I'm out for now

[zitro1987]

As long as curses and corruption and volcano don't discriminate against the player (unless at war of course!), I don't see a problem here. When I'm playing death, I warp node and famine wizards with impunity.
*Yes, these hurt, but I think if a wizard sends a stack of 4 griffin + 5 chimera and you lose a major city - it hurts a LOT more.

The slow research idea had good intentions, but the solution drastically went the other way. The idea of an enemy AI beating you in research is exciting anyways and if not at war, you can get some neat spells via trade. Why not increase RP costs by 50% from original while simultaneously strengthening SP (slowing increased investment cost?) and MP (introduce more overland or mana/turn mana spenditure)?

I'd even 'possibly' accept the extravagant research costs if the realms had better synergy and variety and lose a few more instances in terms of 'this direct damage or spell is a bit better than the other' or 'this creature is about as good, but plays differently'. We'd need to feel like we're really missing a strategy or complement a strategy very powerfully just by missing a spell. Yes, it sounds really hard, but if nerfed research needs to compete against gold/prod/mana/skill and let games be less decided by starting commons, then it may be a good place to think about.
*White magic arguably has the best synergy due to buff stacking and might be most compatible with the new research costs. However, there are clear duds like having 2 plane-shifting spells in the same tier nonetheless!
*Death magic might have the worst synergy.
-We have 40 spells per realm. How can uncommon/rare/v rare spells really really feel 'needed' or complementary? Do we need a discussion to trim redundancies within each realm?

[Kaiku]

I dislike volcano too, and as Nelphine said, not for balance reasons. One of the best feelings you get in this game is finding or having a city right in the middle of those delicious resources. Volcano just stomps on that feeling in a "No fun allowed" way.

No clue what to do about it, really. But if evidently everyone hates this spell, the blame doesn't really lie with us, especially when it's not a balance argument. It's the spell that's clearly no fun and needs to adjust.

I would be more okay with a much rarer, more expensive, more powerful volcano, but I'm not sure Chaos needs or wants something like that in the later game.

And to OP:
I've played many games on advanced until I knew what I was doing, and only recently started playing on expert. I don't think it's very realistic to start out on expert and expect good and fun games. I do agree that some level of cheese becomes necessary on the higher difficulties, which is a bit unfortunate.

[Seravy]

I've only played one game but so far research didn't feel significantly slower than before. The only difference was that I couldn't quadruple my research speed in the late game by dumping all my power into that which I regularly did in the previous system.

It's hard to say common research is slower when you have 3x the costs, but 6x the resources specifically in that part of the game - instead of library for +2, you have library for +6 AND magic market for +6 early. In the old system if your race didn't have the university and you found no easy node, you had close to no way to raise your research (or power) in a relevant way until way past turn 50.

Why not increase RP costs by 50% from original while simultaneously strengthening SP (slowing increased investment cost?) and MP (introduce more overland or mana/turn mana spenditure)?

Short answer : We wanted to make sure people can't raise research efficiency to 4 times the base amount by holding back on MP and SP spending as that is excessive.

Long answer : We wanted to change the 3/1/1 ratio of spending into 3/1/4.
Technically we'd have the same result if we left RP costs alone, but made each 1 power only generate 0.25 MP and SP  and raised power income to 4 times the current, but that would cause confusion while having the same overall effect.

Your suggestion would have changed the ratio towards 6/0.5/1.5 which is worse than before instead of being closer to what we want. It simply isn't the desired direction.

(2/2/4 might have been an even better goal than 3/1/4 but I didn't want to mess with the SP/skill mechanism, it does work fairly well and all our current spells costs depend on that mechanism)

[zitro1987]

I've only played one game but so far research didn't feel significantly slower than before. The only difference was that I couldn't quadruple my research speed in the late game by dumping all my power into that which I regularly did in the previous system.

It's hard to say common research is slower when you have 3x the costs, but 6x the resources specifically in that part of the game - instead of library for +2, you have library for +6 AND magic market for +6 early. In the old system if your race didn't have the university and you found no easy node, you had close to no way to raise your research (or power) in a relevant way until way past turn 50.

Why not increase RP costs by 50% from original while simultaneously strengthening SP (slowing increased investment cost?) and MP (introduce more overland or mana/turn mana spenditure)?

Short answer : We wanted to make sure people can't raise research efficiency to 4 times the base amount by holding back on MP and SP spending as that is excessive.

Long answer : We wanted to change the 3/1/1 ratio of spending into 3/1/4.
Technically we'd have the same result if we left RP costs alone, but made each 1 power only generate 0.25 MP and SP  and raised power income to 4 times the current, but that would cause confusion while having the same overall effect.

Your suggestion would have changed the ratio towards 6/0.5/1.5 which is worse than before instead of being closer to what we want. It simply isn't the desired direction.

(2/2/4 might have been an even better goal than 3/1/4 but I didn't want to mess with the SP/skill mechanism, it does work fairly well and all our current spells costs depend on that mechanism)

What is '3' / '1' / '1' ... which is which? I'm not sure I understand the spend ratio.

I'm not sure I understand 'we'd have the same result if we left RP costs alone but made each power only generate 0.25MP and SP' ... it goes along the same way of heavily penalizing research to the point of almost never picking it, therefore slowing the game too much.

[Seravy]

In the old system:
3 MP for 1 SP and 1 RP. This is how you spend your income if you are actively using your spells instead of ignoring them. If you aren't, you can switch over to 0 MP, 0 SP, 5 RP. So you can raise your research speed to 500% the "normal". That's wrong.

However, if it's 3 MP, 1 SP, 4 RP then you can do 0 MP, 0 SP, 8 RP which raises your research speed to 200%. That is fair.

The game isn't slower, UNLESS you have been abusing the 500% research in most of your games to begin with. That's not what the research slider is meant for, but it ended up working that way unfortunately. We've raised power income from the vanilla game to roughly the triple. But we didn't raise research cost and research producing buildings along with that so the balance broke over time.


In the vanilla game you had
Library 2, Sage's Guild 3, University 5, Wizard's Guild 8 RP for a total of 18/city.
Shrine 1, Temple 2, Parthenon 3, Cathedral 4 for 10 power/city.

In the mod you had (before change)
Library 2, Sage's Guild 9, University 5 RP, Wizard's Guild 3 RP for a total of 19 RP.
Shrine 2, Parthenon 4, Cathedral 6, Wizard's Guild 10 power for a total of 22 power. (and roughly twice as good nodes, etc)

So power to research ratios broke, the players had 2-3 times as much free power for the same amount of base research and research costs. But players need the free power to be able to have enough to use their spells. This isn't the vanilla game where "and now I summon 1 creature and that wins" was the norm of using overland spells. You need many. Even though the cost of spells is the same, the design goal on how many the player is supposed to be using increased greatly. But if the cost of that, and the cost of research is not evenly matched, then research is vastly superior to using the spells. So the research has to be higher along with it.

[m59gar]

Ok, so I've had some time to calm down. I didn't realize my post would get so much discussion.

I will say, I play on Expert now because Advanced offers no challenge. I am basically guaranteed to win since I know all the tricks and Advanced AIs just kinda sit there until I'm ready to kill them. That's why in another thread I was asking for a difficulty where the AI is smart like Expert but doesn't get absurd advantages.

I LOVE that diplomacy has been fixed and made part of the game as was originally intended. However, my point about Maniacal/Aggressive/Ruthless wizards is that the entire diplomacy portion of the game is once again removed with these guys. They corrupt/raise volcano/attack with doomstacks totally at random without even declaring war, or they declare war immediately and stay that way the rest of the game, nothing you can do. What I'm really asking for is some way to interact with these guys. Even the most maniacal dictators still respect SOME fellow leaders. Here's what I'd like to see:

* Maniacal: very hostile toward anyone weaker on Spellpower. If Spellpower is equal or greater, they see you as an equal and want to make an alliance.

* Ruthless: very hostile toward weaker players based on Army Strength. But if Army Strength is close or greater, very NOT hostile, since Ruthless doesn't mean stupid. But AI will still attack cities that are poorly defended.

* Aggressive: lighter version of Ruthless, but also attempts to use diplomacy with you and other AIs to make alliances and attack together, as opposed to going it solo like Maniacal and Ruthless.

* Chaotic: totally random

* Lawful: uses diplomacy to make attacking them risky since all allies will attack too.

* Peaceful: extreme diplomat who attempts to make alliances with all wizards and stay neutral as much as possible.

For the most part, Chaotic Lawful and Peaceful are already like that. It's just Maniacal Ruthless and Aggressive that are basically 'attack you no matter what' right now. That isn't even necessarily more difficult, so if there is a tendency for Expert and higher to make the negative personalities, let's remove that. Peaceful and Lawful can be just as dangerous for different reasons.

Let's also keep in mind that on higher difficulty levels, the player is always dead last in Army Strength and Spellpower, so maybe that's exacerbating diplomatic issues based on those values.

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I was very disturbed to read 'let's remove all ores and transmute' in response to player complaints about volcanoes. I've been part of development communities before where 1 person in charge thought their way or the highway and that it was the players that were broken, not the game... only advice I can offer is to realize that players will avoid things they don't like, and players DO like challenge. So if players like me are save scumming to avoid volcanoes and corruption, then volcanoes and corruption cease to have their stated design and instead read 'save your game every turn, reload constantly, and bitch about it on the forums'. That's realism vs idealism.

* Raise Volcano - what if this just made the ore unavailable until the volcano cooled? As in, ores on volcanoes offer no bonus. THEN change terrain would be a 'counter'.

* Corruption - stops food/production but NOT ore values, since that's raise volcano's ability now.

New chaos spell:

* Eruption - Rare - destroys ores on target square. 500 mp. Since this is a SERIOUS move to make. Taking out Gems or Adamantium or the like is a permanent crippling effect. I think that's why people are so annoyed by it. A 50 mp early game spell is too easy for the effect offered. Oh and also? REQUIRES A STATE OF WAR FOR AIs TO CAST IT. none of this random out of nowhere nonsense.

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I would also like to point out that part of the problem with all this is that normal units are completely and utterly worthless. Wizards can start with Nagas, and just a few Nagas can wipe out literally any number of Spearmen, Swordsmen, whatever. The only possible chance you have of adequately defending yourself with normal units is going 9 ranged defenders such as Slingers or Longbowmen. Unfortunately that's slightly too slow. A Maniacal Wizard's 9 Nagas with Focus Magic are gonna show up when you have 4-5 Slingers or Longbowmen at your Capitol. Meanwhile, all your satellite cities are screwed.

I honestly can't remember the last time I made any normal units other than ranged, flyers (like Nightmares), or Magicians. I'm starting to think normal units should get some serious buffs, especially the ones that are made for early game defense. Swordsmen's Large Shield should have something like Invulnerability's 2 damage reduction, but only from ranged. Think about it, in all fantasy movies the lines of men with shields take cover from arrows, forcing the enemy to close the gap and fight hand to hand. We really need something like that in the early stages of the game, because right now there's literally no way to actually defend your cities other than mass Slingers/Bowmen. (and even then someone can show up with Guardian Wind and you lose)

[Nelphine]

On topic of dipomaxy, how many spells did you give those maniacal wizards as tribute? How muchgold? Did you take the charismatic retort? Did you cast aura of majesty? 

ALL the diplomatic interactions are there, and work, for maniacal/aggressive/chaotic wizards.

My guess is that you never use those things on the other personalities, so you're not actually interacting with them, they just don't go hostile as easily.

Note that chaotic wizards can literally go from alliance,to war, to alliance. Interacting with them is fairly useless, even if it works on the extreme short term.


Similarly if you have a lot of chaos books, chaos realm wizards will like you more, and not go hostile as easily. Don't like chaos curse? Playing chaos literally helps against that.

[Seravy]

Diplomacy, let's see...

Maniacal is actually the only one where there is a direct penalty to diplomatic modifiers, but even this penalty does not apply to tributes.

Personalities that are highly positive do have a larger "bonus" modifier so it's easier to make treaties or reason with them but the core mechanics are the same for everyone. If you can make a treaty with a lawful wizard, you can do the same for an Aggressive but will need 20 more relation points worth of tribute, or in case of maniacal, 40. Alternately, you can substitute your military force for these points. I've had pacts and alliances with maniacal wizards before.

Wizards attack without declaring war because that's how it is supposed to work. Same as the vanilla game btw. This makes Wizard's Pacts valuable, as they prevent the wizards from doing it. However, Lawful and Peaceful wizards have been made to be unable to do it in this mod, so you can always be 100% sure they won't hurt you unless they declare war (or you attack them, yes even misclicks and fleeing counts unfortunately)

The modifiers you suggest are not possible to do - there is no room for that much detail unfortunately. It also makes it harder to understand for the human player - the current system of "higher relation score+higher relative military strength = good" is at least simple and easy to understand.

Lawful and Peaceful roughly work like you describe already. "attacks weaker" exists but is a trait of Militarist and Expansionist, and only affects that specific type of war declaration source, nothing else (again, no room to make every type of interaction have a different formula for every wizard type). Chaotic is as you describe, random.  Maniacal, Ruthless and Aggressive are largely the same with a minor difference in modifiers, but behave differently in the actual wars/hostility. They have different preferences on amounts of garrison units, and use of city curses.

* Raise Volcano - what if this just made the ore unavailable until the volcano cooled? As in, ores on volcanoes offer no bonus. THEN change terrain would be a 'counter'.

So basically a Volcano would be a terrain modification like corruption, instead of terrain itself? That...isn't a bad idea but then we'd lose the ability to use Raise Volcano to convert Tundra tiles to something useful, which I definitely like to have. It's not that powerful but it's a lot fun.

I don't agree on Eruption. Ores are something you either take out early or it's meaningless. By the time of rares, that +12 gold is nothing compared to the 120 you get from taxes on the nearby city. Taking out Adamantium after it produced 200 units is far too late.

Normal units...the bottom tier of those are actually designed to be "food" for the common summons. If they are equal, the summons will feel unimpressive. I would expect in a "master of magic" game that summons (which btw are generally harder to produce except in the first 30-40 turns) to be better than the bottom tier normal units.
I have to agree we might have more work to do in this area, but it's not easy. Especially now that we altered the balance on both sides at the same time and have no real idea of which way it moved overall. The free settlers contribute a lot towards the availability of production for normal units, but the added magic market contributes to more summons at the same time. The hardest part with this is the the early game specifically has a "reversed game state" - while in the entire game you have less summoning capacity and more production, for the first two or three dozen turns, it's the exact opposite. We had a thread about this recently : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8957

[Nelphine]

I think his idea for volcano was not to change the change terrain part of volcano. It would still turn any terrain into volcano, which would eventually turn into mountain. What he wanted was for any ores present to not be removed (although I'm not sure this interacts with creating new ores, which I believe raise volcano should continue to do.) Instead he wants volcano tiles to count as being corrupted (except immune to purification) so even if there is an ore (or a newly created ore), you don't get the benefit of it until the volcano reverts back to a mountain.

Which I also kind of like as then raise volcano loses its status as the best economic city curse. (However I'd suggest changing the revert percentage back to 2%, while leaving power production at 3.)

I'm not sure to make this corruption effect clear to the player though.

[Seravy]

Oh...I understand but I can't do that. Replacing every existing check for ores with 'contains ore AND does not contain volcano" is just insane. Terrain and Terrain modifications are not even in the same array of data.