Pricing of Mages ... is it balanced?

[Cohen]

That's because Caelum is one of the best nations!

[Inigo Montoya]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Cohen: The mages are not intended to be equally cost effective for all nations. Caelum for have cheaper powefull than any other nations not because they have to hitpoints less but because cheap mages is intended as a feature of the magocracy Caelum. Other mage prices vary similarily for similar reasons. The different nations are not intended to pay the same cost for the same punch, it is one of the ways in which the nations are differentiated, both thematically and gameplay wise.

Exactly! I think we should all be very wary of trying to homogenize this outstanding game. If we "balance" every nation's mages against every other nation we will end up with every nation playing the same and feeling the same. We'll have every nation with 10 hp mages and the same magic paths for the same cost. It's the only way to "balance" it. Screw balancing mages if that's the price we'd have to pay for it! I'd rather have one nation's mages being more powerful for the cost. On the other hand, balancing nation to nation is a worthwile endeavor so everyone has an equal chance of winning. Balancing mage to mage or commander to commander or archer to archer, etc just ends up with every nation playing exactly like every other. No more of these kinds of unit comparisons please, Cohen. Focus your efforts instead on comparing nations. It's a lot harder to do because it requires a greater synthesis of information, but it has more value.

[Edi]

I don't see anything wrong with the mages for different nations costing different sums, because it usually more than balances out in other respects.

A more interesting comparison about cost effectiveness is the one between indie mages you can get from sites. There are some real eye-poppers there. Most indie mages costs 180, with the apprentice Version generally being 80 to 120, but then there are guys like the Circle Master that have D2B2 for 100 gold that are good as cheap researches and blood hunters if nothing else. Admittedly, their magic combo is one of the less useful, but they are some of the best bang for buck I've seen so far. Adepts of Pyriphlegeton are also great, F3 for 180, when most of the 180 gold mages have more or less one fixed and three random picks.

If anybody is interested in taking a closer look at the indie mages (and all other indie units as well, take a look at the Unit_ID.xls from yours truly, available on Arryn's site.

Edi

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Cohen:
That's because Caelum is one of the best nations!

Caelum might well be one of the best nations. But that doesn't change the reason behind their low mage cost. The mage cost is low because Caelum is intended to be a nation of mages, in the blurb it is stated that it is a magocracy. It is intended to have relatively cheaper mages than the other nations. You are the count Rugen of the shrapnel Boards, you have been slain by Inigo Montoya, now please stop torturing Wesley.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Sheap:
Yes, the occasional natural disaster will reduce your income, but it will not cut it in half, especially if you use the points you saved from not taking Order to buy Luck.

Buying luck will actually exacerbate the problem, increasing the frequency of random events. Random events are BAD! Remember, one of the more common and pernicious "good" events is "free" militia. On forced Turmoil, that hurts a lot.

[Sheap]

It's not that bad...

The effect of luck scale is only 5% increased frequency per step. So you will get only about 15% more events with luck-3 as with luck-0. But if you have taken luck-3 instead of being 50% good they will be 80% good. You will have only 46% as many bad events with luck-3 as you will with luck-0, and 85% more good ones. Other than militia, all the good ones are actually good But even militia is not that bad.

Let's take a militia event - discounting that sometimes you get a priest with them, or flagellants, which actually does make for a useful event. Let's say you get 30 militia, which cost you 14 gold per turn in upkeep. Let's also say you don't have any commander handy so you have to recruit one, for 30 gold and 1/turn. Let's also say it takes 5 turns to dispose of the militia. This is pretty much a worst-case scenario, unless you play on an insanely huge map, in which case it might take longer to get rid of them.

Add it all up it comes to 105 gold the militia event costs you, worst case. It costs less, a lot less, if the militia come with their own commander, or if you get fewer of them. That still sucks, but it sucks less than many of the actual bad random events.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Sheap:
Let's also say you don't have any commander handy so you have to recruit one, for 30 gold and 1/turn.

2 per turn, for non-sacred commanders. Just to quibble with you. I figured I'd go ahead and mention it before Norfleet did.