Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

Spearmen should cost 20 and be more useful. They'd still be useful for rebel control and scouting, by virtue of being the cheapest unit. Same goes for Swordsmen.

Suggested stats:
Spearmen: 2 attack, 4 defense, 2 hearts, cost 20
Swordsmen: 4 attack, 3 defense, 2 hearts, cost 40
Bowmen: 1 melee, 3 ranged, 1 defense, 2 hearts, cost 30

I see no downsides to doing this. The early game becomes more interesting, instead of being a dash for halberdiers or other higher end units as Nelphine has demonstrated multiple times.

If that's done, halberdiers need to become more worthwhile to reward player by building fighter's guild. Something like +1 movement, but +10 cost.

My opinion is:
*Swordsmen to have 4 defense instead of 3, more representative of 30 cost.

[Seravy]

Eh, no, that would completely uproot the current balance and would require redesigning everything. If the bottom tier unit is suddenly 3 times stronger, we need to increase everything else along with it...common summons, cavalry, maybe even halberdiers themselves, etc

4 shields and 2 hearts on the "you lose your city because you only had police units, not real soldiers" role spearmen? Eh no, that's WAAAAY to good for defending cities. Seriously, that spearmen is actually more than twice as good as a Skeleton and you pay 25 mana for those. At the same time their "scouting" and "disposable unit to cast combat spells" ability becomes halved - as cost doubled.

Swordsmen, well, I'm actually unsure what role they are meant to take on. Cavalry already does the "counter ranged units" role better, having extra defense against bows won't really help if they get to shoot 5 times before you reach them unless your swordsmen have the advantage in buffs or levels. So I can only assume they are meant to be for garrisons - they are decent in melee and behind walls, they can actually hold well vs ranged units at the same time. At 9 shields (3+wall+large shield), most common bowmen type units will have a hard time hurting them.
However, they do the garrison role fairly well as is, I don't think they need any buff for that. The most I can think of is a stronger large shield, but +3 is already pretty powerful.

2 health bowmen are just a huge no. With those, eliminating wizards early becomes trivial - 9 of those bowmen kill 9 sprites easily. (and probably do far too well against any other early unit simply by being ranged and not going down easily to spells and lightnings.)

[Arnuz]

I agree wholeheartedly with Seravy

PS: that makes me think twice about removing spearmen from humans and DEs though - even dwarves suffer from the lack of police and they have the production bonus to get smithies fast...

[Catwalk]

Agreed that bowmen should stay at 1 health. They're not as underpowered as spearmen and swordsmen currently (although I don't see anyone using them), but 2 hearts would indeed be over the top.

Spearmen and Swordsmen would in no way be overpowered with the above stats. They see minimal (competent) use at present, and it's boring. They're massively underpowered. Why not try it out? It's an easy experimental change, and we would very quicly be able to evaluate it. Make it 1/4 spearmen instead of 2/4 then. Also, Skeletons are underpowered so they're a bad unit to compare with.

[Seravy]

As the conclusion from http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid655708 , I believe we need changes in the basic buildings.

We have sawmill to provide a base amount of production per city and we have marketplace for gold.
We also have the Fortress to provide basic power, but this power does not scale with your empire, leaving your power/research production way behind for the midgame, while your gold/production is already fairly relevant.
This makes the early/midgame extremely luck based - either you find a lot of nodes and treasure, or you...hold back on using magic because you can't afford it.

So I believe we should aim for the following changes :

Remove Ship Yard. This thing is a waste of a building slot.
Galleys should require the Maritime Guild. Both Galley and Warship needs new stats, that define a different role for each, so players will find a use for both. (difference in speed, firepower, armor, durability and resistance)
Maritime Guild should cost as much as the SY and MG combined.
A new building needs to be added that produces power at no maintenance and is cheap to build, a "power marketplace". Amount of power should probably be in the 5-8 range with a cost of 80-125. We'll need a name for this building. This building should not count as religious and should have low maintenance.
Libraries should be repositioned as the "basic research" building. Produce 6 research at a cost of 80? Alchemist Guild should likely drop the requirement of the Library. Sage's Guild should keep it. Wizard's Guild I'm unsure. It should probably switch over to require the basic power building whatever its name will be.
We might want to drop the power produced by Alchemist Guilds. It feels a bit unnecessary and could be incorporated into the new basic power building and/or other power buildings. AG should stay as a choice of military demand and prerequisite of Amplifying Towers plus enabler of Nightshade - that's enough roles for the building. Converting gold to power on a military building makes no sense.

I think that's about it. The additional 4 research and 5-8 power should be a major help in the early and midgame, while not having a relevant influence in the late game (boosting city total power and research each by about 25%).

It would reduce the major luck factor of treasure and nodes, and would reduce the front loaded impact of Cult Leader, overall improving the balance in these areas. As a probably unwanted side effect, it would slightly lower the efficiency of power denial strategies of Death wizards. Not sure if we need to compensate them for that or not, as complete disabling of power income was a bit on the strong end to begin with.

Do note these changes should be immediately followed by an overhaul of spell research costs, as calculated in the linked thread, otherwise the additional power and research would make it too easy to advance in research tiers.

[Kaiku]

Note that I've only played with power on fair (huge land and rest fair, usually) which I think is relevant, so yes, for much of the early game all my points have to go into mana, until I've cleared some lairs at least, but that's quite a bit farther away. That doesn't leave many options like investing in research in early game, as I won't be able to cast anything to take those lairs.

So I like where this is going. But since the changes will be quite massive I have no idea how it'll turn out so I'll have to wait and see.

Ships are a small part of the game yet have 3 buildings, which doesn't feel proportional. Shipyard is also a single turn build, so it probably wouldn't matter if it went away.

[Seravy]

A few possible names for the new building :
Ivory Tower
Crystal tower
Mage's Guild
Witch's Guild
Wizardry Shop
???

[Kaiku]

I do still think an option might be to just give Shrine and Parthenon a few extra points so together they give as much as the new building would. It'll serve the same purpose. Yes, those builds also serve different purposes, but I don't see why that would matter. They already give (negligible) power as well, so they're multi purpose already.

Not that I believe there's anything wrong with replacing Shipyard. Just don't think it necessarily has to be a new building. A new, essential building would also be competing with early units, again.

[Seravy]

The wrong with shrine and parthenon is the cost. It includes unrest reduction and unlocking shaman/priests in the price. The other thing wrong is it gets boosted by Dark Ritual and Cult Leader and we don't want that to happen on the basic power building.

[Seravy]

   

This is the new building, I'm still trying to figure out how to call it.