Cohen Mod 0.2

[Edi]

Ok, Cohen, I'm officially withdrawing that tentative offer I made earlier. This mod of yours is, like I said before, so lopsided it's ludicrous.

• It gives insane boosts to Abysia
• It comparatively nerfs some other nations' units despite minor boosts
• It outright nerfs some nations significantly (esp. Caelum)
• It nerfs certain powerful summons and renders them undesirable while some already great summons are radically improved
• Pretender balance does not exist anymore
• Even some of the other spell modifications are at least suspect. More in the following.

Hellbind Heart, 40 fatigue? What are you smoking? Just spam the battlefield with that spell and combine with Relief, that's a huge spoiler. Easily achievable using communion or sabbath too, so this is nothing more than another massive boost for Abysia. Line up Warlock Apprentices and have them cast either Sabbath or Communion Slave while the warlocks use master, and that's a HBH spam army right there.

The most drastically improved summons and rituals are, surprise, surprise, astral and fire spells, so these again serve to directly make Abysia more powerful. Marignon too, but not quite as much. Succubus, already a good summon, has been slashed 25%, when by the time you get blood summons of that level, you should have a well established blood economy. So more unbalanced oomph right there. Except what's the use of it, when HBH spam is a viable strategy?

Solar Brilliance 300 fatigue, no gems? Yup, can't have those pesky Ermorian armies or other nations running about with demon hordes, so form a squad of apprentices and warlocks, preferably with crystal/slave matrices and slam them with SB right off the bat in later game when high end spells are available. No fuss, no muss, and most importantly, no danger at all.

Undead Mastery and Master Enslave, 400 fatigue, no gems? Again, communion via matrix, start with this and you'll have yourself a brand spanking new army, or enough of one that the enemy will have his hands full just dealing with the enslaved units before he can even begin to look in your direction. Strangely, Master Enslave is another astral spell, giving the already astrally powerful Abysia ANOTHER boost. Why am I not surprised.

By now I'm too disgusted to even start going through any more of that list, but it's obvious you have no idea whatsoever about what you are doing, other than boosting Abysia to completely, ludicrously insane levels.

You also seem to be completely deaf to all the comments and criticisms of your choices, and you either ignore them outright, or make up weak rationalizations that don't withstand any kind of indepth scrutiny to justify to yourself why they really are ok despite boosting one already powerful nation way above others. Or you just have an incredibly poor grasp of Dom2. Pick your poison.

In the other places I normally frequent, this kind of behavior is called by its real name, fanwhore wanking, and your response tactics by their also more apt name, IWOI, short for Invincible Wall of Ignorance, a wall of denial so thick nothing gets through.

This mod as it now stands isn't salvageable, it's a complete and utter trainwreck even before it has left the station, and nobody here is going to want to play it, especially in MP. As that is your aim, better start addressing the criticisms or expect the mod to find no audience. If you intend to use it in SP, then I'll echo what Peter Ebbesen said about creativity.

Edi

[johan osterman]

Edi: spells cost 1 gem per full hundred fatigue. So your complaints about solar brilliance etc are at least partially misplaced.

Edit: Although the reduced gem cost of some of the more powerfull spells súch as master enslave means that it will become available to lower level mages that use gems to boost their skills.

[Edi]

Ah, I didn't know that, Johan. Thanks for clarifying.

Then that part of my complaint is invalid, but it won't be exactly difficult to come up with sufficient gems and with sufficient casting levels through communion and gem boosting for even rather low level mages. It will make Pythium, Arco, Abysia and R'lyeh very powerful, but also puts these spells within reach of even weak astral nations. Let's see, Starshine Skullcap, Banner of the North Star, Crystal Coin (optional, really), a bit of gem boost and sufficient communion, and wham, even an S2 mage will be casting Master Enslave with relative ease.

Same for all the astral spells, and even the others, all you need is get Communion or Sabbath going and you can do that for almost any spells, no matter the path. Even non-astral, non-blood mages can do it, though it requires a bit more effort, but not outside the realm of possibility. And the worst part of it is that the communion/sabbath's main purpose now is to just boost the caster's magic to sufficient level to execute the spells (like Arcane Domination), risk of damage is no longer all that relevant. Even to the communion/sabbath slaves, because you need so many to boost the magic path that the fatigue just disappears.

Edi

[Cohen]

Personally Edi, I don't see the point of the Spell aggression.
Abysya usually has claims on Blood, and yes, some blood spells are now better because they don't require slaves.
Hellbind Heart is a sort of Enslave Mind now, more coty in fatigue term, and at the same level of magic skill (don't forget the lvl of magic required is added to the chance of resist, don't recall if halved or less however).
And for Sabbath Mastery/Slavery, who'll us a spell that makes your slaves starting with 100 or 66 Fatigue? Considering Reinvigorate doesn't work if casted after (tried on battlefield) by the Master.
So on, considering Abysya goes to Blood-9 research, with all his research problem (having a discount of 20 gold for each warlock apprentice won't make that difference, it's always 1 warlock at turn because capitol only, and you gain 1 scout or heavy inf more), probably those spells will be more useful to someone else, considering many of the pointed spells aren't blood.

I'd agree the Gem requirements were done to make them more difficult to use, but they've already a good level of cost, and not everyone could use communion. And AI waste Gems very quickly. I'd like to keep some spells with an higher gem cost but to lower their fatigue cost, however dunno if you ever tried Solar Brilliance in battle and checked his effectiveness ... it isn't so effective and could blind your units too.

For Caelum, what to say ... they've among the best mages in the game. For 100 Gold you obtain a 2A1W (3 path, and what paths!!!) and for 175 Gold you obtain a 3A2W1? (6 path !!! and not capitol only). Notice in many games the nation that win is Caelum (followed by any other Air Nation, usually Pythium and Vanheim, oh well expect in the games where Caelum has been Banned and not only by me).
However there will be a Copper Plate modify in 0.2 too ... raising it cost, too isy to get lightn immunity with an armor.

Thx Johan for the explaination, I thought to have written it somewhere before, about gem cost ...

[PDF]

Cohen,
I've absolutely nothing against you (we never played together), so maybe you'll trust me more than some other guys ; your mod is unbalanced in my opinion too - not all of it, but the pretender part is ludicrous : human mages become superhuman mages, Moloch becomes super-dooper SC, Alchemist is overabusable, etc..
Of the rest, many ideas/changes (btw you should write "changes" and not "modifies") come direct from Zen's ideas, either for Pretenders or items (Clam-Fetish-Bl. Thorn and Life drain weapons "nerfing" for example).
The unit changes, although badly documented, look more interesting.
Lastly, I don't understand your spell changes : you pretend to defend "national armies" and yet you make magic still more powerful ? I can understand some balance changes to spells - useless low level summons... - but this really require carefulness lest you ruin the game (marvelous) gameplay.

If I were you I would do modules indeed - because each part could be tried/tested independently, and start with less changes, then adjust, rather than throwing everything in right from the beginning.
As it stands I'll certainly not use it in any MP - and not out of "mod-defiance", I've just started a pbem using Zen mod - but because way too many things are changed at once, without enough rationale and documentation, nor proper forethinking of the impacts.

[Cohen]

About items I had already my mind, as I said in someone else post "What this game really needs", where there was a exaustive discussion about Life Drain, and another post about Clams and Gem Generating item.
For Items I took nothing from Zen.

National armies will be revalued by:
1: Better production scale.
2: Some easier access troop boosting spells (more access to some spells affecting troops).

True, making easier to get some summon improves magic too, but troops can deal with Wyverns, Drakes and such.
The thing that make troops worthless are SCs with drain life. Without drain life (or regeneration + reinvigoration, but they're 2 items instead of 1), even troops could kill an SC.

For your opinion regarding Human Mages, personally I like to them usable. And for Usable I mean they could be taken without letting you know this will make you lose.
Moloch is effectively good now. I'm going to transfer it to Marignon in 0.2, becoming a choice for a fire only bless.
About Alchemist, I've already answered before ... however picking this, means you renounce to your SC from turn 1.
Thx for the advices PDF. Even if you want to help not to ruin the game, want to do some testing?

[Edi]

Cohen, yes, HBH is now more like Enslave Mind. No question about that. The problem with it is that with the changed Sabbath spells (10 fatigue, no slaves), HBH spamming becomes a viable tactic. Sabbath boosts magic levels, and getting +1 or +2 is laughably easy, especially if you find sages or lizards, astral sages and shamans can use communion slave to power a sabbath circle.

As for Caelum, have you taken a look at the nation as a whole? Yes, they have good mages. They also have incredibly crappy troops, which means that until they get a decent level of evocation, they and some other spells, their expansion options are rather limited. There is the SC option, but in and of itself that does not mean much. Caelum is not invincible, and its current strengths do not warrant such a serious nerf when its weaknesses are taken into account. Nor does Caelum being strong in certain areas mean that Abysia needs such a huge boost.

A lot of things depend on luck, especially early on (what indeps and how large provinces around you etc), and a lot more on smart use of resources at hand. The objective is not to cut every nation down to the same size, rather it is to find a balance that allows them to be different and play to their unique strengths. Your modified Abysia has only a single weakness: no missile troops, which is easily remedied by independents.

There is a general trend throughout your mod that pushes balance out the window, which is why nobody is going to like it. Yes, some low level summons need improvement (the drakes most of all), but your sweeping changes wreakmore havoc than anything else.

Edi

[Cohen]

Personally I find Caelum troops good.

Archers with precision 12 + wind guide.
All troops with defaul magic weapon.
Armors that get increased protection in cold provinces.
Flying army (they can swarm early rush pretenders before they buff, and they strike first).
They've Mammooths. Stompa Stompa of indies. (but they usually have better ways to conquer indies).

I'm playing Caelum in a game, and I'm facing Ermor by myself all alone. AE Ermor, so not so easy to cut down with lightnings and false horror (they don't rout, they're so many to lightning them all) and I cannot wind ride their better commander (ouch they're ethereal), but dunno why I've stripped them of every non castled province except one where there're a concentration of dusk elders (well however a Wrathful Skies raid had killed some of them and of the minor D2 leaders) ...
Yes now I've to siege ... uh oh ... wall shakers coming in, with some Harbingers thx to the massive clam I can forge with Caelum. CrushaCrusha. Not to say cold+sloth points = uber GK, + ring of wiz, +ring of sorc, +some death item = Death10 Undead Mastery (with +2 Penetration due to rings!).
Well this was is depriving me of many resources, so probably if someone attacks me later could have upper hand ... but it's easy and common for a third party to get over someone that has just finished an exausting war.

However, even if they've a not so good army, what matter, armyes become useless after turn 20-30 more or less.

Abysya has many more other weaknesses (costy troops/mages for what you obtain, problems in researching and blood hunting at the same time, are 2 of the most clear examples), not only the missing of fire troops.

[Kel]

Zen said:
A pretender can be powerful by being only good at one thing, if that one thing allows you to fill a gap or weakness in the nation you are being a pretender for.

If he can fill that gap plus aid in other areas or even fill other gaps then yes, he is clearly more powerful than a pretender that can only do the one thing. If the GK were only capable of being an SC and nothing else, he would still be decent and he would still be used but he would not be as universally powerful in every situation and thus would not be used as much as he is now.

By taking any human pretender, you give up a lot by losing the SC. I don't think 15% extra forging (over the cyclops) is *that* much of a stretch for the loss of the SC and the vulnerabilities that accompany being a human pretender. Path costs ? I don't know. Pretender cost ? I dont know. But +15% forging, -SC = unreasonable ? No way.

- Kel

[Karacan]

Cohen said:
Personally I find Caelum troops good.
I'm playing Caelum in a game, and I'm facing Ermor by myself all alone.

MP or SP? And if MP, what experience level does your opponent have? And your priests have nothing to do with this easy win, just your troops?

By the way, would you really like to play against this new Abysia of yours? With something other than the great new alchemist of Ulm or the Marignon Moloch.

And for the record, I actually play more or less competitively with human pretenders. They suit my style very well, and I actually managed a win or two. On bigger maps, though, with more than one opponent nation.

And anyway, what's the point of continuing to argue? You won't be budged from your position, and the community (at least indicated by the general sentiment) is unlikely to accept your consideration of balance, and thus equally unlikely to ever use it. I nevertheless admire people who can muster the energy to make massive mods, so I wish you good luck with it. It's satisfying finishing something you put some work in, even if it'll never be used outside SP or a few friends.