Research costs

[Nelphine]

I think its too big a change. I would never research a common that required 300 - I almost always pick my commons so that I don't have yo waste 200 research, not because I want a particular spell.

I would look at that and go 'if I take alchemy, I can almost buy multiple sawmills for the cost of researching a single common'. Not worth it, ever. You'd need to raise the cost of sawmills to ~200. Also not worth it.

[Seravy]

So what? Leave the game broken?

Not doing research for the first 30 turns has always been normal. Eventually you have to start doing it. Likely when you no longer make settlers and sawmills. Because others will. You might be able to get away with "I have only commons" for the first enemy, but the rest will have uncommons.

300 research only looks high because we have no power and research income. But we'll fix that. Besides, the phase is 72 turns. And income won't be even during this time. You'll likely do most of your research in the second half, so 1403-1406. By then 300 RP will be like 3 turns.

...I guess this will end up as an experimental version though.

[Nelphine]

No I won't do research unless ALL the extra income into research buildings. I'll use alchemy build more cities fit more halberdiers and crush everything. I can build 5+ halbdiers for the cost of researching a single common spell. That's literally dozens for uncommon and more than 50 per rare. If my opponents want to research while I build and buff dozens of halberdiers, I win every time.

[Seravy]

Was worried for a moment then I realized the keyword in that sentence.
"and buff"
Buffing is not free. It costs resources equal to researching because RP = SP + MP.
Basically, you aren't buying halbderiers from your mana at all - you can produce enough anyway. At the very least, production will always be faster than buffing. So what you are buying is mana and skill to buff them. Not halberdiers themselves. But skill is nonlinear. If you abandon research you have double for your SP and MP, which allows you to...idk, buff some 65% more halberdiers than normal. That's not so great if you consider this is the cost of the entire tier, so each skipped spell gives you what, 10% more of them?

And honestly, raw halberdiers, without buffs, are not that great. That common spell you research will likely be used to dispose of dozens of them while you can only produce 5 more. That uncommon will probably kill even more. (Because, well, you are going to use the spell you research. Otherwise, why bother. So that Giant Spider research will give you not one, but 10-20 spiders. Which will eat 50 or 100 halberdiers before they get outdated by gorgons.)

[Nelphine]

Except warlord, war college, adamantium, tactician, orihilacron, coal, are all buffs to my halberdiers that don't cost mana.

My bezerkers rarely have any buffs unless taking a fortress, or fighting death (then they take bless).

Halberdiers need.. Holy weapon and holy armor. The extra income doesn't need to buff all of them, they only need to buff one stack that hunts down anything dabgerous, while the hordes of unbuffrd one clear the rest of the map.

[Seravy]

...let's look at the current numbers instead then, assuming we want to avoid changes. We already know what would be ideal but what do we have now?

Common tier : 1400 RP
Uncommon tier : 6400 RP
Rare tier : 17600 RP

Let's assume I spend the same amount on SP. 

I get : 42 skill after common tier, 82+21 = 103 after uncommon, 134+49 = 183 after rare.

That's about what I need for those tiers, perfect.

So if we go by SP = RP it doesn't look that bad. So where does it go wrong then?

On MP. The MP spending to be actually able to use spells is ~3 times the SP spending in every tier. I can easily cut that off for a few turns, pour it all into RP and get an entire next tier done from it or more. Overall, from 5 units of resources only 1 goes to RP, 1 to SP and 3 to MP in the current system. (and that 1 RP comes from buildings in the first place and cannot be reassigned. In fact, more than that comes.)
So by reassigning, RP output can be raised to 4-5 times the "normal" amount. And the multiplier between tiers is only that 4.

Which is why RP = SP+MP would be better as it does not have that problem. Except then RP costs will be really high compared to, like, everything.

...so do you have any other idea how to prevent players from turning their all MP into RP? Because that clearly is the problem. To use a tier of spells, you have to spend 3-4 times as much as it takes to research it. So instead researching the tier and using the next one will always be more profitable.

We have the similar problem on normal units. Using swordsmen cost several times as much as building up to halberdiers. Using halberdiers cost several times as much as building up to armorer's guild units. So building up to them is always better.

One can argue there is the pressure that you have to use things immediately to be able to fight off enemies, so you can't advance to the next tier all the time...but is that enough? I don't think it is, at least not with these prices. Even if the pressure clears only for a moment, that moment is enough to get an entire tier or two done.

[Nelphine]

For the research issue, a huge amount of your mana early comes from either alchemy or treasure. It literally can't be converted to research (this is true for common and most of uncommon phases).

In the later phases, war is the thing holding you back. You must have absolutely insane amounts of mana (in my current game, I'm 100% mana slider, so I'm getting 1600+ mana per turn, and I use alchemy almost every turn to turn gold into mana - and I'm still losing mana overall. I spent probably 2 years building my mana up in preperation for this war, so I had over 10000 mana saved up. I'll still hit zero nana before the AI has lost all his major offensive stacks.


So obviously peacetime during late uncommon or early rare is the problem. Your income is no longer treasure or alchemy, so in peace you can suddenly drop mana income.

So, I think you should add a check to hostility/war declarations based on mana reserves - if your enemy has low mana, they're probably researching, so declare war now, before they can finish researching and start summoning.

[Nelphine]

City units is far more difficult. Treasure can be used to buy up the next tier, and is in fact my main strategy with barbarians. However, I don't consider it a problem because of how strong common summons are - you NEED halberdiers to fight them.

[Seravy]

For the research issue, a huge amount of your mana early comes from either alchemy or treasure. It literally can't be converted to research (this is true for common and most of uncommon phases).

Unfortunately if we fix the lack of early power/research source problem, which we should even if we keep the research costs, (problem likely exists even if the RP costs are not raised, it just less severe) that opens up more possibility to convert treasure.

Your income is no longer treasure or alchemy,

Ideally this should be true for the entire game, otherwise players will be unable to afford their early spells unless (very) lucky on treasure. Alchemy also only helps if you're lucky on gold ores. So please don't assume it's fine for commons just because the income system for that time is broken. We don't want to keep the system in its current "you can't do research or skill until turn 60 unless you found a node or play Sage Master Halflings" state.

So, I think you should add a check to hostility/war declarations based on mana reserves - if your enemy has low mana, they're probably researching, so declare war now, before they can finish researching and start summoning.

That's no different from saying "The player must always be in a war". That's not a real solution. Peace exists and we have to deal with it somehow.

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Summary of the problem :
Spending in the current system follows a 3/1/1 ratio between MP/SP/RP. This MP can be freely reallocated. Allocating it on SP is fortunately inefficient due to how it works - Even if 4 units are spent on SP instead of 1, casting skill only doubles, or worse (as Amplifying Towers are still not affected). So pushing SP is possible but can't break game balance. However, if that 3 units move from MP to RP, then we have a problem. 4 units of spending on RP puts the player an entire tier ahead, but in reality you don't need to get an entire tier, you're good with only 1-2 spells of that tier, then you can restore spending to MP to use that new spell.
What's worse, research buildings already provide you with roughly 1.33 units that must be always allocated on RP, while you only have 3.66 units for the rest. So the system already gives the player more than the needed research to play "normally" if all buildings are built everywhere at an equal rate. Meaning players can safely keep their research slider on zero all the time. (Assuming the total income actually covers the 5 units actually needed, ensuring that is the other task we have.)

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My proposed solution was to make RP costs higher so the ideal ratio is 3/1/4, so moving the 3 from Mp to RP has less effect. This isn't perfect, but at the moment I have nothing better.

[Seravy]

Your counterargument seems to be that in that case you rather do 7/1/0 spending instead of the suggested 3/1/4, and use the excess MP on city troops. However, if we think it through rationally, you can't do that. Out of the 7 units, roughly 2-3 comes from research buildings. If you don't build those, Power buildings are generally half as cost effective, so instead of 7/1/0, you'll end up with 5.5/1/0 instead.
We can actually regulate this fairly well through research building pricing, and their share in the total research+power production capacity.
In other words, you will want to pay 300 RP for a common if your choice is between a building that gives you 6 RP for 60 hammers, or one that gives you 6 power for 120 hammers which you can then alchemize into gold. (Why would you even build that then? Banks pay better if you are going to turn it into gold anyway, even if you have alchemy...)

So thinking it though, that "I send it on a halberdier instead" scenario doesn't exist, you don't get that 300 RP in the first place to reallocate if you haven't built for research.

Do note that we are going to rearrange power/research buildings anyway to balance income, so we can set the RP buildings any way needed to have the desired outcome.