Research costs

[zitro1987]

Gaia's promise to stay relevant with high research costs, it could speed up the terraforming effects or simply cost less to cast.

[Nelphine]

Raise volcano on a yellow crystal is almost as good as current day evil presence. For the power side only. And it can't be dispelled. Some AI will dispel everything - raise volcano is far better in the long term for economic damage than the death rares. With the game being slowed down, that's huge. Corruption doesn't do that much of a snowball effect, unless you use it dozens of times. Again, in long term, raise volcano does more. And corruption comes so early you probably haven't explored all the key terrain yet anyway.

[Nelphine]

And especially from the point of view of a human player, who is being attacked by raise volcano vs any city curse, its by far the most damaging. The assumption is that you play until you win - which means you want resources. The permanency of raise volcano is simply catastrophic compared to any other city curse. One volcano could easily cost the player 1500+ power, whereas a city curse such as evil presence isn't likely to last more than 3 years - even including lost production lost taxes lost power, and dispel cost, its not likely to be as high as 1000 power.

(And recall how much I think death city curses are op when used against the human. Raise volcano is miles worse.)

[Seravy]

Certainly but the assumption here is the ore resources are a "premium" feature. So what the volcano actually does, is counters your luck of finding that resource. At least in the early game, but later, the income from ores is not significant compared to an empire's total.

[Nelphine]

That doesn't change the fact that raise volcano is still a bigger hit to the human economy than any of the rare death city curses. Sure its removing something that is extra, but even on poor, you still end up with a fair number - enough for raise volcano to have a good target 10+ times.

Economy hit is economy hit. It's already better than rare deaths (on individual casts - rare deaths are better because you can blanket the empire, and raise volcano eventually runs out of good targets) you don't need to make it even better.

[m59gar]

I absolutely despise Raise Volcano. The AI casts it on me fairly often for no reason, and it's the sole reason I save scum every single turn. Volcano on my gold? Nope, screw that. I'm not even at war with the AI, why the hell are they wrecking my empire permanently?

Raise Volcano should randomize existing ores, not destroy them. I'd be much less irritated if I still had a resource, it just got changed to something else.

And maybe the AI would stop spamming it on me.

[Kaiku]

Yeah, me too. There are a few spells that, balanced or not, are just not fun. Raise Volcano, Spell Blast... Anyway, the spells that limit the player in some way, and Volcano is super annoying as it's cast so early and often.

"Found that super once-in-a-lifetime nice spot with 4 ores and 60+ production? lol."

[Seravy]

One more thing we need to consider, retorts.

In the old system we have a 3/1/1 spending on MP, SP, RP.

Now, Mana Focusing is no longer in the game so that affecting 3 times more resources is no longer a problem. (And some of the mana needs are satisfied from nonpower sources like treasure so it wasn't even that bad)
SP and RP were roughly equal so Archmage was slightly better than Sage Master but not really because raising skill had diminishing returns. So overall it was balanced.

In the new system however it'll be 3/1/4.
Which means Sage Master will be 4 times as good as it currently is if we don't change it. That's probably not good? Or is it acceptable because the return on the investment is very slow? (to get a higher tier does take a long time even with the bonus?)
Either way we need to raise the base +5 RP because now even a Library does better. Should likely be 10 or 15.

[Seravy]

One more thing to think about : Races that generate power.

In the old system, An Elf city produced +12 over the normal 43 (power+research). Now they still produce 12 more but over a base amount of 55. So the bonus went from 27% to 21% in the overall city power and this is on a max pop city, average cities are worse.
Raising them to 2/3 power per population would yield a 29% bonus. Even a full point of power is a mere 45% increase. (Note that any change would equally affect Draconians, High Elves and Beastmen. We'd need to come up with a different amount for Dark Elves and Halflings.)

[Nelphine]

How much is non research-only power increasing per city? By 3 compared to original total of 25.

So you need to add 3/25 to the bonus. I wouldn't bother changing any race except halflings.

Halflings are pure research, so you could increase them to 1.5 research per population.