Test games played

[Nelphine]

Myrran guaranteed spells: you would need to specify it only works with the 2 realms with the most books. (As I assume it would affect starting commons as well)

Even then I'm leery about it. Myrran is incredibly strong just for having one less opponent - and if you do get through to arcanus early, you can just steamroll their city troops. And each myrran race has at least one type of tower unit they can slaughter.

You can't play myrran like you play arcanus. But once you get the play style worked out, its very hard to go back to the weaknesses of arcanus.

[Seravy]

But once you get the play style worked out,

That's the problem. If you don't get any guaranteed spells, and have to use low books, there is no way to get any sort of consistent strategy that involves using non-common magic. Military strategies might work better as they typically only need common buffs and military retorts, but anything else that's not mono-realm is significantly penalized.

You are effectively losing not only two uncommons, rares and very rares, but your only guaranteed picks as well so you have like a 50-50 shot of getting the game you wanted to play. Heck, it's probably closer to 25-75.

In this current game my strategy was to use change terrain, stream of life, gaia's blessing to overcome the desert and growth issues and have a strong economy. But I could only afford 4/4 books so I don't have any of those spells. None of the other wizards have a single Nature book to trade for these, and the Life wizards don't offer Stream of Life in trade either because they also didn't get it or maybe I just don't have anything good enough for it (my rares are not exactly what the AI considers important to trade for).

I could do 5+5 books with no retorts, but then what? Boring, never ever playing a retort on Myrror if I don't want to rage quit for lack of spells.

We've reworked the spell system to be a perfect, tight fit for every strategy in the game. There is no room for Myrran in that, it literally means by picking it you can't use any of the normal strategies in the game at all. And even if Myrran strategies exist, that's a ton of less diversity and fun because Myrran narrows your options.

For an Arcanus wizard, you get to pick from 14 races, and have 294 different ways to spend those 2 picks, totaling 4416 different possibilities.
For Myrran, you get 5 races, and have 1 different way to spend the 2 picks : You pick Myrran from it. So 5 possibilities total. The difference? 4416/5 = 883. There is exactly 883 times less diversity in wizard generation if playing Myrran. Not including additional sub-choices opened by picks such as guaranteed spells, that is. Even if good Myrran strategies exist, that sort of loss on diversity is not acceptable. To quote a friend " I don't play Myrran, I don't have enough picks that way." and that was before the overhaul of the book system.

...We might want to rethink how to change the game to reduce the cost of Myrran, instead of making exceptions on guaranteed spells.

I think I'll open a thread for this.

[Nelphine]

The main thing is: myrran offers the most spells and spellbooks in treasure. You have to play differently. You literally can rely on getting books and spells in treasure. You have fewer enemies thus making lair hunting a much more accrssibe strategy.

It's DIFFERENT. Not worse. You don't play around guaranteed spells. Ypu play around amazing races. You don't play around wizard 1 then 2 then 3. You play 'only 2 so diplomacy is easier, so play the long game, and then smash everyone all at once.'

[Seravy]

so play the long game,

Which I'm failing at due to low books not giving me good rares and very rares. Isn't that a problem by itself?
I suppose the Myrran AIs are in the same situation but then the game is decided by a dice roll. My opponent got High Prayer, I didn't? Well, that's a loss, try again. (Tho this is already felt at uncommon level, you don't need to wait for very rares. On Arcanus, both life+something wizards having Prayer is standard. On Myrran, it's random and whoever gets it wins.)
Anyway, made a thread for this, so continue here:

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8972

[Seravy]

Diplomacy huh. Yes, I could have opted to not start a war with the other Myrran wizard but...they control like 60% of the plane and are ahead of me in power. Letting them grow further would be a suicide at this point.
(Yes, they are draconians. That race has problems.)

[Nelphine]

Its only suicide if you don't use the time. If you find supreme light and archangel in treasure, and get 3 myrran 18+ tile nodes, because you aren't at war (pre 1410), they can be 3 times your power and you still crush them.

(Recall my games of declaring war on 3 AI simultaneously when they have a combined city total 5 times higher than mine.)

[Seravy]

(pre 1410)

At that early, I can't expect to beat lairs of that difficulty in any consistent manner if at all.
In my current game where I got a pretty good start, I'm in 1412 and so far cleared two larger lairs.
I suppose I could have done it earlier if I didn't go to war with the first Myrran wizard, but I didn't feel like playing with only 4 cities for some reason and they settled everything else.

I suppose I could push research and get Arcahngel (it actually showed up) in another 25 turns or so but then I can't raise my casting skill and Archangel isn't very good with only 75 skill and 1x enemy Divine Order in play. If I spend 60 turns on getting it plus raising my skill, the enemy will probably hit very rares themselves and have their own archagel, or worse, crusade, charm of life, high prayer, etc.

Or maybe I'm just overestimating the AI after so many failed games.

[Arnuz]

Uhm is this the thread where we're speaking about dwarves? I lost track with the awesome traffic we're having :D

Just wanted to mention that not being able to build any troop without a smithy is quite annoying as it leaves you open in new outposts, but forces you to have a building otherwise making the city a higher priorities for AIs. As the technological race I'd be ok with allowing dwarves to build swordsmen without smith, same with the orcs, but I don't know how difficult that is. Balance wise it doesn't seem to be a big deal, it's swordsmen ffs.

[Catwalk]

Random coal idea: +20% production instead of -20% unit cost. Iron stays at -10% unit cost.

[Seravy]

I think this is a non-issue, it only costs 80 gold to buy a smithy and dwarves have lots of gold.