Conceptual Balance Mod 5.4

[quantum_mechani]

Turin said:
I think that the problem with the vine ogre isn´t the vine ogre himself, but rather the ivy kings. I doubt anyone complains about precious n3 mages forging an ivy crown and then using their time getting 2 ogres per turn. Especially when you compare them to lamias.

The ivy king on the other hand doubles that efficiency and is already a bargain summon. A very high hp, no encumbrance n3 mage for only 20 gems is really sweet.

Regarding the drakes, I find all of them to costly with the exception of the cave drake, which makes an excellent tank. The others should drop to 6 gems in price.

As for Scs/thugs, the nerf to lifedrain weapons makes them a bit less dominant, Ice and arch devils are fine now imho, but banelords are still to cheap. I would raise the price to 20 gems.

I actually don't see the Ivy Kings as so supremely useful, most of the time I prefer lamia queens.

The cave drake is indeed a nice tank, and the ice drake sees quite a bit of action too. The fire drake not so much, because of alchemy, but still used sometimes. The wyvern is actually still pretty bad, particularly compared to black hawks, I will probably improve it slightly next version.

Bane lords I have seen a lot fewer of since they went to 15 gems, together with life drain nerfs. Now it is mostly just the uniques, pretenders and later on tartartains that become army crushers.

[PDF]

Turin said:
I think that the problem with the vine ogre isn´t the vine ogre himself, but rather the ivy kings. I doubt anyone complains about precious n3 mages forging an ivy crown and then using their time getting 2 ogres per turn. Especially when you compare them to lamias.

The ivy king on the other hand doubles that efficiency and is already a bargain summon. A very high hp, no encumbrance n3 mage for only 20 gems is really sweet.

Regarding the drakes, I find all of them to costly with the exception of the cave drake, which makes an excellent tank. The others should drop to 6 gems in price.

As for Scs/thugs, the nerf to lifedrain weapons makes them a bit less dominant, Ice and arch devils are fine now imho, but banelords are still to cheap. I would raise the price to 20 gems.

About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.
And Ivy Kings should *not* be able to "reproduce" so easily, so have N2 instead of 3 and cost a little more.
Ogres should be back to their base stats and costs 2 or 3 gems.
I don't see any Drakes in my games, and IMHO they should cost 4 to 6, no more. Who'll care to have such high-cost, one-per-summoning, sort of critters except in the very early game - where gems are quite scarce ?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.
Also Devils are still too strong : "real" devils should have some less HP (32, like a Jotun) and morale 15 for all kind of devils, 18 still makes them rather unbreakable.

Maybe I'm going to make my own mod ...

[quantum_mechani]

PDF said:

About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.
And Ivy Kings should *not* be able to "reproduce" so easily, so have N2 instead of 3 and cost a little more.
Ogres should be back to their base stats and costs 2 or 3 gems.
I don't see any Drakes in my games, and IMHO they should cost 4 to 6, no more. Who'll care to have such high-cost, one-per-summoning, sort of critters except in the very early game - where gems are quite scarce ?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.
Also Devils are still too strong : "real" devils should have some less HP (32, like a Jotun) and morale 15 for all kind of devils, 18 still makes them rather unbreakable.

Maybe I'm going to make my own mod ...

Hmm... I'm not sure I understand, I thought you were criticizing the mod for being _too_ extreme?

I don't know why you don't see drakes in your games, probably play to big of maps? When you are in conflict around turn 20 or before they are highly useful.

Your suggested nerf to the ivy king would nerf him to oblivion, and the ogres would be rarely if ever used.

[Graeme Dice]

PDF said:
About Ivy Kings and Ogres, it's exactly the problem.

Why do so many people think that vine ogres are so dangerous when they are only slightly more useful than the infinite skeletons from raise skeleton?

ID/AD are still very powerful, and too easy to get by non blood nations, I suggest to make them B4W3/B4F3.

A SC without effective lifedraining can be taken out quite easily by your elite national troops. The devil commanders can never be made 0 encumbrance, so they will always tire out eventually.

[quantum_mechani]

Graeme Dice said:

A SC without effective lifedraining can be taken out quite easily by your elite national troops. The devil commanders can never be made 0 encumbrance, so they will always tire out eventually.

Not quite, properly equipped (including regeneration and reinvigorating), few national troops alone would be capable of defeating them.