Faerun - started

[Saber Cherry]

Huzurdaddi said:
As for Pythium's cheap communicants IIRC they cost 60 gold in the mod. That's actually quite expensive. A 1S caster should cost slightly less than 60 gold if it has no special abilities and communicants are in many ways less useful than a 1S caster. I still love communion though. It can be frighteningly powerful.

That's true; I may have been unfair, and should have left Communicants alone while just expensivizing the mages. 60 gold for a non-casting communicant with no magical or normal leadership is much higher than Illwinter's guidelines. However... I'd still buy them like crazy at that price Since, after all, Astral-1 mages are super-rare (1 in 4 vaetti hags; 1 in 8 80g sages; etc) and are far, far better than any other level-1 mage (other than blood). Communicants are almost as valuable as Slave Matrices, which are quite pricey.

Were the stats on Assassins improved? Well now, that could make a decent sized difference! Perhaps I should go back to Marignon ( I generally like them they have all of the toys, although their more expensive crossbowmen are a little bit of a pain ).

No stat changes, but they do gain additional armor (Armguards), and a third weapon (throwing knives) that may even allow them to take out indy commanders safely. So by default they are more powerful, though fully-equipped, they are about the same. The price also dropped by 5g. Slayers, OTOH, did not get the extra equipment or price drop, but they did get stat boosts.

One question: Did you Nerf pangaea's White Centaurs over your 1st version? A quick glance still shows the light lance ( did they have that in the stock game ) and decent stats? I thought that many people had been ( rightly ) overrun by these guys in your 1st test game. I don't expect them to be as big of a factor in a Faerun game ( although as his nearest neighbor I may be eating those words! ).

Yes, they are substantially nerfed... and yes, they were used very effectively in the test game They keep the light lance, but the defense was reduced and price increased, and thus should be about right now. Black Centaurs, OTOH, get an entangling magical Vine Spear, which is cool... but Carrion Woods can probably never afford very many of them.

[Jurri]

@Pasha: This is certainly far too large a map for me. Soapy and Huzzur, I salute you for your stamina. Iron men walk amongst us.

Bloodstones can be hoarded by Abysia rather effectively, btw. You need but an earth warlock and you're set. There's even a feedback-loop before you start arguing definitions, since every bloodstone yields 10 gold per turn if alchemized and thus pays the upkeep of an apprentice ... Come to think of it, using the gems to make dwarven hammers is also a cumulative proposition since every hammer can be used to save 5 slaves or more per turn . Such foolery aside, 15 slaves and 2 earth gems to get 1 earth gem a turn? Dang cheap, if you have the mages (like Abysia does) and ask me.

[Boron]

Jurri said:
Bloodstones can be hoarded by Abysia rather effectively, btw. You need but an earth warlock and you're set. There's even a feedback-loop before you start arguing definitions, since every bloodstone yields 10 gold per turn if alchemized and thus pays the upkeep of an apprentice ... Come to think of it, using the gems to make dwarven hammers is also a cumulative proposition since every hammer can be used to save 5 slaves or more per turn . Such foolery aside, 15 slaves and 2 earth gems to get 1 earth gem a turn? Dang cheap, if you have the mages (like Abysia does) and ask me.

Yeah but since we plan to play without forge of the ancients it is hard to get bloodstone forgers.
Abysia and Marignon DF are the only 2 nations who can get them.
But only every 8th Goetic master/Warlock has an earth pick.
Warlocks are capitol only, Goetic masters are difficult to get in masses with forced turmoil 1 for marignon DF.

I slightly nerfed them now too though.

[Boron]

Current Beta of my balanced hoarding mod:

Clam:
3W needed to forge = 20w or 15w with hammer

Fever Fetish:
3F 1N needed to forge = 20f 5n or 15f 3n with hammer

Blood Stone:
4B 1E needed to forge = 40b 5e or 30b 3e with hammer

Soul Contract:
5B 3F needed to forge = 80b 20f or 60b 15f with hammer

Reasoning:
Soul Contract:
6B would be extremely expensive with wish disabled. Payback time would be 160:7 = 23 turns or 17 turns with a dwarfen hammer. A dwarfen hammer is not so easy to get for Abysia + Marigon(earth random, blood stone and earth boots) and extremeley difficult to get for Mictlan, Mictlan needs to trade them or put earth on their god.
This way the Soul contract is still an option but balanced.
Also note that a scouting enemy will see your devils and then do a few flames/blizzards on that province likely.

Blood Stone:
First i wanted to make them earth 10 but then Abysia+Marignon , the only 2 blood nations that can forge bloodstones, would need to empower a guy to earth 2 first in order to forge bloodstones.

Fever Fetish:
First i wanted to make them 10n 5f but this way machaka would be the only nation which could forge them easily and they could massproduce them.

With 20f 5n they can be produced by all the classic fever fetish forgers but need 1-2 fire boosters.
In the long run they are still an investment to consider but they are imho balanced now also.

Clam:
Switched to W3 cause disabling hoarding for caelum, mictlan and jotunheim seemed unfair to me. For 20w clams can still be considered but the payback is 40 or 30 turns with hammer.

This mod is only a suggestion though, if the majority wants no hoarding at all this is easy doable too:

10.3 #constlevel <level>
Level of construction required to forge this item. This
level can be 0,2,4,6,8 or 12 for items that cannot be
forged. To disable a item, set this value to 12.

So i can simply disable them if wanted .

Just continue telling me your opinions since we have some time now anyways waiting for the last 3 players to join

[Oversway]

With 75 sites on a 400+ province map. I wonder if these nerfs arn't too much... its not like people arn't going to have a ton of gems anyways.

Then again, Atlantis is a good clamhoarding nation so maybe I'm just being selfish

[Boron]

Oversway said:

With 75 sites on a 400+ province map. I wonder if these nerfs arn't too much... its not like people arn't going to have a ton of gems anyways.

Yeah those gems are imho already more then enough

[Saber Cherry]

Boron said:
Reasoning:
Soul Contract:
6B would be extremely expensive with wish disabled. Payback time would be 160:7 = 23 turns or 17 turns with a dwarfen hammer. A dwarfen hammer is not so easy to get for Abysia + Marigon(earth random, blood stone and earth boots) and extremeley difficult to get for Mictlan, Mictlan needs to trade them or put earth on their god.
This way the Soul contract is still an option but balanced.
Also note that a scouting enemy will see your devils and then do a few flames/blizzards on that province likely.

Flames / Blizzards can be ignored by the contracted unit, if properly equipped. 1-H weapon, Burning Pearl, Fire Plate, Lucky Coin, Ring of Frost cost 25 gems and protect the carrier from lesser horrors, seeking arrows, ranged spells, and so forth. Abysians only need a Ring of Frost, since high HP and armor should protect them from seeking arrows.

However, 3 fire puts Soul Contracts totally out of reach for Jotunheim, Vanheim, and BF Ulm, simply due to mage paths. I'm not saying that 6B 2F is necessarily better... but 5B 3F in a very large, 75% magic site game seems to restrict Soul Contracts to only Abysia / Marignon / Mictlan, without making the price substantially higher, giving those nations a major long-term advantage.

Blood Stone:
First i wanted to make them earth 10 but then Abysia+Marignon , the only 2 blood nations that can forge bloodstones, would need to empower a guy to earth 2 first in order to forge bloodstones.

Vanheim (IMO) is the primary bloodstone nation, as it can not only forge bloodstones, but strongly benefits from them. Dwarves with a blood random would have a hard time forging high-blood, low-earth stones...

The changes to Clams and Fetishes seem good. Did you consider making Clams 2 paths, so that nobody can make them with normal mages and start hoarding them from turn 2? 3W 1N makes clamming harder by restricting the mages that can do it, and involves 3 discrete gem types.

I'm not participating in the game, just commenting as an interested observer. But I will mention one more thing... have you given any thought to nerfing the Soulstone of the Wolves? Since... I think it's bugged. Isn't it supposed to cast Howl only once?

[Oversway]

BTW: Ulm is *s00pa* in this mod. Wowzie. As is Atlantis.

Doing some test games, I don't yet see a big boost for Atlantis, at least not compared to other nations...want to clue me in?

[Soapyfrog]

I would deep-six soul contracts entirely if I were you. Just my opinion. Vampire Lords could be a problem too, you never know.

Actually I would deep-six all gem generators, but I guess in that case you'd have to do something about troll kings, sea kings etc.

But that's just my opinion, the nerfs you presented will probably work out OK, at least until the game goes crazy around turn 70 or so

[Huzurdaddi]

Oversway said:

Doing some test games, I don't yet see a big boost for Atlantis, at least not compared to other nations...want to clue me in?

Well seeing as I am your neighbor ... no

Aww heck ok. IIRC their basic infantry became quite a bit cheaper. Combined with the supply boost this made taking indeps quite easy. At least it did in my trial runs. Maybe it won't work out like that in the real game.