Tower?

[Seravy]

I have been wondering that towers might break too early again after those previous monster changes?
I've had several games in a row where the strongest wizard was not the one on Myrror - often simply because there wasn't enough time to fill more than half of the plane yet.

[Domon]

Mu experience too, on normal and hard, based purely on feelings, though

Btw, i got a couple lairs with a single hydra that gave me 10 gold as a reward: some bug?

[Seravy]

Mu experience too, on normal and hard, based purely on feelings, though

Btw, i got a couple lairs with a single hydra that gave me 10 gold as a reward: some bug?

No, that's the ruins of a destroyed city. The Hydra looted only 10 gold from the wizard, probably because the city was too small.

[Nelphine]

Towers are a very finicky point. If you make them too strong, the plane with fewer wizards (normally Myrror, not always) becomes a haven. For me, this is the best reason in the standard game for Myrran to be a 3 pick retort.

Too weak, and effectively towers simply becoming land connections between continents. The two planes in this case are really one with some points if intersection. In this version. If the myrror races were equal to arcanus races, the Myrran retort is only worth 1 pick.

In this mod, the retort is worth 2 picks. And this is how I believe you should base the strength of towers, on the cost of the retort.

What do you get by being on Myrror?
1) a better race. Arguably right now some arcanus races are very close to as strong as some Myrror races. Thus I don't think this is worth quite a full pick by itself (but its close enough that if the retort did nothing else, it would cost 1 pick anyway.)
2) better nodes/lairs. This has a downside, from wandering monsters, and just being harder to conquer. So for our discussion, I call this a wash. Its different than Arcanus, but not really 'better'.
3) better resources. On rich, this is pretty huge. On average, its noticeable. On poor, meh. I think if we base it on average, this is worth about half a pick, a full pick on rich.
4) less neighbors. With 1 neighbor, this was worth a pick (or two!) all by itself. With 2 neighbors, this gets interesting. The early game is certainly harder than with 1 neighbor, and the late game is harder than with 1 neighbor. But its still much better than arcanus, where early game is very hard, and late game is one wizard. IF towers matter.
5) i think (i could have my versions wrong and this no longer exists) a little bit of power from your fortress. This basically makes up for the race not quite being worth a pick.

So.
1) worth 0.75 of a pick.
2) worth 0 picks.
3) worth 0-1 picks, depending on something the player controls. So, for balance sake, I'm going to say its worth 1 pick.
4) this is the topic of the thread.
5) worth like 0.1 picks, if it even exists anymore.

Looking at this, if towers are practically nonexistent, the Myrror retort is still worth 2 picks (maybe as low as 1.5 retorts depending on your view about resources.)

If towers are very strong, then splitting the enemy AI between the 2 planes equally is worth at least 1 pick. (Note, for the AI this whole discussion doesn't matter, because the human controls where the enemy AI go. So for the AI, the retort is 1.5-2 picks.)

Therefore, since the retort costs 2 currently; and for the AI its probably always worth 2; and having a notiecably easier early game AND later game is probably worth a pick all on its own for the human player (which would make the retort worth 2.5-3 picks),

I conclude that towers should be weak, even on high difficulties.

[Seravy]

I agree with all your points except the one you base your conclusion on, which is 4.

In my opinion :
While it is true that stronger towers mean you have to fight fewer enemies at the same time, this assumes you are actually wanting to fight them, and that's not guaranteed. You might not - with only two other players on the plane you can probably build enough cities without going to war. Especially if you got the better starting position, like, a bigger continent. I believe the following is also a perfectly valid logic :
The weaker the towers, the earlier you can access the Arcanus plane, and beat the wizards there who are playing races with inferior units. (this is almost always true, dwarves, beastmen, draconian and trolls are way stronger than the average arcanus race, especially the basic units) This means that weaker towers make the retort worth an extra pick or two. Arcanus might not be as rich as Myrror, but taking control of possibly the entire plane on your own wins the game nonetheless. And you can block towers or the Myrran AI might just not declare war on those who are on Arcanus, so you have a much better chance of doing so than the AI.

In one scenario weaker towers are better and in the other, stronger towers are, I'd say these two benefits cancel each other out - Myrran is equally good regardless of tower strength for the human player. Ultimately it depends on which AI wizard starts where, you'll want to be on the same plane as wizards playing realms you want to eliminate early, and you don't want to be on the same plane as wizards playing books that make them hostile towards you.


However, this is not the case for the AI. If the AI picks Myrror, it's playing a 1/4 setup, which the human player can never do. Not only does it have the better plane, but also no contact with others, so safe from all wars or anything else (aside from raiders) that can slow down progress. This means stronger towers benefit the AI, and by a large margin. It effectively gives the AI 4x the normal amount of territory to build on, or extract treasures from at the same time as granting immunity to wars that could consume these resources.
...the only exception to this is, if the tower breaks at a time when the human player is not prepared, and the Myrran AI immediately attacks them, then weaker towers are better for the AI. However, in this case the AI is developing faster than the human player already so more time will just increase the gap.

(btw 5 doesn't exist anymore)

[Nelphine]

Right but the human chooses his many players are on Myrror. If there's only one AI on Myrror, the human knows that and will build their initial strategy around it. Similarly, if the human chooses Myrror, they build the strategy around that too.

The AI has no such choice. If they have Myrror, they can't tailor their strategy on it. They have to play as if there is no opponents there, and as if there are two opponents there.

Its true that the AI realms make a big difference. But you can't base your initial picks around that, nor can you base tower strength around that. Both of those are done before you know the AI realms. So I do not consider it something that you can base those changes on.

Sometimes AI realms will be good early, sometimes late. Since the AI can't choose that strategy, its fair that the human can't either.

Therefore you have to balance things earlier than knowing enemy realms.

Which, in general means more AI near you in early game = a harder game, and less enemies fighting over territory on the other plans = harder game.



One further rebuttal to the idea that you can break through and conquer arcanus with weak towers, and therefore weak towers are bad:

Two scenarios: human starts on arcanus, vs human starts on myrror. In either case, the Hunan can break through to the other plans with weak towers. The human can normally do this more effectively than the AI (although your mod helps the AI immensely in this regard.)

Therefore, from arcanus, should the human do so, the single Myrran AI will focus on him primarily. Thus it is not super easy to both conquer Myrror and also avoid/win wars on Arcanus at the same time.
From Myrror, the human has a slightly easier time, since multiple enemies on both planes distract each other, and he has a nominally superior race. Perhaps worth half a pick.

With strong towers, a human on Arcanus has the Myrran AI builds up into the strongest AI it can, making for the hardest late game opponent (again, in general). A human on Myrror will face two strong opponents from the other plane... But they will compete with each other and be noticeably weaker. In the late game, absolute strength natters, not numerous average enemies. This is easily worth at least 1 pick.

Yes the two scenarios both have Myrror player stronger than Arcanus. But the weaker the towers, the smaller the difference between the Arcanus and Myrran human player specifically because the weaker the towers, the closer it us to one plane where long term advantages won't be gained.

[Seravy]

Therefore, from arcanus, should the human do so, the single Myrran AI will focus on him primarily. Thus it is not super easy to both conquer Myrror and also avoid/win wars on Arcanus at the same time.

Depends. If the AI also broke towers that are not in the human's territory, a lot of the Myrran AI's forces (and settlers) will go to arcanus, making it easier for the human to claim the still unclaimed half of Myrror. If the Myrran AI is peaceful/lawful, the human effectively gets half the Myrran plane for free because the Myrran AI won't attack them at all. (and if they happen to be weak against the human player's strategy, gg, the player wins. I have beaten impossible that way once, making peace with everyone an Arcanus and conquering all of Myrror meanwhile.)
If the AI is hostile and has no access to Arcanus of their own, your assumption is true.
This can't be done if starting on Myrror, as Arcanus has two wizards. So weaker towers indirectly buff Arcanus wizards....in other words weaken Myrran.

Anyway, in short, you say "Strong towers would make Myrran more valuable for the human player and that's not good" while I say "Strong towers make Myrran more valuable for the AI which is good"?
Interesting. Question is, do we want the AI to benefit more from Myrran at all? I think we do...I mean there is a mandatory Myrran wizard for hard and above for a reason, they are meant to be the big bad final boss that appears in the late game. Is that a more important goal than how good the Myrran retort is? Might be. Might not. Some people say Myrran is not worth 2 picks nowadays, I don't agree with that though.

Two other factors we might want to consider :
Stronger Towers are an indirect buff to Life magic - they can access the other plane anyway. To a lesser extent this applies to Death as well (Shadow Demons) but it's marginal there.
Stronger Towers are also an indirect buff to Nature - the Adamantium or Mithril gained from Transmute is much more valuable if you can't access the Myrran plane. (especially on poor mineral settings)

[Domon]

Is flavour a consideration? I think i like the flavour of tower as ultimate reward spots.

[Nelphine]

I do like the flavour of towers being very strong.

I agree that strong towers make myrran AI stronger, and I think that is a good thing.

I think strong towers make myrran humans stronger faster than they make myrran AI stronger; and I think this is because the human can choose their whole strategy based on the myrran pick. And I think its enough faster that stronger towers will quickly put Myrran back to being worth 3 picks for the human player, which I don't think you want. (I also feel that it would not be a 3 pick retort for the AI at that point, which is part of why i dont think you'd want that, although I'm willing to disagree on that.)

[Nelphine]

I also love the idea of the myrran wizard being some sort of late game boss, but I literally don't think I've ever experienced it. (I very rarely wipe wizards out early though). Instead the towers break, the AI fight a bit, and you end up with 2-3 strong AI with presence on both planes, and 1-2 very weak AI that don't matter (which could be from either plane but very rarely have a presence on both planes.)