How about beasts require upkeep. but upkeep is waived for all beasts stacked with the sov?

Hey people, I'm happy there is good discussion on the post. It means that there are many different ways of seeing the Beastlord, and untill now, most of you agree in leaving as it is. I don't want it to be nerfed, really, but my last games with it showed a way to access to a big army with little effort.

Let me explain again. A good beastlord design will include +1spell mastery/level and +2mana/turn. Once you tame one or two low level spiders with web, you can easily tame other low level beasts (wolves, bears,...). As XP is given after tame, your Sov reaches soon level 4. Giving him Path of the Mage opens the chance of +spell mastery traits, wich for some reason, is used to calculate the resistance to tame. So after a few levels more  (this is, more FREE bears, wolves, and spiders), you have a strong army, and a Sov with high chances of taming.  Harridans and hoarders are webbeb by one of your many spiders, and your sov only has to go and tame...and voila...your free strong army becomes a free deadly one. Adding objects that increase +spell mastery only accelerate the process to get a big spider even sooner. Send that army to the nearest AI, and see what happens... And if you send your champ with the rest of your beasts to the other AI... That is an early/mid-game game-breaker, or not?

I usually post to give suggestions to improve the game. I don't like too much nerfing, as I find this game difficult in the early game, and any help/power combo is wellcome. Like the binding faction trait. But it gives crappy summons, to improve them you need to build shrines, and they are still crappy. So binding helps in early game, and scales in mid game in a reasonable way. But beastlord has not this scale. You start with crappy beasts, and then get access to super-beasts. No fair scale. I want helping traits in early game, but not game-breakers.

I posted this to be sure I'm not wrong in thinking it, and some of you agree with that. I wanted to see opinions about that, and intead of just complaining, I wanted to gather ways that could help to give some balance to the trait. I insist, I don't want it to be nerfed, just giving some balance, so next time I play it I don't feel like "oh, I'll take that harridan soon. And once I have it, I'll take the hoarder and settle there"..."wow, umberdroths, I want one or two for my collection"...

Rather not change beastlord, or if so make it minor.

Upkeep is definitely drastic would not want to go that route although 0 upkeep is pretty significant.  Gold would be ok I guess, influence/mana no.

needing to have a mob be a certain level/health/etc is an ok idea - but adds a big pain in the ass for something that you would probably reload for.   I don't really want to spend a half hour reloading because i can't get it "just" right.

If I HAD to have a nerf, i would rather it be - no upkeep under sov, outside of sov it costs X - either some one time amount of currency (gold preferably) to transfer ownership (i.e. forge a collar) or a cost per turn (again preferably gold).

As much as I hate it, it probably is a good idea to nerf great wolf.  I didn't know it stacked... that's just mean.

Other than talking pure nerf, it could be that maybe some pros and cons are added, i.e.:

Limited number of beast slots - beasts level relatively quickly or provide some other passive benefit

Some beasts cost upkeep, while others generate income so its possibly to realistically keep it balanced

beasts with the sov cost no upkeep and become beefier upon join, beasts outside of sov cost upkeep (some) and get weaker.

Beasts in a city (confined) can go nuts frequently, beasts with humanoids go nuts rarely, beasts with other beasts go nuts never (or sov)

Similar to great wolf, more "pack" beasts provide benefits to the entire army.  Solitary critters, like uberoth, reduce an armies effectiveness (related to tarth)

etc

Well it seems most people agree in that BL is ok as it is.

Maybe for us who found it OP, it was only because the games resulted specially good because of random conditions (many beasts to tame), or we could squeeze a lot the benefits...

For now, I have changed the thread tittle to an interrogant, but disussion is still open if anyone wants to add suggestions/opinions.

I would have another suggestion but it seems to be a lot of work...

Basicly we have 6 kinds of beats that can be tamed, wolves, bears, wargs, spitting spiders, biting spiders and reptile like things (umberdroth and co). These beast races exist in different lvls (for example: bear cub (1), bear (3), cavebear (5)) but even if a bear cub reaches lvl 10 it would still be  a cub not learing any trait or getting any +/lvl on dmg, def or anything else but the basic +1 to hp and acc.

Now if we could add the posibility of having pets evolve (a summon scroll that exchanges a lvl 3 cub with a lvl 3 bear) we could:

- reduce pets to the lvl of the caster when tamed (-> no cave bear before sov lvl 5, no umberdroth before lvl 10)

- if that reduction devolves the beast into an earlier version hand out a free scroll so it can re-evolve once lvled up 

- sell these scrolls for lots of money and maybe only after they have been researched (military techs so that you want them even if you dont build troops)

- offer an alternative to getting better beasts even late game when the spawns are gone but also in early game if you find nothing but some wolves in bandit armies to tame

- offer a reason to waste mana on taming low lvl beasts during the whole game

- give a reason to train low lvl beasts (outside the sovs army) resulting in more losses than collecting them in towns where they raise your rating without any upkeep

Since I still dont know much about modding I am not sure if it is moddable (maybe with multiple specilized tame spells?) Something like tame_cavebear that tames a cavebear and depending on casters lvl kills it to summon a bear/cub insteat.

PS: Those of us that find the BL OP might just be to agressive...

Beeing OP should mean that the AI is less likely to declare war and as long as wildlands and quests provide challanges you dont feel OP. The fact that you can steamroll entire factions with an army of BL and 4 beasts only reveals itself to those that are looking for war. After 2k turns I am confident that the AI would be more challanging (escpecially if only one superpower faction is left controlling 70% of the map) but I just dont have the patience to wait that long

Seems like the trends in this post reflects very well the state of balancing discussions over here:

- You've got people arguing that broken stuff strategy "x"is fun and we should keep it that way.

- You've got people trying to hit the nail on the head by putting forward funky solutions about "x".

I would personally agree with the first group up to the point when I play a game implementing strategy x and realise by turn 35 I would win. Now I would say to myself "Hey! everytime I pick strategy x up I know I would win my game". Is this fun? Frankly the first game is; past that, it's just to easy, and thus boring!

I'm fine with having altar quest spamming, beastlord, instant-blizzard-nukes for 90 gold strategies as aces up my sleeve, but honestly, I'm never gonna use them again after the first try, or in all honesty once every 36th day of the month.

Want to "balance" beastlord? Keep it simple and realistic. Would it be possible for an apprentice tamer  to tame powerful beasts? Keep the same numbers and have a % reduction (-5%, -10%, 15% or whatever) for every level difference between the beast and the beastlord. More of a gambling, still useful, no mana upkeep, no maintenance, no shenaniggans, just have to roll that high 6 if you want to tame your level 7 Bear with a level 1 Sovereign.

My 2 cents, now the pitchforks!

I finally get what the OP is talking about.  I started a game tonight with Kul-al-Kulan, the Umber race, and made him a beast lord.  Holy crap is he powerful.  My first army consisted of a Cave Bear, a Great Wolf, a Skath or some kind, and a Naja.  I later added a Umberdroth and a Ravenous Harridan.  There is really nothing that the other sovereigns can throw at me that can even deal with that mess.

I really don't care if they change it, mostly because I think a balanced game is rather boring, but I do get what you are talking about.

I changed my army now to the Great Wolf, with two Umberdroths.  Those three things are just one big wrecking ball.

I have tried beast lord, and it is nice (especially when compared to having the ability to summon a single level 0 shadow warg), but it does have some significant downsides.

First, the one use per 10 turns thing can be a significant problem in some contexts.  If this ability does need to be balanced, I think I would do so by playing with this number.

Second, beast units have significant weaknesses and if you buff them you need to pay mana upkeep.  You cannot upgrade their gear, and city buffs do not apply to them.  So if you need to use your beast units, you are going to be losing some of them, and, beast units count against your army size.

Third, if you can survive to late game and specialize in a single resource, the compounding of resources quite could easily mean you are not resource constrained in the context of that resource.

Finally, any initial advantage can be leveraged into a long term advantage if used effectively.

In other words, beastlord has the feel of a linear advantage in an exponential growth game.  It's a very real advantage, but it's surviving into the late game with compounded advantages that is OP.. Note also that Adventurer [for example] gives you another potentially superior source of no-resource-cost units (and whether it is actually superior depends on the kind of world you are playing in).

That said, if beast taming is too powerful at the highest difficulty levels, that suggests that when beasts get tamed they lose the buffs they were given by the high difficulty level.  (But I have not tried this so I cannot comment.)

I have no idea why there are people that are bothered by stuff being "too strong" in a single player game.  As someone else said in another thread, Fallen Enchantress is a toy- it's meant to be played with.  

We don't have multiplayer where other people will miss out on fun because we're steamrolling them with powerful beasts. We pick traits based on how we want to play.  If, like Tuidjy, you don't enjoy using Beastlord, nothing's forcing you to use it, like he said.  The AI doesn't use it, so you can't even claim you need it just to keep up with the computer.

Myself, I've always preferred the idea of buffing weaker options instead.  I'd love a Bandit Lord buff.  Maybe make them gen cash instead of taking it, as was mentioned earlier, or allow stronger rogue humanoids to be affected by it.  *looks at syndicate*

... Also, what exactly would be wrong with power inflation if things are buffed?  I mean, I know why real-life inflation is bad, but I don't get why it would be so bad in a game like this.  Just buff the really bad stuff instead of everything. 

Well, after the long discussion, I still think it is OP. Ironman mode can put a limit, but only at the very first moments. Once your Sov reaches path of the mage, and gets some more levels to improve spell mastery, the tame is going to be succesfull most of the time. And when you get web-spiders, then you can web and tame. If you fail tame, still can kill the webbed beast with low risk.

I find OP as it is a way to get free units (ok, you need to spend some mana, wich can be reduced with some traits too). This allow to increase faction power very easy and fast, so you can delay the troop production and focus in Civ developing, or spam units and the faction power will increase a lot, and everybody will be afraid of you.

But it is ok. It is fun to play and almost all people here want their Beastlord to play this way. So for me, the case is closed.

In fact, I'm dealing now with the most OP tactics: Tuidjy's quest loop. Against this, beastlord is like a toy.

If anyone wants to try other interesting strong tactics, try to spam Quendar Slaves, and our lovely yithril juggernauts (but these are for the late game).

For 90 gildar and a conclave with Scribe scrolls, you can try buying a "Blizzard" Scroll in the shop. It is said to be very powerfull, if you have some water shards.

Although I'm still quest looping, I will give it a try on my next fight.

I would leave the HP-tame% idea too. However, level is okay for me, and it is implemented already, works nicely... higher level, more charismatic (higher spell mastery) leaders have a better chance against a plain, lower lvl (lower spell resist) beast to tame.

But I found this "rebellion" idea awesome... keeping tamed mobs would look like this:

1. tamed beasts are easier to keep if grouped with a hero or the sov: the chance of the beast leaving the party is (level of the beast *2) - (level of the leader).

A solo lvl 1 beast has 1% of running wild, but with a lvl 2 leader (hero/sov) the chance is null.

For a lvl 11 Great Wolf (same lvl hero): 22-11= 11%. The level of the hero is usually higher, so it is an extreme example.

2. for a BL it is easier: (level of the beast * 1) - (level of the leader). Basicly there is no chance that the beast leaves the lord (until grouped with the BL) as they have the same level.

3. 1 mana / every 3 lvl of the beast.

I just like the idea to keep the beasts under the command of a higher level leader... what do you guys think?