Research costs

[Seravy]

By Evil Omens I believe you refer to Eternal Night.

The whole point of this idea is to put the power into cheap easy to make buildings. Religion buildings are expensive and a package deal of power+unrest reduction+shaman.

I'm open to redesigning both Evil Presence and Eternal Night's power reduction part, if necessary.

I'm actually not 100% sure completely blocking out power for a wizard is a desirable effect for the game in the first place. Even if it works, it's just unfun. Whether on the receiving end or not. So Evil Presence failing to do that, I don't mind, and we might want to look at other possible effects instead. (I want to keep the "no unrest reduction" part though.)

Likewise, halving power on Eternal Night is something we added due to lacking better ideas. The spell is actually good enough just for the other two effects, but if we really want a third one, we can come up with something new.

[Nelphine]

Fair enough. Then in that case I'm on board with a new building.

I'm not convinced yet that increasing research costs is a good idea, but you've put forth enough math and suggestions that I'm open to the idea.

(My biggest concern is still that the common and uncommon phases last too long - and since you have to play them every game, whether you win fast, win slow, lose fast, or lose slow, having them long negatively impacts replayability. I'd like to reduce them to 4 and 5 years, and make rare 6 years. Reduce how many units are expected to be summoned to go with that.)

[Seravy]

Well, I decided to go with the 6 years/phase model as 8 years is admittedly slower than how games normally work out.

But very rares in 1418 is fairly average for my games. I think what this really changes is not the actual timeline of games, but the influence strong starts have on it. Less snowballing. Got 4 nodes with max power instead of 1? Well that's amazing but while it used to mean your income went from 40-> 100, now it merely means it goes from 75 to 150. So instead of 150% only 100% higher.
Albeit Barbarians might get hit by this change a bit too much as they don't get the new building nor the library. Not sure what to do with that. I suppose, you conquer cities and buy the buildings there instead...but that just ignoring the problem.

[Nelphine]

Um. On barbarians that's probably true. The human can plan for it, the AI can't. I'd say give them the library as that would be fine for the AI, but from lore perspective might need to give them the new building - and an eldritch market could still fit lorewise.

[Seravy]

Yea but...barbarian mages? I mean, it's just a building but it should be your citizens working inside.
Library is outright impossible by the way as that would put the race at 8 prohibited buildings and 7 is the max.

However, while others build these, you are supposed to be building troops anyway. It's not like having the building would mean anything, if you don't build it, and for a Barbarian strategy, "I want a Magic Market instead of 2 Cavalry" doesn't sound such a great deal. Or does it...well in 25 turns it pays for itself but...that's not how you play rush.

I feel we can get away with saying it doesn't affect the race.

[Nelphine]

Right, for the human I don't care, its for the AI. They can't rush, and they can't choose how many barbarian cities they end up with. And it wouldn't be barbarian mages, it would be wandering wise men/shamans/voodoo priests/druids - all the magic types that don't like the big city. (That's why I like eldritch market - it implies less organization, more esoteric sources, and so can have different lore for different races, whereas something like ivory tower wouldn't work at all.)

As a note, I assume given this conversation that you agree on giving it to gnolls?

[Seravy]

Not planning to, but they have their library so they're fine without it. (And for the AI, they also have Cathedrals so they don't end up without power either)

I think the AI was required to be non-lawful non-peaceful to play these two races, so they are fairly unlikely to end up in no wars and nothing to conquer. Yes, they were. So as long as they don't raze all the cities they get their hands on, they are ok. (And in worst case, there is one easy AI on the map while the other 3 are unaffected. Since if they haven't started a war, they couldn't have taken over the others.)

[Nelphine]

Blech. I can live with the barbarian thing, but I think you should watch gnoll AI - after seeing them in 10 games, reevaluate. They're just awful. But oh well.

Better would be to give them bowmen. In fiction, gnolls often have bowmen better than anyone except high/wood elves. I'd be happy losing cathedral (in addition to not getting eldritch market) for that.

[Seravy]

Well, yeah, testing various AI races is on the list. But first we need the game to stop changing :D

[Seravy]

Okay, so to be fair to all realms, and still have the ability to have cheaper and more expensive spells, I distributed the 40 slots for 40 different research costs, that have the intended average for each tier.

So I'll just need to assign each spell to one of the slots.

160 C
200 C
260 C
320 C
320 C
320 C
320 C
380 C
440 C
480 C
420 U
640 U
960 U
1280 U
1280 U
1280 U
1280 U
1600 U
1920 U
2140 U
2500 R
3000 R
3500 R
4000 R
4000 R
4000 R
4000 R
4500 R
5000 R
5500 R
6000 VR
9000 VR
12000 VR
15000 VR
15000 VR
15000 VR
15000 VR
15000 VR
18000 VR
21000 VR
24000 VR

It's roughly in the originally used X/2 to 2X range.