There is no room for more lairs, it already uses the max possible amount (for Huge anyway, smaller maps get fewer to avoid freeing the map generator).
Lairs are already pretty much bottom priority for the AI but unless the AI is at war AND has enemies present on the continent, there will be nothing to attack except lairs. Basically, the AI doesn't clear lairs to prevent the player from doing it, they clear lairs because there is nothing else they can use their troops for, unless there is a war ongoing and a weak enough enemy city to attack. (or stack of units. Albeit those might have less priority than lairs if said "stack" is too weak to matter. But important stacks will likely have far higher.)
More importantly, as I said treasure is luck. Even if there are more lairs, it's still luck. It's not like I can tell the game "always put the 5 easiest lair next to the human". And luck should not have this magnitude of effect.
Also, we've intentionally made sure there are a balanced amount of easy lairs otherwise sprites and other treasure hunting strategies become overpowered.
So treasure is not a solution.
Quote:But yes, I would build the improved shrine.. After I build the bank.
Actually, wouldn't you just build halberdiers instead of the building? I mean, for the building's cost, you can get, say 2 halbderiers? Or you build the building, get 6 power a turn, but need 240 for the 2 halberdiers, so you wait 40 turns. Waiting 40 turns for no reason at all on a military strategy...sounds bad. (Albeit by this logic you don't need the bank either. Which actually is true. I don't build banks with military strategies, military races don't even have banks usually. Ultimately you'll need some money for maintenance costs eventually so you build some, but not with the intent to fuel halberdier purchase directly. Unless you already have enough halberdiers, can afford the 40 turn delay without risking to run short on troops, and expect the war to drag out significantly longer than 40 turns so you still need halberdiers by then.)
Either way, I wouldn't worry about players using the new building as some sort of a second marketplace. Sure, they can do that but it's an overpowered choice. And other buildings would be worse, you don't build wizard's guilds to buy halberdiers from the power, I suppose? (Unless that city has excess production, all other economy buildings, but can't build halberdiers itself I guess.)
Okay, so the next step is to design the income system. Ideally the ratio of production on buildings should remain the same except for the two new early buildings that get added.
We need an average income of 124 for turns 1-72. Income on turn 0 is 20 so to put the average at 124, the actual income needs to be 228.
For turns 72-168 we need 366. So that puts turn 168 at 504 income.
Finally turns 169-264 we need 1403. That puts turn 264 at 2302 income.
This is for the "slower" schedule. If we decide to go for the faster one then...
Turn 72 stays at 228. (Both schedules were 6 years for common)
Turn 144 becomes 570.
Turn 216 becomes 2504.
I don't think measuring income will get us anywhere, it's too subjective and depends on who is playing, etc. as well as being too slow.
So let's try to just approximate it based on how the game should normally progress. Assuming Fair map size, Good node strength and a fairly average medium difficulty game with a medicore but not useless wizard. For simplicity, I'll assume Alchemist Guilds stop producing power.
Turn 72 (1406) you probably fight your first war, and own about 8 productive cities, maybe a few outposts.
Out of these 4 will be developed halfway, 4 will only have basic income buildings.
Assuming you had average luck, you'll control 2 nodes.
You'll find roughly 1200 mana worth of loot (more but the rest you keep as items, spend as gold, or it wasn't a resource but a hero etc). This is 17/turn.
N = Node, BP = Basic Power building, LI = Library, UN = University, SG = Sage's Guild, WG = Wizard's Guild, PA = Parthenon, SH = Shrine, CA = Cathedral
So 2N+8BP+8LI+4UN+2PA+SG+WG+17 + Fortress = 228
2N+8BP+8LI+4UN+2PA+SG+WG = 191
We have for these currently :
28 + 0 + 0 + 20 + 8 + 9 + 13 = 68 , so another 123 needs to be added somehow.
(btw these same cities likely provide you with about 200-250 gold so this change actually puts money and power on even standing, albeit a large part of that money is spent on upkeep costs, which is fine, that's what it is mainly for.)
Next, turn 144 (or 168). (1412 or 1414)
You already conquered the first enemy fully, and the second mostly. This puts you at 16 cities, out of which, 8 are highly developed, 4 are halfway developed, 4 are still on basic buildings (likely through damage but maybe late settling or razing). You own 6 nodes. You found 2400 mana in treasure again, so it pays you for the same amount twice, but as it's already included in the income you start with in the phase once, we don't need to include that part. Yes, in reality you'll be finding quite a lot more here, but I rather encourage keeping those items and using them on heroes than to require it to be spend on spells. So we add 17 for treasure again.
6N + 16BP + 16LI + 12UN+ 8 PA + 8 SG + 8 WG + 17 + Fortress = 504 or 570
6N + 16BP + 16LI + 12UN+ 8 PA + 8 SG + 8 WG = 467 or 533
99 + 0 + 0 + 60 + 32 + 72 + 104 = 367, so here we have 100-166 missing.
Finally, in year 1418 or 1422, we already fully control the Arcanus plane and are ready to burst through to Myrror. (Or if we are very good players then already won and received max score on Time. But balancing should be done based on normal players.)
So we own 35 cities, out of which 20 are completely maxed, 7 have most of the major buildings but still miss things like cathedrals, and 8 are only halfway done (damage from the last war). We also own 14 out of the 17 node on the plane, the last three unfortunately evaded our attention or contains monsters we want to avoid.
(Yes, it's possible that we are already conquering Myrror, but have another wizard still alive on Arcanus but I'll assume that's the same amount of cities.)
Treasure by now is not a relevant percentage of income.
14N + 35BP+ 35LI + 35UN + 35PA + 27 SG + 27 WG + 20 SH + 20 CA + Fortress = 2302 or 2504
236 + 0 + 0 + 175 + 140 + 243 + 351 + 40 + 120 = 1305 but need 2282 or 2484. Here a major gap opens up, as the amplifying towers demand for more mana.
So overall, common phase power is far too low, uncommon phase is actually not that far from actual needs, but rare phase is very far again as the Amplifying Towers demand more mana to use the skill.
(I feel we have messed up the timeline somehow though. We assumed 7 Amplifying Towers for this phase, yet 20 fully built cities. That doesn't really add up. Edit : already fixed numbers.)
