Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Belac]

I have no idea if this is possible, but what if Shattered Soul increased over time (eventually reaching 100%)? So the utility of each Tart declines, until you have to retire them and summon another one. That would nerf them a bit without making them weaker when usable.

[Festin]

Making elemental royalty non-unique may be good for overall balance, but it is horribly unthematic.

Actually, it would be really nice to see more national SC summons. I would like to see Chayots, Rudras, Dai Oni, Lords of Civilization, Seraphs, Fallen Angels etc. Who mentioned the coolness factor?

And instead, in every single game so far all I saw were Tartarians, Elementals (mostly Air Queens), and various blood summons. Before the clam nerf there was a chance to see some rare Seraph in action, but no more, it seems.

[KissBlade]

The longbow was nerfed in resources. That's why the samurai archers were indirectly nerfed. Also the standard samurais are worse than the samurai archers.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Festin

Making elemental royalty non-unique may be good for overall balance, but it is horribly unthematic.

That depends on what you think the theme is.

The platonic element conception (ie, that originally used by D+D in 1st and 2nd edition, originated with Plato) envisions the elements in reality being produced by or tied to elemental planes that are infinite in extent and purely composed of that element. An infinite plane would have infinitely many royals on it if it had any royals, so... where's the problem?

Since the term 'elemental' is tied up with the platonic concept of element anyway, the fact that the game uses elementals suggests its implicitly accepting the platonic concept, and thus the elemental royalty being unique is actually unthematic.

I'm not saying making them non-unique is necessarily the way to go, I'm just saying there aren't really major thematic problems with doing so.

[Ink]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

That depends on what you think the theme is.

The platonic element conception (ie, that originally used by D+D in 1st and 2nd edition, originated with Plato) envisions the elements in reality being produced by or tied to elemental planes that are infinite in extent and purely composed of that element. An infinite plane would have infinitely many royals on it if it had any royals, so... where's the problem?

Since the term 'elemental' is tied up with the platonic concept of element anyway, the fact that the game uses elementals suggests its implicitly accepting the platonic concept, and thus the elemental royalty being unique is actually unthematic.

I'm not saying making them non-unique is necessarily the way to go, I'm just saying there aren't really major thematic problems with doing so.

yeah but the dominion's elemental royalty have personalities (or at least stories) to an extent, meaning they aren't really the pure, unanimous and anonymous platonic type element. Based on it perhaps, but then also ground through the fantasy-machine.

not that I don't support them being non-unique, there could be infinite elemental personalities floating around on the elemental planes (it would be odd that there are only three or so personality-types of each element, but I digress), and the type summoned is just picked randomly.

[Sir_Dr_D]

What if we created four new spells, that summon a lesser form of the elemental royalty. (Call them elemental elite, or something like that.) These would be non-unique, and would give another option other then Tartarians.

[vfb]

Like Stavis said, there are already lots of other (admittedly mostly-weaker) options, plus some that he didn't mention, like Gargoyles and Trolls.

[Trumanator]

It would be nice if you could just summon the Troll kings for a lower price, instead of paying out the nose for a bunch of high upkeep troops.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Making Tartarians unique is what I would like to see. But that is likely not possible.

What if they were given an expensive gold cost, so you cannot maintain as many?

It makes sense for them to be expensive.

[Squirrelloid]

there's plenty of fodder for alternative SCs if we wanted to introduce new creatures, but that's sort of outside the scope of CBM as currently envisioned.

(For example, Hetaconcheires. In mythology there are only three of them, but there's no reason there need to only be three of them. Sounds like an earth summons. Admittedly, I'm not sure how to do them justice without making them overpowered since even the gods feared them - and 100 attacks is rather a lot).