Province Bonus to Magic School?

[Executor]

How is it free after the initial wish? You get the 20S from the site and 25S from the wish, you still need 55S gems for a continued wish the next turn and I consider a regular game to have let's say 20S gems income on average.

If you save all gems from forging/casting you still lack gems to cast a gem wsh. While it may cost 80 to cast in theory you need the full 100 and keep the 20 as a deposit. (I think)
If you're alchemizing gems (which you're probably fire cause they're worthless), it makes for an even more expensive gem gen with less initial profit (but I guess all gem gens have opportunistic cost so ok), which given, undoubtedly will more than compensate you after a dozen or so turn...

But my point is, it takes a while to really kick it off and make some pearls since you won't be making the full 20S per turn from the start, or you will at the expense of losing other gem types to alchemising.
As the game progress you might be casting it multiple times per turns and getting more out of the site as you go, also adding another wisher faster and faster every time for more profit and so on...

So I'm just saying, you can't really consider that game breaking cause it takes a lot of time and risk getting to the point where you gain a substantial amount that will affect the game in such a manner.

[thejeff]

No. It's a discount. 80 gems to cast.
If you wish for gems, you get 25 of each gem type. In theory, you alchemize them all to pearls. 25*6 = 150/2 = 75 + 25 pearls = 100 pearls for which you paid 80. You take 80 of those and cast it again, leaving 20 to spend or invest.
In practice, you'll alchemize more of some type and less of others and/or use some of your S income, all depending on what you need for other uses.

Would it make more sense to think of wishing for gems as giving you 100 pearls? Except better, because you don't have to alchemize them back to pearls. Since you can, you can get 100 pearls by spending 80. Or 80 pearls and 40 other gems.

It's not "I cast wish at this site to get a whole bunch of gems and free wishes." It's "I cast wish at this site and get enough gems for another wish and a bunch extra."

The only real problem is that Wish comes along fairly late in the game and you might not have enough time to get a good return on your investment in building wish casters.

[Executor]

I wasn't sure bout the discount.
However if you're using it like that, give 80S and get 100S in return, you'll still be losing gems until more wishers stack up due to alchemising right?
So it's either 80S for 100S? or 80S for 150 all + 25S? Which I guess in principle would add up the same as you're giving/getting S gems on every turn, and you get all types 1 in 2 or 3 turns, but with the exception that 80S for 100S will grow and give you a much bigger S income over time and eventually bring more gems.
But that still isn't game breaking.

[Jarkko]

Executor, I think you are missing the point here. The 20% discount means the following:

1) You need a mage who can wish and 80 pearls collected.

2) Once you have that base investment, there is no more investment into the wish.

3) Because you Wish for gems and get 80 pearls (aka enough to cast next Wish) + either 20 pearls or 40 other gems, for free. Every single turn per each mage.

The base investment in case you have no astral mages is same as for clams if you have no natural clam forgers without hammers. That means after 20 turns you have already generated enough to break even to take into account all the empowerement and forging the boosters. On the other hand, if you have even a S1 mage, you break even earlier; if you have a S3 mage (like many nations do) you break even after 9 turns. If you have even higher astral (like if you took astral on your pretender, then you will have quite a bit more because it is suicidal to take low astral on pretender) then you break even even earlier.

The site *is* game breaking.

[Kobal2]

What Jarkko says. Moreover, this is all stuff that remains firmly under the table : no one is wiser that you're breaking the bank, because wished gems/gold do not show up on the graphs. Which means that you can get very, very powerful while appearing to be non-threatening. The exact location of the site also remains a secret because unlike blood/conj sites it isn't spawning an ungodly amount of units every turn.

Also bear in mind that the longer your Wish machine remains active, the more powerful it becomes. It's a self-improving feedback system. Which cannot be said of other similar sites : conjuration, construction and blood reduction sites let you do more with less, but it's a linear function based on how many gems you're taking in. Discount wishing is exponential.

[Executor]

You are just wrong, and you *cannot convince me that it is game breaking, simply because it's not.

First of all Kobal2, I am very aware it grow bigger every turn, second there are a dozen blood nations that can pull to 300 slaves a turn and that either doesn't show up on the score graphs, however you know they're blood hunting, same would go about wishing, people would notice it, well sensible people anyway.

Now, I'd say the winning contenders are clear from turn 30-40 onwards, which means you'd keep an eye on those nations, at least I do. So if you get a nation that has a variety of SC's, summons, etc...and has about the same gem income as you, put a finger on your head and ask what's wrong with the picture?

Further more, you most likely won't be getting wish before turn 50, there's the race for the uniques, the battle spells you'll need first, GE, probably tartarians and than the rest. So by the time you get all you need, wish, a caster, and by the time it repays it self and starts making a *worthy profit the game will most likely already be decided. It can only get you so far, give you a boost, but it is not game breaking.

[Dimaz]

It's game breaking from game mechanical point of view, of course if you play with vet players other factors play more significant role than any site or other single advantage for one of the sides. But from game mechanical point of view Alt site+Wish is similar to gemgens which are considered broken by most vet players here.

[JonBrave]

Excuse me, as a total newb stumbling across this thread, if it bothers (some people at least) so much, can you not make a change to the game to prevent this happening? I mean, can you change soemthing in a file to disable it?

[thejeff]

Well, this particular thing yes.

You could either remove wish or raise it's cost.
Or you could remove the site.
You can't, as far as I know, change what you can wish for or how many gems you get.

The debate comes in when we try to convince other people that those changes are a good idea, so they'll play in a game with them.

[llamabeast]

Gotta disagree with you Executor, in very few turns you can be making a silly amount of gems and noone will be any the wiser. Given that, you'd have to be quite careless to advertise that you'd grown powerful. If it was me, and I wanted to win, I would carry on as if nothing had happened, build a fort on the site, and just quietly get my machine up and going. For a long time I would only spend the gems on training up new Wish casters. I'd fill the fort with units to make it hard to siege, and then it wouldn't matter whether I lost the rest of the game. After a while I'd be making a few hundred S gems a turn in profit and could just win whenever I wanted. None of the other players could do anything about it.

Basically, given that I'd reached the ability to cast wish and had a chance to put a fort on the site and fill it with units, I can't imagine how I could fail to win. Would be quite shoddy to lose that game in my opinion.