Enough whining!

[Jack Simth]

It could be useful, but might need adjustement on availablity - a level 8 summonnable critter is going to be a lot less common than a level-1 summonnable critter, simply because you don't have access to the 8's until later in the game. If beta testers tend to play short games, reducing the cost of the summon might have no bearing on how often it's used, making it overpowered in longer games; contrawise, an early summon might have a price well out of proportion to it's effect, simply because it's available sooner. A unit from a rare site might be seldom used (it's rarely found) but be quite powerfull, and have it's cost crash because it's almost never found.

[sushiboat]

You would compare within categories, naturally. Infantry vs. infantry, low level spell vs. low level spell, etc.

[alexti]

I'm not sure it would work. There're too many "specialty" items, units and spells. For example, anit-Ermor strategy won't be useful against most of other nations, so anti-Ermor elements would get underpriced by the proposed method. Similar thing is likely happen to "underwater" tools. Certain items that counter certain strategies will suffer the same fate.

[baruk]

How about if the price/gem cost (or even fatigue cost) fluctuation is an in-game effect? So if people start casting alot of wrathful skies, seasonal spirits, ghost riders, the cost starts going up in game. Or if certain spells or units remain unused, they become slightly cheaper. Sort of like how the mercenary system works. I expect it would be a lot of work for Illwinter to set the game up like that, however.

On the "whining" thing, I think the problem is that people mistake the means, namely "game balance", for the end, which is to improve the game. Game balance is never an end in itself, it should only be used if the result is to improve the game. Certain games even thrive on game imbalance, anyone else ever play the "Great Dalmuti" card game?

If I make a suggestion concerning the game, it is because I think it would be an improvement, whether or not any "game balancing" is involved. If people disagree, I hope they can do so based on the relative merits of my idea, rather than dismissing it whilst making broad generalisations about the motives behind such ideas.

My motives? I see a lot of games with annoying house rules, regarding castles, clams and the like. I understand people's concerns, but they tend to go too far, in my opinion, by banning things outright, and restricting gameplay. Like previous posters, I'd rather introduce more counters to effective tactics (part of this is making them more "counterable" in the first place, which I do not see as a "nerf"), as I think this will lead to a more interesting game by increasing the options available.

An idea I had whilst I was thinking about this: how about changing the order of the Nation design system, so that national scales are the first thing chosen, and they influence the different pretender Gods that are available (and perhaps the powers of those Gods)? You would have the scales and all potential Gods on the same screen, so you could see the effect of switching the scales around. Unavailable Gods would be greyed out, selecting them would automatically switch scales to the appropriate level.
Additionally, scale choice could have more influence on the rest of the nation choices. Perhaps a high production scale could provide a wider range of castles, or castles with improved stats. Cost of magical paths could be affected eg. cheaper death magic with death scale, cheaper fire with heat scale etc. Starting spells, spell availability and spell effectiveness could all be affected by scales eg. ghost riders could be available earlier for death nations, whilst being more expensive for those with growth scales. With these kinds of changes, a balance overhaul would be required. I could even see scale choices no longer costing points, if the benefits of the negative scales were matched sufficiently by those of the positive scales eg. drain scale would provide more significant magic resistance, a bonus to dispel, and perhaps a forging bonus (if you see a drain dominion as one that controls and tempers magical power, rather than banning it outright).
This kind of system might provide a more varied selection of viable scale choices, but it would be a lot of work. I couldn't say for sure whether it would make the game "better" though, but it seemed interesting when I thought of it.

[NTJedi]

Jurri said:
Whining about whining is still whining, you know.

I agree

[Truper]

Hehe. It seems to me that what some people are referring to as whining is exactly what these boards are for. Discussing the game, debating whether certain features are balanced, proposing mods and house rules, etc. All that is well and good, and makes for interesting reading. I've proposed a few modifications that some might call nerfs myself, but its hardly the case that whenever somebody beats me with a tactic I call for a nerf to stop it. After all, I've been beaten in scores of ways, and only proposed nerfs for a couple of them