Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[decourcy]

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by decourcy

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

The biggest difference is that vanilla stone hurlers' boulders are stopped by shields. The vanilla and cbm hurlers should perform fairly similarly until you run into elite infantry, like the Tuatha warriors you used.

[Bat/man]

Well, in the other thread on Agartha I was pretty hardily lampooned.

I made the notes that the boulder throwers are very good.
Personally, I *like* the changes.

Is Agartha overpowered. Perhaps, although I never thought I'd say that. I really like the feel of the national buff (song of the mournful?)

I think the upcoming change to PD might be sufficient, to make them a simply relatively balance, interesting race to play. Agartha under CBM 1.9 can definitely surprise people. I think the idea of darkness is great, and I think your new proposal to implement it is good llama.

Mitigating against the stone throwers: you can take an AWEFUL lot of friendly fire casualties unless you find one of various ways to avoid.



[Aside: As an interesting mechanic, llama: I think the capital (and perhaps other cave citadels) should spawn darkness always.
Perhaps the way to do this is a free unit spawn (high protection, high mr, no slots, no movement, and diseased with 1 hp). Have this unit free cast darkness?

This way agartha would have darkness in its capitols (caves?) and yet could not move these units out to achieve darkness in other areas (as they die).]

[Admiral_Aorta]

Originally Posted by decourcy

I am playing a SP EA agartha vanilla at the moment, to see what is wrong with them. 9 precision hurlers that do 30 some damage, easily buffable by earth strength. That is not bad. I gained some indie mages with air, and had one follow behind casting wind guide. I am not having many problems.

I would play vanilla EA Agartha before vanilla EA Arco any day. I know, Arco has advantages but they have many weaknesses in the early game that are hard to recover from. They are the biggest rush bait in the early game.

you could have armies of nothing but markata in SP and not have problems, this is meaningless

[llamabeast]

The trouble with shields in the base game is that the shields stop the boulders completely, which obviously doesn't feel right.

decourcy: Since I don't really agree with any of your observations about in-game balance there's not much to be said really. If you think Agarthan hurlers are tougher than E9N9 Niefels then I'm at a loss (though if you just meant that hurlers are tougher when played by the AI then that's fair enough; any balance discussion involving the AI is pretty much irrelevant I'm afraid since it doesn't know how to play). Sorry CBM isn't for you! I will bear your observations on the hurlers in mind though, if other players also report similar feelings.

[llamabeast]

Rereading my comment it looks slightly rude; sorry if it came across that way. I'll review the boulder throwers but I think I disagree with you.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Rereading my comment it looks slightly rude; sorry if it came across that way. I'll review the boulder throwers but I think I disagree with you.

It might be appropriate to adjust the direct hit damage of the boulder slightly. In vanilla it was at 28 damage, now it's at 34 due to heightened strength and using another base weapon for it (with 10 instead of the old 10 damage.)

Other upgrades the boulder received is greater default range for the stone hurler, from 6 to 8, and it circumventing shields (as we have both repeated.)

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Redeyes

It might be appropriate to adjust the direct hit damage of the boulder slightly. In vanilla it was at 28 damage, now it's at 34 due to heightened strength and using another base weapon for it (with 10 instead of the old 10 damage.)

Other upgrades the boulder received is greater default range for the stone hurler, from 6 to 8, and it circumventing shields (as we have both repeated.)

Yes, Agarthan boulder throwers got better in a few key ways. Granted. Are they overpowered now, though? It would be nice to have better evidence than from a single player with little MP experience, especially as the traditional weakness of boulder throwers has been their susceptibility to clever scripting.

[decourcy]

And remember every Agartha player is going to use giant strength/strength of earth whatever. I noticed in my looking at SP vanilla Agartha, it is not just splash effect, they are better in every way.

Valerius, Don't think i am arguing with your good advice, i do spend a fair amount of time working placement, etc.
Also, i feel many players on here surrender to the demands of technique. I am an experienced gamer, and i win a fair amount concentrating on different elements of warfare.

We will see how i do in Smiting season.

[Executor]

Stone Hurlers have some preposterously big disadvantages.
The first one being terribly short range, meaning you can`t safely place them in any scenario and against any troops. Any sort of cavalry is just going to cut trough them as they can close the distance without the Hurlers firing.
The second one being their dreadful mushiness. There`s really no point in taking a bless for them either. Earth means nothing for archers and regen means nothing to monsters that can`t sustain themselves on the battlefield a few rounds for the regen to take effect.
And in the end they have no protection, no shield, no defense, so any combination of cannon fodder + archers will kill them.

They`re good and they have many uses now, but I doubt they need fixing. Besides, there are better nations with much better sacreds for the same gold ratio.