New experimental version

[Arnuz]

I don't have any super objection to having higher destruction rates for cities with more buildings (also allows us to remove the difference between difficulties, as higher difficulties will have more buildings).

However, I'd still like to understand - why do you need to be (close to) guaranteed to get the important early buildings, above and beyond getting the city itself?

Just getting the city means: no settler produced, no time to get the settler into position, no time waiting to turn from outpost to hamlet. Just this advantage is huge. What justification do you have (from a balance point of view) that you need more than that? Remembering that all of those things also benefit from AI cheating bonuses, except settler speed; so you can already conquer more cities than on lower difficulties if your strategy is based around conquering cities.

(This all assumes a good ratio of economic gain between razing and conquering. I talked about razing because if you raze the city, you lose all of the benefits I just mentioned, plus any buildings you do get plus any taxes from population. That's a HUGE loss, so razing the city needs to give corresponding economic rewards, or you won't ever raze a city, and we want razing cities to be an important option, but a less favorable one. Thus, I assume if you are going to give gold for destroyed buildings when conquering a city, you need yo give something to razing cities, or it will never be chosen.)

If the answer isn't based on balance, its based on enjoyability of gameplay, then I have no direct response, except to say I don't think its balanced.

Both enjoyability and balance, as this addresses the raised difficulty that is being observed in a way. Also, ok, fireballs and physics, but a degree of reasonableness doesn't hurt: why would the barbarian horde spend the time to raze a damn sawmill? To sell the hammers? To whom after the pillaging :D A wizard guild OTOH is probably going to give phat loots, so...

I don't mean guaranteed early buildings... I have not proposed to not raze them, rather to give part of that money back. The result in my mind would be somewhere half-way between before (no razed buildings) and the current choice to raze the entire town (which does give you more money, although I don't know how much - is it the sum of all the building sale values?) so that that choice still gives you more money. I don't think it needs to give a lot more money, as razing is a valuable strategic option if you can't defend the town. The ideas for diminishing returns were alternatives. I think that it'd be a good mechanic anyhow, but Seravy's point about the razing procedure may prevent it. It'd be easy to find a diminishing returns mechanic with pillage gold, though, so that'd be addressed.

On the ration comment: remember that we're speaking about the early game, where you don't have the luxury to wait that your stack is perfect to avoid losses. So, no time and resources for settlers are spent but you have to spend resources on attack, and given that style, losses - even just hit points make you wait, so they hurt the quick aggression style.

Seravy, I'll also do a random game or two to see how that goes, it sounds like a fun change, as soon as the current one is over. Yes, that'll give me more experience, and true, I tend to speak before testing How do you roll the wizards?

[Seravy]

which does give you more money, although I don't know how much - is it the sum of all the building sale values?

No, it's 10% of the total building values. Sale value is 33% so less than one third of it. We tried it with 33% and it was way too excessive.

How do you roll the wizards?

Start "generate.exe" in DOS and it tells you all the settings (except those you need to pick yourself : starting spells and difficulty)

[Seravy]

Meanwhile I started the next game.
Rolled a below average wizard this time. 4 Life, 2 Chaos, 2 Nature, Runemaster, Cult Leader, Sage Master.
Nomad third time in a row.
As this is such a weak setup, I play it on Advanced.

[Nelphine]

Strictly I'd call that stronger than your last game. No one book randomness, no famous with a realm that doesn't help heroes, no guardian on tniy (guardian on tiny has some major advantages, but you NEED your nodes on tiny - not enough cities for power).

[Seravy]

I'd call 2 Chaos books twice as wasteful as 1 Death - Death is way better at common then Chaos at uncommon, Runemaster is 2 wasted picks (on this level of difficulty, dispel wars are unlikely to be relevant) and even the 2 Nature are less useful than on the previous one : Chaos has no early game options, Life does so it doesn't need to rely on another realm for early options. Sage Master is nice but with low books its weird, Cult Leader is again questionable (Life already reduces unrest well, but at least it's good with Heavenly Light) but it's something. And none of these have any positive synergy whatsoever.

[Nelphine]

You have a strong buff master game. 4 life is perfect, 2 chaos for flame blade, 2 nature for water walking or sprites (I'd do water walking but sprites could fund you an awesome early neutral). Runemaster to prevent dispelling (specialist is better, oh well).

Get pikemen (if nothing better from other cities of course; and nomad pikemen are weak so might need rangers), and just brutally murder everyone. You've even got nomad resistance to make up the usual flaw of bezerkers. Even swordsmen with heroism and flame blade (and eventually holy weapon) will do nasty damage.

Edit: horsebowman. Don't know I forgot them. Buff them and brutally murder everything including sky drakes.

[Seravy]

Well, I did pick Flame Blade because I saw the possibility...
Buffed some Horsebowmen with Flame Blade. They did nice damage but got killed easily (first enemy had ghouls and javelineers, mostly ranged units. I guess I could have made them more durable with Heroism (already added Holy Armor for the one big battle) but that's too expensive to be worth it. For a Heroism+Holy Armor+Flame Blade set I get a Chimera and those are far better - not ranged but more heath, flight, way more attack power...

Likewise, buffed pikemen are amazing but Chimeras are better unless I face something with high armor and that's not going to happen in the early game.

Also, landmass is Small - Chimeras don't need to be transported by ships, pikemen do.

For now I'm doing well, one wizard down, another seems to be behind me so probably easy yo take out as well. No contact with the last two yet. Overall, difficulty is as I'd expect from Advanced so far.

[Nelphine]

True, chimera are amazing. Buffed horsebowmen are probably better when fighting anything that isn't primarily ranged - they just don't take damage. Node hunting. Nodes nodes all the nodes. But main thing is, chimera take a long time to research. Before you get the nodes, you can have a full stack of offensively buffed horsebowman.

Anyway, if you're already that far, its probably too late for them, but you're doing fine anyway.

As a nitpick: buffed pikemen, even nomads, have more attack power than chimera as long as the enemy has at least.. 4 armor? Might be 6. But the health and movement difference is so huge that doesn't help.

Looked up stats: never mind, pikemen are just better than chimera for attack. +2 to hit instead of +1, the enemy could have 0 armor and the pikemen still would average slightly better damage. Against 0 armor pikemen would average 27 damage. The chimera would average 25-26.

[Seravy]

Nodes, well...
Storm Giants have missile immunity
Giant Spiders eat horsebowman for breakfast, buffs or not.
A few Chaos Spawn, I guess I can do that one. Recently reached that area.
The 2 easy sorcery nodes I cleared without buffs.
In the next continent, there will be "many chimeras", not horsebowmen friendly from experience (too many can corner them) but easy for my own chimeras, the other two nodes the AI already cleared.
There is one with Colossus but Flame Blade/Heroism probably won't be enough for that. Pikemen can do it though.
That's all the visible nodes.

[Nelphine]

Ugh, find some air elementals and sky drakes. And great drakes. And behemoths? (Probably not) and hydra, and death knights (not really). And chimera (their armor is low enough, 9 horsebowman should eat them. I could be wrong if there are 7 or more I suppose.)