Yeah, I agree with namad. Game balancing, you are right Seravy. But part of Mom is that the game isn't properly balanced. And having random early Rares even if useless is something I ok forward to.
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September 18th, 2016, 10:53
(This post was last modified: September 18th, 2016, 10:54 by Nelphine.)
My problem with book rewards is they come at different stages in the game. Dungeons/lairs etc are much weaker than nodes. So you ALWAYS are going to get a death books relatively early (if you get any books). (And the death ones seem to populate a lot more than the life ones. Not sure why.. maybe there's more if those types of lairs?)
(September 18th, 2016, 10:43)namad Wrote: doesn't seem particularly harmful.It was somewhat harmful. And much more in the one my friend played. He got Sky Drake before reaching rares in Chaos and kept telling me chaos sucks. Because he never got a rare spell from it until the game ended, and Chaos is a late game realm...but all the rare Sorcery spells didn't leave room for Chaos on the list. So he still thinks Chaos is unplayable and I probably won't be able to make him play it any time soon. (it was a normal difficulty game btw) In my case I had Herb Mastery, Great Wyrm, Survival Instinct, Petrify and Earth Elemental on my list, 5 slots. Arcane spells are already limited to a max or 3 slots, so in theory I could have ended up with zero Sorcery spells on the list for the entire game (or at least a good 100 turns), fortunately it didn't happen but I still had 5 slots taken up by expensive spells I didn't want to or couldn't afford to research. And it wasn't happening all at once, no. I researched a spell I didn't need, hoping something useful shows up. Oh look a rare spell. Okay, let's try another uncommon I don't care to have...oh great wyrm nice...and this went on 5 times in a row. Then Sorcery spells started coming but since it was one a time, I still kept getting ones I didn't need, the only one I actually had use for was Phantom Beast. I agree that a SMALL chance of a higher rarity spell (but at most 1 tier higher, not 2 or 3) would be better but it's not really possible to do in a reasonable amount of time. As is, getting one is more likely than not, and not just once but every single turn. You can easily end up with a book that has 8 Nature spells in it all the way from uncommon to very rare and zero sorcery spells despite having 6 sorcery books. By the way, there still is a source of early rares in the game : treasure. Which you can actually get unlike "hey look I can have Great Wyrm now, it only takes...79 turns if I don't produce mana or skill at all!. Quote:how come centaurs and catapults can't?They are normal units. Phantoms are fantastic. Sorcery being the second rarest is fine but...as is it is the rarest, not the second. Even Life is more frequent. There literally are zero "weak lair" type sorcery places. And those would be the most fun to find, easy treasure. (September 18th, 2016, 13:17)namad Wrote: In 20 years nothing has made me think anything is as good as a sky drakeThat is true, but he already won the game with the Storm Giants by that time so they were just the "extra" :D
September 18th, 2016, 14:03
(This post was last modified: September 18th, 2016, 14:05 by Seravy.)
One more thing I discovered some time ago but forgot...
When neutral towns are generated, thanks to kyrub, all of them appear at an equal chance now...except for one. Elves. If they were selected and the tile is not a forest (which is like, what, 30% chance or so? Or less? Hills, mountains, grasslands, swamps, deserts are all bad) then the race is replaced by High Men. While I see why they would do this, elves like forests afterall, this makes the race far too rare. Which isn't a good idea considering this is one of the better races on Arcanus and one of the few "late game" races you will want to spread even if you didn't start with it. This also makes High Men more common than other races. The question is short, do we want elves to stay rare or to be the same chance as any other race? This has pretty big AI implications because Elves and High Men are both races the AI likes to spread and have equal priority, so this would result in more variety and harder games. High Men units are good but the AI isn't particularly expert at taking advantage of that because rolling Cathedral, Shrine and Armorer's Guild takes a while for Paladins, and Magicians are...easy targets if you have any anti-magician tactic like Fire Storm or Magic Immunity or an invisible unit. The crappy resistance on their other units makes them easy to steal from the AI before they build the Paladins, so building them favors the human player somewhat. Elves on the other hand are more AI friendly, their best units do not require external buildings like a Cathedral, and Pegasai can be pretty dangerous, attacking from 5 overland tiles without advance warning. The AI benefits from the power production more as well and is less hurt by the slow growth rate. They aren't as powerful as spamming paladins, but it lets the AI diversify their empire, by having both high men to rely on if they reach late game and get the Paladins, and Elves to harass the player with flying and cavalry units while still having decent magicians and less reliance on low resistance units. My vote goes for more Elf cities. (by the way Myrran races all have equal chance to appear)
September 18th, 2016, 19:56
(This post was last modified: September 18th, 2016, 19:58 by namad.)
I am not sure I can agree about elven neutral cities. Although this is clearly a bug. They're the only magical arcanus race, it would make sense for them to be rare (Although not for such a dumb reason.)
If you can give them a more legitimate reason to be rare, I'd be all for it. Maybe that's not possible though. This might be even more against your wishes, but it'd be cool if they were rare on purpose, but also got a quality buff (like extra starting population or buildings or troops). Also: (September 18th, 2016, 13:40)Seravy Wrote:(September 18th, 2016, 13:17)namad Wrote: In 20 years nothing has made me think anything is as good as a sky drakeThat is true, but he already won the game with the Storm Giants by that time so they were just the "extra" :D Your friend might just be a veteran strategy player too good for normal? Perhaps he would've won early with whatever his book picked randomly regardless of how the odds were stacked.
Overland casting: I know someone else was mentioning something so I'll add my experience. After getting astrologer, my overland cadting is supposed to go up 50%.
I had a skill of 243, plus about 15 more from heroes in my capital. Astrologer pushes that to 370. But i could only cast 4 heavenly light (60 mana) in one turn, the fifth required waiting toll the next turn to complete. But when I cast a multi turn spell like a 1000 point disjunctionl, I get the full skill per turn used. I did it a few other turns as well; finish my heavenly light, cast 4 more, then start another. (Note if my skill was really 243-260, just finishing the first one should have prevented me from casting four more in that turn. It should have been finish one, cast 3, start another. ) It seems like overland skill is right, but the game thinks you're out of skill at your base skill, regardless of modifiers so you only get the extra skill when you can use it between turns. |
