Re: Vote
 

Yes please.
You said:
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At the moment I'm toying with the idea of removing their default magic in favor of 'potential' magic. They would have no magic when you summon them but 50 gems empowerment of the appropriate type would get you direct to level 4 in a path (thematically speaking, it's just a different way of representing the feebled mind, but in a way that anyone could heal them, not just the GoH/Chalice). This way, with the right investment they could well surpass most EDM summons, but they wouldn't have the huge diversity advantages.
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Yes, I think the only way to remove afflictions would be to swap out the summoning spell, which has side effects I'd rather avoid. I think having plenty feebled would still be OK though- it's true GoH/Chalice is great now but the concern with the direct raising prices was that it would make them better- this would just leave them at about their current power. After all, how many tarts can you really empower? At 10 gems each you should easily have plenty of healthy empowerment candidates. Also, under this tart scheme GoR could probably get cheaper and they could be used with whatever afflictions as thugs (I actually think seeing some still feebled tarts used in battle would be quite cool).
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let me see if I get you right, your suggestion consists of:
1. Tarts won't have magic.
2. 50 gems worth of empower would give them lvl 4 of ???
3. Tarts would still have afflictions
4. Tarts summon price would be 10D

So basically to get a 4X tart I'll need to spend 10D *(avg # of times to get non feeble mind tart) + 50D. My gripe with the suggestion is that: a- it keeps the current unthematic "all nations take death to get to tarts" tendency. Yeah, it really makes sense to see MA Mari + Pyth deploy tarts and go hvy on death...
and b- The price raise and losing diversity seem to take all the fun out of tarts - or in other words are too extreme.

Except LA Ermor the other nations could use both diversity and row power. Think what it would do to MA Machaka status to have near exclusive access to tarts. So perhaps don't give Tarts to LA Ermor but do give to other underpowered death nations.

Tarts are fun the way they are but not everyone should have them. To prevent ppl from taking them you'll need to make them suck and then nobody will summon them :(

Re: Vote
 

I agree that removing the magic and making them cheap to empower removes much of the interest that comes from the diversity.
Being able to get the magic you want on the chassis you want, as long as you have the gems takes away alot of the flavor. Trying to figure out something useful to do with the weird path combinations (or getting that random 7S titan) is all part of the fun.

And I'm not sure about the mechanics of this. What happens if you stick a RoW on one of these?

Re: Vote
 

That seems a defeatist attitude towards balance- either they are so good people use them exclusively or they suck and no one uses them.

That more or less sums it up, yes. Though given for 10d they are quite good troops anyway, the cost for an empowered tart chassis is more like 50 of whatever gems you can spare + GoR cost. I do sympathize with your objection to unthematic nations getting tarts, but honestly I don't see any option to stop that without very unwanted repercussions. To me, having Mackaka get Tarts but not LA Ermor seems even more unthematic than everyone getting them. And allowing high powered death nations privileged access is just asking for trouble. In any case, restricting tarts by nations is more of an and/or suggestion than directly in opposition to changing their magic.

As for the point about removing fun, I admit I get as much fun from rolling randoms as the next person, but there are plenty of places to do that in dominions. You could even look at the empowerment as simply a more round about way of rolling randoms, based on what kind of gems you get extra of from sites. And as much as rolling randoms is fun, so are strategic choices and this seems to actually increase those.

EDIT: Boosters would work as normal, i.e. they would not boost anything unless you already had that path.

Re: Vote
 

My worry about the empowerment thing is that it might actually increase the tendency of Tartarians to give you diversity. Generally it's possible to scrape together 50 gems of any colour by late game, so if you get to Tartarians you might just empower one of each path you don't have strong access to, and then have strong access to all paths.

Re: Vote
 

I'm not sure it could really be worse than the current set up in that respect... it's true you can't guarantee any particular path right now but I think you can generally acquire diversity at a much lower price. 50 gems of a type you don't have good access to is not easy, and having one x4 mage of the type is not really that great of overall access- compared with usually having a largish pile of tarts with usually several of each path.

Re: Vote
 

Fair enough, you've convinced me! I'd tend to think if getting an X4 mage (in path X that I don't have access to) as a win for getting access to that path, but if its so late game that I'm getting Tartarians I suppose a single mage for all that effort and all those gems is no longer so impressive.

Re: Vote
 

I think it shows kinda the problem that the suggest price for diversifying at level 4 is 50 gems, when thats the same price diversification is 'intended' to be with empowerment to level 1.

Not that I've ever summoned a Tartarian ^_^

Re: Vote
 

Yes, I'm basically saying that I'm concerned your suggestion would lead to the latter. Why should anyone pay so much the get a one path lvl4 tart?- If you need level 4 summons there's plenty to go around now that are way cheaper and easier to get. It was the diversity and unexpected nature of what you'd get that made for the "fun" factor.

ok, how about the following: go even further with the randomness effect - add a certain chance that the summon would backfire. Either not work, or summon horror or some such.

Re: Vote
 

I don't see why people wouldn't summon them. They simply wouldn't be as incredibly good as they currently are. With QM's proposed mechanic they would perhaps be used to break into a new path, since they could immediately summon other commanders in that path to help your diversity, for more economical use of gems. It would also make it more of a strategic choice for the player. Instead of simply "summon more till I get lucky" its "do I want this guy to help me diversify into w or do I empower him in e for another SC?"
Another thing is, with this change it would be possible to make GoR even cheaper opening up more interesting options.
I also agree with qm in that I see no reason that tarts can't be balanced to be viable and not simply the number 1 choice.

Re: Vote
 

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I don't see why people wouldn't summon them.
I think I won't summon them under the new scheme. It won't be cost efficient. Perhaps many players would feel the same. If so, they'll go from being super common to being rare.


They simply wouldn't be as incredibly good as they currently are. With QM's proposed mechanic they would perhaps be used to break into a new path, since they could immediately summon other commanders in that path to help your diversity, for more economical use of gems. It would also make it more of a strategic choice for the player. Instead of simply "summon more till I get lucky" its "do I want this guy to help me diversify into w or do I empower him in e for another SC?"
Another thing is, with this change it would be possible to make GoR even cheaper opening up more interesting options.
I also agree with qm in that I see no reason that tarts can't be balanced to be viable and not simply the number 1 choice.
I assume they can, I just don't think the proposed change is good. I would have preferred better competition from EDM, a different solution or the current status rather than the new change
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