PBEM balance mod v1.17 released and v1.18 soon ready (Community)
After some delays, v1.17 of the community PBEM balance mod has been released on a new "beta branch" of the mod. It corrects a few bugs found in v1.16 and update the descriptions of abilities, to increase users' confort while using the mod. The changelog of v1.18 is also ready: this version tackles Death March and Arch Druid's evolve mechanisms, both of which were considered over-powerful. New releases will now be first pushed to the new "beta branch" http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=758212846 and will be released on the main balance mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661597466 only after several days/weeks of tests.
Hiliadan
Before going through the history of the release and the changelog, let's remind everyone what is the balance mod and why everyone should use it to improve his/her game experience.
What is the PBEM balance mod?
The PBEM balance mod (which you can download from its Steam Workshop's page) is a mod mainly developed by Zaskow, cbower and Hiliadan which aims to balance the game for PBEM and single play, that is to say to make it possible for any combination of class/race/specialisations chosen before the game starts to win a match if after the start of the match, the player makes good strategic and tactical choices.
The mod has been developed with the AoW3's community and changes are integrated only after a consensus is reached regarding the need to add these changes to the mod. It is thus not a mod based on the opinion of its developers but a real community mod. Changes that do not achieve their initial aims are edited or removed and the mod has already been through several iterations to, little by little, make AoW3 more balanced.
Why PBEM players and single players should use the PBEM balance mod?
Triumph does not balance the game any more. Its latest official patch, v1.705, does not bring any balance change and instead focuses on bug fixing. Triumph stated that they are happy with the current balance of the game. It is thus now the job of the community to balance the game and your best choice if you want a more balanced game is to use the balance mod!
The game suffers from several big imbalances that the mod corrects:
- Necromancers can win games in 10-20 turns by reanimating Death Bringers and Titans and Ghoul Cursing all the units of the maps with their heroes/leader and their Death Bringers with 100% chances of success thanks to Inflict Despair