Game balance issues, again...
 

Hello boys and girls. Got some old and some new gripes from the #dominions channel @ IRCNet.

1. Clams are still damn powerful for reasons outlined before in these forums.
Suggestion: Move it to const 6 and make it horror mark the user

2. Bane Venom Charm is too overpowered and gives exp for killed civillians (we had a commander go over 27k exp in a rather short period of time).
Suggestion: Move it to const 6 too and don't give exp for civillian kills. Make the disease less lethal too, it should be a nuisance not a game breaker.

3. Add an item that allows armies or commanders patrol on the move. Like some const6 magic eye that shows all stealthy dudes in the same province. It's got plenty to do with the forementioned Bane Venom Charm -incident. By the time you found the charm bearer it was already too late.

Comments are appreciated. I hope that Illwinter staff reads this too. Some of the issues have been oulined before and haven't warranted a correction before but it never hurts to point them out again.

Cheers.
-Wind

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why are you letting people build up a force of clams? The only two nations that can do it safely in a normal game are Atlantis and R'Lyeh.

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What do you mean by "safely"? And what's to prevent other nations from choosing to do so, as Norfleet did so effectively against you in his Last MP game?

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Without having them wiped out by artillery spells when you can actually find the other person's capital.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I gave up on the game because it had become an indefinite stalemate. There's no way that he could make a force that could take out 100 mystics protected by all four domes and with the ability to make multiple juggernauts per turn and cast wish for gold to support the upkeep. My astral income from clams was considerably better than his.

[ March 20, 2004, 01:39: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Inconceivable. You boasted a mere 110-odd clams or so. I had twice that, at least! And you were NOT making 700+ astrals a turn, of THAT I am certain. You don't know the power of the Dark Side.

[ March 20, 2004, 02:01: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hardly a stalemate when he has twice the clams, an Arcane Nexus feeding him free income from *your* spells, and the ability to outproduce you in Tartarians and other units that can eat juggernauts for snacks. You might be safe, for a while, hiding in your capital, but even that wouldn't Last long after he'd conquered the rest of your realm. At which point you run the risk of losing via dominion ...

You have vastly underestimated what he had. I'm not trying to argue, just stating a fact, based upon what I've been shown of the score graphs and portions of his realm I don't think you were privy to.

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">He gets absolutely no gems from any of my astral and blood spells, and there's no way he can outproduce wish produced blood slaves poured into the globals.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To do that he'd have to be able to produce juggernauts by the dozen.

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You have no idea. No idea at all. Wish-produced blood slaves? Not a problem. And SOMEBODY was feeding me 700 gems a turn....unless that was kickbacks from own spells. Either way, you seemed barely able to muster a paltry 3 angelic hosts a turn.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think that's doable.

[ March 20, 2004, 02:30: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, you get a 25% kickback on all non-blood, non-astral rituals and forging you or any other players do when Arcane Nexus is in effect.

In effect, if you forge 4 Clams of Pearl for 40 water gems, you receive 10 astral gems in kickback next turn - which can be turned into 5 water gems, if you so desire. In effect, the Arcane Nexus can be considered to cut 1/8th off the price of any of your monthly non-blood non-astral forging and rituals (well, actually better than that, but that is its least possible effect http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

To receive 700 astral gems from the Arcane Nexus would require all the nations in the world to use 2800 non-astral non-blood gems per round, which is an awful lot, but certainly possible in the end-game on a large map, particularly if gem production has been significantly boosted with fire fetishes and clams of pearl (with astral gems alchemised to other types of gems for ritual/forging purposes)

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

Arcane Nexus also harvests an unknown amount of gems as "ambient energy", and I have no idea how much this is. All I know is that I was getting reports saying the arcane nexus was absorbing anything from 500 to 700+ worth of gems per turn.

I have no idea who was spending all that. I can only assume that the mystery extras come from this "ambient energy" amount. Although one time I got an 1800 gem kickback when I threw up a max GoH. I'm pretty sure that had to be the largest gem expenditure I made, and that caused the absorption to go from a normal 500-odd to 1800 odd, and it never went back to 500, and stayed at around 700, for the rest of the game.

Perhaps "ambient magic energy" is a kickback on global enchantments in the world as well? I was ramming up maxed out 999 point enchants, so that could be it. Ramming up a 1K-gem GoH certainly seemed to increase the output by about 200 gems....

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The baseline seems to be less than 10 astral power (approximately, probably an openended 2d6 really, or something like that)

I ran some controlled tests (I controlled all gem use in the game) putting up 200 gem globals and did not notice a significant increase in the baseline astral power I still saw the usual 2,3,5,8,4,13,3,5,4,5 kickbacks from the ambient energy the next ten rounds.

As such I doubt that there is any significant impact on the ambient energy from global enchantments, unless it is something that would only kick in at extremely high energy levels, which I have not tested. That would not make all that much sense from a game-balance perspective, but it would certainly be a neat synergy.

More likely, the players are just using gems like mad in your game - but you would know that better than I. If you make a copy of the savegame in the current situation, you can run controlled tests when the game is finished and tell us whether the extremely high gem cost globals increase the ambient energy.

Remember, when the monthly message text says "The Arcane Nexus has absorbed magic power equal to X astral gems.", that means that X non-astral non-blood gems generated the power for the nexus. It does not mean you get X astral gems. You only get x/4 astral gems in your lab, not X. (Sorry if I am belabouring the obvious here)

[ March 20, 2004, 09:21: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

Ah. So it was closer to +175 astrals/turn in income, which seems to be about right, then, and then there would be 700 gems expended in the world....that seems more like a reasonable figure.

Unfortunately, that would mean most of those expenditures are mine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Indeed, as I noted earlier, for 2800 gems to be used each turn to generate 700 astral gems would require an awful lot of fever fetishes and astral clams (whose astral gems would be alchemized to other gems). 700 magic power and 175 astral/turn seems much more reasonable.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, fortunately you can consider it equivalent to a considerable reduction in cost of at least 1/8 on every non-astral gem use you have - no other enchantment will do that for you, none even gets close. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 20, 2004, 10:17: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Your 1/8 figure assumes the Nexus-produced gems are converted back to the type you cast, right?

Now, if you're instead tempted to convert TO astral from other types, you can think of the Nexus as giving you a 33% break on the "price" of other type uses of gems - like, instead of spending 20 Earth gems and getting effect X, and 10 more Earth gems to alchemize into 5 Astral pearls, you just spend 20 Earth gems, and get effect X AND 5 Astral.

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Your 1/8 figure assumes the Nexus-produced gems are converted back to the type you cast, right?
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Correct. That is why I said that that was the least benefit you could consider yourself to be gaining from the Arcane Nexus. It is the absolutely worst case. In actual gameplay, you win much more because of the increased flexibility even without considering the gems you get from other players' actions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Game balance issues, again...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Added to your no doubt extreme production from Clams of Pearls, it should still be enough to allow you to create a reasonably sized army of GoH Doom Horrors with nifty equipment. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif