Experimental Game - Outofthelab

[Calahan]

I read it as well. I'd also like to think Illuminated One appreciated the feedback

[Illuminated One]

Yeah, sure, as I said this is not going to be the finish version, however I do want to get a feeling for it before going further, so I appreciate any comments.
However it would be better to have them in the mod thread http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43679
If any of the mods can move them, I'd be grateful.

Regarding national disadvantages

I didn't intend to copy normal nation research progression.
I tried to stick to some guidelines while making the list

a) Good/Bad research depending on how progressive/traditionalistic and cultured the nations is
Arco is thematically about the rise of philosophy and science so good res
Niefel is revisionistic (awake the old giants that tyrannized us at the dawn of time) - so bad res

b) Cost of research is based on the status/accessibility of the mages
Kailasa has a caste system with the mages in the highest caste - you don't expect them to work for a peasant's wage
In Ulm mages are distrusted yet plentyful because of the widespread superstition. A shaman could just a wise man or woman brewing potions (oh god, this is RPG talk, isn't it?) or improving their tribesmens' weapons without demanding much except a place by the fire and a beer.

Of course this is subject to interpretation (and I've used that to boost or penalize some nations were I felt more free to interpret) and the list isn't set in stone. It's more a sketch with which I intended to playtest things out.
If it favors some nations, so what? Vanilla isn't excactly balanced, too, and the winners are not generally feared as uber rush nations. Some of the loosers (Atlantis, Yomi, Rlyeh, Tir, Niefel) trouble me, too, and if anything turns out to be out of balance I'll try to fix that, although I'd rather give it a try before deciding.


About upkeep issues

Well, lets suppose I took a lower upkeep (say 1000) for the late game and higher gold settings. Let's say you're getting 6000 gold = 4500 gold netto, give or take a few, so you are recruiting 10 mages and 200 troops each turn. I want to get away from mage and troop spamming and this isn't really it. I don't think it really undermines bad scale strategies, in fact I've been always thinking the opposite way - the higher the gold the more good scales pay of and vice versa.
I can see your point about early problems, though, and have updated it to 60 gp upkeep.

[Squirrelloid]

Well, its here because my comments are pertinent to the combination of game settings + mod effects, not just mod effects in isolation. Some of them certainly do apply as such though.

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

b) Cost of research is based on the status/accessibility of the mages
Kailasa has a caste system with the mages in the highest caste - you don't expect them to work for a peasant's wage
In Ulm mages are distrusted yet plentyful because of the widespread superstition. A shaman could just a wise man or woman brewing potions (oh god, this is RPG talk, isn't it?) or improving their tribesmens' weapons without demanding much except a place by the fire and a beer.

Of course this is subject to interpretation (and I've used that to boost or penalize some nations were I felt more free to interpret) and the list isn't set in stone. It's more a sketch with which I intended to playtest things out.
If it favors some nations, so what? Vanilla isn't excactly balanced, too, and the winners are not generally feared as uber rush nations. Some of the loosers (Atlantis, Yomi, Rlyeh, Tir, Niefel) trouble me, too, and if anything turns out to be out of balance I'll try to fix that, although I'd rather give it a try before deciding.

Here's the thing - yes, Kailasa is a Caste system, but (and correct me if i'm wrong) - my interpretation of Hindu castes has it that while the religious caste is at the top, they don't collect that much of the society's wealth (the warrior caste does). And in the case of EA Kailasa, the deific commanders are hardly going to care about base mortal currency. Also, despite being nominally Hindu, the mages have a decidedly buddhist feel, which means they'd tend towards asceticism - even more reason why they aren't expensive to maintain.

Caste system doesn't necessarily make a statement about who has all the money (although one of the elite castes is going to end up with it - in this case its almost certainly the warrior caste, which is near the top), it makes a statement about who can fulfill which roles, who can marry whom, and how that society values those roles. Kailasa's top caste being apparently ascetic mystics underscores this point - they are reverred by their society but it seems out of flavor to say they demand large cash rewards for their role.

About upkeep issues

Well, lets suppose I took a lower upkeep (say 1000) for the late game and higher gold settings. Let's say you're getting 6000 gold = 4500 gold netto, give or take a few, so you are recruiting 10 mages and 200 troops each turn. I want to get away from mage and troop spamming and this isn't really it. I don't think it really undermines bad scale strategies, in fact I've been always thinking the opposite way - the higher the gold the more good scales pay of and vice versa.
I can see your point about early problems, though, and have updated it to 60 gp upkeep.

Lets run with this idea of 250 gold for 8 RPs is standard for good researchers for a moment.

Turns.......Good.......Upkeep.......#Researcher Equiv
1...........200..........0............NA
2 to 11.....80...........60...........10
12 to 23....140..........200..........17.5
24 to 35....200..........600..........25
36 to 48....270..........1000.........33.75
49+.........350..........1500.........43.75

Ok, first of all, we have to conceed that turn 1 is a special case with no good analog.

We're also going to have to conceed that, if we stick with the research progression you've outlined, you're underpaying early.

Turns.....#Mages.....Mages Actual Cost.....Cost Payed.....Remain
2-11........10..........2500+2750upk..........600... ......4650
12-23.......17.5........1875+5250upk..........2400... .....4775
24-35.......25..........1875+7500upk..........7200... .....2175
36-48.......33.75.......2187.5+10968.75.......13000.. .....155.25
49..........43.75.......2500+1093.75..........1500 ........2093.75
50+.........43.75.......1093.75upk/trn........1500/trn....-406.25

Total remaining to be payed as of turn 49 end: 13849
Time to pay it off: 13849/406.25 = 34 turns

Note that the mage actual cost is the cost to purchase the number of additional mages plus the upkeep of the total number of mages for the given number of turns.

The first thing you'll notice is that it isn't until turns 36-48 that you're almost paying for everything you're getting in that time period.

Which isn't too bad. But what if the nation's mage's are sacred?

Turns.....#Mages.....Mages Actual Cost.....Cost Payed.....Remain
2-11........10..........2500+1375upk..........600... ......3275
12-23.......17.5........1875+2625upk..........2400... .....2100
24-35.......25..........1875+3750upk..........7200... .....-1575
36-48.......33.75.......2187.5+5484.375.......13000.. ...-5328.125
49..........43.75.......2500+546.875..........1500 .......1546.875
50+.........43.75.......546.875upk/trn........1500/trn...-953.125

Total remaining to be payed as of turn 49 end: 18.75
Time to pay it off: <1 turn

Ouch. Seriously ouch. Every turn after 49 they're paying 1000 gold they wouldn't normally have to. (953.125, but whatever). That's painful.

Think 250gold for 8RPs sacred is unreasonable? That's identical to MA Shinuyama's 300 gold 10RP mages in terms of gold efficiency. And those mages are sacred.

[Squirrelloid]

On mage and troop spamming (Separated out because its a rather different subject):

So what do you want combat to be? Nothing but thugs and SCs? This is an army scale game and you want to play it without armies?

I'm honestly quite confused. I actually find the tendency of the lategame to be about ubersummons and crazy kitted individuals rather than armies to be a let down.

I mean, yes, it'll be nice to have less than 30 mages in your capitol on any given turn. But that'll just translate into more mages roaming the map i imagine. And i haven't found troops to be all that micromanagement intensive compared to mages...

And there is no way around spamming mages - everyone needs to do some amount of site searching/forging, and everyone needs battle mages. And if you insist on closing the purse strings as much as you are I imagine people will forsake troops in favor of more mages after the early game, since troops are becoming less effective.

One important point here is that playing with less than 100% gold is a bad idea when you're adding a large fixed cost.

Predictions:
Once enchantment 3 comes online, nations which can efficiently skelly spam will be big winners, so long as they can afford to buy mages at all, because they don't even need armies, and their skelly spam is even better than usual since other nations can't afford the armies they'd normally be able to.

Awake SC Pretenders will be overpowered because they'll permit excessively rapid early expansion relative to other nations. I'd be surprised if anyone can expand before turn 4 without an SC, while SCs will start expanding on turn *2*. That 2 turn advantage will turn into more money for troops, which will turn into even more accelerated expansion and a bigger province gap. (While an awake SC is always an advantage, its not normally nearly so much of one).

[Squirrelloid]

ok, i suppose i'm still tentatively interested, but as C'Tis. Lets see if the Lizard Kings are really as awesome as i think they'll be under these conditions.

May i recommend setting renaming to On rather than accepting the default (not being able to find the right commander quickly is the most annoying thing in the world).

I might also suggest HoF of 15 instead of 10, but its not a big deal.

[Squirrelloid]

i would argue that the relevant factor is not total number of troops bought, its the ratio of mages to non-mages purchased that matters. Ie, the thing of importance here is scale independent - it doesn't matter if there's 100 troops or 1000, what matters if 10% or 40% of cash resources are spent on mages.

I would argue that ideally mages would be made to represent a smaller fraction of your total purchases. Making gold scarce does the opposite, because it makes the number of commander buys relatively larger to available cash.

The two ways to decrease mage purchases relative to unit purchases are as follows:
(1) increase available cash (Ie, the larger the players cash pool is relative to his #commander buys, the more money he'll probably spend on units)
Issue: build more fortresses to buy more mages
(2) make all mages capitol only (hard limit of one/turn)
Issue: nations with better mages are big winners here

supplemental to 1, making fortresses/labs more expensive will stop mage production facility spamming. Actually, making fortresses cheaper and labs much more expensive will make unit recruitment centers cheaper while making mage recruitment centers more expensive.

Say 1/2 price fortresses, triple price labs (and no nation gets cheap labs). At 400/fortress and 1500/lab, players might think twice before building multiple sites for recruiting mages.

(Note: such a price change would make the 'lab burns down' event unacceptable - since you're already running a script, perhaps a script that checks to see if the event occurred, and reruns the turn if it did).

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

supplemental to 1, making fortresses/labs more expensive will stop mage production facility spamming. Actually, making fortresses cheaper and labs much more expensive will make unit recruitment centers cheaper while making mage recruitment centers more expensive.

Say 1/2 price fortresses, triple price labs (and no nation gets cheap labs). At 400/fortress and 1500/lab, players might think twice before building multiple sites for recruiting mages.

The only problem with this idea is that some casters/researchers don't require a lab. Of course you could make them cost more. But if you're doing that, why not just make every caster cost more, if all you're worried about is the proportion of mages to normal troops?

I think the real thing we're trying to fix here is the "fifty mages sitting around in your capital" issue. The point is that you'll only buy a mage if you have a particular use for them.

Take Sauromatia as an example. You won't have 50 enaries if you aren't going to research with them. It's just not practical. You'll have 3, maybe, for remote site-searching. Because there's no point making a bunch of them if they're just sitting there useless for half the game. Better to spam castles with the money, make more troops, then once research has ramped up to the point where they're actually useful, you'll start cranking out combat mages. But you might not even tech to Nether Darts at all under this mod--because you don't already have the mages sitting there.

[Illuminated One]

I've released a first version of the mod for SP games/testing.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43679

There are a few differences in research strength between the mod and the table here, the values in the mod are the correct ones, except for some nations that might get a penalized a bit (Marverni, Arco, Ctis, Ermor).
For the early expansion remember - you have spells. This helps to expand quickly despite the settings. For example Kailasa. Get a bless, research alt 3 first turn, alchemize an earth gem to buy a Yaksha and own.



@Squirrelloid

kianduatha is correct. The main goal is to avoid the growth of micro, which is intolerable imo.
1) Increasing gold goes against that.
2 and the labs suggestion) Well, I had some ideas to limit recruitment centers but cap-only is to much as it will practically remove 100s of mages from the game. It will probably mean that recruitment centers can only be built in certain provinces. Not yet there, though.

I doubt thought that all in all it will increase the mage to troop ratio.
In vanilla sure, but there a mage is also a researcher, although if it does I'm not going to fix that with this first part of the full mod.

[Squirrelloid]

Does anyone else see a contradiction between these two statements?

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

For the early expansion remember - you have spells. This helps to expand quickly despite the settings. For example Kailasa. Get a bless, research alt 3 first turn, alchemize an earth gem to buy a Yaksha and own.

I doubt thought that all in all it will increase the mage to troop ratio.

Statement 1: You don't need armies to play the game.
Statement 2: mage:troop ratio will stay constant between this and normal play.

But wait, we already concluded we don't need *any* troops. How many normal games do you know of that play like that?

Yes, you don't recruit tons of crappy research mages. You recruit as many top tier mages as you can afford and own independents/other players with nothing but pure magery or SC bad-assery. This actually sounds like more micro rather than less.

But as I said, i'm tentatively interested as C'tis. I'll even make a pre-game prediction: I will never buy a single non-mage (barring an indie commander or two for castle-building)

[Illuminated One]

The statement that Kailasa can expand very effectively without troops does neither entail, that
a) Kailasa can't expand better with troops
b) Kailasa won't need troops later in the game
c) Other nations don't need armies

Therefore I fail to see where your statement 1 comes from.

Besides there is no contradiction between statement 1 and 2.
Only that you don't need something doesn't mean that you don't want it.

I'm fine with any discussion or critique (and some of your comments have already been taken aboard) but I don't like it if someone tries to get all smartass on me. Sorry if I interpreted that into your post.

Most of the things in this mod are in for a reason. Yep, it will change a lot, and it might go against my intention. But I don't like to jump to conclusions especially in a game like dominions and will wait until I see it work out before doing radical changes.
I don't believe in the less money=more mages argument. If you end up in a game with less provinces do you conquer your equally small neighbour only with mages? In any case what do you propose? More money? For having less micro?

SCs will be more powerful, yes, but totally overpowered? Let's see.