Conceptual Balance Mod v1.92

[shonuf]

Regarding MA Ulm, they do seem a bit OP at the moment. But I do love the theme of a magic hating nation.

My "nerf" suggestion would be to remove the S/A from the 10% random of the master priests. Simply going after their magic diversity, where they should be thematically weak.

[Immaculate]

Tlaloque need to have their prices reduced by about 20-30 gems. You get a 1 in 4 chance at diversifying your magic but only late game... and it costs 60 gems. Thats too much. I don't think they should come earlier- they should just be like 30-40 gems, not 60.

Not a big issue but its an obvious problem that can be fixed easily enough.

[earcaraxe]

I have some ideas about pretender changes I would like to share with the public. I would like to spark a discussion about them, as these are not tested, but based on my playing experience. Exact numbers are educated guesses, might need tweaking. Your insights are very much welcome, please feel free to share ur opinions.

Some general reasons behind my ideas:
- B should be cheap as everyone always thinks “I’ll just empower them if needed”.
- I think its ok for the titans to have high magic paths unless it makes a good major bless significantly cheaper (which wasn’t my intention). My goal was that a titan (that has tipically 2 paths innately) should be a master of those two, and not much else. Lead an army, cast devastating battle enchantments then fly home and put up his ritual. Clearly most of them could use some help. (One idea would be to use the “magicboost” modding command and raise their skill by about two in the given paths, which would bump up their magic ability without strengthening the bless.)
- The summoning bonii are fun, cool, have their niches and thematic. I like the already present ones very much, some more would be nice. It makes the chassis more „special”, even „loveable” (for me at least). They are intended not to bee too strong, and most certainly they are not strong at all.



scorpion king – summon allies: 3 scorpion beasts

son of the sun – F3, bonus fire snakes (4) when summoning them

great warlock – generates 3 slaves per turn (presently still suboptiomal to other astral rainbows)

lord of the desert sun – summon allies: 3 lions

lord of the summer plague – D3F1N1

lord of fertility – autosummon ??? (something thats thematic with fertility, random animals perhaps)

lord of the wild – N3 B3 (totally redundant paths)

mother of tuathas – A3 N3, summon allies: 3 sacred tuatha warriors. (otherwise redundant paths. if i take her, i want her to be really better than my mages)

colossal head – N2 B4 (i wonder if it gets used at all)

great black bull – N1 B3 (without slots B1 is so weak)

dragons – level 3 F/W/N magic, blue – amphibious, green dragon - recuperation. (got these ideas from valerius)




what do u think?

[Valerius]

I can't comment in detail on boosting pretender magic paths since I'd first have to check which nations have access to the various pretenders and how that compares to existing bless options. But even a 1 point increase in base path is significant because it saves you a lot of design points when aiming for a major bless. So I think it's worth being cautious even with the less useful blesses. Magicboost would get around that, though.


In terms of summoning monsters (I think you'll want them to be autosummoned so they don't require a turn of pretender time), I think it's a fun perk but probably not enough by itself to get someone to choose them if they weren't already viable choices. The summons will mainly be of use during expansion but unless they're completely OP it will take a few of turns to build up enough to be effective and at the same time these titan pretenders presumably need some gear to be able to solo provinces themselves. So there's a delay before things really get going - compare that to an SC who can expand from turn 1/2 (depending on your tolerance for risk).

Hmm, is it possible for pretenders to arrive with retinues? That could be interesting as you'd have an extra expansion party right from the beginning as well as a small number of autosummons each turn and once the titan was equipped he could start expanding as well. Maybe they could have a first shape that summoned a large number of monsters and then the next turn shift to a second shape that had a far lower number of autosummons? Haven't tested to see if it would work.


But as regards dragons I don't think they should be boosted. I did add on water breathing and recuperation - but that was on dragon summons, which is a different matter than pretenders. Dragons already see plenty of use (they're certainly my preferred awake pretender) so no boost is necessary IMO.

[earcaraxe]

maybe im not high on dragons because of the nations i play then.

i was specificly thinking of summon allies, not autosummon. I agree the summon allies option wouldnt make an underused pretender more used. but it would add a little color to them, without the risk of making them OP.