Vanilla Summon Costs

[Endoperez]

There are lots of people who only play singleplayer, or just the demo, and still think the AI is hard and impossible to beat, and would be quite confused indeed if they bought the game and found out they don't know research levels up to 4 any more.

As an example, is LA Vanheim good or crap? There was that thread about some other forum thinking it was so bad it was almost useless, and discussion about their mages' randoms and the skinshifters and stuff like that.

Similarly, here we've had huge discussions about monkey nations' PD, and about Ulm. Some people think Ulm in all ages suck, some think MA Ulm sucks, some think EA Ulm is too good already - unless someone frequents these forums, major changes will come out of nowhere. Even if someone frequents here, some changes seem to come out of nowhere.

Some changes are good and universal. Price changes are relatively easy to adjust to, and changing Summon Animals to 20 to 30 beasts isn't that big of a change. Something like changing Dragon Mastery to Conjuration 1, 10 gems and Cave Drakes to 20 gems for 4 drakes, +2 from mastery, +1 for every level above needed? Suddenly some nations can pump out lots of Cave Drakes in the early game with one turn's expense from a Great Mother pretender. The spell might get used now, but all changes are scary.

There's also the fact that Shrapnel is still selling Dominions, and shipping the game with a manual that is very clearly outdated is bad. If people can at least trust that the manual gives the right idea about where you find what spells and what they do, they can plan without having the game always open.

EDIT:

Sombre said:
The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

The manual could use an update, but I use it to check spells' details. Where can I find this spell, what level caster does it take, how much fatigue does it cost? It gives me that. I also use it to check probabilities from the table at page 5, and no one has proven that wrong yet. I also learned out the effects of fatigue and morale from tha manual, and no one has proven that wrong either. My manual is right in almost everything, and wrong in few things. It's also missing some stuff that should have made it in for the release (number of towers in castles, quickness stacking, things like that), and lots of stuff that was added in patches. As I said, it could use an update. But it never was, and isn't, hopeless.

[Jazzepi]

Sombre said:
The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

In Magic : The Gathering, they've faced this problem for a long time. Since the rules have changed so greatly since the printing of the first sets, they've had to extensively change old cards. For example, there is no longer "interrupts" in magic anymore. Everything is an instant. The important lesson to take away is that they weren't afraid to go back and meddle with older cards to make the game better. Even though it makes it a bit more difficult to pickup old cards and play with them according to the oracle wording (the official text of every card is listed in the oracle), the game is made that much better because old mechanics are fixed, cards are reworded, and things become keywords.

Also, they generally only change things to make them clearer, while preserving as much of the original effect as possible. Lighting Bolt may now be an instant instead of an interrupt, but chances are a player picking one up is going to play it almost exactly the same way as someone might play Shock.

I see a lot of value in gently tweaking these lower level summons. Make them more valuable. Let people use their gems on stuff other than forging, SCs, and magic diversity.

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

Jazzepi said:
I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

What's wrong with it now that the bug has been fixed?

* Caster of Stygian Paths took 1 an dmg for each unit under his command instead of units taking 1 an dmg each
* Stygian Paths reported random number of lost on the way

Manual: Transports the caster and all troops under his command to distant province. En route, all troops are attacked by dmg:1 AN attack and dmg: Death, MR attack. These represent the spirits of the underworld attacking. Stealthy units only have a 20% chance of being hit by the death attack. The caster gains no benefit from stealth.

[Gregstrom]

I too think gentle tweaks would be of value. A bit of a boost to summon numbers or stats, or adding scaling per path level in the right place, would add a lot to some spells. Work like that done to the 'Sleeping in...' spells, adding some scale dependencies or dominion-dependent boosts, could also be a neat solution. Summon Animals might summon bigger, stronger animals in a Growth scale, for instance.

[Karlem]

We have the options at hand:

1.- Make the changes in patches so SP people will not notice if they do not patch.
2.- Add a PDF to the Patch with the modifications done.

This way you can keep the manual as a basic rules book and the PDF file updated to the last changes.

You can also ship the game with the last patch and PDF file and everybody will be happy!

[Dedas]

I think Illwinter should forget an updated manual, at least for the moment. With so many changes and continuous patching I don't see the point, it is just too much work. It would be better to just wait until most bugs and extreme unbalances are fixed, and then release an updated manual in PDF. In the meantime we have the excellent in-game information and this forum to help us.

[Endoperez]

Dedas - scale bug was fixed for 3.14, which introduced a new scale bug. It was fixed in 3.15, but either .14 or .15 introduced "armies not moving" bug. Continuous patches are the result of "most bugs and extreme unbalances" being present, and sometimes being created by the patch.

PDF update to the manual would be really handy, though. That's a really good suggestion.

[ryo_akashi]

I vote option 3...

Option 3 - introduce new items/spells (a la Ivy crown, Dragon master) at higher level to increase effectiveness of weak units.

This can be easily done via a patch and adds new content.

[Dedas]

I understand why the game needs to be updated regularly, that is natural when you change things in a big game like this one. My point is that it would be a waste of time to release an updated manual with every patch. Updating help texts should have low priority until it is relatively safe that the new features work as intended.
Also, the people that actually notice the different changes (not additions) and discusses them on the forums, aren't exactly newbies, so a manual is not really needed at once.

Another thing to remember is that you don't have to update the game to play and learn the basics as a newbie. I would suggest not to, so that you can use the printed manual as you play. When you feel ready to jump into MP, just download the latest patch and play some SP with a nation you like to get a feel for changes. When that is done you should stand a fair chance in any newbie game.

[Aezeal]

All summon spells doubled... 2 tarts for the price of one