Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 released! - Page 4

Smeghead · #31 November 8th, 2012, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fantomen

Did you install the latest patch? What OS are you on?

Ah, thank you Fantomen.
I have just purchased Dominions 3 and had assumed that the purchsed version was up-to-date.
I applied patch 3.27 and no more crashes.
Thanks again.

parone · #32 November 9th, 2012, 04:20 PM

lol. that's quite a handle

Smeghead · #33 November 10th, 2012, 10:15 AM

I'm relatively new to Dominions 3 and I notice the CBM mod is very popular for PBEM games.
There seem to be a hell of a lot of changes from Dominions 3 vanilla; is Dominions 3 vanilla badly balanced then, or do players just like to play with a different setup at times? Some changes seem rather arbitrary.

I've just been looking at a few of the changes and they really turn things upside-down: Dwarven Hammer now Construct 8(!) ... heck, the game could be nearly over before people get a discount on forging.

Also, I noticed some very powerful weapons available at low Construct levels.

Fantomen · #34 November 11th, 2012, 08:43 AM

Vanilla as is very unbalanced for multiplayer yes, CBM adresses that.

The changes are not arbitrary at all, but it takes lot's of multiplayer experience to understand why they were needed. It's admittedly a bit of a catch 22 there because you can no longer fully obtain that experience when all games already use CBM, you have to trust the veterans who came to these conclusions in the first place.

In the specific case of hammers, dwarven hammers were so good that it forced everyone to make them in order to compete in mp. Without dwarven hammers you lost, so every nation that did not have national earth magic had to take it on the pretender, this limited the number of viable pretender builds and thereby the number of strategies available.

This was not so much a balance adjustment as it was a way to diversify the strategic spectrum. Not only in the sense of pretender builds, but also because forging any item at all before you had your hammers made was wasteful playing, which really shaped the strategic options for competitive play.

Smeghead · #35 November 11th, 2012, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fantomen

Vanilla as is very unbalanced for multiplayer yes, CBM adresses that.

The changes are not arbitrary at all, but it takes lot's of multiplayer experience to understand why they were needed. It's admittedly a bit of a catch 22 there because you can no longer fully obtain that experience when all games already use CBM, you have to trust the veterans who came to these conclusions in the first place.

In the specific case of hammers, dwarven hammers were so good that it forced everyone to make them in order to compete in mp. Without dwarven hammers you lost, so every nation that did not have national earth magic had to take it on the pretender, this limited the number of viable pretender builds and thereby the number of strategies available.

This was not so much a balance adjustment as it was a way to diversify the strategic spectrum. Not only in the sense of pretender builds, but also because forging any item at all before you had your hammers made was wasteful playing, which really shaped the strategic options for competitive play.

Thank you for your reply, Fantomen.
Ok, that all sounds very logical ... but that makes every tutorial, walkthrough and FAQ for the various factions I've read on WIKI and watched on YouTube redundant and a complete waste of time

Kind of annoying.

Also, Earth seems kind of nerfed now, as well as Construction.
That means I'm even more of a noob than I thought I was and everything I thought I knew will need to be rethought with CBM 1.94 in mind, as CBM appears to be pretty standard for multiplayer.

And every time there is a CBM update, all strategies will need to be rethought.
New CBM versions must be keeping a lot of people busy reassessing their strategies.

Fantomen · #36 November 11th, 2012, 04:00 PM

It's unlikely that you will see any more changes on that game warping scale, most strategies deviced with the current CBM should remain viable.

Also, most of the discussion and work on CBM and most other mods is done in the dom3mods forum: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

Earth is not necessarily weaker because of the hammer removal. It's a matter of opinion, but consider that you HAD to make hammers before to compete. That used up a lot of your earth gems, now you can spend them on other nice things like crystal shields, earth boots, summons and battlemagic...

A lot of items were also made cheaper to balance the hammer removal, so construction is still a good path.

But yes, keeping up with CBM changes can be frustrating. Hopefully we are about to reach the point where only small adjustments will be needed.

Redeyes · #37 November 13th, 2012, 06:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fantomen

But yes, keeping up with CBM changes can be frustrating. Hopefully we are about to reach the point where only small adjustments will be needed.

Some of the balance changes seem fairly gratuitous without knowing their history and I would le to see them explained, like why Dai Tengu is so much cheaper than other summons (it's a really good spell), why Monkies have such cheap summons (Rudra!), or why the glamour nations got,so large compensation for changes (blood on Vans, forge bonuses on Bean Sidhe and Alfs) when no others got something similar.

Fantomen · #38 November 13th, 2012, 07:41 AM

The rationale behind the high degree of compensation to the glamour nations was that hammer removal hit them the hardest because they rely so heavily on thugs. It's possible that the were overcompensated and needs rebalancing, as was done with Ulm and Agartha for example. I would like to see more than theorycrafting to justify that though, as in actual game data proving they got too powerful.

The monkey summons cost pearls, the most valuable gem and a critical resource for those nations. So they aren't actually cheap considering the opportunity costs involved. You never have enough pearls as monkeys. I'm not sure when and why the reduction was made, but I suspect it was because the removal of clams hit monkey nations the hardest, and they needed compensation for that.

I haven't tried the Dai Tengu, I've fought them and never seen them dominate the game in any way.

When discussing national summons or other national traits, I think it's important to see them as a part of the whole nation, not as individual spells or units. The rudra is "cheap", but your troops suck, this gives you a weak early game and a strong lategame that is part of the theme for those nations. The important question is whether the nation as a whole is interesting and balanced enough. And you're going to argue for changes, those arguments should be based on real MP testing.

Redeyes · #39 November 13th, 2012, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fantomen

The rationale behind the high degree of compensation to the glamour nations was that hammer removal hit them the hardest because they rely so heavily on thugs. It's possible that the were overcompensated and needs rebalancing, as was done with Ulm and Agartha for example. I would like to see more than theorycrafting to justify that though, as in actual game data proving they got too powerful.

And you're going to argue for changes, those arguments should be based on real MP testing.

Was there anyhing like this at the different times when the changes I mentioned were made? The explanations you make seem like post-factum explanations at best. You aren't a primary source for the changes.

And we aren't touching the really gratuitous stuff now, like Machaka's cursing rock shards or point-blank fear spell.

I have some understanding for the forge bonuses the glamour nations got as the idea always apparently was having a few strong thoughts. The blood change looks like an attempt at making the nations relatively better at blood in comparison to others (and if that wasn't the intention then it is the effect) which never was their theme to begin with, the change looks very gratuitous.

The changes to the glamour nations seem very schizophrenic as an earlier version of cbm also lowered the cost of all their troops to make the nations less about their commanders.

Fantomen · #40 November 13th, 2012, 12:42 PM

Yeah, I absolutely agree that too much extreme buffs have been handed out without enough data to prove they were needed.

I'm not arguing all the changes were good changes, just trying to explain what the thoughts behind them were. I might not be a primary source, since only llamabeast is, but I've taken part in all those discussions on dom3mods that preceded those changes. So whether I agree or not I'm referencing the arguments as they were presented then. You can go there and backtrack the CBM threads to compare.

But now that they are done, I don't think they should be undone unless they are proven to actually unbalance the game. Simply because tinkering back and forth based on theorycrafting is a very bad way to do things. So what I would like to see is you, me and other people showing with references to real games that stuff is unbalanced. Not just saying that they are. If the Vans are overpowered now then we should see them dominate the MP scene over time, check their win ratio and impressions from good players a year from now. Then you can change the things that has turned out to be broken.