New experimental version

[Nelphine]

My lunatic game has the new amp towers - I found myself building wizards towers first now. The increased destruction rate is great, so I wasn't able to get massive amplifying towers early.

The maintenance of amp towers us annoying visually - it displays as 17 coins that go off the screen (presumably its actually 20 but you can't see them all.)

I still build amp towers before religious buildings unless I need the unrest control.

My lunatic thread also has a question about the new surrender mechanic.

[Arnuz]

Building destruction is really harsh now. Amp towers with maintenance are not a big deal, they still cut the logarithmic progress to linear, but if this is your design then they work as intended. When invading you buy them anyway, that's thousands, 20 less per day doesn't really change that much - I guess that it sums up so it doesn't matter so much. The building destruction makes a much bigger change. Even too big perhaps - getting the sawmill and forester guild razed is always a pain in the back, early on, as it leaves you with a useless city. Did you change barbarians and gnolls to destroy more? I don't recall this written in the game but maybe I've missed it.

Yes maintenance looks weird. Could you maybe use 2 10 coin symbols instead of 20?

[Seravy]

The maintenance display should have been fixed in EXP13.
No, Barbarians and Gnolls destroy the same amount as anyone else.

[Arnuz]

What do you think of getting the sale money of destroyed buildings? This still slows down the conquering - as you need to rebuild half the city - but at least you can quickly buy back the important little things, sawmill etc. Think of it as rebuilding from the ruins rather than from scratch. As AIs don't really suffer from this change (we've realised that they don't really exchange cities until very late game) the change seems overly harsh on the human player.

Another alternative would be to implement the change to barbs & gnolls, giving the other races some less destruction.

Finally I thought that a retort that reduces city destruction could work well with aggressive styles.

Finally if that's intended then never mind - guess there'll be a lot more razing

[MrBiscuits]

I think I'm against raising the destruction rate. It makes the late game much slower and more boring and removes the one benefit the player gets from the massive AI bonuses. 

Don't forget that 90% of players will be no where near as good at the game as the top players so fine tuning everything for them will make the game less fun for everyone else. 

My least favourite part is the late game grind when you are quite evenly matched and this change makes that even more drawn out. 

The idea behind supernatural is good, but it seems a bit too complicated and unintuitive compared to other abilities. It also seems quite similar to armour piercing.

[Seravy]

The destruction rate depends on the difficulty level. It's not higher on Normal and only slightly higher on Advanced.
On higher difficulty, it's safe to assume the player is good enough otherwise they wouldn't be playing that level.

removes the one benefit the player gets from the massive AI bonuses.

That's exactly why it was added. AI bonuses are not supposed to benefit the player at all.

(note that ending turns on city tiles still add to the destruction rate which can make it much higher than the added amount from this change.)

[Arnuz]

Yes, destroying more buildings is a good change, for the due delay to get the AI's goodies. But destroying them for nothing is really harsh... That's why I proposed to give the sale cost, or a percentage of it to compensate a bit. That's still a percentage of benefit from the AI bonuses I guess, so if you don't agree I don't mind, but not its entirety.

On a completely different albeit linked note - any hope to get some of:

- a shortcut to open the city list
- going back to city list if a city screen opened from there
- the possibility to buy directly from city screen, ideally (more complicated I guess) - maybe from the right click?

[Seravy]

a shortcut to open the city list

Not sure what you mean. If the "Cities" button on the main screen, you activate that with the "T" key, ever since the base game.

- going back to city list if a city screen opened from there

If you right click to change production, it already does that.
If you need to change farmers, unfortunately, it doesn't.
But what if the user doesn't want to go back? Sometimes you only need to change one city.

- the possibility to buy directly from city screen, ideally (more complicated I guess) - maybe from the right click?

Like, by pressing the B button there? I'll check if that is possible or not.

[Seravy]

...No, unfortunately, buying isn't handled in a separate procedure so I can't call it from elsewhere.

[Nelphine]

Arnuz, if you get more Monet from conquering (I'm already averaging over 200g, sometimes as high as 500), then it would defeat the purpose of increasing the destruction rate. Things get destroyed and you have to choose what to get (still best to get the amp tower, but doing so means you are negative for the city for some time, which is the purpose of the increased destruction rate - either you buy the other things like sawmills (which is like the 6th building I buy late game), or you take time yo build them. Either way, negative.

Also means if you get lucky and the amp tower doesn't blow up, you're still probably negative, which is even more important.