Famous, Inquisitor

[MrBiscuits]

Famous could reduce unrest as well, although that might be a bit too close to Just Cause.

Perhaps Charismatic could have the unrest bonus and Famous gets the cheap and more frequent items/mercenaries instead.

[zitro1987]

Idea 1: Famous and Inquisitor are mutually exclusive and similar but opposite retorts

Famous: +10 fame, mercenaries come more often, increased fame bonus when conquering lairs/nodes/towers.  Mutually exclusive with Inquisitor
Inquisitor: Greatly increased fame bonus when conquering towns (about 4-8 fame, depending on size). Also a +33% gold income or production bonus

Idea 2: Famous/Charismatic/Inquisitor changed:

Famous: +10 fame, mercenaries come more often and at 25% reduced price
Charismatic: No reduced price, but higher chance of AI offering tributes/gold/spells. 
Enslaver: Greatly increased fame bonus when conquering towns (about 4-8 fame, depending on size). Conquered towns cannot build units, but have +100% base production effect (does not stack with buildings).

Idea 3: Just the enslaver idea above

Idea 4: Different enslaver idea
*Towns produce +33% base production (does not stack with buildings). Conquered towns cannot build units, but have +100% base production effect (does not stack with buildings). 

My warning about trademaster and gold-heavy inquisitor ideas: They stack way too easily with certain strategies and alchemist. I strongly strongly recommend against them. My enslaver idea can give potential for a lot of gold (Trade Bonus!), but it's not as straightforward.

That being said - Seravy's Inquisitor Idea 3 (his 'enslaver') is my favorite in there and very similar to my proposal, instead using gold as opposed to production.

[Tlaloc]

I like the previous ideas for Famous. Here's another:

+10 fame, reducing hero hiring cost, guaranteed hero offer on turn 30 (assuming player has enough gold)

Generally I'd like to see Famous wizards get heroes earlier than what would be possible for non-Famous wizards. Another idea would be to remove the turn limit for Famous wizards, but players might have trouble getting enough gold before turn 30 to make it worthwhile.

[Seravy]

All right, let's think about all these ideas (including my own)...

Anything that raises fame - No to any of these. Fame is a fairly small portion of any player's economy, I'd estimate it to be able 20% at best. For the AI it's literally worthless - Fame equals maintenance reduction but the AI pays reduced maintenance. Assuming Hard difficulty, each fame is only worth 1/2 per turn for the AI compared to the 1 of the human player, while the AI has a much larger income. So the overall impact Fame has on AI gold economy is minimal. What's worse, accelerating fame too much makes Champions available too early, which should not be any faster than the current.

Earlier heroes - No, we are trying to weed out exactly this kind of advantage.

Guaranteed hero on turn 30 - No particular problem with this one but the chance to get a hero with zero heroes and famous is fairly good. Not sure if it's necessary, and the player is likely to reject medicore or weak heroes when playing Famous anyway, and there is no guarantee the first offer will be a hero they want to keep, which means they waste the effect.

Conquered towns cannot build units - The best way (and probably only) way to limit a player to a single race like Inquisitor. Unfortunately it suffers from three significant problems. One, I'm pretty sure the AI wouldn't be able to play this at all - At least in case of inquisitor they can and will settle the spot after it was razed, but with this they are stuck with a city they cannot defend or use for military production. If the majority of their empire is not their home race, they'll just lose the game to having insufficient military. The second : Move Fortress breaks the whole thing, and the third - same as with inquisitor, some races are simply unable to deal with certain enemies making this a far too large drawback. For example when playing Gnolls, enemy flying units are impossible to deal with without using units from another race, but I could say the same for low resistance races vs Death wizards, or slow moving races vs fast enemy units, etc. It's unfortunate but I think I should give up on the idea of "one race" games altogether, it just doesn't work well in this game.

Cost reduction and hiring chance bonus of mercenaries/etc on the same retort : No to this, it's a combo exactly because you have to pick two different retorts. If it was one it would be uninteresting and powerful. I rejected this more than enough times but maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Reduction of unrest : I can see this working, but it's Cult Leader territory. I rather not have that overlap with another retort as it's already not a very popular retort.

Double gold from razing : We nerfed gold from razing because it caused balance issues. We don't want that back even if it costs a pick.

Repulsive : agreed, this is not a good retort, as a lot of players don't play diplomacy and attack everyone anyway - and even those of us who care about diplomacy sometimes play aggressive strategies that go to war with everyone anyway. This retort promoted aggressive play which is already way more effective than maintaining peace so it's not necessary. The opposite however, a retort that promotes peace against war would be interesting - I believe Civilization had something like it "Democratic - increased trade and/or production bonus based on city population, but additional unrest during war.". This would have nice combo potential with Charismatic (more peace) and Cult Leader (more unrest removal), two underused retorts.

Annihilator : Questionable - Unlike all other retorts that are useful for every realm, this one is almost worthless for Life wizards, albeit it's decent for all 4 other realms at least. If it also boosted Healing, it would be good however. Other problem is AI and strategic battles, albeit I can add an exception to multiply spell power if the retort is present so that's a solvable one.

Additional hero levels before hiring : I think there is no problem with this one, and it helps making up for bad RNG - if you pick famous but don't get a useful hero early enough, the one you get later will be of a higher level. (not useful for Life wizards though, who have Heroism, unless the level is allowed to exceed 4. I believe it should be capped somewhere around 4-6.)

Additional hero level or EXP after hiring : Almost same as above but I'd rate it worse as levels would be more limited instead of keeping up as time proceeds in the game. Too similar to Warlord as well, and hard to explain how a wizard being Famous makes heroes learn faster. On the other hand, it explains why higher level heroes would offer to join very well.

Trade gold bonus : I see no problems with this as long as it's somehow related to population, to avoid a bonus in the early game.

To sum it up :

-Famous should probably get the "Additional hero levels before hiring" benefit.
-Either "democratic" or "annihilator alternative" the one that works on healing, should be added instead of Inquisitor.
Honestly I'd love to have both but we don't have that many slots. Annihilator might be unfun to play against though - more direct damage is rarely fun from enemy wizards, and Chaos/Death/Sorcery wizards are already the highest threats and this helps them most. On the other hand "Democratic" is not AI friendly, unless we force the AI to always pick Peaceful/Lawful if they have the retort. (considering how the AI is forced into specific races with Inquisitor, I guess that's fairly reasonable.) Another fun part of "Democratic" : The new "Declare War" menu item in diplomacy would more valuable, as using it would give the AI with the retort increased unrest immediately. As is, it's useless unless a player wants to force an Ally into attacking another player.

More ideas and opinions are still welcome, I don't have time to start working on it yet, and probably won't in the next 10-12 hours as I'll be sleeping so these are not my final decision, just likely choices.

Edit : one last idea - "famous" and "democratic" merged into one retort - heroes, and mercenaries are more likely to prefer working for someone who dislikes war, and merchants are probably happier about selling weapons to them as well compared to crazy tyrants trying to conquer the world. In this case the "+10 fame" probably should be dropped as well as the extra hero level idea, but we have room for "Annihilator Alternative - single target healing and hostile combat spells are most effective". Not sure if it's a good idea to merge famous with a retort that has a significant potential drawback though. Probably not.

[Nelphine]

I'm not a fan of annhilator. Combats are already extremely dependent on the ruling wizards power - to the point that 1 spearmen can be an amazing defense when the opponent has the wrong spells. Anything that removes even more from the meaning of actual units is a mistake in my opinion. In many cases, just getting high resistance high hit point units is all you need because the wizard spells will do all the offense you need.

If anything I'd rather have things that reduce the offensive capacity of wizard spells.

[Seravy]

I'm not a fan of annhilator. Combats are already extremely dependent on the ruling wizards power - to the point that 1 spearmen can be an amazing defense when the opponent has the wrong spells. Anything that removes even more from the meaning of actual units is a mistake in my opinion. In many cases, just getting high resistance high hit point units is all you need because the wizard spells will do all the offense you need.

Good point - in that case we probably should do "Democratic" and Famous as two separate retorts. (not planning to use the name Democratic of course, maybe something like, Harmonizer? Attuner? idk.)

[Nelphine]

I think democratic is a bad idea. Not in and of itself, but we're removing inquisitor because it buffs the early game, and is a penalty late game.

Well, late game, either you're winning so much it doesn't matter, or you need to be at war with someone. Now, democratic will ALWAYS give you a bonus in the early game.. And a hefty penalty late game.

I think the concept is interesting and could be fleshed out well, but I'm not sure how it avoids the very problems that are causing us to consider removing inquisitor.

(Also the very intriguining idea of causing unrest in your opponent turns this into a liability instead of a bonus. Even inquisitor didn't make its penalty based on someone else's actions.)

I think democratic would be more appropriate as modiers on the peaceful personality itself.

[Seravy]

Now, democratic will ALWAYS give you a bonus in the early game.. And a hefty penalty late game.

Not really - if you do war one enemy at a time, the penalty would not be that bad. The goal of the retort would be to promote
-using diplomacy to be in fewer wars at a time
-research based victories where the player gets stronger spells or uses them better than the AI - if the rare spells can win the game, there is no more need for a good gold income, so the penalty won't hurt.
-good planning for "blitz" wars where the enemy is crushed in a few turns then peace is offered to get rid of the penalty.

I do see problems though
-Some AI wizards are not going to listen to diplomacy and will declare war anyway - too much random factor
-Fewer enemy wizards than 4 is a starting option and that makes the retort better. If there is only one enemy, you can't be in war with more than one, ever.
-Too strong for Sorcery wizards who can make peace with anyone anytime through Aura of Majesty.

but if we do neither this nor annihilator, it means we have an empty slot still. I did like how this was a combo with Charismatic and Cult Leader. A retort that somehow increases unrest in exchange for a better gold income would be inter...wait just a second, raising taxes already do that. Aww...

[Nelphine]

Hehe. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to go against the ideas, but I think inquisitor is better for the game than they are - which doesn't mean I'm particularly trying to defend inquisitor, just I don't think these warrant removing it.

What about the opposite of amnhilator? Something that makes all enemy healing/direct damage do less against the wuzatd who has the retort? (Probably still abusable early game, but if you make it some kind of percent it would still have high effect late game)

[zitro1987]

I don't like 'Democratic' nor 'Annihilator' at all and you just listed some of the reasons why on the former. Now that I have more of an idea on what YOU might want, I'll try again.

Famous with an additional levels before hiring is a very good idea. I suggest applying the experience cost modifier and cap it at level 4. Let's try not to make the retort now overpowered, it wasn't bad at its current form.

Charismatic - do not change.

Now, if we remove inquisitor and limit gold-related bonuses with trading and/or maybe 'trade goods', we could have a few choices:

Enslaver - Conquered cities have +50% production. Probably something with 'trade goods' (slaves pushed to produce more - a benefit to conquered cities)

Trademaster 1 - Trade Goods +50% (or +100%) more effective. Also doubles trade bonus cap
Trademaster 2 - Trade Goods +50% (or +100%) more effective. Increases trade bonus by +50% (meaning, if city size currently allows 40%, you gain 60%)

Adventurer - Increases unit stats when attacking lairs/towers/caves (not nodes)
Adventurer2 - Increases treasure of lairs/towers/caves/nodes by a percentage