Conceptual Balance Mod 0.9

[quantum_mechani]

PDF said:
Still Titaness' 25 RP bonus is so high I thought it was a typo !

I think you will be hard pressed to find her overpowered with the that, a lesser bonus would have meant nothing because there would be no incentive to keep her around researching.

Yet there are *many other* things that aren't "balanced", but just changed because the author wanted to change it : the remote searches at level 3 research/ path 3 totally changes the way searches could be done, but don't change the game balance at all !

On the contrary, they change game diversity a great deal. People tend to forget, what balance really is allowing for the for the most diverse number of options to be viable. By the time reach the late game (level 9 research in a school or two), you most likely have very good access to all paths, and so near all spells. What this means, is that late game, everyone is playing with the same deck, so fewer options have niches. Every game, the same handful of spells rule the final phase. If each nation has a different selection of paths, it makes each game more unique, and more options can get their time in the sun. Without magic being limited more by nation, in makes carving niches for all the options many times harder.

Some other changes - BW nerfing and many Evo nerfs also are hard to justify as "balance changes", I didn't ever see anyone claiming BW was unbalanced...

You may not have- in the mp games I have played, it is the most frequently abused and complained about battlefield spell, after skelly spam.

Now for example Ulm that always was weak now looks utterly crap,

I agree, that was an unintentional side effect, and I'm going to work towards easing it in later versions.

As for the other evocation 'nerfs', look carefully, more spells were boosted than nerfed. Again, the effort here is to improve diversity, it is much easier to meet halfway than try to buff up every spell to the level of the best ones.

[Graeme Dice]

quantum_mechani said:
You may not have- in the mp games I have played, it is the most frequently abused and complained about battlefield spell, after skelly spam.

If people are complaining about bladewind and raise skeletons, then they, quite frankly, need to learn to play better. Bladewind is absolutely useless against heavy infantry, while skeletons are absolutely necessary to the balance of death magic nations.

As for the other evocation 'nerfs', look carefully, more spells were boosted than nerfed. Again, the effort here is to improve diversity, it is much easier to meet halfway than try to buff up every spell to the level of the best ones.

The thing is that the spells that were nerfed weren't even that good. Thunderstrike for example, kills six people per mage per normal combat unless you have an air 4 mage, are carrying around 20 gems worth of a staff of storms so that you can cast storm power, or have a communicant horde with all the attendant vulnerabilities. Bladewind gets cast twice at most (Summon earth power and bladewind in drain 3 costs about 134 fatigue for a master smith), and might kill ten to twenty people per mage. And that's if the opposing force is a typical AI army of 200-400 unarmoured troops.

I think, that in all the games of Dom2 I played, that the total number of spells I cast on the battlefield that required gems comes to a total of less than 50. Battlefield spells that require gems are not fun, they are a chore. I cast summon lesser air elemental twice with Caelum before I realized it was useless. Water elemental summons were cast a total of about 10 to 15 times in two different games as Atlantis. Summon sharks got cast once. Four vapors was cast once. I used wrathful skies about a dozen times. Rigor mortis got cast twice. Darkness was about six times. Soul drain was a single time, as was firestorm. Hellfire had a half dozen casts, but that's because demonbred are mobile enough to shuttle their own slaves. Rush of strength got cast once, as did the similar spell for demons. Summon imp had a bunch of casts from blood mages defending their hunting provinces, but that's about all. The micromanagement required to shuffle gems around just isn't worth the relatively minor effects most of those spells have. Then there's the fact that site searching spells must remain the most effective way to search for magic until such time that Illwinter decides to add automatic searching with mages.

[DominionsFan]

I think that we all have to thank to qm, that he spent countless hours to make this CB mod. Right now I haven't tried it yet, but after I've read the changelog, there are some things what I like, and there are some things what I don't. For example: why was it needed to nerf the order scale? I don't understand it still. Make the sacred units more expensive, instead of nerfing the order scale. We cannot recruit countless number of troops anyways, since we won't have so many resources to do it...however we can use up the remaining gold to build forts for example.
Its a good thing that the growth from the growth scale incresaed, however maybe [to compensate to order scale nerf] we should get more income from the growth scale now?
People won't take death scale so often in blitz games at least.

[Nerfix]

I again echo Graeme. I apreciate qm's effort but I think he went into a very wrong direction with the mod.

The mod needed for the savegame is the streamers and standards one, so it shouldn't affect the game mechanics...but I did realize that on both occasions I was facing javeling armed infantry. I'll have to see more of what could have caused that weird combat behaviour.

[Twan]

I have the same feeling about many changes. Diversity should be the result of players choices with lots of good options, not of extremely pigeonholed nations and overnerfed magic, two things already too much used in dom3 IMO. I think I would prefer a mod buffing the weak paths (what is now possible with the new spell modding commands) and giving more possible strategies to each nation (adding ways to developp original magic choices instead of restricting more the possibilities). Anyway it may or not be the good direction for the cbmod, and another mod can be done for those (like me) prefering a more dom2-like game.

[Boron]

Twan said:
I have the same feeling about many changes. Diversity should be the result of players choices with lots of good options, not of extremely pigeonholed nations and overnerfed magic, two things already too much used in dom3 IMO.

The search spell nerf boosts rainbows, accashic record and sitesearching directly with mages.
Graeme said it is more MM to directly sitesearch, but imho directly sitesearching with a mage requires about the same effort as sitesearching with the remote 1 path search spells, maybe even less MM.

Twan said:
I think I would prefer a mod buffing the weak paths (what is now possible with the new spell modding commands) and giving more possible strategies to each nation (adding ways to developp original magic choices instead of restricting more the possibilities).

QM maybe nerfed some spells too much, mainly my beloved skelspam and probably bladewind too, but if you buff the weaker paths battlefield spells then this might have 2 cons:
- Magic doesn't feel different enough if nature/water/death/blood magic get stronger battlefield spells too
- Troops might become too useless by this change. In Dom2 troops were imho too useless usually, now in Dom3 they are still butchered by battlefield magic eventually, but they seem to have more niches and be more useful than in Dom2.

Graeme said that a mage has to be able to kill more troops than his cost, but imho this is not really true. Mages have other uses too. If mages with some research kill easily troop armies, then troop armies have no niche.

Currently the balance could roughly be seen as rock paper scissors balance imho:

Mages > SCs > Troops > Mages

This is generalizing too much of course, some spells counter troops very well like magma eruption, and "Mage SCs" like Dai Oni can defend vs. mages eventually with earthquake and rain of stones.

But in general at least in early and midgame it seems more rewarding in Dom3 to try a combined arms approach than it was in Dom2 were spending gold on troops almost felt like a waste of money.

Twan said:
Anyway it may or not be the good direction for the cbmod, and another mod can be done for those (like me) prefering a more dom2-like game.

Yeah a retro-mod that tries to make especially the middle age an exact copy of Dom2 might be cool too

[Nerfix]

The sitesearch nerf just brings more annoyance into the game as even having 2 picks in a path usualy signalizes some sort of specialization in the magic. Puttign them into 3 picks/path mages them extremely hard to cast for nations even specialized in their own magic. Caelum would need to use a High Seraph, Abysia an Anathemant Dragon and Agartha an Oracle!

Perhaps the only "issuos" site search spells are Dark Knowledge and that Astral probing spell, but those could be raised to 2 pick spells...or then just left alone.

I have a less radical aproach to mages than Graeme and QM. While I don't think that a Master Smith or an Oracle should be able to kill 14/40 units per combat round I think they should be able to do something else than cast Stoneskin or sit. Mages are expensive and the spells need DOUBLE the research from Dom 2. If you feel that a spell is too strong try something less radical than moving it up to high research levels or making it prohibtively expensive and annoyingly hard to use. In unmodded game the Pillar of Fire is a fine example. Sure it is a nice spell for Fire 2 but it is freaking Evocation 8, same level as army blaster spells and all that.

I really do apreciate QM's effort, but this is the equivalent of smaking around with the Nerf Stick while wearing Boots of Quickness and under influence of Astral Weapon...but failing to hit that Helhirdling which gleefuly charges into the ranks of helpless Earth and Air mages.

[Boron]

Nerfix said:
I really do apreciate QM's effort, but this is the equivalent of smaking around with the Nerf Stick while wearing Boots of Quickness and under influence of Astral Weapon...but failing to hit that Helhirdling which gleefuly charges into the ranks of helpless Earth and Air mages.

Helhirdings cost now 110 gold, that is almost a 50% price increase. It might still be too little, but at least they weren't left unnerfed .

I agree though that it is very questionable if extreme nerfing is a good approach. I am still undecided regarding this design decision. It has to be made when trying to make a balance mod though.

But theoretically someone could try to make most national troops extremely cheap and buff all the weak spells.
Probably this would add more options and might lead to a better mod. At least in theory this approach sounds worth a try at least imho.

Zen's and QM's CB mods all had a masochistic touch imho. But their Dom2 CB mod has nontheless been the best balance mod for Dom2 imho.

[Nerfix]

I'm not sure if culling some of the most obscenely overpowered stuff in Dom 2 really counts as "masochistic", especially when the mod boosted some unused stuff. I especially liked the changes to Sabbath and Hellfire. The Wraith Sword thing might come close.

[Arralen]

I dissent.

With most of qms mod, and with most of what has been said here - either pro or con.

Just for the records.