Why are Sages fair? Opinions wanted!

[Endoperez]

Hey, I like the no-magic Sage! That fits them as it fits Philosophers! In fact, their description could be changed so that they follow in the path showed by the ancient Philosophers of the Golden Era of humankind, when rationality ruled...

[Chazar]

Nobody commented on my suggestion about just giving them 40 points resource cost so that they require a fort to be built each and every turn?! Is that too far off?

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I do not see the problem with the random pick: It is incredibly useful for sure (allowing non-blood-nations to go bloody; making 1-path items in abundance, etc. --- BTW, which nations lack a native random pick?), but it just never felt wrong to me. However, as they are right now, I think I would still pay the 110 gold without much doubt, but I might stop producing them after the first dozen...rasing merely their gold cost would still allow to built up research at an amazing speed...

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I also think that the Philosopher should remain a unique boon to Golden Era and not something everybody has good chance to have access to...

[johan osterman]

Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost. So while giving Sages a high resource cost might make them somewhat scarcer it would be inconsistent with the other units. So unless you deck out the Sages in some enormously heavy armour or you start to assign resource cost to all mages, perhaps lab flasks etc takes resources that competes with weapon making resources, I do no think it is a particularily good idea.

[Boron]

Panther is right imo .
I can't think of a situation in which i don't build 1-2 sages a turn if i can no matter which nation i play .

Research is just so important and the sage and the loremaster are the two best researchers .

In my last machaka game with vh research i found 1 loremaster and 2 Sage sites and recruited 2 sages + 1 loremaster each turn and then had researched all important stuff for me on about turn 60 with VH research .
If i would have wanted i could have even researched everything on turn 60 in that game but i had other priorities , especially forging with forge up occasionally in this game .

Sages are a no-brainer atm

But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

[Chazar]

Boron said:But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

Hmm, how do you get all those 80+ year old sages if 12 turns are a year? So the conclusions is that a library burns out after a certain number of sages have been recruited, right? Now that would also limit the sages...

Edit: Clarification: The library runs out of recruitable sages because there are only people below 60 in the province left. Since 12 turns are a year, the population wouldnt age fast enough to produce further 80 year old sages anymore...I am joking!!!

[Chazar]

johan osterman said:
Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost.

Well, I am pretty aware of that (see my post in this thread below/above), but I cannot think of any other reason why this would be a bad idea. I think this is similar to Kristoffer O's argument in the discussion about province size. So it's merely a task of coming up with a sound explanation if the game mechanics work out fine...

What I really want, similiar to what I said with a twinkling eye a post ago about the aged sages, is that one could only recruit one sage every other turn, or maybe only one sage per season.

Maybe there are even more troops that can only recruited in a certain season anyway (some sacred units can only be recruited at a certain festival point - equinox, solstice, moon position,etc.)

[Boron]

Chazar said:

Hmm, how do you get all those 80+ year old sages if 12 turns are a year? So the conclusions is that a library burns out after a certain number of sages have been recruited, right? Now that would also limit the sages...

You get them because they start at the age of e.g. 78 years when you recruit them ... .
Once they are then e.g. 80 years old ( = 24 Gameturns ) they have each turn a 5 or 10% probability to die of old age

Another idea a bit off topic but concerning slightly unfair stuff would be that AQs and other powerful creatures serve you for 10 turns when you summon them but after that in order to keep them serving you they demand resources .
AQs would e.g. be free for the first 10 turns , demand 2 Airgems per turn for the next 10 turns of service , then 5 Airgems for the following 10 turns of service etc. .
And they would keep the equipment .
Would also make the Uniquesummoning more interesting because you can try every 10 turns out of the blue a summoning and get maybe a fully equipped AQ .
If the AQ gets killed you get only an empty AQ though .

What do you think ?

[Saber Cherry]

Just to be clear, I don't think there is any reason to nerf sages. That said, they're basically lazy academics who want to sit around in library lounge sofas all day. They're probably old and frail, and have a lifetime of resentment from being picked last for the sports teams in school.

...so, to be "nice and thematic", give them 6 HP, 15 base encumbrance, 2 AP, and a new weapon, "Feeble Slap" (-4 damage, -2 defense, -2 attack). And make them a little confused in chaotic situations - randomly swap the order of their spell scripts for combat. And last but not least, since forging smacks of "real work", give them a -50 forge bonus=)

0 strat moves might be interesting, too.

"Sir, Ermor is invading! Their ghoul hordes will eat you alive! We have to leave now!"

"Ehhh... what's that you say, sonny? Don't play soldier in the library, you hear? Now let me finish this book."

[Ironhawk]

Sages should be priced in the 100-120gp range. At that gold cost it will no longer be a *complete* no brainer to take them. They would be on par with the lowest level mage available to a lot of nations, which prompts the question: Do I want a pure researcher? Or should I recruit a mage who can research some, but also be deployed for combat should the need arise?

Certainly at that cost most nations will still buy many sages. And thats fine - the Library was placed in the game to be a research booster. But 100-120gp will make for some diversity of choice in play. In addition, they will have the desirable effect of making high magic nations more alluring without completely crippling the tactic of playing a magic-poor nation and gambling that you will find libraries.

The Panther said:
Question for all: At what cost would you have to think twice about building sages in the first 40 turns of a game?

Like perhaps:
80 gold - Of course, build them by the boatloads!
110 gold - Probably build several when the gold starts coming in, for the research gets so much harder to make it to the higher and higher levels.
140 gold - Build a few because all you need is the lab to boost your research, but much prefer other choices.
170 gold - Never build one.

Any opinions?

They are still useful for the one random pick regardless of the research bonus. It is especially nice to get a blood sage when you are not a blood nation.

One other thing is that the other neutral mages sure seem FAR less common than sages. I would guess libraries have a higher probability to appear than other type sites.

[Tuidjy]

I voted, of course, no. Some of my reasons:

1. Sages are only marginally better, as researchers, than many other indies.
2. Sages are rather common and available to everyone.
3. Sages are rather underwhelming in combat.
4. Sages are quite vulnerable to pretty much anything.

Sages of course have their good points - they are useful for death and astral
searches, low level item forging and blood hunting. And of course, they can
provide a nice early boost in research.

But do sages decide games? Hell no. I save all my turns. Here is what sages
did in my last three big games (more than four people)

Game number I (Pythium)
I built a total of 14 sages, between turns 15 and 22. I was rolling for blood.
Theurgs are close to sages for research, and make awesome combat mages in mid
game... as well as in late game, if you can build enough slave matrices.

Early sage provinces - turn 7 and turn 12.

Game number II (C'tis)
No sages. Shamans are better researchers, and they are more useful in combat.
They do not get sick in miasma, either, but that was not an issue, I had
Gift of Health running most of the game.

Early sage provinces - turn 8.

Game number III (Abysia)

Here is one game in which I was glad to have found sages. The game is only on
turn 56 right now, but I can say that I have about two dozens sages, and that
they do not account for even half of my research. I have not built any for
about 20 turns, because I prefer recruiting fighters as opposed to bookworms.

Would I have been dead in the water without sages? Absolutely not. On turn 8
I found a lizard province. By turn 20, I had found mages that give me 6 RPs and
cost only 60 golds to recruit. I also have a druid province. Had I needed to,
and had my neighbors left me the time, I could have also taken a blood druid
province or an amazon one.

Dominions II is full of options, but it is very shortsighted to think that any
strategy is a game winner/breaker. Yes, you will lose if you neglect casters,
castles, research, mobility, hoarding, supercombatants, diplomacy... but neither
of these will garantee you a win. And yes, you will also lose if the RNG takes
a dislike to you. If your temple and lab burn on turn 2, you prophet gets nailed
by a random event assassin, and your pretender gets decay'd by an indy, you are
toast. Not finding any independant mages is a drag, but it can happen. As for
having a pretender design that requires sages, sorry, but that's your problem.