Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments

[Huzurdaddi]

Perhaps I should have said "gems are made for cracking heads" instead of "summoned casters are made for cracking heads."

In any case you will rarely see gems ( especially death gems ) being used to summon casters that will primarly used for research in multiplayer games. There are just too many good things to be doing with gems.

[Turin]

Well, I will happily trade 30 gp for 1 death gem in every mp game after ~turn15-20.
I used the seraph, because almost every nation has a special research unit, so it make sense to take an above average unit.

Usually the restricting factor when it comes to recruiting is lack of gold/gems, not the lack of usable labs. If you have to much gold to spend you can simply build more labs.

[Scott Hebert]

If you could trade, perhaps. Unfortunately, death gems are worth 15/4 gold each (strictly speaking).

And, of course, if you're saying that you'd spend that much to get 1 death gem... wouldn't that be an argument in favor of death gems being too valuable?

And, should you wish to use a 'research unit', try the Seithkona or any other 1/1/1 mage, since that's actually better for your argument.

However, a Spectre is worth more than any 1/1/1 mage.

And finally... no, it makes absolutely no sense to use an 'above-average' unit unless you want everything to be above average, in which case I suggest you play with all magic at research level 0 and all spells costing a maximum of 5 gems.

[Turin]

Well it seems it makes no sense to discuss this further.

Mass spectres to your heart´s content, I´m sure soon there will be dozens of threads calling for a nerf to this overpowered unit.

[PDF]

IMHO, the easiest way to solve the "researching summons" issue could be just to make them poor researchers.
With for example -4 RP the Spectre gets 1 RP in any non-Magic environment and would be a pretty lame investment for research.

[Arralen]

Why not simply give them upkeep costs in gold ?

[Saber Cherry]

Arralen said:
Why not simply give them upkeep costs in gold ?

Well, for Spectres, they're undead... and thus, while balancing, it is hard to justify. Lamia Queens could get upkeep, though.

I like PDF's suggestion for research, though... even a -1 or -2 research penalty for upkeep-free mages could have profound effects on which choices and investments are the best in a given situation.

There are many possible rationales... for example, they are vengeful undead summoned from their graves, powered by hatred and the desire to kill, and thus uninterested in research. Or because they are merely brainless souls, they are able to fully use their memories of the previous life, but inefficient at tasks requiring high mental agility like studying and learning new things. Others (like Coatls) simply lack the appendages, intelligence (golems), humility (elemental royalty), desire (non-astral Ice and Arch devils), or physical shape (Vastness, Treelord) to conduct efficient research. Not that many of these are commonly used for research, but all of them have good rationalizations for why they shouldn't be allowed to research efficiently. It makes sense to me that mortals, with their short lives, would be much more focused on research and progress and haste compared to beings for whom time is fairly abstract, such that mortal mages should be inherently better at research than magical creatures and undeads, and that any intelligent mortal summon might demand pay.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions; I'll look through the summonable mages and think about them.

[Huzurdaddi]

Turin said:
Well it seems it makes no sense to discuss this further.

Mass spectres to your heart´s content, I´m sure soon there will be dozens of threads calling for a nerf to this overpowered unit.

In this care Turin is correct. You guys are barking up the wrong tree here unless this is in the context of making casters far more expensive than they are today.

Spectres researching is a non-issue unless you are playing ermor and have found a conjuration site, oh and maybe CW too.