Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

Niefel Jarl is worth 500 gold =)
TC Consort for 15 gold? When I play TC I pump out consorts like crazy. They're already one of the best units in the game... IMO.
Eunuch for 10 gold? ...to good for a leader, even a terrible one. 15 or 20 gold seems like a good absolute minimum.
45 for a black harpy is too much unless you give them leadership.
30 gold for a forester? I'm not really sure if anyone uses them now...
And considering all of Man's (Avalon) mages are capitol only, increasing the price is painful.
70g Lord Wardens are pretty crazy, too... IMO.
C'tis: Even at 35 nobody will buy a taskmaster.
Bane spider at 70? ... No, I refuse to play against Machaka with that setting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Those are incredibly good assassins that come with 10 death gems worth of magical weaponry.
Empoisoner also shouldn't drop in price considering their potency.

Well, those are just a few preliminary thoughts. I'm think that complexifying your formula to a form like (x^2+.5xy+(a+bc)^1.5)*10+(a^1.2+f+2x)*5+15 might be necessary to get a good result, rather than using a purly additive formula like x+2y+a+5b+c+15. I can't imagine making a purely additive formula that "considered" all of Dominions' complexities.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

Incedentally, here's a formula I made for caulculating the worth of a unit's physical stats:
HP*((6+Prot)/6)*((Mor)/10)*((1+MR)/11)*(9/(6+Enc))*((3+Str)/13)*((2+Att)/12)*((1+Def)/11)*((3+Move)/5)*((40+AP)/50)
Go ahead and tell me how useful/worthless you think it is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

A 'normal unit' with 10 hp, 10 att, 10 def, 10 str, 10 mor, 10 mr, 10, AP, 3 enc, 2 move, and 0 prot will come out as 10 gold. Also, I weighted defense more than attack and strength, and AP the least of all... I dunno, it works ok I guess.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

I tend to think so, too. He weighs in at 400, then gets a 40g discount from that for being capital-only.

They're just spies, right? They could get another 5 or 10 points for having more Stealth than the 'average Spy', but not much more. If they're found, they're dead.

May I ask why? He's, well, crappy, to put it mildly. He not only can but probably WILL die to the first hit he takes from anything (including a stray arrow). There's really no way you can increase that.

10 Leadership would be 5,for a total of 50.

I can see them as somewhat useful as patrollers...

Um... not really. The Daughter of Avalon is the most under-costed mage in the game. The Mother and Crone are also quite under-costed, as they stand now. Really, I'm not going to cry, at all, about Man's mage costs increasing.

Perhaps, but Man's benefitting a lot from the capital-only reduction.

Quite possibly. THe aim is less to make everything 'more usable' than to see what they all 'should' cost.

Well, the Bane Spider is one of those 'niggling problems', which is how to quantify those Bane weapons.

Well, if there is to be a reduction for capital-only commanders, it should be applied across the board.

It's quite possible that a more complex formula would give better results. As it is, though, I think the remarkable thing is not the odd 'way out there' commander so much as all of the commanders that are either spot-on or quite close to spot-on.

I am confident that, if there is a more complex formula, it is not much more complex than the (very) simple formula I am currently using.

I know others have mentioned 'prioritizing' the various stats, but then you could wrangle forever on which are more important.

I am currently considering applying a 'diminishing returns' idea on the specials... as a note, the reason Caelum and Pangaea's commanders are so expensive is the large amount of specials they have. Perhaps if there is a 'full cost/75% cost/50% cost' diminishing cost on specials, it might assuage the issue.

OTOH... there are some that have many specials (Vanheim, for instance) that come out right on... I'll have to work on it.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

It sucks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif No, actually, I'll look into it and see what happens. Interesting formula. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

I think his body is probably undercosted using an additive formula. Using my formula http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, I bet his body alone would come out about 300.

Here's the difference:
Lets say you have a guy with 20 HP, 20 Att, 20 Def, and everything else 'average'. An additive formula would tell you hes worth 40 gold, where as a multiplicative one would say 80. I guess Im more inclined to believe the latter, but maybe someone could run some quick combat sim tests to see how many 'average' troops that guy would be worth.
Well, the real reason I went multiplicative was that for my mod I had a guy with 5 HP, 5 Str, 5 MR, etc. who came out with a negative cost... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

I think I'll add some comments just for fun.

W3S2 has no synergy, is very vulnerable to mind duel, and has no real offensive or ritual punch, so I'd never really buy these at 210.

I can't see ever spending this much on a mage that can do little besides summon vine ogres.

I don't think you've discounted them quite enough for having the extreme disadvantage of being both capital only, and being Man's only mages.

Here, their lack of mobility, and general fragility, especially when coupled with the middle of the road troops of C'Tis shoulnd't be overcosted.

Desert tombs already pays a hefty economic and scale hit, so the really don't need to have even fewer mages running around.

They are less useful than sauromancers in general, so they really should cost less. They suffer from the same problem of all the new themes and nations in DOM2, in that the mages are all too costly for what they can actually accomplish.

Would anybody ever buy any high seraphs if they cost this much? You'd get far better punch out of two normal seraphs.

The combination of astral 2, capital only, hurts these nearly as much as it does a deep seer. They also have the added disadvantage that they will start to cast sermon of courage or banishment instead of useful spells.

Diabolic faith has an even worse economic hit than Desert Tombs, which makes each mage cost relatively much more than a mage of the same gold cost for another nation. This isn't too far off from what you would expect however.

Jotuns have the disadvantage that while their commanders are very cheap for their performance, they won't stick around on the battlefield unless you have enough normal giants with them.

These always did seem overpriced to me.

I'd be wary of making one of the best sets of national mages even better.

Aren't these considerably more dangerous than a Vanadrott?

Assasination shouldn't really be figured into the cost of a researcher, as an assasin can never kill more than a single commander per turn, and is very rarely worth the time investment, let alone the gem investment.

Unlinked randoms make these only really useful as astral casters on the battlefield.

I pretty much expected these to be too expensive, but I'm surprised that all of the ?1H2 mages are less than 80 gold by your calculations.

That's close to a usable value, but they'd probably have to cost even less to make them powerful.

Death magic and astral magic are both important enough that no nation should be without them, so I'd be wary of making that change.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

At 15 gold, I'll have 10 or more castles recruiting nothing but consorts. That way I can completely shut down an opponent's economy. With 100 consorts you could shut down something like 10 provinces a turn, and never lose more than 1 in each province.

You don't patrol unless you are trying to catch spies or assasin's, and then you'll use enough cheap units that the bonus on a commander doesn't matter too much.

Which doesn't matter much past turn 5, as you'll be recruiting nothing but Crones as soon as possible.

Man is limited to a single crone per turn, which isn't nearly enough to keep up in most cases.

Man doesn't benefit from the capitol only reduction. Man is hamstrung by the capital only restriction for everything past the very earliest parts of the game.

You have to price commanders based on what they can accomplish. Empoisoner's are just about the only assasins that you'll ever be able to make use of besides taking out independents early on.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

Hey, my modded assassins and slayers are pretty cool http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And I loved building slayers in the base game. Skull Talisman, Boots of the Messenger, Lifelong Protection, Copper Plate and Lucky Coin made them able to take over many remote provinces alone... and those are all low-level items.

Of course, the way I play is not necessarily an effective way to play... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

OK, scratch that old and busted formula; that was just something basic to start off on. Here's the new hotness:
sqrt(((HP*(10.0+Prot)*Def*MR)/1000.0)*((Str*Att)/10.0))*((3.0+Move)/5.0)*((40.0+AP)/50.0)*(9.0/(6.0+Enc))*((Mor^log10(7))/7.0)

Comments:
HP, Prot, Def, MR, Str, and Att are all wieghted the same now.
The square root does not encompass Move, AP, Enc, or Mor.
log10(7) = 0.84509804001425683071221625859264 (about), meaning that about 22 Mor is worth twice as much as 10 Mor (instead of just 20 Mor being worth twice 10). I chose to use a logarithm with base 10 so that, for unit with 10 Mor, the equation (Mor^log10(7))/7 will equal 1, so a unit with 10 Mor will be 'average'.
The basic idea is: sqrt(defensiveness*offensiveness)*other. I decided upon this because in a simplistic system where the units only have 2 stats, HP and Damage, an ideal cost formula is sqrt(HP*Damage).
I counted MR as a defensive capability, but it could be brought out of the square root to be weighted more heavily.
I didn't really know what to do with Enc, so I just threw it in so that a unit with 0 Enc is worth 50% more than the same unit but with 3 ('normal') Enc, and the same unit but with 12 Enc is worth half as much.

Re: Random Picks and Modding...
 

I have a n00b modding question: How much is the 4th magic school worth? Ive been counting it the same as the 3rd school (10, 30, 50) so far... so that F2E2D1?1 costs 183.75.

Also, a few questions about your costs:
How much did poison resistance end up being worth? 10, same as elemental resistance? Less?
What about being an animal? I would think that does more harm than good, right?
50% increase for sacred troops, but not commanders, right?
Is the capital only reduction 10% or 20%?

One more question: What's with the 'Death Poison'? How much damage does it do?