About the numbers.
Your proposed numbers are almost identical to the current values. A difference of 1% is close to irrelevant. I thought your problem was the retort being too powerful for the first books, yet you leave that at 15-16% each.
If the change needed is only this much, I rather not bother, it would take a while to change them.
I believe we agreed that if the needed difference is small, it's more user friendly to have everything at the same value instead, when we made the retort.
(boosting research might be useful though. It's strictly inferior to power.)
It's most likely worth looking at both the bonus and what the book itself you need gets you together.
Bonus : Agree on Production being best. I would normally consider Power second - it's much harder to get than gold, and is also more valuable in most cases. However, cities generate way more gold than power in most cases, making gold a better deal. That leaves Power third. Research would be amazing, except it's somewhat of an "all-in" thing, a mere 16% isn't going to get you all that further ahead. Spending that extra gold or production to buy the research buildings faster might pay off better on the short term...and on long term, research is not beneficial as the whole point is getting it done faster than others, and after very rares, it becomes useless. So research is probably fifth. This leaves population the fourth - it's slow, but 1 extra people per 50 turns up to twice per city is not that bad - those people will then benefit from the gold and production boost, further increasing their value. It's weak for the early strategy but so is research.
So the other is same as your except the last two, but if I had to rate them in words, I'd say production is great, gold is good, power is average, research and population are below average.
the book :
Life : Ultra-valuable, lets you have a massive list of valuable spells, some of which are useful even in the late game.
Nature : Very good, Sprites, Bears, Water Walking and Earth Lore are all great for the early game, and Web stays useful through the entire game.
Chaos : Awful - a single Chaos book doesn't contribute much, you need to pick at least two for this to not be a waste. Even then, Chaos uncommons aren't that good so you need to get lucky.
Sorcery : Decent, many Sorcery commons are strong and remain useful through the game, albeit they aren't that outstanding as Life would be.
Death : Also decent, death commons provide a nice benefit for the early game, but aside from Wraith Form on ships, offers not much for late game - Mana Leak being the best here.
I'd rate these as Life -> Nature -> Death -> Sorcery -> Chaos.
If we look at this together with the above two, Life and Death rank well on both, so they are the most valuable choices for the retort. Nature offers a poor benefit but strong spells, so it's a good choice anyway. Chaos and Sorcery are below average choices.
However, there is a catch. You can stack the Chaos and Sorcery benefit with other retorts that multiply your power or research, which makes those a lot more powerful, especially if you did take enough books to get the powerful chaos/sorcery rares. You can't stack any retort to improve the Nature, Life, and Death bonus. So while different strategies benefit from these two groups, and different picks are needed for them, I think every realm is viable for Omniscient..you just don't thrown 1 Sorcery book on top of the others. Makes sense - Sorcery and Chaos are dedicated late game realms, while the other three are not.
Quote:Wait, Omniscient does nothing for non-city resources? I got that completely wrong then, am I correct that this isn't shown anywhere in-game?
Right click on the retort. Read the text. "Each of the wizard's CITIES gain...". Though, the Omniscient bonus showing up on the city resources instead of being just a flat addition to the total like Archmage should have been another hint.
