Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Starshine_Monarch]

Hm... What about making empowerment in Earth cheaper for those that need bloodstones? I know you can't mod the cost of empowerment, but how about this?

Take MA Ulm for example. Create a national spell for them at Construction 6 called "Empower Smith". Using the same idea from a Dragon's or Skratti's mage/monster forms, this spell would permanently change the caster into a new "Empowered Smith" unit with the stat-line of a Master Smith, but the new unit would have #magicboost 3 1 and one less Misc. Item slot, thus giving the smith a boost in Earth Magic for roughly the cost of a second Earth booster, the downside of course being you can't pass this around like a normal booster. This of course couldn't be cast twice, because you'd be changing into the exact same unit number, so trying to boost a second time would have no effect.

A few downsides I can see from here would be this spell would be completely pointless to be cast by anyone with a better physical statline than a Smith, such as Earth Kings and the like. Other mages however can only dream of the Smith's statline and, if they meet the path requirements, would be able to cast the spell. This wouldn't be that bad if the mages only had paths that they could pass off as being from a Master Smith, but when your enemy starts seeing Empowered Smiths with N2 or some other path that Smiths don't get as randoms that he might get suspicious. These however, are unavoidable drawbacks of this method.

As for Agartha, just take the above and replace "Ulm" with "Agartha" and "Smith" with "Oracle" or "Golem Crafter" The same Spell could be used to empower Oracles of both EA and MA Agartha I believe, though we would need a separate one for Golem Crafters, Ktonian Necromancers and Tomb Oracles... Though I hate to take away Burnsaber's precious Spell Slots, it wouldn't need very many to do this if it's just a few nations that really need them.

[Sombre]

You can't mod transformation spells cleanly.

[Fantomen]

Possible or not it would be a bad solution IMO. Too complicated and cluttering, and only adressing specific nations.

I´d prefer a new earth booster with funny side effects to that, but as I stated before I don´t think it is needed from a balance PoV.

Can you copy the effect of another item into a new modded item? I mean: is it possible to duplicate the earth boots into a misc item? I suppose not since this discussion looks the way it does, I just thought about it...

[rdonj]

I think that would be possible, yes. However, I'm also pretty sure that doing so wouldn't help because you'd be wearing two items giving the same ability... so it would be like wearing two pairs of earth boots, just one of them happens to be hanging around your neck.

[Fantomen]

Worth trying isn´t it?

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

I´m also behind the pebble skin suit rather than tome of gaia.

But honestly I don´t think Ulm or any other strong earth nation is weakened by the loss of a second earth booster.

I think of it this way: With no gem gens the only way to "generate gems" is to use dvarwen hammers. This favours earth nations, a lot. And without a second earth booster it will be even harder for non earth nations to forge enough hammers, increasing this advantage.

Hardly any nation ever needs blood stones to forge dwarven hammers.
Either you get to earth-2. Then you can forge dwarven hammers with earth boots. Or you don't. Then you can't make bloodstones.
Theoretically if you get to earth-1 you can trade for earth boots, make a bloodstone and forge dwarven hammers. In my experience people are asking for dwarven hammers directly if they don't want the bloodstones for gem genning.
The uses that I got out of the booster part of bloodstones was really only to reach high level earth spells or have some more in need. For that reason I'm against a cursed replacement booster.

For Ulm this is even more significant with their innate forge bonus, Ulm is now the undisputed master of gem saving in a world where gems just became a lot more valuable.

Gems are not more valuable through scareness, since they are not a market commodity (you usually don't compete with other people buying gems for money).
With 40 gems Ulm's forge bonus saves theoretically 10. With 80 20.
Compare this with Niefel where are Jarl saves you ~ 25 (assuming that it is roughly on par with a Bane Lord + ring of regen + boots of the messenger) while costing 500gp, it is clear that forge bonus is better the higher the gem to gold ratio is.

[Fantomen]

I´m not talking of the possibility to forge hammers, I´m talking of the opportunity to make enough hammers. Most nations will get their cruical one or two hammers, but how many can match the rumbling gemsaving engine of ulm or agartha?

If you expect to have fewer gems (with no gemgens) the relative advantage of using those gems effectively will increase. This is true even if you´re only looking at the closed economy of individual nations. And they do increase in value with scarceness. The example of Niefel Jarl is good because it illustrates how different ways to save gems now become more important. The relative advantage of recruitable SCs is increased now, as is the value of gems and the advantage of hammers.

[Sombre]

I don't agree hammers are more valuable now. They save a proportional amount so unless you have too many gems to conceivably spend in a turn or too few gems to do anything, their value doesn't change based on gem quantity.

[thejeff]

I noticed in an SP game that MA Oceania has a Mermage (1416) without magic as a PD leader instead of a Turtle Chief, at least on land. That wasn't intentional, was it?

Looking through the code, I can't see how that happened, but I'm not much of a modder.

[Redeyes]

Is there any reason in particular that the Caelum Eagle King multihero gets Air 5 instead of 4?

I just had one who also got the air random (2.5 % chance) - 6 Air seems like overkill on a hero, even for Caelum.