'Heim nerf mod?

[Shovah32]

I would probably agree that EA Vanheim is the weakest Van era. Mainly because MA and LA have skinshifters(very, very nasty) and stronger sacreds although i might rate LA lower than EA depending on the situation.

[Saint_Dude]

It seems that we already have a mod that addresses many of the imbalances of sacred units; namely CB.

If you nerf the stats of many of these units, they cease to be interesting. CB nerfs them by increasing their gold cost, and increasing the point cost of high blesses (which are used to make certain sacreds particularly irksome). Seems reasonable to me.

[thejeff]

But it does many other things as well. I would prefer a more focused change.

I'm not at all sure that all high bless strategies need to be made more costly. I think the problems are more narrow.

Obviously a total nerf to the stats makes them not useful, but there should be a point at which they're still good, but don't dominate.

[Gandalf Parker]

It might be possible to chop the van nerf out of CB (I havent looked at it). Or maybe Quantum will make pieces available as seperate mods.

The ability to mod is very important to us. The many MANY switches, map commands, mod commands, that Johan has written into the game allows us to not just gripe about things but to actually come up with changes and TEST THEM.

Possibly, part of the problem with getting the CB mods suggestions noticed is that it has so many changes in it which might be dependent on each other. The end result might be ok but we cant see if the whole package has to be accepted for it to work. Testing bits of it seperately would be good, I think.

[Saint_Dude]

In my mind they dominate with numbers, not stats.

If CB is not going to be used, consider using the CB prices for sacred units (at least the problematic ones) as a starting point, and then tweaking the numbers slightly to account for the greater ease of formulating strong blesses in vanilla.

In vanilla; Vans and Helherdlings could cost 110 gp, Jotun Skinshifters 90 gp, Shadow Vestals 45 gp, and maybe even the Mictlan jags could use a bump to 30-35 gp.

The only unit IMO that it may be preferable to nerf stat-wise as opposed to price-wise would be the Niefel Giant. And that is because they are already so bloody expensive. Decreasing their chill aura from +13 to +10 would probably be sufficient (maybe overkill).

[llamabeast]

I agree CB addresses all these issues, and in fact I think I like it overall, insofar as I know what it does (I've played one MP game with it, and I approved of the changes I noticed). But CB isn't used for all MP games for a number of good reasons, mainly to do with the fact that the large number of changes is confusing when we've all got used to the vanilla game.

So, I think a more focussed mod to fix specific issues is a good idea. We can probably learn a good bit from CB though - although we can't just take the changed units directly from CB, because they have been changed as part of a context of many other changes.

So, quantum_mechani, if you read this your opinion on what changes could be made to the units in question would be very much appreciated.

To answer another point, as I say it's important that the overpowered units remain strong - we don't want them to lose their interest. They just should be beatable with a good strategy, and recruiting other units instead of them should be a viable choice for the Vanheim/Niefelheim player.

Saint_Dude - again I don't really speak from experience, but I think I have heard players saying that even very small numbers of double blessed Vans can be almost unbeatable, in which case just increasing the cost might not be enough. I'd welcome more opinions on this.

Decreasing the cold aura on the Niefel giants sounds like a good idea - but as Sombre says that may not be possible (and Sombre knows his modding so I am inclined to believe him). I think perhaps a decrease to their protection might make it possible to cause them a bit more pain before your units pass out. Thoughts?

[llamabeast]

D'oh! Somehow I missed your post quantum, don't know how I managed that.

Very interesting, thanks for that. I think I might well consider using the pretenders and scales part of CB in future games I run (I think I like the whole mod, but it can be a bit confusing and also many of the games I run are for newer players, and it would be good if the manual remained accurate for spells and forging).

I still wonder if it might be useful to have a specific anti-super-sacreds mod, usable if people don't want to use the modified pretenders and scales (I can imagine some people wouldn't like those changes). Adding Lanka to the list sounds like a good idea.

I will try to have a play with the nations in question tomorrow - not really had much of a chance yet.