LIFE Realm

[Seravy]

Remove heroes from raise dead. I never use it for heroes precisely for that reason.

Meanwhile I got an idea.
What if it caused an experience loss?
Something like, I don't know, 20% of total experience?
...although there is one problem, the hero doesn't die all that often if used carefully. So you earn the EXP back from the battles that killed it. And this is easy to abuse against the AI.



Removing heroes from possible targets is a clear solution but it feels drastic.

What if...it was limited to one use on the same unit per combat?
In short, the same way how a combat summoned catapult is a Nature creature, revived units would be a Life creature in that combat. That prevents raising the same hero again in the same battle. When the combat ends, combat data is erased and only overland data remains in which the unit has no realm, so it reverts back to its default. Would come with the side effect of the unit counting as a fantastic unit tho, so regeneration from supreme light (we can prevent this if we make it arcane or death realm instead of life), vulnerable to banishment and exorcism (actually makes sense, it's the spirit of a dead person coming back!), buffed by soul linker (also makes sense, it's a soul!) and things like that.
The unit comes back with half health so it is somewhat vulnerable to getting killed again (and we can escalate that if it counts as a Death unit for the duration of combat, those cannot be healed, except by Healing Charge...might want to disable that?)

[Nelphine]

I don't like heroes getting stronger due to soul linker when they come back. Multiple strong heroes is already the worst abuse of this as is. Maybe give heroes a large penalty (-10 to all stats) when they come back. You can bring them back to avoid having to resurrect them but they'll be useless the rest of the combat.

So for normal units raise dead is an 'avoid having to rebuild and let them fight again' but for heroes its just 'avoid having them die'.

Kind of like res sickness in WoW. Heroes dying is a BAD thing but raise dead at least let's you avoid the worst (not having them after combat).

[zitro1987]

I find 'True Sight' to be too situational and rarely powerful enough to justify a 400 research cost or even being an uncommon ... and illusions are not that horrifying among 1-figure units like phantom beasts or heroes, more when it comes to multi-figure units. If the reason is to protect against something like vertigo or confusion, resist magic is far better and more broad. If the reason is to protect against psionic blast, that spell isn't that scary and the opponent can use another damage spell. On top of that, True Sight fairly expensive for what it does.

Suggestion: 200 research cost and probably 12/60 cost.


Prosperity - I find 200 cost to be rather high for something that isn't much superior to a merchant's guild (it does give some extra gold out of resources though) - I always pay attention to the initial cost of the spell (meaning, the 800 research).

Suggestion: 150/2 cost

Call To Arms could use a research cost reduction.

[Seravy]

True Sight is a very powerful spell that's vastly underrated by people. It counters Illusion damage, some of the nastiest unit curses in the game (Confusion, Mind Storm), Wall of Shadows, and allows targeting invisible units, both for the unit itself and the wizard's spells. It's essential to keeping heroes alive and you can never get it early enough when playing them, not to mention it is the ideal trade material : It's uncommon, has a decent trade value, and the AI will never be able to use it against you, unless you are actually playing Sorcery or have some sort of an invisible army. Considering how none of the uncommon Life spells are a priority in research, I don't see why True Sight would need to be cheaper than those.

Prosperity...this might need improvement. Inspiration adds +100% for the same cost. I'm going to take a look at my cities in that previous recorded game and see how much gold I got out of it.

Call To Arms is a unique effect for the realm, not only is it a combat summon in Life but also a very strong one - probably the best in the game despite the realm being worst at summoning. If anything, the current "normal" cost is low and the spell deserves to cost 8000, the only reason why it isn't is, I don't want that many spells to have the "extra high" research cost, and if this was raised, High Prayer would need to also go there, bringing the total number of 8k spells to 5.

Edit : Prosperity seems to bring +20 to 30 gold in most of my cities which is not a bad deal for 200. A typical Inspirations produces the same amount of hammers. It's fairly good if you need the gold...not so much if you just want to turn it into mana without alchemy. Compared to Dark Ritual (+12 power for 150), it's better, of course gold is usually less desired than power so that is what makes it fair.

[Seravy]

Does true sight also counter lightning damage?

No.

[zitro1987]

I figured out (sort of) why prosperity is more powerful than spell description of +50% gold -> it appears to also account for marketplace bonus and possibly even add a slight bonus to marketplace, giving it +10-12 instead of +8 once the city is big.


I tried it on a fairly small city with 10 tax income -> +5 gold (exactly as expected)
I gave it marketplace -> +4 more gold (half of marketplace)
I let the city grow, marketplace providing 10+ gold instead of 8 (tiny bug?) and prosperity getting an extra 5-6 due to marketplace


If these effect stand, the spell cost of 200/2 is balanced but you'd have to make the spell description a bit more vague. If you're interesting in fixing these bugs, I'd change the 50% bonus to about 66-75%

[Seravy]

I figured out (sort of) why prosperity is more powerful than spell description of +50% gold -> it appears to also account for marketplace bonus and possibly even add a slight bonus to marketplace, giving it +10-12 instead of +8 once the city is big.


I tried it on a fairly small city with 10 tax income -> +5 gold (exactly as expected)
I gave it marketplace -> +4 more gold (half of marketplace)
I let the city grow, marketplace providing 10+ gold instead of 8 (tiny bug?) and prosperity getting an extra 5-6 due to marketplace


If these effect stand, the spell cost of 200/2 is balanced but you'd have to make the spell description a bit more vague. If you're interesting in fixing these bugs, I'd change the 50% bonus to about 66-75%

For some reason the trade bonus of marketplace is added to the "marketplace" line directly instead of the "trade" line. Similarly the production bonus of terrain is added to the Sawmill and Stables lines instead of the Terrain line. I'll check if I can fix those.

[zitro1987]

For some reason the trade bonus of marketplace is added to the "marketplace" line directly instead of the "trade" line. Similarly the production bonus of terrain is added to the Sawmill and Stables lines instead of the Terrain line. I'll check if I can fix those.

Oh, is that what it is? It does make pretty good sense however to link marketplace to trade and helps whoever uses roads (meaning, helps with conjure roads / engineers).

[Seravy]

This is how gold is calculated :

Code:

TradeBonus:=River+Sea+Road
If nomad, TradeBonus:=Tradebonus+50
TradeBonus:=Min(3*Pop,TradeBonus)

If MerchantGuild then TradeBonus:=TradeBonus+40
If Bank then TradeBonus:=TradeBonus+30
If Prosperity then TradeBonus:=TradeBonus+50
DI:=Taxlevel*(Population-Rebels)/4+(Population-Rebels)
CX:=DI
If Inquisitor then DI:=DI*2
If Dwarf then DI:=DI+CX
If MarketPlace then DI:=DI+8
DI:=DI+Gold/Silver/Gem

DI:=DI*(1+TradeBonus/100)
If TradeGoods then DI:=DI+Production/2
ProducedGold=DI

This is correct. Which means the what the individual lines show in detailed view do not match the actual amount of gold produced by Prosperity still.
I will have to check for Inspiration too.

[GermanJoey]

Wait, according to that formula Dwarves get double income from taxes, but not double income from minerals. That's not right, is it?