Artifact costs

[Seravy]

I've been thinking about these, but it's not simple.

-There was a neat balance between the cost of item creation, and very rare summons, as the two are on the same power level. Now that very rare creatures are about 50% cheaper, items seem far too expensive to use unless no very rare summoning is available. A set of items on a hero generally costs 8-12k and for that you can have 2-3 full stacks of very rare creatures which is far better than a single unit even if it's as strong as two or three or even 5 of those creatures.
-However, Create Artifact comes much faster than very rare creatures. By the time enough of them are on the field to effectively threaten a well equipped hero and prevent it from being unstoppable, it's possible to make several items and use the heroes to win the game. It's a rare spell, not a very rare one.
-Cheaper artifacts would mean higher quality treasure which would break game balance - remember that reducing treasure by ~25% was the difference between unstoppable demigod heroes in the midgame, and the current, more balanced game.

So, idk. I do know I would never cast Create Artifact or Summon Champion while I can have 500 cost Great Drakes, Sky Drakes, or 600 Archangels etc



A similar problem for Disjunction : the choice of dispelling enemy globals, or summoning 3 Great Drakes for the same price is usually obvious - when it was against 1.5 great drake, dispelling was a worthy choice (yes, the AI might recast the spell but for a few turns they don't have it which opens up possibilities for attacking and conquering, or whatever else. That opportunity is not really worth twice as many very rare creatures though, at least I don't think it does.) - albeit when playing as a Runemaster, dispelling is still worth it in many cases.

[zitro1987]

I've been thinking about these, but it's not simple.

-There was a neat balance between the cost of item creation, and very rare summons, as the two are on the same power level. Now that very rare creatures are about 50% cheaper, items seem far too expensive to use unless no very rare summoning is available. A set of items on a hero generally costs 8-12k and for that you can have 2-3 full stacks of very rare creatures which is far better than a single unit even if it's as strong as two or three or even 5 of those creatures.
-However, Create Artifact comes much faster than very rare creatures. By the time enough of them are on the field to effectively threaten a well equipped hero and prevent it from being unstoppable, it's possible to make several items and use the heroes to win the game. It's a rare spell, not a very rare one.
-Cheaper artifacts would mean higher quality treasure which would break game balance - remember that reducing treasure by ~25% was the difference between unstoppable demigod heroes in the midgame, and the current, more balanced game.

So, idk. I do know I would never cast Create Artifact or Summon Champion while I can have 500 cost Great Drakes, Sky Drakes, or 600 Archangels etc



A similar problem for Disjunction : the choice of dispelling enemy globals, or summoning 3 Great Drakes for the same price is usually obvious - when it was against 1.5 great drake, dispelling was a worthy choice (yes, the AI might recast the spell but for a few turns they don't have it which opens up possibilities for attacking and conquering, or whatever else. That opportunity is not really worth twice as many very rare creatures though, at least I don't think it does.) - albeit when playing as a Runemaster, dispelling is still worth it in many cases.

That's a good point. I wonder if the following can be done:
*Enchant Item unchanged.
*Items from Create Artifact have a 33% cost reduction, but research cost is MUCH higher, above that of 'summoning chamption' and is obtained in lairs as if it were a 'rare'.
 -If this can result in a minor 'build and destroy back to mana' profit, it doesn't matter because you're wasting precious overland skill doing so!

[Seravy]

As the item cost is set when it is created, if the spell cost is 33% lower, I think it's possible to make the item be worth 33% less mana when being destroyed too. Definitely liking the idea, I'll take a look at the possibility of implementing it.

[zitro1987]

I'm not concerned about the item being worth 33% less mana while being destroyed, but if that's a feature of a cost reduction, it's not a problem either.

By research cost increase, I refer to the traditional cost of a rare - '1600rp' or maybe 1200rp

By cost reduction, I mean percentage cumulative with artificer (50% * 67%) not 100%-50%-33%

[Nelphine]

Um. Disjunction is a sore point for me. Due to overland casting bonuses, if disjunction is any cheaper, AI can practically always do it one round by the time they actually get the spell, which prevents human use of spell blast. (Also note, very rare summons already fall in this category, but at least they get used multiple times so the human can still spell blast *something* even if they can't actually prevent the spell from ever being cast)

I really don't want disjunction to be unpreventable, as the cost of globals is already practically prohibitive for the human player. They're worth the cost when looking at the effect they bring, but AI can spell blast, or disjunction far too easily. And again with power bonuses, the AI always comes out ahead on the actual cost, so it ends up not being worth it for the human. But in reverse, its almost never worth casting disjunction against an AI for the exact same reasons - they can recast the global too easily, and the AI always comes out ahead mana wise.


Other than that, I agree that create artifact should be cheaper. I'd gave said 20% myself, because I still find heroes simply destroy everything, including very rare summons. So maybe 25% is better?

But I definitely think overland bonuses simply make the AI and the human play too differently when it comes to spells that influence each other (curses/dispels, buffs/dispels, globals/disjunction, spell blast/anything) and so trying to account for problems on the human side always make the AI too powerful, while trying to account for problems on the AI side make the spell useless to the human.

[Seravy]

Looked into the possibility of doing this. Predefined treasure already comes with its own cost data, so that one is good. Randomly generated treasure items, and items created by the AI however are identical. The AI part can tell apart items from artifacts, but the treasure is always artifacts. So this one is problematic, random items would be more valuable if the discount was enforced. However, loss of unused points and generally worse quality plagues random items anyway, so an increased max value is probably safe to ignore. A 2000 budget item with powers I pick is almost always better than a 3000 budget item with completely random abilities.

The created item cost is calculated by a procedure which is called from everywhere, so making it adjust the cost would do the trick...except there is a problem. The input for the procedure is the item itself - and the item doesn't store any information about what created it. The type of item would need to be added into the data somehow - probably by cutting off 1 character from the maximal length of the name and storing it there. This field would need to be initialized by all sources of item creation, and I'm pretty sure the random generated item procedure doesn't have free space for that.

Overall, I think this is not very doable. I rather cut down the cost of item creation itself, and adjust treasure item budgets (mainly, the spent budget vs the generated cost multiplier, which used to be 2 then 1.6 and idk what it is right now but less - we can further reduce it easily) accordingly, but then we need to discuss the cost for each stat and power individually (unless we agree on the current system being perfect in which case we can just reduce all by 25 or 33%). This would make Enchant Item also cheaper, but honestly, it's prohibitively expensive at the time you don't have create artifact yet as is anyway, so that might be an improvement. (yes, you can make a small trinket with one or two powers, but a 4 power item costs ~1000 or more, which is what, 30-40 turns of casting?)

Meanwhile, I tweaked AI disjunction changes, and casting chances for some globals, which should improve the situation with disjunction somewhat.

[Arnuz]

Idea: how about embedding the bonus to artefacts into artificer instead? Simply making it more powerful (raising the discount). It's not the same but it could be a decent compromise. It might even make me try the retort once

[Seravy]

Well, the problem is the cost being too high without Artificier, so....that would solve nothing.

[Arnuz]

Too high for what though?

Because if the aim is to make it affordable at lunatic, then you have to cut it by 90%, not 20.

If it's too high for lesser difficulty, well... At that point fixing it only with a not-so-valued retort would at least make the retort more appreciated. Not perfect but it does solve something

[Seravy]

Too high for what though?

The aim is to make "Do I want X rare or very rare creatures or an artifact of equal cost" a choice where you want to pick one or the other depending on the game state. This used to be the case : a 4000 cost artifact was sometimes a better choice than 3 Demon Lords or 4 Great Wyrms. Rarely, but given a good enough hero and an enemy that could kill said creatures with spells, the item was the better choice.
Now that creatures are about half price, that same artifact has to compete with, say, 8 Great Wyrms and it's harder to imagine anyone would go for the items instead of the (3x - a hero has 3 slots) 8 Wyrms. The hero is still better, but 24 units grant so much more presence on the map than a single hero, no matter how good it is, that it's a no-brainer choice.