Myrran retort

[Seravy]

To quote myself from the recent dwarf testing post :

For an Arcanus wizard, you get to pick from 14 races, and have 294 different ways to spend those 2 picks, totaling 4416 different possibilities.

For Myrran, you get 5 races, and have 1 different way to spend the 2 picks : You pick Myrran from it. So 5 possibilities total. The difference? 4416/5 = 883. There is exactly 883 times less diversity in wizard generation if playing Myrran. Not including additional sub-choices opened by picks such as guaranteed spells, that is, which probably further increase this gap by a factor of 10. Even if good Myrran strategies exist, that sort of loss on diversity is a problem because it's too unfun. To quote a friend " I don't play Myrran, I don't have enough picks that way." and that was before the overhaul of the book system.

While what the retort offers is certainly worth the 2 picks, it making it impossible to play 95% of the strategies in the game is definitely not the right design. The current spellbooks system is very tight on the picks - the "last two" picks are the most valuable in most cases - either by giving you the guaranteed spell, or simply by higher books giving you more spells or letting you play books+retorts instead of just books.

For example, if Myrran, you can't play most Artificer strategies - you don't have enough books picks to make the items! You also can't play any dual realm strategy that is based on 1 guaranteed rare of each realm, or even uncommon if you want to have any retorts and I could continue the list.

[Nelphine]

Arcanus has 9 races not 14.

Myrran you do usually have to pick one realm, and then use other realms as extra. But that still let's you get your guaranteed spells from your main realm, and then take enough books in a second realm to .. Find them in treasure.

Myrror has far better treasure than arcanus. And much more of it is not taken by the AI. And you only face 2 AI instead of 3.

You should NOT have as many choices on myrror as on arcanus - but you still have hundreds,aybe thousands of choices.

They're different.

You have far stronger city units - you need to use them (unlike arcanus where you can rely totally on summons). You have fewer enemies and better treasure - you need to use that.

You can't get as many guaranteed options - so you need to be more flexible, especially since you'll get treasure that will be completely random.

Your artificer build may not start out as strong bit you'll usually end up with 3-6 extra picks from treasure. Which means you have far more potential as long as you're adaptable.

Its a completely different set of strategies.

[Arnuz]

On myrran otoh you get lots of books... Not that I disagree mind you. It's just something to consider. Personally I wouldn't consider lack of guaranteed spells an issue in myrran, it forces you to be creative and adaptive, but I wouldn't be too annoyed at getting more choice at all.

[Nelphine]

Your enemy gets prayer, you don't? Make sure you DO use whatever you get. Be prepared for more possible playstyles. Its harder to learn, but once you do, its easier to play.
I STILL consider myrran to be the way to go if you want an easier game even with the guaranteed second opponent.

[Seravy]

Arcanus has 9 races not 14.

True, my mistake.
So it's not 880 something then, only 500 something plus the spell picks which is still a lot.

Yes, playing 6+2 books is an option but that's not a dual realm wizard. And while extra books are a thing, they have a fairly low chance to be from that "+2" realm.

You are literally saying "you can't play dual realms on Myrror and you can't play non-race-specific strategies either". If that's not a huge alarm sign that it's unfun, nothing is.
Again, my problem is not balance - no problems there and yes, Myrran is probably easier to play and win.

Anyway, answer me these :

1. If I want to play a dry rich land economy nature/life dwarf game, to take advantage of my main race strength - as you say I'm supposed to do that, right? - double mineral from desert crystals and gems, double taxes from population, but you need to overcome the poor max pop of desert areas - so if I want this strategy, what do I pick?
2. If I want to play a raise volcano+transmute ore creation strategy, as it's a unique, fun thing you can only expect to work with Dwarves (otherwise it's simply not worth it even for low difficulty), what do I pick? Being aware this is not exactly a top tier strategy, let's say I want to beat Expert at a 50-80% chance using it. I'm fine at not using it at all on Master and above.

[Nelphine]

I'm going to answer 2 first as its easier: you don't waste time with transmute. You raise more volcanoes. I did a mono chaos game like that and raised ~250 volcanoes before I got a spell I preferred to cast instead of that overland. And not even on top of each other - do it on every tundra, swamp, and desert you can find. Get tons of power, and new cities to build.

Number 1: you're a dwarf. You don't give a damn about population. You build a city so that your 1 population hamlet produces 100 good from gems and gold mines. Why do you care if you get another 15 gold from taxes or not? You only need population in cities where you are going to build troops, which should never need to be the majority of your cities. And even on dry games you can find a few spots with good population, ad mithril or adamantium.

[Nelphine]

Also: at least 2 (barbarian and lizardmen), possibly more arcanus races are viable on myrror. So you have slightly more than the 5 choices there.

[Seravy]

I'm going to answer 2 first as its easier: you don't waste time with transmute. You raise more volcanoes. I did a mono chaos game like that and raised ~250 volcanoes before I got a spell I preferred to cast instead of that overland. And not even on top of each other - do it on every tundra, swamp, and desert you can find. Get tons of power, and new cities to build.

The idea behind that is to keep going with volcanoes until you get a tier 2 ore of any type, then transmute it into crysx crystal for a +30 power source. Tier 1 ores if they appear can be turned into quork crystals for 15 power as well tho at the cost of transmute that might not always be worth it. Raise Volcano doesn't produce crystals directly, only gold and silver which is not bad but you still need transmute to convert coal/iron/mithril/adamant into those unless they appear in your military centers.

You build a city so that your 1 population hamlet

Without spells, that amazing desert location will never turn into that hamlet. I have a pop 6 spot in the current game (which is high for a middle-of-desert location) and it hasn't grown into a hamlet in like 50 turns and even went down to 1 house once.

Why do you care if you get another 15 gold from taxes or not?

Dwarves pay double taxes, so we are talking about 5 gold per unit of population, before gold bonus modifiers. With roads, that's almost 9 gold per population. Assuming SoL helps you to get 20 extra population by casting it on, say, 4 cities, that's 180 extra gold for you per turn. Without the production bonus. Those extra people will also build trade goods for you (unless you need troops in which case building them faster is a huge benefit by itself), increasing your gains to ~12 gold per population. (And these are without prosperity and inspirations both of which are a real possibility to have.)
This ignores the fact that casting it on an outpost helps it grow into a city way faster so your minerals also come into effect 10+ turns earlier, netting you another 1000+ gold once.
This is the same for any kind of terrain, in fact the better the more you can benefit as it means you're doubling a higher base growth value. On the other hand is you're doubling a smaller growth rate, you get fewer people, but you'll be ahead of your natural size for a much longer period of time, so in this case it's still very beneficial. SoL is good, regardless of you terrain/growth rate, unless you are already near the max pop, but with Nature spells to improve terrain, you won't be for a long while.

[Nelphine]

Right, but that's all bonus. Why should you get to have your cake and eat it to? You can't get that with any arcanus race. You take some picks to get the big racial boost but you give up the picks to get the spells to do the enhancers. That is the very definition of choice and trade off. You get one or the other.

[Seravy]

There is no "trade off" in core elements of a strategy. You either get them all or don't play that strategy.
I still remember the days before guaranteed spells when Hadriex had to play "Flying warships" without the Flight spell. I rather not regress back into that state of the game.

Picking Warlord on top, that would be a bonus. Picking Archmage and Astrologer, those would be extras as well. Prayer? Bonus. But Stream of Life and Change Terrain are the cores of the strategy as is Gaea's Blessing. Can't pick them, can't play it.

Like this current game. I'm winning, but I'm not playing the strategy I wanted. I'm wasting time on something I didn't choose to play. If this wasn't a meaningful game to see how dwarves do against draconians and sorcery wizards (yes there are an abundance of those again), I'd have quit and restarted because I'm not playing the damn game I wanted to play.

Yes, adapting to the situation is important but the way most people adapt to "I wanted to play this but got that" is to quit and start over because people play games to have fun.

To use your example, I go to the cake shop to eat a strawberry cake.
"Sorry, we don't sell strawberry cakes. You can buy this cake box that has a 40% chance of having a strawberry cake in it and 60% chance of having a chocolate cake, or that other one with 30% strawberry and 70% peach".
Ok, yeah, sure, give me one. Ehh peach. I can't eat that what a waste of money. No, I'm not buying another box, could you tell me where the nearest other cake shop is?

You can word it like "the strawberry cake is a bonus" but I'll still go to another cake shop if I don't have a 100% chance of getting it if I came for that.

You can't get that with any arcanus race.

Only because there is no Arcanus race with "pays increased taxes and receives double from minerals". We could have one if it had no production bonus or different units.

My point is, it might be worth 2 picks to play Myrran as the whole package, but you generally only need a tiny fraction of it for your particular strategy. For example the invisible unit from Dark Elves or the mineral bonus from dwarves. The rest of the benefits you don't care about but what you do care, you can't get because of them.

Meh whatever. If I can't have fun playing Myrran, I won't play it. Guess that means no more dwarf or draconian testing after this game. I hate playing low books and I'm tired of mono-realms, played those way too many times.