Modify the Randomness!
 

Ok, building off my "Random" thread, here is an idea for a slightly less chaotic mage recruitment system.

When recruiting a mage, instead of having a random magic path(s) automatically selected, being able to select a "student" mage from a "pool" of student mages would be nice.

So, you want to recruit a Sage this year. You get to choose a Sage student to promote, out of a pool of 8 randomly generated "student" Sages. Throw in a variable for number of provinces were you can recruit a Sage from, and you have pool=8+(# of Sage recruitment provinces). You could make the 8 students be a random # instead (3-8?).

I'm sure some "students" would get frustrated, married, whatever, and leave the academy, so you could throw in another random to "rotate" some candidates out of the pool, thus getting new potential picks without having to recruit them.

Just a thought.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

Well, then I want mostly blood sages then. Talk about cheap blood hunters AND cheap researchers.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

So in effect, you want to be choose the random pick from pool with multiple mages with random paths? I hope you realize how much more powerful all mages with random 2 or more would become... Arco Mystics are already good, but you would almost never get the "bad" three-times-one mages, Tien Chi S&A Celestial Masters going against Astral nation would all have their sorcery pick in Astral, Vanheim Midgard would be able to recruit the galderman they required (FD for Skull of Fire, AD for Vision's Foe, EB to make Blood Stones with the help of their B friends, WX fir Quicknessed battle goodness...). It would also make bloodhunting very much easier for most nations able to get any cheapish random mages, even if they have no national blood...


In short, I don't like this idea at all. Random is supposed to be random, because that is the only way for it to be balanced.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

Powerful as in it would be nice to actually execute a plan based on mages magic paths? Yes, I agree.

No, random is not necessarily balanced. It can be far from what I consider balanced. All this current system does is reward luck. I simply want less luck involved, more skill. You may have a great plan that revolves around getting a couple of paths on one mage. How logical does it sound to you that you would "try" to make that happen via academies, talent searching etc? You think it is more balanced to assume that you are going to spend resources on a mage you have zero use? That doesn't make sense to me.

How would you react if troops were recruited in this fashion? All the costs are averaged and you get to choose how many, but not what. So in one year you get a mix of 1 heavy calvery, 27 militia and 2 archers, when what you wanted was a 10 Heavy calvery. Seems a bit weird to me.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

I think it would lead to much less mage variety, not to mention messing up the 'sorcery-elemental/linked randoms-unlinked random' balance system.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

The game is not intended to play like chess. It has a many random components, quite intentionally. As for random magic picks on recruited mages being logical or not. It is magic. Perhaps not all Sages have aptitude for all paths of magic, perhaps a few Kings of the Deep have natural affinity for death, perhaps out of all the Gygjas you manage to scrounge up from the wilds around Jotunheim you only find one that specialises in astral etc.

Re: Modify the Randomness!
 

This would be a reasonable thing to mod, though as others pointed out, it has major balance implications.

It would be easy to mod if we had that much-requested mod command to have a new unit use the image from another existing unit, so we wouldn't have to create the duplicate image files.

Also, every mage can be empowered in any path... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PvK