Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

Isn't it a huge problem if barbarians swordsmen can't reach enemy units quickly enough? They have weak resistance and defense so aren't going to survive for lon...well I guess players can use cavalry instead.

A more important question...would anyone play Barbarians instead of Gnolls if this was done?
...ok I guess Gnolls don't have thrown and ranged units nor berserkers so maybe?

[Nelphine]

Yeah basically, I think that the 3 movement a) allows the barbarian archers too much ability to kite, and b) steps on the toes of the gnoll racial too much - but barbarians also get pathfinding and thrown weapons. Due to conquering cities, you can't even say that they're bad in the long term - you only need 3 barbarian cities in the whole game, and you only ever build units below bezerkers at your capital (not including spearmen garrisons). So their economy just isn't a factor for this discussion. I'd keep bezerkers at speed 3 though.

And there's only a few races that have better defense than barbarian - admittedly their resistance is low, but so are high men and gnolls. And really, the 3 units we're talking about are so early that it doesn't really matter - battles that early are usually decided without any spells anyway.

But changing the movement of those 3 units (barbarian swordsmen/spearmen/bowmen) really won't change much in the long run - they're relevant only for a very short period of time.

In the long run, I think bezerkers need to be changed to 4 figures (modify stats slightly so that the base bezerker is just as strong, or the level 1 or level 2 is just as strong, wherever your balance point is) so that buffed/experienced bezerkers aren't worth so much overland strength. This isn't so much for actual strategic combat, as it is for AI overland decision making. Bezerkers basically make AI unable to declare war on you (since you have the highest overland army strength by a HUGE margin), and unable to attack any stack you decide you want to protect (such as your fortress, other important cities, towers, nodes, anything you want) because only the strongest AI units come close to the overland strength of bezerkers, which means that 99% of AI stacks can't reach the 75% overland strength required to attack 9 bezerkers; and 90% of AI stacks can't even attack 4-6 bezerkers.

[Arnuz]

Isn't it a huge problem if barbarians swordsmen can't reach enemy units quickly enough? They have weak resistance and defense so aren't going to survive for lon...well I guess players can use cavalry instead.

A more important question...would anyone play Barbarians instead of Gnolls if this was done?
...ok I guess Gnolls don't have thrown and ranged units nor berserkers so maybe?

Why would anyone use gnolls rather than barbarians now? Giving speed to gnolls and pathfinding to barbs might be a way to give a characteristic to each.

Mind you - maybe the speed is cool, but then swap around pathfinding. It's the combination that is a killer. On volcanos archers wouldn't quite be able to kite chaos spawn so easily without PF even at speed 3. Kiting nagas and phantom stuff would still be an issue on plains.

[Seravy]

The only problem with Berserkers is calculated unit value not including Resistance - but we can't do anything about that. Buffs hardly matter - you can't buff every single unit you produce.

btw are you playing Barbarians without Alchemy? That's what they are balanced for. Picking Alchemy with Barbarians is a trick for high difficulty levels. If it is making them too overpowered even for Lunatic, we should disable that instead by simply making it  not work on races that can't build an Alchemist Guild - which currently means only Barbarians.
Alternately we can allow it, but add an exception : "barbarian units with magical weapons don't get the +1 To hit bonus" so then the weapon immunity can still be bypassed without gaining more damage.

If we really want to weaken Berserkers directly, reducing their 3 shields could do so : at 0 shields the unit has only 57% of its original power (tho this reduction is less relevant if the unit has levels and holy armor on it). However, I'm afraid 0 shields would cause the unit to die horribly to any ranged attack, even simple arrows from level 0 bowmen....adding Large Shield could fix that but it would be extremely weird to see that on a Berserker.

[Nelphine]

Right the problem with bezerkers is, as you tsted, that in tactical combat, they're basically fine as is. The problem is overland strength for AI decisions. (And you can put a single buff on every bezerker you build; more if you give up city buffs).

I am using alchemy, but that only adds ~400 to their attack strength. That's barely 10% of my current unbuffed bezerkers attack strength, and even early on that's no more than 25% of the attack stat. Losing 2 figures in return for slightly higher stats would make a FAR bigger difference (1/3 of both attack and defense, although it would be a little less depending on how you changed the stats.)

I don't like the idea of treating barbarians different than other races on the alchemy retort - either everyone should get the +1 to hit, or no one should. Its a neat trick to use on higher difficulties that rewards players who learn the ins and outs of retorts and races. And only bezerkers have any problems, not any ships or earlier units, so removing the +1 to hit as a whole I think is unfair to other strategies the race uses.

[Nelphine]

I know, I know, I bring up this topic a lot. But as per my latest post in the impossible strategy thread, in my current game (Yes, I won the game like.. 7 years ago. Whatever, I'm still playing.) I have 881 overland casting skill from amplifying towers. I have another 133 from my heroes. Which means I really 'only' have 367 overland casting skill, which means I REALLY only have 245 casting skill that I've paid for via power power production. (Note that I don't really care about my current combat casting skill because really.. is there any difference between 400 and 800? Who the heck uses 800 combat casting skill up?) This also means that I need less than 500 skill points to increase my casting skill via power production.. which means I'm raising it almost 2 points per turn from power production, even though my casting skill is enormously high.

I feel amplifying towers are too strong. Yes, it's only with uranus' blessing + spellweaver, but still. 881 is excessive. And there's over 50 cities on the map that either I don't control, or that I do control but don't yet have amplifying towers in. That's potentially over 1100 more overland casting skill from amplifying towers.

As a note: a wizard without spellweaver, Uranus' blessing, or heroes, would have about 1/3 of my overland casting skill (500-550 in 1414). This actually sounds reasonable for lunatic. Amplifying towers would 'only' slightly more than double my casting skill.

[Arnuz]

127 cities, lol, how long does it take to go to the next turn ?
(Edit, ah Uranus' blessing, gotcha)

Anyway supporting. Amp towers grow skill linearly, while the base mechanic is logarithmic I think. Eventually they take over, maybe their production cost should raise with their number?
For extra fun the total number could be considered, not by wizard.

[Seravy]

Let's see..

1011 OVERLAND skill, not counting your heroes. But you have Spellweaver, so your real skill is 674.
Your skill from SP is 197. This leaves 477 for towers and Uranus' Blessings. Assuming you have UB on all the cities, you gain 238 skill from towers, but you control half the world and already won the game. The skill to cast half of a very rare creature a turn in this position is perfectly fair I believe.

I don't see the problem with the towers themselves.

Your 34 cities with UB produce 238 skill but this costed you 10000 skill to cast in theory. So there are 50 turns to gain back the investment. Unfortunately, with 4 Divine Orders in play you didn't need to pay this cost - yes, UB is overpowered in those games where multiple DOs are in play.

and now we are back to multiple sources of something stacking = bad.
Spellweaver+Uranus Blessing+cost reductions on the latter. Same deal as what we had when Spellweaver stacked with Archmage. If anything, it means UB needs to change, probably produce more power but less skill, and cost less to cast. (tho you should have needed like 40 turns to cast them if it wasn't for the discounts)

(btw Even if I make towers produce 0 skill, you STILL get 7 from Uranus Blessings so you still get 218 from Spellweawer and 238 from UB for a total of 456 gained.)

That said, with the lower cost of very rare spells and spells in general, I think it's a good time to rethink how Amplifying Towers work.

[Seravy]

Amplifying Towers

These are pretty much all the possible options for their working mechanic :

1. A percentage bonus to skill.
The worst possible option, as it is exactly the opposite of normal skill mechanics - instead of earning less when at higher values, you earn more.
On the upside, it does mean casting skill becomes proportional to the territory, which is why the building exists in the first place - on larger maps, more skill is needed to keep up with everything going on - buff more cities, more units, summon more creatures etc.

2. A flat addition to skill.
This is what we have now. Basically, for each city, you get 7 skill, which means each city is paying for its own summoned troops, garrison buffs, and city buffs at a rate of 7/turn, kinda like production - for example in 20 turns, you can summon a 140 cost creature into all of your cities, assuming they all contain the tower.
I think this is fairly well suited for the goal but as very rare creatures and high end spells cost less, we might want to rethink the amount if we keep this option.
The problem with this is, if playing too aggressively, this skill won't be used on defense and will get pooled into a doomstack of some sort instead, which conquers more and more cities, further raising the skill, and that is not really what it is meant to be used for. Fortunately the AI is more competent at attacking, and neglecting defenses to that extend is not viable anymore, and even then, at least some city buffs are generally wanted anyway.
Also, larger maps with more cities do mean you'll need more troops for invading an enemy, so more skill for offense is actually needed as well.

3. A flat addition to SP.
This would make amplifying towers effectively have a constant value in mana - unlike wizards' guilds which produce a flat +13 resources a turn, this would be a one time +2000 or something like that.
The problem is, if we want an amount that has any relevance in the late game (and we definitely want that, this is an expensive, late game building), then the power added needs to be high which would be completely broken if built early. (+2000 would grant 20 additional skill around 50 for example, but only +2 at 500)

4. A percentage bonus to SP.
As Sqrt(c*X)=Sqrt©*Sqrt(X), this is identical to a smaller percentage bonus to the skill itself, the same was as Archmage at +50% SP is worth +22% skill. So it's not a different option.

5. SP production
This would make the building the same as a Wizard's Guild, which is boring. Aside from being over time, it would still have that same problem of being more relevant early than late.

And that's all we can do I believe.

The current flat bonus looks the best by far, the question is, how much do we need?
How many spells does an average player typically use on a per-city basis, either on defense or offense? City buffs, summons, etc all together?
At the current +7, a city produces a very rare creature in 71 turns, an average city buff or uncommon creature in 20-30 turns. That doesn't seem too high to me.

[zitro1987]

I don't see a problem with the 900cost (1800 gold) building producing +7 flat skill. As you have more productive cities, you have insane normal unit production potential across the world (double-digit top-tier units per turn). 7 skill is a drop in the bucket and your analogy of cities 'producing spells' really put it into perspective.

In short, I feel +7 is perfectly balanced. I have an issue that it's also +7 in combat skill, but I'm in the minority.