Fixing up Tartarians ?

[13lackGu4rd]

tarts are just silly. for only 10 death gems you get the *best* summonable troop possible, and with further investment(GoR, items, GoH/Chalice) you get the *best* SCs and very diversified magic paths! the only balancing factor is that everyone has access to them, and death magic isn't that hard to bootstrap into even with no death magic.

however I must disagree with you guys that making them more expensive will balance them. quite the contrary Imho. making them more expensive means that nations with no death at all(besides bootstrapping that is) would be at a severe disadvantage due to not having enough death gems to get hordes of tarts. death nations start death site searching a lot earlier and usually also have some natural death income from their capital, so they'd still be able to summon many tarts...

if you want to balance tarts just weaken them Imho. the insanity can stay as long as they're still the best choice for SCs(besides wishing for unique SCs perhaps) and maybe lower their chance to start feebleminded, so even those who didn't win the race to GoR/Chalice would still have a decent amount of non feebleminded tarts to work with...

[Burnsaber]

Or you guys could try out Llamabeast's Endgame Diversity Mod which was made to fix this exact issue (tarts being the only SC option)

[Doo]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Or you guys could try out Llamabeast's Endgame Diversity Mod which was made to fix this exact issue (tarts being the only SC option)

I agree this is a good mod, and it adds flavor to the game.

[Festin]

Or we could reduce the cost of generally overpriced national endgame summons to make them worth using and add some diversity to the endgame.

[Squirrelloid]

I totally support 30d tarts and 5n GoR! GoR for everything!

[Belac]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I totally support 30d tarts and 5n GoR! GoR for everything!

Actually, that is a really good idea (the 5N GoR especially). There's lots of stuff that would make interesting commanders (OK, I'm reviewing my turn in Mooseknight right now and wishing I had the nature gems to spend GoRing an Umbral), but 20 (or even 15) Nature gems is quite a fair amount.

I think there's substantial value in a cheap SC with severe and unavoidable drawbacks. There are other things we can do with Tarts that would weaken them relatively. For example:

GoR doesn't work on them. You don't get one of the 1/5 who are already commanders, summon another. That would weaken Tarts overall without changing the relative power of nations with more Death gems.
Instead of Shattered Soul (which still makes them useful on defense), they sometimes get Lost in Time and Space.
Tarts Leave After A While, as the magical bonds holding them on this plane weaken and they plunge back into Tartarus.

[Foodstamp]

I think the reason they made tarts so cheap is for rapid end game cleanup. This is great for SP if you want the option, but it is predictable and annoying in almost all end game situations in multiplayer.

[thejeff]

Cheap Tarts are actually balanced better. That lets those who don't have the Chalice and/or GoH summon enough to get useful ones.
If they were sufficiently expensive then they'd only be worthwhile if you could cure all you got and whoever could hold onto the Chalice/GoH would dominate.

If you could change mechanics to balance them better, I'd make them uncurable, even by the Chalice/GoH.

[Sombre]

I think more expensive and incurable is the way I'd go.

[Micah]

More expensive and incurable just raises the luck factor of what chassis types you end up with and what afflictions they come with. Tarts are a needed end game balance mechanism to unlock magic paths for certain nations and shouldn't be constrained too tightly. Adding in other summons is a much better idea IMO, as it increases strategic chassis selections as opposed to increasing the importance of luck. There are also a reasonable amount of counters available to tarts IMO.