Pretender Balance Mod

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
To you, to me, to Zen, certainly not - but that's an ethnocentric judgment if I ever saw one. It certainly would make sense to, say, a Dusk Elder or a Sauromancer. Fantasy litterature, movies and RPG are full of alien cultures that worship exactly that kind of guy. Eg, Blizzard's Diablo series, to give just a prominent exemple.

But then, why doesn't the above argument work for the Vampire Queen? What makes the Prince of Death any better than the Vampire Queen to their subjects?

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Hmmm. In fantasy, Vampires are often depicted as secretive creatures, sometimes with a couple servants to wipe the webs that litter their coffins. OTOH, Demon Lords or Princes usually come with a huge retinue of all sorts of minions. Never noticed that?

quote:

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Cheap magic paths - ie, versatility. Human mages are more adaptable just for the reason they're less strongly attuned to a particular magic path. Makes a lot of sense to me, therefore I like it this way.

I'm sorry, but as I've tried to illustrate, I don't agree. You take a Rainbow, and you take a focussed mage, give them the same Dominion (even as low as 4), and it takes 3 Paths to make the Rainbow even come out even, and that's with vastly inferior stats.

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Let me remind you it takes 7 colors to make a rainbow. As long as you aren't close to that number, your comparison is meaningless.

The reason I chose 4 is because that's the minimum I feel is necessary to grant reasonably quick and sure access to the powerful Rituals from the Path. Gift of Health, Forge of the Ancients, the Elemental Monarch Summons, and so on.

Fine. If that's your focus (assuming the 'and so on' doesn't cover every magic color), then obviously the rainbow mages aren't for you, and you're better with a more specialized pretender with 3 or 4 strong paths. But it's not due to an intrinsic limitation of the human mages, it's rather a self-imposed restriction due to your playstyle.

To me, if you're going to take a Pretender with a lot of 2s, the Pretender is going to be able to do a whole lot of nothing.

Hrm. FYI a pretender with only 2's can get 5+ in every path through items only. And I'm not talking artifacts here, that's doable at Construction 6.

You're going to have to rely on Empowerment or your National mages to cast any useful Rituals. About the only way to justify that kind of Pretender is to go the Coin/Skullcap/Ring of Sorcery/Ring of Wizardry route, and that's extremely expensive in terms of Pearls, Pearls I think would be more effective casting Acashic Record and taking a more focused Pretender.

Oh wait, so Rings are expensive and Acashic isn't?

This is my big beef with Human Pretenders. They look like they should work for the generalist route, but they don't.

Whether this is because of a lack of good Rituals to use at low path levels, an imbalance in cost of the Pretender, or relative ease in finding Independent Mages with 2-paths, I don't know. I'm just proposing an idea to make them more palatable on a quantitative level. It certainly makes them more viable, while not overshadowing the other Pretenders.

The only problem is one of theme.

No, the only problem (and that's your problem, not anyone else's) is you want the human mages to compete with the Titans on their ground. Which, of course, is hopeless.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
And yet you _want_ to worship a Prince of Death? This really isn't making sense to me.

You're damn right I do. He wants to kill just about everyone and make the world into a land of death. I want to kill everyone. Becoming a demilich appeals to me, and makes for an excellent sign-up bonus. Where do I sign up?

Sure, YOU don't want to worship him, but that's why you get to be a Soulless after you die.

[ June 18, 2004, 04:41: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Scott Hebert]

Hmmm. In fantasy, Vampires are often depicted as secretive creatures, sometimes with a couple servants to wipe the webs that litter their coffins. OTOH, Demon Lords or Princes usually come with a huge retinue of all sorts of minions. Never noticed that?

I've noticed that those minions are normally mindbLasted into submission, which isn't really willing, IMO.

Let me remind you it takes 7 colors to make a rainbow. As long as you aren't close to that number, your comparison is meaningless.

According to Zen, 4 paths at 3 would be the closest thing to 'normal' Raibows you get, and 4 is just as close to 1 as it is to 7.

Fine. If that's your focus (assuming the 'and so on' doesn't cover every magic color), then obviously the rainbow mages aren't for you, and you're better with a more specialized pretender with 3 or 4 strong paths. But it's not due to an intrinsic limitation of the human mages, it's rather a self-imposed restriction due to your playstyle.

And the restriction is shared by many, it seems, since very few people seem to use human Pretenders.

Hrm. FYI a pretender with only 2's can get 5+ in every path through items only. And I'm not talking artifacts here, that's doable at Construction 6.

Well, if you start with 2 in every path... do Rings of Wizardry stack? I assume not, since very few magic items do. Then you'd have a Ring of Wizardry, a Ring of Sorcery, a Staff of Elemental Mastery... that's 4 in everything. You could use that Air/Blood robe, though I doubt many do. Circumstantially, you could have 5. But I guess I'm missing where you could have 5 in everything at Construction 6. Let me renew my familiarity with the MIQR and get back to you.

Oh wait, so Rings are expensive and Acashic isn't?

140 Pearls (the price of the quoted equipment) gets you almost 6 Acashics. Acashic, unlike the equipment, gives you an immediate and permanent gem income back. There's also the fact that the early Acashics make the later Acashics possibly cheaper, through the gem income.

No, the only problem (and that's your problem, not anyone else's) is you want the human mages to compete with the Titans on their ground. Which, of course, is hopeless.

If that's true, why aren't the human pretenders used more often?

It is true that I don't see the point of true Rainbows. If you use them for site-searching, they're very slow, and might not even find sites that your other mages can use. This means that the gems from those sites will either be saved so the Pretender can use them (once he stops searching), or they will be alchemized (at extreme cost) into a gem that can be used by other mages.

You're not going to have a Bless effect, the impact of which varies by nation.

Your superior Research over other Pretenders doesn't matter when it's most important, in the early game, because you're site-searching.

*shrugs* Where is the benefit over, say, a Great Mother with 4N/4E/3S, who can cast Gift of Health after Construction 4, can cast Acashic naturally, and Forge before spending over 100 gems that would have been halved under the Forge?

If you want to talk about site-searching, my Great Mother will find almost any site that I need to find early (before Acashic kicks in). Nature sites for Nature gem income, and a wide variety of possible effects (including Nature mages that I may not have nationally), Earth sites for Earth gems and money, and Astral sites for Astral gems (for Acashic).

I don't see the appeal of Rainbows under such conditions.

[Chris Byler]

Acashic Record, IMO, is only effective if you crank the site frequency way up (this both increases the success rate and number of sites found, and decreases the relative costs by giving everyone more gem income). 25 pearls to often find nothing? No thanks, I'll use the path-specific spells for a gem or two each, or send some mages to search the old fashioned way for no gems at all.

Granted, a lot of people *do* turn the site frequency way up, but I don't (at least in SP) - magic dominates the endgame enough already, increasing the site frequency only accelerates this.

You also neglect the awesome research power of rainbows. Titanoids can't match this, partly because of their new path cost and partly because of their chassis cost.

I think the introduction of the bless system did nerf the old "2 or 3 of everything" rainbow, for some nations. But others don't rely on their bless effect (base Ulm comes to mind - they could really use a strong researcher and good site searcher, too).

Also, you don't need the Elemental Staff/Ring of Sorcery/Ring of Wizardry for high-path-requiring rituals; for rituals you only need to boost one path at a time (or occasionally two for something like Astral Corruption, King of Banefires, Father Illearth etc.) Make some individual path boosting items (which are much cheaper) and swap them around. Humanoids have plenty of item slots to play with (except the archmage on horse or freak, who is handicapped by his inability to wear boots of earth, so don't take him if you want earth). ES/RoS/RoW give research bonuses to a rainbow, and make him stronger on the battlefield, but they aren't really needed for rituals.

Rainbows aren't the best for path 5+ spells like elemental courts, globals, etc - although they can cast them the usually require items to do so. They really excel at research, site searching and forging (few items and even fewer magic sites require more than 3 in a path).

And finally, only some nations/themes really require strong dominion (principally Ermor and extreme temperature lovers). Yes, I know it's the name of the game, but dominion isn't the only way to win or defeat enemies. SC pretenders want dominion over their battlefields, but conventional armies can live without it. Most nations can spread dominion by preaching or building temples even if their god's dominion strength is low. Later in the game, especially on large maps, the dominion strength at initial purchase is less important because of the temple boost, more preaching and overall more sources of dominion. Nations with strong and/or cheap priests, inquisitors, cheap temples, or blood sacrifice (although this costs more than other methods) are particularly good at getting along with lower dominion strengths. I don't think buying every pretender's dominion up to 6 is a fair comparison - not all nations need that high a dominion.

[Blitz]

I had kind of given up figuring out how to balance humanoids with titans. But I had a few ideas, which might make them more appealing.

- Lower the cost of all humanoid pretenders to 0. The cost of raising dominion is already prohibitive. When you consider that making an 8-path rainbow Ghost King costs only 80 points more than a humanoid, you would have to be a complete moron to go with the humanoid. The Ghost King comes with the full Vampire Queen list of goodies (less immortality and regeneration), comes with a level of death magic, is obviously a first-class supercombatant, and can do anything a humanoid can do.

For example:

Ghost King - level 2 in every path, no blood, dominion 4 - 321 points
Frost Father - level 2 in every path, no blood, dominion 4 - 261 points

Even by using the humanoid in the manner most suited to the chassis, the difference is negligible. The GK's extra toys are indisputably worth 60 points. Any deviation from the basic rainbow template, be it higher dominion or fewer paths will only decrease the gap.

Now let's look at a "free" Frost Father...

Ghost King - level 2 in every path, no blood, dominion 4 - 321 points
Frost Father - level 2 in every path, no blood, dominion 4 - 206 points

Much more reasonable. The Frost Father is going to have lots of points left over for castles and scales. I would imagine humans would have a better idea how to rule an empire than a ghost anyways, so having excellent scales would be a fitting role for a human. Losing the SC power of a pretender god, but gaining a rainbow mage and very fortuitous scales might tempt some people to go the humanoid route.

Just make them all free, like the Oracle and Manticore and Nataraja mkay?

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Acashic Record, IMO, is only effective if you crank the site frequency way up (this both increases the success rate and number of sites found, and decreases the relative costs by giving everyone more gem income). 25 pearls to often find nothing? No thanks, I'll use the path-specific spells for a gem or two each, or send some mages to search the old fashioned way for no gems at all.

The path-specific spells are also nice (I've underestimated them for a long time). 'Manual' searching is too slow.

Granted, a lot of people *do* turn the site frequency way up, but I don't (at least in SP) - magic dominates the endgame enough already, increasing the site frequency only accelerates this.

The most common frequency I've seen here is 50. That would mean in mountains, the chance is 75%. Assuming that I know how the site placement works, that would mean an average of 3 sites in 'good' areas. That's not 'often nothing'. I'm certainly not saying you should spam Acashic all over the place.

You also neglect the awesome research power of rainbows. Titanoids can't match this, partly because of their new path cost and partly because of their chassis cost.

The difference in research isn't that great, and if you're site-searching, you're not researching.

I think the introduction of the bless system did nerf the old "2 or 3 of everything" rainbow, for some nations. But others don't rely on their bless effect (base Ulm comes to mind - they could really use a strong researcher and good site searcher, too).

Possibly. With Ulm, though, I want Forge up ASAP. That requires a 4 Earth for reliability.

Also, you don't need the Elemental Staff/Ring of Sorcery/Ring of Wizardry for high-path-requiring rituals; for rituals you only need to boost one path at a time (or occasionally two for something like Astral Corruption, King of Banefires, Father Illearth etc.) Make some individual path boosting items (which are much cheaper) and swap them around. Humanoids have plenty of item slots to play with (except the archmage on horse or freak, who is handicapped by his inability to wear boots of earth, so don't take him if you want earth). ES/RoS/RoW give research bonuses to a rainbow, and make him stronger on the battlefield, but they aren't really needed for rituals.

Er, okay? What Rituals are you speaking of, here?

Rainbows aren't the best for path 5+ spells like elemental courts, globals, etc - although they can cast them the usually require items to do so. They really excel at research, site searching and forging (few items and even fewer magic sites require more than 3 in a path).

They suffer from severe overwork. If I can only do one thing a turn with my Pretender, I want the most effective return possible. I don't feel I get that with Rainbows.

[quote]I don't think buying every pretender's dominion up to 6 is a fair comparison - not all nations need that high a dominion. /QUOTE]

I used the number that other people told me was most common in MP games. I'll try to get better data from now on.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Just make them all free, like the Oracle and Manticore and Nataraja mkay?

I already mentioned this. However, you do this, and you lose the balance between the Human Pretenders, because they're not all made alike.

I mean, why would you take the Crone then? I would be hard-pressed to reason my way out of taking the Enchantress.