Conceptual Balance Mods - Version 3.0

[Jurri]

Here's some suggestions to disregard at your pleasure. Thank you, quantum and Turin; I like your iterations of the mods way better than the previous one's. I won't be commenting on the balance here, only aesthetics.

On formatting, I notice there are a lot of troops that don't have modifications done on them. I assume these are for ease of modding; however, a lot of commanders seem to be missing, at least from the national themes. (Niefel jarl, sidhe commanders...) Also, at least the readme for the item mod lacks information on the changes to hell sword aside from the cost. You don't really need a readme, in my opinion, since with proper formatting you might as well put all the information you want in the actual mod-file.

I'd suggest modding the slottage on the Thing That Should Not Be: at the moment it has a head-slot, but no head, and it loses it's drain life attacks when given a weapon. I assume the drain life comes from the tentacles, so this doesn't make sense. Thus I'd suggest removing the head slot, replacing the life drain attacks with the life drain tentacle some critters use and making it a permanent part of the Thing. Although this would make 'em really sweet SCs, it's not really a balance issue, since you see them only once in a blue moon anyway. There might be other inconsistencies with the slottage on lesser void summons, too.

For thematical reasons Caelum should have water magic on the seraphs, in my opinion. Increasing encumberance and possibly adding other mali like removing the body slot or a misc slot would be more thematical to my mind. See, no comment on balance even on this controversial issue, go me!

The Ulm BF hero, the member of the third tier seems to have a random name. At least I got him with two different names recently. Neither was Hanif or Carsten (the first name being from the heading in the mod and the second from the description.) Can the name even be fixed?

The noise weapons aren't consistent. At least the wail of wailing lady and the demonic laughter of the Demon Jester are not AoE, even though it makes sense that noise affects everyone on an area. I would suggest renaming the attack of the Demon Jester to something else. With the lady it's harder: Maybe make the attack AoE but easily negated by MR?

The spell Second Sun costs 320 to cast, even though the mod-file has it at 350. Is this a hard-limit, then? Anyway, I assume this is a typo and there's one zero too much

The anthemant newt lacks a description.

There was something else too, but my [censored] computer went and crashed on me in the middle, so. Maybe it'll come back to me...

[quantum_mechani]

Jurri said:
Here's some suggestions to disregard at your pleasure. Thank you, quantum and Turin; I like your iterations of the mods way better than the previous one's. I won't be commenting on the balance here, only aesthetics.

On formatting, I notice there are a lot of troops that don't have modifications done on them. I assume these are for ease of modding; however, a lot of commanders seem to be missing, at least from the national themes. (Niefel jarl, sidhe commanders...) Also, at least the readme for the item mod lacks information on the changes to hell sword aside from the cost. You don't really need a readme, in my opinion, since with proper formatting you might as well put all the information you want in the actual mod-file.

I'd suggest modding the slottage on the Thing That Should Not Be: at the moment it has a head-slot, but no head, and it loses it's drain life attacks when given a weapon. I assume the drain life comes from the tentacles, so this doesn't make sense. Thus I'd suggest removing the head slot, replacing the life drain attacks with the life drain tentacle some critters use and making it a permanent part of the Thing. Although this would make 'em really sweet SCs, it's not really a balance issue, since you see them only once in a blue moon anyway. There might be other inconsistencies with the slottage on lesser void summons, too.

For thematical reasons Caelum should have water magic on the seraphs, in my opinion. Increasing encumberance and possibly adding other mali like removing the body slot or a misc slot would be more thematical to my mind. See, no comment on balance even on this controversial issue, go me!

The Ulm BF hero, the member of the third tier seems to have a random name. At least I got him with two different names recently. Neither was Hanif or Carsten (the first name being from the heading in the mod and the second from the description.) Can the name even be fixed?

The noise weapons aren't consistent. At least the wail of wailing lady and the demonic laughter of the Demon Jester are not AoE, even though it makes sense that noise affects everyone on an area. I would suggest renaming the attack of the Demon Jester to something else. With the lady it's harder: Maybe make the attack AoE but easily negated by MR?

The spell Second Sun costs 320 to cast, even though the mod-file has it at 350. Is this a hard-limit, then? Anyway, I assume this is a typo and there's one zero too much

The anthemant newt lacks a description.

There was something else too, but my [censored] computer went and crashed on me in the middle, so. Maybe it'll come back to me...

Thanks for the input.

On the formatting problem I will happily pass the issue on to Edi who is handling that along with the readmes.

The thing that should nor be named change sounds like it makes sense.

I have thought a lot about the Caelum issue, and I feel that really high encumbrance is less thematic than the younger seraphs not knowing water magic (think Man's crones).

Not sure what is up with the BF hero, I can't see any mod commands that would have messed that up, and if it is Illwinter's error I don't think it can be fixed.

I believe the wailing lady attack is AoE. As for the demonic laughter, just imagine you have to also be looking right at the demon for a damaging effect.

Second sun should be fixed next version, but good to know about the hard limit.

The newt had a description in some version, must have somehow got deleted.

[Turin]

The name for the member of the third tier seems to be always random. In the unmodded testgame I made to get all the heroes, he shows up as Radan.
I guess illwinter wanted to make them like the knights of the stone or the master of the games,so you can get more of them, but then decided otherwise and forgot to fix his name.

I could alter the description though, changing "Carsten" to "This one".

[Jurri]

Hey, it would be really cool if you got more members of the third tier! It's not like you'd get too many in any case, what with the forced misfortune and all. The description change would be appropriate as things stand.

The Caelum thing: Seeing how ice is the very guiding element of the theme, and water is the path for ice, I'd think water magic rather essential for them. With spell casting encumberance at 12, as it's now, quickness isn't too good no matter what spell you spam. I never played Caelum, but the little bit of versatility that water gives looks rather important to enjoy using it. You could always remove the body slot to prevent switching to something more economical, as well as making them suspectible to lightning (is that possible?) to reduce their usefulness in wrathing purposes. (They need to carry lightning rods to balance themselves when flying or something ) Not that wrathing is a problem with so restrictive a path requirement. Heck, I'd almost rather see them dropped to A1W1 than losing the water... I might be in a minority, though, so maybe I'll just shut up. (But c'mon a glorified illusionist!)

Why not change the weapon to demonic gaze, then? That would be more plausible to me. Or something obscure, like 'demonic juggle' or 'demonic trick.' Is there a special reason for staying with laughter?

[quantum_mechani]

Jurri said:
Hey, it would be really cool if you got more members of the third tier! It's not like you'd get too many in any case, what with the forced misfortune and all. The description change would be appropriate as things stand.

The Caelum thing: Seeing how ice is the very guiding element of the theme, and water is the path for ice, I'd think water magic rather essential for them. With spell casting encumberance at 12, as it's now, quickness isn't too good no matter what spell you spam. I never played Caelum, but the little bit of versatility that water gives looks rather important to enjoy using it. You could always remove the body slot to prevent switching to something more economical, as well as making them suspectible to lightning (is that possible?) to reduce their usefulness in wrathing purposes. (They need to carry lightning rods to balance themselves when flying or something ) Not that wrathing is a problem with so restrictive a path requirement. Heck, I'd almost rather see them dropped to A1W1 than losing the water... I might be in a minority, though, so maybe I'll just shut up. (But c'mon a glorified illusionist!)

Why not change the weapon to demonic gaze, then? That would be more plausible to me. Or something obscure, like 'demonic juggle' or 'demonic trick.' Is there a special reason for staying with laughter?

Well, I consider the ability to throw lightning bolts more important thematicly than a point of water. And they are not just glorified illusionists, flying mages are very rare and always useful. It is not like they can no longer use water magic, the high seraph is actually on average a better water mage than before due to the elemental random. I understand I can never fit everyone's opinion of thematicness, but if I hear more compliants along these same lines from others I will probably try to find another way.

The same goes for the demonic laughter, it seems the best way to me, but if other people have a problem with it, I may change it.

[Jurri]

Hmm, alright. I guess what gives me the image of ice being so essential is that almost every piece of description tells us how the Seraphs make the ice armament of the Caelian warriors, which in the game's context should be hard to do without water magic. (Surely the high seraphs can't be bothered with such a menial task!) I can't find a single reference to lightning or thunder, though, but maybe I'm just lax. Now that was just me being snide, sorry, I'll shut up on the matter. Thanks for the work again, though; I like most other parts of the mods!

[quantum_mechani]

Jurri said:
Hmm, alright. I guess what gives me the image of ice being so essential is that almost every piece of description tells us how the Seraphs make the ice armament of the Caelian warriors, which in the game's context should be hard to do without water magic. (Surely the high seraphs can't be bothered with such a menial task!) I can't find a single reference to lightning or thunder, though, but maybe I'm just lax. Now that was just me being snide, sorry, I'll shut up on the matter. Thanks for the work again, though; I like most other parts of the mods!

Well, you know, I actually agree with you. I had them 1w1a to start, but I got complaints that they couldn't toss lightning (orb lightning not enough I guess). So, as I said, no pleaseing everyone.