CBM for Dom 4?

[CrimsonKing]

Is there something like CBM for Dom 4 If so, where can it be found ?

[Staythecourse]

No. there is no generally accepted balance mod. The only widely accepted mod is Worthy Heroes. Though I think one of the Dominions communities plays exclusively with their own balance mod.

Balance in this game is honestly pretty good except for a handful of terrible nations. The only big problem is almost all items being crap, which is not so much a balance issue since it applies to everyone. I really wouldn't like to see the kind of infinite escalation and strategic homogenization CBM brought. An unfortunate and perhaps inevitable consequence of buffing up "weak" things, and increasing options for everyone.

[sum1won]

There are a number of balance mods, but none as widely used. Mine (Google summod GitHub releases) is probably the closest to what you are looking for. It's used in at least three different communities of dominions players. However, it's hardly universally used in any of them.

Something Awful has a minimalist balance mod they use, but that's not on the same scale.

Magic Enhanced is great fun, but not a balance mod by any measure. Same with the ubiquitous worthy heroes.

[kzickas]

Originally posted by Staythecourse:

The only big problem is almost all items being crap, which is not so much a balance issue since it applies to everyone.

I don't think items being crap is the main problem. The thing is that there's nothing to put items on that isn't extremely expensive. Once you have sunk that much resources into the chassis the items have to basically make it invulnerable in order not to lose your investment. That means that thugs are only ever used for raiding, so only the anti-chaff options get used.

If a hill giant came as a commander instead of a unit for 4 or 5 earth gems I could totally see myself putting a gloves of the gladiator on it and sending it into the front lines.

[Staythecourse]

Well, thugging/SCing being bad and hard to pull off in any sort of cost effective manner for most nations is not necessarily a problem. It was a concious design decision after all.

Even if dirt cheap chassis become widely available, why would you use gladiator gloves instead of a brand? All it would accomplish would be to bring the handful of good anti-thug gear back into use, as targets for anti-thugs become more common.

And frankly, I don't want to see mass thugging for everyone come back. That was the worst part about CBM becoming ubiquitous in Dom3. I do want to see SCs regain a niche, though not entirely sure how.

[kzickas]

They were better, but they weren't cheaper. Thugging to me means a big investment that takes specialized responses to take down. Putting a few gems on something and hoping for it to make a bit more impact than spending those gems on summons isn't thugging to me.

Even if dirt cheap chassis become widely available, why would you use gladiator gloves instead of a brand?

The secondary damage would be better against targets with less than 32 armor and especially against enemies with fire resistance. Also against enemies with size 3 and above since you only hit one additional target.

Another thing is summoned gear. Bane lords are the most common summoned chassis and their 10 gem cost includes a bane blade (supposedly worth 5 death gems). That makes it hard for other forged items to be enough of an improvement to justify their price.

[Morsigil]

I have to say, I disagree entirely Kzickas. First, the fire brand is expensive. If you're just planning to fight PD, you buy a frost brand and get effectively the same result for half the cost. The problem with basically any weapon that doesn't have a splash effect is that you get mired in limb hits, repels, and defense. Brands skip repels and defense, and either skip limb hits entirely or make them less painful by hitting other units at the same time.

Think about it.. The gloves of the gladiator gives you 4 0 length attacks, all of which can be repelled, or miss. Frost and fire brands give you 1 attack which can be repelled, or miss, but better stats, and anywhere from 1-6 (depending on the number of units in the square) attacks which always hit. So in your example of 2 size 3 units, that would be a total of 3 attacks... Only one shy of the gloves, and 2 of them are guaranteed to hit. Meanwhile, there is something like a 20% chance for said hit to do 5 damage to a limb, or miss entirely to defense.

A bane blade might hit one guy a turn, and if it's not a limb hit, hooray.. now you get to roll the dice again next round, all the while trying to soak 12+ attacks.

I think the bane lord might have been the most summoned chassis at one time, when thugs were a thing back in CBM, but these days I personally would probably take 4 wights over a single bane lord. Despite wights prior to legion of wights being really inefficient, it's still a better deal.

[zest]

In point of fact, I think you're both kind of right. Both summons and items could use a rebalance after how much the availability of gems was reduced between Dom3 and Dom4. 20+ gems to summon a SC/thug chassis is simply too much now that afflictions happen more often, elemental immunity is nolonger a thing, and gemgens are gone. For that matter a huge swath of troop summons just aren't worth casting. Items are the same way- only a few thug items really give enough bang for their buck to be worth it with the current availability of gems, especially considering the risk of losing said items is a lot higher then in dom3.

Items in particular suffer from the reduction in importance of SCs- many items served as specialized pieces for building the perfect anti-SC thug(examples: Holy Scourge, Stone Bird, most non-brand elemental weapons, elfbane, duskdagger ect...) for the specific SC you're fighting. Now that SCs die to armies and those tailor made Ant-SCs are no-longer necessary all those items lost their niche

All in all, both forged items and summons give substantially less bang for their buck then gems spent on battlemagic(with the only exception being boosters which do so largely by virtue of impacting battlemagic themselves as well as opening up ritual options). The current prices of many items/summons don't really reflect the current more limited availability of gems wherein there is much more need for all gem uses to be competitive with one another.

[kzickas]

I'm not really saying that the non-brand weapons aren't underperforming, they are. But I think you'd come a lot closer to having weapons in a reasonable place if they had decent options to put them on. Right now weapons need to be very extreme to be worthwhile. Having chassis that don't come with decent gear would also help.

And eating 12 attacks per round sounds like exactly the kind of one man army thing that I don't think should be necessary to use forged items.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Originally posted by kzickas:

I don't think items being crap is the main problem. The thing is that there's nothing to put items on that isn't extremely expensive. Once you have sunk that much resources into the chassis the items have to basically make it invulnerable in order not to lose your investment. That means that thugs are only ever used for raiding, so only the anti-chaff options get used.

If a hill giant came as a commander instead of a unit for 4 or 5 earth gems I could totally see myself putting a gloves of the gladiator on it and sending it into the front lines.

I think its the opposite. There are a lot of cheap chassis. Mainly national, recruitable ones. But because they are cheap and expendable it makes no sense to put expensive gear on them.

Why should you pay out expensive gems to put a full set of good gear on a Skratti to the tune of 40+ gems? You can build 3 Skrattis with 6 gem and 3 slaves worth of gear each and get much more bang for your bucks!

And FYI I still use banelords in MP on occasion. But only if I have access to flying boots. A couple of flying banelord raider with a brand and a shield can be a pain in the arse for enemies to deal with in the mid-game. A non-flying banelord is too easy to counter for the cost though.

(I lie, i dont play MP anymore...)

[Zonk]

One problem with trying to balance items through modding is that required path & costs are directly connected.

You cannot have items that require a powerful mage to forge but are cheap, or the reverse.

If illwinter someday changed that - allowing us to separate forging path requirements & costs, like we can do for rituals - it would open up a lot of modding design space.
(of course, this has already been requested in the past)