Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

Yea, you will be able to summon and forge. Just not enough to make difference, if you play as an underdog against a powerhouse.
Oh, and Astral Nexus will be even more imbalanced than it is now, because with your tiny gem income you will never ever come close to dispelling / replacing it.

Their tiny gem income put it up, and they had to pass 150s benchmark to do so. Certainly your similarly tiny gem income can afford the 30s for dispelling + whatever boost you feel is appropriate - that's like a 1:5 advantage in your favor!

New strategies wont arise out of *lack* of something. Heavy nerf of summons will make national troops more powerful and controlling territories with magic sites more important. This is the goal of this nerf, as far as I understand.

But then, your neighbour you just defeated in a decisive battle will turtle in his castles, sending black minions with bane venom charms everywhere (calling it 'fighting till the bitter end'), while somebody else will just go AI letting others claim their lands easily. I bet it sounds all-too-familiar. That other lucky dude, having suffered much less casualties and reaping much tastier reward, will continue to grow, while you will fall behind - and there will be no other resources to draw upon, just land and magic sites.

and... what stops that from happening now? I mean, even now with gemgens the same stuff happens, and your opposite is surely clamming/bloodstoning/fetishing just as hard as you are. There's no difference in comparative advantage here.

Or take LA Ermor and LA Rlyeh, for example. They get thousands of troops for free; at the moment you can try to use summons and SCs against them. Remove gemgens, and its your laughable recruitable troops against their endless hordes. Right, you might have one or two SCs, but so will they. Game over?

Troops which are just so much chaff... Surely any LA nation can do something about those with national recruits. Strategic and tactical use of your mages may also be more important in such a scenario.

How did they not end up with just as many SCs as you before, as well? I mean, Rlyeh gets a great clamming mage on an N random, so its not like they're going to lack for clams. Ermor has great access to death magic for all that crazy death thugging/SCing without alchemizing. I'm just not seeing how lack of gem gens means you no longer have an SC advantage against them.

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Its not that I necessarily agree with removal of gem gens, but I don't think it has the consequences you do, because everyone is affected equally. This means equal reduction in the number of SCs on both sides, assuming the two sides are actually evenly matched. (Otherwise, the stronger side should still tend to defeat the weaker side if they fight straight-up).

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Their tiny gem income put it up, and they had to pass 150s benchmark to do so. Certainly your similarly tiny gem income can afford the 30s for dispelling + whatever boost you feel is appropriate - that's like a 1:5 advantage in your favor!

Even if you have stored 100+ astral to dispel Nexus immediately, which doesnt happen all the time, he will just cast it again next turn. Did you ever cast Nexus in an intense MP game? Its 200+ astral pearls per turn.

and... what stops that from happening now? I mean, even now with gemgens the same stuff happens, and your opposite is surely clamming/bloodstoning/fetishing just as hard as you are. There's no difference in comparative advantage here.

Of course there is a huge difference. No gemgens rule makes land much more important, which makes any gap wider. I think its too obvious to explain in detail.
Also, there's a fat chance that other dude didnt even start clamming yet. Imagine that its Mictlan. He can rush like no tomorrow, but he cant start clamming out of the box.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Troops which are just so much chaff... Surely any LA nation can do something about those with national recruits. Strategic and tactical use of your mages may also be more important in such a scenario.

Say again? Ermor troops are useless chaff? With natonal unholy blessing? Really? Thousand of longdead legionaires with 16+ attack and high MR anyone? With darkness? Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre, anyone?
Rlyeh spawn is useless chaff? Void creatures, tramplers, huh? Not to mention that Rlyeh also has recriutable troops to support this chaff, which happen to be identical to MA RLyeh troops. And MA RLyeh is a very solid nation.

So yes, surely and LA nation can do something about these with just national recruits, which is why even with gemgens these two nations won most games so far.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

How did they not end up with just as many SCs as you before, as well? I mean, Rlyeh gets a great clamming mage on an N random, so its not like they're going to lack for clams. Ermor has great access to death magic for all that crazy death thugging/SCing without alchemizing. I'm just not seeing how lack of gem gens means you no longer have an SC advantage against them.

Ermor's got a weak research, so its gonna take a while before he can get SCs and clammers of his own.
Rlyeh... Well, in my opinion LA RLyeh is just crazy, in all meanings. But when X > Y, X/Y < X + a / Y + a.
In other words, when national troops dont matter as much as SCs and summons do, advantage in national troops also doesnt matter as much.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Its not that I necessarily agree with removal of gem gens, but I don't think it has the consequences you do, because everyone is affected equally. This means equal reduction in the number of SCs on both sides, assuming the two sides are actually evenly matched. (Otherwise, the stronger side should still tend to defeat the weaker side if they fight straight-up).

Affected equally doesnt mean equally hurt. Reduction in the number of SCs will strengthen some nations and weaken others. Also, see above about widening all gaps.

[Jarkko]

I think Machaka got the short straw with this version.

With Flaming Arrows being so difficult to cast in CBM the only hope for Machaka has been to burn gems for evocations (or to get Flaming Arrows up), craft items and summon stuff early on in the game, and expand rapidly, because their late game *sucks*. Except now there are too few gems available (this is *good*, it just hurts Machaka mid game a lot, and they already do suck in early game and late game...).

Everybody and their dog can enter the seas now, which is good. Well, except of course Machaka. Their troops are useful only to slow down the opponents before the fire evocations save the day; except of course the fire evocations can't be used under the waves.


Machaka desperately needs some help now.

Maybe a national version of flaming arrows with a lot less demanding requirements would be nice. Don't know if it would be possible have a flaming arrows with limited duration (like say one turn, so that the caster would have to recast it each round) or limited area (like AoE 10 or 20 or something), but it sure would help Machaka a lot.

Or perhaps the Black Sorceror could have Dragon Master as innate ability (to be able to summon fire drakes early on to bolster the lines in the early moments).

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

I think Machaka got the short straw with this version.

With Flaming Arrows being so difficult to cast in CBM the only hope for Machaka has been to burn gems for evocations (or to get Flaming Arrows up), craft items and summon stuff early on in the game, and expand rapidly, because their late game *sucks*. Except now there are too few gems available (this is *good*, it just hurts Machaka mid game a lot, and they already do suck in early game and late game...).

Everybody and their dog can enter the seas now, which is good. Well, except of course Machaka. Their troops are useful only to slow down the opponents before the fire evocations save the day; except of course the fire evocations can't be used under the waves.


Machaka desperately needs some help now.

Maybe a national version of flaming arrows with a lot less demanding requirements would be nice. Don't know if it would be possible have a flaming arrows with limited duration (like say one turn, so that the caster would have to recast it each round) or limited area (like AoE 10 or 20 or something), but it sure would help Machaka a lot.

Or perhaps the Black Sorceror could have Dragon Master as innate ability (to be able to summon fire drakes early on to bolster the lines in the early moments).

If you want to find a solution in line with has been done recently the Bane Spiders/Spider warriors could be made recruitable everywhere. The regular spider warriors are almost identical to man's wardens, except they aren't sacred and therefore have twice the upkeep.

The anywhere Bane Spiders might make the nation "assassination-centric", wouldn't call that entirely a bad thing - new dynamics are interesting and if the new strategy is more viable than the old one it's a "win".