Myrran retort

[Nelphine]

Sure, but you don't need everything you get from 6 nature books either. I only care about guaranteed change terrain and land linking, but I'm stuck with all the common spells and other uncommon and rare etc.

The whole game is package deals. That's what makes it complicated, that's what makes it hard to balance.

Of course, this is also why most of my games are life. I like that magic. I don't do much testing on any of the other 4 realms. (Literally the only death spell I like is demon lord, and its practically impossible to get that, but I keep trying.)

So I fully understand you not wanting to play myrran. Hopefully we can get someone else who will test it and video it, although for the most part the races are pretty good.

Otherwise, next time you do get the urge to do a mono realm, or a dual realm without guaranteed spells (which should be totally feasible. If its not, that's an issue with disparity in spells of the same tier, as per your prater complaint) hopefully you think of the myrran retort. If not, well, those of us that love the retort will keep playing it.

[Catwalk]

Retorts are guaranteed benefits that are immediately useful. Books offer random benefits sometime in the distant future. More than 4 books in one realm is for the most part a waste of picks.

[Nelphine]

That's why there are guaranteed spells for every book pick past 4.

[Catwalk]

But that's a tiny long-term benefit. This is an original MoM problem which Seravy has reduced, that's a good thing. It should be reduced further.

[Seravy]

Retorts are guaranteed benefits that are immediately useful.

Except Myrran. That's the problem. You're paying for it as though it was giving you something immediately, but it does not.

1.Better treasure?
Can't get that until mid/late game, have to defeat the stronger monsters first.

2.No strong opponent alone on the other plane?
Late game benefit.

3.Fewer wizards on your plane?
Ok that helps on one front (more space for you, better chance of peaceful game) but hurts on another (less spell trading, if diplomacy turns hostile, it hurts more - each wizard represents a larger chunk of the world against you than otherwise)

4. Stronger race?
Late game - it's not relevant until you break into Arcanus as everyone on the plane gets one.

5. Better/more minerals?
Other wizards on the plane also get it (yes, there are fewer of them, see 3). Only Dwarves can get an extra benefit from this, and they are the least capable of "late game" from all of Myrror so they are ever worse off in 1,2 and 4.

6. Less chance to early rush and eliminate the wizard on other plane and win the game through having control of a whole plane alone as there are two of them instead and they develop faster from early nodes and treasure you don't get?
A clear disadvantage to early game although only affecting Life wizards.


Now, there are other late game retorts in the game, and one even costs 2 picks (Chaneller). Even those benefit you more than Myrran in the early game, but more importantly you don't need Chaneller to pick Gnolls or Barbarians as your race. You need Myrran for Dwarves even though Dwarves are not a late game race. That's a contradiction by itself and probably the greatest problem with the race.
I wish I knew where the thread where we last discussed the value and benefits of Myrran is, I bet I'm forgetting half of it.

I don't think a game mechanic designed to unlock 35%-50% of the game content (5 races out of 14 plus all the other mechanics listed above) should be exclusively early or late game. It should be generic and should work well with any strategy. If not, then we need to redesign all the Myrran races to be late game races, fortunately all realms have at least a decent late game and even the early game retorts remain valuable for the entire game as well.

[Seravy]

Found the old Myrran thread. So far still reading the first page but I see both of you asking for it to cost 1 picks. I wonder how the remaining 11 pages will develop the discussion. (well the newest one, anyway, I'm sure we had more even before this one but those are probably obsolete)

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8684

I agree that the distinction should remain. However, I think it would be great if Myrran was reduced to 1 pick and enemy AI is set up so there's always 2 Myrror and 2 Arcanus wizards. That way you always have 2 wizards expanding with relative ease far away from you and 2 wizards coming for your throat. That way we can balance Myrror specifically based on the value of a stronger race and better terrain specials. There's too much luck in the current system IMO (yes, I know it's always been that way).

Particularly, this describes what I'm thinking quite well. We've already done the 2 wizards/plane thing but it's still costing 2 and that doesn't seem to work very well, at least on the enjoyment side of things. Balance is probably ok although that greatly depends on how exactly we adjust the races.

[Catwalk]

I'm reluctant to comment on the Myrran pick, so I don't really belong in this thread I need to play around with it to see how the current balance is. I do still think that making it cost 1 pick would be a good first step, though. As you say yourself, 2 picks just to have different options available to you limits your wizard build quite heavily.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that you typically face 3 Arcanus wizards and 1 Myrror wizard if you play on Arcanus. Isn't that the case?

[Seravy]

I'm reluctant to comment on the Myrran pick, so I don't really belong in this thread I need to play around with it to see how the current balance is. I do still think that making it cost 1 pick would be a good first step, though. As you say yourself, 2 picks just to have different options available to you limits your wizard build quite heavily.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that you typically face 3 Arcanus wizards and 1 Myrror wizard if you play on Arcanus. Isn't that the case?

Exactly.

And yes, I believe our current choices are

2 pick Myrran - more balanced, less fun, and less accessible for players due to heavy limitations on wizard builds
1 pick Myrran - less balanced, but more fun and more accessible.

(unless we want to come up with some special other solution, but I don't think they'd be very good)

Considering how tight the picks are set up in the current system the ideal would be a 0 cost Myrror but that clearly contradicts the "Myrran plane is superior" core design and shouldn't be done.
Some retorts are better than others still, and Myrran being one of them is something I would consider acceptable as long as it's not an overwhelming difference.

Now having read up to page 2, it's clear that I was picking the "costs 2 picks" options from balance considerations, but more balance isn't always better for a game.

[Seravy]

Found another pretty good post meanwhile :

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.

And after this point the thread derailed into a discussion about starting positions and terrain generation, aww...

[Catwalk]

Why would 1 cost Myrran be less balanced and why would 1 cost (your opinion) or 2 cost (Nelphine's opinion) be more objectively fun? I disagreed with Nelphine back then and I disagree with him now Myrran is fun because the terrain and lairs are different and because you have access to great races. It's not fun because you're facing less opposition, that's a boring reward.