Conceptual Balance Mod 1.84

[llamabeast]

I agree that Just Man's Cross is definitely bugged - kianduatha had already pointed out the crazy AN damage, but I hadn't noticed the AOE1. I think I will remove that as it negates the best counters to missile weapons (shields and air shield). Also the damage is changed to AP. Hopefully it is still a pretty nasty weapon against shieldless undead. Thanks for the report!

[kianduatha]

Oh, yeah. The AN damage was scary because it ignored shields and was AOE, hence the reference to it being a more damaging, aoe Piercer. For the record the Holy Scourge is also AOE-1 and ends up being basically a 2-handed better Fire Brand(which might be okay if the #nostr thing helps it to not do crazy damage)

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I agree that Just Man's Cross is definitely bugged - kianduatha had already pointed out the crazy AN damage, but I hadn't noticed the AOE1. I think I will remove that as it negates the best counters to missile weapons (shields and air shield). Also the damage is changed to AP. Hopefully it is still a pretty nasty weapon against shieldless undead. Thanks for the report!

Thanks again for taking the time to read through the comments and for taking on CBM in the first place after all the other stuff you've already done.

Changing the damage to AP helps a lot. 15 AP damage is nothing to laugh at but at least you could equip a thug to maximize protection. You may to give up something else but having to make such decisions is part of the fun and challenge of the game. Removing AOE 1 would of course also help a lot though shields may block it more often than you intend?

Originally Posted by kianduatha

Oh, yeah. The AN damage was scary because it ignored shields and was AOE, hence the reference to it being a more damaging, aoe Piercer. For the record the Holy Scourge is also AOE-1 and ends up being basically a 2-handed better Fire Brand(which might be okay if the #nostr thing helps it to not do crazy damage)

I agree; AN damage and AOE 1 are a scary combination. At least the Holy Scourge requires closing to melee range and also requires two hands, but I think it would also lend itself to a similar approach as llama mentioned with just man's cross.


Llama, for both these effects was your intention that this be a dangerous weapon for undead troops, both with and without shields? If that is the case could you change the secondary effect to fire damage and leave the AOE? Relatively few undead have any fire resistance so even if they were buffed to FR 50 they'd still take damage (tripled because of #dt_holy) - however thugs (including undead ones) would be able to invest in FR gear to protect themselves.



I also wanted to mention a different magic item: master/slave matrices. Since I rarely play S nations I've sometimes found these useful to form communions. But items with a 5/5 forging cost take a big jump without hammers, from 6 gems to 10. I don't know if you've gotten other feedback but it's hard for me to see it being worth forging them at that cost. OTOH I like the whole ES crystal magic theme that has magic items as well as a site where you can recruit the mages that invented those items. It occured to me that pricing the slave matrix at 5 S gems and the master matrix at 5E5S would lower the overall price to about the same level as before but also keep the theme somewhat intact.



Also a comment about hammers. I was wary of removing them, especially because I think their removal hit thugging nations hard (nope, I never get tired of lobbying for glamour nations or thugs ). In one of my current modified rules games I used CBM 1.6 as the basis since I'm most familiar with it and it's the easiest for me to balance when I start changing rules. And after playing several post 1.6 games I realized that I've come to view hammers the same way I viewed gem gens - as a hassle that I just didn't want to bother with. I was reading Calahan's comments in the Tempest thread. He makes some good points and one that applies to me is regarding "casual" players. I'll do my best to win and I'm quite willing to fight to the last province but the most important thing to me is to have fun. And for me, hammers aren't fun. But I can see why people would prefer keeping hammers in the game. One option is to keep playing 1.6. It's a good, stable release. But if you'd like to take advantage of some of the new content then you'll have to modify the current CBM release. Of course anyone can modify CBM as they see fit and start a game but there is an advantage to having a "standard" version that incorporates hammers (for one thing, it makes it easier to recruit players for those games). But, especially with 1.9, making those changes won't be as simple as adding in hammers. You'll also have to restore item pricing (and presumably effects) to account for the existence of hammers. And what about nations that were hit especially hard by their loss and compensated for it? Those changes should probably be removed as well (though perhaps you could avoid this part since I'm guessing most of the compensated nations were low-mid range in power and not the top level). My point being, that it's not reasonable to expect you to maintain branching versions of CBM so I think one or more people would have to take on that task. Well, I ended up rambling when all I was going to say was that I've come to like not having hammers. Sure, balancing items will probably take some time but for me it's a good change.



Ok, one last thing. Vanheim lobbying! TNN/Eriu got some boosts to balance out the removal of hammers but Vanheim has been hit even harder with recent changes. So FWIW here's a list of ideas (only presenting stuff I think thematic): forge bonus for dwarves or maybe forge bonus on dwarven elder heroes (perhaps a reason to take luck with Vanheim?), reduce Van cost at least to original pre-glamour nerf cost of 75 gold, reduce cost on mounted hirdman (maybe 45 gold?), Vanjarl B1 is a lot less useful without SDRs - give dousing bonus or perhaps reduce cost and/or remove B1 and change to something like 25-40% chance of AEDB. Also, I think EA Van probably needs more help than MA given that they've got tougher competition and MA has better sacreds as well as recruit everywhere skinshifters and einheres.

[rdonj]

I could see sidhe lords/vans/etc just take a lower gold cost so they're easier to recruit, and use numbers to help make up for the nerf to effectiveness. Or they could possibly just get slightly better default equipment instead.

While we're on the subject of TNN, what can we do to the mother of tuathas to make anyone ever think to use her as a pretender?

[kasnavada]

On the subject of CBM "changes" and following my comment on the tempest thread...

On a personnal note, I'm not fond of reducing possibilities of a game. Which is what has been done with gem gen and hammers : as Callahan explains, and which I will not repeat. On the tartarian changes, the whole "GoR undead" aspect have been lost just for the sake of ONE unbalanced spell. I do not think that a game should be balanced by removing stuff, it should be done by adding stuff so that other avenues can be explored (much like EDM tried to do). But that's only what I feel, if most others think otherwise I'll bend.

The main thing I dislike about CBM though is that most of it is just undocumented. Which is another reason that makes me feel that CBM is as unbalanced as vanilla, since with so many changes and no documentation but "try every stuff" (and even then, some things can be missed...) it's rather easy to overlook stuff, which makes the game feel unbalanced whether you're doing better than your opponent(s) or the opposite. Not to mention the amount of knowledge needed to play this game well... Some of it was before you took on the project though.

Not that I don't respect the amount of work that has been done. It's just that when I look at what has been done, I'm unable to assess if any work has been done, and when I do look for information, it feels like a lot of reworking of some issues and overlooking of others. And when I play the game, it feels unbalanced. In SP games I crash AIs with "stupid" strategies on some nations while other need finer stuff, and the rather low amount of MP I did start show me mostly the same, with the main difference that diplomacy even things up a lot.

I'm not delusional enough to think "Balance" is universal. There are dozens of solutions to any problem. The problem I'm seeing in your (hard) work is that I can't see a path leading to some idea of balance defined anywhere, and that from my point of view, the work done done on CBM looks "reworking the same stuff again and again" while a lot is just overlooked.

My perspective may be flawed of whatever, but since my last comment was either badly explained or not well understood, I'm trying to get the points I wanted to make here .

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by rdonj

While we're on the subject of TNN, what can we do to the mother of tuathas to make anyone ever think to use her as a pretender?

That's a good question. She's the most thematic pretender the nation has but in everything you'd want a pretender to do there's better options. I guess the easiest choice would be to make her more appealing by adding a magic path, reducing path cost, etc.

But what about a different approach of giving her #onebattlespell? Fog Warriors would be OP. Wind Guide, or even Arrow Fend, not appealing enough. What about Antimagic, Relief or maybe even Mass Regeneration? Relief in particular synergizes nicely with the reduced encumbrance on glamour troops and firbolg. I don't know if this by itself would be enough to get me to choose her but maybe combined with another boost (path cost 30?) it would be a viable option.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by kasnavada

On the subject of CBM "changes" and following my comment on the tempest thread...

On a personnal note, I'm not fond of reducing possibilities of a game. Which is what has been done with gem gen and hammers : as Callahan explains, and which I will not repeat. On the tartarian changes, the whole "GoR undead" aspect have been lost just for the sake of ONE unbalanced spell. I do not think that a game should be balanced by removing stuff, it should be done by adding stuff so that other avenues can be explored (much like EDM tried to do). But that's only what I feel, if most others think otherwise I'll bend.

GoR undead is coming back. Also some people have started making an effort to list changes CBM makes. Of course, some have argued that CBM IS the changelog itself, and if you can speak mod it really is all right there listed right out in the open.

[Deathblob]

There's also Larz's cool dom3editor app that lets you open mod files and view the changes. So you don't need to be able to read .dm files.

[llamabeast]

The difficulty with a changelog is that CBM makes thousands of tiny changes, so if such a log is made it is unreadable. CBM is now ~22000 lines long. Lots of stuff, and even if you can "read mod" it is hard to be sure exactly what's been done.

Having said that I will aspire to make a short list of general changes contained within CBM, so that people can understand the general ideas even if the details are not listed. I think that would be helpful. For example:

- Pretenders extensively rebalanced, with many given extra special abilities (always mentioned in the in-game descriptions). Special abilities include spawning of troops, generating gems and automatic in-battle spells (e.g. Phoenix Pyre for the Phoenix).
- Cavalry made more usable - all have a "hoof" attack, with heavy cavalry upgrading to "warhorse hoof". Almost all cavalry made cheaper.
- Gem generators (clam of pearls, blood stone, fever fetish) made into unique artifacts, to reduce micromanagement, turtling and the necessity of focussing strategies around forging them.
- Armor stats rebalanced, with a general reduction in encumbrance for heavy armor. Heavy armor still has higher encumbrance, but now it is at least a net advantage for most battles (consider base-game MA Ulm for a clear demonstration that heavy armour was previously a hindrance).
- New content added for a number of nations, especially weaker nations. Most of the new content takes the form of national spells. Marverni, Agartha, Tir na n'Og, Machaka and MA Ulm are examples of nations which have received quite a few new spells.

... etc.

[Soyweiser]

A lot of the summoning spells have also been rebalanced. So that you now have a reason to summon fire snakes and the different drakes. In vanilla they are just to expensive, it is easier to wait for the higher tier spells that give more bang for your gem.