Questions about balance and mods

[tmeese]

I haven't been able to play the game after it was patched, so I was wondering if the various factions in the game are now considered to be balanced?
I was also wondering whether people usually to play the original game, or if there are some mods that are preferred over the original.

Thomas

[fiur]

there are many pretty good mods out !!! many at this site an at www.elrath.com

[nevermindspy]

necro ,haven : slight to big overpowered - depends on map and conditions

all others pretty much balanced , overall balance-wise is pretty good..

[Sir_Toejam]

depends entirely on the map.

sylvan costs so much wood now, for example, that on maps with little wood resources it would be at a severe disadvantage. other factions also have a "bottleneck" resource of one type or another.

I've been playing with reducing the bottlenecks, making all factions balanced for most maps. I haven't had much feedback yet, but you're certainly free to try it out if you wish.

there's a thread about it here:

viewtopic.php?t=4036

... and a first release of the mod which you can grab some way down that page.

[Phoenix_1973]

Haven is obviously overpowered on recruit or warrior , but is in very hard trouble on heroic , the other factions are more balanced , except ballista specialists on small and open maps .

[Obnoxio]

Necropolis with Vladimir seems the best to me. Was over-powered until they added 20% lower defense from Raise dead.
I like the Sylvan troops but the Sylvan heroes get too many points into Knowledge ignoring Power and other areas..
I'd like to be able to choose where Hero stats get allocated.

[Sir_Toejam]

Was over-powered until they added 20% lower defense from Raise dead.

oops. you're not gonna like patch 1.4 then.

they put resurrection and raise dead back to pre 1.3 (according to JJ)

[ThunderTitan]

they put resurrection and raise dead back to pre 1.3 (according to JJ)

Nope, he only said that about Ress. And it was lower HP from what i read. Lower def would've actualy bee pretty good.

[Sir_Toejam]

i assumed the original poster meant hp, since there never was a reduction in def to begin with.

[Obnoxio]

Yes, I meant 20% lower hit points with Raise Dead. So after casting it a few times on one stack the hit points get a lot lower.So it makes it more balanced.
Normally I get Vladimir with expert summoning and Sorcery and just use raise dead to re-vive any losses. A Phoenix can be very usefull too when it has 1000 hit points and does 300 damage. He can build his army off necromancy skills and convert other troop types into Necro units at his Castle.
The biggest problem is large stacks of Familiars sucking away his mana.