Yomi Rebalanced by Telos Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

There have been multiple threads decrying Yomi's weakness and talking about ways of fixing it. I finally took it upon myself to actually do something. (I'm sure some of the ideas I've used came from FrankTrollman, Baumgarm or other commenters, so they deserve some credit for this.) You can download the mod here: Dropbox.com

Warning #1: I think I've worked most of the bugs out of this, but I may have missed some. I also haven't extensively tested this yet by any means, so parts of it may turn out to overpowered, or underpowered, or just weird. Let me know if you notice problems, and I'll try to fix them. Thanks!

Warning #2: MA Shinuyama probably reuses some of Yomi's units, so if you use this mod in a multi-era game, you will likely affect Shinuyama too, which may or may not be what you want.

My overall philosophy.
It is widely agreed that EA Yomi is under-powered. I wanted to make fairly minimal, highly thematic changes to address that, while keeping what is most unique about Yomi: easily massable chaos-powered demons with ethereal second-forms and high upkeep,allied with human bandits and wild bakemono goblins. Edit: Some commenters have said that the changes I make add up to an "expansion pack" rather than a mere "rebalance". Whatever you want to call it, the mod's aim is to get a balanced EA nation that accentuates what was flavorful and interesting about vanilla Yomi.

Overview of Yomi's weaknesses and how I tried to compensate.
(1) Chaos-powered Oni are drastically diminished by order scales, which are what most opponents will have because order is very powerful. This weakness is addressed by giving Yomi tools for weakening enemy dominion and sowing unrest with its stealthy goblins and a new spy.

(2) Oni are quite expensive, which fits poorly with the turmoil scales that Yomi is pressed to take. Chaos recruitment softens this a bit, but doesn't reduce upkeep. I've kept the theme of having demons be easily massable on demand but costly to keep around, but I have increased the chaos-recruitment discounts on most of the Oni to help improve Yomi's tumultuous gold situation while still encouraging them to play the most thematic aspects of the faction.

(3) Yomi's leadership situation in vanilla is quite awkward. Its signature Oni require undead leadership, but it has great difficulty recruiting such leaders without cutting significantly into research or site-searching. I have slightly tweaked most of the leaders, and added some new national holy spellsto help address this and to give each leader something to do.

(4) Yomi's bandits fit a bit oddly in the faction, and there is quite little use for the shieldless bandit infantry. I played up the stealth/trickery angle by giving them twist fate having them enter battle in a stealthy smoke mode that gives them slightly increased stats until they initially get hit, which is thematic and makes them somewhat playable.

(5) I'm not sure whether Yomi's national summons are appropriately priced. If they're not, this mod should eventually address this, though I haven't decided how yet. Suggestions?

Detailed list of changes.

1. Turning Bakemono into harbingers of chaos. Various modifications allow them to sneak into enemy territory to sow unrest and weaken dominion in preparation for Oni invasion.

[X] Reduced the cost of temples to 200. Yomi has no sacred units to recruit, and Yomi generally is pressed into taking lackluster scales, so temples do less for Yomi than they do for most nations so they should be cheaper. This will help Yomi spread its lackluster dominion to keep from getting order-penalties on Oni.

[X] Made each of the 3 recruitable goblin units increase unrest by 0.5/goblin/month. This is thematic for wild undisciplined goblins, and gives Yomi the flavorful possibility of sneaking goblins into enemy provinces to sow unrest that will make their Oni stronger when they arrive. This also provides nice synergy when goblins and Oni defend a choke together, though obviously at the cost of income, which again seems quite thematic.

[X] Gave the weakest bakemono goblin a single-use net to go along with his club, just to give people a potential reason to recruit him rather than the one with the length-5 spear, or possibly even the archer which is by far the best bakemono. I toyed with the idea of reducing these back to size 1, as they were in Dom3, which greatly increases their usefulness in some situations, but I decided not to counteract the designers on this and also decided that Yomi already had that niche covered with the tiny Ko-Oni. (There might be a good case for switching this though, making the Ko-Oni a less easily banishable size-2, and letting the tiny club-wielding bakemono warriors fill the size-1 niche.)

[X] Made bakemono chiefs have heretic 1. This allows Yomi to start weakening enemy dominion and generate the turmoil dominion its Oni need. (I've tested this a fair bit now, and it doesn't seem over-powered.)

[X] Added a mountain-recruitable Yuki-Joro. (This is an actual figure from Japanese mythology, literally a "snow harlot". En.wikipedia.org ) She is STR and sacred, is a spy, seductress, and heretic 2, with W1H2. To fit real-world mythology, she has mistform, floating, and cold-power, which make her a reasonably powerful assassin in cold provinces, even though she's not especially impressive stats-wise. The fact that she is a stealthy heretic, preacher and spy should give Yomi further potential for creating the sort of tumultuous dominion their demons will fight better in. The W-path is a boon to Yomi's magic diversity. I had initially wanted to make this an N-path so it wouldn't be any more useful than the many tribal shamans you easily find, but the actual mythology of the Yuki-Joro fits much better with W than N. Since it's widely agreed that Yomi is under-powered, I hope it won't be too much to give them the ability to recruit a W1 mage (in a mountain with lab and temple). As far as magic diversity is concerned, this is less powerful than having them start within a few provinces of jade amazons, which is an extremely common thing to have happen anyway, so I really doubt it will break anything to make Yomi a bit more assured of being able to get W1 eventually. Some people have complained about Yomi's inability to get H2 (boostable to H3 with an artifact), and this provides a route to that.

(Since I was using Bakemono as a flavorful way of spreading chaos, I didn't add chaos spread to Yomi's dominion, but that might be worth trying as well.)

2. Rebalancing Oni. The main change is to reduce upfront costs, usually by increasing chaos-recruitment discounts. In each case, the base cost and hence the upkeep costs remains about the same, so this really helps only in the initial recruitment (or really the turn after initial recruitment because that's when you get the discount). This helps Yomi's money situation, while accentuating strategic choices involving delaying recruitment to save on upkeep costs versus risking recruiting your Oni too late.

[X] Increased chaos-recruitment discount on the tiny Ko-Oni from 1 to 2, but also increased their base cost from 12 to 13. In Turmoil 3, they now cost 7, rather than 9, but cost slightly more upkeep, which may not be all that big of a deal given their generally low life-expectancy.

[X] Increased chaos-recruitment bonuses on both chilly Ao-Oni and fiery Aka-Oni from 2 to 3, but also adjusted their base costs to 21 and 24. After discounts in turmoil 3, these now cost 12 and 15 gold respectively, but of course have much steeper upkeeps than are usually associated with such prices.

[X] Increased chaos-recruitment on the javelin throwing Oni from 2 to 5, and on the largest Kuro-Oni from 3 to 6, so these now cost 25 and 32 gold in Turmoil 3, but again have much steeper upkeeps which is a fairly big deal on these highly survivable units.

[X] Increased the chaos-recruitment bonuses for both Oni leaders. Oni generals increased from 10 to 20 (though their base price also increased for reasons stated below), and the big cap-only Dai-Oni from 15 to 30, so it now costs 390 in turmoil 3 though has higher upkeep than you would expect for that price.

3. Fixing Yomi's commanders. These changes are geared towards making undead leadership for Oni less painful to get, and giving each of Yomi's commanders something to do.

[X] Demon Generals. Reduced the D-path to a 20% random so this won't require a lab and is a bit cheaper, but still provides some potential for skele-spam or whatever you wanted a D1-general for. Increased undead leadership to 80 to compensate lack of D-path. (I had tried making these wilderness-recruitable but found that cheapens the excitement of 120 leadership if you can grab another so easily.)

[X] Demon Priests. To give these priests something to do, and to help address morale issues that Yomi often runs into, I added two new H1 spells for Yomi that are AoE 1 versions of its bigger national spells that provide barkskin and berserker for oni. Even with these spells, hardly anyone would forego recruiting something else to get a priest from a fort, so I made them wilderness-recruitable (with a temple, of course). I also added some extra undead leadership (up to 40 now) and increased their map-movement to 2 so these can ferry around stacks of Oni. You do have to build a 200-gold temple first, but then you can wilderness-recruit leaders for your core troops, just like most nations can.

[X] Sorcerors. I cut death from their list of possible random picks to make the auto-calc cut their price by 10 gold (from 115 to 105). Yomi has plenty of other ways of getting D2, and cutting their price makes them more economical researchers, a nice improvement.

[X] Oni Generals. In vanilla, these guys are like gangly teenagers - poor at leadership, poor at research, not quite tough enough to use as a thug, not quite powerful enough to use as a battlemage. We've already addressed leadership and research, so l opted to make these a bit better as thugs or battle-mages. I changed their magic to be D1 + 100% of E2/F2/D2. Each of the resulting versions is quite usable for battle magic or is nicely self-buffable as a thug. I didn't want to add a holy path to these, but I did want to open the possibility of using their sacredness as a thug, so I made them automatically bless themselves at the start of battle too, to at least crack open that door. I view this as a weaker version of Holy-1 that's usable only for self-blessing, but oni are too self-absorbed to help others. I also added 3 HP, as that gives them +1HP of regen with an N9 bless. (Yomi still probably doesn't have nearly enough sacreds to be a good candidate for a strong bless, but this is there for someone to try if they want.) It's fairly frustrating to put good gear on an Oni thug, as the gear disappears forever if the Oni goes into ghost-form. [X] To help alleviate this, I buffed the Oni generals (and also the Dai Oni's) no-dachi. For testing, I currently have them get a 2-handed dark fire sword, statistically similar to their vanilla sword, but magical and armor-piercing with some bonus fire damage. Eventually I should make this into a more thematic new weapon, something like a flaming no-dachi.

[X] Hannya. Aside from their cold-bloodedness, these receive less complaints than most of Yomi's units so I didn't feel I needed to change them much. Yomi already has a hard time attacking into enemy dominion due to chaos power, and this is compounded by cold dominion paralyzing Hannyas who have 4 base encumbrance + 10 more for cold-bloodedness. I counteracted this a bit by reducing their base encumbrance from 4 to 2. This makes them quite good in heat, and slightly less terrible in cold.

[X] Dai Oni. Aside from cost and encumbrance, people usually don't complain much about these either. I decreased their upfront cost by upping their chaos-recruitment discount and gave them a slightly better sword. Also, building on the theme of having Oni be too easily distracted to research or help others, I removed their Holy-1 path and made them instead just automatically bless themselves at the start of combat. This makes them a bit cheaper, and it potentially cuts some fatigue from their buff cycle which is important given the atrociously heavy armor they wear, which I'd like to let them keep as it is part of the flavor of Yomi.

4. Tweaking Yomi's bandits. Yomi's bandit archers are solidly armored and well-worth recruiting, so I saw no need to change them. Yomi's bandit infantry have no shields (following Japanese history that didn't involve many shields) and hence they are fairly weak as infantry go - indeed it's usually smarter to hire indy infantry, or Yomi's equally well-armored archers instead.

[X] I decided that an interesting flavorful tweak would be to play up the bandit infantry's stealth and trickery, by having them enter into combat in a stealthy smoke mode that gives them slightly improved skills until they suffer their first hit. That's usually not quite as good as an actual shield, but it is flavorful and makes it slightly more likely people will recruit them. [ ] Currently their stealth mode stat change shows up just as their having a simple buckler. Eventually I should create a custom shield called "deceptive smoke" instead.

[X] Thanks to a great suggestion by DariusFF below, I made bandit commanders tax collectors, so that they can raid provinces and collect taxes even if they can't trace a safe route back to a fort. Seems thematic for bandits, and Yomi can definitely use any bit of money it can get.

5. Making Yomi's summons worth casting. [ ] I may want to adjust these at some point, but I haven't figured out how exactly I want to do this yet. Suggestions?

Edited by: TelosTelos

I get a bit worried when someone rebalances a nation by changing literally every unit--it makes it impossible to get a sense of balance, because 15 changes are happening at once.

Ao-oni would be the only oni you would ever recruit, even more than before.

Hannya and Bandit changes are completely unnecessary--they both have their own uses. Ditto with the Sorcerer--he's fine.

Oni Generals *can* be thugged without the changes--and it feels odd that they would be able to get D4. Very odd.

Giving Yomi an H2 caster and cheap temples seems against the flavor of the nation--they're not supposed to be concerned with that sort of thing.

I agree with most of your changes, Telos, particularly the more conservative ones--reducing temple price and making bakemono cause unrest. I think those two changes go a long way toward fixing the core problem the nation has, which is chaos power. I also like the Yuki-Joro (although her name could be, perhaps, Yuki-Onna), although as you mentioned, having a cold power unit in a nation with cold-blooded battlemages is a bit awkward. I am unsure she needs to be H2, though. If I made anything H2, it would be the Dai Oni.

You are right that Demon Generals are pretty much garbage as they are, and I definitely agree that they should have stronger magic; Oni are supposed to be "powerful mages, but poor at research" and right now the Dai Oni is the only Oni who can cast worth a damn. What I think would improve them more than anything, really, is changing their armor to something lighter, even if it was just into "regular" samurai armor. I don't think I like the self-blessing though. It's...unusual, to say the least, and I don't think it's especially thematic.

I really strongly dislike your changes to the sorcerer. Them having a solid shot at being D2 was very important to me, as it let me pump out Shikome or, with a skull staff, Shura, once I had some death income. Yes, I could do that with Hannya, but Hannya are more expensive and I prefer to not have them sitting at a fort making troops if I can help it. Furthermore, D2 sorcerers were passable battlemages. So, losing those things for a pitiful 10 gold? Not great, since I would have to recruit more Hannya to compensate, meaning no savings in the end.

I don't think Hannya need a buff. They are not the problem with Yomi.

As for the bandits...whatever. I never recruited them and I probably still will not recruit them. There was very little they could do that bakemono couldn't do better.

Finally, a minor complaint in that I dislike the Demon General essentially losing D1. I enjoyed giving them skull staves so that they could whip up Shikome during downtime and cast things like Shadow Bolt in combat. Losing that is hardly the end of the world, though.

Drop the Twist Fate on Bandits and give them perhaps a tiny stat boost somewhere + big pillage bonus.

Overall a nice mod, though the changes are a bit too drastic for my taste.

New commander fits Shinuyama better than Yomi fluff-wise, personally I would go with making Demon Priest a spy instead.

Bakemono being heretics is also questionable - how is their heresy justified within Yomi's overall theme? Are they persecuted by Oni for deviant beliefs or something? Sounds unlikely, since they are just slaves.

Twist fate on bandits also doesn't look credible. I don't think such tweaks are necessary in the first place, since you gave bakemono unrest generation (but Oni do not generate unrest? Are they better behaved than their goblin slaves?), so bandits are now the only unit you can mass in your territory (for garrisoning castles and such). They are also your only troop who can use formations, and their spears are a good weapon, so they definitely have a niche. They do need a pillage bonus.

Sorcerer nerf really was unnecessary, same for the Hannya buff.

I like a magic boost for Oni Generals, though I would stop at D3.

Edited by: Festin_K

Did you make sure the bandit unit can autocast spell ? I don't remember this actually working, but I may be wrong.

kianduatha wrote: I get a bit worried when someone rebalances a nation by changing literally every unit--it makes it impossible to get a sense of balance, because 15 changes are happening at once.

I understand this worry. My thinking though was (A) that one of Yomi's problems is that a lot of its units didn't have good niches (esp. demon priests, oni generals, bandit infantry, both types of goblin infantry). To fix that, you really do need to change multiple things at once. (B) another of Yomi's main weaknesses is that turmoil scales don't leave it with enough gold. Trying to fix that by changing just a few things means people will recruit just the few things you made cheaper, which wouldn't be a good outcome. So this too requires tweaking a lot of things at once. And (C) I wanted to make the mod seem like a *fun* way to play Yomi so people would actually download and try it, so it needed to have enough changes to make it seem like Yomi would have lots of attractive options, rather than hardly any, which is the current perception.

If it turns out that I made Yomi over-powered, then we can cut things back, especially the parts that seem OP. But I doubt I have made them overpowered, as Yomi will still face all the disadvantages of being Turmoil 3 with high upkeep, with a core army that gets a lot weaker if it strays very far from their home territory, and whose main work-arounds for that are still double-edged swords, to say the least. My own guess is that the changes I made are in the ballpark of "just right", with about equal chances of being "too much" and "too little". That's exactly the ballpark I want to be in with my first version of the mod.

kianduatha wrote: Ao-oni would be the only oni you would ever recruit, even more than before.

Edit: oops, I briefly confused the names of (chilly) Ao Oni and (fiery) Aka Oni. My own experiences (and most things I've read) have suggested that the chilly Ao Oni are very often better. My mod actually increases their base price by 1, while decreasing the base cost of Aka Oni by 1, slightly shifting the balance towards Aka Oni. It will take testing to see whether this new balance works, but I don't see any obvious reason to think it won't.

kianduatha wrote: Oni Generals *can* be thugged without the changes--and it feels odd that they would be able to get D4.

No, D1 + ?2 can't yield anything higher than D3, which is the minimum for casting soul vortex to counteract their heavy armor. I've had terrible luck thugging them in vanilla, probably largely due to fatigue issues involving their heavy armor and the fact that in vanilla the E-picks fall just short of being able to cast summon earth power, while the D-picks fall just short of being able to cast soul vortex, both of which can address their fatigue issues. Edit: I was misled by the Dom4 editor mistakenly displaying the generals as having D1 as their base, so I now understand why you thought this could yield D4. What I modded them to is D1+200% F/E/D, so that can yield at most D3. Sorry for the confusion.

kianduatha wrote: Giving Yomi an H2 caster and cheap temples seems against the flavor of the nation--they're not supposed to be concerned with that sort of thing.

Yomi is supposed to be concerned with spreading turmoil, and that's the main thing their temples do. Seems thematic to me. Picture them as sacrificial demonic alters out in the wilderness, not as some sort of fancy cathedral. The H2 Yuki-Joro are expensive, slow-to-recruit and available only in mountains. I really doubt they'll be used much for banish spam, or really for priestly duties at all. If you recruit them, it will almost certainly be either for their W path, or because they make good spies/seductresses/stealth preachers. My main reasons for giving them H2 were (a) to make sure the unit wasn't too cheap, (b) to make her have serious potential as a stealth preacher, and (c) to give Yomi the chance to recruit an H2 if it ever really wants one, as a couple people on another thread had been asking for that. (Incidentally, summoning mound fiends is easily doable for Yomi and does provide another path to H2, so it's not clear this really is as big a worry as people had been saying.).

Incomp wrote: I also like the Yuki-Joro (although her name could be, perhaps, Yuki-Onna), although as you mentioned, having a cold power unit in a nation with cold-blooded battlemages is a bit awkward. I am unsure she needs to be H2, though. If I made anything H2, it would be the Dai Oni.

Since she's meant to be operating mostly in enemy territory (as a spy/preacher/seductress) cold-power works alright on her even if you go Heat 1-2, as Yomi often does. It actually helps to ensure that you probably *won't* use her much in your own dominion. Vanilla Yomi does already have cold-resistant Ao-Oni that deal cold-damage, so it's not like it would be completely unthematic for someone to try playing them as a cold nation. I'd be disappointed if someone added H2 to Dai Oni, as Dai Oni have much better things to do than casting H2 spells, and they're already plenty expensive, so it would suck to pay for H2 you'd hardly ever use. Much better, I think, to stick the H2 on an obscure niche unit that you won't recruit many of, and would like to use as a stealth preacher anyway. Regarding the name, I went with Joro(harlot) rather than Onna(woman), as harlot seemed to fit a bit better with Yomi's theme of goblins and bandits. Both are present in Japanese mythology.

Incomp wrote: You are right that Demon Generals are pretty much garbage as they are, and I definitely agree that they should have stronger magic; Oni are supposed to be "powerful mages, but poor at research" and right now the Dai Oni is the only Oni who can cast worth a damn. What I think would improve them more than anything, really, is changing their armor to something lighter, even if it was just into "regular" samurai armor. I don't think I like the self-blessing though. It's...unusual, to say the least, and I don't think it's especially thematic.

I agree that their heavy armor is unfortunate. My hope is that giving them access to summon earthpower (on the D1E2 ones) and soul vortex (on the D3 ones) gives them a reasonable workaround for fatigue issues, without needing to take away their armor. It's slightly different from your standard thug, but probably still workable, and diversity is a good thing. Usually sacred thugs have H1 just so they can bless themselves. (Indeed it was complaints about inability to self-bless that made the designers grudgingly add H1 to the Dai Oni, I think.) Since I added a bunch of H1 battle spells, giving oni generals H1 would put them in that game too, which I'm not sure we'd want. Making them auto-bless is quite a bit like giving them a significantly weakened version of H1, which seemed like a great compromise for a holy-challenged nation like Yomi. I'm actually tempted to do the same thing to the Dai Oni, and make this part of the theme of Yomi that their sacred demons are self-absorbed and can't be bothered to do any more holy duties beyond anointing themselves with unholy water, or however it is that demons bless themselves.

Incomp wrote: I really strongly dislike your changes to the sorcerer. Them having a solid shot at being D2 was very important to me, as it let me pump out Shikome or, with a skull staff, Shura, once I had some death income. Yes, I could do that with Hannya, but Hannya are more expensive and I prefer to not have them sitting at a fort making troops if I can help it. Furthermore, D2 sorcerers were passable battlemages. So, losing those things for a pitiful 10 gold? Not great, since I would have to recruit more Hannya to compensate, meaning no savings in the end.

I would suggest compensating with Oni generals rather than Hannya. Oni generals are cheaper to recruit (at least in turmoil), and have much cheaper upkeep costs due to being sacred. One third of them will have D3 which enables you to do all the things you mentioned, and the other 2/3 are useful as well. Many nations have researchers that produce about twice as much research/upkeep as vanilla sorcerors do. Heck, even a lot of *indy* mages are more economical researchers than vanilla sorcerors are. 10 gold may not seem like a big difference, but it is a 10% improvement in the cost efficiency of your core researcher, which is roughly equivalent to getting a Magic+1 scale for free. I wouldn't call that "pitiful" myself. (Edit: similarly, I would call this change a "buff" rather than a "nerf", as Festin called it.)

Incomp wrote: I don't think Hannya need a buff. They are not the problem with Yomi.

I agree that Hannya are far from Yomi's worst problem. I don't think this slight buff will make them OP though, while it will make them a tiny bit more usable outside of heat provinces, where currently their cold-bloodedness makes them virtually unusable. My inclination is to try it out. If it turns out that I've made Yomi too powerful, then -- first off, yay! -- and second off, this can be one of the first buffs to cut back.

Incomp wrote: Finally, a minor complaint in that I dislike the Demon General essentially losing D1. I enjoyed giving them skull staves so that they could whip up Shikome during downtime and cast things like Shadow Bolt in combat. Losing that is hardly the end of the world, though.

I fear that losing the assured D1 is part of the cost of making them wilderness-recruitable without a lab, which really helps with vanilla Yomi's serious leadership issues. 20% of them will still have D1 in my mod, and I doubt you'll have enough skull staffs to give to many more than about 20% of them anyway, so I doubt it would affect you all that much. Also, don't forget that a third of your oni generals will have D3, so they can do these things without needing a skull staff, and are cheaper on upkeep than the demon generals anyway. I hope my mod will encourage people to build a greater diversity of units, which I think would be a good thing.

Edited by: TelosTelos

while i agree with some changes and disagree with others let me start by saying tank you for taking the time to make the mod. it is appreciated that you are giving it a shot. let me just say a couple of my favorite changes, those im not sure why you changed anything, and those i disagree with.

LOVE
i love the changes to their temples. for a faction that mostly fights a battle then picks a building at random as their temple i do feel it has flavor that fits the nation. they dont take time to really make a real temple in my eyes just pick some random building and move on. this is easily my favorite change. allows you to not have to get such a high dom score in pretender design while not breaking the bank to get temples up for higher checks.
Yuki-Joro and native water is great. more so then any other magic path since water has the easiest boosters to make. that cuts a path you might need on your pretender. but just so you know yomi does a H2. dia tengu leader comes with H2. im not sure how thematric it is for them to have such a easy ability to get H2. overall i love the unit outside of that. a unit with heretic is a huge boon.
NOT SURE WHY IT WAS CHANGED
Hannya are great as is. im not sure reinvig is something oni are able to hand out to them and i dont think they are in need of any change. much like Ao-Oni/Aka-Oni they as a faction have both fire and ice already with in their ranks. i see nothing wrong with that extending the Hannya/Yuki-Joro.
Sorcerors have a place already. lab rat with a short lifespan who can double as a battle mage. losing 1D makes them more effecient and less a battle mage. yomi is not a nation of the learned scholars or one of meager lifestyles. just think they were fine as is esp with native water and cheaper temples. might be able to afford magic scales now which make them so much better overall.
DISAGREE
bakemono chiefs have heretic 1. dont agree with a unit so easily spammed to have it. doesnt make sense theme or balance wise. that they loot and cause mischief does, creating unrest, that they preach doesnt.
Demon generals being recruited outside forts is a bad idea. losing the 1D even though you no longer need a lab + fort to make them is a bad idea. the fact that you gave a first turn general so we dont have to recruit one right off the bat is more then enough.

again thanks for taking the time

Edited by: deathnor

This mod is really interesting to me. I'm glad to see someone doing something about Yomi's worst problems, like undead leadership and research. i'm also intrigued by a lot of the new content, which is all very clever and interesting. I do think it would be misleading to promote it as a balance mod. This should really be called something more like "Yomi Re-envisioned." Not only is the number of changes very high, most units are now used for fundamentally different things than they used to be used for. There's a large number of new abilities and new recruits that substantially change the nation's basic feel and strategy. You also use several mechanics, like autospells and reinvigoration, that are quite rare in vanilla dominions. I know autospells are widely used by the modding community, because it's an incredibly powerful tool, but it means that your new Yomi doesn't blend in seamlessly with existing nations.

If you're presenting this as a balance mod, here's my reaction to the changelist.

Section 1:
Temples, Bakemono Spearman, Bakemono Archer : I approve of all this
Bakemono Chief: I'm not convinced Yomi actually needs a heretic. I also don't understand the flavor justification for this. Also, at 40 gold this feels overtuned. Arco's sceptics are one of their signature units, yet they cost more, lack forest survival, command fewer troops, and are old.
Bakemono w/ nets: I don't like this. I suspect it will be so wildly effective that the spear goblins get overshadowed. From a flavor perspective, I think if Yomi used nets, they would be on the human bandits, who are bigger and presumably higher-tech. But I don't think Yomi needs or wants nets.
Bakemono w/ clubs: If you really want to make all 3 goblin units viable, you could remove the unrest from the spearmen. Thematically, the club guys are the wild tribes, while the spearmen are goblins trained by the oni as guards and regulars. This would make your raiding forces a little weaker, but allow you to defend your own lands with massed goblins.
Yuki: I don't understand why she needs mistform. To my knowledge, nothing else in the game has mistform inherently and I don't see why she needs her own unique mechanic.

Section 2: I have no opninion. Making oni effectively cheaper sounds both good and conservative, but I have no idea what the right numbers are.
Section 3:
Demon General: Yes, I approve.
Demon Priest: I don't understand why Yomi needs new holy spells. Divine magic isn't meant to be their focus. Also, adding an H1 morale booster just feels weird. A nation whose priests buff morale should have H2 priests; that's pretty much the major distinction between H1 and H2 anyway. I would rather just give them an H2 than add new spells. Other ways to make them feel less bad about buying priests would be to increase the randoms or give them stealth.
Sorcerer: Leave them be. I would rather have more E1D2s and fewer D1E1A1s.
Oni General: Auto-blessing kind of comes out of nowhere as a mechanic. The same logic that gives it to the Oni could really apply to any and all sacred commanders. Further, while you refer to it as a weaker H1, it's substantially superior to H1 on the battlefield because it doesn't take up a slot in your buff rotation or hit with 9 fatigue. I would rather see them continue to be unused if they can't be made usable within vanilla parameters.
Hannya: I don't think hannya need to be changed at all, and I definitely don't think she should get reinvigoration. That's adding a new special icon to clutter their commander screen for no reason. If you really want to make them more efficient combat casters, lower their base encumbrance. It's currently 4, which is really high, for no particular reason.
Section 4:
I strongly disapprove. First of all, yomi's bandits are fine as-is. They're more armored than bakemono and stealthier than independents. That's a perfectly good reason to exist. I really don't like twist fate as a fix. Twist fate is actually an extremely powerful ability, and it's particularly good against giants, berserkers, and sacred infantry -- which is what EA is full of. There is no reason for Yomi to be feared for its human infantry corps, and if I could build twist fate bandits I would stop building goblins and probably even stop building oni.
Step 5:
Which summons are you referring to? Tengu summons are difficult for Yomi to cast, but there's no doubt in my mind that they're worth casting. All three tengu spells are extremely good gem investments. Shuras are extremely good thugs, and the Nushi is a great diversity mage at a reasonable price. The only things I would change would be, perhaps, making kappas come out 5 at a time.

TelosTelos wrote: Since she's meant to be operating mostly in enemy territory (as a spy/preacher/seductress) cold-power works alright on her even if you go Heat 1-2, as Yomi often does. It actually helps to ensure that you probably *won't* use her much in your own dominion. Vanilla Yomi does already have cold-resistant Ao-Oni that deal cold-damage, so it's not like it would be completely unthematic for someone to try playing them as a cold nation. I'd be disappointed if someone added H2 to Dai Oni, as Dai Oni have much better things to do than casting H2 spells, and they're already plenty expensive, so it would suck to pay for H2 you'd hardly ever use. Much better, I think, to stick the H2 on an obscure niche unit that you won't recruit many of, and would like to use as a stealth preacher anyway.

I agree that it won't be that big of a problem, but I do believe it is still awkward to have two different temperature preferences in one nation. My main objection to H2 on the Yuki-Joro is simply that it doesn't make any sense to me. Why is a mountain spirit who is unrelated (if allied) to the Oni their most authoritative priest, imbued with the most divine power?

TelosTelos wrote: Regarding the name, I went with Joro(harlot) rather than Onna(woman), as harlot seemed to fit a bit better with Yomi's theme of goblins and bandits.

Believe me, I know what Joro and Onna mean. I simply don't like the word "harlot" much.

TelosTelos wrote: I agree that their heavy armor is unfortunate. My hope is that giving them access to summon earthpower (on the D1E2 ones) and soul vortex (on the D3 ones) gives them a reasonable workaround for fatigue issues, without needing to take away their armor. It's slightly different from your standard thug, but probably still workable, and diversity is a good thing. Usually sacred thugs have H1 just so they can bless themselves. (Indeed it was complaints about inability to self-bless that made the designers grudgingly add H1 to the Dai Oni, I think.) Since I added a bunch of H1 battle spells, giving oni generals H1 would put them in that game too, which I'm not sure we'd want. Making them auto-bless is quite a bit like giving them a significantly weakened version of H1, which seemed like a great compromise for a holy-challenged nation like Yomi. I'm actually tempted to do the same thing to the Dai Oni, and make this part of the theme of Yomi that their sacred demons are self-absorbed and can't be bothered to do any more holy duties beyond anointing themselves with unholy water, or however it is that demons bless themselves.

OrionJA addressed this, and I agree with him.

TelosTelos wrote: I would suggest compensating with Oni generals rather than Hannya. Oni generals are cheaper to recruit (at least in turmoil), and have much cheaper upkeep costs due to being sacred. One third of them will have D3 which enables you to do all the things you mentioned, and the other 2/3 are useful as well. Many nations have researchers that produce about twice as much research/upkeep as vanilla sorcerors do. Heck, even a lot of *indy* mages are more economical researchers than vanilla sorcerors are. 10 gold may not seem like a big difference, but it is a 10% improvement in the cost efficiency of your core researcher, which is roughly equivalent to getting a Magic+1 scale for free. I wouldn't call that "pitiful" myself. (Edit: similarly, I would call this change a "buff" rather than a "nerf", as Festin called it.)

Okay, fine, but I don't think the change was needed in the first place. There are excellent uses for the air, earth, and death randoms of the sorcerer, and I dislike losing any of them. The fire random I would be glad to see gone, however. It is thematic, I suppose, but is not very useful.

TelosTelos wrote: I agree that Hannya are far from Yomi's worst problem. I don't think this slight buff will make them OP though, while it will make them a tiny bit more usable outside of heat provinces, where currently their cold-bloodedness makes them virtually unusable. My inclination is to try it out. If it turns out that I've made Yomi too powerful, then -- first off, yay! -- and second off, this can be one of the first buffs to cut back.

As OrionJA said, it would probably be simpler to lower their base encumbrance, which is oddly high. I, however, feel like "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" is a useful maxim. I recommend focusing on Yomi's weaknesses, not their strengths.

Edited by: Incomp

Incomp wrote: The fire random I would be glad to see gone, however. It is thematic, I suppose, but is not very useful.

I would be sorry to see it go. It enables to Yomi to access scorpion beasts, fire brands, and gleaming shields without taking a Dai Oni off the battlefield. Magma bolts is a perfectly reasonable attack for the early age, earth boots gets them to magma eruption, and banefire dart is also on the table, so I'd say they have acceptable battle magic. Eventually they become they become the forgers for your skulls of fire, and once you have one or two skulls you can use them as emergency hannya substitutes if you need flaming arrows or flame wards.

Orionja wrote:

I would be sorry to see it go. It enables to Yomi to access scorpion beasts, fire brands, and gleaming shields without taking a Dai Oni off the battlefield. Magma bolts is a perfectly reasonable attack for the early age, earth boots gets them to magma eruption, and banefire dart is also on the table, so I'd say they have acceptable battle magic. Eventually they become they become the forgers for your skulls of fire, and once you have one or two skulls you can use them as emergency hannya substitutes if you need flaming arrows or flame wards.

You know...I suppose you are correct.

Well Yuki-Onna are sorta like Civatateo or Banshees (Baobhan Sidhe) than sucuubi in nature, so I wouldn't call them whores.

Oni generals are already decent mid to late game battlefield spellcasters. Oni generals cost more than sorcerers, but have slightly less upkeep and comparable paths. They're substantially cheaper both to recruit and maintain than hannya, and equally good at death magic. Early in the game, you don't build them because they're inept researchers and their heavy armor is inconvenient. But later on, your mages are apt to encounter rains of stones, foul vapors, and other hazards that will make you seriously glad you went with the mages who has >40 hp instead of 10. You also tend to get jumped by devils and eagle warriors and other things to cleave with those swords. You may also end up appreciating the massive undead leadership. Also, their base encumbrance is much lower than either of your other mages'. If you can replace that samurai armor with something weightless, they are the best skeleton spammer you get. They also may end up benefiting from a minor earth or nature bless you picked up by accident.

If there's one thing I would change, I would give them 40 leadership. I get that they're generals of the oni, not oni who are generals, but it would be nice if they stopped penalizing the morale of their demons.

So, I can't get auto-casting twist fate to work on units that aren't commanders. Apparently auto-casting is something that only commanders can do? Anyway, I've been toying around with having the bandit infantry start combat in a stealth mode (indicated by purple smoke around them) which gives them a slight boost to their combat skills until someone hits them, at which point they revert to being normal bandit infantry (using the same mechanic as hydras use to change shapes as their heads get lopped off, but without regeneration obviously). That's a bit more thematic for stealthy bandits than twist fate anyway, and probably is slightly less powerful, or at least is powerful in different and more thematic ways.

Good suggestion on making the Hannya have reduced encumbrance rather than reinvigoration -- same net effect in a less in-your-face way. This is probably the least essential change in the mod, so it'll be an easy one to revert if it turns out to make Hannya or the faction as a whole too strong. As far as I can tell, it doesn't cause any problems though, and Yomi is weak enough that slight boosts across the board don't seem uncalled for. A lot of nations have similarly powerful casters with less encumbrance and without the albatross of cold-bloodedness, so I think there's plenty of room to buff the Hannya without breaking them.

I'm surprised by people's opposition to removing the chance of getting a D-random on sorcerors. Just to be clear, this doesn't "nerf them" or make them have less magic, it just makes it more likely that they'll be E2D1, E1F1D1, or E1A1D1, by ruling out the possibility that they might be E1D2. Yomi has three other mages that are all capable of getting D2 or more, so it's not like this stops you from being able to do anything you want to do. What vanilla Yomi *can't* do is recruit researchers that come anywhere near the cost efficiency of most nations, or even of a lot of indy mages. Cutting the cost, while retaining the research capability, of your primary researcher does make it significantly cheaper to get a lot of research done, roughly equivalent to getting a Magic +1 scale for free which is a big deal. In most games, you'll recruit dozens of sorcerors and only use a handful of D2 ones for anything other than research, and anything you do with those D2 ones, you could have done just as easily with something else like an Oni general instead, whose cost isn't much different (slightly more upfront, slightly less upkeep), but is an inept researcher for thematic reasons. Furthermore, especially when I have plenty of other D2's, I'd much rather get an E random on my sorcerors anyway (for summon earthpower, etc...) and removing the chance of getting a D random increases the chance of getting E2. So this change really looks like all upside with next to no downside to me.

One reason I added new national holy spells was that people have complained that there's no point in recruiting demon priests, which is disappointing because these are flavorful. Another reason is that people have complained about morale issues, stemming from needing to use lousy leaders like Oni Generals or Demon Priests to lead their troops around. Many nations solve that problem with H2 priests casting sermon of courage, but for thematic reasons, we don't want Yomi to have easy access to H2. It seemed like a good compromise was to give Yomi's priests a weaker "demonic courage" castable by their weaker priests, and it seemed thematic to also give them the ability to do mini AoE 1 versions of Yomi's other demon buffs too. I really doubt it would be worth recruiting many priests to do this, but letting them do it does give a nice thematic feel of demon priests out there doing their own twisted demonic analog of what other factions' priests do. I am tempted to remove demonic courage though, as demonic rage (AoE 1 end of culture) has about the same net effect, but is much more unique and flavorful.

Some people complained that giving Yuki-Joro mistform or Oni Generals self-blessing would be bad because it's different from what other nations do. To me it is *good* to explore flavorful different ways of doing things. Yuki-Joro's mistform seems like a great flavorful way of representing myths about their being able to avoid harm by turning into clouds of mist or snow. Sure, I could make her ethereal, as many broadly similar creatures are, but mistform seems to fit better, and it certainly won't make her any more powerful than, e.g., Baoban Sidhe are (i.e., not very powerful). Similarly, having Oni Generals self-bless seems like a flavorful way of making them seem more selfish and less powerful than your run-of-the-mill H1, while still enabling them to use their sacredness as thugs without all the hassle of bringing a priest to bless them and then retreat. Also, one of the biggest weaknesses of Demon Generals is their heavy armor, so giving them a fatigue-free spell out of their buff-cycle allows them to keep that thematic armor without running into such crippling fatigue issues.

People also raised some worries about whether it makes sense to have bakemono be heretics and cause unrest. Their vanilla flavor text already depicts them as hiding in the mountains trying to avoid the Oni, so I think it's perfectly flavorful to have them be heretics in your own "Oni Kings" dominion. It also doesn't seem likely that warty little goblins would be much bigger fans of anyone else's dominion, so I think it's fine for them to be heretics there too. More generally, it seems really flavorful and fun to have a bunch of wild goblins sneak around causing havoc and sacrilege, paving the way for demonic invasion. I haven't tested this enough yet to know how balanced it all will be, so it could turn out that 40 gold stealthy heretics are brokenly cheap, but I doubt it. We have a better sense about how much stealthy unrest-causation should cost from Pangaea's revelers and the mod is in line with those costs.

TelosTelos wrote: I've been toying around with having the bandit infantry start combat in a stealth mode (indicated by purple smoke around them) which gives them a slight boost to their combat skills until someone hits them, at which point they revert to being normal bandit infantry (using the same mechanic as hydras use to change shapes as their heads get lopped off, but without regeneration obviously).

I don't understand why you would want to introduce a new shapeshifting mechanic for Yomi bandits. They're third-string infantry, basic human spearmen in a nation of nonhumans, and as such they don't need to be interesting. In the fiction, I don't think Yomi's bandits would have advanced stealth tactics more effective than those used by professional warrior castes (van hirdmen, ulm's steel maidens) or by superior races like the satyr sneaks. In the game, I think it's fine if the Yomi player spends most of their time and energy looking at demons. If your modding fingers are itching and you want to code some weird stuff, I would rather see tanuki, inugami, rokurokubi, shoujou, or namahage make an appearance.

Good suggestion on making the Hannya have reduced encumbrance rather than reinvigoration -- same net effect in a less in-your-face way.

It's not the same net effect. Reinvigoration continues to apply to unconscious characters, while base encumbrance becomes irrelevant. A major part of my objection to reinvig is that hannya don't need special protections against freezing to death or burning out as communion slaves.

Someone wrote: I'm surprised by people's opposition to removing the chance of getting a D-random on sorcerors. Just to be clear, this doesn't "nerf them" or make them have less magic, it just makes it more likely that they'll be E2D1, E1F1D1, or E1A1D1, by ruling out the possibility that they might be E1D2. Yomi has three other mages that are all capable of getting D2 or more, so it's not like this stops you from being able to do anything you want to do What vanilla Yomi *can't* do is recruit researchers that come anywhere near the cost efficiency of most nations, or even of a lot of indy mages. Cutting the cost, while retaining the research capability, of your primary researcher does make it significantly cheaper to get a lot of research done, roughly equivalent to getting a Magic +1 scale for free which is a big deal.

.

It's not at all like getting a free magic scale. Magic scales allow you get your research done faster with the same number of forts, make independent mages and minor mage summons more attractive, and do all kinds of other nice things cheap sorcerer's won't. I would agree with you that the E2D1 sorcerer is probably the "best" sorcerer, but I think D2E1 is second best. I'm a huge fan of skeleton spamming, which I think is better than anything F1 or A1 brings you. It's true that you have 3 other mages with guaranteed D2, but skeleton spamming works better the more casters you have, and most of your nations mages are going to be sorcerers. Skeleton spam is particularly useful when you're going into combat with large numbers of mages and few troops, which is usually the case when your research farm gets raided or a fort gets cracked. And speaking of forts, I really want my research team to be able to churn out shade beasts or soulless to man the walls in a pinch.

Someone wrote: Many nations solve that problem with H2 priests casting sermon of courage, but for thematic reasons, we don't want Yomi to have easy access to H2.

Why not? The whole project makes Yomi a much more religious nation. You're want their priests to be inspiring courage, you're giving them an H2 in the mountains, you want blessings to be more viable, you're giving the goblins a tribal religion if their own -- your Yomi is clearly a pretty spiritual place and H2 is not out of place.

Someone wrote: Some people complained that giving Yuki-Joro mistform or Oni Generals self-blessing would be bad because it's different from what other nations do. To me it is *good* to explore flavorful different ways of doing things.

I don't speak for anyone else, but my position has always been that it's bad to do something "different" in a balance mod unless it's absolutely necessary. If you were making a expansion pack, the exact opposite would be true. There's room in this community for mods that innovate, that challenge our ideas about how the game works, but balance patching isn't that place.

Someone wrote: People also raised some worries about whether it makes sense to have bakemono be heretics and cause unrest. Their vanilla flavor text already depicts them as hiding in the mountains trying to avoid the Oni, so I think it's perfectly flavorful to have them be heretics in your own "Oni Kings" dominion. It also doesn't seem likely that warty little goblins would be much bigger fans of anyone else's dominion, so I think it's fine for them to be heretics there too

. The goblins are presented as infidels, not heretics. Lots and lots of nations have commanders who don't participate in the state religion. Enkidu bone readers, Abysian warlocks, Horite shamans, and so on. None of them as statted as heretics because they don't actively interfere with the established cult. Within Yomi, heretic goblin chiefs would imply some kind of subversive organizers who urged people generally, including humans, to reject oni worship and flee to the mountains. I don't think the goblins care that much. As for enemy dominion, all the stealth heretics I know of are implied to have powers of persuasion. Sceptics, that one demon lord, the Gathite healers, and so on all have something appealing on offer to lure people away from the enemy faith. I don't think the bakemono are ingratiating themselves to the foreign public or having meaningful interfaith dialogue. To the extent that they interfere with the established religion, it's through terror and disruption, not proselytizing, and that is represented by using your stealth troops to destroy enemy temples.

Look, a lot of your ideas are interesting. There's no reason you couldn't have a fantasy Japan where elite ninjas train side by side with demons, goblins are an oppressed religious minority, and captivating ice maidens serve as cultural ambassadors. If you want to make that nation, go ahead and make that nation! But I think it will go better if you don't pretend it's a rebalance. Once you start thinking in terms of an alternate nation, you have a lot of freedom to smooth over these wrinkles. You can rename the goblin chief to "goblin mystic" or "goblin idolator," or just make some all-new heretic units like rokurokubi or pennagolan. You could take away the nation's heat preferencene and add a half-dozen snow themed units. Or whatever.

TelosTelos wrote: So, I can't get auto-casting twist fate to work on units that aren't commanders. Apparently auto-casting is something that only commanders can do? .

Yeah, #onebattlespell only works with commanders

Arguably for consistency the Yari bandits should have 11 base defense and both should have 11 precision; if you want to buff them for some reason, that'd be a sensible place to start.

Orionja I think hit the nail on the head with the 'rebalance' vs. 'expansion' divide--currently you're trying to do both. They're generally great ideas, just it can be confusing when you're claiming the changes as simple rebalancing.

I personally think Oni Generals are pretty good as-is. I would *love* for them to be ~20 gold cheaper[to model Inept Researcher as 5/tick], but they're quite usable as bargain-basement thugs and hefty battlecasters. Incidentally, making Demon Priests #foreignrec is probably the biggest boost you could give the Oni General. Ooh, and if you're feeling particularly generous you could give the Demon Priest some sort of ranged weapon [with more than 10 range] to let them take advantage of the 'fire and keep distance' order to keep out of trouble. That would about double their utility.

Orionja wrote: I don't speak for anyone else, but my position has always been that it's bad to do something "different" in a balance mod unless it's absolutely necessary. If you were making a expansion pack, the exact opposite would be true. There's room in this community for mods that innovate, that challenge our ideas about how the game works, but balance patching isn't that place.

[...]

There's no reason you couldn't have a fantasy Japan where elite ninjas train side by side with demons, goblins are an oppressed religious minority, and captivating ice maidens serve as cultural ambassadors. If you want to make that nation, go ahead and make that nation! But I think it will go better if you don't pretend it's a rebalance.

Look, I don't much care whether people label this a "rebalance" or a "balanced expansion pack". My thought was, how can I take this incredibly weak nation, accentuate what's good and flavorful and interesting about it, but add on stuff to make it play at a power-level comparable to other nations of its era?

Chaos recruitment is one thing that's interesting about Yomi, but it wasn't enough to balance the huge economic hit of turmoil, so I increased chaos-recruitment bonuses.

Chaos power is one thing that's interesting about Yomi, but that is currently disastrous against order dominions, so I added a flavorful twist on the bakemono who were already depicted as marginalized infidels who were sneaky and wild, making them also have the ability to sow unrest and subvert enemy dominion, which seemed to me a flavorful and fun way to keep Yomi's chaos-powered units from floundering on offense. Spies and stealth preachers would be a big help to this manner of overcoming the great weakness of chaos-power, so I picked a relevant myth that hadn't been explored in the game yet, that of a wilderness snow seductress, and added her as a flavorful spy and stealth preacher based in the same real-world mythology as the faction already was.

It was widely agreed that Yomi's commander, leadership, and research situation didn't work, so I made some minimal tweaks to preserve the great flavor of all these commanders, while also ensuring that Yomi's leadership and research needs would be met, and that each of its commanders would have an interesting role, even if that does require shifting a few tasks (like D2 forging) to different commanders than you would have previously used.

For real-world historical reasons, the game doesn't give anyone in the faction shields which is an interesting flavorful constraint, but unfortunately makes the nation under-perform against archers in a ranged combat system that was designed with ubiquitous shields in mind. So I tried to find a way to play within this interesting constraint, to give Yomi infantry that'll play at the power-level of the shield-infantry that virtually everyone else gets to recruit by giving them something else (deceptive smoke) that fits the flavor of stealthy bandits who won't use shields. (Incidentally this brings them to the power level of indy infantry, not to the level of "elite ninjas".)

All of these changes were motivated as a way to take the flavorful stuff Yomi has and make it balanced, rather than as just throwing in random cool stuff with little regard for balance, which is what I take most "expansion packs" to do. But if you think I've added so much cool stuff that you want to think of it as some sort of "expansion pack" instead, I really don't care. As long as I've produced a fun and balanced nation that retains the central flavor of vanilla Yomi, I'll be happy.

I honestly don't understand the problem people have with this mod.
The changes Telos made makes sense to me. The only advice I could give is tone it down a little bit.

1) Remove heretic from the bakemono, but keep their unrest generation.
I understand what you're saying about their behavior, but I feel it doesn't merit having the #heretic command.
The unrest ability I do love, as it opens up so many avenues for Yomi, since chaos power works with unrest too.

2) Keep Yomi's theme of arrow weakness, instead elaborate more on your idea of unrest / sabotage.
Add unrest generation, thematic as bandits would definitely cause unrest and general panic to the public.
Add Tax collector for the bandit leader, this would give Yomi more options. Users would have to choose between the mobile bakemono chief or the tax collecting bandit leader for their raiding needs.
These changes would give Yomi humans more flavor while still keeping their weaknesses to arrow fire.

Am I missing something because I can't find the download link for this thing, and I want to try it out.

not one up its all theory crafting so far. admiral aorta.

telos as to pushing into order you dont need a recruit mountain bakemono who causes unrest and is a heratic with all other goblins causeing unrest, raiding bandits despite how poor it works, a new heritic 2 commander, and spells, cheaper temples. its to much.

and as far as sorcs yomi were one of the few factions in dom 3 (alabait suboptimal) who could go T3L3 and do well. they never had good reserchers. yes they fall behind other nations. but they did in dom 3. to lose battle paths due to death loss does to them as much good as it loses a battle caster. this was never a gold efficent or research heavy nation. that luck took a hit this game should show where the problem is. they could take the same scales last game and do good. not great but good.

and as far as everyone and bandits. i dont get how a unit that scavenges gear has only 2 forms or has such a high resource cost. they steal gear from dead people. how the hell they cost more res then any bakemono is beyond me i dont get why their cost is so heavy/ 2 different builds for a unit that takes 0 resources to make.

Edited by: deathnor

Did Yomi actually win any games in Dom3? As I remember, Shinuyama was the powerhouse among 3 Japanese nations, Yomi and Jomon being closer to "meh, it works, sort of" tier.

Bakemono literally use clubs and little else, naturally they would cost very few resources. Bandits would at least need to repair their looted gear, and forge the missing parts.

DariusFF wrote: I honestly don't understand the problem people have with this mod.
.

As I understand, people don't have a problem with this mod as such, we are more or less continuing the discussion from other Yomi balancing threads.

Edited by: Festin_K

Admiral_Aorta wrote: Am I missing something because I can't find the download link for this thing, and I want to try it out.

I haven't put up a download link because I'm still testing it (and because I don't know how to do one actually -- guess I should set up a dropbox account or something). Edit: A download link is now available in the original post.

I do have everything implemented that has an [X] by it in the original post, and as far as I can tell it's all working fine.

A lot of it isn't very pretty yet though. No fancy banner for the mod, and the Yuki-Joro is currently just a recycled priestess sprite that mists out with mistform. I did make some nice smoke-bandit sprites, but I currently implement the smoke as just giving them the effects of a buckler (+2 shield parry), by literally giving an extra buckler to the smoke-form. The more flavorful way to do that is to create a new "shield" called deceitful smoke with stats much like a buckler. They switch nicely back and forth between their smoky shape and their smokeless shape though, and that looks good and works well.

I haven't made it far enough in a test game to get lab and temple built on a mountain to try out the Yuki-Joro at all yet, so for all I know, she may turn out to be buggy. And I haven't done a whole lot with goblins yet to see how annoying their unrest causation will be.

If anybody's willing to help me test a not-yet-pretty and perhaps-buggy version of this, I'll be happy to post my current version, though since I'm actively working on it, I'll likely have updates to offer fairly often as I discover bugs and mistakes.

Edited by: TelosTelos

I think all of it's great stuff; I do, however, want to convince you that Yomi does not have bad *internal* balance among its commanders, at least.

Essentially Yomi's issue isn't that a bunch of units or commanders don't get used. In fact, Yomi has some of the best internal justifications for getting different commanders I've ever seen: you NEED Demon Generals to lead your troops because your other ones can't handle it; Bandit commanders are needed for raiding (once that gets fixed); Sorcerers are needed for research; and so on.

The problem is that you need all those moving parts, those combined arms. And some Mictlan player can instead just recruit some Jags and an H3 caster and call it a day and end up with a better army than you.

In the Yomi Rebalancing thread, the reason for making, say, the Demon General not take a lab is not to convince people to make them, but to lower the essential cost to the nation of having to make them.

That being said, the most niche commanders are the Oni General and Demon Priest--the latter mostly because its use is dependent upon how much you use Oni Generals and how convenient it is to use them as blessers. Your Oni General certainly will get some use, which is great.