general feedback =)

[Artorius]

I'm new to MoM/CoM (see my Welcome thread post for details; but basically I just discovered MoM a coupe weeks ago). My easy game this week went well. I was able to comfortably learn buildings / units. Was a great environment to learn without risk of dying or becoming bored. It didn't take long before I realized AI wasn't going to truly pose a threat / challenge, so I rolled over AI, slowly dropping off pacts / banishing wizards one by one. I considered staying on Easy for my 2nd game to continue experimenting, but decided to try Normal.

In my Normal game, all were on normal plane (I always pick Sss'ra cause I like how he looks). Lizardmen. Pure green magic, with retorts alchemist and conjurer.

Nearby AI (Yellow) was friendly; but they expanded quicker than I expected; I was caught off guard and quickly expanded myself to keep up. We share a large continent now, trading spells, friendly, alliance. I traded them Transmute and Improve Terrain -- my thinking, beyond diplomatic benefit, is to keep them powerful to balance other, likely more aggressive AI players, with the added option of benefiting from the applied enhancements if I need to conquer Yellow / consolidate the continent.

I explored early and found Red, Purple, Blue. Blue was a bit of an isolationist, fortified with just 4 settlements on small continent, investing heavy in navy. Red was fighting Purple on largest continent; Purple dwindled to one sole settlement. I intervened on the side of Red just to gain Purple's last settlement, then waterwalked a Settler to establish 2nd settlement too. I wanted to gain beachhead on Red's continent first, while I built up forces with plan to conquer Blue so I could then prep for war with Red.

I was on good terms with all at this stage. But then Red casted Armageddon. It surprisingly didn't spark any aggression against him by Yellow or Blue. Yellow had an existing war versus Blue, which put a clock on my strategy. Armageddon may have emotionally gotten the best of me because I decided to shift plan and zero in on eliminating Red. I'm thinking now it would be best to ignore Armageddon, use my green spells to offset, stick to plan.

Anyway, for my newb self, my 1st and 2nd game, I'm thoroughly enjoying the difficulty levels of both Easy and Normal.

PS -- Unrelated, but I copied CoM onto Dropbox and now hop between computers to play; works great; save follows me everywhere.

[Nelphine]

Awesome! I'm very glad to hear about experience on normal, so thank you for that! Especially hearing you faced an Armageddon is awesome.

[Seravy]

but i disagree that the basics are sufficient to win normal. the only way to win this game was spamming sprites (playing halflings with 10 nature books). otherwise i'd have been reduced to my capital very quickly. there was no way to have higher military strength without losing all my city spots to enemy settlers, and there was obviously no way to avoid being declared war without higher military strength. both would lead to losing the game unless you have a special plan. again, needing a dedicated strategy like that is not a problem, but it's not what i'd expect form normal or even hard difficulty. it's what you usually need only for the highest difficulty levels.

I think this sums up pretty well what I meant by "make units". You obviously need armies to survive in a hostile world, but I'm pretty sure it didn't need to be exactly sprites. Bears, Spiders, elven lords, pegasai etc could have worked. Probably even halberdiers. I agree summoned units outweight normal units by a large margin in the early game when everyone has only swordsmen (mostly because they're much more costly and limited), and it might be not trivial for a new player to think "hey this is a magic based game, maybe I should rely on magic to survive", but I would at least expect them to go on the "hey it seems we need stronger units, let's try pushing for a fighter's guild first" route after losing once or twice.

by the way, guardian seems a bit weak for 2 picks.

Seems but it's not. Try it. I used it to great success.

sawmill: cost 200, gives 12g (8p = 16g - 4g upkeep), ROI 17 - does it benefit from production boni?

Yes it does.

since 1f = 1g, but producing trade goods only gives 1g for 2p, it's better to use farmers for producing gold until you hit the food cap, even with high production boni (assuming you have an animists guild)

That's good news because it means you don't have to worry about keeping total food at 0, and you don't lose lots of units when a food building or city is lost.

Anyway, for my newb self, my 1st and 2nd game, I'm thoroughly enjoying the difficulty levels of both Easy and Normal.

Thanks for telling, I don't hear much about these levels either, and I'm not very suitable for testing them because I;m too experienced with the game. Glad to hear they are about right.

[Seravy]

About return of investment numbers.
I don't agree with research being considered 1g. You can't buy research for gold. You can buy mana crystals but those cannot be converted to research and lowering the mana bar to push research up has limitations (you might need all of it for skill, or just have way less than what you can make through buildings).
Also, researched spells pay for themselves though whatever their effect is, not by producing resources. A spell that wins a war is worth as much as the entire empire of the person you defeat with it. A spell that gives you more research, power, or gold is also worth far more than its own research cost.
Likewise, raw magical power is the same deal as it can be used for skill and research.

Return of investment is low on granary and farmer's market, the primary role of these is to raise your maximum population, and to help out races that grow slowly. The extra food also makes the city more resistant to food reduction, like Famine or corrupting every tile around the city. You'll want them early if your city is at a bad location like desert or tundra, otherwise they're better to be left for later.


Forester's Guild is surprisingly good, but I'm fine with that. It's not better than the sawmill and marketplace which are intended to be the core economic buildings . I find the main advantage of this one is feeding my armies. Building them helps avoiding the situation of having to use farmers that only produce 1 food elsewhere.

I wonder how a miner's guild or mechanician's guild ranks but due to the percentage nature those are quite subjective. I intend these (and ofc bank and merchant's guild) to be the primary economy boosting buildings, that have a good ROI (after sawmill and marketplace but preferably before or at least comparable to anything else).

[letsdance]

Bears, Spiders, elven lords, pegasai etc could have worked. Probably even halberdiers.

yes but the only one available of those at that point of time was bears and i see no reason to summon them when sprites work better. i was declared war before i even had 4 towns. surely you don't suggest to build military buildings before settlers - like i said in that case i'd have lost all good city spots.

on the other hand i practically killed one opponent by parking 2 sprites next to his capital. so if you weaken the AI maybe it is too weak.

i don't think the building calculations really provide useful information but it was still interesting to do them.

I don't agree with research being considered 1g. You can't buy research for gold. You can buy mana crystals but those cannot be converted to research and lowering the mana bar to push research up has limitations (you might need all of it for skill, or just have way less than what you can make through buildings).

yes that's exactly why research is less valuable than mana: you could use your mana for research, but you don't do it, because you need it elsewhere. if you considered research as valuable as skill or mana, you'd use your mana for research as often. maybe 1.5 gold per research would better, but i had to pick a value.

[Seravy]

yes that's exactly why research is less valuable than mana: you could use your mana for research, but you don't do it, because you need it elsewhere. if you considered research as valuable as skill or mana, you'd use your mana for research as often. maybe 1.5 gold per research would better, but i had to pick a value.

Uh no, I meant you literally cannot make research points out of gold (nor gold from research). Not because you don't want to, but because that isn't an option. And you can't push the bar higher than 100%, and power income is far more limited than gold. In short what I meant, if you have a power income of 25 and a gold income of 200, you can still only have 25 research at most, even though you could make 100 mana crystals from the gold, it does not translate to 100 research. It translates to 25 if you had 100% mana production and was able to reallocate all of that, and none at all if you were already producing 100% research, or were producing 100% skill.

like i said in that case i'd have lost all good city spots.

Sometimes the better option is to build military and take those cities by force. So yes, I am suggesting that if the diplomatic screen shows there is a turn 40 war coming, you might want to avoid doing the settler first route unless you can manage that along with at least some force to defend yourself. In most cases the best choice is to build the settlers and summon the military but not always.

[letsdance]

i was not talking about gold in my last post, just about mana, and i was not comparing mana to research, but mana income.

you can convert mana (income) to research by setting the sliders. yet you usually don't do it (correct me if i'm wrong). therefore, mana income is more valuable than research.

we've been talking about building benefits here. the buildings don't give you raw mana, they give you mana income that you can use for reserach, mana or skill. if you usually don't use it for research that means research is less valuable than the other options, which means mana income is more valuable than research. with that consideration, research should have a lower gold value than mana income. which is what i did.

[GermanJoey]

The term for "mana income" is power. Shrines, Alchemist Guilds, etc generate power. You can convert power to mana, research, or skill points via the sliders.

And yes, sometimes you definitely do want to convert power to research via the sliders! Usually not, as you generally need mana to cast your starting spells early and then want to maximize skill points, but if you see a key spell pop up in your apprentice book then you want to make sure you can get it quickly.

[Seravy]

Yes, research has a lower value than power. But power has no value in gold either. You can't make power out of gold. You can only make mana crystals but those aren't power and don't convert into research and skill directly unlike power does. So you can say a Shrine is better than a Library (it better be for 3 times the cost) but you can't say a Marketplace of Forester's Guild is better as those do not produce power, the only thing you can compare to research.

I often push my research to 100%, but it depends on the situation and my strategy. I'm much more likely to do that if I have a large number of books in the same realm, which guarantees I'll get the big spells that win the game. Especially if I'm playing Chaos.

[letsdance]

if i want to consider the value of costs and returns from building i have to assume a value for knowledge and power. the assumed value of 2 gold = 1 production isn't perfect either (if you build trade goods it's 2 production = 1 gold instead), nor are many of the other assumptions (like 2 food per farmer) yet you didn't complain.

no we can't buy research points for gold. well, we actually can since we can buy a library for gold, but the idea is more to find out if that's worthwhile rather than using this as the accepted value. but we can get research from power and we can get mana from power and we can buy mana for gold. that's enough to make a senseful assumption, which is not more off than assuming a production of 2 per worker (which is not true since it doesn't consider production boni). the system it not perfect and it doesn't have to be, it's just to get a general idea about the value of those buildings.