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PBEM & Single player Balance Mod 1.31

1.31 version was released!

1.3 Changelog

What is the PBEM & Single player balance mod?
The PBEM & Single player balance mod aims to balance the game for PBEM and single play, that is to say to make it possible for any combination of class/race/specialisations chosen to win a match if good strategic and tactical choices are made during the match. In PBEM games, it is a must-have to avoid one-sided games, and in single play, it significantly increases the fun of games through both balancing and the addition of synergistic abilities for some units (like Engineers and Halfling Brew Brothers). The mod is mainly coded and coordinated by Zaskow and Hiliadan (and in the past cbower).
The mod has been developed with the AoW3’s community and changes are integrated only after a consensus is reached regarding their need. It is thus a real community mod and not a mod based on the opinion of its developers. Changes that do not achieve their initial aims are edited or removed and the mod has already been through many iterations over more than a year.

Why PBEM players and single players should use the balance mod?
Triumph stated that they are happy with the current balance of the game. Its latest official patch, v1.8, brings only a handful of balance changes and mainly focuses on bug fixing. It is thus now the job of the community and of this mod to balance the game!

The game suffers from several big imbalances that the mod corrects:

– Necromancers can win games in 10-20 turns by reanimating Death Bringers and Titans and Ghoul Cursing all the units of the maps with 100% chances of success thanks to Inflict Despair

https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLVegwVpl7gLENQGy5fjGryvor43W_GA3j
Illustration of why Necro is OP – Round 5 of the 2015 PBEM Duel Tournament – Necromancer Draconian mirror match

– XP farming is encouraged in the official version because touch abilities (Touch of Faith, etc.) provide XP whenever they are used and the limits of XP each unit can yield when it is hit is too high, meaning that players have huge incentives to stall fights to use all their touch abilities and to limit damages caused to enemy units to harvest as much XP as possible from these units (see also the videos above)

– Mind control strategies are too strong and can be used too early and production/summoning strategies can’t compete

– Slayer’s Doubt and Stiffen Limbs last until the End of Battle, making high-level sites very easy to clear in early game

– Dreadnought and Halflings are too slow and too weak respectively making them uncompetitive

– And many more smaller issues

The balance mod pays attention not to bring changes that can reduce the fun for single players. Using the mod thus brings you the benefits of a more fulfilling game without any drawbacks. The mod also brings many new interesting synergies and uses to weak units (Dreadnought's Engineers can now build Roads and have an improved Flash Bomb; Halfling Brew Brothers provide Bolster when they use Fortifying Meal and synergize with Halfling Farmers by allowing them to re-use Throw Chicken) and weak specializations (all elemental spec have been boosted, e.g. Domain of the Sun now gives +1 fire damage). Cf. the screenshots.

Simple changelog - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/changelog/661597466 and full detailed changelog (dedicated GoogleDoc): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgwAg70dwNm8i3nFJqt8hrnwpNmxudn2aSXuvDet-5w/edit?usp=sharing

Feedback welcome to further improve balance!

Warning!

This mod contains 2 visual mods (with permission of their authors): Racial Class Unit Reskin by Tibbles and Racial Watchtowers by iHunterKiller.

--- To go further ---
Bug reporting: on Paradox official forums: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pbem-sp-balance-mod-development-thread.1119915/ or by commenting here on the Workshop
Balance discussion: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/balance-based-on-hard-data-from-the-pbem-tournament-continued.1121531/
News on the latest versions of the balance mod on the AoW3 community website, the Battlefield, in the news section: http://www.the-battlefield.com/aow3/index.php?page=gamenews
Summary of all the proposed changes and opinions of the community: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1flsHncpzAmJa_2xMHZ6Tlp-mf69ej2mYrSGNc4V3_QA/edit?usp=sharing

--- Beta Branch ---
This mod is the "Main Branch" of the balance mod, i.e. the stable version we recommend for most users. A Beta Branch is used to test the latest changes before bringing them to the Main Branch, and is updated more often: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=758212846

Great thanks to Tibbles for our nice logo!!!
Great thanks to SfH|ExileFromHeaven and Larik.частица.света for Russian localization!!!
Great thanks to Badok for Polish localization!!!