Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Calahan]

Weak as a day old kitten.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

If less gems is at least a partially acceptable answer, then dont we already have that by setting sites to a very low setting when creating the game?
--magicsites X Magic site frequency 0-75 (default 40)
Setting events rare would help also.

That would lower everyone equally. Of course some nations have a naturally high gem income from national sites, which could be boosted by pretender selection, but that is part of the balance for those nations which they pay for in other areas (that people usually complain about). That all just amounts to a different game-feel for us all to enjoy. And its already been built-in by the developers.

Not to mention that it would make some of the globals less pointless, like... what's that spell that gives you 5 pearls a turn by collecting solar light?

-Max

[Squirrelloid]

Yes, lets set events rare and make there be absolutely no reason to take anything but misfortune 2-3...

Seriously, Luck isn't good enough as it is, lets not make it any more tempting to get points off the luck-misfortune scale.

[Makinus]

It appears more or less agreed that forging is one of the bigger MM causes in the game, and it was suggested to eliminate hammers... what about increasing forging costs? would not that decrease the forging rush? In this way forged itens would be more rare and you would give artifacts only to the most important units.

[thejeff]

Increasing forging costs just makes hammers more critical. And since you can only increase costs by increasing path levels needed, also increase the need for shifting boosters around.

It's not the few high level expensive artifacts that add to MM. It's churning out the dozens of cheap ones for your thugs & mages.

[fantasma]

hammers allow for more forging which causes more MM. Removing them has two positive effects on managing:
1. Forging cheap stuff costs 67% more -> up to 40% less items
2. no need to find that mage with the hammer, anybody with the path can do it.

I think hammers introduce micro.

Reducing site frequency has a drastic influence, while reducing overall gem flow it makes finding specific gem types really unpredictable. I remember that game when - after searching all my provinces, 30 provs - I ended with a total of 1w! That was at 45%

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by thejeff

It's not the few high level expensive artifacts that add to MM. It's churning out the dozens of cheap ones for your thugs & mages.

We should try and convince the developers to provide an automatic forging command the same as we have for magic site searching. This would definitely help.

I have found increasing the gem cost of gem generators prevents them from being forged as often because it requires more gems even with the hammers. The end result is instead of having 10 mages forging gem generators the higher cost means only 3 mages or less. In some cases other summon spells are viewed as more worthy because each gem generator has a longer period of time before it's paid its own cost.


In regards to SCs... such as the Tartarians and recruitable SCs, I believe new spells should be introduced to provide strategic strategies against them. For example I created one game where I created a summon spell where the creature generated horrormarks when struck... naturally not important against an army, but very important against SCs. Also I created a long range summon spell which was a summon specific for fighting SCs and then after its arrival a horror would appear. Another spell which can be introduced for handling SCs would be twisting the internal alchemy spell into a new spell so it only sends insanity instead of the decrease in aging. Another idea spell which comes to mind is creating a spell which uses cursed luck... currently it's almost impossible to even encounter a game which will have cursed luck. These will give armies a better chance against the heavy usage of SCs during late game.

[Sombre]

All strategies are strategic!

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Sombre

All strategies are strategic!

When the number of strategies are few it's less strategic and more linear.

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, I think the tartarian thing would be quite easy to fix if there were some other nonunique SCs with about equal price and power.