Mod: Conceptual Balance 1.3, updated documentation

[Sombre]

Pretty sure rage and touch of madness were changed to cost a gem a version or two back.

The biggest changes this time around are to pretenders. I was talking about some of them with qm yesterday and it's amazing how the certain pretenders were given price cuts AND substantial boosts and only now seem worth the cost.

[Xietor]

It has been awhile since I looked at CBM, so the gem cost for Touch of madness may have escaped my notice before.

The Pretenders are very interesting. And this part of the mod is actually what I am considering using in my future mp games, though I need to look at each one carefully which i have not yet done.

The only Pretender(at 1st blush) I strongly disagree with is the Mater Lich, who is widely used at the vanilla cost. Why reduce the cost of pretenders that are widely used already? If a pretender is widely used at the higher cost, then a significant part of the mp community think the pretender is worth that cost.

I play the larger mp games, and perhaps the ML is not used as much in the blitz games. But I would not put too much emphasis on what occurs in a blitz setting.

[Zeldor]

Xietor:

You should be happy then that your favourite pretender got improved. Mine got more expensive :/

[Xietor]

Master Lich is a good pretender, and i have used him in 2 of my past 6 mp games. Also used the Lich and the Mother of Serpents. Mother of Serpents got reduced as well. I used the Immortal shin pretender in one, but more as a novelty. i do not think the Shin. unique hero is worth the cost.

In the 6th I used the Gorgon, whose price doubled. But I definitely understand the Gorgon being raised, though it is a shame since it is the signature Pangaea Pretender. But the Gorgon is not Pangaea only(:

Tyrant's favorite pretender IS the Master Lich however. And the Kingmaker poll showed several players using the ML, including one of my immediate neighbors.

So if the purpose of the Pretender portion of CBM is to create greater diversity, lowering the cost for a pretender already used more than most others would seem to work at cross purposes with that goal.

[Sombre]

Re: Gorgon - you should hopefully now see other signature pretenders like lord of the wild or great mother seeing use.

I thought the ML was ok at the previous price, but it is certainly possible that it's being overrated by people. It's definitely no PoD. I don't think it's been turned into a no brainer by the price reduction or anything.

[Zeldor]

One typo:

Lord of the Forest has "power to rally the beats of the wood" . Of course should be beasts, not beats.


The only one thing I don't like is increased cost for Risen Oracle. Yes, it is great pretender, but hard to do it with Agarthas as awake. They really NEED awake pretender and they also need good scales. When you meet Agartha you should be pretty much ready to face Oracle or Olm [and Olm could get some domsummon of small olms or smth else to encourage taking it awake or dormant].

[Xietor]

Agreed. The price reduction is small.

But I am not a noob, and I gladly pay the 100 points at times for the ML. Heck he was in the Hall of Fame in the 1st Big Game with 65 Nations for a long time. Shadow Blast and Banefire plus he can't die in his own dominion. And the Master Lich with astral/death combo can be quite evil, as you get risk free magic duels.

Similarly, Tyrant has played in many mp games. While there may be room for debate on his value, there is at least a strong consensus of players that favor him even at 100 points.

So my only thought is why mess with what is not clearly out of whack? We are in total agreement that many many pretenders cost way too much and are never used. And that is the appeal to me of the pretender portion of the CBM.

But I would resist the temptation to lower the value of pretenders that many expereinced mp use at the base cost. And I think the ML is the only one. So it is not a big deal.

As I mentioned to Coobe, the breadth of this mod is tremendous, and no one is going to be pleased with every single aspect of it. There is likely no other mod that has had the amount of work devoted to it. And maybe it will prompt changes.

I do think the Worthy Heroes Mod has prompted a change in thinking, as I recently observed the Agartha vanilla heroes look very Worthy! And I noted KO's comment in Kingmaker that there likely is no need to upgrade the new races heroes, as
they are tough as well.

In fact WH is so commonly used, even Edi thought one of the heroes that had been enabled in the WH mod was also enabled in the vanilla game.

So mods can serve as a testing ground, or beta test if you will. And if they work exceedingly well, then parts of them may be adopted into the base game.

[quantum_mechani]

Xietor said:
Agreed. The price reduction is small.

But I am not a noob, and I gladly pay the 100 points at times for the ML. Heck he was in the Hall of Fame in the 1st Big Game with 65 Nations for a long time. Shadow Blast and Banefire plus he can't die in his own dominion. And the Master Lich with astral/death combo can be quite evil, as you get risk free magic duels.

Similarly, Tyrant has played in many mp games. While there may be room for debate on his value, there is at least a strong consensus of players that favor him even at 100 points.

So my only thought is why mess with what is not clearly out of whack? We are in total agreement that many many pretenders cost way too much and are never used. And that is the appeal to me of the pretender portion of the CBM.

But I would resist the temptation to lower the value of pretenders that many expereinced mp use at the base cost. And I think the ML is the only one. So it is not a big deal.

As I mentioned to Coobe, the breadth of this mod is tremendous, and no one is going to be pleased with every single aspect of it. There is likely no other mod that has had the amount of work devoted to it. And maybe it will prompt changes.

I do think the Worthy Heroes Mod has prompted a change in thinking, as I recently observed the Agartha vanilla heroes look very Worthy! And I noted KO's comment in Kingmaker that there likely is no need to upgrade the new races heroes, as
they are tough as well.

In fact WH is so commonly used, even Edi thought one of the heroes that had been enabled in the WH mod was also enabled in the vanilla game.

So mods can serve as a testing ground, or beta test if you will. And if they work exceedingly well, then parts of them may be adopted into the base game.

Regarding the master liche, I have yet to ever encounter a veteran player using one, let alone winnning with it. I'm happy for someone to prove me wrong, play a duel and see how evil they really are.

As for a testing a ground for changes to the base game- only in the rarest circumstances. Firstly Illwinter has a said repeatedly they don't want to put much time into balance, and that's part of why they are supporting so much modding. Second, they are very reluctant to change anything that contradicts the manual. And thirdly their balance methods are different, while I have to use nerfs very sparingly, that is more or less the exclusive type of balancing Illwinter uses.

While I of course support using pieces and parts of the mod (that's why there is a segmented version), I do wonder if you like most the changes why you'd dismiss 75% of them out of hand.

About the magic scale, it's a very tough issue, it pains me either way it's set up. However, I have come to realize that using the dom2 magic scale in the end reduces one's options.

[darloth]

I found some spelling errors and other typos, so I fixed them. There were a couple of incorrect mod keywords as well, I'm not sure what they were doing, but now a couple of things in theory will work better.

I've only included the .dm because it's the only file I've changed, you can diff the changes if you want to see what exactly has been done. I've left alone all american / british spelling differences and not changed anything where I wasn't sure of the correct one, but it might be worth checking anyway. If you don't like me correcting your work, that's fine, just tell me and I'll delete the post, but I thought I'd at least offer the chance of other people benefiting from my 10 minutes going through with a spellcheck routine.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by darloth

I found some spelling errors and other typos, so I fixed them. There were a couple of incorrect mod keywords as well, I'm not sure what they were doing, but now a couple of things in theory will work better.

I've only included the .dm because it's the only file I've changed, you can diff the changes if you want to see what exactly has been done. I've left alone all american / british spelling differences and not changed anything where I wasn't sure of the correct one, but it might be worth checking anyway. If you don't like me correcting your work, that's fine, just tell me and I'll delete the post, but I thought I'd at least offer the chance of other people benefiting from my 10 minutes going through with a spellcheck routine.

Thanks Darloth, I certain don't object to some help in polishing. Every time I release a new version I realize right a way a half dozen little bugs/problem that I didn't catch.