Probability of heroes or artifacts sell should be higher and lairs difficulty

[GMBarak]

Hi,

I would like to express my opinion that the probability of heroes offer to join you and artifacts offered to be sold to you should be 150%-200% higher across the board for everyone. there were games where I waited a number of years after July 1502 to get a hero offer to join me. and the chance of an artifact offered to be sold to you in the first 10 years of the games even though you have enough money is about once every 2-3 games and most of the times it's a crappy one.
even when I got the charismatic trait and high fame there still wasn't hardly any artifact offered to be sold to me.
I also saw posts of people who picked the charismatic trait from the start of the game and complained that hardly any hero offered to join them although they had enough funds.

on another note, I had the chance to play many games of Caster of Magic in the last months. and I think there should be tougher nodes guardians with better rewards.
better rewards means:

1. Always grant 1 good artifact instead of 2 or 3 crappy ones that would be probably immediately thrown away. 
2. reduce probability of mana/gold reward from nodes and it should be twice or 150% the current amount, that is equal to node budget and not half of it.
3. increase the chance of books/retorts.

I am aware of the "treasure impact" feature, but what I am talking about is an opposite feature to "easy lairs" something like "hard lairs" = 150% to 200% difficulty of lairs with about the same impact on rewards.

Thanks!

[muxecoid2]

Unlike in vanilla famous or raw fame do not increase chance of hero offer. Charismatic reduces the cost and helps with diplomacy. I usually can get a couple of hero offers by year 4. If you absolutely need heroes and artifacts early go for artificer, sage master and runemaster.

Gold and mana rewards are welcome in early game when you still have lots of stuff left to buy and invest in casting skill.

On what difficulty do you usually play?

Reliable good artifacts from stronger lairs would shift the balance towards rushing an army that can take a lair which is not necessarily a good thing.

[GMBarak]

Unlike in vanilla famous or raw fame do not increase chance of hero offer. Charismatic reduces the cost and helps with diplomacy. I usually can get a couple of hero offers by year 4. If you absolutely need heroes and artifacts early go for artificer, sage master and runemaster.

I also sometimes get two hero offers until year 4 but sometimes I don't even get a single hero offering... and that's where the problem is.

Gold and mana rewards are welcome in early game when you still have lots of stuff left to buy and invest in casting skill.

Yes, but still either in later or early game, Nature/Death/Sorcery book which you can find will never be worth 400 gold. I will gladly pay for it about 4000 gold even in early game if I had the $$. so money/mana is still a very bad treasure to find. increasing the amount of gold or decreasing the chance of getting a "bad" treasure like gold/mana might make it more fair IMO.

Sometimes when I get gold, I feel like the monkey who got the cucumber in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

On what difficulty do you usually play?

Currently I win in expert and trying to win in Master...

Reliable good artifacts from stronger lairs would shift the balance towards rushing an army that can take a lair which is not necessarily a good thing.

Not if you increase the lair strength so that you can take it only after many years from the beginning of the game. you will need to invest a lot of effort into getting it. which might not be worth it in current treasure settings.
Also offering more artifact sales to the player makes the game more interesting. it makes you think of strategies of how to take advantage of the resources you have.

Thanks!

[JustOneMoreTurn]

I tried changes (and cheats) that gave me sooner/better heroes and better items, but that totally spoiled the game. I'm presently playing with heroes modded to be too weak to bother with, and the summon and item creation spells disabled ... and enjoying the game more. It's sad to lose the fun of getting heroes and items, but I find them just too game-breaking. Of course, tastes differ, so more options to adjust such parts of the game are good.

I do agree that choosing a hero-based strategy and getting screwed by the random generator is not fun, so a bias for famous or Charismatic is reasonable, or even a hard-coded "if you don't get one by turn x, provide one".

[GMBarak]

I tried changes (and cheats) that gave me sooner/better heroes and better items, but that totally spoiled the game.  I'm presently playing with heroes modded to be too weak to bother with, and the summon and item creation spells disabled ... and enjoying the game more.  It's sad to lose the fun of getting heroes and items, but I find them just too game-breaking.  Of course, tastes differ, so more options to adjust such parts of the game are good.

I do agree that choosing a hero-based strategy and getting screwed by the random generator is not fun, so a bias for famous or Charismatic is reasonable, or even a hard-coded "if you don't get one by turn x, provide one".

Well if you like it that way, that is great, I usually play on Huge maps with 13 wizards, having to micro-manage so many single units will make the game more like work and less like fun for me. The challenge for me in my games is to reach a superior position when I know I won and the rest is technical, at that point I stop playing. but reaching this position in the hardest difficulties is the challenge and fun for me.  

I guess that playing with a hero based strategy, since high fame does not improve the chance of getting heroes, which are low in the first place, the best option for me will be to rush the Summon Hero spell/ spell power/mana and not rely on gold/fame brining me good heroes.

[jhsidi]

I'm not sure why Famous and Charismatic remain in game as they are -- I'm sure a debate was probably had in the past -- but I can't imagine that experienced players would pick either. They're terrible for the purpose of adding mercs / heroes to the game. The basic problem is having two layers of RNG. If layer 1 is unlucky, you get no offers. If layer 1 is lucky and you get an offer, it may be for something terrible: nomad spearmen mercenaries, or the Barbarian or Dwarf as a hero offer. Compounding on that, there's no summoning circle equivalent, so whatever you get pops up at your capital and may be 10-20 turns away from the action.

Although this system has remained unchanged for a very long time, one thing has changed -- heroes frequently pop up in treasure, and you can get ANY hero (not champions) from treasure. If you want to use heroes early on, I'd say go with a treasure hunting setup such as early sprites, apprentices, horsebowmen, etc.

As for artifact offers, I can't think of a single time I've ever wanted to buy what was being sold. Not sure I'd want to see more frequent offers regardless. Treasure does drop quite a lot, and so do enemy heroes. Usually my problem is not having enough storage slots for all the useful stuff.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Yes, storage slot limits are a problem. Depending on playstyle, you can fill up the slots before acquiring a hero. Quite annoying. If changing the graphic interface for more slots is too much work, maybe allow items to stack off-screen? When a new item is dropped onto the left-most slot, all items shift right, with the right-most disappearing until something is moved to a hero or cashed.

One idea regarding heroes that I've had frequently while playing, is an option to allow only one hero per stack. I keep trying to do that as a private rule, but the temptation remains, since each combat is an opportunity to add experience.

GMBarack: maybe I'll try a game based on only using heroes for attacking lairs or cities (and only one hero per stack). That might be interesting.

[muxecoid2]

I should stop playing on phantasm to get a taste of your problems. I feel famous charismatic can be good on race like klackon that lacks own ranged units and does not want to control foreign cities.

[GMBarak]

I should stop playing on phantasm to get a taste of your problems. I feel famous charismatic can be good on race like klackon that lacks own ranged units and does not want to control foreign cities.

I still don't understand how you guys consistently win in Phantasm, I use all the tricks up my sleeve and all the methods you call them overpowered and cheesy and still find it hard to win in Expert and very hard to win in Master. I never reload and I play in a huge map with 13 wizards, high elves, 4 life books, 5 sorcery arch mage, artificer and Astrologer. I get create artifact by mid of year 1508. and from the start of the game I go all out for all the lairs and nodes instead of enemy cities, because there are treasures there you cannot find anywhere else like books, artifacts you can't create yourself and retorts. if you will not get them quickly one of the opponent PC will get them before you, so I don't see any better strategy.

[jhsidi]

I believe the absolute optimal strategy is to focus on conquering cities with cheap, reproducible units (like muxe's Klackons) and/or invulnerable ones (e.g. regenerating units). Cities provide far more resources than a treasure strategy even if you have astrologer and guardian spirit. However... a lot of people don't find that strategy to be enjoyable. Personally the highest difficulty I can win at with a more treasure oriented strategy is Lunatic, and that's only with specific spell schools / retorts that I know work.

Artificer may be your blocker here. Even with artificer, making artifacts is extremely time intensive. Every turn you're making an item, you're not casting a spell that could provide immediate benefit. If you'd swapped that artificer pick for tactician, for example, you get the benefit of a nice artifact to all heroes plus a handy +1 defense for all your units, and never spend a single turn casting anything.

At high difficulty levels, by 1508, a lot of times, the game is on the verge of being "won" in the sense of being able to look ahead and see that soon nobody will be able to fight you off. That requires a focus on early momentum, which is usually not something you can pull off with a pick like artificer.