Ritual bonus from magic sites

Evilhomer · #1 February 1st, 2007, 06:21 PM

page 88 in the manual...

and for all you who have mysteriously misplaced your manual I can atleast give a hint that base cost of the global does not factor in....

incognito · #2 February 2nd, 2007, 11:22 AM

So this kind of sucks. Is it a true bug or a deliberate move by the developers to limit the impact of bonus sites?

Kalin · #3 February 2nd, 2007, 11:53 AM

I'm pretty sure it's just an oversight. Instead of doing something like this:

Gems Spent - (Cost x (1 - bonus))= extra gems (assuming bonus is a percentage multiplier like .20)

they went with the simpler version of:

Gems Spent - Cost = extra gems

Of course this oversight has been around since... pretty much forever, so they just kinda kept it around as one of those hidden rules to make new players crazy. A throw back to the old days perhaps? Who knows... It's just that everyone who's been around for a while knows about it, and frankly it's not really that bad IMO, so there's really no outcry for it to change anytime soon.

FYI: your extra gems is compared with their extra gems, and the one that used more wins the global slot (or kills it in the case of Dispel). Or in the case of domes, the extra gems = the duration of the spells. The ritual bonus doesn't do anything in these cases unless you're just casting them at the base with no extra gems (for various situations).

Oh, and I'm pretty sure Fates of Oedipus always destroys the Eye... (I don't think it even has an extra gem box). Of course that could just be me not getting enough sleep.

Hellboy · #4 February 2nd, 2007, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Kalin said:
Of course this oversight has been around since... pretty much forever, so they just kinda kept it around as one of those hidden rules to make new players crazy. A throw back to the old days perhaps? Who knows... It's just that everyone who's been around for a while knows about it, and frankly it's not really that bad IMO, so there's really no outcry for it to change anytime soon.

But if I understand this correctly, it really is quite bad.

I played a few Dom 2 games a while back (apparently before this fact was discovered), and as I recall in the end game, it was the extra gems that far and away dominated the question of whose global spells stayed up. One of the more practical ways the weaker nations could gang up on the front runner was to pool gems in order to dispel that front runner's globals. I know that in my games, in our diplomacy, we always assumed the formula applied was even more generous than your Kalin, in that bonus percentage applied even to the extra gems, something more like:

extra gems = [Gems spent - (Cost x (1 - 0.2))] x 1.2

The upshot of what you are all saying is that these sites are next to useless in MP games, at least for global spells.

Has anyone tested this empirically in Dom3?

Manuk · #5 February 2nd, 2007, 05:52 PM

it�s not useless. you get the discount at the base cost. and in the enchantment tree you will find death "summons" and discounts come handy.

Info if I don't remeber wrong is in the manual with the exact dispel formula.

I like the most the construction bonus. if you get the bonus=20 site, an ulmish smith and a dwarven hammer it's 75% discount. I had that.

Amhazair · #6 February 2nd, 2007, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Manuk said:
I like the most the construction bonus. if you get the bonus=20 site, an ulmish smith and a dwarven hammer it's 75% discount. I had that.

And then cast Forge of the ancients for maximum goodness.

Hellboy · #7 February 2nd, 2007, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Manuk said:
it�s not useless. you get the discount at the base cost. and in the enchantment tree you will find death "summons" and discounts come handy.

Info if I don't remeber wrong is in the manual with the exact dispel formula.

I like the most the construction bonus. if you get the bonus=20 site, an ulmish smith and a dwarven hammer it's 75% discount. I had that.

Did you read my post? I said, "useless ... for global spells". Baalz has the right idea and provides 2 specific examples of uses for global spells, but those are rather specific scenarios I would say.

My point is that this is a bug, and it is serious enough to fix.

Kalin · #8 February 3rd, 2007, 09:40 PM

Terrel, it's only bad because you think of it like this:

extra gems = [Gems spent - (Cost x (1 - 0.2))] x 1.2

In this case, every gem you spend you are suppose to get 20% as bonus. However, if you think of it as this:

extra gems = [Gems Spent - (Cost x (1 - 0.2))]

Then all you are losing is 20% of the original cost of the spell, which is pretty much nothing in the final stages of the game, as you have pointed out, since extra gems is what really determine if you get the slot (or dispel).

Now, you might argue that a site is SUPPOSE to give that advantage, but then I would have to disagree. I mean, is a site really suppose to give you 200+ free gems (if you are into the thousands for that slot)? Wouldn't that make the site plain overpowered?

So if you're saying we should fix it and add that 20% to the free gems, then I have to respectfully disagree (due to insane imbalances). But if you're saying we should fix it so that it discounts properly, then I agree, but as I pointed out earlier, it's really not THAT bad of a problem.

Baalz · #9 February 2nd, 2007, 05:54 PM

I don't know, it could still be useful in two scenarios. One, if you're casting a global that (for whatever reason) you don't expect to be dispelled (you're fighting someone with no astral mages). Secondly, if you're casting a global you expect to cast, have it dispelled, then cast it again...perhaps several times. For example, lets say I'm gonna cast Astral Corruption (that's the name for that blood global that hoses most other rituals, right?). Since that's gonna piss off every non-blood nation its gonna be a high target for dispelling, but fortunately I've got the blood magic site that reduces the cost by 60%. So, now when I cast it I can use the minimum number of blood slaves and get the 60% discount. When it's dispelled, my adversary has no idea how many blood slaves I put into it so he'll presumably pump a decent amount of extra pearls into the dispell, but guess what? The turn after its dispelled it's right back up (60% off!

). Repeat this a couple times, then put up a pumped up global enchantment at the point you've depleted your enemies pearls by leveraging your 60% discount. His next dispell will probably be a weak one, since you've been draining his gems faster than yours so even if he pumps up the dispell you should have the edge (unless he's just got a whole lot more gems than you do)