Races, Units, Buildings

[Arnuz]

7 skill is a drop, 7 skill in each of 20 cities has suddenly produced in year 7 more skill than all your investment is skill as an archi mage for the entire match because that's dropping quadratically, as each skill point costs add many skill points you already have.
What about the proposal to make towers cost more as more are built, or something along those lines? (Time based, ...)

[Seravy]

What about the proposal to make towers cost more as more are built, or something along those lines?

Building costs are constants, I can't turn them into functions.

...20 cities in year 7 is exceptionally good, 20 cities that already have a cost 900 building is insane. I still don't understand how can people have that many and not lose half of them to lack of garrison units. Until people post videos on how they beat Lunatic, it's pointless to even talk about it. The problem is not the towers but the fact you have so many more than normal for that year.

[zitro1987]

Yes, 20 amplifying towers is very powerful (140 skill, 210 overland if spellweaver).

So is 20 wizard's guilds + 20 parthenons for your possibly biggest source of mana and some research/unrest ... which is needed to keep up with higher skill

So is 20 banks + merchants guilds + oracle for pure gold production, which can be turned into mana ... which is needed to keep up with higher skill

So is 20 war colleges + armorer's guilds and/or fantastic stables for medium-strength stacks of dooms and garrisons, because cities are too important.

Let's face it - cities are essential to your wizard's power potential. +7 skill is very good, but the rest of the buildings really enhance your wizard's capabilities. If a player is timid to conquer advanced cities with these buildings, he/she may fall behind. The concept of the game is to be at war, conquer, and feel powerful.

Reason why I wish amplifying towers get limited to just overland skill - to encourage putting points in skill late in game for more, needed combat skill. The amount of combat skill, thanks to the towers, become rather ridiculous and thus every player is guaranteed to be able to spam nearly-unlimited spells multiple times per turn, as long as mana present. If the towers only impact overland skill, then players who want to spam combat spells may need some extra skill investment via magic power.

[Nelphine]

You already know that my lunatic strategy is simply to have insane army strength compared to all the AI, therefore making war incredibly unlikely. And when war does happen, I put bezerkers in my most important city to prevent them ever being attacked. If you look at the save file I gave you, you'll note that in that game I've actually got to the point of having 4 bezerkers in each city; and I've literally never had a city attacked by the AI since that happened. I don't bother buffing any of them, because it's overkill.

However, yes, your explanation of cities designed to 'produce' spells to support themselves does make sense. I think it's flawed because I always play aggressively and focus everything onto my offensive doomstack(s) - but only up to what is required. I rarely do mega buff units anymore, because it's overkill (maybe attacking fortresses, or djinn, or something like that). Bezerkers with holy armor and some kind of resistance boost is all I need for offense.



So, assuming your explanation is our required goal, then I think we should keep casting skill per tower; and then I think we should find two numbers: one, what is reasonable if the skill is used defensively, as Seravy originally envisioned it; two, what is reasonable if the skill is used offensively, as I do. Then pick a number between the two.

For number two, I'm still of the mind that 3 per turn is reasonable. For number one, I would guess, even with cost reductions on very rares, that 6 per turn is reasonable. (Amplifying towers come into play around the time of rares in my experience.)

Therefore, I'd suggest 5 per turn as being a happy medium between the two numbers.

I'd further suggest Uranus' blessing be reduced to only 4 per turn when added to an amplifying tower. (This number is between the 2 as well, but sorcery naturally has the ability to use low amounts of extremely strong magic, such as magic immunity and invisibility, that don't require huge amounts to be expended in order to be extremely dangerous.) You could reduce the cost of Uranus' blessing, but I wouldn't reduce it a lot. Maybe 25% at most.


If that was done, my current 881 from amplifying towers would be reduced to 369 before spellweaver; and then, either 184 more, or 164 or 2014 more from spellweaver, depending on when the bonus is rounded. I believe it's rounded after all sources are added up though, so it should be 184. So 553, or just a tiny bit below 2/3 of what I'm currently getting. That number still seems high, but my game is already over, so I'm ok with it being high.

[Nelphine]

...

So is 20 war colleges + armorer's guilds and/or fantastic stables for medium-strength stacks of dooms and garrisons, because cities are too important.

...

Reason why I wish amplifying towers get limited to just overland skill - to encourage putting points in skill late in game for more, needed combat skill. The amount of combat skill, thanks to the towers, become rather ridiculous and thus every player is guaranteed to be able to spam nearly-unlimited spells multiple times per turn, as long as mana present. If the towers only impact overland skill, then players who want to spam combat spells may need some extra skill investment via magic power.

I just want to point out something here. A) I'm inclined to agreed with Zitro that limiting amplifying towers to overland casting skill actually does follow Seravy's stated purpose for what amplifying towers do (pay for the spells that a city requires to exist, such as summons, city buffs, and unit buffs to protect that city).  So I'd be ok if amplifying towers was limited purely to overland, and I agree with Zitro's reasoning as to why that would be a good thing.

But my bigger point B) is that cities are NOT IMPORTANT in and of themselves.  This is how I can play so aggressively on lunatic.  The only thing that is important is the units which you kill your enemies last city with - (or at least force them back into peace, if you're playing exceptionally aggressively).
You can lose all but one of your cities, as long as your enemy loses his cities first.  So you don't need to protect them all that well, as long as you will be standing longer than your enemy.  For this purpose ALL AI are treated as enemy, even if you have an alliance with them.  You need your cities to last just long enough that you will get enough troops, summons, buffs, whatever you need, to kill all your enemies.
And AI cities are virtually always better than your cities after the same amount of time has passed (unless you've already won).  Which means if you can trade one of your cities for one or two of their cities, you end up in a much stronger position. 

So defending your cities is not super important.  If leaving your cities mostly defenseless means that you can attack earlier and therefore get better cities; then leave your cities defenseless!  Take those juicy AI cities that were built with all the cheating bonuses the AI get!  Let them take your cities in return, which are small and crappy, then they use their cheating bonuses to build your city up, while you get stronger faster because you have their big juicy city; and then you take back your original city after it's big and juicy too.



This also means that the HIGHER the difficulty, the easier it is to get amazing cities, and the more you need to embrace the idea that your own cities are not overly important.


(Note, for myself, I need to have 3 barbarian cities building bezerkers to be able to beat the last AI; so for me, those 3 cities actually need to be defended until I'm fighting the last AI.  So I'm not trying to say never defend any cities, just don't treat most of your cities as must-have pieces of real estate. They aren't.)

[Arnuz]

Ohhh, the year 7 example was just to show the issue, I've never had that many either.

But in any game you still reach a point where skill by towers overcomes skill by mana investment, always, due to the linearity of towers. The longer the game, the more significant this becomes. I believe this to be the issue, and using summons to garrison or to attack is a skewed comparison, you use them for your strategy no matter where the skill is coming from.

So - if there's consensus on this being an issue, which I'm not yet sure about mind you, then I'm throwing offers on how to fix this.

As building cost is fixed then the skill by towers might decrease with the number of towers in
-the world
-the plane
-the empire
depending on what you want to achieve.

This would leave skill by towers detached from skill by mana, as is now, which I deem positive (makes city based strategies a bit better, and with stronger identity) but still introduce a diminishing returns mechanism of some sort.

Making it plane or world based gives importance to whom starts building them first, but makes AI resource cheating even more of a factor than it is now.

[Nelphine]

If it matters, around half of my amplifying towers in my example of 41 amplifying towers came from cities I conquered from the AI. I really really like waiting until the AI builds amplifying towers before taking the city, although it gets destroyed decently often, so it's not perfect.

[Arnuz]

Ha ha Nelphine, I can't keep up!

Basically we disagree on the premise. I don't think that designing amp.ts on the principle that they're for defence is valid. But if that's the consensus I'll just keep abusing then for attack.

Ever noticed, however, that with some exceptions city trips are slower in general than summons? I tend to associate speed with attack, you won't gain much at a speed of two, much more at a speed of three, four or five, and with flying or pathfinding.

[Arnuz]

If it matters, around half of my amplifying towers in my example of 41 amplifying towers came from cities I conquered from the AI.  I really really like waiting until the AI builds amplifying towers before taking the city, although it gets destroyed decently often, so it's not perfect.

Sure, and, I don't know you but for me it's one of the first buildings bought with all the conquest money. Just to show how more important than mana buildings it is.

[Nelphine]

Ever noticed, however, that with some exceptions city trips are slower in general than summons? I tend to associate speed with attack, you won't gain much at a speed of two, much more at a speed of three, four or five, and with flying or pathfinding.

Yeah, that's why i love endurance + archangels/wraithform warships so much.

Sure, and, I don't know you but for me it's one of the first buildings bought with all the conquest money. Just to show how more important than mana buildings it is.

I SHOULD do that.. but I don't. I find I can't sustain buying amplifying towers. I can only do so if I'm not going to be at war in the next year or so, as I can easily burn through 10000+ mana in the first few turns of a war, so I need all my gold to turn into mana.  So the only buildings I consistently buy are Granary and Farmers Market (and Sawmill, and sometimes marketplace) just to get max population going.

But I never build a mana/gold building until I have amplifying towers.  The amplifying tower matters way too much.