Mod: Pythium, the Second Empire

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Redeyes

I have two immediate reflections:
Keeping the Artisans capital only isn't really warranted - they are pretty abysmal in all areas but forging, which actually isn't very good anyway.

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

I agree that artisans are really so sub par there's little reason to build them. Since they have so many randoms and you only need one in each path, building more than two or three is a gamble, since you're likely to get a duplicate path and thus wasted a valuable capital-mage slot.

I'd like to keep them as cap-only for thematic reasons. I'll likely boost them in some another way. Now that I think about it, I could give them 10% F, 10%A, 10%E, 10%S and 10%W additional randoms to make it possible to get some "Savants", like renessaince geniuses that have mastered several forms of art. With those randoms, they'd always get that one quarantieed pick and had ~41% chance of getting at least one of those 10% randoms for some crosspath forging action. I admit, they'd still be inferior choice to Alchemists, but Alchemists sort of outlive their usefulness in the mid-game once you have stabilized your research and enough of the W picks to act as acid spammers.

I'm not really a advocate of wacky randoms, but they might make sense in this context.

Originally Posted by Redeyes

Theosis is too cheap compared to similar spells. Call Amesha Spenta has higher path and research requirements (5 astral, 8 research), and a cost of 50 pearls (under cbm, 60 otherwise). The summons from Theosis are superior in most ways, why it ought to be more expensive.

Yeah, LDIceasre brough that up. I'm making another version Wednesday and I'll price them better for that. I'd like to keep them "relatively" cheap though, so I'll probably make the spell somewhat harder to cast to justify that. I was thinking of S5H3 (so you need at least cap on emperor and thus con6) with 50 gems.

Although I kind of disagree on the Archangels being superior to Spentas. Their combat stats are pretty similar, Arch Angles have somewhat higer awe and better average hitpoints, but all Spentas get full item slots (3 of the archangels have restricted slots). Spenta of Sky and Metals is clearly better than any of the archangels and Spentas diversify their respective nation more (3 of the six spentas get you to N and also 3 get you to higher E), they also get 5's in some paths for some good global casting action. Only two of the archangels diversify (Glorifier and Healing) and other angels only give high paths on paths you already have good access to. I'd say that they are pretty much equal as summons and I'd say that CBM Spentas are a bit overpriced in relation to how difficult they are to get for Caelum (besides, as astral summons they have to be competetive with RoS and RoW).

Originally Posted by Jack_Trowell

Principes seems overpriced at 15 gold. They only have slightly above average stats and equipement. The tower shield is of course good against ranged attacks, but the medium armor means that arrows that aren't blocked will often wounds the unit. And gold cost is not supposed to be about equipement but stats, and for what I see, for supposed "elite" units, theyr only get a few 11s instead of the base human 10.

As such, 12 gold each would seems like a better price, but maybe I am missing something about them ?

Well, vanilla Pythium Pricipes are heralded (or at least were heralded some time ago) as one of the human best infantry in the game. They are like custom made to act as meat screens for the communions. The ones in this mod are a bit nerfed because they lost a point of defense when I changed their weapons, so 14 gold could be warranted. But I'll see if any other players have anything to say about this, it's been a while before I have played CBM Pythium somewhat competively.