Retorts and books you can find in a given game

[zuzzu]

I strongly agree that banishing / defeating wizards should be where additional books come from, but as I recall, that idea came up before and Seravy rejected it (I don't recall his reasoning on why).

Although I can see it might be unworkable; trying to figure out whether the mechanic goes with banishment or defeat is complex (IMO it should be on banish, defeat can be tricky for various reasons) and it conflicts with the new wizard retirement / disappearance mechanic. Imagine spending 20 turns constructing the perfect doomstack, only to see the guy vanish...

But as a game mechanic, it makes a huge amount of intuitive sense. Kill your rival, steal his power. As-is, the game has made taking a wizard's tower harder than the worst lair, with pathetically small rewards. It doesn't feel good; getting a book would feel amazing. So if there's any possibility of this happening I'm all for it.

I missed the details of "the new wizard retirement / disappearance mechanic". Can you elaborate more? Thanks!

[Slingers]

I missed the details of "the new wizard retirement / disappearance mechanic". Can you elaborate more? Thanks!

It's explained in this thread:

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...?tid=10276

[jhsidi]

I only agree if this particular reward is only for around turn 150 or later, when conquest is more resource intensive and less rewarding (early in game, attacking capital can result in outright defeat and towns becoming neutral for easy conquest)

Turn 150 is quite late game. And it seems your intention there is to prevent players from winning an easy battle to get a pick -- but I want to point out that's already possible.

The current pick mechanic allows the extra picks to randomly occur even in quite weak lairs. A lair with something like 4 (maybe 5?) cockatrices or a full roster of phantom beasts can be holding a pick. Which, depending on spell choice, is something I can conquer in 1501.

Supposedly, putting picks in those weak lairs is for the benefit of the AI. But I don't think it works particularly well. As I noted, AI actually finding picks is inconsistent. They often don't find any. When they do, it's not clear that the new pick makes a huge difference.

A theoretical benefit for AIs has somehow taken priority over fun for the player. Particularly -- fun for treasure-oriented players. Which is something like half the community, from my observation. In MoM, we used to be able to hunt specific lairs (the strongest ones) and have a good chance to find a pick. Now it's kind of just... attack all lairs and hope for the best. Not very satisfying.

As for enemy wizards, one more point -- why are you arguing against the player trying to destroy wizards early? It's something you can already do. Conquest oriented players can pursue that strategy and "break" the game just as much as you're implying would happen if their fortress had useful treasure.

I don't get the effort to perfectly balance the game and close off avenues that could benefit the player. Mechanically, it's such a broken game -- finding one spell at the right time can win it already. That is, in fact, the fun. Even original MoM was fun, with all its bizarre bugs. It has become a much better game in Seravy's hands, but I don't always agree with the urge to ensure that it has a a perfect counter against all strategies. Putting picks in wizard fortresses would be super fun and not necessarily make for an easy game -- considering how well fortresses have been designed to resist attack -- so what's the real objection here?

[zuzzu]

I only agree if this particular reward is only for around turn 150 or later, when conquest is more resource intensive and less rewarding (early in game, attacking capital can result in outright defeat and towns becoming neutral for easy conquest)

Turn 150 is quite late game. And it seems your intention there is to prevent players from winning an easy battle to get a pick -- but I want to point out that's already possible.

The current pick mechanic allows the extra picks to randomly occur even in quite weak lairs. A lair with something like 4 (maybe 5?) cockatrices or a full roster of phantom beasts can be holding a pick. Which, depending on spell choice, is something I can conquer in 1501.

Supposedly, putting picks in those weak lairs is for the benefit of the AI. But I don't think it works particularly well. As I noted, AI actually finding picks is inconsistent. They often don't find any. When they do, it's not clear that the new pick makes a huge difference.

A theoretical benefit for AIs has somehow taken priority over fun for the player. Particularly -- fun for treasure-oriented players. Which is something like half the community, from my observation. In MoM, we used to be able to hunt specific lairs (the strongest ones) and have a good chance to find a pick. Now it's kind of just... attack all lairs and hope for the best. Not very satisfying.

As for enemy wizards, one more point -- why are you arguing against the player trying to destroy wizards early? It's something you can already do. Conquest oriented players can pursue that strategy and "break" the game just as much as you're implying would happen if their fortress had useful treasure.

I don't get the effort to perfectly balance the game and close off avenues that could benefit the player. Mechanically, it's such a broken game -- finding one spell at the right time can win it already. That is, in fact, the fun. Even original MoM was fun, with all its bizarre bugs. It has become a much better game in Seravy's hands, but I don't always agree with the urge to ensure that it has a a perfect counter against all strategies. Putting picks in wizard fortresses would be super fun and not necessarily make for an easy game -- considering how well fortresses have been designed to resist attack -- so what's the real objection here?

I think that a special reward for killing another wizard is interesting. A guaranteed pick, though, might be too much - imagine a game of 14 wizards, it would be unfair to let you get 7-8 picks over time, and if you managed to kill half the wizards, you are already very powerful.

A more interesting one could be to have a certain type of reward for banishing wizards, and for winning a capital/fortress but not banishing the wizards. I think that there should be a chance of getting a pick; a chance of getting 2-3 spells; a chance of getting mana and gold.

[Seravy]

Wizards get defeated by AI players too rarely, resulting in gaining a high amount of picks consistently for the player.
Then we are back to square one, same problem as if they could find them consistently from lairs.
The elimination mechanic actually doesn't interfere for anyone who knows what they are doing, as AI wizards cannot retire while at war with the human player.

Yes, I know there are plenty of players who don't care about balance and just want to find treasure and win that way. That's what the modding options are for. If anything, a new scoring option for this might be a way to go. Add +2 picks in treasure for each wizard in game, lose 80% score. But modding.ini already makes that possible as a permanent change so I don't really see why we need to make it a special scoring option.
Unless...we teach the AI to abuse the option. When the option is selected, the AI builds wizards with more retorts and fewer spellbooks, divided between more realms. They also prioritize attacking lairs and nodes higher than any other target, war targets included. And then it's more fair and can be like, -20% score or something like that.

Books for defeating wizards is definitely an overkill because there are so many of them. I remember we had some sort of discussion about making fortress rewards better which might be a good idea but not in the form of additional books.

[zuzzu]

Wizards get defeated by AI players too rarely, resulting in gaining a high amount of picks consistently for the player.
Then we are back to square one, same problem as if they could find them consistently from lairs.
The elimination mechanic actually doesn't interfere for anyone who knows what they are doing, as AI wizards cannot retire while at war with the human player.

Yes, I know there are plenty of players who don't care about balance and just want to find treasure and win that way. That's what the modding options are for. If anything, a new scoring option for this might be a way to go. Add +2 picks in treasure for each wizard in game, lose 80% score. But modding.ini already makes that possible as a permanent change so I don't really see why we need to make it a special scoring option.
Unless...we teach the AI to abuse the option. When the option is selected, the AI builds wizards with more retorts and fewer spellbooks, divided between more realms. They also prioritize attacking lairs and nodes higher than any other target, war targets included. And then it's more fair and can be like, -20% score or something like that.

Books for defeating wizards is definitely an overkill because there are so many of them. I remember we had some sort of discussion about making fortress rewards better which might be a good idea but not in the form of additional books.

You know what? You are right on this one. I think that the proposal would mostly break the game.

Perhaps a simple point would be an option in the starting menu to add a small number of books + retorts to lairs and nodes in the game (yes, you can do it with modding.ini, but I'd guess most players would like / prefer to have a simple option, rather than edit modding.ini themselves). If you think about it, it's similar to poor/normal/rich minerals, in a way. We can have poor/normal/rich "picks" (in the form of either books or retorts, randomly) as an option.

[jhsidi]

Wizards get defeated by AI players too rarely, resulting in gaining a high amount of picks consistently for the player.
Then we are back to square one, same problem as if they could find them consistently from lairs.
The elimination mechanic actually doesn't interfere for anyone who knows what they are doing, as AI wizards cannot retire while at war with the human player.

Yes, I know there are plenty of players who don't care about balance and just want to find treasure and win that way. That's what the modding options are for.

This is a pretty wild misreading of what I said. There's no reason for you to jump straight to "he wants broken balance and a win button!!!1!". What I said -- twice -- is:

The current assumption that AI wizards will get picks and will benefit from those picks is not working well. Most AI wizards never get another pick. It's not clear that the ones that do get it, also get some huge benefit from it. Meanwhile, players have no way to strategically hunt for picks because their distribution is almost completely random. 

I also clearly said that I think the game becomes unbalanced / isn't good if you get too many picks. And you read over that and jumped straight to "plenty of players who don't care about balance".

I get it, you don't want to change the mechanic or try anything new. But don't willfully misinterpret what I'm saying. It's pretty plain. I think the choice to randomize picks into lower rank lairs is not an improvement; it's a downgrade, based on some theory of what the AI SHOULD be doing.

If you really want to ensure AI wizards get additional picks -- then just give them picks. The remaining AI wizards, or just the leaders, could get an extra pick when a wizard retires. That would be superior to breaking the treasure balance on some theoretical model of AI getting picks from lairs, which again, doesn't happen more often than not and varies wildly between different difficulty levels.

[Seravy]

The current assumption that AI wizards will get picks and will benefit from those picks is not working well. Most AI wizards never get another pick. It's not clear that the ones that do get it, also get some huge benefit from it. Meanwhile, players have no way to strategically hunt for picks because their distribution is almost completely random.

Yes, that's the important part, to be UNRELIABLE. This has been my stance on this the whole time.
If you can be sure you get additional picks, regardless of the amount, it's a problem. Obviously, more is worse.

I don't want to give the AI picks. I want to avoid giving picks to any player too often. AI players finding a lot of picks isn't much better for game balance. This is a strategy game. An opponent that has too many different options is needlessly hard to plan against and also not very fun.

My suggestion for the AI to prioritize hunting for picks was specific for the new scoring option that generates more picks. If we add a new game mode, the AI should be able to play it well and take advantage of it. Similarly how the AI breaks towers faster on "Race to the Unknown". But that doesn't mean I want that to be the default gameplay, that's why it's an option. So no, I don't want to give more picks to the AI, nor the player. I don't want to give more picks on the default game mode, period.

"AI being good at playing it" would also apply to a game mode where wizard towers reward picks. However the AI was already proven to be very bad at that with no chance of improving. So then we would have a game mode where the AI has no chance to compete, that's not an obvious "lower difficulty" option, but one where most players would expect the AI to be competent and adapt to the game mode and win. And here is the problem. Why play a mode where I compete with AI wizards on how quickly I can banish others, if the AI loses that race by default? I mean, I might as well just give the player the extra picks for free at that point.
...which isn't necessarily a bad idea I guess. We could have a scoring option that says "when the human player defeats another wizard, they gain 1 book or retort at random from the books and retorts the banished player had. -90% score." and then we made it clear this option isn't a race with the AI, but a one-sided bonus for human players to enjoy.

Anyway, you are the one misunderstanding things here. I don't want to give the AI more picks. I want to be sure the player can't count on finding them instead. The AI having a better chance at weaker lairs helps with that but what really helps most is having few picks to begin with. The main reason why they can be in those weaker lairs is because finding them unexpectedly is fun, and it's a nice surprise for the player, as well as a good motivating force to dedicate resources to clearing them as early as possible. If only hard, late nodes and lairs had picks, strategies not strictly focusing on treasure hunting could ignore them entirely. As is, it's worth considering the detour and building some extra units to conquer that semi-difficult lair full of spiders or unicorns that would be an automatic "ok, I'll ignore that" otherwise.

[Anskiy]

Seravy, are you sure this score modifier/option would require a -90% score penalty? Just how easy is it for a human player to assault most wizard fortresses on average? Remember that most of us aren't as skilled at gaming the system as Sapher...

[Blake00]

It's been a few versions since I played so maybe things have improved now days but I must admit the reason I stopped playing CoM2 was because I couldn't play how I enjoy playing MoM which is to gear my starting Wizard for treasure hunting and then build him up through treasure rewards. I must have cleared out like 100 lairs on a ginormous map and didn't get a single spell book or retort, I couldn't believe it, not even 1. I get that it messes up balancing but meh that's how I always enjoyed playing MoM. Fair or not, 'to better oneself' in stats a abilities until the point where all AI enemies fall easily at your knees is kind of the basis of every RPG adventure game out there (eg whether it be Might & Magic or Elder Scrolls you start the game barely able to kill a rat and by the end of the game your almost one shot blasting dragons out of the sky lol). MoM is obviously not a RPG adventure game but by almost totally removing Wizard enhancement rewards from treasure hunting it kills a lot of the RPG aspect area that made the original so much fun, and instead makes it feel more like a like straight up pure strategy Civ like game instead.