Heroes...overpowered?

[zitro1987]

My recommendations are 
_reducing base hero movement by 1 (gives incentive to equip movement items for both ranged and melee heroes in combat) - I do not understand the 'quick casting' related objection and how much of a general concept is.
_Base scouting of 2 with a few at 3 or more.
_Artificers starting with 'create artifact' should remain - otherwise, this retort is even more limited and leaning towards being mediocre (you have excellent competing 1-book retorts!). Hero-based strategies carry risks and won't always work.
_Applying an armor cap of 30 and a 'to defend' cap of +2 (I'm not sure if this is doable)
_Applying a rule of diminishing returns when armor (or combination of armor / to defend) gets to a certain high level (I'm not sure if this is doable)
Responses to these:

*Razing generates a global hidden, severe diplomatic penalty, enough to trigger additional wars if done repeatedly. - Unsure as this is game changing for 'stack of doom' and 'v rare summon' tactics as well. Not a bad idea however.
*Separate combat and overland movement from items - seems difficult, unintuitive, and too harsh on basic +1 move items.  
*Have all heroes start at 3 movement except Illusionist, Thief, Assassin who get 4. - Yes
*Raising the cost of Endurance or making it uncommon - Possible. Swap with true sight or planar travel?
*Reducing the treasure point per monster point ratio in general - Seems a bit excessive at times at the current version, so I'd support it. However, I think the ideas below are better.
*Reducing the boost to monster strength on higher difficulties - I'd support this. The boost in 'hard' should be applied to 'extreme' and 'impossible'
*The boosted monster amount for higher difficulties do not come with equally boosted treasure (a mix of the above two) - maybe, but I wouldn't go overboard (use 'hard' as the benchmark?)
*Limit the amount of extra defense in accessories to 4 like the original game - YES! They're just accessories, not something stronger than a full plate of armor.
*Make Agility +2/3 defense per level - May be needed to balance it out against constitution. If 3/4 is possible, it'd be more fair.

[Seravy]

Current thoughts - update :

Already done :
Heroes go down to 2 Scouting (3-5 for beastmaster,ranger etc).
Wraith Form goes up to 3 books in items.
Phantasmal goes up to 5 books.
Invulnerability goes up to 5 books and 1000 mana.
Flight goes up to 3 books and 450 mana.
Invisibility goes up to 5 books and 1000 mana.
Haste goes down to 4 books, but up to 1500 mana.
Teleporting goes back to 6 books, cost to 1500 mana. Merging goes up to 1000 mana.

Will do :
Armor will have no movement bonus. Weapons will have up to 2 on staves, wands and axes. 3 on bows. None for maces and swords. 2 for accessories.
Quick Casting will cost 2 movement per spell cast.
Reduce additional monster/difficulty, not sure about the amount

Still unsure :
1. Razing generates a global hidden, severe diplomatic penalty
-Bad for inquisitors
-Doesn't help if razing is done against the last enemy, or player has no towns to lose
-The AI's willingness to put fantastic creatures into their cities should help against raze and run somewhat
2. Reducing treasure/monster, or treasure/difficulty - might be unnecessary if monster/difficulty is reduced, players playing low difficulties tend to report finding weaker treasure
3. Minor tweaks to the amount of armor you can have in various items (still don't think it helps much, a hero with prayer, endurance, invulnerability and a total of +15 defense from items and agility is already almost invincible and we can't even reach that low by nerfing - plates are +8 by themselves)
4. Base movement of heroes to 3 (4 for fast heroes)
5. Artificier not getting Create Artifact - unsure if still needed, raised book cost of Flight and Invulnerability should make the strategy in the video work much less as it loses two retorts. If needed, cost of invulnerability or flight can be raised by an additional 1 even. Without those two, the strategy can't work, I think.
6. Apply diminishing returns to armor over 15
7. Change Agility to 2/3 or 3/4 per level...2/3 offers better rounding as max level is 9. 3/4 of 9 is actually same as 2/3, both are 6.

...time to sleep, will think about it more tomorrow. (I'll probably keep thinking and not sleep but I should at least try...)

[Nelphine]

Considering how strong stealing cities is in general, its only this very specific tactic that needs a fix - any change to razing affects normal games, and I think should be avoided if at all possible.

[Nelphine]

Quick casting at 2 will allow illusionist to cast 7 spells per turn? Seems .. Powerful.

[Nelphine]

I'd keep a careful eye on monsters/difficulty. I'd actually consider, give lairs a treasure rating and a monster rating. Allow monster rating to scale with difficulty, but treasure rating to scale Mich slower.

Basically, right now playing in higher difficulties actually rewards more because lairs are harder. Bit if you know how to bear them, you simply get more for roughly the same investment. If treasure didn't change but monsters did, that would feel actually harder.

Something like: 100% monster/treasure rating on normal. Monsters go up at 50% per difficulty as it currently is, but treasure only goes up 10% per difficulty.

So a lair on normal has 1000 points of mobsters, on impossible it has 2500 points. On normal it has 1000 points of treasure, on impossible it has 1300 points.


This would mean on impossible you don't end up with a practically guaranteed 26-30 picks by the end of the game, even though its supposedly 'harder'.

This would also jeep powerful artifacts truly rare, regardless of difficulty.

[GermanJoey]

Oh man, capping monster difficulty seems like a perfect solution to capping lucrative lair/dungeon/etc rewards, especially since that'll encourage the AI's to come over and clean house before the player can really do it themselves. Decoupling reward from the actual monster difficulty, as Nelphine suggests, is even better.

Another suggestion for Endurance: make it much cheaper and get rid of the +1 to-def. That would make it more biased for use on normal units, such as spamming it on ranged units, hordes and halbers, various dwarves, etc.

[Seravy]

I think monster difficulty going up might have been a mistake in the first place. Harder monsters mean the AI takes the lair out later, leaving more for the human player to get. I'm going to check the numbers now.

Edit : It's like this

Tower = 1200-3600
Node = 200-7200 (Myrror)
Strong Lair = 300-3800 (Myrror)
Weak Lair = 70-950 (Myrror)

Easy = 50%
Normal = 75%
Hard = 100%
Extreme = 125%
Impossible = 150%

Treasure = 100% of Monsters on Arcanus, 125% on Myrror

For the looks of it, I believe making all but Easy use a 100% multiplier might be enough to fix the problem.

Edit : Tested a 100% multiplier, Arcanus seems fine but Myrror still has some extreme valuable items in nodes. The formula for calculating monster points from node tiles might need some adjusting.

[Seravy]

Status report

Done
Heroes go down to 2 Scouting. Beastmaster, Druid has 3, Ranger 4, Priestess and Chosen 5 scouting.
Wraith Form goes up to 3 books in items and 450 mana.
Phantasmal goes up to 5 books.
Invulnerability goes up to 5 books and 1000 mana.
Flight goes up to 3 books and 450 mana.
Invisibility goes up to 5 books and 1000 mana.
Haste goes down to 4 books, but up to 1500 mana.
Teleporting goes back to 6 books, cost to 1500 mana. Merging goes up to 1000 mana.
Heroes move 3, Thief, Assassin, Chosen moves 4.
Plate Mail, Chain Mail, Shield cannot have a movement bonus.
Mace, Sword cannot have a movement bonus.
Accessory, Staff, Wand, Axe can have up to 2 movement bonus.
Bow can have up to 3 movement bonus.
Accessory an have up to 4 Defense and Attack.
Quick Casting costs 2 per spell.
Predefined items adjusted to the new rules. As usual a few items are left that break crafting rules, but most of them are mid tier.
All difficulty levels now use 100% monsters in lairs, except Easy which uses 50% still.
Chance of book treasure is now 25% instead of 55% each time that option is rolled.
2 books will only appear if the remaining treasure points exceed 2750. This ensures 1 books are more frequent than 2, which used to be the other way.
Lairs already containing a book or very rare spell cannot roll "book" again to replace the existing reward and waste points.
+1 movement costs 250 in items. +2 movement costs 500.

Unsure
1. Razing generates diplomatic penalty
2. Changing how defense rolls work on high amounts
3. No create artifact for Artificier (easy but not sure if still needed)
4. Reduce Agility to 2/3 each level (hard to do if even possible, and gain is minimal)
5. Remove Flaming, add a new item power (preferably to chaos or death armor/accessory as those have very few options)

[Seravy]

Did a test run with the new settings.
I was still able to eliminate a wizard using the early artifact tactic. I actually rolled a game with 3 Myrran wizards so that was it for the entire Arcanus plane. I didn't win the game because the first Myrran wizard had web and crack's call, however taking 3 Death books for Wraith Form instead of Flight can counter that. As far as I can tell, the Sorcery spells are not used much in this strategy, although Spell Lock is nice if available and Focus Magic is useful on some heroes.

I believe removing Create Artifact is necessary (I admit that will make it a weaker retort, but it'll still be decent. 50% discount is huge and trading Enchant Item for 4 free spells, possibly trading those for more is also nice)

I also suspect moving Endurance up to uncommon might be necessary. It provides far too much defense boost for the early game (pretty much equivalent to a +5). Doing this however makes Life a weaker realm overall, as early normal unit with Endurance and Holy Armor was one of its strongest strategies. (And pretty much the only one aside from heroes, Life has no good common summoned creatures)
An even greater problem with it I see is, no uncommons to move down to common. True Sight is already pretty strong for uncommon (even if situational), I don't want it to be available for 1 book wizards, or as a starting pick. Planar Travel is obviously overpowered for a common, you can send a settler to Myrror on turn 10...

I also noticed the effects reduced monster multipliers, there were a lot more places I could take out with my early hero, but I didn't get any really good stuff from them. Nodes broke much earlier, which might be an advantage for the AI as well. Towers also break earlier, one opened up around 1408.

[Seravy]

Started another game with no create artifact spell.

-Had to do 1 Nature instead of 3 Sorcery as Flight is not available in Enchant Item. Water Walking+Pathfinding is almost as good. This freed up picks so 6 retorts are doable again.
-No invulnerability so I can't even think about attacking capitals due to the lightning - at best I could attack regular cities.
-AI wizards have several cleared and melded nodes in 1405 due to easier enemies.
-I found significantly more places I could take out as well, making early exploration even more important. I could own a node already if I cared to. (can't summon spirits while making items and I'm losing anyway)
-A tower was broken already
-Enchant Item as a starting spell is still pretty valuable and Artificier feels useful - My hero has planar travel, pathfinding and waterwalking, plus decent defense - Not enough to even try beating impossible wizards but certainly enough to win a hard difficulty game and also to obtain a lot of treasure. Getting an early Myrran neutral city is also possible.

I believe we reached the primary objective, the early hero strategy can no longer beat the highest difficulty levels. How much late game razing hero stacks are influenced, I can't tell yet, for that I need to play a longer game with a different wizard.

Overall I think the difficulty increases significantly from the monster changes as there will be fewer places left for the human player by the time they find it, the AI will get a major power boost from nodes, Myrror will get involved about 5 years earlier, and cleared nodes mean more points on the map the player has to be able to defend (or take away from the AI). Oh and here is this undead Doom Bat staring at my capital, since the AI found a place it could take out because it had fewer Doom Bats inside than usual - this change also makes AI Death wizards stronger in the early game as they can salvage more undead units from lairs and nodes.