Artificier strategy

[Arnuz]

I understand that making abilities work as a tech-tree is too much work. That's too bad, it'd offer so much possibility! Oh well vOv

Found the thread, read it, like Nelphine (and Zitro back then) I
- think that both heroism and focus magic were and are an unsolved issue. Why make two spells that make heroes so much more powerful and then remove them for 30 turns?
- don't mind strongly about it because whatever happens, Seravy and CoM are great

IMHO the issues with artificer are a result of these two unsolved spells. I'd say that with heroism and FM nerfed, the power of heroes becomes the amount of items and other spells that they have on them.
1. Items need to be found, so they are luck based. Sure, once in a while a game will become easy thanks to the year 3 30 shields hero, but: "getting lucky and finding early a super combination of items" is hardly a strategy, right? Besides, the long-term game is already won anyhow given the AI limitations, so I don't consider the end game power of heroes to be an issue.
2. Buffs contend for overland skill and are dispellable, so they are relatively balanced barring the two above, that are an absolute must-have for early heroes. They allow to jump the early XP build up phase that is an experience in of itself - why should only life and sorcery be allowed to do this? FM is basically the same for spellcasters, as while going from 10MP to 30 is an abyss, going from 30 to 50 is convenience. Given that the XP build-up ~ and the linked risk ~ is what happens in the first 30 turns, I see that you are then forced to prevent heroes for 30 turns as a consequence...

However, having 2 spells that are super strong on heroes and then removing heroes is no fun imho. Last proposal: FM and heroism simply don't work on heroes* (because, let's see, heroes are already heroic and individuals with a magic focus?), and famous works immediately but without fame - so that you you can only get one of the shit tier heroes - Dwarf, Barbarian and Orc Warrior if the cost system still the one you described in this post. FM shouldn't work on fantastic units either imho, but that's for another thread...

As a consequence, artificer would increase in importance because it'd be useful to create cheap starting items that complete the picture filling up the heroes' slots at the beginning, after you assess what you've found in the first 3 lairs to get the heroes to accumulate the XP of the first levels without dying quicker. Life is already super-useful to this thanks to healing, I wouldn't say that this takes away life's role as hero-friendly realm.

*Or, modify them. Heroism might increase the amount of XP gained by a percentage, and similarly MF might give a relative increase to MP total, making them grow in power constantly rather than being completely front-loaded like they are now.

[Seravy]

Why make two spells that make heroes so much more powerful and then remove them for 30 turns?

Because they are pretty important spells for nonhero use?
(and no, making them "nonhero only" is not easy at all. It involves human and AI targeting both in and out of combat, and checking a unit for being a hero is code heavy - at least 30-40 bytes. Then there is the need to add a new warning message and display it, tho that's probably the easier half. So it's not something I'll agree to do unless there is no other way and even there it might or might not be doable, with "not doable" being the more likely outcome.)

But, let's say there is no heroism.

You hire the Thief.
Let's assume she is level 2 - 30 EXP is trivially easy to get from any weak lair.

Base shields : 5
Agility : +2
Tactician : +2
Holy Armor : +2
Lucky : +1 To Def
Endurance : +1 To Def

At this point the hero is already durable enough to beat anything available in the early game.

Heroism only contributes 3 shields to an Agility hero - 2 from Agility itself, and 1 from natural leveling. That's marginal - you can make up for it by creating three +1 Def items which costs...less than 300 without artificier. It's also temporal - as soon as the hero did kill a few enemy unit, it'll be level 4 anyway.

Heroism on a nonagility hero contributes less to durability than Holy Armor, or Endurance, or Tactician (not all three but any one of these) - it's hardly the source of the problem.

The reason why Heroism was considered problematic is "Ritual" type abilities - producing 16 Power instead of 4 is a big difference - but not all such abilities are affected by Heroism. For example, Noble is also insanely broken if you get it on turn 1 - and doesn't need Heroism. On turn 30, it's fairly balanced (albeit still above average).

The rapidly growing mana pool on heroes (both from Heroism and Focus Magic) is a bit more unbalanced, but again, only for a while. Eventually the AI has enough casting skill of its own to match it.
The problem is, this one cannot be balanced easily. The hero has to have at least 12-20 mana to be able to cast any spell at all, so it can't be less on level 1, otherwise we are back to the base game where caster heroes can't cast spells until they are level 3-4. It also has to grow by leveling, and the growth has to be higher for each "mp tier" the hero has - otherwise any hero ability picks spent on more mp would be wasted. (yes that's a thing, heroes can get more MP as their random ability.)

I thought we already discussed this in that thread, or not?

Either way, I don't think the 15 MP from focus magic is that powerful. You can use it to summon an additional zombie, centaur, or something. (actually those cost more, but almost)
So in each battle involving the hero, you have an extra low tier unit. (or nuke one enemy unit with a spell instead, or heal, etc)

For this you paid 75 overland casting time. That buys an entire permanent unit. A Ghoul, a Sprite, one and a half Bears, etc. Which will also be there in every battle to support your hero, and does not use up one turn from the hero to "cast it" either. Sure, it's less versatile, and if they kill it, it's gone, but so is Focus Magic if dispelled.
Overall, it's not all that much better than any other common spell - slightly better, yes, but not on a game-changing level.
Heroism on the other hand grants a lot, 3 levels worth of MP is usually closer to 25-30 than 15. That one is definitely too good for heroes - but it's a temporal boost - as the hero levels up, it disappears. More importantly, removing it would not solve the problem, see above.

but without fame - so that you you can only get one of the shit tier heroes

Or you cast Just Cause and get good heroes anyway.

Most common spells in Life just reek of "yeah and this make heroes overpowered". It's either we have a Life realm or we have heroes in the first 30 turns, not both.

[Nelphine]

That sounds like a rough summary of the previous discussion, yes. Basically, focus magic and heroism are potentially problems, but NOT because they increase heroes ability to win combats. You can have insane heroes without either spell, which means doing anything to those two spells does nothing for the overall problem of hero power. (You can easily test this right now, by simply not using those spells on heroes.)

The limit to 30 turns was basically a compromise to avoid the worst of the 'this game I got lucky and got x hero super early without ever leaving my capital' and the snowballing hat brings.

[Arnuz]

Wait, I don't get it. How can you hire the thief at the start if it's at the third tier of heroes? I was building the proposal around dwarf, orc warrior and barbarian... See http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid627821 (yes I've read it, unless you're speaking of another thread, I must say that the impression was different but I haven't studied the entire 4 pages ^^')

Thanks for the explanations, to both, I must admit that I thought that it was simpler to make a spell units only.

Dunno, Nelphine, if one gets super lucky that's it imho, I don't think it's worth it trying to balance the game around cases of super luck. Anyhow, I wanted to add another idea, how about simply shuffling the spells around? Heroism as it is now makes it easier to use late heores - the summoned champion that arrives when there are no easy lairs anymore. Therefore, what if you make it an uncommon? That prevents players from having it at turn 1 which imho is part of the problem. If you are convinced that the spell is not the problem then nevermind, we'll agree to disagree and that's it (you are the modder so you "win" the argument, and I'm perfectly fine with this : )
Same with FM. As for ideas on what to swap it with... Looking at life I'd say that prayer could be a common, it's a very life-y spell. In sorcery, vertigo and blur seem that they could be dropped as well - they're a bit underwhelming as uncommons imo. Maybe vertigo more than blur.

Heroism and FM are must-haves - a hero strategy could work with just these two spells, and will be much less powerful without them. This is usually an indication that something's broken. This BTW indirectly also nerfs ghouls, and would fix a lot of what I find to be broken...

Is changing spell rarity easier than the other ideas I brought up?

[Nelphine]

The argument against moving heroism in the past has been AI who are mono life. Basically that particular type of AI is extra exposed against human early aggression due to lack of summons. They must rely on heroes and city troops. Assuming we don't force mono life to always play a race with war college and warlord, then those AI cant expect to have strong city troops, and due to overall problems with heroes we don't want any ai to rely on heroes. Therefore they must use city troops AND have a way to make those troops dangerous - enter common heroism.

Focus magic is harder to justify as a common, but basically it comes down to early sorcery sucks and needs something, again assuming mono sorcery. Additionally, dual sorcery can't really rely on late game sorcery, so they need good synergy - as common, focus magic is amazing for synergy dual realm builds. Without it, dual realm sorcery would become a giant gamble that might not help at all (thus forcing dual realms to either skip sorcery, or choose mono sorcery to guarantee the strong late sorcery spells.)

[Nelphine]

And the super lucky thing was a big consideration because one of our big goals is to try to make more strategies viable at all levels. If you can get a great hero on turn 5 or 10, then you could reasonably make a strategy out of playing until whatever turn, no acceptable hero? Restart. And heroes are string enough if gained early enough to win lunatic (destroy everything except capitals with the hero, while you play the rest of your empire normally. Without any secondary city, even lunatic can't play.

And all it takes is tactician + warlord + holy armor + endurance, and an early hero is invincible. You could also grab artificer for a +2 or +3 armor item as well though that's not needed for at least the first two AI. No need for heroism or found items.

[Seravy]

How can you hire the thief at the start if it's at the third tier of heroes?

That's the gold cost, not the fame requirement. You find 300 gold in a lair, or pick Alchemy and convert your mana income for the first 10 turns. It's a fame 0 hero, but you're good to go up to fame 20 which covers all nonchampion heroes (famous+just cause) anyway.

how about simply shuffling the spells around? Heroism as it is now makes it easier to use late heores - the summoned champion that arrives when there are no easy lairs anymore. Therefore, what if you make it an uncommon?

This has also been discussed already. Heroism is not useful if it's not an early spell - compared to uncommon overland spells (for example Shadow Demons or Stream of Life), casting Heroism on a normal unit is not worth it. Also, monolife is unplayable without Heroism - it's what it gets instead of summoning spells. The AI especially, but also for the human it's fairly important to have.

Focus Magic is common because it has high combo potential, and to take advantage of that, the spell has to be accessible. It is also not good enough for an uncommon, even if slightly above average for a common.

Still, I'd pick other spells before it even for a hero strategy. There is no guarantee I get a caster hero.

[Arnuz]

The argument against moving heroism in the past has been AI who are mono life. Basically that particular type of AI is extra exposed against human early aggression due to lack of summons. They must rely on heroes and city troops.

This argument doesn't hold to inspection. It might be true for a capital, where the buffed stack lies (uselessly), but even then the human player can simply run around and grab or raze the other cities, so there's no advantage. Even then, heroism is counter-productive imho: it sucks a lot of skillpoints out to buff the capital garrison which is then not used. Sure, there's the wandering doomstack, but if we're thinking of the situation where the human is actively attacking, there's nothing that the wandering doomstack can do - blocking it is as simple as putting a stream of spearmen on its path...

Focus magic is harder to justify as a common, but basically it comes down to early sorcery sucks and needs something, again assuming mono sorcery. Additionally, dual sorcery can't really rely on late game sorcery, so they need good synergy - as common, focus magic is amazing for synergy dual realm builds. Without it, dual realm sorcery would become a giant gamble that might not help at all (thus forcing dual realms to either skip sorcery, or choose mono sorcery to guarantee the strong late sorcery spells.)

At the same time it's super exploitable. The consequence of this choice is to always have 2 sorc books, is this wanted? (makes me want to try dark elf spearmen abuse: 32 attack whoopage, that might actually beat lunatic ; ) that spell is incredible, I don't know how you don't want it always Seravy. Improved hero mana AND ranged attack, double strength of low level magic ranged troops and summons, ranged cockatrice stoning (and similar stuff) for the later game, all in one flexible package: what's not to like?

And the super lucky thing was a big consideration because one of our big goals is to try to make more strategies viable at all levels. If you can get a great hero on turn 5 or 10, then you could reasonably make a strategy out of playing until whatever turn, no acceptable hero? Restart. And heroes are string enough if gained early enough to win lunatic (destroy everything except capitals with the hero, while you play the rest of your empire normally. Without any secondary city, even lunatic can't play.

And all it takes is tactician + warlord + holy armor + endurance, and an early hero is invincible. You could also grab artificer for a +2 or +3 armor item as well though that's not needed for at least the first two AI. No need for heroism or found items.

On the restart thing, that's just like save scumming, there's no point in trying to prevent that from in-game mechanics imho, cheaters will find a way. Why even make the effort to account for that?

On the other hand, I completely agree on the issue that heroes are a super-stacking magnet. I've seen the thread about a change of defence mechanics, that seems too narrow. I'd rather think of a system of diminishing returns for shields, to make a dragon stack still dangerous to face even with 30 shields, but that probably deserves its own thread.

[Nelphine]

Defense already has diminishing returns, but yes I agree.

AI can cast a lot of spells. Consider, heroism is the cost of 2 hell hounds. Ever been on a chaos island with 40 hell hounds? (I am assuming you have, I've seen it much higher) - that's far more than just the capital garrison getting heroism. Mono life doesn't have anything else to spend its prodigous overland skill on.

As for focus magic, I've given up on it. If I take sorcery books its not for focus magic anymore. Basically it's a 'win harder' spell. Ghouls and cockatrices and sprites are all powerful even before the buff - and every time I've tried to make a tactic out of the combination, I've ended up realizing I can do the same tactic without focus magic, and thereby save some picks. Heroes getting more casting skill? Same thing. Heroes are already overpowered I win buttons - making them stronger really doesn't matter. There are a few things that focus magic really does help - basically any 20 or 40 caster, to allow them to cast one of the higher-than-20-or-40 spells. But again those units are already strong enough, or rare enough, that you don't build a strategy around them plus focus magic.

In short: what you're saying seems to be the standard response to what I've come to call focus magic ism. Its very strong, it seems amazing, you rightly want to nerf things that make the game too easy for you, but you need to experience all of the other things that are as good or better, that are just a lot more subtle. The game actually does handle focus magic, its just focus magic really jumps up and down screaming for attention so it seems stronger than it is. (This is similar to realizing sprites aren't a problem, any form of clearing lairs early is - sprites are just the easiest one to learn, and the one with the lowest risk of doing it wrong, but they're not even the best, even before all the lair changes).)

Note: despite all of the above, both heroism and focus magic are on my own personal watch list. Every time someone brings them up, which happens regularly, I re-examine with the new input. But for instance, ghouls I can just slaughter AI with. I don't need to focus magic to steal chaos spawn, when I can conquer all the cities without focus magic.

[Seravy]

Ghouls and cockatrices and sprites are all powerful even before the buff - and every time I've tried to make a tactic out of the combination, I've ended up realizing I can do the same tactic without focus magic, and thereby save some picks.

Pretty much this. The buff is good but...I don't think it can compete with a 2 pick retort, or 2 1 pick retorts, or idk, 2 books in a realm that suits my strategy better? (2 Nature for Sprites or bears, 2 Life for all the amazing common and uncommon spells or Heavenly Light, 2 Death for Wraithform or zombies or ghouls, 2 Sorcery for resist magic or floating island, etc are all amazing options depending on what you are playing)

I've first tested the FM+Cocktrices strategy when it was reported - and it failed spectacularly. The entry cost for it is too high - you have to research Cockatrices, and each unit costs about 270 MP and has like 4 or 5 upkeep which is very steep in the early game when it is still powerful. Then the unit has to wait 3-4 turns to heal between battles because it gets bombarded by combat spells and it doesn't deal enough damage if it's missing figures.

Next there was FM+Sprites - Sprites just do the exact same thing without FM, it wasn't relevant. Those 2 picks do better on retorts that make Sprites easier to summon, or nodes easier to fight.

Then cockatrices again - I repeated the test game at least 2 more times and the result was the same.

Then Ghouls with FM - again, FM isn't relevant unless you find Chaos Spawn (or other very specific units, I think Earth Elementals are the other one. Djinn is probably an AI flaw, they should be casting magic immunity or dispelling wave.) to reanimate so this is a very luck based strategy. Not my cup of tea.