Retort balance, hopefully last time

[Nelphine]

I think runemaster should get treated similar to guardian and get something minor, that's completely unrelated to its current benefits. (I also want to insist again that dispel protection and bonuses are too high - every source of them come with other bonuses, so it would be fine to halve all of them, and the game would become more playable.)

[Seravy]

I'd personally go with +3. It's meant to be a minor extra as the retort is already somewhere between 1 and 2 picks, so the bonus should only be about half a pick worth. If we look at omniscient, a 5 nature book, dual realm player gets +3 pop. So that's half a pick. Therefore guardian should get +3 as well.

Unfortunately these effects don't add together that way.
You either fight a lot of battles, and take full advantage of the combat effect, but then you lose units of population so the city will never really reach the increased maximal amount (sure you will keep most enemy units out, but inevitably the unit in the gate falls and an enemy will step onto that tile, which will still have a chance of killing people, if it happens often enough due to many battles, it adds up - not to mention enemy armies might fly, be noncorporeal, wall crusher, or the enemy might even cast wall or city damage spells in the battle) - so in this case the max pop bonus mostly translates to a minor growth benefit (+8 max pop is only 40 people a turn, still 25 turns to grow back a single unit of population). Plus you are risking cities - every once in a blue moon you might still lose one to an incoming doomstack. It also likely means you end up conquering some cities (constant fights mean you are at war), which don't get the bonus at all.
Or, you don't fight a lot of battles, enjoy the full benefit of max pop everywhere, but get nothing out of the combat bonus.

So the two halves are kinda mutually exclusive - the more you try to take advantage of one half, the less you get from the other. So you can't really add them up, it's closer to the situation where both halves need to be about 1.5 picks for the sum to be worth the 2.

However, players will likely overrate the population benefit and underrate the combat bonus (most players see a stronger economy as a guaranteed major gain, and treat "max pop" as if it was people they already own on the longer term, even if they don't actually ever reach that amount, while defensive battles are the "that might happen sometimes" category) so the combat parts should be strong, close to the full 2 picks while the economy part can be weaker but still needs to be at least 1 full pick of value.
That would put it at +6 max pop instead, which is what I'm going to try first, if we end up seeing everyone plays Guardian all the time, we can reduce it then. Unlikely though as it demands completely discarding the most popular style of playing - rapid expansion and offense.

Also, this is entirely a late game retort, which is what we're trying to push towards "powerful" and early game retorts towards "not that powerful" as early retorts not just feel strong but tend to actually be strong due to snowballing potential. So that's one more reason why we should err towards the higher numbers.


Edit :
For Runemaster the 100% bonus on Arcane might be enough - hero strategies and SoM strategies both benefit greatly from that so it gets two major roles. Only problem is you can get heroes without summon hero, and items without create artifact, and Spell of Mastery can be countered by Spell Blast as our design intention was to make sure it's not always a guaranteed win. Of course, there are tricks to get through that, but those tricks are all very rare sorcery, limiting that use of the retort to a single realm.

[Seravy]

I think the greatest problem with Runemaster is its relation to Sorcery magic and interaction of effects.

If you are playing Sorcery yourself, Runemaster works as intended (You can win by SoM), and enjoys an extra economy benefit (you can dispel enemy city buffs and at a 300% dispel power using AEther Binding, doing so is very efficient). However it also suffers from a major problem - your unit buffs don't need the dispel resistance (Spell Lock), and you already have increased Dispel Power (AEther Binding). So in this case two of the 3 effects are merely "win more" instead of actually contributing - ultimately in this case you pay 2 picks for halved SoM cost. (that probably is worth it all by itself though, if that's your primary strategy. 50% wasn't though. So I guess this case is fixed by that?)

If you aren't playing Sorcery but anyone else does, winning by SoM no longer works for you - it merely enables you to get a military victory by disabling the Spell Ward countering effects (still a big deal!). Dispel resistance still works and even has increased relevance (instead of "can't use enchantments at all", you are still good to go and have a slight advantage). Dispel power also still works - but without Dispelling Wave or the ability to win by SoM, the ability is much less relevant. Dispelling unit buffs never really matters as you can just keep starting battles using unimportant spearmen to spam more dispels until it works. Dispelling city buffs is not available and requires Sorcery. Dispelling globals is still a thing and still matters, but the Sorcery player might copy them, so your double dispel power can merely keep up with the problem, not result in an actual advantage. Overall, it merely gives you a fighting chance instead of a winning strategy - but in a case that would be a guaranteed loss otherwise. That might be worth it?

If neither you, nor anyone else plays Sorcery, the retort works well. Dispel resistance on globals will matter - on units and city buffs, not so much but it's at least something on the units. SoM costs will matter - no one can counter your SoM so you can easily win using it.

Ok, this actually doesn't sound bad. The retort either works for your primary strategy and is your victory condition, or gives you a chance to win in games where that strategy would result in a guaranteed loss.

However all of these are late game benefits, so throwing in a free Dispel Magic sounds like a solid plan for me. It even helps the issue Nelphine mentioned in the Life thread - eliminating Runemasters early when playing buffs. If they can dispel from turn 1, doing that is a lot more difficult and while still doable, costs a lot in lost enchantments. So in this case you will be forced to counter their Runemaster ability by having it yourself...that is, if Specialist isn't doing it already as it's currently is. So Specialist is the next thing to look at...left it for last as it is probably the hardest one.

[Seravy]

So... Specialist.

Currently, you get 12% cost reduction, 12% research bonus, and 100% dispel resistance for 1 pick.

If you do it in addition to your 10 books, you're giving up the chance of picking other retorts - I believe we agreed the effect is balanced compared to other retorts - except Runemaster where the dispel resistance makes it far too useless as it effectively offers the same benefit without the faster SoM which is, ok, the question is, do we want Runemaster to be a retort chosen for non-SoM strategies? I'll try to answer that later.

If you pick it instead of book 10, you lose 3 very rares, 5% cost reduction and 8% research bonus, so you traded 3 very rares for 7% cost reduction, the 100% resistance, and 4% research. That basically shifts you more towards the early game in exchange for possibly missing critical late game spells, but the benefit is small. Depending on the strategy it seems a fair trade. 

On book 9 you get the same package, but you miss out on 3 rares and 1 very rare instead. Rares are usually less critical so this is a much better deal than the previous.

On book 8, you lose your chance to get a guaranteed uncommon - that is a major impact on your early game making it fair, or even outright a bad choice. However here you are getting 12% to both, as you aren't losing a book cost bonus, even then it's still a fair trade.

On book 7, you lose your 100% uncommons, although you'll likely be able to fill the missing 3 spells from treasure anyway. You also miss 1 rare and very rare. However that's still not as bad as books 8-10 and the benefit is again the full 12%. This seems to be a strong choice. However that leaves you with 5 unspent picks that need to be distributed between at most 3 retorts. I guess including two cost 2 retorts, or 1-2 books in other realms is still fine without much of an impact. So this doesn't seem like a balanced choice - IF you already accepted playing fewer than 8 books, you should pick 6, and include Specialist. That's a very big "IF" though - going this low on books effectively puts you on the level of a dual realm wizard who lost one of their realms. Of course retorts can make up for that, but I'd say this is the type of choice mostly used for high difficulty games by experienced players aimed to be won early - otherwise lack of spells will bite you in your back, and spending your remaining picks well does take a lot of experience in the game. If a problem exists anywhere, it's here, but it only applies to high level play.

Any further books below this puts you at such a low critical amount of spells, and leaves you with so many picks you shouldn't spend on books (specialist doesn't apply to those realms) and can't on retorts (max of 4) that they are probably not a viable choice except on very specialist builds. Which...kinda makes sense for a retort called Specialist. 

Overall, I think the amount of cost and research is about fair as seen above.

Dispel resistance is trickier - it's really hard to measure how much it is worth. Anyone has an idea how to attempt that?

[Seravy]

question is, do we want Runemaster to be a retort chosen for non-SoM strategies?

To answer this, we have to look at the available strategies that could benefit from Runemaster.


Chaos globals and/or Life globals.
The additional dispel resistance is of very high value for these strategies, especially the chaos one - once you have the spells in play, you pretty much won. Unfortunately, to get the globals you need a lot of picks, so you can at most have two of the following three, and would need all of them for these to work properly :
-100% chance to get the relevant global enchantments (10 books)
-Additional retorts to make the build viable for higher difficulties
-Runemaster itself.

So as is, these strategies aren't viable with Runemaster.

However, I do have one idea how to fix that : By adding "You have an increased chance of learning global enchantments" as one more extra effect on Runemaster. As it adds dispel resistance, which requires learning globals or using a buff strategy to be of relevance (city buffs are rarely targeted by dispels), this has a strong synergy with the effect. It's also somewhat of a minor bonus - you aren't getting more spells, but the ones you get will be more relevant to your strategy.
On the implementation side, this would mean whenever the game rolls for putting a spell in your book at the start of the game, if it's not a global enchantment, it'll have a 50 (or more)% chance to roll again. So for example if you have 1 Life very rare, there are 5 globals in the game, so you normally have a 50% chance to have a global. If the reroll is also 50%, your chance to get one will be 75% instead.
I'd probably need to run some simulations to calculate which reroll percentage is needed if we set a goal like "8 books should get all the globals in the realm 90% of the time".

If we do add this feature, Runemaster will be viable to pick instead of Specialist, although still at best an even match as Specialist offers discounts, 1 more picks, and quite high dispel resistance. So even then Specialist should lose some of the dispel resistance as well.

City buffing
As those are rarely dispelled, I don't think this is a viable reason to pick Runemaster no matter what.

Early hero/Artificer
Ruemaster helps here but this is actually one of the things we don't want to be too powerful in the game, more importantly, Specialist doesn't offer a comparable benefit (you aren't going to get the Arcane spells earlier at all, and items don't care about dispel resistances anyway) so for this case we don't need to change Specialist.

Life unit buffing
Runemaster offers the ability to cast spells through Spell Ward against late game Sorcery by accelerating SoM and Life has Enlightenment to get that research done, which combined with the ability to dispel copied enemy globals, and more resistance on own globals, should be enough to allow the Life wizard to beat the otherwise impossible late game Sorcery enemy. So Runemaster definitely is relevant here and better than Specialist - except for one thing. It offers a late game way to win, while Specialist simply speeds you up, allowing you to never reach that phase. People tend to prefer that, unfortunately. So while Runemaster is already capable of doing this one, due to human preferences, Specialist does need to be nerfed on the dispel resistance enough that it no longer works against Sorcery AI's who can dispel, otherwise people will always pick that anyway.

Buffing that includes Sorcery
Runemaster doesn't matter here, Spell Lock is a thing. Although if the enemy is very dispel heavy, it can still make the difference between unwinnable and winnable. Not an optimal pick but Sorcery buffing is usually Sorcery heavy, likely includes Artificer and heroes, and even works well for SoM wins, so the retort still has nice generic value to it, even if not important for the actual buffing. Specialist doesn't offer those benefits so Runemaster is viable.

Multi-realm buffing without Sorcery
Life+Nature isn't really a thing, as Nature buffs are rare or later.
Chaos channels can't be dispelled so Chaos+anything doesn't care - you are only protecting Flame Blade in addition so might as well get Specialist for your main realm instead.
Death buffs...also aren't really a thing that exists.
So this category, while it seems like it would be "the" runemaster thing, doesn't really exists as a strategy.

Overall, the conclusion here is we do need to nerf Specialist if we want to make Runemaster viable for most of these, but it's certainly possible to so and offers enough new strategies to be worth doing.

[Seravy]

Ok, so I found my post why I didn't want to reduce dispel resistance on Specialist : 

Dispel Resistance is an ability that's useless in small quantities. You can either have your spells in play with minimal recasting, or not, there is no middle ground. At 50% you're still losing too much enchantments to cast any in the first place.

If Specialist was 50% for Life I'd simply not buff units. Too much loss to combat Dispel Magic to keep up with recasting. (Do note we won't have Spellweaver soon so recasting an early Endurance WILL take 2-4 turns as intended in most cases.)

While this certainly has a point, we should look at how much "small quantities" actually means. I don't think I've actually calculated if 50% is enough or not, I just assumed it isn't. (probably isn't though, as it's nonlinear, but let's see...)

So, assuming enemy dispels for 100, 50 MP or 20 MP.
Will look at 3 enchantments - a cheap one, a medium and an expensive one. (40,80,150 costs)

   

Losing dispel resistance from 100 to 75 or even 66% is a very small difference in the actual effectiveness - that much resistance already has the enchantment in the "usually won't be dispelled" region and more resistance is not very meaningful. Losses only increase by about 10%.
At 50% it gets a bit more relevant, losses getting to around 20-25% more.
Losing the entire bonus roughly increases lost enchantments by 50-100%.

Now the question is how much enchantment loss is affordable to still play the strategy.
I'll assume the unit is mildly buffed and has 5 spells on it. The enemy has the power to cast two power 50 dispels per battle on average (probably less by himself but magicians boosting up the totals). The buffs are low to medium cost early life spells, so the average of column 40 and 80.
As is, loss of value is about 19/spell/50 cost dispel so overall 190 mana at 100% specialist.
That's...prohibitively expensive. It is about the same as losing one fully buffed unit each battle. I might be overrating the enemy casting capacity though.
Ok I'm a bit tired to even try to guesstimate how much loss per battle I'd find ok or not.

What I do see however is the difference between 50 and 100% resist is less than I expected. I have no reason to be against reducing the resistance to 50% as far as unit buffs are concerned. City curses aren't as relevant anymore (pestilence is expensive, the others aren't ones you want to spam everywhere anyway). Which leaves Global enchantments - those do use a linear formula so are hit harder by the nerf - but we want global enchantments to be covered by Runemaster anyway.

Overall I think I'm ok with specialist being 50% only.

[Nelphine]

As long as you nerf aether binding to match specialist, I'd be ok with nerfing specialist in order to make runemsster more attractive. Aether binding + dispelling wave is why you take specialist - not for standard dispel magic.

[Seravy]

oh btw, the "higher chance for globals" thing actually is very relevant for Life Buffers - it almost guarantees you get Divine Order. That is a huge addition to the strategy.
Overall, I think seeing 50% on specialist vs 150% on runemaster is enough to make people consider both - even if the actual chance of getting dispelled isn't anywhere near that much lower as the numbers make it sound like.

Nerfing AEther Binding won't ever happen though.

[Nelphine]

Why?

What does the increase in strength do that's required for what is at its core, an economic spell, and one that was so strong in economic terms that we had to reduce it?

We've just proven that the difference from 50% to 100% isn't as big as expected. That goes both ways.

Nerfing specialost and not aether binding simply means that buffing becomes even more binary - fight non sorcery, you still win (you don't need specialist for that), and fight sorcery and you lose (and you still can't afford runemaster because you lose the economic boost specialist gives). You already have problems with sorcery today - this makes it worse.

So you drop specialist entirely, take an even stronger economic retort and gamble on no sorcery in late game. So now you kill non sorcery even harder than before, and you're faster at growth so you can kill sorcery faster before they get aether binding and dispelling wave. 

Why would you want to encourage even faster rush play?

[Seravy]

...or you know, you could, like, do the intended thing and pick the Runemaster? That's what the whole discussion was for?
If AEther Binding is weaker, you don't need neither specialist nor runemaster - you can simply get away with picking neither, without gambling. As is, you have several choices :
-Pick neither, which is a major gamble (zero sorcery and runemasters is unlikely) and while it's the most powerful when it wins, the win rate will be horrible. I see this acceptable as a choice for Lunatic, not really for any lower difficulty level.
-Pick Specialist only - Honestly, this doesn't seem very different from the above. It's questionable whether other retorts are better for your economy, as 12% on cost and research is big. Even Spellweaver is only 16.6% on cost only per pick spent. But you trade that 4% for the 50% dispel resistance which actually is significant, not just against sorcery but everyone. I risk the statement this is still better than picking another retort, even for Lunatic - especially for Lunatic as those non-Sorcery people will have lots of mana and skill to pour into normal dispels.
-Or pick Runemaster and have a slightly slower, but more solid setup where you can beat all maps, even those that do have Sorcery or other Runemasters. This might not be good for Lunatic, where you might end up being just a little bit too slow to score the wins, but it offers by far the highest win rate on all other levels of difficulty.
-Pick both and pretty much never lose any enchantments at all. Probably not a good option as that much dispel resistance is kinda useless. Still, even if not an option for pure buff strategies, it can be very good for "generic" Life strategies, where you buff AND summon and equip heroes ASAP both, using the faster Arcane research speed for Summon Hero and/or Create Artifact. As heroes go well with Life and buffing as well, this is also a viable, albeit different, option.

By the way I don't think there are other "even faster rush" retorts to pick instead of Specialist. We've been carefully making sure there are as few as possible over the time, mutually exclusive warlord and tactician limiting this option even further. The "economy" retorts are mostly late game oriented (Astrologer, Cult Leader, etc), so considering Alchemy, Tactician/Warlord, Omniscient and Archmage/Spellweaver early retorts, you can barely fill the 4 retort slots with them and I don't think these are all that much better than the 12% reduction from Specialist. (or even deserve to be called early for Omniscient if you haven't picked rainbow books.)