Re: Gift of Nature
 

nations with good recruitable everywhere expensive mages, like C'tis, Marverni, Shinuyama, Pangaea, Ryleh'(especially LA), etc can really use GoNB. other nations that rely more on cap only mages are less affected by it. regular troops generally become obsolete or are just replaced by summons so they aren't that big an issue for it.

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

I changed the title of the thread to refer to the correct spell.

It's bad form to scare your moderators with thread titles that make it seem like a different, more widely used spell has a bug. ;)

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

I'm not sure what to make of it but in the game Pan cast GoNB it had huge income. It controlled ~ 1/3 of Sharivar, had dom 10 and got IIRC more than 10K gold per turn (perhaps closer to 15K but I prefer to err on the side of caution).
With GoNB it was invincible. 30+ PD everywhere + patrolling pans, endless centaur swarms & much more of every goodie that money can buy.

I've also cast it in an SP game as Marv. in Lands of Lore map controlling ~ 1/5 the map with dom 10 and the GoNB has more than doubled my income although I don't have good dom score.

Re: Gift of Nature
 

That was exactly my thought, also. I've seen such income increases from it because of this.

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

Thanks for all your answers

I'll check my savegames, but I'm quite sure I went far over *3 the total income.

In the stat view, on the income tab, my graph made a very steep increase which really looked more like * 10 than *3. Seems to me the income tab does not take upkeep into account ?
I went from 4 or 5k to over 30k income...

As for why I'd need more money, well, you can't ever have too much :) Well that's wrong because the spell ruined the game !! But truthfully yes a bit more money would have been usefull, even in mid-game. I was in a game with *3 magic scale, playing MA CTIS and yes to propagate my miasma I had DOM 10, playing with an emprisoned pretender (I mostly play SP, that shows !).

So the dominion in my provinces was very high, with miasma and some order scale. Even then I can't buy a mage at each of my fortress (Yes, I'm SP player, I probably buy too many temples, labs and fortress). So a +30% increase would have been already nice. a +300% is too much. A *10 is game killing.

To double production is IHMO balanced, as you still need gold to buy troops. It's a nice way to produce more sacred at capital if you're production limited and a nice way to produce heavies, closer to front.
You probably won't double your recruitment, or not for long.

To double income is IHMO inbalanced, as it has a more global and profund effect, effectively you can double your army (upkeep).

In my view, the spell should be toned down so as to be still usable...

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

It might be unbalanced, if it weren't for the fact that every reasonably intelligent player would immediately go to war with you in an actual MP game.

Also, its possible that its effects compound with your miasma, which could explain a rather massive boost.

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

Could you post a savegame? Then we could check it out.

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

A few points must be considered. While income is doubled, Gem Income isn't. The currency of the game by the mid game is already moving towards fort turns, mage turns, and gem income, while this allows you to increase fort turns and mage turns, the rate of increase isn't all that great. Add in the fact that someone will be dispelling this, and its a matter of what can be done in a few turns, meaning it is nothing on Forge of the Ancients, Utterdark, Arcane Nexus, or the other really big spells.

Re: Gift of Nature
 

Okay, let me give you an example from an ongoing MP game under CBM 1.6

The setting is EA, the map is Aran. We are into the late game and the remaining nations are Ulm, Fomoria, C'tis, and my own Lanka.

As we entered the late game Fomoria and Ulm launched a joint attack on me as being the most dangerous player, while C'tis basically chose to bunker down while chain-summoning Tartarians. I cut a deal with C'tis whereby I, fundamentally, didn't do anything to stop his accumulation of Tartarians, not even touching his recently cast Well of Misery or other globals in return for his not touching my globals. The clear understanding was that he'd attack Fomoria or Ulm when it damn well suited him (after they had bled me) leaving the two of us to face off at the end should I prevail against my attackers.

The next turn I cast Gift of Nature's Bounty, a spell that under normal circumstances would have caused every player to ally against me immediately, but which under those circumstances the C'tis player could accept. (Whether that was wise of him or not I do not rightly know yet as the game isn't done)

I controlled about 25% of Aran at the outbreak of war - the poor NE region, much of which had been devastated by Helheim's death dominion earlier in the game - and was only able to bloodhunt for approximately 150 blood slaves per turn while affording 3 or 4 commanders (and for MP, that is a low number of commanders to recruit per turn when you are at turn 50-something as we were)

With GoNB, the situation changed completely. I could set the tax percentage to zero in the vast majority of my provinces while bloodhunting them, recruiting a mage in every fortification ever turn, building ever more fortresses, building temples everywhere, and building 40 or 50 or 60 PD wherever I wanted to throw a surprise for any small group of Ulm raiders without blinking at the cost. (Normal for Lanka is to use 0, 1, or 10 PD as their PD is utter crap, but when you have a surplus of thousands of gold AFTER recruiting and building each turn, hey, why not use them for that? If the raiding parties destroy the PD, hell, who cares?)

If it wasn't because I was morbidly afraid of full penetration Master Enslave used on MR 10 troops, I could have been recruiting my sacred Kala-Mukha warriors in every fortress each turn as well, but I chose to stick with my blood summons (for the most part).

Now, many turns of grueling warfare later I control half of Aran and recruit 29 Kala-Mukha mage-priests per turn while only taxing one province in six and gaining about 350 blood slaves (should have been more, but as I said, much of the land had been devastated in earlier wars). On the battlefield, huge +5 and +6 blood sabbaths are easily put together and I can afford their loss should things go wrong.

This is an extreme case, admittedly, and if Fomoria's and Ulm's players had had more MP experience they'd have paid whatever it took to dispel GoNB even without C'tis help, but even when playing non-blood nations it is very common in MP to not be able to afford recruiting a mage in every fortress each turn.

After all, if you are ever in a situation where you can afford to recruit a mage in every fortress each turn with money left over, you have built few fortresses and should use the extra money to build another fortress. You can never have "too many mages" in MP.

The sort of half-arsed mage-effort one can get away with in SP is only possible because the AI is utterly incapable of putting up a fight and doesn't know how to use its mages.

In MP, you may face situations like "How to assault Ulm's fortress when it is defended by a screen of very tough troops that'll take ages for even Danavas to chop through who are guarding 135 mages, most of whom are the national shamans and smiths but at least one of whom will fling a round 1 Master Enslave at you, and all of whom will be protected by Army of Gold, Warriors of Niefelheim, Anti-magic, Demon Cleansing, Storm Warriors, Mass Regeneration, Fog Warriors, Mass Relief, Storm (so no flying) and possibly a few more spells. Oh, and he probably has dozens of Bells of Cleansing present too - at least one score - so chopping your way slowly through the screen using demon troops is going to be exceptionally costly if it is even possible". And sometimes you may be in a situation where you cannot afford the time it would take to go for a dominion kill but will have to assault.

You can never have enough mages in MP.

Re: Gift of Nature's Bounty
 

that is incredible. you think of strategy in layers I've never dreamed about.

still, I had been talking about bigbig maps, like Glory of the Gods. these are the ones I play the most on in SP.

would gift of nature's bounty be as relevant there? after all, with enough provinces, you accumulate such a fat amount of gold you can hardly dent it even by raising PD up to 125 in each province.

but again, my experiences are limited to sp