Random Picks and Modding...

[Scott Hebert]

Graeme Dice said:

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

K...

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.

Very similar to most of these comments, while I do not disagree they have merit, you are also ignoring the base assumption that I made that all paths are equally valuable. I know they're not, you know they're not, but that is the assumption that Illwinter makes.

Would you perhaps give me what you think each path of magic should cost?

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

I can see them doing other things (like leading your Hydras).

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.

Possibly. OTOH, why is a Daughter 80g, and a Druid 140g?

Oh, and there's the Bard, but I don't think anyone counts them.

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.

As opposed to their ability to spam an endless horde of Undead, and the fact that they start with Terror?

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

Well, they (and Broken Empire Ermor) are the only nations that get National Unholy Priests. Ermor's cost upkeep; C'tis's don't.

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.

I think it's more that the original nations are too good.

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

Quite possibly. Then again, this is how much Illwinter's formula gives them.

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.

Perhaps. OTOH, Fire/Astral has many synergistic abilities.

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.

About the only thing Diabolic Faith is missing is a national Blood-3 mage (which the Master can get, I believe).

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.

Or you use nothing but Commanders. Experimenting with this approach, some increase in cost might be needed. Something I am looking into, however, is a way of working Size into the calculations... bigger troops get a reduction on certain things (HPs and Str, primarily). That would lower these costs, R'lyeh, and even Caelum.

These always did seem overpriced to me.

Er... are you sure you want to agree with me on this?

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

I know how good these are, but if you increase the Astral/Death Searching spells to 2-path each, the Seithkona become a little less valuable.

Aren't these considerably more dangerous than a Vanadrott?

Well, that depends. The Vanadrott is Glamored, and can throw much better spells, overall, than the Jarl. Perhaps Cherry can run them both through the simulator? Or can spells not be modeled just yet?

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.

Perhaps a reduction in the cost would be in order, but not a simple ignoring of that ability. If you cut the Assassin cost in half, say, his cost goes down to 90. This would also help Man if you apply the same reasoning to the Bard.

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

Or guaranteed Acashic casters. Are they total randoms or not? I seem to recall a 5S one before. The cost is for total randoms. If they aren't, the costs may change.

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.

I don't use the 'base 30g' cost. Instead, I use my own formula. However, I am thinking of raising the first path's first level cost from 30 to 50, which would add 20g to all of the 1-path mages. However, since that will cause issues with all of my magic pricing, I'm leery to try that just yet.

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

Is it their 1S that's a problem?

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.

[/quote]

Perhaps, but this almost sounds like chicken-and-egg. Perhaps they are so important because the gems needed to power their spells are so easily found (comparatively speaking).

Anyway, I will take your comments under advisement.

[Saber Cherry]

Death Poison: 35 damage IIRC. Animal is a negative feature.

As for morale value... it's sort of an s-curve with the steepest part around 9, with asymptotes at maybe 5 and 16. I can't think of an s-curve equation offhand.

At any rate, morale 14 is perhaps twice as valuable as morale 10... and above that it doesn't matter much. From my observations.

[Saber Cherry]

Scott Hebert said:

Well, that depends. The Vanadrott is Glamored, and can throw much better spells, overall, than the Jarl. Perhaps Cherry can run them both through the simulator? Or can spells not be modeled just yet?

Sorry, no... by the time I did that, I'd have pretty much written (a graphics-free version of) Dominions II.

(regarding Celestial Master)

Is it their 1S that's a problem?

The problem is that with their level-1 paths, there are virtually no useful spells they can cast.

[Scott Hebert]

Graeme Dice said:

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.

Presuming I kill any of them before I'm right on top of you. You do have a point, though. Perhaps a blanket increase in their cost is in order. (All spies.)

Would it be better if catching a stealthy unit created an Assassination-type encounter?

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.

Well, as a note, Assassins and Spies have become cheaper, so patrolling might be useful.

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

I don't necessarily agree with that, but then, I don't have your vast experience playing this game.

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

Perhaps. Again, you are the experienced player here.

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.

And they benefit the same amount as anyone else by the capital-only cost reduction. Now, I may revise the reduction I give so that the reduction is greater the more capital-only commanders there are. That would solve this issue (about the only one it wouldn't solve would be the Bane Spider one).

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.

[/quote]

If you say so. I've seen quite a few 'assassin builds' around that are quite effective at any point.

[Scott Hebert]

Saber Cherry said:
Sorry, no... by the time I did that, I'd have pretty much written (a graphics-free version of) Dominions II.

And this is a problem?

(regarding Celestial Master)

The problem is that with their level-1 paths, there are virtually no useful spells they can cast.

[/quote]

Which is why they're so low. *sigh* It seems apparentto me that people seem to think that the under-costed mages are the 'right' ones, and everything else is horribly overcosted.

[The_Tauren13]

Saber Cherry said:
As for morale value... it's sort of an s-curve with the steepest part around 9, with asymptotes at maybe 5 and 16. I can't think of an s-curve equation offhand.

At any rate, morale 14 is perhaps twice as valuable as morale 10... and above that it doesn't matter much. From my observations.

Hmm... so perhaps I took the wrong approach.
How about: (((x/10)-1)^(1/3))+1
Code:

---

Morale   Cost

   6     0.26

   7     0.33

   8     0.42

   9     0.54

  10     1.00

  11     1.46

  12     1.58

  13     1.67

  14     1.74

  15     1.79

  16     1.84

  17     1.89

  18     1.93

---

[Huzurdaddi]

Scott,

I think you are on the correct path with your costing. The power of Caelum and C'tis almost 100% come from their mages and this is refelect in your increase of their cost.

Your changes will clearly change the flavour of the game. Many people really like the current optimization points ( Caelum, magic dominating, etc ) but it would also be interesting to see how your mod plays out.

WRT Spies they really should cost more. A spy is worth far more than a scout.

I also think that making the cost reduction of a capital only commander a function of the number of capital only commanders a great idea. Actually it should probably be some kind of percentage formula. But I'm sure you will work it out.

[Graeme Dice]

Scott Hebert said:
Would you perhaps give me what you think each path of magic should cost?

S2 or less is worth less than most other paths. S3 or more is worth more. W is worth the least of all except if it's in combination with a path that is useful on the battlefield.

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

I can see them doing other things (like leading your Hydras).

I've never seen anyone actually use hydras, so I can't comment on that.

Possibly. OTOH, why is a Daughter 80g, and a Druid 140g?

The druid is very common, the Daughter of Avalon is not.

As opposed to their ability to spam an endless horde of Undead, and the fact that they start with Terror?

They can only summon an endless horde of undead if you've also researched alteration 5 for drain life, and have also spent 10 death gems on a skull staff. Otherwise they only get to cast about 4 raise skeletons, which is not that scary of a force.

Well, they (and Broken Empire Ermor) are the only nations that get National Unholy Priests. Ermor's cost upkeep; C'tis's don't.

Unholy priests are severely overrated. By the time you've summoned enough so that they will have a noticeable effect on your battles, your opponents should be able to deal with longdead without much difficulty. The summoned unholy priests are probably better off when used as combat platforms.

I think it's more that the original nations are too good.

That's your opinion. I'd say that Caelum's mages are a good baseline for what every nation should have.

Then again, this is how much Illwinter's formula gives them.

True, but nobody would buy them at that cost.

OTOH, Fire/Astral has many synergistic abilities.

It has a single synergistic spell in astral fire, which is inferior to the soul slay that an S3F3 mage could otherwise cast.

Or you use nothing but Commanders.

That does not work at all, as a single death means that all your commanders run away.

I know how good these are, but if you increase the Astral/Death Searching spells to 2-path each, the Seithkona become a little less valuable.

I'd go the other route and decrease all site searching spells to 1 in the respective path.

The Vanadrott is Glamored, and can throw much better spells, overall, than the Jarl.

You don't use a Niefel Jarl for its spellcasting ability. You use it as a full-fledged SC. This is a role that a Vanadrott cannot match as the Van does not have sufficient hitpoints.

Perhaps a reduction in the cost would be in order, but not a simple ignoring of that ability.

Why not ignore it? Is there any way to make assasination cost effective?

Or guaranteed Acashic casters.

Acashic record costs too much to worthwhile.

Are they total randoms or not? I seem to recall a 5S one before.

If you have a 5S one, they you got very lucky, as you're much more likely to get something along the lines of S3W1B1N1, which doesn't have too much of a use.

Is it their 1S that's a problem?

That's the worst of their problems.

Perhaps they are so important because the gems needed to power their spells are so easily found (comparatively speaking).

No, they are important because astral provides luck, and magic resist in the form of the lucky pendant, lucky coin, starshine skullcap and antimagic amulet, while death magic provides wraith swords and decent summons.

[Graeme Dice]

Scott Hebert said:
If you say so. I've seen quite a few 'assassin builds' around that are quite effective at any point.

They might be able to kill any human commander they run across, but that's not going to help you very much when somebody takes the fairly simple step of recruiting scouts, 30 gold commanders, and H2 priests for your assasins to spend their turns against.

[The_Tauren13]

Or maybe dump the equation and pull something like this:
Code:

---

Morale   Cost

   0     0.00

   1     0.05

   2     0.20

   3     0.32

   4     0.41

   5     0.47

   6     0.50

   7     0.70

   8     0.85

   9     0.95

  10     1.00

  11     1.10

  12     1.30

  13     1.60

  14     2.00

  15     2.12

  16     2.23

  17     2.33

  18     2.43

  19     2.51

  20     2.60

  21     2.67

  22     2.74

  23     2.79

  24     2.85

  25     2.89

  26     2.93

  27     2.96

  28     2.98

  29     2.99

  30     3.00

---

Graeme Dice said:
I'd say that Caelum's mages are a good baseline for what every nation should have.

Right. Lets make national troops more useless than they already are. And lets make most battle summons more effective than most ritual summons. What a fun game!

Graeme Dice said:

They might be able to kill any human commander they run across, but that's not going to help you very much when somebody takes the fairly simple step of recruiting scouts, 30 gold commanders, and H2 priests for your assasins to spend their turns against.

If I can spend 50 Gold and a few gems to make my opponent lose 30-50 gold per turn, I'll be happy.