Wizard changes: Picks & retorts

[Catwalk]

I know it's possible to mod the costs of retorts to some extent, but don't know how much. Many retorts are quite useless as is, others can be balanced through cost changes.

I would like to increase the number of picks in order to make it possible to fine tune retort costs better. If # of picks and costs of everything were doubled, we'd effectively be able to increase retort costs in increments of half picks (using current cost levels).

Please offer feedback on cost and effect changes, I'll post some ideas later.

[luddite]

I thought it was funny that the original game makes alchemy cost just 1 pick. I guess the designers thought it was a weak pick, only useful to get a little bit of extra gold or mana. But it's actually incredibly strong. First you can turn all your initial mana into gold, to get a faster start. Then you can turn all your excess gold into mana whenever necessary, basically giving you unlimited mana. And of course all the low-tech races need it to get magical weapons (and races like trolls and gnolls really benefit a lot from magical weapons).

I could see this Alchemy being worth at least 2, maybe even 2.5. Depends on whether you change it to let more races build the alchemists' guild.

The warlord-alchemy combination is so strong that I feel like I could win almost any game just with that.

[kyrub]

If # of picks and costs of everything were doubled, we'd effectively be able to increase retort costs in increments of half picks

Revamping the cost of picks into several new cost branches is surprisingly difficult, I am afraid. First, imagine there is no externalized table with costs, everything is hard-coded. Second, try to think about all places it is used (human spell picks, AI randomly chooses picks, human player and AI acquiring spell picks from a node) and third, imagine all these spaces as tight caverns with no real place and a load of IF statements about cost, incompatibility between black/white, book nr conditions etc. And making new coding space in Magic.exe is uneasy because I did not study it enough.
(It's possible but it costs a lot of time from my reservoir.)

On the other hand, the fonctionnality is usually very easy to change. Surprising, eh?

[luddite]

On the other hand, the fonctionnality is usually very easy to change. Surprising, eh?

Wow that is weird. So if, for example, you want to reduce the cost of one and increase the cost of another, would it be easier to just swap their effects, instead?

[Catwalk]

Ugh. Well, technical issues trump all as always. Can anything be done about costs, or do we have to rebalance through functionality alone?

[kyrub]

Wow that is weird. So if, for example, you want to reduce the cost of one and increase the cost of another, would it be easier to just swap their effects, instead?

That is actually quite clever idea.
But, swapping IS easy. The problem is a new system of costs and many exception (new cost brackets).
@Catwalk
Before making big statements I have to look back in the code. But this is what I remember.

[Catwalk]

luddite's idea would probably be fully sufficient, gives us a lot of room for balancing. Would there be any downsides to it?

[I like Serena]

human player and AI acquiring spell picks from a node

A node yields skills, not picks.
Aren't picks managed exclusively in magic.exe and not in wizards.exe?

[Catwalk]

How about letting Famous wizards start with a 0 fame hero, selected by the player through Serena's tweaker?

Also, how about letting Charismatic wizards start out with +150 gold?

[WhiteMage]

Fine, but I would prefer a random hero. You know me. Randomness makes game interesting.