Caster of Magic II Game balance brainstorming.

[Seravy]

Yes, as far as I remember, reaching 12 books gives you all 44 spells.
You also get the same cost and research discount for each book gained above 8.

[namad]

Having book 9 be a lot worse than book 10 and imo definitely worse than book 8, sounded bad, when I thought the limit on books was still 10, but if you take 11/12 books that changes things. Some book has to suck if you can have 11/12 books. When I thought the cap on books was still 10, there was no need for any of the books to suck because there was plenty of reward to spread around just 10. That makes more sense to me now though. Still probably won't take a 9th book over a retort, but at least I understand better why you had to pick a book to be the worst book or whatnot.

[Seravy]

You can't take 11/12 books. You can only find them in treasure.

But yes, some books have to be worse than others unfortunately.

Do we have a reason for the 8th book to contain the second guaranteed rare? Maybe that could be moved to book 9?
Although even at book 8 you have 8 out of 12 rares so the guarantee isn't particularly important, you get the spell without it 2/3 of the time.

In the DOS version the main perk for book 9 was getting all the rares but there are more rares now so that's been pushed to the 10th book.

The only really good thing in book 9 is the cost discounts and the second guaranteed very rare.

[namad]

You can't take 11/12 books. You can only find them in treasure.

But yes, some books have to be worse than others unfortunately.

Do we have a reason for the 8th book to contain the second guaranteed rare? Maybe that could be moved to book 9?
Although even at book 8 you have 8 out of 12 rares so the guarantee isn't particularly important, you get the spell without it 2/3 of the time.

In the DOS version the main perk for book 9 was getting all the rares but there are more rares now so that's been pushed to the 10th book.

The only really good thing in book 9 is the cost discounts and the second guaranteed very rare.

If you're actually asking, one thing I'd look at is actually the 10th book. The 10th book gives 4 spells and the exact same discount as the 9th book. The 9th book is half the spells and the same exact discount. So, for me at least, a fix that's almost a tautological improvement would be to move from 2spells/4spells to 3spells/3spells. In other words, why not just move the 10th rare to the 9th book?

Specifically your question about the 2nd guaranteed rare? I'd say 1 guaranteed rare is very valuable, but the 2nd? hardly matters (because by that point in the chart you have almost all the rares anyways). Also, looking at the CoM1, the 9th book has all rare spells (all ten). Now that 10 isn't all anymore (there are 12)... I'm not sure why the 9th book had to lose a spell? Why not let the 9th book keep it's 10th rare? 10 rares in CoM2 are "worse" than 10 rares in CoM1, simply because in CoM2 you suddenly have to worry about which spell you'll randomly miss out on.

That's just me though, and basing it on some sort of sense of "fairness" where I want all the books to be as "equal" as possible. I'm sure from your 100s or 1000s of games of playtesting maybe you've discovered that making the 9th book bad improves the game. That could easily be true.

Maybe making the 9th book a bit of a worse book helps balance the ai, and the human player can just wisely avoid picking exactly 9 books very often in their custom designs.

[Seravy]

"all books need to be equal" is somewhat wrong.
You only have 12 picks.

At 10 books you only have 2 left for retorts or other realms. That's very limited.
At 9 books, you have 3 which is 50% more.

So book 10 being better than 9 is definitely intended, but maybe the difference is too much.

Looking at my data tables from when this was discussed, it seems this version was picked because it matches closely what you get with the same amount of books in two realms most on every amount of book.

In particular with 4+5 books you get the same amount of rares as you do with 9 books and the difference in other tiers also doesn't exceed 1.

[namad]

4+5 gives you 7 starting spells instead of 5 as well as double the trading access. However you are right that 11+9+9+7=10+10+9+7 You're also right, that it makes sense for ten to be better than 9. Largely because of stuff like warlord/archmage/myrran (aka the retorts I personally like, heh).

[zitro1987]

what if jackals require war college and fighters guild instead?

This way Gnolls, a ‘rush’ oriented race, can bypass the tree of knowledge requirement to get their top unit, giving a unique ‘rush’ opportunity. War college experience bonus  is kind of essential for jackals anyways.

If a player wants to rush a top tier unit, they now can with gnolls (with some high building cost requirements)

[JustOneMoreTurn]

If you want to have jackals require different buildings, just edit units.ini for that.

[massone]

The only really good thing in book 9 is the cost discounts and the second guaranteed very rare.

I rarely play single realm strategies, but the second guaranteed very rare is potentially extremely powerful in some realms now that there are so more in the list. Not only because some spells are much better than others, but also because some strategies simply depend greatly on having access to particular Very Rare spells in the late game.

[Intaka]

Very cool book count discussion. I didn't know the purpose behind 2 spells @ 9 books vs 4 spells @ 10 books was based on the opportunity cost of retorts and total spellcount.

Learn something new I guess. I'm all about the why.