partly done - "balance" mod Thread - Conquest of Elysium 3

I like them game very much, but i have some issues with AIs, balance between options in a class and balance between classes.
Hence, i tried to do a mod trying to tweak all classes so that the issues are reduced. Done so far Baron, Barbarian, Burgmeister, Senator, Enchanter, High Priestess, Necromancer, Priest King, so somewhat halftime and it would be nice if someone could play a few games with the mod. edit: now also Demonologist and Witch
Besides, i have the question, where and how to upload the mod?
Because beneath that spoiler is simply the entire text, for copy and paste into a .c3m text file.

Regarding the issues i have, i tried to mod with the following problems in mind:

-AI cannot use some options (e.g. reveler ability of senator) and fails at properly using other options (e.g. those tribal kings should stay at home city and do never anything else but hunt slaves)

-some options are generally or often inferior to others e.g.
- triarius vs praetorians
- ballistas, catapults, trebutcher (unless iron abundant, but for 1 gold=1 iron heavy infantry and crossbows do a better job at castle def)
- amazons vs standard barb (especially slow amazons)
- hoburg militia vs hoburg slingers (same price, the latter have ranged attack)
- war dogs
- tribal warrios vs all other priest king stuff (priest king needs ranged, has enough stupid melee standing around, thank you)
- some irregular recruitments (e.g. retiarius) are never worth considering (i dislike that especially, because lack of availability should mean better quality)

-AI doesnt know above, hence does stupid things like slowing his barb army with a 10 amazons (thats not the same as slowing his necro army with 100 soulless)

-"raven familiar" moments with class specific abilities - i mean 1 hand of glory = 3 gold, so that damn raven familiar i just summoned costed 60 gold
-> hence overworking much of summoned units to have them not be totally of in power compared to costs

- balance between classes, some need some upping (mainly senator and enchanter done so far)

-guardian units and permanent commander at home fortress; greatest AI weakness is war of attrition, i win many games on high difficulty by AI running out of commanders, AI has 5 times my troop strength, but war ends with "no commander"; also permanent commander with ritual ability for classes, i hate winning vs AI because he is too dumb to preserve his commander on which half his economy depends (ok, sometimes they recruit new, but in the meantime they suffer seriously)

- and also some other changes, which simply looked right (high priestess god for example spawning stupid spiders and scorpions across the world; casters should survive their own spells at least, otherwise this is huge exploit vs AI)

So it would be nice if someone found time to play this mod a bit, i do not know, when i finish the rest of classes.

Short description, what the changes roughly are:
Captains have bows, hedge wizards do some minor fire and ice dam, catapults and ballistas more powerful in siege and cata fires in normal battle a bit.

Baron: Trebutchets still only siege, but real nasty siege; Pikes and Longbow upped(especially latter at 12.5 gold too expensive for being a unique unit); dogs scare with baying, especially animals; stupid dog packs can be recuited for cheap (do not know whether this is good idea); all irregular mass recruitments (e.g. 10 spearman for 70 gold) have more numerous and more seldom versions with 60 and 120 units (idea is on small maps irregular recruitments matter much, on large maps they are less important due to income scaling with map size but frequency doenst)

Barbarian: totems and effigy upped (stationary units must be very cost efficient for their power); all barbs can rage; all amazons now for at least some purposes better than standard barbs; amazon lev 1 casters now hopefully more interesting to lev 2 casters; hierher ancestor summon units improved; elder enaries and ancestral shaman can now survive their own entire combat spell;

Burgmeister: lucky militias; slingers good vs undead (at least one area, for which they are useful)

Senator: javelin always used, praets normal speed, triarius rearpos rank 1; gladiators and retiarius now useful additions (especially glads, probably too good, but themewise it fits); fast scorpion instead of slow ballista and due to not knowing recruit chances now all commanders always available (fits to senator i think, romans are organized, they should not rely on chance when to make their troops march); no reveler and effect similar to revelry now automatically activates when entering ancient forest (for that dummy senator can gather weeds, which are substracted each turn, though probably some extra income via trade possible); large batches of hastatus, gladiators and retis available as with baron

Priest King: no more slave hunts, tribal kings and priest king autogenerate slaves (AI cannot fail to handle that); troops now all have something special, which hopefully makes them alternative to tribal warriors, though no real ranged unit added; nearly all priest king leaders summon slaves in battle (this is to compensate the autospawn rate which is lower than slave hunt yield and also make all those guys more useful, since they often waste their time to case bless); many summons changed (toad priest and Tzitzimitl sucked hard for their price); larger batches of sun and moon warriors avilable

Enchanter: all constructs armor +1 for more usefulness; terracotta soldiers upped; all resource site using golems turn upon death into handy immortal respective mines (e.g. gold golem dies-> creature called "handy gold mine" with immortality -> enchanter just gives up income of gold mine for the "short" time till gold golem dies - that should still be long enough for it to be balanced); enchanter and great enchanter now generate the iron and gold equal to mines used up and also turn into handy immortal mines upon death (in my impression there is to little incentive to have many enchanters or great enchanters);

High Priestess: genereally summon cost reduced (many units not good enough for price, this way is simpler); Baal now can no longer suffer permanent injuries and spawns spiders and scorps across the world (to remind everybody that he is around - and yes, if you get Baal you will notice some odd change in top left corner of map, no other way to do it); some summons upped;

Necromancer: many summons upped (they have to be compared to lich, lich is 400 hands, minor summon 20, greater 80 and lich is awesome); vampire completely changed for 125 hands less half the caster and eating villages to raise dead is no deal, changed version is about spawning vampire spawns, like a lot better version of ghouls (but i fear vampire is too good now, but hard to tell); demilich can move slowly without teleporting;

Thanks for any feedback. (the text file still contains a lot of commented stuff for test purposes.)

Upps, spoiler doesnt work as i thought.

Where can i upload mod?
Speedy.sh

http://speedy.sh/MFgnA/balance-mod.c3m

That should work.

Just to add, no graphics and sound adjustments, so some attacks have no effect and no sound.

Just made test games with unmodded troll vs unmodded and modded marquis AI senator on random maps.

The game vs unmodded senator ended as always in late summer 3 by killing his last commander with 2/3 of his troop strength stationed. The game vs modded senator is in summer year 4 and looks like senator will crush me with ease. So AI can handle modded senator well.

edit:
Demonologist and Witch done, most Greater Demons and all Demon Lords now summon some units without risk, should make them interesting enough, Demon Lords full spell access; Witch slow summons and weak high level summons strengthened, Androphag Spearman more useful, Witch and Hag can repair burnt Forest/Jungle/Ancient

Edited by: carn11

Sounds cool. How does the work go? Has anyone try it?

I reactivated the file link, apparently its only active for about 2 weeks. Made some minor cost changes to senator spellcasters as they were to good in last version and baron militas matter now more.

currently i am doing demonologist.

Main problem is that with any option for which i know it is bad, what change is sufficient to make it good enough but not too good. And i can just check that by playing. What change to do to demon lords that it can make sense to gather 750 sacrifice and summon them? Are greater demon, greater devil, hierophagus, ice devil worth 100 sacrifices, when minor summons can be done for 10? I just keep guessing, because in-depth testing would take too long.

I'm a complete newbie in CoE so far, so I doubt that I can help . Though many Illwinter fans now check Dominions 4 beta, it's great to see that such a wonderful game as CoE (and in the same vein, the same "universe", the same lore as Dom4) has support and interest from modders.

Demonologist and Witch done now, maybe except for Duke of Hell

Newest version, done so far:
Baron, Barbarian, Burgmeister, Senator, Enchanter, High Priestess,
Necromancer, Priest King, Demonologist
, Witch, Bakemono, Pale One, Druid, Cardinal of El, Warlock

still to do: troll king, high cultist, dwarf queen, making things look and sound nice, high priestess standard recruits

Speedy.sh

http://speedy.sh/MFgnA/balance-mod.c3m

I ran some tests to see which fraction of the time each faction wins a round. With your mod, most teams survive to turn 200 (where autobattle automatically stops), so I allocate the win proportionally to how much of the remaining armies in the world belong to the surviving faction (i.e. a three way tie would give each army 0.33 wins). These tests are done with the Empire society and the default map size.

I conclude that the Barbarian, Druid, and Voice of El all need some kind of improvements, while the Baron, Troll King, and Priest King need to be weakened. I really like the mod and want to thank you for all the work you've done, but feel like the improvements to Baron were misguided since they were the most powerful AI faction in vanilla.

N=220 No mods Balance 1.104
Bakemono 0.023 0.035
Barbarian 0.030 0.023
Baron 0.137 0.115
Burgmeister 0.033 0.031
Demonologist 0.060 0.037
Druid 0.019 0.020
DwarfQueen 0.043 0.030
Enchanter 0.020 0.033
HighCultist 0.030 0.038
HighPriestess 0.043 0.036
Necromancer 0.132 0.075
PaleOne 0.025 0.033
PriestKing 0.088 0.145
Senator 0.035 0.044
TrollKing 0.072 0.138
VoiceofEl 0.002 0.022
Warlock 0.106 0.050
Witch 0.095 0.085

Edited by: Ighalli