Guaranteed early rare

[Seravy]

We all know how big of a difference it makes if the rare spell we want appears first, or last among all the rares obtainable, and this have been made worse as here are 12 spells now.

Guaranteed rares aren't given at 10 books because you get every rare spell.
So we could use this to implement a guaranteed early rare feature.
This would guarantee that the spell(s) you pick will always appear first among any rares you can research, the same way Artificer guarantees Create Artifact to do so.

Do we want this feature?
If yes, how many guaranteed spells should it give? One or Two? I think two would work better?

If we do add the feature, we also need to discuss what rares the AI should be picking in which case for this.

[Anskiy]

Definitely add this feature, mono realm plays with 8-10 books are quite weak especially in 13 wizard games.

I say one guaranteed early rare at 9, two at 10. Hmm, but 8 books still needs something..

[Seravy]

We can't add any at 9 because that still has to choose guaranteed normal rares in the UI instead of early rares.

[Suppanut]

Why don't just make guaranteed spells to always appear before other random spells of the same class so gueranteed rare would also act as early rare too?

[zitro1987]

Guaranteed rare(s) at 10 books is exciting, an idea i remember wishing for

2 rares is preference

[Seravy]

That's an option but would mean we have to grant 2 guaranteed early rares at 9 books as well in which case we aren't actually making 10 books any better relative to 9.
So the main question is, which we think is weaker, then 9th or the 10th book?

Book 10 gives you +3 rares while book 9 gives you only +1. Everything else is the same. (+1 very rare, +1 guaranteed very rare, cost/rp bonus.)

Based on that book 9 does feel weaker as a pick than book 10 but book 10 also requires a larger sacrifice to get. (going down to 2 picks for retorts and other books from 3 is worse than going from 4 to 3.) and it's also safe to say getting a second guaranteed very rare is worth more than getting a third.

So taking those into consideration it feels like they are evenly matched.

8 books are fine as is, they are the strongest choice possible right now thanks to guaranteed early uncommons.

If we want consistency though we should keep guaranteed and guaranteed early separate which is only possible if guaranteed early is for 10 books only. It's also somewhat questionable how much 9 books even needs the feature, as it only gets 9 rares instead of 12.

So at 9 books the worst case scenario is having to research all your visible uncommons (7 spells at 1280 each) and 4 rares (9 from your realm and 3 from arcane minus the 8 slots) a total of 7*1280+16000=24960 RP, without trading for any of the Arcane spells. Okay that is kinda expensive honestly but if you pick your cheapest rares, you can get it down to about ~23000.
At 10 books, 3 more rares are added so it is 36960 RP and even picking cheaper spells, around ~35000. Much worse and while the former can be mostly eliminated by trading for some of the uncommons or arcane rares, or even finding them as treasure, it's super hard to do that for the 10 book version where 6 rares have be gained on top of all the uncommons.

Or we can leave the system as is, as having to adapt to which spells come up in which order does make the game more varied and interesting? We should also consider trading - if wizards start to guarantee their first rares, they will be unable to trade between them because they'll research the same things in the same order and assuming the human players knows which spells are good, they will do the same. It's also questionable if letting the AI get that Flame Strike or Evil Presence early every game would be fun to play against, I actually think it wouldn't be.
And the greatest issue is that there is no combo potential which would require varied choices. At 9 or 10 books you don't have a second realm or at least not relevant amount of books in it. So picking a spell because it's a good combo with another won't happen.
For example, for guaranteed rare the AI might pick Doom Mastery instead of Flame Strike if they have enough Nature books to also get Survival Instinct. There are a few similar choices coded in the AI selection. However at guaranteed early, the AI doesn't have enough books in other realms so they always have to consider what's best for the mono-realm strategy so they would always pick Flame Strike and this is even true for the human player. If I can't build a combo I'll just pick the strongest rare spell(s) every game.

[Anskiy]

That argument makes sense, however high book mono realm strategies are weak for the player so I want to boost them in a reasonable way. 2 guaranteed early rares for 10, and maybe increase the odds of guaranteed spells showing up in the book when we advance a tier? Like if for example I pick Incarnation as a guaranteed rare with 9 books, have it come at 50% chance when the Rare spells start showing up? at 8 books make it 40% chance, at 7 30% etc. The nice thing about this is, you could even use this system for guaranteed uncommons. The way it stands right now, guaranteed spells in the higher tiers have little value since they may not show up until it's too late, so it's better to go with lower number of books and then gamble on lairs.

[Suppanut]

I see. If that so, guerantee first rare would be a thing, I support it.

[zitro1987]

Based on what Seravy is saying, i think we should limit it to just 10 books. We won’t often face against AI with early rares (who will probably have a general use spell like flame strike or inspirations) , but player can choose to. It is also far more intuitive when not mixed with guaranteed in 9 books

I don’t think it will cause a problem in the hands of the ai, because it is unlocked only when rares become available

[Seravy]

I decided to add the feature, for 10 books wizards only.

Next thing to decide, the AI's choices.