Retort balance, hopefully last time

[Seravy]

Considered that but we shouldn't.

-Conjurer already sees above average use.
-Conjurer helps your early game.
-You can guarantee having the common, uncommon and even rare creature you want to summon. Unlike combat spells or global enchantments, in case of creatures, you only need one of each tier, not the full set.
-In fact having the full set can be a disadvantage as summons compete with each other for your overland casting skill.
-Conjurer only costs 1 pick. Getting 10 books in your realm and still adding another retort is reasonably doable. For the other two, the cost of 2 meant you can't play other retorts (not even Myrran) if you want all spells.

btw I might as well mention it, the reroll percentage ended up being 75%, and I used the same for both Runemaster and Channeller. The number of high rarity combat spells and global enchantments is actually pretty similar.

[Bahgtru]

I don't like anything that reduces diversity. I see already too many games with focus magic nagas or cockatrices, it's just boring. I wouldn't do exclusionary rerolls. You never know when something unexpected comes up and proves to be winning.

Two posts that weren't answered:

Something that has always left me perplexed is the fact that skill is not affected by the same drawback: if a spell costs more to cast it costs more to cast, why should its mana cost be different from its casting cost?

I'd change that mechanic rather than range. Now THAT would make channeler desirable!

Charismatic has the same problem that majestic aura has: in-game events trump their effect completely. If you're stronger than an AI you don't need them, the AIs will accept all the deals after maybe a present or two, if you're weaker or have too many cities they won't accept your offers anyway. Or maybe I'm mistaken, but this is my feeling.

[Seravy]

Spellcasting ability is a way too critical part of the game to nerf it to 1/3 based on range.
You are wrong about charismatic, the effect is not that weak. It adds a flat +40 bonus to treaty offers you make which is usually enough to get treated as if you had the same strength as the AI when you are not, and stronger when you are equal . More importantly it halves all relation loss effects, so you can get away with a lot more than usual.

[Nelphine]

I have a feeling baghtru generally plays on lunatic, where things like AI strength, and human expansion, are maximized, and so even with the bonuses of charismatic, it's still hard to actually maintain peace, unless you have overwhelming superiority - which most lunatic strategies are designed to give you.

I'd definitely put that on luatic playstyle, not the retort.

[zitro1987]

Spellcasting ability is a way too critical part of the game to nerf it to 1/3 based on range.

I actually think Bahgtru has a really good idea. However, it needs to be a combination of bonuses and penalties, and the modifiers should not be extreme. 

I wouldn't mind seeing the following (each 0.5 is 15%) … (an alternative minor 10% per distance modifier would still work)
1X distance = 130% skill
1.5X distance = 115% skill
2X distance = 100% skill
2.5X distance= 85% skill
3X distance = 70% skill
4X distance (banished) = 55% skill

If 10% modifier:

1X distance = 120% skill
1.5X distance = 110% skill
2X distance = 100% skill
2.5X distance= 90% skill
3X distance = 80% skill
4X distance (banished) = 70% skill

Early in the game, it is frustrating how lackluster combat spells are when you can't cast more than a couple firebolts. This gives them more usage without being overkill and benefits when defending your main area. Having up to a 30% boost (might allow an extra life drain) would be exciting. It should also eliminate concerns of weak starting combat-based realms due to lack of skill. 

Eventually you will get out of your comfort zone, expanding out - the 100% modifier of 2X distance will become common.

Late in the game, combat skill gets so high to the point of redundancy. However! it might still benefit a player in combat to increase a seemingly infinite 250 skill to 300 skill when in the opposite plane or very far from capital because then you will only have 170 but can boost it to 210. You begin to feel a disadvantage, particularly if you go to opposite plan early on when you have 100 skill and you see yourself with just 70 combat skill and are close to AI capital (thus AI's 100 becomes 115 or even 130)

On an intuitive sense, this is as intuitive as it gets - the farther you are, the less a wizard can cast. However, with minor % modifiers, it shouldn't cause balance issues. But you may feel it when it allows you the possibility of an additional spell, or not being able to cast your flame strike twice, just being short a few points.

[Seravy]

Longer battles are generally won by whoever has the higher casting skill, so this would pretty much mean you can't win battles unless you had an overwhelming force and ended it early.
That is actually a good thing for offensive battles, but unacceptable when you're defending.
Basically it would make cities not in the 1-2x area impossible to defend - unless you can have garrisons vastly superior to incoming forces in which case you could just use them to attack and win the game.

I think having a different multiplier to MP and casting skill would be hard to understand and frustrating for players, too. Also, messing with casting skill is generally a bad idea, as it will result in situations like "I can cast 2 flame strikes so I can crush that stack. Wait, why am I 10 casting skill too short? Oh the enemy moved one tile sideways before I caught them and now we are at a higher range..." and that sucks. Providing enough mana crystals to never run into that sort of situation is something the player can do, and they can blame themselves for failing it. But the casting skill they would blame on the game and rightfully so, you can't expect players to count the number of tiles before every single battle.

[Nelphine]

Basically it would make cities not in the 1-2x area impossible to defend - unless you can have garrisons vastly superior to incoming forces in which case you could just use them to attack and win the game.

I actually see that as a good thing. The ai already has problems guarding a big empire compared to the human - so making it hard for the human to expand would be beneficial.


However I agree with the later point. It would suck when one tile made the difference. I don't know how to fix that.

So what if you make the range turn based, and based it on the formula that determines how many cities a human can have without causing diplomatic penalties.

Basically, as the game goes on, your range would increase until it covers your whole plane, though you might keep any bonuses much more limited if you even keep them.


Edit: you could make a pop up any time you are trying to initiate a combat Where'd you have a penalty, similar to the treaty breaking pop up, and you could use that 'optional rule' button from the hotkey discussion to allow the player to turn off these pop ups.

[zitro1987]

I also see the first point of difficulty/ease of defending being a bit difference based on distance.

I think a pop-up indicating combat skill when u attack may be fine, but I'm not sure if it could be intrusive.

[Seravy]

Other problems I see with it :

-It encourages razing which we want to avoid
-It's redundant - paying higher mana already makes holding far away cities difficult
-It's overly harsh - you can't expand even if you have the resources to do it in the old system (can afford paying the 3x mp). Skill isn't linear so raising it to overcome any penalties is not very viable
-Bad for the AI as well - they stand no chance at winning if they attack cities in your territory where they get the skill penalty.

[Nelphine]

But it does two things that are very important.

It makes the myrran AI much more difficult to conquer, while also making it harder for the myrran AI to invade. The second part can be problematical but it opens up other options if we ever want to. This is particularly important when the human is myrran and naturally has an advantage over the final ai.

Second, it makes rush strategies harder to win, as they universally rely on fortress strikes, where the AI always has the bonus. This makes longer term strategies stronger, as the range is based on time - which in turn also affects the AI, which means in longer games, your last point that it will hurt the AI, won't be true. (It will be for the myrran though, see above.)


Please note, I don't think there cancel your concerns - but I think they are HUGE benefits and should be carefully weighed against those concerns. I think it does have the potential to overall better the game, even if it has drawbacks.