Myrran retort

[Nelphine]

For me, having 1 less starting wizard on your home plane is simply huge. Its not QUITE worth 2 picks by itself, but combined with some strategies available to you, it definitely is. (An old example was myrran lizardmen - you grow SO MUCH faster than all the myrran races that even on master you can easily control more than half the plane despite a total of three people on the plane, without conquering anything. This isn't quite as strong now since the racial growth changes).

Another powerful thing is play life, pick a myrran race, astral gate and destroy the other plane.

When you consider things like this, balancewise, myrran is worth more than 1 pick.

Combine that with the post that Seravy quoted from me above, and I think its better to make Myrran worth a full 2 picks, rather than weaken it to make it only worth 1 pick.


The other balance reason to be worth 2, is draconian flight. We KNOW early flight is lunatic level strategy by itself.

[Seravy]

1 cost isn't "more fun", rather than "less unfun" compared to 2 picks. 2 picks simply limit the wizard creation options to the extent where I don't want to even play anymore and am about to rage quit my current game due to lack of spells.

2 cost is more balanced because having 2+2 wizards instead of 3+1 is a huge (but late and boring) benefit. You don't have to face the "big boss myrran wizard" who controls a plane alone. Considering how I got obliterated by these a few times before, that matters, although nowadays I don't see it that much anymore. The doomstackbuilding allows the AI to effectively clear arcanus nodes and snowball into an advantage which the Myrran wizard is worse at doing (as their lairs and nodes are harder to clear plus they even need to commit more production time on settlers in the early game so normal units start to participate in the action later), so arcanus wizards tend to be ahead until midgame, and if they get lucky and break into myrror in time, or get that much advantage for some reason, even for the entire game. Fixing plane shifting related bugs also allows AI players to mix between planes better especially if they have life books. So actually my argument for 2 picks seems to be much weaker now than back then.

[Catwalk]

I don't disagree that having less opposition is helpful. I'm arguing that it's a boring and decidedly unfun advantage.

[Seravy]

I'm arguing that it's a boring and decidedly unfun advantage.

Exactly.

[Arnuz]

I don't have strong opinions on this one, but reading I've been wondering: does it ever happen that the 2 arcanus fight and one ends up winning and grabbing all the cities, thus becoming a lot more powerful?

Because one becomes more powerful by getting all the cities of the other, as well as spells perhaps. That'd make an even stronger end game boss, wouldn't it?

[Nelphine]

That's fair. So to recap:

Myrran at 2 picks is probably as close to balanced as we can get due to number of opponent wizards per plane.
Myrran at 2 picks makes it stand out as a Big Deal.
Myrran at 2 picks significantly reduces other choices, thereby reducing its replayability.

Therefore, we are looking at possibilities to make it 1 pick, or to grant it done form of other benefit directly related to playability such as guaranteed spells.

What do we think of the option of setting wizards by plane regardless of what plane the human starts on?

(In that thread I had suggested setting it up based on difficulty, but it could just be a flat number, say 2 AI on each plane.)

That removes the biggest balance issue, while also ensuring the racial choice is always an important advantage.

[Nelphine]

@Arnuz: I've never seen it. I've seen 1 AI defeated by the combined attack of 2 other AI, but never a 1 v 1 defeat. Total anecdote I know.

[Seravy]

That's a quite unlikely scenario as if the stronger one isn't winning extremely quickly, the one on the losing side will form a peace treaty and stop the war. However if the strong one is also expansionist/militarist to start a new war after every peace, then it can eventually result in that.

A most likely scenario is one AI hitting the other in the early game with a doomstack and taking them out entirely around turn 40-60 while their fortress still only has sprites.

[Seravy]

What do we think of the option of setting wizards by plane regardless of what plane the human starts on?

If by that you mean to have 3 Myrran wizards, well...in that case I would think Myrran costing nothing at all would be the fair cost. You aren't really gaining anything if everyone else gets the same benefit, race, treasure, whatever.
Not a fan of that solution to be honest.

If you meant to always have 2+2 even if the player is on Arcanus, I like that even less.

[zitro1987]

I actually like the idea of having 3 myrran wizards if choosing myrran, and 3 arcanus wizards if not choosing myrran.
*but only if that allows you to pick myrran at 0 book cost. (or is it marginally better to play myrran because lonely arcanus wizard has less chance of being powerful with weaker race?)

If so:
*you get full freedom of 12 picks - replayability
*you get challenged early on and meet wizards early - a big aspect of fun
*you get to play those powerful races, yet not be as powerful.