Mod: Adept's Mod (weapon, magic and monster changes)

[thejeff]

No, he's saying the troops are balanced now. Swords may be better than axes, but the axe troops are cheaper or have better stats to make up for it.

Make axes better and now you have cheap troops with better weapons, or better troops with better weapons.

Actually with Carnutes, they have berserk, IIRC, which makes them good even with poorer weapons. With better axes, they're probably too good.

Making a change to a weapon across the board means you're changing the balance of every unit that uses that weapon and you really should look at each one individually, in the context of the nation and see whether it's still ok or whether it should have it's stats or cost tweaked to make up for the change.

[elmokki]

Currently (CBM 1.92) Marverni has two very viable choices since the axe wielding unit is different in other ways (berserker 3, more hp, less att/def). By buffing the axe you'll risk making Marverni only want to use the axe wielders.

That's the first example that I got to my mind really and you should not open a game with Marverni and look at the units. What I mean is that when you change balance of weapons by comparing only weapons themselves you risk changing balance in ways you can't anticipate without looking at every nation's unit selections.

I consider the werewolf nerf horribly stupid. The spell and forging changes I like. Those are at least things changing actual percieved balance problems. Weapon changes on the other hand - unless you get gratification from playing with percievedly more realistic weapons - are just a big box of surprises. It's hard to say what the weapon changes even achieve. You'll mostly see the same kind of units in the field since nations don't really have alternatives. In some rare cases you might've achieved more variety, but in general what you did is give random buffs/nerfs around to nations. Awesome balancing!

Simply said: the balance in this game is primarily balance between nations. Weapon changes in general are a blanket changes which buff/nerf relative powers of nations fairly randomly. That's not balance, that's just err... pointless tweaking?

If you want to give players options regarding weapons, you'll want to start editing sprites to give nations more options with their troops. The weapon changes would be more understandable if all nations had the ability to actually choose between the weapons, which they generally don't (Marverni does not, the berserking on Carnute Noble Warrior is the differentiating factor)

Oh, also, generally nerfing Jomon is something I would not put under mod with "balance" on title either, or do you really think Jomon as a nation is more in line with other nations in terms of power now, in which case I guess you can call it balance.

[Adept]

I guess I should put the head slots back for werewolves in the name of consistency. If a dragon has a head slot, I suppose a werewolf should keep his. Still gonna leave them with 2x claws instead of hands.

Re checking the pricing I did on Jomon. It fits the pattern of the pricing (most of these are from Late Age).

at/df mor gold
defender 11/12 13 15
t-guard 11/11 12 13
sweihand 11/11 12 14
man-at-arms 11/11 12 14
entrance guard 11/12 14 18
Iceclad 11/10 12 15 (prec 11)
Iron Crow 12/11 12 15
Raven Guard 13/11 13 17
hirdman 11/11 11 12
vanara swordsm 11/11 10(+1) 13
Ice Warrior 11/10 12 13
Ice Guard 12/11 13 16
Meteorite guard 11/10 12 13
milite 9/9 8 8
Limitane Prim 10/10 11 12 (guard)
Hastatus 10/10 11 12
principe 11/11 12 15
Emerald Guard 13/12 14 25

---

Ashigaru 9/9 10 9
samurai 10/11 11 11
O-ban 11/11 12 14
Go-hatamoto 12/11 13 17
Aka-Oni 12/12 14 20

[Adept]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Making a change to a weapon across the board means you're changing the balance of every unit that uses that weapon and you really should look at each one individually, in the context of the nation and see whether it's still ok or whether it should have it's stats or cost tweaked to make up for the change.

Unit costs in Dominions (vanilla anyway) are based on the training level of the troops. Their resource cost comes from the gear. This is logical and consistent, and has been so since the original Dominions with very little change.

http://illwinter.com/dom2/modinstructions.html

[Adept]

The original values for Axes and such are bizarrely bad. The units haven't been built to compensate this with balance in mind. Kristoffer has talked about his creative process, and it definitely isn't to balance everything like that.

The original axe:
Damage 7 one point higher than a broadsword
Range 1 shorter reach, with all the problems that gives
Attack -1 hard to land a blow
Defence -1 Not only does it not give a defence bonus, it hinders you

Where as I compared it with a sword so it does a bit more damage (8 to the broadswords 6), has no special bonus or penalty for fighting and still has the harsh but fitting shortness of range.

It's hardly a miracle weapon. Actually it's still pretty bad in comparison to a sword except it can help you get through heavy armour... which btw was the point why knights quite often used axes as armour got better (and later warhammers).

[Jiggymike]

What I don't understand is why people are so up in arms about this mod if they have no intention of using it when I think it became clear pretty early on that most people aren't particularly interested in it. Adept set about to make a mod that fixed problems he saw with Dominions, namely that weapons weren't accurately in line with their historical use. He also didn't think that werewolves should have hand slots because, traditionally (as in popular media and not necessarily in your backyard), you don't see werewolves fighting with shields or weapons. And finally, he had what I would personally consider a slightly strange obsession with nerfing Jomon, which is the game's version of feudal Japan, because he also wanted to make them more historically accurate. Does the lay population overrate the effectiveness and awesomeness of Japanese samurai? Maybe...but they have a cool name, wear awesome-looking armor, and thrust swords into their own stomach when they dishonor themselves, so I'm okay with people thinking they are bad asses. In fact, the addition of fear to those units was, in a way, the ultimate "eff you" towards Jomon/samurai warriors, because they're generating fear even though they've been weakened to the point where it would be ridiculous to fear them. His mod wasn't made with nation-wide balance in mind but was designed so that "historic" conflicts could be recreated in the game.

Some of his ideas are pretty good, in my opinion. Sometimes I think it would be cool for weapons to have slightly more niche uses, as opposed to basically different points on a sliding scale of attributes (damage vs. length vs. attack and defense bonuses/penalties). However, these are more necessary for balancing the game as a whole, which most people prefer. Adept's mod seems effective for what it was supposed to accomplish, but it's simply not for everyone, or possibly even most players of Dominions. I respect him for sharing it and I think people should be a little less critical/harsh; if you don't want to use the mod, then don't.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Adept

Unit costs in Dominions (vanilla anyway) are based on the training level of the troops.

So a giant with lesser training is cheaper than a normal human with more training?

[Deathblob]

Well, it should be obvious that "training level" excludes giants, troglodytes, mounted units, units with glamor, elephants, sacred units, hydras, minotaurs, mammoths, shamblers, and demons. It's implicit!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Deathblob

Well, it should be obvious that "training level" excludes giants, troglodytes, mounted units, units with glamor, elephants, sacred units, hydras, minotaurs, mammoths, shamblers, and demons. It's implicit!

You forgot hobbitses!

[Scaramuccia]

There is only one problem with this mod - it's name. It isn't balance mod, it is "realistic" mod or something similar.