Message from Abysia

[tibbs]

I think the old age idea is used as more of a game mechanic to balance the power level of certain units than for roleplay though it fits nicely in both aspects.

I like it.

[Teraswaerto]

I don't know if I quite *like* the new old age thing, but:

1. It can be countered with spells and items, different units are effected differently, etc. which adds strategic depth.

2. Some nations suffer from it more than others, which means it's a balance consideration, AND it's thematic that R'lyeh or some such has one up on the puny humans.

[PrinzMegaherz]

The old age itself isn't that bad, but it's one rather unbalanced factor in the game. Best solution to solve the problem is to take a nation with long living mages like Yomi. It's just a shame that my favorite nation (which was never one of the top dogs) has been degraded this badly.

[Cainehill]

It also has (presumably) unforeseen consequences such as making EA Arco's philosophers a very dubious choice now. Yes, their research rate is high, _but_ they start old. Priestess's start with a good 30 years to go before hitting old age.

So, let's see - why would I want to recruit philosophers who die of old age, instead of priestesses? And yes, I noticed this in my very first game : philosophers were dropping like flies from age.

Secondary side effect of aging : a quick test makes it look like _all_ units have Christmas birthdays, ie, all units age in Late Winter. So - want to buy a mage on the cusp of old age? Buy him/her in early spring to have more time before aging. And don't _EVER_ buy in mid-winter, or you may be bitter.

[Nerfix]

Cainehill said:

It also has (presumably) unforeseen consequences such as making EA Arco's philosophers a very dubious choice now. Yes, their research rate is high, _but_ they start old. Priestess's start with a good 30 years to go before hitting old age.

So, let's see - why would I want to recruit philosophers who die of old age, instead of priestesses? And yes, I noticed this in my very first game : philosophers were dropping like flies from age.

Did you perchance take Death scale? I usualy take 1 Growth or neutral growth with early Arco and I have yet to see significant amounts of Philosophers to die. I recruit them early on because they can give a significant research edge.

They become less attractive to me when you hit the point where your Mystics can do something else than shoot Fire Flies and forge Enchanted Pikes anyway, but that might just be me.

The only one with whom I had serious old age problems was Abysia. Now, those fellas could use some extra five years before they hit old age. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

[Archonsod]

PrinzMegaherz said:
The old age itself isn't that bad, but it's one rather unbalanced factor in the game. Best solution to solve the problem is to take a nation with long living mages like Yomi. It's just a shame that my favorite nation (which was never one of the top dogs) has been degraded this badly.

It's the best solution if you don't want to or can't deal with old age. To be honest, I wouldn't agree that it's a disadvantage, apart from in the early game. For any blood nation, research construction and a relatively cheap (10 blood slaves) item is available which negates ageing alltogether. Given that old age is payment for increased abilities or lower than normal value, this is going to give you a cheap, powerful or otherwise advantaged mage which you can ignore the downside of. In other words, you just became slightly more powerful than everyone else.
You could even build a strategy around this. Consider the crone or other pretenders who get a points or abilities break because of old age. Select imprisoned for maximum goodness, and bank on getting one of the age negating spells or items before your pretender breaks free. You can then prevent old age from ever affecting your pretender, thus effectively giving you free points.
It's down to playing style really. Some people are going to rule out nations with older mages because it doesn't suit their style. Others will embrace them and find ways to deal with the ageing problem or even turn it to their advantage.

[Tyrian]

Age system is a good idea for the gestion of effect like burden of time. It is silly than near-immortel creature like the illithid are equally affected than simple human. Age system is a good solution for this problem's type.

[Fate]

Ok, as I mentioned above I was playing a MA Agartha game. I had Growth +1, and my only land opponent (after knocking of Machaka) is Jotunheim, with Death 3.

To date, around 3 - 4 years (I need to check), I have had exactly 2 mages contract disease in my dominion, and 2 others get exactly 1 wound each (neither was disease or feeblemindedness). That was out of at least 16 mages.

I have also sent an army of ~10 mages through Jotunheim's death 3 dominon in the war. They all died in a large attack from Jotunheim, but prior to that 4 got diseased, another 2 got wounds, and none were feeble minded.

So, to recap, I lost 5 to disease (1 got feeblemindedness at the same time, so I think that counts more), 1 to feeblemindedness, and 4 got non-debilitating wounds. Keeping in mind that I have another 10+ turns of use after a mage gets diseased, I don't think it is that bad at all.

It could be that growth scale help. I know death scale really hurts.

[Daynarr]

Precisely. Death scale is no longer 'no brainer' to pick when you play a nation that has commanders/units with old age. Growth scale makes big difference.

[PrinzMegaherz]

Archonsod said:. For any blood nation, research construction and a relatively cheap (10 blood slaves) item is available which negates ageing alltogether.

About those shoes:

Yes, they stop aging. But do they prevent old people from getting diseases?

if that wouldn't be the case, Abysian mages start at around 55 with old age beginning at 35 and you would need to cast rejunevation twice to get them out of old age and would need to construct those shoes. Oh, and you would propably need to boost blood magic as reju is blood 4.

Over 30 bloodslaves just to get one mage that won't die of old age? Sounds not like a good deal to me.

But I did Illwinter injustice with me starting this thread, because Abysia still rocks if you focus on demonbred instead of anathemas for early expansion. They might be a bit weaker in fire magic and a bit less (un)holy, but they fly and have a long lifespan, so there's definitly a reason to use them (never used them in dom 2 because anathema were just better for my purposes)