Early game summoning over-represented?

[Nelphine]

I'm OK with taking a break before working on this. Go 3 months with version 5, see what crops up. Definitely don't need to jump into this change without even seeing how the other changes actually work.

[Nelphine]

One thing I'd mention - I think its good to have the first 4 books worth a bit less, and books past 8 worth a bit more, (probably 1, 1.5, 2; could even do 0.5, 2, 2.5) to encourage higher book picks.

[Arnuz]

I'm ok with most of these changes! Woop!

One caveat: the AIs' skill advantage needs to be reduced, even on lunatic, otherwise this is only going to make the issue worse.

While we're balancing economy I'll throw out an issue that's been bugging me for a while: terrain. The difference in value of the various terrains is really painful, it makes starting city placement awfully important and aleatory.

I propose two things to combine with the current set of proposed changes:
1. to change slightly the terrain values so that they always total up to the same amount of bonus. Deserts and tundras could perhaps be the exception and be less valuable, but mountains/hills/forests/grasslands/coasts/oceans should always be equal, in terms of food and production, with forests and hills providing mid-way bonuses so that a forest plus a hill equates a grassland plus a mountain. I don't mind the river advantage, but they should be more distributed among the islands - I often see complex river setups with many crossing each other that create incredible city spots while the rest of the map is dry. Perhaps this only takes a check on distance from another river at map creation?

2. improving the city placement, it's terrible when the starting city is at 1 distance from exploiting a food bonus and there's no space for another city on that direction. Or, if the programming is too hard (as I imagine), rather than starting with a created city, start with a settler, and your two spearmen, civ style. Given that the starting economy is going to be more powerful, a few turns spent looking for the best spot are not a big deal, and give you more choices: risk it and move or accept the situation and land.

[Seravy]

1. This was rejected in the past - if all terrain are equal there is no point in having spells that improve it. I can only set the number of rivers, not their position.
2. This is impossible, starting without a fortress?

[Arnuz]

Aren't you annoyed when you see that food resource at distance 3, or 2 diagonal?

[Arnuz]

I just realized a possible issue, myrran races and elves are recieving an enormous buff from this. Starting with more population and with everybody with less starting skill they can very quickly let the wizard achieve the current skill situation, given how skill is generated from power. Surely much quicker than the others.

[Arnuz]

... And another one: this is a nerf for the more rebellious races, as the beginning they miss the troops and garrisons to manage unrest, so their economy is going to be less improved by this.

[Tlavoc]

Even spearmen and magic spirit would reduce unrest - or a person could lower taxes. I'm not sure about build of spearman vs shrine. It will set the player back about 2-3 turns at the very start though depending on the population.

As for the 'annoyed at missing resources', that's just part of city planning. I hate when the AI player sets down settlers in -just- the wrong place so that mineral vein is inaccessible to EVERYONE, but that's just how it goes.

[Nelphine]

Yup its annoying when you just miss a resource, but I don't think its an issue. I definitely don't want to start with a settler instead of a city. (Due to how outposts work.)

For terrain bonuses, I wouldn't object if hills/forests got slightly better production bonuses (4 or 5% instead of 3), and mountains slightly lower (8 or 9%). Could even give plains 1% production. Right now a city that starts near several spots of mountains is noticeably better than one that doesn't. Don't change everything or make them equal - just improve the good ones a little bit (and why is raise volcano the best terraforming spell? Seems silly.)

[Tlavoc]

Probably more of an issue with granary/farmers market increasing max population - I had one game where I wanted to inhabit the tundra without terraforming (I was using halflings and my wizard wore red). With Omniscience and 9 nature that was +4 on top of granary/farmer's market's +5 you got +9 max population. Tundra is something like 1-3 population due to shore, so each town was 10-12, but I had no competition (until I somehow pissed off the master of magical chickens.)

My goal was to build nutcracke-... I mean colossus with santa's little help- halflings. I meant halflings.