem it find. For instance if I find an earth site and nothing else, the message reads: 1 new magic site found in wherever, No new magic sites found in wherever, No new magic sites found in wherever, No new magic sites found in wherever.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.9
 

Yeah, it's a shame Earth Communion reports back like that, but unfortunately it can't be changed. I decided the slight quirkiness of it was worth it to give Agartha a cool spell.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Right! Following a few days of feedback, here's another little update release.

CB1.92:

Errors fixed:
Fay Boar protection dropped after recruitment - fixed
Trident from Beyond was W1S1 - meant to be W3S1 (forging reference was correct)
Forging reference error - Jade Knife listed as const 2 rather than 8
Spider Bite and Heroic Blade shared a weapon id, which was bad
For modders: ID usage info at the start of the mod was wrong, fixed

Content stuff:
Polypal Queen given a buff - she now domsummons gibodai, but costs more points
Mind Lords have 3 misc slots (just for thematic reasons really)
Spells which kill the caster now also give the caster insanity. This means that if you use an immortal pretender to cast Possession or Foul Sacrifice he will quickly go mad (would you like to be eaten from the inside by spiders?)
Foul Sacrifice once again gives more spiders if you have more nature magic
Jomon tweaks from kianduatha - ninjas keep shurikens when given magic weapons, tatsu has more powerful magic (lvl 3), shark warrior has improved MR, mori-no-kami is a better archer, and sea units got Japanese weapons and armour


Of course one never knows what monstrous bugs may still be lurking, but at present I don't anticipate releasing any more updates in the immediate future. Fingers crossed, this should now be ready for people to go ahead with MP games. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Shatner: Forgot about your typo till just now, sorry. Will be fixed in the next version.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Hello everybody!

I would like to spark a bit of debate in this thread about Yomi. I believe that there are two things that need to be changed badly.

1) The first would be their heat scale. Yomi consists of many fire resistant demons, and their homeland is a Volcano! I think it would be more than appropriate for them to have a preference for Heat Scale 1 and just for thematic purposes, if nothing else.

2) The second and most important thing that needs to be changed, in my point of view, is the base magic of the sorcerers.

Currently, they have 1 Earth and 1 Death with a +1 random in Air, Earth, Fire or Death.

What if the 1 Death were changed to 1 Air?

As it stands now, the Hannyas basically trump the sorcerers in almost all ways, with them seeing almost no play time. With this one small change, the sorcerers would become a viable alternative to the Hannyas because they would have a 25% chance of having 2 Air/1 Earth, which would open them up as fantastic, yet fragile support mages for the armies of Yomi, acting as casters for all kinds of nice spells such as Wind Guide, Lightning Bolt, Aim, and Contact Dai-tengu. They could also forge many items that would benefit Yomi greatly, and expand their options against certain nations whom they have many, many problems fighting against.

The way I see it, Yomi's theme is about reckless and violent elemental power being wielded by selfish, greedy, gluttonous demons, with lots of emphasis on offense, and very little on defense. This one small change would open them up for more of their thematic demonic violence, such as dai-tengu, and reduce some of their crippling redundancy.

But anyway, I can see how it could be a bit strong, but I just feel like Yomi gets jipped, seeing as how they have a whole slew of "national" spells that they can't even access reasonably well, such as Contact Nushi and Contact Dai-tengu. Air magic is SO vital to Yomi that the fact that Air 2 Dai-Oni are basically diamond-coated godsends makes Air a NECESSITY on your pretender, severely limiting your builds and options.

Maybe if they were made a little bit more expensive to compensate, although I don't think this is necessary, as they have old age, and Yomi needs growth to counter-act that, something for which they almost never have spare points available.

At least for me, it is more thematic. Yomi is about wild and crazed googly-eyed demons who aren't civilized or patient enough to hone and develop their raw magical power. Their schools represent this, too. To me, it is almost as if they are lazy because of all of the power that they naturally wield, taking it for granted and therefore not using it to it's maximum potential.

Fire, Earth, Death and Air and even a little Nature. These are all violent magics and elements weilded by wild demons that hail from the mountains and forests of the Volcanic Mountain of the Oni.

If anything, perhaps I could make a mod to change this one thing about Yomi for people to test and to see if they like it or think it is too overpowered. I think it would make Yomi extremely competitive and that they would finally start receiving some love and attention from the community!

Please tell me what you guys think, I'll be looking forward to your opinions and input!

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I have made the mod, and you guys can download it to test it. I gave Yomi a preference for Heat Scale 1 and the sorcerers now receive 1 Air and 1 Earth with a +1 random for Air/Earth/Fire/Death.

Tell me what you think.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I am at my g/f's house and d/l'ed the 1.92 and added the files to the mod folder. Previously, the game was strictly vanilla on this computer. I enable the mod. Go to game tools-create pretender-middle ages,,, game crashes, small message box pops up about bad #selectweapon command

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

The Yomi with Fire resistance have it because they have innate Fire magic, not because they're used to a hot climate...that's why only the Yomi that can Throw Flames have FR. And there are cold-aspected demons too, so I'm not sure that Heat-1 makes much sense. As they are now, because many of their units have Fire resist, you can probably get away with taking Heat-3 without so many repercussions, but it isn't their native heat preference.

Why should Sorcerers get Air magic baseline instead of Death, thematically? I mean, we are talking about "a dark magician who has chosen to serve an Oni King to gain power". Sounds pretty dark/death-y, not air-focused.

You have an excellent point though about Hannya overshadowing Sorcerers. Perhaps a small price decrease(they are very old, after all) or a research bonus of 1 would make them comparatively more attractive, because right now they simply aren't better researchers than Hannya.

As an aside, I made a practice game with Yomi and my first Dai Oni was A2, heh.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Well, the Hannya does have the demon and cold-blooded traits, which can be disadvantages (End of Culture and End of Weakness are not nice to Hannyas.

in M1:
Sorc = 115G/6R = 19, Hannya = 200G/8R = 25
in D2:
Sorc = 115G/4R = 28, Hannya = 200G/6R = 33

So sorcs are always cheaper researchers.

In addition, they have totally different paths. You're not going to cast many army buffs (or debuffs) with a Hannya. Hannya are really only better at battlefield evo (unless you are up to RoS, only a Dai Oni or a EA sorc with boots can do that), and maybe making undead archers. Yomi has great thugs, there's not much point in using Hannya as thug mages, any item you make is better off on a Shura or Dai Oni.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

sidhos: Have you patched dom3 to the latest version?

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

llama: Thanks, I'll give that a check. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

llama: That fixed it. Thank you. I THOUGHT I had the latest patch but obviously didn't. D'oh

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Before I begin, getting an Air 2 Dai Oni on your first turn is like winning the lottery.

They have a 25% chance of coming with Air 1. Air 2 is another 10% x 25%. So that would be:

1/4 x 1/4 x 1/10 = 1/160

That means that 1 out of every 160 Dai Onis will have Air 2.

Yeah. Real dependable.

Getting back on topic, I think that maybe the Heat Scale 1 change wouldn't be a good thing on second thought. My main reason was the fact that they hail from a volcano and the netherworld. But, now that I think about it, they also consist of many humans and bakemono, who don't care for it either.

However, I still believe sorcerers need a change.

I have played Yomi a lot. And by a lot, I mean a lot. I test them all the time because I love their theme, and people tend to treat them as "weak" and I enjoy the challenge of trying to make them shine.

I have only joined the forums recently, but I have down many test games in private through e-mail with my brother, LongBrodie, and in singleplayer.

From my tests, I can tell you, without a doubt, that Yomi has some serious issues holding them back:

1) Sorcerers die from old age in DROVES. While they are better researchers monetarily, it doesn't really pay off later when they are dying before you get your money's worth out of them.

2) Yomi needs the Growth Scale to support the Sorcerers. Yet, Yomi has a very, very limited selection of Pretenders, and none that are thematic. Their ability to take Growth is only viable if they take a scale-monster as their Pretender, which isn't very useful as they need magical diversity to support their redundant mages.

3) Yomi needs Air magic. They need it. Without it, they are severly limited in their capacity to fight certain nations. They become a one trick pony that is very, very easily countered. Air alleviates this problem somewhat, opening them up to flying sacred Tengu and other wonderful spells.

My main argument is that giving them the ability to have Air 2 would free up the Pretender to get other magic or other scales, such as Growth, which would in turn allow them to support the sorcerers. There would be nothing stopping you from taking Air anyway, but it wouldn't be an absolute necessity.

I can sit here and argue this into the ground or until I am blue in the face with theorycrafting all I want, but I recommend you guys check out the mod and play a few games with it and tell me if you think it is "overpowered" or not by seeing for yourselves.

I just ask that you please, please consider them in comparison with other powerhouses such as Hinnom, Sauromatia, Mictlan and Niefelheim.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Try a sleeping Dom6 E6S4 Lord of Plenty, O3S1H1G1L3M1. Bakemono hordes are great for initial expansion. Actually, they are great after expansion too.

You will get more A than your initial income from events/A1 sites/cross-path sites, and if you want A2 to get into A through Dai Tengus, empower an A1 Dai Oni.

If you're really against empowering, forge a RoW with your god. It'll make it easier to advance in N & W too, if you don't find nice indies like Jade Amazons.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

You'll want the RoW anyways eventually--slap one on a Dai Tengu and you suddenly have enough for air boosters.

But yeah--worst-case scenario, you have to spend 30 air gems getting an A2 Dai Oni.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Hi all, i try to play a bit with Niefelheim EA but when i try to recruit, black screen and---"myloasmalloc: can´t open./mods/./Worthy_heroes/niefel_Jarls_1.tga", btw i am new to mods...

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Oh! That one is my fault! Many apologies, I'll get a patch out ASAP (it won't need a new version number as it's just a graphical change - the mod is pointing to some image files that many people will have but I didn't actually include in the mod).

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Okay, I've updated the zip file so that all the image files are included in the CBM_Sprites folder.

Morla - please try the download again, hopefully it will work this time. :)

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

YaY, it works, but with the YARG3 version it doesn´t work, same error, i try copying the worthy heroes 1.91 and it works, but i am going to play my first mp game and we are going to uso yarg3 version, this solves the problem but i don´t know if i can play the game with that version of worthy heroes

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I am definitely of the opinion that Fomoria could use a little help. Their capital dependence is crippling. Not only is this a major vulnerability, it dramatically reduces their competitiveness in large maps.

See the thread: Well CBM1.9 is nice, but why no buff for Fomoria?? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47743

Unmarked Champions are an excellent unit for the price. But, you can't really recruit them as you are so weak in research you can't afford to recruit anything outside your capital but the otherwise nearly useless Fomorian Druids.

Here are the changes I would propose. They are nothing dramatic. There would still be plenty of more powerful nation choices for EA in my opinion. But, it would go a long ways to broaden the options for playing styles.

* Give the Fomorian Druid a Leather Hauberk and Shield
* Give the Fomorian God King pretender chassis N1 in additional to his current base paths, W1 and D1.
* Make the Fomorian Giants, Fomorian Kings, and Fomorian God kings fully amphibious and give them at least 50% darkvision. They came from the depths of the sea for goodness sakes.
* Give the Fomorian Druid a 10% random AWDN pick.
* Make the Unmarked Champion capital only. I know this is a bit of a contradiction in my stated goals for these changes, but it really wouldn't hurt Fomoria much at all with a better armored Druid. Besides, its odd that Unmarked troops are cap only but their champion is not.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Sorry, that should be W1 and D2 on the Fomorian God King.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Sauromatia too is absolutely crippled.

Hydra: cap only.
Androphag Archer: cap only.
Witch King: cap only.
Oiorpata: cap only.
Hydras: cap only.

Sauromatia will never win! Because of the CAP ONLY!1!!

At least give Witch Kings a chance for A4, so they can put up an Air Dome in their cap and compete with Fomoria.

Here's an excellent idea: take the Death off the Witch King, and replace it with Air.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

Deathblob my respect for your trolling skills goes up every post

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I do admit that the Fomorian Giants themselves getting darkvision 50 or so would make a lot of sense(it's apparently pretty dark in Fomoria, what with all the black dogs and stuff running around with darkpower). But I think most of your other changes hinge on Fomoria being weak at research. And for that, the easiest change is simply to make Fomorian Druids cheaper by 10 or 15 gold.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

I was afraid of giving them a research boost would give them more help than they need. And, it would seem inconsistent with other giant nations which have much the same issue with research. I'd say that they need a nudge to keep up with some of the other CBM changes, but no more.

Giving the Druids a Shield and Hauberk, to me, gives Fomoria something a bit more interesting to recruit from their non-cap forts than an oversized researcher while staying in theme. They may not be much good at evocation, but with some basic gear and spell buffs, Fomorian Druids could put up a decent fight. If someone goes with a E9N6+ bless, they could even be formidable. For that option, I might actually see increasing the cost slightly.

And, a final clarification on the Fomorian God King. I'm proposing he would end up with W1D1N1 instead of his current W1D2. Perhaps he gets played more than I know about, but I have yet to see him in a game. And, considering how cool of a chassis he is, that's a shame. I think giving him a spot of nature, which Fomoria really should always have in its bless, would do that. Though, this is more a thematic than balance change. Fomoria has no need of an SC pretender.

Re: Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92
 

The Hierogallus and Black Emerald heroes for pythium dont have shields or helmets.

however, im not using a clean mod so YMMV.