Caster of Magic II Game balance brainstorming.

[Seravy]

So... ditch the mechanic that doesn't work. Neutral cities can generate stacks according to a budget that scales by time. Simple, predictable and already well understood. It would also be obvious to players.

What about the building requirements? Players would say the neutrals are cheating if they spawn a unit they cannot build in the city. However if players can get those buildings early by conquering the neutral that isn't good for balance either.
Basically, it's always easier to fight the same unit under neutral control than under the human player's control so no matter what we do, if the building requirements are satisfied then the player will get a better reward than what they had to fight against (same unit but they use it much much better than a neutral can.)
...well I guess it's not an issue with Neutrals not getting "tree of Knowledge" units but it used to before then because those units win the game if available early.
That said, we need to then change neutral production output and building selection to teach the neutral "player" to actually build the military buildings, possibly based on a detailed table of which building starts to get built in which game year or something.

That would prevent the recurring problem I'm finding of finding neutrals in the first 10-20 turns with almost nothing guarding them.

You do? I've significantly buffed how well defended neutral cities are in CoM I and this uses the same system.
This is the table per race and population size, the city gets the buildings in the first X+1 columns where X is its population :

(0,0,Bsmithy,0,BShrine,BStables,0,BBarracks,0,BWarcollege,0),
(0,0,Bsmithy,BBuilderhall,0,BParthenon,BFighterGuild,BLibrary,BalchemistGuild,0,0),
(0,0,Bsmithy,0,BStables,BMagicMarket,BFighterGuild,BBarracks,BWizardsGuild,0,0),
(0,0,Bsmithy,0,BSawmill,BShrine,BParthenon,BMagicMarket,BWizardsguild,0,BBarracks),
(0,BSmithy,BBuilderhall,BUniversity,0,BFighterguild,0,Blibrary,BAlchemistguild,0,BBarracks),
(0,0,Bsmithy,BLibrary,BFighterguild,BStables,Balchemistguild,0,BBarracks,0,BWarcollege),
(0,0,Bsmithy,0,BShrine,0,0,BMagicMarket,BWizardsguild,0,0),
(0,BLibrary,BSmithy,BStables,BSawmill,BForesterGuild,BAlchemistguild,0,BBarracks,BMagicMarket,BWizardsGuild),
(0,0,BSmithy,BBuilderhall,BStables,BParthenon,BBarracks,BFighterGuild,BWarCollege,BLibrary,BAlchemistguild),
(0,0,BSmithy,0,BFighterguild,0,BBarracks,0,BAlchemistGuild,0,0),
(0,0,BSmithy,0,BShrine,BLibrary,BAlchemistGuild,BFighterGuild,BBarracks,0,0),
(0,BSmithy,BSawmill,BStables,BLibrary,BFighterGuild,BAlchemistGuild,0,BBarracks,0,BWarCollege),
(0,0,BSmithy,0,BShrine,BStables,BFighterGuild,0,BBarracks,0,BWarcollege),
(0,0,0,BShrine,BSmithy,0,BFighterGuild,BBarracks,0,BWarcollege,0)

For example race 0 (Barbarians) get swordsmen from pop 2, shaman from pop 4, cavalry from pop 5, and extra levels at pop 7 and 8.
I don't think the highest tier units would be very realistic in cities of pop 0-8 and anything higher is very rarely generated (think 10 is the max). Even if the highest tier units were used that only increases the unbalance - the AI can't conquer those for a very long time while players can conquer most of them by repeated attacks and spellcasting. Even a city full of Minotaurs goes down to 9 successful castings of Black Sleep.

Hm? But I found a neutral elf city with an armorer's guild. It was still garrisoned by longbowmen, but I got the armorer's from it before I cast tree of knowledge, and it generated pegasai as normal. So either the rule isn't working anyway, or the city appeared with an armorer's guild but somehow didn't get a garrison of pegasai.

Bug? Probably the neutrals ignore Tree of Knowledge the wrong way so they built the building (always can build instead of never can build) ... yes that's exactly what is happening.
..or maybe this was intentional? I don't remember. Probably not.

[jhsidi]

What about the building requirements? Players would say the neutrals are cheating if they spawn a unit they cannot build in the city. However if players can get those buildings early by conquering the neutral that isn't good for balance either.

Start by assuming that the neutrals will only be present early on. By midgame they're conquered. So I don't think you have to worry about them having top tier units or the corresponding buildings; just make sure they have mid tier units.

Then maybe the early stack that uses the weighting system will be something like -- 3 halberdiers, 3 bowmen, 1 swordsman.

For the garrison, I wish the neutrals would just cheat a bit. Why can't a town have 1 unit of magician without a wizard's tower? Maybe they were trained elsewhere and went back to their hometown to settle down. Maybe the priest was sent from fantasy Rome, or the rangers were a famed mercenary unit hired by the town. It's OK for me and would make the battles more interesting.

This is the table per race and population size, the city gets the buildings in the first X+1 columns where X is its population :

I generated a fresh game to make a couple points here. Just one game, I didn't do it multiple times to get better results. Here's the file: https://ufile.io/6d4k0tm5

• Neutral high men are 7 tiles away (land distance) at 70x48. It has 3 population, a smithy and a garrison of 3 swordsmen. 
  
• Neutral klackons 10 tiles away (land) at 81x58 with a population of 2, a smithy and a garrison of 2 swordsmen.
  
• Neutral barbarians 7 tiles away (ocean) at 78x42 with a population of 5, a shrine and 5 shaman.
  

So straight off, I'll own the first two towns as soon as I see them. Those are a gift given to me by the generation gods. Something like those appear in every game, although this game has them in uncommonly good slots. The barbarians will be slightly trickier. But really, they're just going to have 9 shamans by the time I attack and those are easily countered.

The table is irrelevant here because the towns are starting at a very small size. Most of the towns I see are tiny. But who cares, it's a freely settled slot and a free race to add to my menagerie. That's honestly almost as good as a town with more population and a few more buildings, and it came "free" because the garrison is terribly weak.

I think that's the crux of the problem here. The neutrals start off as if they're somehow going to compete. But they can't. They grow slowly, have no wizard support and their armies are homogenous.

So anyway, I'd suggest:

• Minimum starting population of 5
  
• Always have town walls, 100% of the time... it's a dangerous world out there, no town would go undefended
  
• Always start with a garrison size equal to the population (so min size 5, min garrison 5)
  
• Ranged units cannot be more than 5 units of the garrison (to counter guardian wind, high shields, etc)
  
• Give them a roll for one or two high tier units that's not represented by the buildings in the town
  

Those changes might be enough to stop the neutrals from being popcorn for greedy wizards, but that's all they are for now.

[Seravy]

I really don't see the problem. This isn't any different than finding an easy node nearby that has 2 phantom beasts and 5 phantom warriors. There are easy targets and that makes exploration rewarding. As long as it doesn't give the player access to a high tier unit directly, that's fine. (easy nodes won't have enough gold to buy the fighting's guild even indirectly.)

What exactly are we trying to fix? Make neutrals last longer? No, because you say that won't happen either way and I agree.

A "free" neutral city of pop 2-3 isn't a problem. You get that if you build a settler, yes, the settler costs you 300 gold but that still only means the neutral city is equivalent to finding 300 gold. In reality, less because the outpost has a smithy, the neutral most likely loses it in battle. Rebuilding the Smithy costs 250...
It also isn't any different from taking the same city from an AI (yes, on top of the 2-4 swordsmen they might have a hell hound and cast a fire bolt but that's about it.) so I'm not seeing why is there a need for neutrals to always be hard to take?

Neutrals are food for AIs and players to conquer, like nodes and lairs. In addition, they are a source of racial diversity in a reasonably unpredictable way.
There aren't enough of them to guarantee you'll find any particular race in a game but the odds are decent to find at least 1-2 that offers you (or the AI) additional options. In fact that's an important part - AIs spread late game races with settlers but they need to find and conquer one early on otherwise it can't happen. The city with only 2-4 swordsmen is easy prey to the AI. The city with units you suggest has "for human player use only" written all over it. Making any neutral location harder to conquer has twice as much impact on the AI's ability to conquer it than the human player because the AI cannot use multiple fights and special tactics to overcome it.

[jhsidi]

I really don't see the problem. This isn't any different than finding an easy node nearby that has 2 phantom beasts and 5 phantom warriors. There are easy targets and that makes exploration rewarding. As long as it doesn't give the player access to a high tier unit directly, that's fine. (easy nodes won't have enough gold to buy the fighting's guild even indirectly.)

What exactly are we trying to fix? Make neutrals last longer? No, because you say that won't happen either way and I agree.

There's quite a large difference between that Sorcery node, where I can't cast and need to build an army of bowmen or be Nature with sprites, and the town I can walk into on turn 7 with a single unit of swordsmen and conquer with any school of magic. Although, I should note that I feel like the easy Sorcery nodes are overdone as well, so maybe I'm just an advocate for making things harder for the human player.

The "what are we trying to fix" would be Revolting Raiders, or just having neutrals be anything other than a substantial gift. Much more substantial than the hell hounds lair I get 100 gold from, which is why I don't really agree with this:

A "free" neutral city of pop 2-3 isn't a problem. You get that if you build a settler, yes, the settler costs you 300 gold but that still only means the neutral city is equivalent to finding 300 gold.

Uh, no? None of that stuff costs gold. It costs turns, lots of them, during which my only producing city is tied up and can't do anything else. Making settlers early on is a hard decision. But OK, I get that the equivalent gold value of the production is 300 (plus the 1 fame, which is a gold per turn in perpetuity). So you're saying I get 3x the reward of an easy lair for half the difficulty? More than 3x the reward, because I also get a new race.

I guess I just don't like games to throw excessively valuable free stuff at me where there's literally no planning or challenge involved.

It also isn't any different from taking the same city from an AI (yes, on top of the 2-4 swordsmen they might have a hell hound and cast a fire bolt but that's about it.) so I'm not seeing why is there a need for neutrals to always be hard to take?

Yes: now I'm at war with that wizard, and if I'm on a high difficulty level, he's going to be a pain in my ass and ongoing danger. I paid for that city.

The city with units you suggest has "for human player use only" written all over it. Making any neutral location harder to conquer has twice as much impact on the AI's ability to conquer it than the human player because the AI cannot use multiple fights and special tactics to overcome it.

This is something you could say about any lair or node, and I noticed that issue is on your list. As it should be, the AI is not yet good enough at conquering things. That's an issue to fix: the AI needs to be able to conquer anything competitively.

Anyway, if you want to give away cities for free that's your call but it's really not my favorite mechanic; also, I like the concept of Revolting Raiders and wish it actually could be something that has an effect. But to get there, it would require changes to neutrals.

[Seravy]

I guess I just don't like games to throw excessively valuable free stuff at me where there's literally no planning or challenge involved.

That value is unfortunately very subjective.
A node gives additional power per turn. A lair doesn't but requires no garrisons.

A neutral city of small enough size to be possible to conquer easily produces nothing, but you still need to defend it and possibly even invest gold to make it worthwhile or able to defend itself. So while it is less effort, it's also not as good as lairs or nodes on the short term.
It also comes with a disadvantage - you don't get to select the location or race. I wouldn't say it happens all the time but about 1 out of 3-4 neutral small cities end up getting razed because it's the wrong location or a race I can't use, or it's too far from my empire to be able to defend it. (who would want to cast spells at 3x mana cost to defend a pop 2 city when they could build a new city closer from less than the mana spent in the first 1-2 battles? Yes, I usually am greedy enough to keep those cities anyway but it never feels like it's the correct play. By the time the city becomes useful, a neutral stack usually destroys it, or I"m forced to summon 3-4 creatures to be able to hold it, either way it's a liability and a net loss for the next 50-80 turns to come.)

I haven't felt the cities being excessively easy to take during the past few years of playtesting. Yes, occasionally there are those with only 2 spearmen but more often it requires relevant effort, sometimes more than lairs and nodes.
I guess how much is "relevant effort" is subjective but I consider a city with 5-9 units of cavalry and shaman difficult enough, at least more so than Sorcery nodes. Even a city that only has swordsmen isn't a pushover when there are 8 of them - either a similar force or a higher tier unit or some sort of a strategy is necessary to beat it.

Of course, compared to building a settler, finding the town is better and feels rewarding (but you still don't get to pick the race and location!), that's an important part since that's what it is, an incentive and reward for exploration. Still, I would pick the lair with 4 guardian spirits guarding a common spell over it any time. Spells are better. Even items are better, sooner or later I will have a hero and then that item will make a difference, no matter how weak it is. For example it will allow the hero to take over that larger neutral city full of barbarian shaman which is better than a pop 2 place with zero buildings. So while a "free" city is rewarding, it's not even close to the other possible things a player can find that offer much better value for comparably low effort, even if those other things might actually need 3-4 bowmen to fight instead of just 2-3 swordsmen or a combat summoned fire elemental.

[Seravy]

For the "too much trading" issue, I fixed a bug today that can be relevant : The AI didn't end the audience when the trade interest ran out so it was possible to trade an unlimited number of times.

[jhsidi]

One more thought on trading: I kept getting the feeling that having 1-3 books consistently results in my having all the good uncommons, so I just counted what I have in this playthrough. With 2 sorcery books, and not having gotten any of it through treasure, I have dispelling wave, counter magic, aether binding, aura of majesty, philosopher's stone, vertigo, spell lock, flight... and I'd have water elemental too, if I didn't keep turning it down.

So with 2 books I got 9/10 uncommon spells. (Also, with 1 book in nature I got all 10 commons.) That's... ridiculously good. Actually, I think it's really unbalanced. This makes the best strategy in the game a multi-school split, with several schools at 2 books and just one at 3-4 to access rares and very rares.

That won't be solved by trading cooldowns: I'm patient, I can wait some turns and keep collecting spells. And really there are only 4-5 of those uncommons I really wanted at all. The massive advantage here over MoM is knowing that I'll be able to get exactly the spells that I want even if I don't have the books to guarantee any picks -- with 13 other wizards, someone is going to have it. Worse, the strategy of taking books in multiple schools supports this trading; the guy with 8 sorcery books and 1 life book is going to offer me aether binding on his own, possibly even for some common spell like heroism. 

Honestly, I just think there should be a hard cap on how many spells you can know and a predetermined roll of which ones you'll have access to. In MoM / CoM1 if you only took a book or two, you knew going in that you'd only get a handful of spells, and there was a high likelihood that your one book of nature would not ever get you web. In CoM2 I'm always taking that one book, because there will always be several wizards with web. And you can keep adding cooldowns and negatives to trading but I don't care, I'll either hold out for the one spell that's a game-changer or just take the relationship hit to collect several.

[Seravy]

That pretty much is exactly how it worked in CoM I too.
Basically if you take 2 books in one realm and a high amount of books in another, then you end up getting most common and uncommon spells in your second realm - but this only really works up to uncommons, not for rares even if you have 3 books.

Uncommon spell treasure is quite frequent and it'll fill your "holes" which will all be in the secondary realm - you get all the uncommons in the primary one anyway. Rare spell treasure is... rare, at best you find like 2-3 per game.

So that's fine.

The problem starts when you pick 2 books in 3-4 realms in which case spell treasure is still only enough to fill up one realm's worth of uncommons...but trading can get you the other 4 easily if there is no limitation.

Basically, you can find 5-10 uncommon spells in treasure if you do well enough on treasure hunting. Those will be enough to fill up a secondary realm but at most one. (or both of your main realms if you do 6+6 books or something like that which is definitely intended)

Whether that's an advantage though isn't obvious. If you had only one realm, those spells could give you uncommons in your primary realms, which means you can pretty much skip researching uncommons and jump directly to rares much earlier. Added diversity vs earlier access to more powerful spells, there is no clear answer which is worth more.
But trading breaks that too. If you trade 4 spells each with 5 different people, you can skip ahead to rares immediately, without having to even find an uncommon spell in treasure if you had one realm.
...Except, this assumes the AI has all those spells. We will need to test to see if that happens, because it's very well possible the best this strategy can get is keeping up with the AI's research levels. You can't trade for an uncommon if you traded for all 10 commons but no one else has an uncommon researched yet.
Still, being able to keep up with the AI in research for free is already a too large advantage I guess?

Sorcery is a bit of an odd one because it offers quite a lot at the uncommon tier, although not as much as it used to so 2 Sorcery books is a much stronger play than 2 books in other realms. (Spell Blast is gone, so is the ability to dispel cities, both are now rares. You also can't luck yourself into you 1 rare spell being Magic Immunity anymore. But it still has a lot of unique, useful utility spells, much more than what you get from uncommons in other realms.)

[jhsidi]

...Except, this assumes the AI has all those spells. We will need to test to see if that happens, because it's very well possible the best this strategy can get is keeping up with the AI's research levels. You can't trade for an uncommon if you traded for all 10 commons but no one else has an uncommon researched yet.

Still, being able to keep up with the AI in research for free is already a too large advantage I guess?

I'm not really looking at it as keeping up with AI research, because at the point that I know I can get whatever spell I want just by virtue of there being a large pool of wizards to trade with, then I can enact a strategy that gives me a big enough lead that I know I'll win the game. That's starts at common level, not uncommon; a lot of commons are powerful enough to give an advantage that lasts the entire game.

Perhaps one of the problems is the AI offer mechanic. Quite often I'll cycle through the entire wizard list, check the trades for each, and find nothing I want. Then over the endturn I'll get some fantastic offer of any spell in the wizard's book in exchange for some common spell I don't care about handing over. So those offers should be less frequent, and the value of what the AI is willing to offer should also be reduced.

But that's not the only problem, really it's just that trading is different from CoM1. Same mechanic, yes. But the larger map and higher number of wizards changed the game. I can take 2-3 books and know chances are very high that I'll find some way to get that spell I really want. In MoM, with access to only 2 other wizards, it was the reverse; with 3 books I knew the chances were pretty low I'd get that specific spell, or if I did (through treasure) it'd be too late to matter.

Maybe trading could be more restricted -- only let trading happen when there's a wizard's pact? That would make sense. Pacts are pretty easy to get, although I often don't take them because of the annoying drawbacks. So that would also make me pursue diplomacy more.

edit to add: I was just thinking about this and realized that pacts are easy to get because I offer spells as tribute. How do I get those spells? By trading, of course. I trade as much as possible to accumulate a lot of spells and get any diplomatic result I want by handing out the candy. So restricting trading would also make diplomacy harder.

Sorcery is a bit of an odd one because it offers quite a lot at the uncommon tier, although not as much as it used to so 2 Sorcery books is a much stronger play than 2 books in other realms. (Spell Blast is gone, so is the ability to dispel cities, both are now rares. You also can't luck yourself into you 1 rare spell being Magic Immunity anymore. But it still has a lot of unique, useful utility spells, much more than what you get from uncommons in other realms.)

Yeah, I recall back when sorcery was one of the weak early-game schools. Not anymore. It goes from being strong in early game to extremely strong in late game. Leaving chaos as the only school that's weak in early and mid game.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

The "what are we trying to fix" would be Revolting Raiders, or just having neutrals be anything other than a substantial gift.

I do agree that neutral cities shouldn't be too much of an easy gift to human players.  However, one problem with making cities harder to take early is that the 'early' races depend on capturing cities; that's their strength, and their weakness if they can't capture enough good ones, so any solution needs to take that into account.  You could balance it so that cites are hard to take with just swordsmen, but other early race units could manage, but there's still the problem of swordsmen with powerful common spells.  I can't think of a simple solution off-hand.

Instead of looking for a solution involving how hard it is to take a city, maybe think of changing the value of a captured city.  If you feel that captured cities are too valuable at present, maybe think of some ideas to make them less valuable, such as a longer period of turmoil that prevents them from being a quick boost to your empire or being more costly to defend (defense penalty, higher chance of raiders attacking).  Early races might then be given bonuses that reduce those downsides, rather than just better units.

Personally I'm not too concerned about symmetry: meaning having the AI play by exactly the same rules as the human.  If the AI is a lot worse at capturing neutral cities, I don't mind giving them a bonus for attacking neutrals, or giving the neutrals a bonus for defending against human players.

My definition for 'what needs fixing' are things that make the game less fun.  I do think that too easy lairs or neutrals are less fun than ones that need some planning and investment and feel rewarding for making those decisions.  Satisfaction comes from a challenge, not from a random freebie.  I *think* I would prefer to have neutrals require significant investment to take or at least be less of an immediate benefit, rather than randomly being an easy--perhaps game-breaking--boost.

Side note: in Civ 5, raging barbarians were an exploit for the human player (effectively milking them for XP and maybe culture points) and they outright kneecapped the AIs, who would send their settlers and workers out without escort.  In COM, raiders seem less crippling to the AIs, but an annoyance for me.  Part of the problem with raiders is that they tend to be a rare catastrophe, so investing in garrisons mostly feels like a waste.  I *think* weaker but more frequent raiders would be more satisfying, because I'd be reminded of the value of garrisons more frequently.