Early Armorer's Guild

[zitro1987]

I do wonder, how is using your resources buying your way towards 3-4 pegasi/elven lords/stag beetles early in game different from
*using your resources playing 'sage master', obtaining giant spiders/lycanthropy and casting a full stack of them?
*using more resources and conjurer, and getting night-stalker)?

[Seravy]

You can't buy the research or casting skill for gold. You can only buy buildings that produce some but they all produce it over time, not instantly. Summoned units are also much harder to buff, Warlord, Adamantium, Holy Armor all don't apply to them. Furthermore summoned units are vulnerable to Life magic while normal units are immune to it, so one more realm can damage them effectively.

But most importantly, those strategies cost 8 books of the same realm. Armorer's Guild unit strategies cost 2 books (2 Life for Healing) and all the other picks can go towards boosting the strategy. Sapher had Chaneller to counter healing costs, Runemaster to counter unit curses, 2 Chaos for Flame Blade to accelerate early treasure hunting, Myrran to have access to draconian bowmen, Warlord to make the units and bowmen stronger (warlord wouldn't work for summons anyway and Tactician doesn't make bowmen deal damage faster) and even 1 Nature book for web, resist elements and opening up even more trade possibilities.
If you do 8 books for Spiders, you still need 2 Life for healing, leaving you with only 2 more picks to spend freely.

Needless to say it's possible to do the same if you only pick 2 Nature books and randomly find Giant Spiders (or research lots of commons and it shows up again at random) but you can't build a strategy around that, if it does happen that's pure luck. If you actually try you'll have it happen like 10% of the games and then you still need to deal with casting skill not being readily available for gold and summons not getting buffs and early uncommon summons generally not being as powerful/durable as the top tier normal units.

[Sapher]

Here is some swordsmen spawm for you ^_^ part 1

[Seravy]

Finished watching. I don't think there is any problem with the swordsmen themselves here... but there might be some problems with common tier undead creation being too powerful. In the end we had a long thread about undead creation but never really changed anything except the black sleep combo and removing poison immunity.
This actually has a connection with the generic rush and no garrisons discussions too : undead creation is a way to have zero cost battles - the gained undead replace the losses and spent mana, letting you end the combat with equal or often more overall "resources" -meaning units in this case- than you started with on top of killing the enemy. That kind of positive feedback inherently breaks systems.

[occasionalplayer]

Clearly, Sapher plays very well. However, I tend to think that most of his successful rush games would not have worked without the initial sawmill and the two additional settlers. I am not advocating for a reversal, but I think this change paved the way for several normal unit rush strategies.

[teelaurila]

Why is the issue not too much gold from treasure? If treasure gave things useful later the rush would very different.

[Seravy]

The issue is too much gold compared to the cost of the building. From any source. I believe this was discussed already - we can't raise the building cost high enough to delay it until 1406 that way, nor do we want to.

[MrBiscuits]

Does the delay not make races without an armourers guild stronger? 
It means you can rush berzerkers or slingers and know there is a number of turns before your opponents can build their best units too.

It also feel a little artificial having to check the current date every turn to see if you can build it. You need to keep enough gold ready or start building an expensive building before timing the finish to coincide with the availability of the guild to get it straight away.

[zitro1987]

New proposal - can purchase price % factor (currently 200%) be tied to town production vs total cost of building?

We could have a formula like cost % factor being = 0.3 * (building cost / city production)
*Barracks in developed city (125 building cost, town production is 30) - therefore 125*.3 /30 ~ 125% - 156 gold
*Armorer's Guild (400? building cost, town production is 25) - therefore 400 *.3 / 25 ~ 480% - 1920 gold
*Half Built Armorer's Guild in same example above - 960 gold
*Amplifying tower in undeveloped city - forget about it.

Buying becomes less desirable when cities have high production, so this keeps buying relevant for all types of cities. I don't think it necessarily nerfs gold as you can get below 200% ratio.

[MrBiscuits]

New proposal - can purchase price % factor (currently 200%) be tied to town production vs total cost of building?

We could have a formula like cost % factor being = 0.3 * (building cost / city production)
*Barracks in developed city (125 building cost, town production is 30) - therefore 125*.3 /30 ~ 125% - 156 gold
*Armorer's Guild (400? building cost, town production is 25) - therefore 400 *.3 / 25 ~ 480% - 1920 gold
*Half Built Armorer's Guild in same example above - 960 gold
*Amplifying tower in undeveloped city - forget about it.

Buying becomes less desirable when cities have high production, so this keeps buying relevant for all types of cities. I don't think it necessarily nerfs gold as you can get below 200% ratio.

That would mean a low production city is bad twice, harder to build things and more expensive to buy as well.