Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

I've compared some prices of the mages ...

First of all I noticed there're a too high variable according to the stat of the piece, instead of the lvls of Magic.


I believe this is wrong! There're mages that have 2-3 hit points more than other mages (like Abysya compared with every human mage) ... and this increases the cost of a lot of gold!

Meanwhile the *battle-mages* (Vantype Leaders, Thuata-type, or Jotunians who've a lot of hit points), I see some mages with like 8 hit points, or such, 8 strenght ... usually a stat totally irrilevant since one arrow bolt, or 1 generic hit will kill every low protection mage, not depending if having 10 or 12 or 8 hit points.

So on ... think like an Abysyan Warlock Acolite (3 lvl mage, 2 blood, 1 astral) costs 150 gold.
For the same price Pythium gets an holy (halved unkeep), 4 lvl mage (2 astral, 1 water, 1 air) and a lvl 3 priest!

Think on Caelum, a non capitol only mage with 3 Air, 1 water, 1 random ... for 180 gold!

I believe base mage stat should count far less in pricing the mage, and magic paths should do the big job, with special skills (fire immune, heat aura, cold immune, holy and such).

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Boo frickety hoo. Abysians are expensive, by nature: They're slightly tougher than your average bear, and they're also fireproof. This fireproofness synergizes well with their national attributes. I think you're just sore you can't afford enough mages with your precious Abysia. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, it's A3W2?, but Caelum's entire selling point is its cheap mages. Compare also to Arco Mystics, also $180, and you get S2???, with the ?'s restricted to elementals for better odds of getting a mage strong in a specific path.

[ August 05, 2004, 02:50: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Abysian warlocks are the cheapest B2 mages there are*. I would love to spend 150 for them with Jotun instead of 250 for a Skratti (SP)

Pickles


*Goetic masters are cheaper after 40 turns &
Amethyst?(the blood ones) amazons may be cheaper too.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Goetic Masters can be considered to have a hidden cost of 2-3x what their actual list price is, due to the fact that mandatory turmoil will cause you to have about 1/2 to 1/3 of the income of a normal player. It does seem that blood mages have an unusual premium associated with their cost in many cases, though, and "pure" blood magic is generally not very impressive.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Well Goetik Master have 2B, 2F and 1?, + Holy Magic 2, and are sacred.
So I believe for 190 they're damn good.

True you've to take mandatory Turmoil 1 and Heat 1, that reduces a lot your income to have Goetik Master.

However I should underline that Warlock Apprentices if used to blood hunt will cripple your research, since you can only build blood huntes and good researchers in capitol.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How come you keep saying this? Turmoil-1 earns 75% as much as Order-3, and that's not even considering the points you save (which could be used to buy Production or Growth to reduce the shortfall). If you've taken Sloth or Death (as I know you are fond of Sloth) then the difference is even less than that.

Yes, the occasional natural disaster will reduce your income, but it will not cut it in half, especially if you use the points you saved from not taking Order to buy Luck.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Cohen: The mages are not intended to be equally cost effective for all nations. Caelum have cheaper powefull than any other nations not because they have two hitpoints less but because cheap mages is intended as a feature of the magocracy Caelum. Other mage prices vary similarily for similar reasons. The different nations are not intended to pay the same cost for the same punch, it is one of the ways in which the nations are differentiated, both thematically and gameplay wise.

Edit: rereading the orignal post drunk I see it is barely comprehensible, I have tried to correct the grammar.

[ August 05, 2004, 22:07: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

1/2 to 1/3 sounds possible for early game after upkeep as say upkeep is 40% gross income then if your gross income goes down 20%, your net icome goes down 1/3
If gross drops 40%, net drops by 2/3 etc

I forgot warlocks were capital - only you really need some indeps to help out - but who doesn't?
& it's not like they are rare.

[ August 05, 2004, 17:47: Message edited by: Pickles ]

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

That's because Caelum is one of the best nations!

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Exactly! I think we should all be very wary of trying to homogenize this outstanding game. If we "balance" every nation's mages against every other nation we will end up with every nation playing the same and feeling the same. We'll have every nation with 10 hp mages and the same magic paths for the same cost. It's the only way to "balance" it. Screw balancing mages if that's the price we'd have to pay for it! I'd rather have one nation's mages being more powerful for the cost. On the other hand, balancing nation to nation is a worthwile endeavor so everyone has an equal chance of winning. Balancing mage to mage or commander to commander or archer to archer, etc just ends up with every nation playing exactly like every other. No more of these kinds of unit comparisons please, Cohen. Focus your efforts instead on comparing nations. It's a lot harder to do because it requires a greater synthesis of information, but it has more value.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

I don't see anything wrong with the mages for different nations costing different sums, because it usually more than balances out in other respects.

A more interesting comparison about cost effectiveness is the one between indie mages you can get from sites. There are some real eye-poppers there. Most indie mages costs 180, with the apprentice Version generally being 80 to 120, but then there are guys like the Circle Master that have D2B2 for 100 gold that are good as cheap researches and blood hunters if nothing else. Admittedly, their magic combo is one of the less useful, but they are some of the best bang for buck I've seen so far. Adepts of Pyriphlegeton are also great, F3 for 180, when most of the 180 gold mages have more or less one fixed and three random picks.

If anybody is interested in taking a closer look at the indie mages (and all other indie units as well, take a look at the Unit_ID.xls from yours truly, available on Arryn's site.

Edi

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Caelum might well be one of the best nations. But that doesn't change the reason behind their low mage cost. The mage cost is low because Caelum is intended to be a nation of mages, in the blurb it is stated that it is a magocracy. It is intended to have relatively cheaper mages than the other nations. You are the count Rugen of the shrapnel Boards, you have been slain by Inigo Montoya, now please stop torturing Wesley.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Buying luck will actually exacerbate the problem, increasing the frequency of random events. Random events are BAD! Remember, one of the more common and pernicious "good" events is "free" militia. On forced Turmoil, that hurts a lot.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

It's not that bad...

The effect of luck scale is only 5% increased frequency per step. So you will get only about 15% more events with luck-3 as with luck-0. But if you have taken luck-3 instead of being 50% good they will be 80% good. You will have only 46% as many bad events with luck-3 as you will with luck-0, and 85% more good ones. Other than militia, all the good ones are actually good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But even militia is not that bad.

Let's take a militia event - discounting that sometimes you get a priest with them, or flagellants, which actually does make for a useful event. Let's say you get 30 militia, which cost you 14 gold per turn in upkeep. Let's also say you don't have any commander handy so you have to recruit one, for 30 gold and 1/turn. Let's also say it takes 5 turns to dispose of the militia. This is pretty much a worst-case scenario, unless you play on an insanely huge map, in which case it might take longer to get rid of them.

Add it all up it comes to 105 gold the militia event costs you, worst case. It costs less, a lot less, if the militia come with their own commander, or if you get fewer of them. That still sucks, but it sucks less than many of the actual bad random events.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">2 per turn, for non-sacred commanders. Just to quibble with you. I figured I'd go ahead and mention it before Norfleet did. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The priest is so-so, but the flagellants are just crap, unless you already are playing a blessing effect involving flagellants or some other similar unit, in which case they might not be a total loss...but they're not exactly speedy units, and they tend to spawn in the most inconvenient places.

To make matters worse, it can take you a lot longer than 5 turns to dispose of the militia, because they are very cowardly and will often flee after losing only one or two men, and as a result, have to be rounded up, and then marched to their deaths AGAIN.....

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I find drowning them tends to work well, if it is an option.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How, exactly, do you go about doing such a thing?

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How, exactly, do you go about doing such a thing? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Have them go with a commander that can lead troops underwater. On the next turn, leave the militia underwater, and move the commander somewhere else.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Doh! Of course. (slaps self on forehead) Thanks. Brain's not firing on all cylinders tonight. Need sleep. Too bad I've caught a case of Norfleet's Disease (insomnia). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How, exactly, do you go about doing such a thing? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I suspect you could also Gateway them into the water. Or that Death-roads spell, which I have never used. With either of these, you wouldn't even need an ability to lead a lot of troops into the water, as you would if marching them into the sea.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pricey way to dispose of such chaff.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

If there's any unbalanced mage out there i would imagine its the Tien-Chi celestial master. The balancing formula just doesnt include the disadvantage that having low astral on an expensive mage is. 1F1A1S2W3H1? for 250 gold... The only possible 3 path (other than holy, of course) is water. And the most common use of W2, forging clams, is hard because there is no base water gem income. Abysia is doing just fine.

Blood mages cost more IMO because they are capable of producing their own gems in addition to casting spells, an ability more than worth its weight in gold.

If anything i would rather see MORE unbalanced mages, because so long as the nations are balanced it just adds more flavour to the game.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pricey way to dispose of such chaff. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Cheaper, imo, than marching them 3-5 turns to get them to water. If you have a high astral income, why not? ( In a MP game as Ermor, with no clams, I had ... 400 astral gems. Of course - I had no one to cast Gateway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I would _gladly_ have burned astral gems to kill the upkeep on those blighters.)

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you don't have anyone else that can make vampires, it's pretty useful. Not really anything else that uses that combo (Bone fiends and maybe an item or two) but vampires are pretty nice.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can agree with that, having just started playing the game recently and with Tien Chi at that. I've been trying to find a good use for these guys. Classic case of jack of all trades and master of none. Are they meant to be used with empowerment?

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Haven't had more than the barest minimum of experience with them, but I imagine that a pretender-made path booster or two could make them downright wicked searchers and item forgers. In that order.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Cohen, to illustrate KO's point:

Both Tien standard and Tien S&A mages cost 250 gold, but the S&A mage gets TWO randoms AND a strat-3 flying movement! And this is a Good Thing. (Bad would be: if they cost more, or the standard CM cost less.)

btw, I think that S&A CMs are great, my favorite mage in the game bar none, and with good gear, they can cast almost any spell in the game. I love them.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pricey way to dispose of such chaff. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh. Actually, pricey would be gatewaying the militia into the water with a mage who couldn't breath water. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Like when I found out yesterday that Void Lurkers don't like breathing air. Most expensive teleport to site search I ever did. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

I like to get my free militia killed too, but it seems pretty useful as it dies, sucking attention from enemy attacks and spells and such, buying me time to do important things on the battlefield, adding to the number of unburied corpses which can be turned into armed soulless... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">not quite .
i think Cheezeninja was quite clear . an cm has S1** that means he can be killed too easy by mind duel . they don't get good / high enough randoms for good conjuration forging easy too .

so i think pretty true against ryleh , arco + pythium the cm might suck extreme .

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Unless you have an astral king with them...

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Well to each his own, I disagree completely. I donÄt know what you mean with "good / high enough" randoms, I think 2 randoms is quite awesome in my eyes. I am bound to get a 2S CM very very soon, and that gives my Starshine Skullcaps, which I try to mass produce asap. But whatever, if you think they are not good, that is fine with me. I basically only wanted to illustrate why price/value calculations cannot be globalized: Tien Chi is a perfect example of why a mage with abilities PQR and a gold cost of XYZ is *balanced* even when compared to a mage with abilities PQR+2 and a gold cost of XYZ-1.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

i love that mages are not balanced but nations otherwise it would be boring http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
i myself don't like the celestial master anymore though because of my mentioned reasons tinktank http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
i use them only for research , sitesearch , forge but not for combat .
i love tien chi s&amp;a but they are really difficult and i can't play them well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

I agree that they are very difficult, Boron. I enjoy them, however, and find that especially in mid-late game, almost nothing beats a decked-out CM.

Re: Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?
 

Well, nothing, except a handful of cheap S1 mages scripted to duel, anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif