Conceptual Balance Mod (and readme file) 1.00

[quantum_mechani]

You're right that LE Mictlan was the main reason for the Dagon nerf. However, I think he is hardly a shabby pretender now, a great turn 2 expander with good prot, fear, and easy-to-acquire-awe, and the slots to keep him relevant later in the game. And besides he has the bit in the description about weak magic.

With the thoumaturgs, the problem was that their crazy levels of reanimation were (together with the great sacred troops) making the nation the juggernaut of ME, and greatly marginalizing the nation's normal national troops. The grand thoumaturgs actually weren't so bad as they were, being capital only, but the ones recruitable everywhere could just be scaled to insane levels. Providing troops, research, and great magic support (with nether darts) you could make a formidable nation even with no other recruitable unit. I probably would have left the grand ones as they were, but it I didn't want to leave a weird gap in available priest levels.

As for the change summary doc, I don't think I'll have time to work on it any time soon, but Mork did show me a preliminary version of one he made, so he might be working on it.

Oh, and yes, the demon bane works as Edi says in both base and CB.

[Sombre]

Then I'm rooting for Mork ;]

[Blitz]

You're right that LE Mictlan was the main reason for the Dagon nerf. However, I think he is hardly a shabby pretender now, a great turn 2 expander with good prot, fear, and easy-to-acquire-awe, and the slots to keep him relevant later in the game.

Better to simply remove him from MIctan then IMO, as LA Atlantis cannot pay an extra 64 points and remain competitive. While there are other pretender choices, the Dagon is clearly the best W9 chassis for this nation, and as stated before, LA Atlantis... with no heroes to speak of, poor national troops outside the reasonably useful Arssartut, and basicly two-path magic. One of these paths is water, arguably the least-useful... and the other is death, with which LA Atlantis starts with only 1 per turn for a total of 4 gems. OVerall, this is a fairly weak nation with three things going for it... amphibiousness, some nice high-damage sacreds and free design points from a cold scale. Nerfing their best pretender takes too much away from an already questionably balanced nation.

With the thoumaturgs, the problem was that their crazy levels of reanimation were (together with the great sacred troops) making the nation the juggernaut of ME, and greatly marginalizing the nation's normal national troops. The grand thoumaturgs actually weren't so bad as they were, being capital only, but the ones recruitable everywhere could just be scaled to insane levels. Providing troops, research, and great magic support (with nether darts) you could make a formidable nation even with no other recruitable unit. I probably would have left the grand ones as they were, but it I didn't want to leave a weird gap in available priest levels.

Perhaps I haven't seen the same level of Thamaturg abuse that you have, although I do feel that the transition from national troops to summons is a natural progression. If you disagree, I suggest you at least restore the power of the Grand Thamaturgs, as they are now quite a bit less useful in the early game, without their very useful smite vs knights and such while expanding.

I've restored the Grand Thamaturg and Dagon for single-player, and hope you will do the same to your mod so I won't be unhappy playing them in MP anymore. We use your mod, it's exceptional.

[quantum_mechani]

Blitz said:

Better to simply remove him from MIctan then IMO, as LA Atlantis cannot pay an extra 64 points and remain competitive. While there are other pretender choices, the Dagon is clearly the best W9 chassis for this nation, and as stated before, LA Atlantis... with no heroes to speak of, poor national troops outside the reasonably useful Arssartut, and basicly two-path magic. One of these paths is water, arguably the least-useful... and the other is death, with which LA Atlantis starts with only 1 per turn for a total of 4 gems. OVerall, this is a fairly weak nation with three things going for it... amphibiousness, some nice high-damage sacreds and free design points from a cold scale. Nerfing their best pretender takes too much away from an already questionably balanced nation.

Perhaps I haven't seen the same level of Thamaturg abuse that you have, although I do feel that the transition from national troops to summons is a natural progression. If you disagree, I suggest you at least restore the power of the Grand Thamaturgs, as they are now quite a bit less useful in the early game, without their very useful smite vs knights and such while expanding.

I've restored the Grand Thamaturg and Dagon for single-player, and hope you will do the same to your mod so I won't be unhappy playing them in MP anymore. We use your mod, it's exceptional.

Both of your solutions seem fine balance-wise, I'm just not convinced that they would be thematic. The Dagon I feel especially adds spice to LE Mictlan. And I can't say I agree too much about LE Atlantis being so weak. I find the national units decent, and the best mages very durable and potent battle mages, Water may not be the best path, but it's not that bad either. At level 3 and above it is quite useful in battle with falling frost, and there things to spend gems on all thorough the game; winter wolves and claymen early, water queens later on, and very long term murdering winter. And all that aside, if I wanted to water bless them my choice would probably be an imprisoned son of the sea.

For the thoumaturgs... I suppose a solution might to make the lesser thoumaturgs capital only too, and give the cultist some death magic, then I could put the grands back as they were. However, I have a feeling people would overall find this approach even more annoying.

Anyway, I do appreciate the input, it's the kind of thing that really does help polish the mod.

[Blitz]

And I can't say I agree too much about LE Atlantis being so weak. I find the national units decent, and the best mages very durable and potent battle mages

I hate to semi-hijack your mod thread with individial nation balance discussions, but I may as well inject my thoughts regarding LA Atlantis anyway. Their Angakoks are good mages, with up to 3 levels of death and falling frost, but that is about where their usefulness ends. They cannot forge anything terribly useful with their 2 off picks except the odd feather or black steel item. Not having astral on the random list hurts a lot. No amulet of antimagic, no medallion of faith, no nether darts. You can get astral off of indies fairly easily, but the gem income will be slow and it comes later in the game. The Tungaliks, at WDH are frankly a terrible mage, for the most part good only as a researcher. They can lead 40 units, build temples and labs, and are cheap on research, but for 130 gold they are only used by default. Compared to other LA nation's secondary mages, they are easily overshadowed. Really only LA C'Tis's 120g Keeper of the Tombs is as poor, while LA nations such as Jotunheim get Seithkonas (NSD, 90 gold), Vamhiem get Volvas (SS, 120g) and Galdermen (AA?? 210g). These two are good examples because both are LA nations with free cold picks, and both have both better national troops and better secondary magic.

Blessings seem a no-brainer with LA Atlantis, as their sacreds (25g, 10 resources) are ideal for sloth. Additionally, Atlantis can take an extra cold pick and react well to a death scale for a total of 360 design points. Not using a bless strategy makes the sloth strategy much less appealing, as you will almost surely be forced to take order to support your high-resouece cost units. A strategy of massed mournfuls is possible, and can work under sloth, but as they are not resistant to cold, they are often taken out by the Angakok's falling frost, powered by their 8 precision of suckage. Additionally, neither the mournful or Arssartut have a shield, leaving the Ice warrior and Ice guard at 37 and 39 resources a pop respectively as the only LA Atlantis units with them. As an interesting side note, the Mournful's sprite has a shield, but the unit itself has only a halberd.

To wrap all this up, LA Atlantis is a good challenge. It can be an exceptionally powerful nation if it is allowed to control the seas... which it often can with only R'yleh (and ermor) as a challenge in the Era. Unfortunately, like Caelum, the heavy resource cost of it's best infantry units is a huge problem throughout the game. Unlike Caelum, LA Atlantis have 10-resource sacreds and the Dagon as a potential awake, awe-9, W9 trampler. This redeeming feature IMO was critical to the limited success I have had with them in MP.

[KissBlade]

You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.

[Sombre]

Just a random point - the blowpipe doesn't get the precision bonus because in the .dm it has #prec 2 instead of #att 2.

I just downloaded the individaul bits version of CB and I'm going to try it out a bit. I think the scales and maybe the spells will be my first port of call.

[Sombre]

Oh and one other thing - does someone have a list of all the new idnumbers used for sites, weapons, armor, monsters, nametypes etc? I could look it all up and write a list myself, but that would be somewhat pointless if one of you has this lying around.

It would help a lot with making CBM compatible mods.

[Blitz]

KissBlade said:
You find tungaliks' poor ...? Sure they're not Seithkona's but sacred ghost gripping frozen hearters are not that shappy in LA. I should also point out they are excellent leaders with the ability to command undead, regular troops, magical all at once. Also I find spamming LA harpoon throwers not bad and the ability to dominate waters should never be dismissed ... Angakok may have precision 8 but the nice synergy of falling frost + cold res troops and the ability to both skel spam/shadow blast is very nice. Who cares if they can't construct worth a damn, death gems can be used for oh so many things and I'm actually pretty fond of water summons now.

Angakoks are great, falling fires + skelle spam is good times, but Tungalisks? They can't cast anything of any importance except your ghost grip/frozen heart, (and frozen heart is level 6 alteration... a path not otherwise useful (except drain life which you cannot natively cast, and quickness, which comes very early). They also can't forge a damn thing either. About the only thing of importance that they can do is research and Dark Knowledge. Aside from the aforementioned Keeper of the Tombs, I challenge you to find a secondary mage from LA who is even close to as bad.

Ulm - Fortune Teller
Arcoscephale - Mystic
Man - Magister (this guy ain't that great either, but in a drain faction)
Ermor - Spectator
Marignion - Royal Navigator
Mictan - Take your pick
T'ien Ch'i - Choice of 4 better ones
Jomon - Shugenja + two main mages
Argathea - Servant of the Oracles (not amazing either, but at least it can forge and cast some national summon rituals)
Abyssa - Warlock Apprentice
Caelum - Caelian Seraph (prob the best 100-150g mage in the game, unless perhaps it's the Harab Seraph (145g, AD(AWED)
C'tis - Keeper of the Tombs (bad)
Pangaea - Black Dryad (not great, but they do get their choice of DDNNN or EENNN main mages, plus two rather weak dryads)
Midgard - Volva (A+)
Patala - Two 250g mages, plus a 160g Guru and a nice communion slave in the Yogi
R'lyeh - Star Child, Star Spawn

Only Man (drain nation), C'Tis (reanimator nation), and Pangaea (two 5 path mages, plus stronger nationals) have secondaries that are as poor as LA Atlantis. With that said, I'm a fan of these guys, especially the sailing and the amphibious nature. They can be a pretty big pain in the ***, tho I think their gimmicks are often not enough to make them a player in LA.

[Sombre]

I couldn't be bothered to wait to be told there's no ID usage list for the mod, so I went ahead and made one. After all, if you want something done,....


Counterbalance complete 1.00, new slots used up:

----Weapon slots used: 659, 708-10, 751-5, 768, 769
----Armour slots used: 252-264
----Monster slots used: 2851, 2877, 2888, 2890-2892
----Site slots used: 890

Despite the weird spreading around of monster numbers and weapons, this is actually compatible with quite a few things. Most importantly, Worthy Heroes. It's also 99% compatible with the Late modcombo 1 I posted, although those mod nations are balanced for use with vanilla, not CBM.

I still plan to make CBM versions of Ulm Reborn, Vaettihiem SE and Zepath's 4 late nations,... but I'm wondering if people are interested in seeing that or not, since most CBM users play strictly multiplayer and mods don't seem at all popular in MP games.