Why are Sages fair? Opinions wanted!

Edge · #1 February 17th, 2005, 05:02 PM

What about eliminating the Magic Level from the Sage, and give them strictly the research component? You wouldn't build 40-50 of them because once everything you want is researched they would be useless.

Scott Hebert · #2 February 17th, 2005, 05:10 PM

In this event, I probably still would pay for them, because it gets me my spells quicker, and I can always dismiss/kill them to avoid their upkeep when I'm through using them.

Bottom line, if I have money I can spend to get a researcher, I'm going to use it, given any reasonable amount. More research is more research.

Endoperez · #3 February 17th, 2005, 07:12 PM

Hey, I like the no-magic Sage! That fits them as it fits Philosophers! In fact, their description could be changed so that they follow in the path showed by the ancient Philosophers of the Golden Era of humankind, when rationality ruled...

Chazar · #4 February 18th, 2005, 06:29 AM

Nobody commented on my suggestion about just giving them 40 points resource cost so that they require a fort to be built each and every turn?! Is that too far off?

---

I do not see the problem with the random pick: It is incredibly useful for sure (allowing non-blood-nations to go bloody; making 1-path items in abundance, etc. --- BTW, which nations lack a native random pick?), but it just never felt wrong to me. However, as they are right now, I think I would still pay the 110 gold without much doubt, but I might stop producing them after the first dozen...rasing merely their gold cost would still allow to built up research at an amazing speed...

---

I also think that the Philosopher should remain a unique boon to Golden Era and not something everybody has good chance to have access to...

johan osterman · #5 February 18th, 2005, 09:08 AM

Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost. So while giving Sages a high resource cost might make them somewhat scarcer it would be inconsistent with the other units. So unless you deck out the Sages in some enormously heavy armour or you start to assign resource cost to all mages, perhaps lab flasks etc takes resources that competes with weapon making resources, I do no think it is a particularily good idea.

Boron · #6 February 18th, 2005, 09:48 AM

Panther is right imo .
I can't think of a situation in which i don't build 1-2 sages a turn if i can no matter which nation i play .

Research is just so important and the sage and the loremaster are the two best researchers .

In my last machaka game with vh research i found 1 loremaster and 2 Sage sites and recruited 2 sages + 1 loremaster each turn and then had researched all important stuff for me on about turn 60 with VH research .
If i would have wanted i could have even researched everything on turn 60 in that game but i had other priorities , especially forging with forge up occasionally in this game .

Sages are a no-brainer atm

But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

Chazar · #7 February 18th, 2005, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Boron said:But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

Hmm, how do you get all those 80+ year old sages if 12 turns are a year? So the conclusions is that a library burns out after a certain number of sages have been recruited, right? Now that would also limit the sages...

Edit: Clarification: The library runs out of recruitable sages because there are only people below 60 in the province left. Since 12 turns are a year, the population wouldnt age fast enough to produce further 80 year old sages anymore...I am joking!!!

Chazar · #8 February 18th, 2005, 11:45 AM

Quote:

johan osterman said:
Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost.

Well, I am pretty aware of that (see my post in this thread below/above), but I cannot think of any other reason why this would be a bad idea. I think this is similar to Kristoffer O's argument in the discussion about province size. So it's merely a task of coming up with a sound explanation if the game mechanics work out fine...

What I really want, similiar to what I said with a twinkling eye a post ago about the aged sages, is that one could only recruit one sage every other turn, or maybe only one sage per season.

Maybe there are even more troops that can only recruited in a certain season anyway (some sacred units can only be recruited at a certain festival point - equinox, solstice, moon position,etc.)