How much should a Random-5 Mage cost?

[Scott Hebert]

Believe me, it's lower than you think.

Short answer: ~160g.

How did I come up with such an answer? Well, I took the modding guidelines from Illwinter's site, and figured out the probability of each type of mage you can get out of a random-5 mage. I then multiplied the cost of such a mage by the probability of it appearing. I then summed them together, and that should be the cost of the mage.

Assumptions made for calculating price:

For initial path above 3, I simply extrapolated the cost of a 4 path by adding 60 (the increment) to the 3 path, and I added 60 again for the cost of a mage with 5 in a path.

For additional paths over 3, I used the same path costs as the third path.

If either of these assumptions are incorrect, better data would be appreciated. The way I have calculated them, it would be easy to switch the costs of the different mage builds to get a different answer.

Other interesting data from this experiment:

Probability of getting a 5-random mage with at least a 3 in any one path: 11.99%.
Probability of not getting a 3 in any one path: 88.0%
Probability of not getting at least a 2 in any one path (all ones): 20.5%

(Note: This also assumes that the mage has 'typical' (i.e., bad) stats.)

The distribution looks like Chi-square, but I don't retain the statistical knowledge to make use of this. I took a rather 'brute force' approach to calculating the probabilities.

I'm now going to go through each mage in the game, and calculate their costs. Any discrepancies (positive or negative) will be reported. Further comments will NOT be made. That is, I am not going to tell the designers of the game that this needs to change, or that needs to change. I am simply going to observe the existence of discrepancies (as the designers have identified mage-cost mechanics).

I hope to have this done sometime before the weekend is over.

[Teraswaerto]

The costs of national mages and troops are not solely based on stats. Overall balance of the nation(s) is more important, and thematic considerations play a part too.

*edit*

Or that's what I think anyway.

[ June 19, 2004, 19:58: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
I'm now going to go through each mage in the game, and calculate their costs. Any discrepancies (positive or negative) will be reported.

I can tell you of one discrepancy that you will probably find right away. The nations that existed in Dominions 1 will tend to pay less for the same magical power than the themes and nations that were added in Dominions 2.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
The costs of national mages and troops are not solely based on stats. Overall balance of the nation(s) is more important, and thematic considerations play a part too.
Or that's what I think anyway.

Well, I'm doing this mainly to help modders. For example, in just the relatively short time I've been doing this, I think I'm noticing a similar cost reduction for a capital-only vs. non-capital-only commander. Something of this nature would be VERY helpful for modders to know.

Something else I've noticed is that if you are a priest, the cost of being a priest subsumes/replaces the cost increase for being sacred. (Cf. Amazons)

However, one of the reasons I am not going to do much if any evaluation of the discrepancies found is precisely because stats don't paint the whole picture.

We'll see. This should be an interesting experiment, no matter the resulting data.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I can tell you of one discrepancy that you will probably find right away. The nations that existed in Dominions 1 will tend to pay less for the same magical power than the themes and nations that were added in Dominions 2.

While I don't doubt you, Graeme, I don't have any knowledge as to what was in Dom1 vs. Dom2 (though I believe themes were introduced in Dom2), and so unless someone tells me what nations were added, I won't know the difference.

[Scott Hebert]

Oh, before I go any further, I'd like to thank whoever made the Unit_ID.xls file (I believe it was Maltrease..?), without which this project would be a lot more tedious and time-consuming.

Thanks!