Tweak to Tuatha

[Cohen]

Ahah for the second time Cainehill agrees with something I've said.

[archaeolept]

It is truly the end times.

[Thufir]

Huzurdaddi said:
Uhm in't man Last of the Tuatha one of the good themes? I mean they have a really good bless troop and they have perhaps the most durable air mages in the game.

I think it is a great theme! But IMO, they are below the median, in power level. Also, I think giving them a middle of the road researcher (perhaps capital only) would be thematically appropriate, and not all that dramatic an increase in their power level.

Their only problem that I can see if that all of their good stuff is capital only and thus they are limited on large maps.

Then you are in agreement with Cainehill. And you and Cainehill may be correct, although I'm not sure that's mutually exclusive with the notion that they should be allowed a slightly improved research capability. I'll respond in greater detail to Cainehill's post.

[Thufir]

Good points Cainehill, and nice analysis of the research abilities of various nations.

Cainehill said:
I disagree that Tuatha are weak, thus don't agree that the bards should receive a research bonus.

But if you disagree that Tuatha are weak, then why would you advocate any improvement in their capabilities without some balancing detriment to their capabilities?

...

Balancing that, they have one of the 3 best national commanders in the game, great for spell casting, great for combat, and having recuperation so their wounds go away - you can even put disease inflicting items on them. True, they're capital only, but they can Air Trapeze without needing any booster items.

Agreed.

Actually, I think the only weakness of the Tuatha theme is that basically everything good is capital only : their two best commanders, and their two sacred troops. But again - balanced by having great sacred troops; not quite as wonderful as Vanheim's but significantly cheaper.

Agreed.

And one of their capital only commanders is actually a cheaper researcher than the bard, if you go 50 turns or more, because it's sacred.

Like many nations, you simply want to find independents to do the heavy lifting on research.

Sure, that's exactly what I do. Perhaps this is my inexperience or impatience speaking, but I find that getting provinces w/ sages or jade priestesses to be quite volatile. It can happen on turn 2, or it may not happen until turn 20. And that has a huge impact on how the game plays out. In my not-so-extensive MP experience, I go through the same thing with Abysia, but with Abysia this somehow seems more thematically appropriate. It is also less volatile, since Abysia can focus it's magic research more narrowly, and still be successful.

The thing I think LotT could use for improvement is having at least 1 of its sacred troops or sacred commanders not be capital only.

This may be reasonable (it certainly would make LoT more effective/powerful), but in my mind this sounds like a more dramatic improvement to LoT than making their research capability middle of the road, rather than bottom third of the barrel.

If we gave LoT a midling-decent capital only researcher, this would only have a significant impact on their turn 1-20 play (until such time as you would've found an indy research province anyhow). It makes LoT's opening game considerably less volatile, which seems like a good thing to me.

And also, Man is one of the very few nations that gets worse PD for each point over 20 than it gets for points under 20, which seems flawed to me. (Man and Pangaea each get 2 units for PD under 20; over PD, they simply lose one of the units, without getting a better unit type.)

That certainly looks bad to me, and I'd be happy to see that changed.

[archaeolept]

just have the sidth champion recruitable everywhere. Man doesn't need another researcher.

[Schmoe]

For the record, in neither of my (admittedly meager) 2 MP games have I found a single sage province. In one of those games I am the leader in provinces well into the game (turn 40 or so). In the other game I had around 20 provinces. With that in mind, I don't think you can just wave your hands and say "rely on finding sages for your research." It simply is not reliable.

I don't have enough experience with the them to say definitively whether it needs a research boost, but I really don't think that you can wave away research problems by relying on sages.

[The_Tauren13]

Don't waste time trying to improve a theme that doesnt need it... go help out T'ien Ch'i Barbarian Kings or Ermor Broken Empire.

[Cohen]

Probably because Man is more played than Tien Chi, so ppl has more requests.