Current Impossible Strategy

[Arnuz]

The point of this retort is to improve 4+ realm wizards, which are otherwise near unplayable.
Even with the retort, you are still trading long term power (rares/very rares) for a better early game (more commons and better economy) and additional diversity, which is a worse strategy now that rare creatures (and other spells) cost less to use, and AI wizards can still cast in combat while banished (so you can't get away with having no rare combat spells by preventing the enemy from using theirs anymore).

It (and other early retorts) appears this much on Impossible strategies for two reasons :
-You are very unlikely to survive the early game if you don't put all your picks into improving that, and due to the large AI bonus values, snowballing effect is amplified, so the early game is more important
-Winning is unlikely overall, so a high risk-high reward strategy that might sometimes provide an outstanding advantage is a better choice than a strategy that has less risk but always ends up just a bit short of winning. In other words, it's worth taking the risk of not getting the uncommon/rare spells needed to reliably win, in exchange of having a chance to win at all. On Hard, I wouldn't use this tactic, more books to ensure I have a robust list of rare+ spells that I can use to win works better.

Hi, grats again for the great work done here. I'm giving my feedback in the spirit of toning down what I see as too good strategy that imho is detrimental to the game by making it less diverse, by having a clearly better-than-the-others approach.

On your answer: what you say is surely correct, but it doesn't prevent the fact that the same strategy could also be used in lower difficulty settings. If snowball works in impossible, then surely it works in hard even better?

So, snowballing is a good strategy. If it's the only strategy that works in impossible, as you seem to say, then it may be considered perhaps the best strategy.And a retort that helps the best strategy become even better is imho OP a priori.
 
But even if that weren't the case, which may well be, still - numbers don't lie. Just comparing them on the initial screen, as it is now, when you have 5 books, the retort gives you:
- half the bonus of sagemaster (half of a pick)
- around spellweaver (no skill bonus but more than half power bonus - half of 2 picks)
- half something else, I'm at work and don't remember ^^' was it growth?
- an unprecedented production bonus
- and a money bonus too, just to be sure

This with the spell books. But books are not wasted themselves, they give you spells and power, so to answer also Nelphine: if you take the retort without taking the 5 books you're wasting a part of the retort on purpose and not min-maxing it, I respect that but it's off topic in a balance discussion.

I'll call this set of bonuses a 3 or 4 picks retort more or less.

Or, don't make it cost so much but give the boni more gradually and less front-loaded, as I suggested? I like multi-book approaches, it's just that this retort is so good with them that it feels cheap to take it.

[Arnuz]

Another idea.

20% of the initial bonus for the first book in a domain
40% for the first book in the second domain
...
100% for the first book in the fifth domain; this is equivalent to your initial bonus set
+20% for the second book in a domain
+40%...
+100% for the second book in the fifth domain, doubling your initial bonus set

That'd make it a 1 retort, 10 books approach when topped. I think it'd be flavourful too. Very multicultural! Maybe still op (or maybe even more )

[Catwalk]

I disagree completely with the notion that quick strategies are high risk / high reward. On the contrary, they're low risk / high reward. It works better on Hard as well.

[Seravy]

Ok, let's compare to other retorts.

You get 16% research on cities. Sage master is 33% on everything, assuming half your RP income comes from cities and half from power distribution, this is about 1/4 of a pick, if you also consider Sage Master provides a flat early game bonus of +7 (or 5, I forgot), then even less, maybe around 1/5 of a pick.

You get 16% power from cities. If cities represent half your power income, that's worth 8% compared to SpellWeaver's 25% bonus but it's better to compare this to Cult Leader instead. That one gives you 75% on religious buildings, which represent about half your total power production in a city, so as good as 37.5% on all. Instead you get 16% which is half, but Cult Leader also provides a 50% bonus on unrest reduction. Overall this part is worth 1/3 to 1/4 picks depending on how much value you consider unrest reductions.

16% gold. No other retort does that so hard to judge. I'd say it's worth much less than power but that depends on playstyle, for military strategies it is better.

+2 max pop is, well, idk, about 10% larger overall empire population? But more people don't generate more power or research (unless it's a special race, even then only 1-2 more). so ultimately this is a gold and production bonus, but it gets applied much slower than those because the population has to actually grow and that takes time. Probably the weakest part of the retort in the early game, but fairly decent for late game (where the retort is otherwise the weakest). In the early game this is worth pretty much nothing at all.

+16% production, again nothing else does this so hard to judge but ultimately it's on par with the gold bonus, or  better.

...try to look at the retort from a different perspective.
A +16% bonus to everything is as good as owning +16% more cities. That's good but hardly gamebreaking. It means if you have an empire of 10 cities, you fight as well as if you had 12. Not what is going to give you the edge against a 30 city empire. A retort that allows a strategy that can conquer more than 16% additional cities is better. Like, Alchemy to make your armies get ready faster and hit harder, while making sure you always have mana to spare for combat spells. Warlord to make sure you can win using fewer troops than otherwise, or beat harder neutral targets. Spellweaver to make sure you can summon 50% more fantastic creatures - if you rely on these for expansion that equals 50% more territory taken, far better than 16%. Likewise, conjurer to reduce costs has a similar effect and so on.
At first I also though "hey look, this is so overpowered, 5*16 is 80% extra, maybe I should rethink this"...but the harsh reality is, you can't add it up that way. The only problem is, this bonus is no-brainer. You don't have to pick whatever works best for your strategy - this works on everything. But the price for that is huge - you won't excel in any particular area and your late game options will be more limited.

Either way, to be able to really judge this, a LOT of games have to be played. Hundreds, even. This retort is new and I don't think we are ready to say it's too weak or too strong. Personally I wouldn't ever use it on Impossible as it doesn't fit any of my preferred strategies. To win Impossible I need far more than 16% advantage so I rather pick retorts that allow me to win through what my strategy is aiming for

(I think one of the best ways to figure out how strong retorts are is to let the AI play a few hundred games and see if any retort, realm or race performs significantly better. I'm planning to eventually start doing that again but I stopped for the moment because there were far too many changes in the game to get consistent data. I won't start again until at least we get the EXP updates into the main release.)

[Nelphine]

I think some retorts are weak. I don't think omniscient is overly strong.

For instance I would say: alchemy, warlord, archmage, spellweaver, astrologer, specialist, tactician, sagemaster, conjuror are all at least as good as omniscient for the pick cost.

Given that, I would find it very hard to say omniscient is unbalanced.

I'm actually considering dropping omniscient. My current build is only 4 life + 1 death. Which makes it hard to justify omniscient. But that +16% production is extremely good.

[Catwalk]

A +16% bonus to everything is as good as owning +16% more cities

It's worth much more than that. If you had 16% more cities, you'd also have to build and pay upkeep for 16% more buildings and feed 16% more citizens.
Try to calculate an example using 100% bonus to everything in one fairly developed size 10 city or two equally developed size 10 cities without bonuses.

[Catwalk]

You get 16% power from cities. If cities represent half your power income, that's worth 8% compared to SpellWeaver's 25% bonus but it's better to compare this to Cult Leader instead. That one gives you 75% on religious buildings, which represent about half your total power production in a city, so as good as 37.5% on all. Instead you get 16% which is half, but Cult Leader also provides a 50% bonus on unrest reduction. Overall this part is worth 1/3 to 1/4 picks depending on how much value you consider unrest reductions.

This one is also incorrect. You get 16% power on everything but your fortress, so nodes are included. Compounding it with Astrologer and Spellweaver on nodes is huge. Similarly, it lets you boost Cult Leader considerably. If you have two effects doing the same thing and you can compound them, each becomes vastly stronger and you have to consider that when balancing.
Lastly, your analysis fails to include the value of the book itself: More spells and higher starting power + casting skill. I don't think numerical analysis works very well for balancing complex game mechanics. You can balance buildings that way because they're simple, you can't balance retorts this way. In that sense, I agree with you that only testing and intuition will give satisfactory answers.

[Seravy]

A +16% bonus to everything is as good as owning +16% more cities

It's worth much more than that. If you had 16% more cities, you'd also have to build and pay upkeep for 16% more buildings and feed 16% more citizens.
Try to calculate an example using 100% bonus to everything in one fairly developed size 10 city or two equally developed size 10 cities without bonuses.

True. Good point. Maybe the 16% is too high then. Any suggestions for better numbers? (keep in mind it should be at least playable even if the player takes 10 books of the same thing, and at least slightly above average for 3+ realms.)

[Nelphine]

I don't think its too powerful. The discussion of omniscient is either for 1 pick you get nothing. Or for 2 picks you get some common spells and 16% of something. Chaos has the worst common spells - giving it 16% power is fine, because that pick for 1 chaos book is nothing but 16% power. If you've already gone deep chaos, then you're giving up other things. I'd MUCH rather take spellweaver than omniscient + a chaos book.

Thus why my strategy is possibly dropping omniscient - it takes too many picks (at least 2, maybe up to 6) to give anything. Everyone one of those picks needs to be individually compared against what else you could get.

Do I take a life book or alchemy? Alchemy. Do I take a chaos book or spellweaver? Spellweaver (even archmage is better than that chaos book since the majority of power over a whole game is spent on skill). Do I take sagemaster or sorcery? Sagemaster. Nature and death are both unique - they are why you take omniscient. And nature is highly debatable.

You absolutely can break down omniscient into 1 pick choices. And when you do, you realize its not overpowered, even taking 1 life/death/nature/chaos.

Omniscient does what it should - it takes an otgerwise poor choice, like choosing 3+ realms, and gives a benefit for doing so. The cost of doing so is already very high so I wouldn't mind omniscient being increased. Having 4 books of 1 realm instead of multiple realms is FAR better for the 'low books high retorts' strategy - omniscient just makes the gap smaller.

[Catwalk]

Gut feeling:
Production > Gold > Power > Research > Pop

Production is very good. Gold is good. Power is mediocre, I don't think starting power should be excluded. Research is both weak and uninteresting, and pop is simply too long-term to matter much at all.

Production: 15% + 3% per book
Gold: 16% + 4% per book
Power: 15% + 3% per book (fortress power included)
Research: 20% + 5% per book (boring effect, identical to Sage Master but I can't think of anything else)
Pop: 2 pop + 0.5 per book + 20% housing bonus + 5% per book


Nelphine, I disagree that you can compare Life books with Alchemy. The value of Alchemy depends heavily on how power heavy your setup is. With Cult Leader and Heavenly Light, Alchemy is not necessary. For rush strategies Alchemy is awesome, for semi-rush strategies it's good. For builder strategies it's less important.

Similarly, chaos books and Spellweaver are not an either-or proposition. They combine perfectly, giving a massive +45% power. This is key to making Heavenly Light work as a resource strategy. If you could pick Spellweaver twice then you could argue that the chaos book was superfluous.