Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Festin]

Celestrial General is quite nice, but it still has some weak points:
*)No earth bless for thugs. Boots of messenger will do the job of course, but, as I see it, the whole point of Kenzoku and Ghost General is their low cost, and this means minimal equipment (something like Demon Whip/Vine Shield, I think). In thier current state, Jomon cannot rely on thugs in midgame, because they will not have enough of them.
*)Need to empower to summon Dai Oni.
*)He does not help to get underwater.
*)He is quite expensive. With their non-sacred mages, Jomon likes good scales.

I think I would try to do something with Ghost King, which really shows how messed-up Jomon is. Who actually uses Ghost King apart from Jomon?

Low HP thing seems a bit illogical: why are Tien Chi soldiers 10 HP then?

I think Aka-Oni Samurai are far better then other Jomon units, including archers. But archers could be very nice, hypothetically, if Jomon had reliable 2F and 2A.

Some suggestions:
1)Reduce samurai armor weight. Come on, it is ridiculous, really. Jomon infantry is not overpowered in any way, since there is an obvious counter for them.
2)In CBM, Jomon can summon Kappa commanders early on. Nice, but a bit pointless, because they are too weak to be used as thugs and have nobody to lead. Give Jomon a low-level Conjuration spell that summons several regular Kappas, or change an existing spell so that it summops a Kappa Chief and 10 regular Kappas(more expensive, of course).
3)I do not know what can be done with their mages and path access. Probably somebody more experienced can suggest something without ruining the balance.

[rdonj]

Well, I managed o3/p3 on him with decent dominion. You just need to take 3 negative scales.

[Micah]

You keep harping on their non-sacred mages but they have a perfectly functional sacred researcher. Granted he's not doing anything in a fight, but your combat mages are actually pretty cheap because they're not sacred, while you can fill out your labs with really cost-effective guys.

[Trumanator]

Not to mention that the W or N random monks become absolute monsters when placed into a communion. 0 enc, 0 gem reinvigoration and POTS are nothing to sneer at.

[Frozen Lama]

Hey, don't rip on the ghost king. he is a very good expander/rainbow

[Squirrelloid]

I've used GK with plenty of nations, often UW ones! He's a great expander early on against non-archers non-mages - which means UW you can guarantee a province/trn so long as you avoid the hydromancers (they're the ones with sea trolls and a kraken). Land nations need to be a little more careful (or give him air magic!).

Jomon:
1) Samurai armor's huge encumbrance is irrelevant. If they acquire more than 20-30 fatigue, you're doing something wrong. Namely, not killing the enemy fast enough. You have 6 damage katanas as the *low* end of your weapon options. At the high end you have 10 damage glaives. Since all the units you will ever buy have str 11, that's 17-21 damage per guy. That's enough to really matter against even elite infantry. Throw on some strength of giants and its your own fault if you start fatiguing out.
2) Earth bless can make a lot of sense as Jomon - specifically for your summoned thugs. But it also benefits your sacreds - the yamabushi are well worth using *even without a bless*. Don't overlook the H2/H1 thug that comes even earlier than the other one - he can self bless and has only slightly worse stats. (Also, only requires E gems iirc, instead of precious astral).
3) Jomon's magic is good. No seriously, you have access to everything but D natively, and you have a summon that has D magic (i forget which offhand - its the swamp one). Who cares if they're not sacred - they're dirt cheap for how good they are. 4 total paths for 160g and recruit anywhere is pretty nice - it comes out to around 11g upkeep, which is less than 2g/RP in upkeep - its not winning any efficiency awards, but its certainly not notably bad either.

And since you can (and should) buy a lot of them, you'll have the path combinations you want, and access to boosters in most paths. The only boosters you won't have reliable access to are air and fire, and for the most part you won't care. Heck, you have the coveted E+S in combination, so you can make coins to S-boost. IIRC, you can get to RoWs without needing your pretender involved.

Site search aggressively (you'll be able to use auspex, augury, apsu, arcane probing, gnome lore, and haruspex trivially) to get good gem income.

Map move 1 a problem? Use your air income to make boots of flying.

4) Samurai archers suck. No seriously, don't buy them. Go-hatamoto, aka-oni, ashigaru, and yamabushi are about the only troops you should ever buy.

5) The monks are just amazing, but not for research. They're less efficient researchers than your other mages (no seriously, they've got half as many RPs for more than half the cost, meaning they cost more upkeep/RP than the mages do). What the monks excel at is being handed a master matrix, and leading line-backer communions in which they get to use awesome spells (W+N monks), or casting AoE air shield (A monks) on your shield-less troops. The F and E monks are acceptable researchers, and the cost of getting the really awesome monks.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

5) The monks are just amazing, but not for research. They're less efficient researchers than your other mages (no seriously, they've got half as many RPs for more than half the cost, meaning they cost more upkeep/RP than the mages do). What the monks excel at is being handed a master matrix, and leading line-backer communions in which they get to use awesome spells (W+N monks), or casting AoE air shield (A monks) on your shield-less troops. The F and E monks are acceptable researchers, and the cost of getting the really awesome monks.

Math error not in my favor. I'm halving the wrong thing in this analysis. Monks are more cost-efficient than your other mages.

That said, the other mages are (generally) more use efficient (you'll want some monks, but won't need them in quantity), and most certainly more *time-efficient* for research. Getting there first is generally better than getting there cheapest.

[Festin]

Thanks for some good suggestions (I did not really notice yamabushi, for example), but, in my opinion, the main points still remain.

Sorry, but Jomon magic is simply not good. Sure, there are nations in LA with worse mages, but not too many. Tien Chi magic is good. Marignon magic is good. Jomon magic is not. I have played 2 MP games with them (and several SP), and the most vivid memory is a huge crowd of W1N1, A1N1 and E1W1 Onmyoji hired in a vain hope to get an F2.

I did not mean that earth bless is completely useless for Jomon. But here the in-built frustration factor of Jomon manifests again: you need earth bless for thugs BUT your mages are not sacred and you have a reliable access to earth. So, it's a kind of a lose/lose situation. Typical.

Moving around those huge monk-powered communions which are supposed to be a trump card of Jomon using boots of flying does not really look like a solution.

Nushi does have D1, but she is Conj-5, needs W2 and can only be summoned in swamps. Well...

Go-hatamoto, aka-oni, ashigaru, and yamabushi are about the only troops you should ever buy.

Why ashigaru? I did not really find any use for them. You start with 10, and they do a good job as archer decoys, but I never saw a reason to buy one.

[rdonj]

Hmm. At first glance, yamabushi don't really seem to be a real improvement over go-hatamoto without a bless. Care to elaborate on their usefulness, squirrel?

[Squirrelloid]

rdonj: Yamabushi have (1) higher attack than go-hatamoto, (2) damage 10 weapon vs, damage 8 weapon (21 vs. 19 damage before drn), and (3) map-move 2. You're also likely to have some sort of bless unless you played for pure scales, most of which are going to be at least plausibly useful. Finally, they require relatively few resources compared to their gold cost, unlike most of your troops, so they're easy to 'mass' - I usually take good dominion as Jomon to push my likely great scales so i'm buying 7+ of them every turn.

Originally Posted by Festin

Thanks for some good suggestions (I did not really notice yamabushi, for example), but, in my opinion, the main points still remain.

Sorry, but Jomon magic is simply not good. Sure, there are nations in LA with worse mages, but not too many. Tien Chi magic is good. Marignon magic is good. Jomon magic is not. I have played 2 MP games with them (and several SP), and the most vivid memory is a huge crowd of W1N1, A1N1 and E1W1 Onmyoji hired in a vain hope to get an F2.

Ok, first of all: castle aggressively. If you have less than 3 castles at the end of year 1, you're probably doing something wrong. If you hire mages at all your castles every turn, and continue castling aggressively, you should get most variations you need.

Second: both of your mages are useful. The Onmyoji only really come into their own later on - i'd focus on the other earlier. He'll get you easy access to haruspex and gnome lore, and you'll probably pull an augur and auspex before too long. As your anti-rush strategy should involve alteration research, these are the mages you want to shut down a rush anyway because the early earth magic in alteration is killer. (Suggested research: alt2 -> thaum2 -> evo2 -> conj3+ OR alt4 OR constr++. This gets you all the site searching spells as well as the necessary rush counters before the end of year 1.)

I did not mean that earth bless is completely useless for Jomon. But here the in-built frustration factor of Jomon manifests again: you need earth bless for thugs BUT your mages are not sacred and you have a reliable access to earth. So, it's a kind of a lose/lose situation. Typical.

First, your god doesn't *need* to do anything for you except provide good scales. So grabbing a major e-bless really doesn't involve any opportunity cost except your scales are worse than they would otherwise be. So who cares if your mages aren't sacred? That means you don't need to waste effort trying to bless them all either, and since your priestly options kind of suck, sacred mages would be even more aggravating.

Moving around those huge monk-powered communions which are supposed to be a trump card of Jomon using boots of flying does not really look like a solution.

Monk-powered communions are *a* tool in the jomonese toolbox, not the only tool. You have summonable thugs capable of raiding, you have good battle magic especially in earth and astral, and you have solid troops. You even have mages capable of casting Wind Guide and Flaming Arrows (F2 + Phoenix Power + 3f gems - so keep an eye out for good indie archers). The communions should come out for big fights only, and as your Onmyoji can all teleport with a cap, they are easy to mass when necessary, and are your go-to mages for communions because they can slave themselves up on their own.

Nushi does have D1, but she is Conj-5, needs W2 and can only be summoned in swamps. Well...

Since your major early research goals are in alteration, conjuration, and construction (following acquisition of site searching spells), conj 5 is not that inconvenient. Also, swamp forts are cheap, so you have good reason to want a swamp anyway. And you'll have W2 by the time you have conj 5. IIRC, she also has decent water magic, so you can use her to break into Streams from Hades with some boosters for D3 access. Conj 5 is plenty early enough for death access.

Why ashigaru? I did not really find any use for them. You start with 10, and they do a good job as archer decoys, but I never saw a reason to buy one.

Ashigaru have a length 5 weapon, and you'll have a pile of N2 mages. Panic + repel sounds like a tasty combination. Also, cheap chaffe is always potentially useful, especially when your cheap chaffe is better armed and armored than most of the independents at a similar resource cost, and the independents are much harder to mass. Deploy them against average morale foot soldiers or cavalry, provide some mage support (re:Panic, but also LoS, Wooden Warriors, etc..), and the lowly ashigaru might surprise you. With sufficient panic-spam, even elite soldiers are vulnerable.

Note that the yamabushi's glaive is length 4, so still good for repelling a wide variety of targets - they could easily be mixed into blocks of ashigaru for some punch.