Retorts and books you can find in a given game

[Seravy]

Seravy, are you sure this score modifier/option would require a -90% score penalty? Just how easy is it for a human player to assault most wizard fortresses on average? Remember that most of us aren't as skilled at gaming the system as Sapher...

It's not so much that it's easy, more like, you leave them there and other AI's also can't do it so you can be sure they don't beat you to it.
So you come back 50 turns later with a big stack of storm giants or great drakes and get the free book without much effort.
Actually, even if the AI was good at banishing other wizards, you could still monopolize them by blocking the 8 tiles around the fortress.

It's been a few versions since I played so maybe things have improved now days but I must admit the reason I stopped playing CoM2 was because I couldn't play how I enjoy playing MoM which is to gear my starting Wizard for treasure hunting and then build him up through treasure rewards. I must have cleared out like 100 lairs on a ginormous map and didn't get a single spell book or retort, I couldn't believe it, not even 1. I get that it messes up balancing but meh that's how I always enjoyed playing MoM. Fair or not, 'to better oneself' in stats a abilities until the point where all AI enemies fall easily at your knees is kind of the basis of every RPG adventure game out there (eg whether it be Might & Magic or Elder Scrolls you start the game barely able to kill a rat and by the end of the game your almost one shot blasting dragons out of the sky lol). MoM is obviously not a RPG adventure game but by almost totally removing Wizard enhancement rewards from treasure hunting it kills a lot of the RPG aspect area that made the original so much fun, and instead makes it feel more like a like straight up pure strategy Civ like game instead.

You are right but this is actually a strategy 4x (civ) game at its core. Levels and gaining power like RPGs is there but isn't meant to be the primary genre. But no worries, modding.ini can solve your problem already.
Maybe later we can add even more modding features to strengthen the RPG genre mechanics, like stronger level up bonus on heroes and similar.

[Anskiy]

It's not so much that it's easy, more like, you leave them there and other AI's also can't do it so you can be sure they don't beat you to it.
So you come back 50 turns later with a big stack of storm giants or great drakes and get the free book without much effort.
Actually, even if the AI was good at banishing other wizards, you could still monopolize them by blocking the 8 tiles around the fortress.

I'm not convinced this is the case. From my experience, by the time you can assemble this power stack of rare/very rare summons(and are not called Sapher) the game narrows down to 6-8 wizards automatically, so the abuse potential is largely gone except for already heavily weakened wizards. I think the blocking thing could also be reasonably solved so long as you aren't in an alliance with the AI, but I don't know how you coded this game's AI so I'll leave that upto you.

[jhsidi]

There's an extra implication being made here, though: you're more or less stating that treasure hunting somehow breaks the 4X / strategy part of the game. All this silliness with -90% score modifiers shows just how game breaking you think treasure hunting is.

It's not. If those of us who are treasure hunters really wanted to win the game as fast as possible, we... wouldn't be treasure hunters. We'd play for conquest. All the rewards from dungeons can be outshone by the reward of having another 10 or 20 or 50 cities.

Blake00's scenario of defeating 100 lairs and not getting the treasure he's interested in has a flipside: that's a bunch of time and resources he didn't spend on conquest. He's not somehow miraculously beating the game by winning all those lairs. He's probably closer to losing it.

And yes, Sapher exists. Who cares. He's using bizarre, overtuned strategies. You could do the same thing for conquest by exploiting AI.

What these discussions always get down to is this:

Maybe half the playerbase enjoys treasure hunting and wants to pursue it as their game strategy. However, the other half doesn't understand why anyone would feel that way and thinks that any suggestion on how to improve that side of the game is some sort of desperate attempt to break the game for their benefit.

Which I guess is fine. If Seravy hates treasure hunting, well, he's really doing his for his own passion so that's fine. But this stuff with -90% score modifier is like additionally telling those players that they're idiots or trying to cheat. That's not what it's about, we're looking for just as much of a balanced challenge as anyone else.

[zitro1987]

Yes, the score modifiers generally rub me off the wrong way, as if a different rule not optimized for AI deserves having your expert game give you easy-normal scores or worse. Even land size tweaks were absurdly punishing in cost modifiers and the tree of knowledge change honestly doesn’t feel like it hurts the AI much, if at all, deserving maybe 0.8X or 0.9X

A rule change that is not far different from changing mineral frequency or node power shouldn’t make you feel like you played on easy. Maybe a bunch of combined could be like playing on 1 or even 2 difficulties below, and should be treated as such

[Seravy]

you're more or less stating that treasure hunting somehow breaks the 4X / strategy part of the game

It kinda does, depending on what you can find.
I still remember the first (and last) time I was playing Civ 4 I found two free settlers. I takes 50 turns to build one, so I basically advanced my progress by 100 turns for free and that was enough to make me 3 times more powerful than any player.

But here is the thing, in MoM/CoM, you don't have one universal skill tree. Instead you get to learn from one, maybe two, if you seriously handicap yourself, three realms. And that's the core game mechanic.
Yes, we can give everyone more books but the game's "still tree" wasn't designed for that and the available "techs" in each are on a power level to be game-winning on their own, but generally have some sort of weakness. So you look at an opponent and "Oh, he plays Life magic, so his weaknesses are poor summoning, no combat damage spells, and weakness to dispelling." or "He plays Death so raising my resistance can counter them and their units suffer from low resistance as well.". Now if the opponent have two realms that does negate some weaknesses but you can still exploit it to some extent. Life+Death wizard? They are still weak to dispelling, and they still have no good combat options if your army has high resistance, but they are no longer bad at summoning or have low resistance on their side.
Three realms will generally no longer have any weakness other than "not enough endgame spells due to low book count, or a weak early game due to no retorts". But find extra books and 3 realms just has no weakness you can plan a strategy against. They just win and not much you can do about it other than brute force and higher numbers on your side.

This is by design and yes, finding more than an average of 1-2 extra picks per game will ruin this design.
I never once said treasure hunting in general breaks the game in geneal. Finding gold, mana, heroes, vials, items, and other stuff generally does not break the game as these are not resources that are scarce by design. Books and retorts on the other hand are.

By the way about the "doesn't like treasure hunting" part, if that was true, the Sprites unit wouldn't exist. It's sole purpose is treasure hunting and lair generation has actually been fine tuned several times to have a fair chance of generating lairs and nodes they can conquer, without going overboard too often. Treasure hunting strategies exist and are still pretty good, some even top tier.

So one final time.
I'm not against treasure hunting.
I'm against GIVING EXTRA BOOKS AND RETORTS TO PLAYERS.
Those are designed to be a limited, scarce resource you can't reliably obtain more of.
They are the lucky jackpot in treasure hunting, nothing more.


...okay I think I won't waste more time on this.
From now on I'll just quote my own response from the second post in the thread as I can't possibly word that any better.

Not getting too many books and retorts too consistently is intentional design to make character creation choices more relevant.

[Anskiy]

Well hopefully it will be possible for us to implement the idea of fortresses giving books upon banishment/defeat as an option still, even if you clearly disagree with that design.

[massone]

I propose the following compromise ideas:

1. Introduce a new retort that costs 2 picks, called "Treasure Hunter", with this effect: when scouting lairs, you will know if there's a book/retort inside. This retort is mutually exclusive with all other retorts, and you are not allowed to find Astrologer or any of the 2-pick retorts.
2. When banishing each wizard for the first time: 70% chance of it being a spell of your owned book OR you get nothing if you don't share books. 20% chance to learn a Common spell from a realm you don't have. 7% chance to learn Uncommon. 2% to learn Rare. 1% to get a book they own.

[Blake00]

You are right but this is actually a strategy 4x (civ) game at its core. Levels and gaining power like RPGs is there but isn't meant to be the primary genre. But no worries, modding.ini can solve your problem already.
Maybe later we can add even more modding features to strengthen the RPG genre mechanics, like stronger level up bonus on heroes and similar.

That's good to know as yeah unfortunately all the cool modding ini stuff came along just after I stopped haha. So I'll have to look more into that when I return to the game one day. Anskiy gave me a ini file a while back that boosted tower guards and treasure budgets etc so if there's now a way to mod with the chances/odds of getting spells and retorts from lairs then that'd be awesome.

[zuzzu]

I propose the following compromise ideas:

1. Introduce a new retort that costs 2 picks, called "Treasure Hunter", with this effect: when scouting lairs, you will know if there's a book/retort inside. This retort is mutually exclusive with all other retorts, and you are not allowed to find Astrologer or any of the 2-pick retorts.
2. When banishing each wizard for the first time: 70% chance of it being a spell of your owned book OR you get nothing if you don't share books. 20% chance to learn a Common spell from a realm you don't have. 7% chance to learn Uncommon. 2% to learn Rare. 1% to get a book they own.

Why exclusive? It costs 2 picks, it allows you to find books/retorts when banishing wizards and clearing lairs/nodes, with a chance that doesn't kill game balance (e.g. costing 2 picks, it should allow you to get 1-3 books and 1-3 picks over the course of a well managed game, but it will give you a starting handicap because you will have 2 less picks to start with).

[massone]

I propose the following compromise ideas:

1. Introduce a new retort that costs 2 picks, called "Treasure Hunter", with this effect: when scouting lairs, you will know if there's a book/retort inside. This retort is mutually exclusive with all other retorts, and you are not allowed to find Astrologer or any of the 2-pick retorts.
2. When banishing each wizard for the first time: 70% chance of it being a spell of your owned book OR you get nothing if you don't share books. 20% chance to learn a Common spell from a realm you don't have. 7% chance to learn Uncommon. 2% to learn Rare. 1% to get a book they own.

Why exclusive? It costs 2 picks, it allows you to find books/retorts when banishing wizards and clearing lairs/nodes, with a chance that doesn't kill game balance (e.g. costing 2 picks, it should allow you to get 1-3 books and 1-3 picks over the course of a well managed game, but it will give you a starting handicap because you will have 2 less picks to start with).

Exclusive at the time of Wizard build selection, so that you cannot have both good retorts selected (which provide strong early game advantages), and the potential to find a lot more retorts. The retort would be an obvious pick every game for every build, if by taking it you can get at least 3 picks more (which you almost certainly will), which is why it needs a more severe restriction--like not having access to any other retort until you find them, which would severely hamper early game in exchange for maximum late game potential.

It would be far too easy to rush the easy lairs that have retort/books in the first 2 years if you knew where they were, so there is barely any handicap from costing 2 picks. After build selection, in-game you can find other retorts, except Astrologer and the 2-pick retorts, the first because it's synergy with Treasure Hunter is too strong, and the latter because getting just 1 of them means TH has paid itself back, and it would be too good if it happened early game.

Alternatively, it could cost 4 picks instead of 2, and only mutually exclusive with Astrologer and Charismatic (the former because synergy too strong, and the latter because you should not be able to safely hunt treasure without the threat of war).