Races, Units, Buildings

[Arnuz]

Nelphine, that's not a lot of change. Just look at the skill formula to see when skill 5 amp towers are better than investing the same amount into skill from mana, after conversion.
If the formula is still mom's n(n-1)/2, http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Spell_Casting_Skill

Then, at skill 5, given that the at costs 1800 if memory serves (I'm on holiday), each skill costs 1800/5= 360. Double to 720 to buy it with gold, which equals mana with alchemy. Then,
Skill=.5(✓(4n-3)+1) =26.
It means that for skill over 26, it's better to convert gold to mana and buy ATS.
Without alchemy, ATS cost 1440/skill point, so this becomes 37.

If they gave 1 skill point only, then they'd be worth it at 59 skill (84 without alchemy). Still quite early, that it makes a meaningful difference: I bet you reach 59 skill by year 3.

This doesn't take maintenance into account, I'd need to see what that means, too drunk to do it now ?

[zitro1987]

*Buildings destroyed after conquering a town should be based on difficulty to parallel AI production advantages instead of a flat 20%. I propose (15%/20%/25%/30%/35%/40%)
*Lowering Wizard's Guild upkeep to 4-5 and upping Amplifying Tower to 10 would be my preference. Anything higher may cause gold-balancing issues for some races or inexperienced players. The proposed '20' maintenance, while mathematically not too irrational, has a shock value to it I don't like.
*Uranus Blessing could cost only 225-250 / 4upk but provide +4-5 skill from amplifying towers, thus resulting in +10 power but fewer skill
*Uranus Blessing could keep same cost, but provide +10 power per building and +4 or 5 skill from amplifying power, resulting in +13 power/+4 or 5 skill

In depth topic on skill:
*I proposed this a long time ago - instead of fractional roots on skill cost (less intuitive, coding not possible, too strong early?), I think base skill point costs should go at the same rate until a number where we believe in this community to be roughly the beginning of 'diminishing returns'. Once that hits, the cost never rises anymore. Diminishing Returns would naturally happen due to the following:
- An average player would have about 6-12 amplifying towers by this time, thus each added skill point is a very small fraction of your total
- The cost for 7 added skill point is X times higher than some measure of cost of building the amplifying tower .. research or mana investment usually/always better for non-archmage wizards.
- A significant percentage that your skill points are not depleted during each decent battle, thus added skill now only benefits primarily overland instead of overland and combat.
- Player should have invested close to 5-digits of power to skill, or even reach it ... a significant, but not ridiculous amount, especially for death wizards.
*Given the 3 points above, I believe a range of '100-125' base skill to be a good marking for maximum skill cost (200-250 cost per point). By this point, a wizard likely has 200+ total skill, so each point costs quite a bit and is only like 0.5% or less.



*On overland-only amplifying towers (if considered) - would it be possible coding-wise to parallel the overland-only feature of garrison heroes? The magic screen shows skill numbers like 70(78)

[Nelphine]

Maintenance only matters if you need to spend some of your power production each turn to keep it up - otherwise maintenance is covered by gold production which otherwise cannot be directly changed into skill.

I never really thought about the math of using power production to buy amp towerrs, as I did all my building math before I understood them.

So, basically, you should always just max mana, convert to gold, and buy more amp towers? Only when you have 0 towers available should you actually spend power production on skill? Interesting. And probably unsolvable. And completely matches what I initially thought when I learned what amp towers really do, but I never bothered to run the math.

[Seravy]

Completed the game I was playing (heroes with artificier).

After the game I did a test to see how my heroes work against the only thing that is supposed to hurt them : 9 great drakes (no wizard).

Well, one of them worked "as intended", meaning striking at the great drake killed it, but the hero lost about half of its health in the fight. Since there is no realistic way to have heroes not kill things in one hit, I think this is acceptable, note that "one hit" in this context means including haste so it's technically two hits.
I dare to say "Haste" was more relevant and powerful here than Phantasmal - maybe swapping book requirements would be a good idea? Without haste the heroes could have only done enough damage to kill the drake in two hits, risking their own lives (or requiring several healing spells per drake killed).
3 weren't melee heroes so I didn't even use them to engage the drakes.
But two heroes were able to fight and kill drakes in one hit without taking much damage in return, only a few points. Which brings me to think that Great Drakes should have a bit higher attack power, as the heroes in question didn't even have agility (tho they had near perfect equips, and various other defensive effects instead). As they are already powerful enough to kill most things they get to attack, this doesn't make a significant difference, and would only raise the strategic power of the creature by 20%. (considering 35->42 attack)

As the outcome wasn't what I expected, I'm running the same test against other very rare creatures.
Death Knights - Didn't do any damage to the melee heroes, but some did manage to breach through and kill the low defense heroes due to their speed. Being multifigure, even with Armor Piercing, I don't think we can do better than that, but if these get buffed by a wizard (like, High Prayer or the like), they can completely destroy any hero. Maybe +1 or 2 swords wouldn't hurt? It does reduce the chance of making undead with them though...
Demon Lords - the doom bolts on turn 1 killed 3 heroes. After that, they did manage to do some damage to the heroes, but fairly minimal and Raise Dead/Regeneration takes care of the doombolted heroes. Oh and this time I didn't cast High Prayer. As Great Drakes showed even 35 attack wouldn't make a difference, I think these can stay as they are, unless we want to give them Armor Piercing?

Archangels - these did more damage to the heroes than great drakes, mostly thanks to the Prayer they used (which shows other creatures also have more potential is a wizard supports them). As Life creatures are meant to be the least powerful and life is supposed to fight heroes by an unending swarm of ultra-buffed normal units overwhelming the player everywhere at ones, this is fine as is.
Colossus - Rocks killed the 2 least armored heroes on turn 1. After that however they did close to no damage which is disappointing. Not sure what to do, as I don't want to buff them any further, they are already a great unit. Survival Instinct should help them do more damage so might be good as is.
Behemoths - having even less damage output then Demon Lords, they can't do a thing to hurt heroes, except for casting Crack's Calls. They aren't really meant to, I guess, Nature's other two summons are for fighting heroes.
Great Wyrms - these finally managed to obliterate most of the heroes, only two of the invisible ones surviving the first turn. Those two however were capable of killing 8 out of the 9 Wyrms, so if I used spells, I could have won the battle anyway. If there was an enemy wizard here, it would have been a guaranteed loss, which is how it is meant to be.
Djinn - these are annoying but heroes with this kind of equipment can deal with it. The ranged attacks did kill those that had low armor and no invisibility but not a major threat otherwise. Note that only equipped heroes work well, buffed heroes get dispelled, also teleporting or haste is pretty much required to be able to melee them.
Sky Drake - failed to kill even the low armor heroes when the drakes were attacking, and did minimal or no damage when the heroes were. These are weak! At least much weaker than expected. They probably need to get their breath attack back to 25 and melee to 30? Tho great drakes even at 35 failed to deal enough damage so they will only really hurt if the player is letting them hit the hero with the breath attack.

The only other possibility I see is capping how much damage can be prevented per attack through shields in a way that average hits will always deal a reasonable amount to a hero or alter defense mechanics in some other way.

So, basically, you should always just max mana, convert to gold, and buy more amp towers?

Definitely not. 2 mana buys 1 gold and 2 gold buys 1 production. So you'd need to pay 3600 mana for 7 skill. That's not worth it until ~250 (base, without towers) skill and then you even pay maintenance on top of it. Where is this coming from? Even with Alchemy, it's not worth it until after 125 skill.
If it's those calculations posted above, he finished it with "I'm too drunk" so yeah. I don't see how he got 26 as the result to 720/2=? and what that formula with 4n in it even is. I mean if one skill point costs 720, that means your skill is half of that, as simple as that. Which makes it 360 instead of 26.

[Arnuz]

I posted the source, the formula is straight out of the wiki. Yeah, I don't know how yesterday I decided that the total power formula was applicable here. An increment of 1 costs as much as your current skill, so ATS are worth it after 257, or 128 with alchemy.

The idea to make skill linear is frankly terrible, skill is the great limiter tool in the game. All the rest can be found, created, and transformed, but not skill. Making it easier to pump would allow us to break the game even earlier, and make aggressive strategies even stronger as you'd need even more resource to cast that much.

[Seravy]

Looked at what my gold production looks like with high maintenance on Amp. Towers.
While my total gold production took a hit (about 250-300 less), I'm still making positive gold (~450). I don't have prosperity, and I only used Stream of Life on a few very rebelling cities. I do have mostly races that can build banks and merchant's guilds, but I have been going on using the Grand Vizier so not all of them actually have those built.

My Klackon city (which is the worst for Arcanus race for gold buildings) is producing a 25 gold surplus, enough to maintain 10 beetles plus another 2 through the Colosseum. I would feel more comfortable if it was at least a few more though, also, this city gets the maximal bonus it can from roads (it is only 20 pop though so it's 60%). Without roads the city would have problems.
However, it does have everything built - selling the AG and FG could save another 10 a turn and you don't want it everywhere all the time.

To make things a bit better, I propose the following additional changes :
No maintenance on Marketplace (1 gold saved).
Amplifying Tower maintenance of 18 instead of 20.
Builder's Hall already has no maintenance (1 gold saved)
Wizard's Guilds cost 1 less as well
Making the total effect only (18-7-1-1-1) = 8 gold per city.
We could further reduce it by 1 if we removed the maintenance from ship wright's guilds or consider a cheaper Sawmill maintenance. Removing the maintenance of 1 on Colosseums can also give a bit more room for non-economic race for making money.
I rather pick the option of reducing the cost on late buildings than earlier, as cheaper earlier buildings would make the early game races stronger.

Edit : the 18 maintenance looks really ugly in the resource details (9 icons). 20 is better afterall.

[Nelphine]

What about say gnolls on a smallish continent with no neutrals? They have no natural way to get engineers. So if there's 6 cities there? If that case isn't an issue, then I'm OK with it.

[Nelphine]

If you conquer a city with an oracle, you get the vision of that oracle as soon as you gain control of the city. You THEN destroy buildings; if you lose the oracle, you still have the vision of the oracle until the end of your turn. Realistically, I don't think this matters, but figured I'd let you know.

[Arnuz]

Edit : the 18 maintenance looks really ugly in the resource details (9 icons). 20 is better afterall.

Yeah 9 icons are always terrible, often I can't understand how much food the last farmer is giving by clicking the farmer as the icons move closer somewhere between 7 and 9, and I end up counting the icons. Painful, I've been wondering if it wouldn't be better to just put an icon and a number.

[Arnuz]

Beastmen: I found the myrran wizard in this game and he's a let-down, both him and an arcanus one are life/sorcery so he could have been a major end game boss buth he didn't expand much. He didn't even start on a small island, his home continent has 5 cities, buth in '08 they're not so well grown despite the capital being a 20 max pop. Perfectionist, so not the top expander but better than the more militaristic types...
I didn't start the game with exp13, but I think exp12 so the myrran early expansion thingie should be there. 

He's a beastmen. It made me wonder when I'd try beastmen and I think... Never. Why do beastmen suck? In my mind they are the fast growing race of myrran, better lizardmen because they can also build most buildings, but they don't actually grow fast - just faster than the myrran races, so not super slowly. On Myrran, dwarves do production better. They have +1 attack and HP but if someone wants a myrran melee race they obviously pick trolls, and the sword and HP is partly wasted on a race with centaurs as middle unit - ranged - or minotaurs - only 2 figures.

Before starting with proposals - well, one would be to drop the +1 sword and make them grow more - do others share my view or is there anyone that likes them? Why? (barring as slaves, secondary race to build the buildings)