Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Dimaz

Squirreloid, I think you're wrong regarding Sea Kings. And I hope I can consider myself an experienced player.

If you'd like to defend SKC you're welcome to.

I'll admit, I've screwed around with SKC in games. I'm not going to pretend I think its actually good though. I certainly don't think the King himself is worth the 55w cost, or that he's anything special as a thug or mage. And the gold upkeep from a single casting of SKC alone is substantial and punitive.

But if you have a case to make that SKC is a worthwhile spell, please make it. My curiosity is perked.

[llamabeast]

piqued. Curiosity is piqued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

Sorry, I am reading the discussion properly as well, I just couldn't resist since I've been reading about eggcorns this morning.

Can't reply properly to the discussion since I'm at work. But Nightfall - the EDM creatures are the result of a great deal of testing and community feedback. Many of them have been strengthened as a result of this feedback. This certainly doesn't mean that they are perfectly balanced yet, and more feedback is always welcome.

Personally I feel that there is a chance that the Zmey is a little too powerful. Previous iterations were extremely weak. I think the Zmey is interesting in that it's an almost unique example of a "monster" in dom3 - it's powerful in combat, but certainly isn't an SC and doesn't really benefit very much from magic items. It is easily killed by heroes kitted out to kill it or by elite troops, but it is powerful against standard troops.

As for the Kraken, I am pretty sure that it is underpowered. I've had real problems getting it to be at all interesting without either giving it excessive magic or making it more powerful than the pretender Kraken. I think that for the next iteration I may add some fluff to say that it's a different kind fo the pretender kind - less intelligent but more physically powerful. Then I can give it better stats and it can be a proper sea monster to be feared, a little like a watergoing zmey.

[Executor]

Anything people used to rush probably isn't junk. You either got Tarts or you rushed to get Eroys.

EDM in fact has marginalized elemental royalty. As Eroys are not cost efficient compared to EDM summons now. And I've seen them used in the brief time between no clams and EDM.
As for Seraphs, I'd for one still use them, but it's not the 100 gems cost that'a s problem, it's the some 300-400? gems you have to invest without hammers and clams to get a mage to summon one. That's why I suggested lowering Wish to S8.

As for the Sea King, I've seen him used a load of times before EDM, and he was in fact, great. Someone who didn't catch a Water Queen could still get a Sea King. I've seen Dimaz use them regularly, WingedDog, Psycho, me, etc.
Corwin used them to smack my tartarians in a game not long ago.

But as for Krakens, I agree they are junk. And Ettins too, if they were free they'd still be useless.

But as far Eroys go, I said it before and I'll say it again, either their cost needs to be lowered or the cost of all EDM increased.

[Dimaz]

Sea kings have regen, quickness, cold and poison res and some prot without items. With helmet and fb you have fr also. With vine shield and rainbow armor, ama and resilience it's a killing machine with more chances to survive battle involving lots of mages than Grendelkin, unless you equip Grendelkin with resistance items only, but SK also deals lots of damage with quickness. I managed to kill equipped tarts with such sea kings. And before EDM they were *the* water summon, unless you needed water queens for underwater conquest. With CBM1.6 (I never played later versions) + EDM it's a hard choice for me between Grendels and Sea kings. Also, the free units are really nice under Army of *+ FW + AM + MR. They can absorb lots of damage and act as a very good shield due to high HP.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Can't reply properly to the discussion since I'm at work. But Nightfall - the EDM creatures are the result of a great deal of testing and community feedback.

There is a _massive_ difference between balancing something at turn 60 and turn 20, which is when a lot of these chassis can _easily_ hit a game.

To me it just seems obvious all the emphasis has been put on the former and not enough on the latter. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe the fact that I played a few vanilla games in between playing CBM 1.6 and CBM 1.92 gives me a different perspective.

[llamabeast]

Turn 20? Which chassis are you thinking of? That's pretty early.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Turn 20? Which chassis are you thinking of? That's pretty early.

An awake sage plus capital mages can open level six in a school of magic by about turn 16 (Depending on nation).

If your capital income then matches what you want to summon your golden.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Dimaz

Sea kings have regen, quickness, cold and poison res and some prot without items. With helmet and fb you have fr also. With vine shield and rainbow armor, ama and resilience it's a killing machine with more chances to survive battle involving lots of mages than Grendelkin, unless you equip Grendelkin with resistance items only, but SK also deals lots of damage with quickness. I managed to kill equipped tarts with such sea kings. And before EDM they were *the* water summon, unless you needed water queens for underwater conquest. With CBM1.6 (I never played later versions) + EDM it's a hard choice for me between Grendels and Sea kings. Also, the free units are really nice under Army of *+ FW + AM + MR. They can absorb lots of damage and act as a very good shield due to high HP.

Sure, but for the almost the same cost of that sea king with brand and dragon helm you could have 2 bane lords with boots of quickness, brands and dragon helms. Bane lords start with decent armor and no enc, so we can grab 2 vine shields for the same number of gems as your shield/armor combo. The only thing we're missing at that point is regen, but we gained chill aura and 0 enc, and we have 2 thugs instead of one for basically the same cost.

Now, you can argue that isn't w gems, so we could compare to Hidden in Snow which gives us a thuggable commander, a bunch of good troops (better than trolls), and 1-3 decent to exceptional mages.

And neither of those options cost us gold in upkeep.

I mean, yeah, its not that the Sea King is that bad, its that he costs far too much.

-----

Executor:
Yeah, i saw *some* ERoys after gemgens went unique, but no one was rushing them anymore. And I still see some. I'd say I see them with about the same frequency. In both cases its mostly the queens. Fire Kings and Earth Kings have always been pretty lame.

I will agree they are overcosted, but I would argue they have *always* been overcosted.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

An awake sage plus capital mages can open level six in a school of magic by about turn 16 (Depending on nation).

If your capital income then matches what you want to summon your golden.

So.. if you're Abysia with a very focused research strategy you could have early Zmeys? With no gear? I'm... not really that impressed.

You do realize Zmeys lose to skellie spam without a RoR and some sort of reinvigoration, right?

Being able to pull something awesome out early is the whole point of an early research strategy. I don't think a turn 20 naked zmey is really all that more awesome than kitted Eriu thugs by turn 10...

[GFSnl]

I agree. The Troll could use a little discount.