cym moth eggs should pop underwater and larva should be amphibious

[sand geyser]

because eggs right now pop only on land it vastly limits its use on water-heavy maps like archi/lakes/conti; so I suggest that eggs pop underwater - invisible to enemies unless he steps on them like with the cloak; there could be maybe even a nearby egg indicator like with cloaks; then it grows to larva normally and larva is amphibious movement=1 unit exactly the same like right now

[chilly tree]

Cymanti is intentionally bad on water-heavy maps. I haven't played the beta much, and I see how eggs not appearing on water could be frustrating, but it makes sense to me that the mechanic would be slightly different than regular tribes. I don't see amphibious larvae fitting with the theme either.

[onyx epoch]

I'm also a bit disappointed you can't get water eggs. They would be really nice for creating algae

On the other hand, moths have a much easier time attacking water cities than land cities so maybe that balances things out?

[zinc lichen]

Can eggs be formed on top of algae? I would expect that to be the case

[sand geyser]

probably; but still it would be like normal cloak has use on archi and moth no

[zinc lichen]

I would like tp disagree than - moth have use on water maps, it's just harder to do it due to the need to spread algae first, but to be fair - flying with 3 range is kind of OP in terms of ability to land on water maps. Especially archi. This is even more OP than aqua cloaks - at least you can unflood to limit reach for aqua

[desert shuttle]

I think algae should spawn where the egg would have been, but then that gives the enemy free resources

[sand geyser]

that would make sense for balance, it could be algea without fruit

[desert shuttle]

or at least auto disband the eggs and give you the stars

[hallow fox]

They can.

[rain zephyr]

Cym was previously S tier on lakes , now its S+ tier on lakes, in part due to the addition of moths along with the naval rework, etc etc.

compared to cloaks, moths are stronger than cloaks on lakes and weaker than cloaks on drylands. on drylands moths are arguably useless in 1800+ elo, it was hard enough successfully attacking with invisible units in high-elo games.

so they buf’d lakes, cym is S+ tier on lakes. In terms of balance, they should go back to cloaks (or at least an invisible land-only infiltrator), as drylands needs a slight buf and lakes needs a slight nerf, i love the artwork though , i hope they can save some of it for a reskin or something.

[desert shuttle]

Make moths invisible on forest tiles since they naturally blend in with trees, and then bring the hp back down to 5

[zinc lichen]

I haven't try it in real life scenario, but I think on dry they shifted moth/cloak game play from being mid-to-end game into mid-to-early-game.

The fact that it costs just 5 stars, can't be one shot by rider/warrior, revealing it doesn't prevent it from landing, can infiltrate next turn after trained and it doesn't need climbing to move efficiently - make it very accessible unit that is deadly in early game

Also - eggs can capture cities!

So moth should be very effective on dry, just not on the end game

[rain zephyr]

@zinc lichen ya someone sent me this game along those lines, mid-game moth https://share.polytopia.io/l/863890a7-b988-4674-8bd2-0e437a31d5b9

ill definitely keep my eye out as strategies are still being evolved .

[sand geyser]

u repeat its S+ but dont really give enough justification

[rain zephyr]

@zinc lichen i assume ur aware, moths don’t steal city income, so there’s also this asymmetry on drylands where income theft affects cym more than it does normal tribes, because clathrus is not as powerful as markets, and in the end game, cym cities are higher leveled than normal. so the tribe with the power to steal income.. if its only given to 1 class of tribes… in terms of balance, should be cym. but i think cym should just get reverted to having cloaks.

[sand geyser]

but they do deny income?

[rain zephyr]

right, but doesnt change my argument

[sand geyser]

clathrus results in much worse spt, but consider it can be much earlier, u dont need sawmills/windmill and u start with funghi right off

so going cym market at 3 cities just for these +2spt upgrades may be worth it

[rain zephyr]

i hear this argument from dozens of people but i don’t buy it / nor think it matches reality

receiving adjacent fungi for good clathrus spots is more unreliable from the map generation, versus good smithery OR sawmill OR windmill spots, and youll get higher leveled markets on average too

[sand geyser]

cause often u get 2/3 funghi connections for clath

[rain zephyr]

@sand geyser here’s one example game, https://share.polytopia.io/g/49d1b684-7ea0-42fb-aebf-08de1138c51d

they have +35spt in end game. ive seen far worse though, this one isn’t a pathological example, its the mean.

this is versus ely, https://share.polytopia.io/g/a28fe261-9153-4dcc-5b14-08de1648c34d its sanctuary though, but similar idea

[zinc lichen]

Well. That haven't stopped you from winning that game

Let's be real - on equal cities end game if cym has 10 stars to make doomax in each city each turn - it's game over

Cause doomax is much stronger unit then normal tribes can produce ( aside from giant)

[rain zephyr]

i wrote long arguments to midji about all this, i can share thread if you’d like.

the core issue here is, there’s basically only two ways to balance, either you have isomorphic/symmetric eco, units and mechanisms everywhere so that you can reason through the isomorphic mappings / functional equivalence . or you have an AI engine playing every tribe against every other tribe at 3800 elo

[zinc lichen]

Also - counter argument to cym scarse fungi - you can take doomax tech to boost it which would be both fighting and eco tech now

[rain zephyr]

if u begin with completely different economic ramps and try to make up for it with OP doomux.. i just dont buy its balanced

just give cym markets with fungi extension, increase price of doomux or nerf it

[zinc lichen]

Weren't you trying to argue that cym need to be buffed to be on par with human tribes? And then used replay where cym won?

[rain zephyr]

And then used replay where cym won?
rephrase? didnt understand

here’s the thread with midji #cymanti-rework-discussion message

its super long, not worth ur time probably

anyways we can theorize about balance all day long.. would be nice if they measured empirically the (un)balance but they’re not doing that either.

[sand geyser]

what u mean by symmetric is devolving game to checkers

[rain zephyr]

mirror matches are pure balance (modulo map gen) and not checkers

to be precise though, i’m really talking about isomorphisms, im not suggesting making cym identical to normal tribes

[sand geyser]

i mean u said symmetric eco

[rain zephyr]

right, in the sense give cym markets or a market isomorphism

take poison mechanism for example, its fairly straightforward to reason through how much damage nerf is required to balance out the bufs from poison, u can achieve great balance there simply through logical reasoning.

but if u give tribes totally different eco ramps, its much more difficult to compensate for that elsewhere , via OP doomux or something, especially when tech prices are symmetric, spirituality cost is symmetric, etc etc

also eco ramps are on exponential curves (that plateau) as a first approximation…

t = number of turn
so 1.5^t is wayyy different than even 1.2^t the longer the game lasts

by the time u get to turn 20, thats like a 240 accumulated star difference… (or 30 knights worth)

[zinc lichen]

I think you are trying to make everything perfect from the get go which is not how real life works ( and you're right we can achieve that if we make everyone 'equal' which is to be honest boring). I think devs are kind of taking a more relaxed approach - if it is good enough - let's try it out and make small adjustments over time. Like they made with the tribes starting points.

I am on dev side here - we don't need more identical tribes and the more uniqueness we have the better

[rain zephyr]

@zinc lichen u dont dev for midji do u?

u just meant ur technical?

[zinc lichen]

This leaves just one question to answer - do you believe that cym end game is underpowered in some setups? Like 900 dryland?

[zinc lichen]

Nope

[zinc lichen]

I mean I agree with them

Being on someone side means you agree with their approach/ actions

[rain zephyr]

here’s my current lay of the land after 20ish rework games … so its tentative

cym is overpowered in lakes all sizes
drylands 324+ is somewhat balanced
drylands 256 -might- be balanced but the nerfed development leads to high variance in the balancing, the games are decisive early on;
pangea is underpowered unless there’s some new moth strat , etc

conti not enough experience to comment yet
same with 121 and 196 dry&pan

i think doomux is over powered, but im afraid to broadcast this because its helping keep the balance right now, it compensates for other weaknesses

[zinc lichen]

I think I would agree with you on that. So it is more or less balanced while being completely unique

Which is good in my opinion

[rain zephyr]

its an improvement over previous version 🙂

but ya needs further tuning

overall im happy with the update

[zinc lichen]

For sure there always be room for improvement. Is boosting clathurus move in the right direction?

E.g. - does cym need more spt in end game cause it is underpowered?

[rain zephyr]

there’s probably gonna be some oddities on small/tiny maps, someone was raising issues with hoodrick vs cym, cym sort of needs 3 techs (hunting,archery,riding) to fight off hoodrick archers , due to hex nerf

i havent investigated it yet

[zinc lichen]

It's like - why would bugs need money anyway?!?! It's not like they live in capitalism

[rain zephyr]

Is boosting clathurus move in the right direction?

im not sure i would make that exact change, id be more tempted to nerf markets a bit

everything is intertwined, i have an idea of a perfect balanced cym thats forming but its a bunch of changes in lockstep

im not sure yet about tiny tweaks to current cym, ill continue to ponder it

the hoodrick issue, makes me consider giving cym archery as starting tech and unnerfing fungi

but midji isnt going to want to do a large set of changes yet again… so its a pipe dream

[zinc lichen]

Cym was never meant to be the one and most powerful tribe

It's ok if there is 3 way imbalance in some setups

As long as it's not 1 tribe win all the time

[rain zephyr]

well all things being equal.. the intention ought to be…. equal power

[zinc lichen]

Yeah, but if cym beat oumaji, oumaji beats good and good beats cym - it's equal

Anyhow - buffing phychi damage to 1.5 after boost damage nerf is good in my opinion

[rain zephyr]

or archery is starting tech, would be interesting

[zinc lichen]

Nah

This would shake so many things at once

[rain zephyr]

sure

its never gonna happen, but its interesting to think about

midji’s intentions are not balance as a 1st priority , like u said

its more like a 4rth or 5th priority

[zinc lichen]

I mean - if balance is your first priority - you would end up with game like tic tac toe. Or with no game play - like insta declare draw

[chilly tree]

As we say, this take is burning in hell. Balance has to be a high priority, and it is possible to have a close-to-balanced game that isn't so simple.

[rain zephyr]

more balanced like chess yah, this polytopia mutant would be more fun at higher skill levels, ya thats the game i want

the only gambling i want to do is map gen, but remove ruins and remove all tribe imbalance , thats a wonderful game that can attract grandmaster level people far smarter than I

if ur magnus carlsen, ur either really enjoying slot machine element, or you’re annoyed by the lack of precision, since once u get grandmaster level minds, a simple imbalance like who goes first white or black is a massive skew to the game…. but then again maybe they wouldnt even like the map generation / i guess not… and thats a critical element , even i wouldnt sacrifice in my quest for balance

tbf, i could always just stick to mirror matches

cym mirror is too dry though, id need to use other tribes that have more rock-paper-scissors dynamic

[sand geyser]

actually the main problem is they DONT make small adjustments

example case: was so trivial to modify starting stars and it didnt happen for so long while now we see how its proven to be much better balance overall with that

[sand geyser]

u could easily make randomized but mirrored maps and it would be unique every time yet still balanced, would completely solve getting laked 3vs6 cities spawns

[sand geyser]

still dont get why u insist on being OP now on lakes, i completely dont agree

[onyx epoch]

Ooh I like this one. It could go either way though. Maybe midjiwan absolutely loves it because of the theme, or he dislikes it because the mechanics are probably not very intuitive for the opponent

[desert shuttle]

Or at least make them invisible only on cymanti tiles

[jagged fractal]

Congrats OBEY. Your recent activity just advanced you to level 5!

[zinc lichen]

Lol:
Statement: they don't do it.
Example: they did.

[sand geyser]

u dont get it really? it took them ages to do it

[zinc lichen]

I did get it