Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

[UninspiredName]

With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest. This means that one Mage with Wish can cast the spell, for non-pearl reasons, at least once every third turn while losing no astral gems at all. I understand it's level 9, but this strikes me as sort of overpowered. It might be better to prevent wishing for Astral Pearls, or decrease the amount of Pearls you can wish for.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.

[dirtywick]

UninspiredName said:
With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest. This means that one Mage with Wish can cast the spell, for non-pearl reasons, at least once every third turn while losing no astral gems at all. I understand it's level 9, but this strikes me as sort of overpowered. It might be better to prevent wishing for Astral Pearls, or decrease the amount of Pearls you can wish for.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.

Just so long as any gems you get are more than what you'd get with Alchemy I think it's fair. After all, genies don't allow you to wish for more wishes

[alexti]

Zen, it's good you've decided to do this again for Dom3. I greatly appreciated your CB work for Dom2.

I have feeling that in Dom3 there're too many design points (due to dormant option and no need to spend points on fortresses). The indication is that I often find that I have spare points (meaning that I already got everything I need to get the nation working but I still have plenty of points left) that I spend on some minor improvements (like taking awake pretender, just for extra research and earlier searching) or couple of growth scales (extra gold won't hurt even though I'd have enough). That is in contrast with Dom2, where the pretender setup was usually full of difficult compromises. I think there're several contributing factors:
1) There's more money in the world, so it's easier to come up with required amount despite worse scales;
2) Magic scale seems somewhat weaker. +1 research for 80 points? Together with fewer cheap mages Magic+3 seems to offer little advantage over Magic+1;
3) Uber pretenders were somewhat weakened and I think that makes fewer reasons to invest a lot of points into powerful multi-path SC.

This issue is also somewhat related with the bless issues on small (and not-so-small maps).

[Nerfix]

FrankTrollman said:

It sure is. However, a Forge Lord has an extra point of dominion and a point of Fire Magic. If you have a Fire Magic of 3, that costs your Forge Lord 24 points and your Lord of War 98 points. If you have a dominion of 4 it costs your Forge Lord 7 points and your Lord of War 21 points.

So that's 156 points of Forge Lord and 169 points of Lord of War.

And if the Lord of War gets anything else, the Forge Lord can get it for the same price or less.

It's cut and dried. The Lord of War is crap.

-Frank

Why would I want Fire magic? All that Marverni needs is an E4 bless for the druids and good scales the I don't think any pretender does it cheaper to Lord of War.

[B0rsuk]

1. Light cavalry archers

Ok, so it makes sense from realism point of view that cavalry can't shoot bows as accurately as infantry. But there seems to be consensus that light infantry is already poor enough and doesn't have a purpose. Why nerf already overpriced unit with lower precision ? I say make their precision 10 for gameplay's sake. It will at least allow to use 'fire and reatreat' tactic with some success, and enable attrition war. Even with precision10, light cavalry with bows:
- costs much more than regular archers. At least twice as much
- bigger size, bigger targets, you can't pack as much firepower into small area
- bigger size probably means they eat twice as much. Bigger base price means higher upkeep cost, as well (correct me if I'm wrong)
- if I wanted archers with acceptable melee ability, I'd take indy archers 10/8, ones with shortbow, short sword, ring mail. 8 morale, but still.
- only advantage light cavalry has is speed, and speed is not THAT big advantage on Dominions battlefield. I think both flyers and heavy cavalry on flank are better for attacking commanders.
... so light cavalry deserves something to make it useful. Even leaving precision out of this, it's already much worse at archery. Increase in precision could be justified by saying they shoot only when all horse's hooves are above earth, or stop before shooting ,etc.

2. I understand reasons for nerving independent mages(to make nationals more important), but they're somewhat too pricey for what they do. Is it intentional ? Two examples (can't remember name) - 1N 1H 10% random mage costs 180 gold. Crystal Sorceress - 1A 1S 10%random costs 180 gold, too. I would decrease the price for many indy mages by 20. Or are they intentionally overpriced ? Is Forest Survival sooo valuable or what ?

3. Slings (damage) aren't affected by strength. Why ? If slings were changed to be affected by strenth, perhaps Blood bless would be marginally more useful, althrough I can't think of a single holy unit with sling. Or are slings already too powerful ?

4. Air9 bless. It certainly has its uses, but they're very narrow. Niche, tricky, combo-ish. Air9 bless basically requires a combo to work. Some people probably are attached to it, but how about replacing Air9 bonus with +2 precision ? I'd be afraid to make it any bigger. But people would have much more to choose from. Precision would help mages as well as archers. I don't think it would overpower archers, because you can't mass sacred archers so easily. Alternatively, it would make a little bit of sense to replace shock resistance with poison resistance (fumes, breath etc; air could help with that). Poison attacks are much more common.
My goal should be clear: not to make air bless simply stronger, but rather give it more general purpose.

[Nerfix]

The_Tauren13 said:
A fiend of darkness is about equally strong as a devil. Which is effed up, seeing that devils take a better mage, are more expensive, and higher research.

Devils are Fire Immune, have a Heat Aura and get a 7 dmh Trident for the extra cost of what, 2-3 blood slave?

[KissBlade]

Heh Zen, I think you know my issues about dom III. Celestial Masters s2 and no old age across the board. Also maybe have mid age TC be able to do something battlemage wise. Make spears not suck. Order scales is too good. ABYSIA NEEDS HELP. I'll think of more sometimes. =)

[Endoperez]

Zen - I hope you don't mind me commenting on these suggestions. Also, as Potatoman said, *applause*. I Wish you Luck on your quest. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon23.gif[/img]

Potatoman said:[*]A 1001/1000 aged commander is just as likely to die as a 100/50 aged commander.

Actually, this isn't the case. A commander with 1000 maxage is less likely to die than a maxage 50 commander, regardless of how big maluses they get from old age. 10 000/500 commander is less likely to get an affliction than a 32/28 commander. Of course, the first might actually be close to dying from the age percentage malus to HP.

FrankTrollman said:

Drakaina

Lord of War

Titan (Female)

Drakaina is a monster. In Dom3, monsters like Dragons and Drakaina get Dominion of only 1. So there's a reason for it, but the reason isn't enough to keep anyone from changing it if it doesn't work.

I'd like to see Lord of War as a Nataraja equivalent: 0 cost chassis, with perhaps 40-point paths. You could take ANY path, but not high. Water for defense and Quickness, or Earth for some protection and Earth Power/reinvigoration, etc.

Female Titan is an excellent warrior, with attack and defense of 15. This is very good. However, she actually has fewer hitpoints than other size 6 titans, both male and female. Her Owl is a nice addition, because Length 6 #bonus attack gives her a chance of Repel regardless of her actual weapons. However, she has Nature and Astral, neither of which are good paths for a warrior. Astral makes her weak against Magic Duel, and I don't think she's available to any non-Astral nations, while Nature only gives Regeneration, forcing her to Enchantment. If she had a (new) helmet called Magic Crown or Magic Tiara as a helmet, she'd only need some armor, and if she had Water instead of either Nature or Astral, or Astral 2/3 instead of Nature, she'd be better.

Also, even while it's true that it's easier to take high level magic with expensive pretender that starts with more magic in a path, levels 9 and 6 aren't always needed. For combat pretenders, another path at just 3-4 might be good enough, and for e.g. weak Air nation A4 is actually a very nice choice (see below).


Son of the Sun was also mentioned. The S1 version, at least, could benefit from beings S2-3 and 75 points instead of S1 and 50 points. If he had some other path instead of Astral, he could be used as a combatant, but Astral makes him vulnerable.

PDF said:
1) Huhu, what about nerfing Horror Mark ?

2) Both Air boost items are now A4, it's really hard to have mages able to make them. It means you need base A4 to be able to progress, it's too harsh a requirement.

3) I have issues with Bless effects, but these aren't moddable...

4) About archers, it's not that logical that lowly goblinoids make as much damage with a bow that a human or better - after all the bow effectiveness is related to archer strength and skill, as well as bow quality isn't it ?

Thus the too-easy hordes of cheap archers will at least be less effective that better, more expensives ones.

Issue is that I'm not sure we can *add* weapons in mods?

1) Horror Mark isn't the problem, but Horrors with Horror Marking attacks, and the fact that Doom Horror attacks are currently too common. When weapons can be #cleared, I'll do a test mod which removes Horror Mark effect from all Horrors' attacks. I'll try if adding another #specialeffect or #specialeffectalways works, or if the horror mark effect of their attacks can be made resistable, or something.

2) There are two Air boosters that only require Air, and both are available at Constr 4. At that level, Water has one booster, Robe of the Sea. Fire has one, Flame Helmet, which isn't good in battles. Earth, Death and Nature have good and cheap boosters, but Earth has no boosters after that, and Nature only Treelord's Staff at Nat 5. Death has Skullface, which is good. Blood has access to three boosters at this point, but Armor of Souls requires Blood 5, Blood Stone some Earth and Brazen Vessel Blood 4.

In short, Air is different, but not much worse than other. One Air 4 mage can forge two boosters, and then even an Air 2 can forge more, and the hand slots are left free for a Dwarven Hammer if you can get your hands on one.


3) This is a very good point. Bless effects cannot be modded. While it's nice to throw ideas around, don't expect anything to happen via the Conceptual Balance mod.

4) Why would Goblinoids be inferior to humans? I think you mean Bakemonos with this. They are size 2, as humans, and some kind of lowly demons.
Dominions doesn't model hit locations, so archer's skill doesn't affect damage. Currently, Precision is the only stat that affects archers. It's good enough, of course, and Precision could differentiate different archers from each other, but why should independent human archers be made more viable instead of national ones?

Also, weapons can be added, but currently not #cleared. This means that weapons' damage can be changed, but it can be impossible to change some of their features, including #nostr.

UninspiredName said:
With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.

A Wish for gems gives amount of pearls that can be almost alchemized back into 100 pearls. 97 pearls and 1 gem in each of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Nature, Death. With two Wishes, you could alchemize it back into 200 pearls. It'd ONLY be profitable if you had Alteration bonus site.

B0rsuk said:
1. Light cavalry archers

-prec to 10
- if I wanted archers with acceptable melee ability, I'd take indy archers 10/8, ones with shortbow, short sword, ring mail. 8 morale, but still.
- only advantage light cavalry has is speed, and speed is not THAT big advantage on Dominions battlefield. I think both flyers and heavy cavalry on flank are better for attacking commanders.

2. independent mages - Is it intentional ?

3. Slings (damage) aren't affected by strength. Why ? If slings were changed to be affected by strenth, perhaps Blood bless would be marginally more useful, althrough I can't think of a single holy unit with sling. Or are slings already too powerful ?

1 - Ligh Cavalry.
Their movement bonus isn't as good as it could be, because most archers of the various tribes have mapmove 2, and some of them have one or several terrain survival abilities. If all independent, non-mounted archers had mapmove 1, Light Cavalry would have some use.
There is more gold in circulation, so LC could be afforded when ANY archers are better than no archers.
LC should be better in battle than LI or archers. Light Lance would help, but that'd make Tien Chi LC weaker when compared to normal indy LC.

2 - Indy mages
Random picks were made more rare, and new paths from independent mages were made more rare. It's inentional.

3 - Slings
There isn't a #clear command for weapons yet. If there was, I'd mod slings so that they deal the same damage when used by str 10 units, more with higher strength, make normal slingers a bit cheaper, and make some slingers Elite with 12 gp cost and str 12, precision 13 (still lowered by sling's negative prec - they're hard to use properly). I'm still considering whether or not their range should be few grids more than for shortbows or not. I wouldn't mind my idea being incorporated into CB mod.

[B0rsuk]

My complaint about indy mages isn't that they're too weak, but that they're somewhat too expensive for what they do. I know they're meant to be weaker, but why make them so pricey ?

Crystal Sorceress (indy)
180 gold 5 res
shortbow, prec 14
mapmove 2
1A 1S 10% random
Other stats don't really matter, but generally lower (other than precision)

Gutuater (Marverni)
120 gold 1 res
1N 1H 100%random
prec 11
mapmove2 + forest survival
can perform blood sacrifices
Many stats, including attack, defence, morale higher than those of Crystal Sorceress

I'm fine with quality, but somewhat confused by price. Now they're not worth buying unless you really need some obscure item forged,
Hmm. I wish Luck scale slightly increased chance of getting random path. It would be both climatic and useful. Dom2 luck scale had repotation of being only midly useful.

[Twan]

About pretenders I'd like to see more misc slots added to the actually very weak ones (and/or perhaps some 1 in one path become 2) like it was done for dom2.

I also think that indie mages and shamans are overpriced (the question is less if it's intentional but if it's a good idea if you want to have all units useful ; in most paths 1 isn't sufficient to make a booster and diversity doesn't really worth to pay 180++ gold for a -sometimes old- mage you'll have to empower anyway).

For light cavalry I would reduce the price instead of making it more effective (say 15-18 gp if the standard archers stay at 10). Reducing the cost would make fast defensive armies (sufficiently big to inflict signifiant casualties to a normal one) a viable strategy without reducing the friendly fire if you use light cavalry as a reinforcement for other troops.

I think the price of light infantry should be reduced a little too (say worse militia 5-6, ultralight/tribesmen/light without javelins 7, most light 8). With more ressources to build heavies the light troops become even more useless than in dom 2 (of course you have more gold, but who will make prot 6 soldiers instead of keeping it for castles and mages ?). And reducing prices for weak units is globally a better idea IMO than raising prices for usefull ones, as it gives more utility to national leaders (with smaller armies the actually rarely used generals would never be used).

PS : about horror marking I also support a big nerf. As it is you just need 3-4 S2 mages, a level 1 research and about 20 gems, to condemn a SC to chain death (see the sad story of my pretender here)