Random questions

[Seravy]

Shines are basic buildings, so they are intentionally priced less, the same way as sawmill, library, magic market, etc are. These buildings are meant to compete with each other, and nothing else.
Parthenons are "advanced" buildings, available only to specific races with access to the Builder's Hall branch of the building tree, so they are slightly more cost effective than "normal" buildings.
Catherdals are neither so they are priced normally. Compared to Wizard's Guilds, they cost 200 less, and have lower maintenance, plus they reduce unrest, but in exchange they produce less magic resources (and don't unlock magicians, where that applies).

4 figures do 4 separate attacks, and defense is applied against all 4.

[Nelphine]

Problem is that cathedral is too expensive for dealing with corruption; and races that get priests don't get shamans. Priests have to have their access from a relatively early building in case you face early chaos opponents.

And I'd say that a cathedral is worth around 3 times a shrine (remembering that I believe parthenon to be undercosted). So I guess, I agree a little, you could round it down to 350, but if you made it worth 2 unrest reduction, it would be worth about 500.

Fair enough. Out of interest how do you make a cathedral worth 3 times a shrine when the unrest reduction (one of the most important parts) is the same?

For me, it's the stacking of unrest. The first one you get is pretty mandatory, so shrine should actually be undercosted (as seravy said in previous post). Then the Parthenon gives a second one, so should be more expensive, but as I explained previously, and seravy also explained, the Parthenon is also undercosted. (This really means, without the undercosting, shrine would be more like 150 and parthenon would be 250. Which makes the 400 cost make more sense.)

Then the cathedral gives triple the power, and also gives a stacking unrest reduction. Due to my belief that extra bonuses of the same type (in this case, unrest reduction) are worth more than an equal amount, then the cathedral is giving either the second or third unrest reduction. This means that unrest reduction is (for me) worth at least twice as much as the same unrest reduction from the shrine. Since the shrine us undercosted, that means it's somewhere above twice as much. The power is three times as much. So I round off and call the whole building close to 3 times as good as the shrine.

(Note: the reason I think stacking unrest is so good is to allow your whole empire stay at a very high tax rate, without losing any production. The smaller cities don't need nearly as much unrest reduction to achieve that, but your larger cities are usually the ones you can least afford to lose production in, or your best military units take too long to build. So you often base your tax rate on the cities with the most important production - so any extra unrest reduction become much more valuable, by giving you a much higher tax return from the rest of your empire, despite strictly being the same unrest reduction amount. Obviously, depending on the size of your empire, increasing tax rate could bring in so much extra gold as to allow you to buy up the lost production in the large cities, but as you get more and more large cities, this doesn't always hold true.)

[MrBiscuits]

It's hard for me to calculate how much one unrest reduction is worth. One extra worker is worth 2 production multiplied by the bonuses or 2 food if they are a farmer.

You could build a farmers guild instead of a cathedral and get an extra worker from growth that offsets one population of unrest. Also it gives you 3 food so you can use less farmers and get more production that way too.

What order do you build at the start of the game? I tend to go granary->marketplace->farmers guild to get quick growth at the start of the game.

[Seravy]

I usually do marketplace, magic market, library in that order, depending on the strategy I might move library to first however. Granary and Farmer first if I'm buying for money and want the growth, like elves.

[Nelphine]

Yeah, depends on exact build.

Typically, sawmill > marketplace > magic mart > miners guild > foresters guild > granary near the beginning
Then once gold is under control, swap magic mart and marketplace.
Once immediate military production isn't a huge need (usually due to summons), insert library before miners guild.


Much later in the game, i might do library > alchemists > amplifying > granary > marketplace > farmers > sawmill for maximum growth (once I can afford to buy all 7 of those constantly). All depends on needs.

Speaking of, I'm very happy with that. The fact that I have different build orders depending on stage of the game, what race I am, what I'm trying to accomplish, tells me that the buildings are pretty well balanced, and effective at different things.

[teelaurila]

On unrest: You also get the tax gold from the worker/farmer but not the rebel. So the higher you can keep your tax rate, the higher value is every unrest reduction.

[MrBiscuits]

Mystic surge has turned my hero undead. Is there any way to reverse this?

My magicians have cast a spell and have SP left and divine order has made the spells still cheap enough to cast, but it says they cannot throw spells at the moment. Is this a bug or can magicians only cast one spell per battle?

[Seravy]

There is no way to remove Undead from a unit. However if the hero dies and get resurrected by Resurrection or Incarnation, it should revert to normal I think, as that's technically a new unit with the experience copied from the dead one.

I think about 4-5 MP is the threshold, below that the unit is considered out of MP because no spell can be that cheap. btw Divine Order doesn't affect units, so you couldn't have used the MP anyway.

[MrBiscuits]

Is to-hit of any value to a unit with doom damage, or phantasmal against a unit without illusions immunity? I can't work out whether it is worth stacking to-hit on my hero.
If it isn't then the hero ability that increases to-hit is pretty useless.

[Nelphine]

To hit always hits, and for that hit arbitrarily sets your bonus to hit to.. +2 I think (meaning your total is +5 to hit, meaning you do exactly half your attack value as damage.) 

Therefore, if you can stack +hit high enough, you'll actually do more damage than if you use a doom weapon, against all but the highest armor units (it takes like 16+ armor for doom to become better than +6 or +7 to hit when you get decent hero attack)

Phantasmal ignores armor, but still rolls to hit as usual. Therefore stacking to hit is still fine.


Generally: +to hit is the best in the end game - attack of 46 with doom does 23 damage. Attack of 46 with +5 to hit (+8 total) does ~37 damage before armor. Assuming no bonus to defend, the target would need 42 armor to average the damage damage taken as from the doom weapon, and I don't think I've ever seen 42 armor (but I've seen 46 attack in late game a fair bit).

Similarly, phantasmal is great, except against cetstin heroes, true sight, death, and a scattering of other units. But again, in late game, those units are slightly more common. Thus, straight +to hit is still very important. And of course phantasmal improves with +to hit anyway.