Early game summoning over-represented?

[Seravy]

continued from http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid649225

(copy of that post)
One problem here might be that city troops you can get early such as swordsmen are not a huge investment, they are cheap. So they are weak. Summoned creatures on the other hand are huge investments, thus stronger.
That's balanced. Why is it not working out anyway?
Because the starting conditions are uneven.
Your city has ~10 production, but you have ~20 power and casting skill. Despite the inherent assumption that skill is a less available resource than production. So creatures are overweight 4 times compared to how it should be in early troop availability.(2 production = 1 casting skill)
But it's worse - your production is competing with settlers which are essential in most cases, and buildings (which are also essential to unlock troops or to have better economy). Meanwhile your power is not competing with anything - your early spells will be 90% summons (or buffs if you play Life but that's the same deal, it's military spending). There simply aren't economy or similar choices at common spells - at least not enough to invest the majority of your skill into them (and this is actually true for a large part of the game, probably only at the "rare" tier can economic spells outweight creatures in all but the Chaos realm.)

So yeah, we might be onto something here. The problem is we raised starting power (and the original game raised starting skill in one of their patches - it wasn't always this high, 1.0 you had a skill of, like, 5 to start with!) but starting production, even with the sawmill, lags behind while the demand for production is higher than the demand for skill. So production can't compete with skill until like turn 30-40 after which it outweights skill as intended and it stays that way until the end of the game.

But if production gets more available at start, early races just steamroll the map...that merely trades one problem for another. We would need to completely rework the cost of settlers, military buildings and (racial) units.

...to be continued

[Tlavoc]

The only expert game I had that lasted long enough to research rares (I was using halflings, so LOTS of research), I locked down my island with something like 6 or 7 cities and kept things civil with the other wizards the whole time. I didn't really start seeing anything but summons passing through until I had access to demons, so near the end of 'mid-game' (due to so much focus on research). At that point I saw mostly elven lords and halberdiers. It's also the one I stopped playing because it took a full minute for the enemies to complete their moves (roughly 20 seconds now that I have dosbox running faster - 12 if I turn off watching the moves.)

So, in the situations I've been seeing, I would say summons are the vast majority of the opposing army. They are also easier to sustain for the player until a couple of towns really start going.

[Seravy]

So to summarize, if we want to regain a balance between early summons and early units, we most likely need :

-A higher starting population for the capital to raise production output
-A reduced starting casting skill
-Increased cost on military buildings to ensure military races won't get their mid/high tier units so early that it's unstoppable on Expert and higher. I'm not saying it should not work but we definitely don't want to see stacks of 9 Wolf Riders or Berserkers as early as turn 10-15 due to the raised production.

Pros
Lower tier units (spearmen, swordsmen, bowmen, cavalry, shaman) become more relevant
Weapon Immunity becomes more relevant (as military buildings including the alchemist guild gets more expensive)
Sprites become less powerful while still staying relevant (as you can produce other ranged units faster and sprites slower)
There is extra power left to distribute between mana, skill and power instead of needing to put all into mana just to feed the starting skill
You have a reason to spend on skill in the early game to enable more expensive commons and just generally become able to summon more things.
Shrine (and thus shaman) becomes a more viable choice as well.


Cons
Makes game harder to play for the AI.
Magicians get more powerful even though they are already way above average (as the cost of Wizard's Guild cannot be raised - it's primarily an economic building and that function would break.)
Many common combat spells cannot be cast in the early game due to lack of skill
Common creature become much less relevant and they get obsolete faster

It's also the one I stopped playing because it took a full minute

That's actually fairly normal when the difficulty is high (Master+) and the game is nearing the max unit limit - it tends to go up to 1-1.5 minutes but during a fresh war involving many units it can be more for a turn or two until those units die. It used to be way slower but fortunately I was able to speed it up. It's painful to wait that long but considering your own turn takes 10+ minutes at that stage of the game, it's not that bad, in the end the AI is only using up 10% of the overall time spent playing. Also, the turns tend to be interrupted several times for combat when the AI attacks you which also helps.

...I actually wonder if replacing the naval attack procedure to use the (now available) intercontinental attack target matrix could help speed it up, as naval and intercontinental used to be like half-two thirds of the time the AI used.

[Tlavoc]

I actually think reducing the starting casting skill would be -incredible- for making early-tier units useful. Right now if I attack with a single longbowman, the AI's first action is an attack spell... and he only has 6 life. Even with resist elements it's highly likely he dies, meaning early combats you WILL lose at least 2 units to spells if you're using early military.

Could wizards be linked to the alchemist guild? Either on its own or as an additional requirement? They don't benefit from it, but it makes the alchemist guild THE building to counter weapon immunity, just like the wall is the counter to ground and ranged and stables is the building for fast units.

I don't think the 'common creature gets obsolete faster' is a bad thing. Currently I see TONS of the tier 1 summons, so I don't really see that as a problem if the relevancy becomes military->T1 summons->T2 summons->military->rare/military->very rare.

[Nelphine]

My only concern with this direction is that early game is still the thing you deal with the most. I've killed more nagas than I know what to do with - probably more than almost everything else combined. Water elementals make this a bit better, but if we go for making early tier units more important, then swordsmen may just overtake the naga, which isn't great from a replayability point of view.

On an unimportant and anecdotal tangent, I find wizards casting spells phase is the longest (I play on max cycles, and I mostly ignore enemy army movements.) But I also like detect magic.

[zitro1987]

Your pros and cons mostly sums things up, but you might have forgotten to consider a few more risks to game balance:


Pros:
Early game is faster paced on a town side (unless this is considered bad)
Everything else you mentioned, particularly balancing production vs skill/mana
Gold more balanced against mana too?

Cons:
Early combat spells weakened further!
Increasing starting population and/or adding a starting settler weakens high pop-growth races, helps slow pop-growth races.
Early game even faster paced on a town side (unless this is considered good)
More population - more starting gold - alchemy more overpowered for early military races
A few more things to balance out.
Early life technically nerfed?



Some suggestions, increasingly more radical:

Idea 1 - Starting game tweaks, 
*More developed starting town (pop 6-7, sawmill, smithy, library, granary, marketplace, barracks) or start with more units (1 more settler and 1-2 more military units)     
*swordsmen gaining +1 armor, or a +1hp/-1 armor to be formidable for good races, satisfactory for weaker ones
*A starting overcast penalty of 5 points until you build your first alchemist guild, amplifying tower or some other stepping stone? (I don't know, skill sometimes feels reasonably slow at the beginning with fewer books and less investment)

pros: 
 - a nice balance of economic and military benefits that do not particularly overly benefit or hurt individual races  (some slight balances among races would still be needed)
 - Stronger swordsmen comparable to starting bowmen in usefulness
 - Slightly easier to reach alchemist guild with starting library

cons:
 - Might be easier to reach and make best usage of certain powerful units with more gold and starting barracks (berserkers)
 - Draconian Bowmen may need to be nerfed, maybe 6 shots instead of 8 ... due to starting barracks.

Idea 2 - Minor changes to the book system
* Each book grants +1 power and +1 skill
* Player starts with 5 extra combat skill (or +5 overall skill with temporary 5 overland penalty until a stepping stone like your 1st amplifying tower or alchemist guild, as proposed earlier)
* Each book after the 8th grants +3 power and +2 skill (unchanged)
* Still do the swordsman boost of 1 armor, or +1hp/-1armor as they're too underpowered!

pros:
-Weaker starting power, more in line with original.
-Weaker starting skill overland (if workable)
-Combat skill is still kept, needed for early spells and mana usage.
-Books after the 8th slightly more powerful - most ideal wizards are already fairly retort-heavy
-No need to make starting town better developed, which involves series balancing efforts.

cons:
- Challenge in programming or explaining to player


Idea 3 - Radical (I'll question your sanity if you go for this):
*An overhaul of the book system, divorcing books from generic power and skill book bonuses
- All players have maximum 10 picks
- All players start with 10 power and 15 skill 
- Books go up to just 8, spell additions per book more significant to balance lack of 1.5pwr/2skill per book. The +3 pwr per last couple of books remains.

pros: 
- Similar to idea #2
- Books more specific to 1 benefit - spells! spells! spells! More intuitive to players.

cons:
- Extreme game change
- Books more one-dimensional
- Books overpowered if obtained from nodes/lairs

[Seravy]

Could wizards be linked to the alchemist guild? Either on its own or as an additional requirement?

Great idea. One of the reasons magicians were better than other units is because they don't need it to be at full power while other units do.

This is what I think would be best if we want to do it :
Starting population of 8-10 (roughly 20-25 production) - probably 8 is better.
Starting skill of 1/book or 1.5/book (roughly 10-15 skill) - probably 1.5 is better.
More expensive (to build) : Alchemist Guild, Stables, Fighter's Guild, Armorer's Guild, Fantastic Stables, Barracks, War College, maybe Ship Yard, Maritime Guild
Magicians require Alchemist Guild on top of the usual
Alchemist Guild cost less to maintain (to make up for higher building cost)
Wolf Riders might need a nerf in this system - they are vastly superior to Cavalry

Possible problems
- Alchemy is more powerful on one side (skipping Alchemist Guild is worth more) although in exchange less powerful on the other (gold to mana no longer allows summoning more creatures - Skill is not high enough and there is excess power to fuel raising skill so the extra MP doesn't contribute much to summoning capability. Mana to gold means abandoning raising casting skill which is essential to at least reach the amount where casting common spells can be done in a comfortable manner. Also, alchemist guild at less maintenance becomes more profitable so skipping it is less of a good idea on the long term.)
-AI might need a higher production advantage - we are swapping the focus of early game from casting (where they get 100% extra) to production (where they get less). Especially as the AI is going "Fighter's Guild first" which will be a slower, more expensive and weaker tactic, but we can't expect it to successfully be a threat with just bowmen and swordsmen. We might need to swap "fighter's guild first" to "Stables first" - cavalry is an effective offensive unit that can make up for less summoned units.
-AI Sprite stacks hitting early outposts will be a thing of the past - the AI is already much worse at this than it used to be due to army strength restrictions on attacks but now they won't even get that many units.
- Everything else mentioned so far.

Overall this would change the game on a large enough scale that we'd need to have Experimental 15 instead of 5.01, and considering how I want to take a break from playing the game, it would stay that way for at least a month or three (as we'd need extensive testing to see if it's improving the system or not).

Oh and one more thing for the "pros" column : the damage to military buildings on conquest will be more relevant if these cost more to build.

[zitro1987]

Do you think it might be a good idea to combine a higher cost of fighter's guild with a 3 movement points for such halberdiers (base cost 70-75)?
=2 mv for a more advanced melee unit is very low.
=3 mv is not very fast and still fairly weak against ranged, just average movement really, but a +1 mv bonus for having a more advanced melee unit from an expensive building
=cost more in line with other fighter's guild units and units like wolf raiders.

[Seravy]

No, I don't want to change the units themselves unless absolutely necessary.

[Seravy]

Oh, one more thing for "cons" :
Production is affected by terrain so starting terrain (mountains) has a higher influence than before.

(albeit, max pop/growth has less influence so grasslands will be worth less which might balance it out)