Wait, its +7 casting skill up front? I thought it was +7 skill power per turn. Yeah that's ludicrously too good. I would drop it to say +3 casting skill up front if you want to keep that style (although I would prefer to not keep that style now that I realize what it dies.) Note my impossible wins have always been while building amp towers last due to my horrible misunderstanding of how they worked. I can vouch that you can still get lots of casting skill without them. I just assumed they were a nice building to get once you had everything else to help out by converting gold to skill in late game when skill mattered but was harder to get.
|
Races, Units, Buildings
|
|
BTW, which normal units are better? Klackons or Gnolls? I prefer Gnolls (2 Attack usually more useful than 2 defense) because defense doesnt seem so important on expendable units.
January 25th, 2017, 17:34
(This post was last modified: January 25th, 2017, 19:58 by zitro1987.)
Yes, amplifying tower (late building) is in theory overpowered. Sawmill (first/early building) is also in theory overpowered.
However, there's no denying these two buildings help make the game more enjoyable at all stages of the game and help balance the mechanics of gold, power, and spell casting rate. I'd say increasing gold maintenance of amplifying tower to 10 is reasonable and manageable this late. Note: I prefer to treat amplifying tower (800 production) as 800 gold cost. The 2X gold cost math doesn't fly well with me because buying is not always ideal unless you have a low production city or have a serious need for something quick. If you also have 'alchemist', the need for buying decreases significantly. Gnolls vs Klackon? Their units are fairly comparable in usefulness, but klackon economy is clearly superior. I always thought gnolls' resistance penalty to be unfair for a military race and make it arguably the weakest race.
January 25th, 2017, 20:01
(This post was last modified: January 25th, 2017, 20:03 by GermanJoey.)
I agree that even though the Amp Tower is "overpowered", it's fine because it allows all players (including the AIs, which will get one in every city very early) to actually cast overland spells at a reasonable rate. It's the exact same situation as the Sawmill.
In fact, rather than making the Amp Tower more expensive, an alternative idea is to schedule an event to happen every so often - think January of every even year (1402, 1404, etc) - that gives +X casting skill. That would allow all players to funnel more production/gold/mana into actual units and spells rather spamming a valuable building into every city. It would also solve the problem of the human player getting a sudden, massive increase in casting skill upon conquering an enemy wizard and gaining all of their Amp Towers. (And it would even let you use the building to do something else) Or, if you'd rather have casting skill be more dependent on mana spent, you could change the Casting Skill formula to use a 2/3rds root instead of a square root in the formula converting from SP to skill, so that it wouldn't take such insane amounts of power to increase skill by even a few points in the late game. Another idea, that I had posted about some months ago, is to change the Amp Tower from +7 Skill to +3 Skill and +10SP, but make it cost only 200 production to build. The motivation there would be to help make the building obtainable by the early mid-game, where both the SP and more modest static Skill boost would actually make a significant difference. ------------------------------------ I also agree that Gnolls are by far the weakest race in the game. They don't have any selling points, other than Jackals being pretty awesome units once you stack a half dozen unit enchantments on them. (but then again, what isn't?) Barbarians, Lizardmen, Orcs, and Klackons all do what Gnolls are supposed to be good at better than the Gnolls themselves. Klackons, on the other hand, are pretty damn good. Their units aren't great, although Beetles being fast and fire-breathing can be pretty useful, and if you want to spam halbers their halbers are pretty good. But their economy more than makes up for it.  Quote: 2/3rds root I have no idea how to calculate that in asm but I guess I can try to figure it out. The primary role of Amplifying Tower is to provide a linear component in casting skill that scales with controlled territory : larger territory means you have to cast more overland spells to protect it (both summoned monsters and city enchantments) and while the income scales linearly, the skill doesn't normally do so. However the majority of casting skill should remain nonlinear - You don't need a higher combat casting skill to use global enchantments or combat spells when controlling a larger territory. Mana and Research are linear so those don't need this kind of adjustment. This means that -It has to be a building -It has to be immediate bonus to skill, not just SP produced The secondary role is to make the AI more of a threat when they control larger territory. More units often do not achieve this, as long as the player can fight them without significant losses, quantity makes no difference. Combat casting skill does, but it increases way too slowly from power gained, and the AI, despite improvements, is still vulnerable to wasting it on mana and not improve skill as much as it needs to to stay a threat. Meaning that -The skill granted has to be generic, and not limited to overland only, and high enough to actually be relevant in battles. In other words I'm satisfied with what Amplifying Towers do but unsure about its cost, maintenance and the timing of its availability. The core question is, does the availability of mana and skill balance each other out in a way that you sometimes want the wizard's guild or cathedral instead of the amplifying tower because you have enough skill but not enough mana, at the very least sometimes before halfway through the game? And what about wizard's guild vs cathedral? I'm almost always doing the wizard's guild first...which is either incorrect play or the buildings aren't balanced. Maybe a higher gold maintenance on both the WG and the AT could improve things?
January 25th, 2017, 21:32
(This post was last modified: January 25th, 2017, 21:33 by Nelphine.)
Higher gold upkeep would make almost no difference (to my playstyle) because by the time I'm a threat to win, I build cathedrals for unrest, and I build wizards guilds because it let's me convert gold to power better than (non alchemist) alchemy.
Also note, only in impossible do I care about alchemist. Other than that, gold is rolling in (by the time wizards guilds are common) so fast that I often burn gold into mana just to avoid capping. On impossible my problem has always been 6 cities isn't enough to guard nodes with (in other words early expansion that can be defended), not overall resource production. Basically, gold late game is mostly irrelevant. Food is the biggest factor, and mana income during early turns of a war is the only other one. (Yes gold can be used for mama, so its not entirely irrelevant, but if using it with non alchemist alchemy is enough, than for a gold expense to matter, it has to be more than that, which is just too ludicrously high to consider in my opinion.) But, now I know, amplifying towers = linear casting skill based on empire size. This should make my playstyle stronger. I still think its too strong. MAYBE +5. Surely 150 casting skill from your empire in late game is enough? Is 200+ casting skill from empire size really required?? (I would still vote +3, for roughly 100 casting skill from empire size.)
I agree with Nelphine, by the time you're even considering Amp Towers you couldn't give a damn about gold upkeep, and build Cathedrals and Wizard's Guilds for the same reasons as him. I usually get a Cathedral first since that'll bring in more income for cheaper and sooner, unless I specifically want to build wizards in that city.
I think that, given your stated desires regarding how there should be an empire-size factor in casting skill, the Amp Tower is perfect the way it is. You could make it cheaper (in terms of hammers) for less skill if you wanted to adjust the timing. As for whether mana/skill tend to balance each other out - yes, definitely, in a large part because of Amp Towers! At least the way I play, every turn in late game I am using every bit of skill I have every turn, spending almost every coin I have either rushing buildings/units or funneling it into Mana. I shift around my sliders between Mana/Research/Skill pretty often. I also end up delaying Amp Towers and the other high end buildings for quite a long time after I could otherwise afford them simply because I have to spend so much gold on Mana for battles. FWIW, I plotted out what using x^(2/3) instead of x^(1/2) would look like, and it seems 2/3 ramps way too fast, oh well.
January 26th, 2017, 06:50
(This post was last modified: January 26th, 2017, 06:52 by zitro1987.)
Wizard's Guild vs Cathedral debate - The former generally wins (if it unlocks magician) unless you're playing alchemist (6 maintenance hurts for alchemist wizards)
Amp Tower - does every race allow both wizard's guild and amplifying tower (or neither)? if so, we could slightly delay it by making it a requirement to have both alchemist guild and wizard's guild. (January 26th, 2017, 06:50)zitro1987 Wrote: Wizard's Guild vs Cathedral debate - The former generally wins (if it unlocks magician) unless you're playing alchemist (6 maintenance hurts for alchemist wizards) What if the Cathedral was cheaper? For example, 400? Yes, every race that can build the Amp Tower can also build the Wizard's Guild. |