Please help me understand the point of "Cloaked in Shadows." 60 CP for an end of turn invisibility? Other than maybe sneaking past a watch tower (which is a much easier problem to solve than a 60 CP spell), I cannot think of a time I would ever cast this spell unless I am purposely trying to lose the game. The original spell was much more useful as it punished players sniping back cities. This spell is absolutely useless. At least make it 2 turns and drop the casting cost to 30.

Hey Gaslov! Nice to see an AoW3 veteran posting here!
Well, the cost might indeed be a bit high. Partisan is quite strong overall now IMO so that might not be a bad thing not to have ONLY excellent skills (though I'm sure other will disagree about the other skills being that good). I've played Partisan in several of my recent Duel Tournament matches, including the current one vs gabthegab (semi-final). Cloaked in Shadows is mostly good in multiplayer, much less interesting vs AI. It allows to evade an enemy who is nearby or to go into an enemy's land without being spotted.
The Invisibility lasts until the turn comes back to you, not just until the end of the strategic turn.

Oh ok, functionality of the skill is much worse with simultaneous turns. It almost does nothing in that case.

Nice mod but I think the gameplay as Necromancer have lost some important flavour when you can't raise dead enemies as your new ghoul minions. I would just lower the chances of success of reanimating or add some negative perk to those units that lower their stats even further (would call it "maimed" or "battered" or something like that).

Originally posted by TyborPL:

Nice mod but I think the gameplay as Necromancer have lost some important flavour when you can't raise dead enemies as your new ghoul minions.

You can still do it through Ghouling Strike and Raise Corpse (and Age of Death) though, it's just less easy/common.

Ok thanks for the tip.

I've always thought T1 and T2 units could all use some sort of boosts.

I have just 1 question. Can you tell me any way to return to 1.27 version? I update mod to 1.28 accidentally. But i really didn't like this changing.

You can revert to an old version using the Dropbox folder here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qv7gezs9rk8o60p/AABNUMDz1J9CSqGsUvJsrlzwa?dl=0 (very old version are deleted after some time). To revert, delete the balance mod's folder in your UserContent folder then copy/paste the .taf from the Dropbox in the UserContent folder, start the AoW3 launcher, it will unpack the mod, then you can play it.

What don't you like in v1.28?

1) Converted units with Regrowth ability gain additional 25% to their upkeep.
2) Earth elemental changing.
Other changing is good.
to be honest for me it's make game less fun. I'm not a master player and maybe it really good changes for game balance(i'm rarely play for earth because prefer water with rot when i can choose master and i rarely choose theocrat ) - but for me it simple make game less fun.
And very big thanks for the help.

Ok thanks for the feedback. We will review the change to the Earth Elemental later on so it might be tweaked.

I support the change/nerf to earth elementals, but it seems a bit odd that lesser earth elementals still have 100% fire and frost protection.

Before I make my full criticism, let me say that I do not understand the full issue of MP and its PBEM balance issues, so I am speaking fully from a single player perspective here.

I want to start by saying that I do not fully understand the rationale behind the nerf to Druid and Theocrat Animal and Martyr evolution, respectively, especially since it does not seem that Rogue has been similarly nerfed. Scoundrels also get 50% faster experience gains with research thanks to Corrupted Killers and the "Quick Learner" ability. Tampering with experience gain rates has unintended consequences, and its management is a core part of the game design that should not be ignored or changed without serious consideration or caution. Druids imo need to be able to evolve some of their low level summons, because they are not guaranteed to survive, are not guaranteed to get them on every summon, and most importantly, experience is a limited resource that must be carefully allocated. Unlike gold, there is only a finite amount of experience sitting around in camps, and the amount that can be *safely* harvested is even lower. By comparison, most other classes can actually produce their best units, while the only way for a Druid to get some of their best (namely King Serpents) is to level up their lower level units.

By doubling the amount of experience it takes for a baby spider/serpent just to evolve (70 to 140), it means that intentionally leveling these units is wasteful compared to leveling heroes, who can become more powerful more quickly with an equal amount of experience points.

For 140 points, you can gain 1-2 levels on a hero generally speaking, especially early on; 420 experience is almost enough to take a hero from level 1 to 7 vs having enough to train up 3 mature serpents/spiders. That, combined with gear from pickups, is bound to be more powerful and impactful than raising up those summons, especially since later you can just summon the adults anyway.

I look at a game like Warcraft 3 for comparison. In that game it's really important to manage experience between your multiple heroes to get abilities and stats as fast as possible on the right hero for the situation. With the harsh nerf to evolving baby spiders/snakes, the investment feels a lot less worthwhile compared to allocating that experience to a unit which will retain it, such as racial tier 3's, summoned tier 3's and 4's, and heroes. By comparison, Scoundrels don't have to reach champion to evolve (according to the notes--I could be wrong). Lesser Shadow Stalkers are arguably better in most situations compared to Queen Spiders and King Serpents, especially since they evolve so much more cheaply, and are thus more numerous, eventually turning into actual Shadow Stalkers which are basically tier 4's.

However, I understand that PBEM games get a little crazy so I would suggest this: upon reaching either Wildlife Refuge or Beast Mastery (probably this one), baby spiders and serpents gain Quick Learner so they evolve more quickly after getting the research, so that Druid can keep up with Rogue's army of Shadow Stalkers.

Just my two cents. I figure it might be worth a try. I hope my reasoning made sense.

Your reasoning makes sense but you underestimate how easy it is to level up Baby Shock Serpents (or Reed, or Spiders) to 70 XP and how worthwile it is to get a King Shock Serpent (or Reed). The previous situation was too favourable to Arch Druid, it was easy to get King Shock Serpent before turn 15, which was totally unbalanced compared to other classes, which had no way to get a T4 that early. Now, AD is in line with other classes and King Shock Serpents are reached a bit later. We have put a lot of careful thoughts into this and the fact that AD is currently considered the best class or 2nd best class (after Theo), in great part due to animal evolving, in v1.3 by the best PBEM player at the moment (novograd) says it all. The current balance is not tipped in favour of hero levelling with animal Evolving considered a "waste" of XP.
As for Shadow Stalkers, you need to research a skill to get them so it's very different.

If you want to see how XP is managed between heroes and animals, you might want to check one AD video: http://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Hiliadan/Videos

So my proposition was to make it so that one of the early druid techs, similar to Rogue, makes it so baby serpents/spiders get Quick Learner. That was the only thing I'd ask to be changed. In that way it would still take a long time to evolve, but it would speed up the process for newer summons, since eventually in a match you cannot be using tier 1 units and feeding them exp anymore.

Something else I wondered is, if the tier 4 serpents are considered an issue, why not make it so tier 3 serpents take longer to evolve, rather than the babies? I'm sure you guys have a reason for this but I wanted to ask anyway.

Obviously you have more experience on this, but these are my thoughts upon playing with the mod for a bit.