(March 8th, 2017, 08:06)Nelphine Wrote: Or in the myrror case, 18 mana instead of 8.
I would rather not remove mana focusing. Its one of the most intuitive bonuses a master of magic could have, and I think it is iconic to the game. Drop the flat bonus to 5 instead of 9.
It won't stop the sprite combo, but is there really anything else that can snowball that early?
For example you can convert the mana into gold (with Alchemy or even without) and buy settlers, hire heroes, buy any unit, etc.
Paired with Sage Master, you can accelerate Giant Spiders, Gargoyles, or Werewolves.
You can summon Ghouls and make a lot of undead units with them from neutrals and weak lairs.
You can buy doom drakes, buff them with heroism, endurance, etc, and win the game. (Hadriex did that and he did include Mana Focusing with the other 5 retorts.)
It really is no different from a free ore or heroism on a hero with AEther Master, both of which we are trying to figure out how to fix - except that there is no random element which is worse in this case - instead of unbalancing your game every once in a while at random, this can consistently do so every game, all you need is to pick the retort.
Honestly I see no other way to fix it than complete removal, if we agree the early free mana is undesired, as the late game effect is just useless and boring. I rather have 33% more power income from being a Cult Leader or Astrologer, or have 50% less spending from Chaneller, than earn 33% more mana - which is inferior to both by a large margin.
(and we can still look at sprites as a separate problem even if we deal with mana focusing - the two are not related. Sprites can do the same thing without Mana Focusing, I expect the difference to be marginal. As few as 1-2 of them can clear out a node that doesn't have cockatrices or wyrms in it, and once you have your node, you no longer need the mana focusing. On the other hand, it might make a difference for Earth Lore, which will be somewhat harder to afford - if it becomes a problem we can reduce the cost but it's probably not necessary.)
Ugh I'd much rather remove cult leader. Its just so limited in what it does - normally nodes + heroes + population give me far more power than buildings, to the point mana focusing is much superior in the late game (and I don't even use mana focusing).
I'm aware cult leader isn't problematic, but it really is too weak for me to ever bother with.
What about changing mana focusing to not give the bonus based on your spellbooks as well as only +5 flat? That would prevent the earliest abuse, but leave it effective for later strategies.
(March 8th, 2017, 10:46)Nelphine Wrote: What about changing mana focusing to not give the bonus based on your spellbooks as well as only +5 flat? That would prevent the earliest abuse, but leave it effective for later strategies.
My point is, everyone only ever picks it for the early game effect. If we fix that part, it'll be back to the retort no one ever picks, like it used to be before that effect was added.
+33% mana in the late game is uninteresting and inferior to the other options, he only upside is not requiring religious buildings, nor 2 picks. (but if 2 picks are affordable, Chaneller is light years stronger, as well as Astrologer)
I also think Cult Leader is not the best retort, mainly because religious buildings are quite race specific. On the upside, it's a nice combo with Heavenly Light and Dark Rituals.
If we want a retort that costs 1 pick and does not rely on buildings for late game mana production, I have an idea : Each population in the wizard's cities produces 1/3 power (cumulative with other similar effects).
This has a marginal effect on the early game, scales nicely with map size, doesn't have a multiplicative effect with other power boosting retorts, and is better than Mana Focusing for the late game, but still worse than Chaneller, Cult Leader and Astrologer which are more situational.
It also augments low power military races nicely and is strong for the AI, plus matches the templates where the AI defaults to the retort perfectly (Nature+Life and Nature+Chaos).
This could also work as a replacement for Cult Leader, but I think that one is fine as is. Additional unrest reduction AND power gain in one is a pretty nice retort - I think the only one aside Inquisitor that can fetch you a higher gold income for the mid/late game.
By the way...we might want to change Astrologer from "doubles power from nodes" to "Each node produces an additional 20 power". That way the effect isn't overpowered for Max power and useless on Weak power.
I've always wanted to play a game where we all share the same start. Here's my game report.
Pregame thoughts
Very powerful setup; some of the most powerful retorts with the best realm and one of the strongest races. Starting spell selection is fine, although I woulda rather have started with Resist Elements (especially since it turned out to be missing from our research book!) instead of bears. Bears are a great summon, but you don't tend to want to use it a lot early since you're spamming out sprites non-stop.
Early game
I didn't think to take any screenshots at first, but I spammed a few sprites, sent one each W/N/E, and then scouted out with Earth Lore. My first take was plinking down the zombies to the west with a single sprite, getting some crappy plate mail that I immediately melted. Then a second sprite joined the northern one to take the Nagas to the north, which netted me a hero (monk, agility*/blademaster/lucky, ended up being mostly useless actually!) and some gold IIRC, which fueled a bunch of cash-rushed settlers. next, a pair of sprites took out the naga node to the northeast, which netted another hero (bard!!!!!!) and some mana. finally, i was able to accumulate 6 sprites to the north and took out the wyrm/bear node, which got me another hero (golden one, w/ soul linker!), some gold and mana, and Resist Elements (badly needed, but still a lousy haul from a VR node!!) i took a few other minor lairs after this, but no other nodes other than these 2 for a long time. (i unfortunately didnt see the naga node to the far SE until much later)
Domestically, I was able to trade/research for the various commons while spamming sprites nonstop, and then full-gunned research when spiders showed up. I got a farmer's market and then rushed about 5 settlers. I took the halfling neutral city to the NE with my bard and a couple sprites, and then found Merlin's fortress to the NW. I took the crappy tundra elf neutral city up there with my water-walking heroes, and then summoned up a batch of spiders into it, resulting in Merlin getting righteously stomped:
(accidentally saved over the screenshot of his defensive force, but needless to say, javs and ghouls don't stand a chance against massed spiders)
summary around this time:
Merlin had cleared a node for me, bringing me up to 3.
Before I could finish off Merlin completely, he was able to bribe Oberic into the war with me, which was really obnoxious since I had been gifting Oberic spells to keep him in good relations. Luckily, his fortress wasn't too far off from the halfling neutral city, which is where my bard was. Summon up a bunch more spiders and:
Interestingly, he had built a Fantastic Stable here that survived the capture, which was helpful later.
Mid Game
By this point, I was pretty much only using spiders for offense (which could advance nonstop thanks to Nature's Cures) as my javelineers just couldn't keep up. So, I started using them to clear camps instead. Found this chucklehead in the sprite lair to the north:
And later found a +2 move item for him too. Unfortunately, I still didn't have transmute by this time, as it wasn't in my book (!), so his only use was to help the bard and the soul-linking golden one keep up with spiderstack, instead of carting around javelineers.
However:
I didn't break the tower, by the way - Tauron somehow did that by some point before 1404!
Anyways, as I was cleaning up Oberic, Tlaloc decided to war with me too, ugh. He lost huge armies repeatedly attacking a Klackon city I had taken from Oberic and had defended with Halbers, Sprites, and a Spider. He was super annoying, using wraith-form lizards, spamming posession, and even had a focus-magiced cockatrice. (thank god that wasn't wraith-formed too!) Luckily, by this time I had finally finished researching my first rare, Blizzard. Thus, Jaer and the Spider Brigade made their way down to Tlaloc's capital, which was defended by the Warlock hero, one actual warlock, 4 sprites, and 3 lizards. First, I hit it with one Blizzard, killing a sprite and leaving the rest at half health, and then hit it with a spider pair to take out the warlocks:
and then cleaned up:
Oh, and that reminds me! I had finally found Land-Linking in a Chaos node in Oberic's former territory, that was another key spell that wasn't in our book! Anyways, super-spiders crushed this pitful defense. I also found this GARBAGE:
I also found a single Death book, but never ended up getting any Death spells.
another summary:
a map for reference, around the time I was finishing up Arcanus:
Tlaloc's last stand, pre double-blizzard:
Late Game
By this point, I was able to research Survival Instinct as my second rare - I admit a pretty luxurious one, but my other options in my book SUCKED - making my spiders super strong. 5 moves and bypasses terrain movement, 16 poison damage + 25 attack hits, 9 shields at +1 to-def, at a cost of 92 total mana. (113 w/ RE) What a unit.
Anyways, Tlaloc actually had a few cities on Myrror, and was right near Tauron's capital. Turns out Tlaloc was kicking his ass. Anyways, that lead me right to Tauron's doorstep. I hit him with a triple-blizzard:
Wiped him out his capital defense in two turns. One of the reasons blizzard is so good is that you have web to follow it up with; webbing five units is more devastating when the enemy has only 5 units in total as compared to 9!
Summary and map immediately after that:
Bastard ended up sneaking a settler down here, delaying the end of the game by 2 turns!
Final turn was on April 1408 - only 99 turns to victory! I've won games this fast on Extreme, but this is my first time under 1410 on Impossible I think. Final income was 1194gpt w/ all cities on trade goods, with 791 power base. Final casting skill (w/ Astrologer) was 351, which included 11 Amp Towers.
Final thoughts: a pretty fun game, thanks for posting it Catwalk.
Analysis-wise, it was a pretty fair game for seeing the strength of Nature. There were a few possible dungeons and such around, but not an excessive number, and none of them were close. I was only able to get 2 nodes early, and didn't get any prize loot from any of them. I researched all three of the Rare spells I had by hand, and had no VRs.* (in contrast, for example, the last time I played nature I found a nature node 5 tiles from my capital that gave me Call Lightning in 1403 - I couldn't even cast it until 1405!) The enemies were also fair, I felt - there was three wizards with nature books, but I wasn't able to gain too much via trades, and two of them had Death books, which is the hardest realm for Nature to deal with. Likewise, there was one life and one chaos wizard (realms which nature obliterates), but both of these wizards had death. That the final Myrran wizard was Dark Elves was indeed pretty fortunate for me, but so it goes.
IMO, the fast timing was mostly due to strength of the nature realm combined with strong retorts. Specialist/Conjurer allows almost twice as many summons as normal, and Archmage/Astrologer/Mana-Focusing allows one to cast at least twice as much as normal. Thus, I had huge hoards of strong summons that were able to overwhelm the AI. I was casting non-stop the whole game, and felt about as limited by mana as I was by skill, meaning I had a pretty good balance of the two. I had my mana slider up about as much as my skill slider, especially near the end when I was blowing over a thousand mana a turn fighting on Myrror. Lizardmen were great for getting a strong economy rolling early, and then greatly supplementing my income by taking lairs and such.
* edit: just remembered that Earth Gate is VR; this was the last spell I finished researching at the end, and had cast it twice on Myrror to warp Gryphons over to help finish off Tauron.
Bit I just said mana focusing is better than cult leader late game. If you remove mama focusing because its only worth it in the early game, then cult leader should be removed for the same reason.
Admittedly you could argue the unrest bonus means something, but in late game? It just doesn't matter enough. (Alchemy will get you far more gold income, especially if combined with mama focusing).
(March 8th, 2017, 12:32)Nelphine Wrote: Bit I just said mana focusing is better than cult leader late game. If you remove mama focusing because its only worth it in the early game, then cult leader should be removed for the same reason.
Assuming religious buildings produce roughly one third of your power (10 from magical buildings, 12 from religion and probably about 10 from nodes with average settings based on the ratio of cities to nodes), Cult Leader gives you a 1/6 boost to your power base, or 16.66%.
Assuming you spend one third of your power base on mana (which is unlikely - in most games you spend the lowest amount on mana, then research and the most on skill - if wars drag out so long that you need high mana production for most of the game, then something went horribly wrong), so, assuming you spend one third on your power base on mana, and it gets boosted by 33%, we are looking at 1/9 increase of power, or a +11.11%.
Even if I ignore the unrest reduction and assume more mana production than usually needed, Cult Leader wins by a large margin of being 50% more effective - and these numbers do not include any gains from Nightshades, Heavenly Lights or Dark rituals either.
Mana Focusing will only perform better if you play a race or otherwise obtain a lot of cities that cannot build the Cathedral, or if nodes have a significantly larger contribution to your power base - So Tiny/Small land, mostly Klackon empire - and even then only if you have way above average need for mana.
My life wins (like my extreme lizardman win when I was trying to show population power) I literally spent about 2000-3000 mana per turn for years (at least 5, maybe as many as 10). That wasn't a small amount of mana production - that's 80-90% plus of my power spent on mana.
Most of my games that take longer than 1415 work out that way. Mana production is by far my biggest expense in late game wars. (And I literally have lost games because I couldn't produce enough - whereas I only lose due to low casting skill when I can't use disjunction fast enough.)
(March 8th, 2017, 13:34)Nelphine Wrote: My life wins (like my extreme lizardman win when I was trying to show population power) I literally spent about 2000-3000 mana per turn for years (at least 5, maybe as many as 10). That wasn't a small amount of mana production - that's 80-90% plus of my power spent on mana.
Most of my games that take longer than 1415 work out that way. Mana production is by far my biggest expense in late game wars. (And I literally have lost games because I couldn't produce enough - whereas I only lose due to low casting skill when I can't use disjunction fast enough.)
But that mana was spent on combat - Chaneller is the intended retort for that, and provides a lot more bonus. Even if we assume the average casting multiplier was a 2x, it still is equivalent to a 100% boost vs Mana Focusing's 33%. Yes, it costs 2 picks, but it offers three times the benefit (or more, in reality the average range multiplier is more than 2). Chaneller even applies to mana you obtained from external sources (treasure and alchemy) and spent in combat - mana focusing does not help with that at all.
2-3k per turn matches my experience, but it usually costs that much in the first 5-15 turns of a war only - afterwards the AI runs out of the large amount of units piled up during peace and the number of battles go down to like, a quarter of the initial. Of course that's pre-3.2 AI so not sure how it'll be in the future.
