Abolish the distinction between Arcanus and Myrran races

[Catwalk]

Summary of Myrran bonuses:
1) Access to Myrran races
2) Roughly twice as many terrain specials
3) Fewer nodes giving double power
4) Slightly tougher lairs = more treasure
5) 25% more treasure per monster = even more treasure, and much higher chance of high quality treasure

I'd say that's well balanced at a cost of 1 pick. And whether you go with Nelphine's suggestion or not, the benefits remain exactly the same.

[Seravy]

How about simply always having 2x Myrror AI and 2x Arcanus AI instead of letting it be up to chance? That's a huge luck factor that we can easily eliminate, and I don't see that anything is lost by doing so.

That's certainly doable but it's rare enough to not threat overall game balance much and makes the game more interesting when it happens. Very much like how, being an Arcanus wizard, you can also roll a 2 Myrran 2 Arcanus setup but it's highly unlikely.
This factor makes scouting more important, as misjudging the number of players on your own plane can easily cost the game - it has happened to me before.

[GermanJoey]

Summary of Myrran bonuses:
1) Access to Myrran races
2) Roughly twice as many terrain specials
3) Fewer nodes giving double power
4) Slightly tougher lairs = more treasure
5) 25% more treasure per monster = even more treasure, and much higher chance of high quality treasure

I'd say that's well balanced at a cost of 1 pick. And whether you go with Nelphine's suggestion or not, the benefits remain exactly the same.

Myrran race by itself is at least worth an entire pick to as much as a pick and a half... I think most of the Myrran races (or at least Beastmen, Draconians, and Trolls) would need to be rebalanced somewhat if Myrran would become a 1-pick retort.

[Seravy]

Summary of Myrran bonuses:
1) Access to Myrran races
2) Roughly twice as many terrain specials
3) Fewer nodes giving double power
4) Slightly tougher lairs = more treasure
5) 25% more treasure per monster = even more treasure, and much higher chance of high quality treasure

I'd say that's well balanced at a cost of 1 pick. And whether you go with Nelphine's suggestion or not, the benefits remain exactly the same.

Myrran race by itself is at least worth an entire pick to as much as a pick and a half... I think most of the Myrran races (or at least Beastmen, Draconians, and Trolls) would need to be rebalanced somewhat if Myrran would become a 1-pick retort.

I say the H+2 vs 2 setup (which is entirely missing form the list) is enough of an advantage compared to the regular H+3 vs 1  to be worth a pick or two on its own as well.

[GermanJoey]

Summary of Myrran bonuses:
1) Access to Myrran races
2) Roughly twice as many terrain specials
3) Fewer nodes giving double power
4) Slightly tougher lairs = more treasure
5) 25% more treasure per monster = even more treasure, and much higher chance of high quality treasure

I'd say that's well balanced at a cost of 1 pick. And whether you go with Nelphine's suggestion or not, the benefits remain exactly the same.

Myrran race by itself is at least worth an entire pick to as much as a pick and a half... I think most of the Myrran races (or at least Beastmen, Draconians, and Trolls) would need to be rebalanced somewhat if Myrran would become a 1-pick retort.

I say the H+2 vs 2 setup (which is entirely missing form the list) is enough of an advantage compared to the regular H+3 vs 1  to be worth a pick or two on its own as well.

Yup, agreed.

IMHO part of that is related to landform generation... with only two opponents, it is more likely the human will have an easier time due to an AI getting stuck on some little island, leaving only one opponent as a real threat. (on Arcanus, it's only half as likely to happen because you need 2 out of 3 opponents to get stuck this way). So it's a little probabilisitc how good this part of the Myrran advantage is. If you end up with two strong opponents while you are on a smallish island, you'll have quite a hard game. If you've got some decent land and there's only one strong opponent, then you're in a good spot.

I think right now, Myrran is worth somewhere between 2 and.... 2.75ish? retort picks, compared to an average pick, depending on your race and how your land shakes out. so, like, about 20% better than an "average" retort pick, which, IMHO, makes it one of the better retorts, but not really in need of urgent rebalancing or whatever.

[Nelphine]

The problem with all of the things listed is that they are only an advantage if the majority if your opponents don't also have them. Having a good race is great - but when 3 opponents also have it, it isn't worth a full pick. Similarly for nodes, lairs,minerals. These things all become a wash. Yes the AI is spending points on them too, but similarly, they aren't actually getting an advantage.

If there were always 2 opponents on each plane, regardless of which plane the human started on, the myrran retort would be worth 1 pick.

But I think this is bad - Myrror is meant (for me) to be a mysterious magical land. 2 picks makes it obvious that it is a Big Deal, that Myrror is very special. I think this is part of the charm of the game, why we keep comimg back to it. So there needs to be something that makes it worth those 2 picks; this is reasonably solved by having 1 less opponent on Myrror than on Arcanus.

Its not perfect, especially balancewise, and I certainly flip flop back and forth between what's more important, balance or flavour, but I think its highly important that the Myrror retort stay as 2 picks.

[GermanJoey]

Oh yeah, and I think another quantifiable bonus to a Myrran start is:

6.) There's no enemy lizardmen to deal with in the early game!!!

[Nelphine]

Lol, AND you can be lizardmen! Although that shouldn't be as bad now that the enemy lizardmen can colonize near their own capital instead of beelining for yours. (Although draconians did this too, they just didn't grow or move as fast.)

[Catwalk]

Wouldn't it be possible to have a rule that always places AI wizards on one of the largest land masses? If necessary, the capital sites can be boosted to meet minimum standards. Again, I probably know way too little about how this is done so apologies if I seem uninformed

[GermanJoey]

I talked to Seravy about this before awhile ago, and IIRC he said it wasn't easy. I think it was in context of whether it was possible to modify terrain after capitals were placed, to do something like Civ4's capital resource normalizer. But I imagine it would be a similar deal with adding land around a small island.