Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

What for? Just to nerf all blood powerhouses to the level of pre-CBM EA Agartha?

That would only be the case if those nations were otherwise weak and depended on underpriced (as opposed to fairly priced) blood summons. As Redeyes pointed out, that's not necessarily the case. And in situations were it is you could compensate those nations with favorably priced national summons or better priced national versions of some of the generic summons. And if it were the case that all blood nations needed cheap summons to compensate them you could account for that by pricing blood summons very favorably compared to other gem summons. Just not as favorably as now. The main point is you'd now be comparing apples to apples instead of trying to translate the gold based costs of current blood summons to the gem based costs of non-blood nations. And blood nations would no longer have gem based summons + gem quality blood summons but have to make tough decisions as to how to allocate their gems.

Interestingly, given all the discussion about zmey, I can see demons being a competitive use of F gems.

Originally Posted by Redeyes

I would price most troop blood summons as being worth 2 gems.

That seems a fair starting point to me as well, comparing their quality to that of the various gem based troop summons. But I'm not at all a blood magic hater and would be open to, for instance, a demon for 1 F gem, moving up to 2 E gems for a demon knight. Blood magic could be a national advantage that allows for considerable massing of high quality troops - it just wouldn't be open ended as it is now, being based on gold.

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Why in CBM thread then?

Like I said, I don't expect the suggestion to be treated seriously but who knows maybe llama will think it's the best idea since the removal of gem gens.

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Valerius

That seems a fair starting point to me as well, comparing their quality to that of the various gem based troop summons. But I'm not at all a blood magic hater and would be open to, for instance, a demon for 1 F gem, moving up to 2 E gems for a demon knight. Blood magic could be a national advantage that allows for considerable massing of high quality troops - it just wouldn't be open ended as it is now, being based on gold.

I think you might be under pricing them now. I would peg the demon knight as being stronger than a wight, other than not being a leader (which is a large drawback) at least at the level of a bane. Devils, Fiends of Darkness, and Storm Demons, also have the advantage of flight and can excel as raiders due to that, you don't need a lot of storm demons to make a competent raiding force.

I think the exercise is somewhat interesting because evaluating blood summons in gem-terms aids in comparisons towards other summons.

[Immaculate]

Tlaloque need to have their prices reduced by about 20-30 gems. You get a 1 in 4 chance at diversifying your magic but only late game... and it costs 60 gems. Thats too much. I don't think they should come earlier- they should just be like 30-40 gems, not 60.

Not a big issue but its an obvious problem that can be fixed easily enough.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Redeyes

I think you might be under pricing them now. I would peg the demon knight as being stronger than a wight, other than not being a leader (which is a large drawback) at least at the level of a bane. Devils, Fiends of Darkness, and Storm Demons, also have the advantage of flight and can excel as raiders due to that, you don't need a lot of storm demons to make a competent raiding force.

I think the exercise is somewhat interesting because evaluating blood summons in gem-terms aids in comparisons towards other summons.

Uh, this is kind of a delayed response but that's one of my trademarks.

I don't disagree with your analysis but I think part of what I had in mind was trying to "sell" the idea to blood nations by making the transition to gem based summons not quite as painful as it would be if you completely went by the utility of the units. Also, for thematic reasons, generally speaking I would like to encourage blood nations to use blood summons rather than other gem based summons.

Anyway, you've humored me enough that you can expect I'll PM you to help set prices and play in the game in the event I do give this a try.

[shonuf]

Regarding MA Ulm, they do seem a bit OP at the moment. But I do love the theme of a magic hating nation.

My "nerf" suggestion would be to remove the S/A from the 10% random of the master priests. Simply going after their magic diversity, where they should be thematically weak.

[solops]

I am returning to Dom3 after a hiatus of a few years. Just grabbed the latest patch (327). Is the Balance Mod 1.92 compatible with it?

[quantum_mechani]

Yes.

[earcaraxe]

I have some ideas about pretender changes I would like to share with the public. I would like to spark a discussion about them, as these are not tested, but based on my playing experience. Exact numbers are educated guesses, might need tweaking. Your insights are very much welcome, please feel free to share ur opinions.

Some general reasons behind my ideas:
- B should be cheap as everyone always thinks “I’ll just empower them if needed”.
- I think its ok for the titans to have high magic paths unless it makes a good major bless significantly cheaper (which wasn’t my intention). My goal was that a titan (that has tipically 2 paths innately) should be a master of those two, and not much else. Lead an army, cast devastating battle enchantments then fly home and put up his ritual. Clearly most of them could use some help. (One idea would be to use the “magicboost” modding command and raise their skill by about two in the given paths, which would bump up their magic ability without strengthening the bless.)
- The summoning bonii are fun, cool, have their niches and thematic. I like the already present ones very much, some more would be nice. It makes the chassis more „special”, even „loveable” (for me at least). They are intended not to bee too strong, and most certainly they are not strong at all.



scorpion king – summon allies: 3 scorpion beasts

son of the sun – F3, bonus fire snakes (4) when summoning them

great warlock – generates 3 slaves per turn (presently still suboptiomal to other astral rainbows)

lord of the desert sun – summon allies: 3 lions

lord of the summer plague – D3F1N1

lord of fertility – autosummon ??? (something thats thematic with fertility, random animals perhaps)

lord of the wild – N3 B3 (totally redundant paths)

mother of tuathas – A3 N3, summon allies: 3 sacred tuatha warriors. (otherwise redundant paths. if i take her, i want her to be really better than my mages)

colossal head – N2 B4 (i wonder if it gets used at all)

great black bull – N1 B3 (without slots B1 is so weak)

dragons – level 3 F/W/N magic, blue – amphibious, green dragon - recuperation. (got these ideas from valerius)




what do u think?

[Valerius]

I can't comment in detail on boosting pretender magic paths since I'd first have to check which nations have access to the various pretenders and how that compares to existing bless options. But even a 1 point increase in base path is significant because it saves you a lot of design points when aiming for a major bless. So I think it's worth being cautious even with the less useful blesses. Magicboost would get around that, though.


In terms of summoning monsters (I think you'll want them to be autosummoned so they don't require a turn of pretender time), I think it's a fun perk but probably not enough by itself to get someone to choose them if they weren't already viable choices. The summons will mainly be of use during expansion but unless they're completely OP it will take a few of turns to build up enough to be effective and at the same time these titan pretenders presumably need some gear to be able to solo provinces themselves. So there's a delay before things really get going - compare that to an SC who can expand from turn 1/2 (depending on your tolerance for risk).

Hmm, is it possible for pretenders to arrive with retinues? That could be interesting as you'd have an extra expansion party right from the beginning as well as a small number of autosummons each turn and once the titan was equipped he could start expanding as well. Maybe they could have a first shape that summoned a large number of monsters and then the next turn shift to a second shape that had a far lower number of autosummons? Haven't tested to see if it would work.


But as regards dragons I don't think they should be boosted. I did add on water breathing and recuperation - but that was on dragon summons, which is a different matter than pretenders. Dragons already see plenty of use (they're certainly my preferred awake pretender) so no boost is necessary IMO.

[earcaraxe]

maybe im not high on dragons because of the nations i play then.

i was specificly thinking of summon allies, not autosummon. I agree the summon allies option wouldnt make an underused pretender more used. but it would add a little color to them, without the risk of making them OP.