Current Impossible Strategy

[MrBiscuits]

+ 20% Housing?
A higher Max Pop already means you're growing faster, even without Housing, I don't really see a point.

I don't think boosting the Chaos and Sorcery effect is an option we have - stacking it with Sage Master/Cult Leader/Spellweaver/etc would then break the game. It might already be borderline overpowered, did anyone try an Omniscient Sage Master or Omniscient Cult Leader? (high Sorcery or Chaos books)

How much faster do cities grow with +2 population?

The initial +2 bonus is not terrible, but 0.25 per extra book is pretty bad. You have to take 4 more books to get any larger bonus at all. 0.5 food per book might be better perhaps? It would mean you can assign more workers instead of farmers right from the start of the game.

Yes I tried an omniscient, sage master, specialist 9 book sorcery build. I didn't quite understand that the research bonus from omniscient was on city buildings only so I didn't play it optimally, but it researched pretty fast. You can choose aether binding as a guaranteed research and get it quite quickly meaning you don't need to put much mana into research or skill for a long time. It is a lot of fun, but it didn't seem overpowered to me.

I'm only just starting to play on extreme though so am far from being an expert.

As a side note, the bonus to research/spell discount could maybe start one book earlier. Having 12 books which almost never happens still only gets you a 20% discount.

[Arnuz]

I missed that it's limited to boost cities too. Perhaps there's a readability issue is the variety of boni that it offers, making it a somewhat more complicated retort than usual.

Good conversation btw.

I add to catwalk's point on productivity, that the same goes for gold. It's accounting: if you have +16% gold in cities you don't get like +16% cities at all, because you need to subtract expenses (maintenance) from your income. Which means that +16% gold might actually give you +100% or even more actual gain, when maintenance is high:
income 18 ->21
maintenance 10: gain 8 -> 13
maintenance 12: gain 6 -> 11
maint. 14: gain 4 -> 9

This boost happens immediately, but also grows over time: it's very powerful. It also compounds with the production bonus, because more production=more gold and more gold=more production. It's simply a must-have. I just found out that you have a trick to get AIs duke it out wihtout player intervention, how about testing it on some AIs?

Nelphine - of course if you use only 2 or 3 realms then the retort is not working to its fullest; you can't judge it based on that. In its current form it's the perfect retort for 5 or 7 books in 5 realms. Maybe 4 realms losing the research bonus for even more early boost concentration at the expense of late term strategy.

[Nelphine]

No, that's not what I said. What I said is you can take the full 5 books plus omniscient, then you finish the rest of your picks. Then, you'll most likely have some realms left with only one book. You van then compare those single books (and the bonus they get from omniscient) and except for death (and maybe nature.. But no one has convinced me of the value of nature yet) there's a better retort to take rather than that single book, even with the omniscient bonus. Which means, even in the ideal setup for omniscient, there are better options. Which means omniscient isn't overpowered. It has its place yes, but it's not overpowered.

[Arnuz]

I see hear you, I misunderstood. Yet I still disagree: single books open up commons for finding and trading, and the early game strategy gets a lot more out of commons than later game strategies. As we're speaking about impossible and snow-balling, the single book is very valuable.
Example: getting some random life or nature buffs... Getting some random red stuff debilitating stuff (I remember casting a lot of warp creatures in my ghoul game until I got the 0 resistance to make my life drains and dark sleeps better)... Even if they're random, all the spells are useful nowadays, and help you making up the strategy as you go around and find stuff/deal with the other wizards.

[Catwalk]

+ 20% Housing?
A higher Max Pop already means you're growing faster, even without Housing, I don't really see a point.

What's difficult to understand? That's how granaries and forester's guilds work differently already. Granary provide a bigger boost to growth than Forester's Guild, Forester's Guild raises the pop limit more.

Max pop and faster growth are completely different bonuses, not least because one is providing a fixed (small) growth bonus and the other is providing a proportional bonus. Having higher max pop is of very limited use if it doesn't also let you fill out that space.

Biscuit also has a good point that the Nature bonus gets weaker the more books you take. Whereas +32% power is always twice as good as +16% power (you're not going to stop wanting more power anytime soon), there is such a thing as too much extra pop. It matters the most for small city sites, for a size 20 site the bonus is all but useless.

Revised suggestion:
+1 max pop + 0.5 per book
+20% housing + 5% per book

With 5 books, that's +3 max pop and +40% growth. I think that's reasonable, especially given that Nature doesn't particularly rely on city spamming and normal units to begin with (unlike Life).

[Nelphine]

I see hear you, I misunderstood. Yet I still disagree: single books open up commons for finding and trading, and the early game strategy gets a lot more out of commons than later game strategies. As we're speaking about impossible and snow-balling, the single book is very valuable.
Example: getting some random life or nature buffs... Getting some random red stuff debilitating stuff (I remember casting a lot of warp creatures in my ghoul game until I got the 0 resistance to make my life drains and dark sleeps better)... Even if they're random, all the spells are useful nowadays, and help you making up the strategy as you go around and find stuff/deal with the other wizards.

I am ok with disagreeing! I believe other choices are better, even with common spells plus omniscient bonus.

[Catwalk]

I used to be a fan of multi realm builds as well for the ability to trade and find spells, but those are mid-term and long-term advantages. Anything that helps you early is vastly more useful than something that helps you later. I still like going low on books because I don't think I need very many spells, though.

[Nelphine]

I dislike extra common spells because it forces me to waste more time before I can research my rares/very rares.

[Seravy]

One thing everyone (including myself) forgot so far on Gold and Production.

Unlike every other category, these are additive, not multiplicative. (unless I remember wrong, someone should check their city detail to make sure. It depends on how I coded it, really.)
A city with no gold bonus at all, will indeed get you 16% more (before maintenance).
A city with +100% gold bonus though (that's a road network and a bank for example), will now make 116% more gold instead - the net gain here is actually 8% more (216 instead of 200 compared to 116 instead of 100).

Production works the same way.

Power and Research do not have these drawbacks, as there are no buildings that add a percentage bonus. Even the retorts that raise your output will multiply the effect of Omniscient (unless they don't, again I don't remember how they were coded. Sage Master must multiply as it's applied outside the city, same for Spellweaver. Cult Leader and Dark Ritual though depends on coding, but I'm 90% sure they multiply, as they are part of the total religious power which is only a subset of the value that is boosted by Omniscient.)

Max pop and faster growth are completely different bonuses, not least because one is providing a fixed (small) growth bonus and the other is providing a proportional bonus.

They aren't, that's my point. Growth INCLUDES max pop in its formula, you get +10 growth for each 2 Max Pop.
So your Omniscient already comes with +10 growth if you pick 1 book, +20 if you pick more and the rounding works favorably, or pick 9.

This is true for Granaries etc as well. A Granary is +2 max pop and +20 growth. But +2 max pop also adds +10 growth so in total you're getting 30 growth out of it. (I was surprised when I first realized that, you'd think the +20 is what comes from the max pop side effect but no.)

(btw I still don't understand, why Housing? Do people even build Housing on Impossible? For so much time that an extra 20% matters on it?)

[Catwalk]

I misstated slightly, I meant a regular growth bonus not a housing bonus.

And I know full well that max pop gives a small growth bonus, but it's too little to matter. In order for Nature to be worth anything, you need to give the player a way to fill out that extra pop.

Housing is actually not bad at all for high pop low production sites with a resource race that can build a builder's hall. Running a resource city with all farmers and builder's hall means you get an excellent growth bonus at a very low cost. You mentioned earlier that Sawmill first is not a no-brainer as Builder's Hall may sometimes be the better choice. Turns out you were right, that can indeed be a good choice.