Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[DonCorazon]

i understand your point, but don't agree that the benefits of hammers are worth the tradeoff in MM pain. true magic diversification will depend primarily on luck anyways, in terms of finding indies in paths you need and once they site search adequately, your gem income should be fine. while i agree hammers make it easier to forge items in non-national paths, i don't think they are so crucial strategically. further, removing hammers might actually help improve one aspect of game balance. for example, nations with recruitable thugs which are generally OP relative to human nations won't be able to kit out their thugs as prolifically, which might make these nations more vulnerable to human troops and thus help even the scales a bit.

[P3D]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

for example, nations with recruitable thugs which are generally OP relative to human nations won't be able to kit out their thugs as prolifically, which might make these nations more vulnerable to human troops and thus help even the scales a bit.

Most recruitable thugs are kitted out already to some extent - save a few thuggable spellcasters.

Good idea to remove hammers (including the uniques). Just remove Forge and the bonus sites too- generators might even stay.

[DonCorazon]

Originally Posted by P3D

Most recruitable thugs are kitted out already to some extent - save a few thuggable spellcasters.

Good idea to remove hammers (including the uniques). Just remove Forge and the bonus sites too- generators might even stay.

i'm talking about the kind of gear that turns recruitables into human army wrecking machines - items that give awe, fear, luck, brands, shrouds on sacreds, etc.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by P3D

Say a Clam would cost say 15W10N (not 14 total with hammer), so it'd take 50 turns to pay for itself.

The problem with that is it doesn't fix the unlimited exponential increase.
Either you make them so costly that they don't pay off - supposing I expect the game to last 70 turns, I would hardly forge anything that pays of after 50 (*) turns after turn 20. And I will hardly forge any before that because I can't afford them. If I'm in an extremely large game that's unrealistic to be decided before turn 150 than clams ftw again. Unless you make their price dependent on the size or time of the game.

(*) but 15W10N pays of before 50 turns, because in late game each pearl is worth 2 gems. If you can wish quite literally because wishing for gems gives you 150 gems for 75 pearls.
If you can't, there's just 1000s of things to spend pearls on every turn, water gems are much less useful.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

i understand your point, but don't agree that the benefits of hammers are worth the tradeoff in MM pain. true magic diversification will depend primarily on luck anyways, in terms of finding indies in paths you need and once they site search adequately, your gem income should be fine. while i agree hammers make it easier to forge items in non-national paths, i don't think they are so crucial strategically. further, removing hammers might actually help improve one aspect of game balance. for example, nations with recruitable thugs which are generally OP relative to human nations won't be able to kit out their thugs as prolifically, which might make these nations more vulnerable to human troops and thus help even the scales a bit.

Why don't we consider who the winners and losers are here?

First of all, its been my impression that Astral, Death, Nature, and Earth are where most of the good gear is.

Rlyeh: winner (MA and LA especially)
Good Astral, Death, Earth access, good site searching for all 3, capitol S income. National mages can forge all astral boosters without empowering. Here's a nation which doesn't really need the boost... And aquatic, so it gets to bundle most elemental site searching into water gem useage anyway.

Ashdod: winner
Astral, Death, Earth, good site searching for all 3, has capitol income for S,D at least. Here's another nation that really doesn't need a boost. I imagine Hinnom/Gath are in similar boats?

MA Oceania: Loser (probably EA too, but not familiar)
Nature, but otherwise only really water (with small amounts of earth and air - they generally have to beg or trade for a hammer, or put earth on their pretender). Pretender is only real way to get access to anything else - low gem input will severely hamper Oceania's ability to diversify. (And since removing gem gens is definitely on the table... there goes clamming for Oceania to actually do anything in the endgame as well).

Basically, most of the winners are already really strong nations, and the losers are generally weak nations.

If you want to rebalance the game to make human nations stronger, you almost need to rebalance magical paths to make them more equal, or rebalance races so human nations tend to get more and stronger access to the good paths than non-human nations. Taking hammers away won't help nearly as much as you think.

[Meglobob]

I am not very comfortable with the ban this, ban that and ban the other mentality that this thread is now full of, happens all the time with these sort of discussions.

Seems to always come down to nerf everything, especially if its good or popular.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Meglobob

I am not very comfortable with the ban this, ban that and ban the other mentality that this thread is now full of, happens all the time with these sort of discussions.

Seems to always come down to nerf everything, especially if its good or popular.

Old wisdom from admins of many online world projects. The people placed in authority over game balance tend to come in two types. The adders, and the subtractors. Those who fix by building up the low ones, and those who fix by taking down the high ones. As long as you dont let one group get too out of control you are usually ok. Of course nor should you allow both groups unlimited control or you end up with everything equal in the middle which is boring. I am again amazed at how well the two-man crew of Illwinter did with that basic problem altho if you look at the history file you can kindof see that they have one of each.

But Im with you. Id rather see more options than less. As long as there is an in-game strategic response then Id be afraid to nerf for fear of creating a new imbalance in some other nation needing a new nerf.

Altho.. as long as its all mods and game setting choices then its just more options. No problem there.


Gandalf Parker
--
Some people NEED menus.
All options open with no menu list appears to them to be no options at all.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Calahan

Gathering all your forgers in one or two places just to save on MM is a guaranteed way to get yourself in major trouble to stuff like lab fires or mass remote killing spells (flames from sky). With the former event putting the majority of your hammers and boosters out of commission for a turn, and the latter losing you said hammers and boosters. And domes won't help against a concentrated ritual attack, which is all the more likely to happen if you enemies notice your gathering all your important mages in one place.

That would require my enemy to know exactly where I have my forgers without me having any idea of it, which should be something near impossible as he can't see my paths (as I have maybe 15 other castles with a lot of mages sitting in).
But there is of course a truth in it that remote spells (and I actually like them) are really bad MM for the victim.

But the more spread out they are, the more MM increases. Hence the claim being made that banning Hammers will reduce MM. (and this is a thread about reducing MM after all)

Yeah sure, banning hammers will reduce MM. But removing all gems will also. I'm not even very much opposed to removing hammers, but they are hardly a core problem. Unless of course everyone needs 3h only to hunt his hammers, but therefore working out where the time is wasted is much better than suggesting bans that can save some micro.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

But removing all gems will also. I'm not even very much opposed to removing hammers, but they are hardly a core problem. Unless of course everyone needs 3h only to hunt his hammers, but therefore working out where the time is wasted is much better than suggesting bans that can save some micro.

Yes, exactly! Gems themselves are a big cause of MM. In CBM summoning individuals demons is cheap - the logic being that the real cost is mage time, not blood slaves. If this logic could be extended to everything you could do away with gems. So aside from perhaps globals or unique items everything would be free (or as close to free as the game will allow). But the only way I can see to do that is to limit the number of mages and that drastically changes the balance and nature of the game (though it could make for a fun, quick playing, mod).

In addition to that, the game doesn't scale well. The more units you have, the more MM you'll have. If there was a way to have the game scale from x units at the beginning to 100x (instead of 1000x) then you could really reduce MM. The best you can do to simulate this is to have smaller maps with fewer players.

In the end, I think you can only change things around the periphery - the cause of the vast majority of MM is built into the game itself. I don't mean that to sound negative: trying to change the things that we can control is worthwhile but it won't solve the bulk of the problem.

[Illuminated One]

Adding to that I mean maybe the main thing is simply that above a certain point it becomes to much for anyone to manage.
I mean seriously, you are not memorizing what paths even 50 mages have and where they all are.
Or how are you sorting your items when they are not in a lab? Do you just plan 3 weeks ahead so that the 60 new forges don't destroy your order? Sort anew almost every turn?
Or do you just scrap the sorting and start endless searches for that thing you know you had somewhere?