Spell Very Rare Treasure

[zitro1987]

I keep reading instances of very rare spells rewarded with middle-difficulty lair or node battles, spells that cost 5-digit research cost, in very early in the game. I once got myself entangle by fighting a few storm giants (difficult, but doable with losses that pale in comparison with reward).

I mentioned this before - we need to limit this reward to rare super-difficult battles where you're fighting 5+ v.rare creatures.

The solution could be as simple as changing the spell point system in rewards to have a base of 200 for that X-4X-9X-16X hardcoded formula. --> 200 © 800 (U) 1800 ® 3200 (VR)

Another better solution could be keeping things the same but the 16X for v rare changing to 25X. It does not seem fair that v rare costs not even twice as many research points as a rare.

[Seravy]

Lairs like that are might be too rare - that's no different than removing the reward completely. I don't think that's a good solution. (Don't remember the overall budgets but I don't think 3k+ lairs are that abundant. Maybe there are like, 20 of them but then the chance of very rare is only 1/4, and it even has to roll "spell" first, otherwise points are spent and it drops below 3k. So it's like 1 out of 5 to roll spell, overall, something like 1 lair with a very rare spell per game?)

My preference would be to keep map treasure generation as is, but if a spell of high rarity would be given to a player at an unrealistic timing, replace that reward somehow when the lair is cleared. We already have a custom spell reward procedure, we just need to add extra conditions to it and somehow replace the reward - as the procedure only rewards spells, I guess the only easy way would be a spell from a lower tier. While this does waste treasure points, in reality the 2.4k points for the very rare spell is fair for a rare spell that costs 4k to research, and even acceptable for an uncommon that costs only 1.3k but you are usually a new spell not on your research list, making it more valuable than mere RP points.

If we agree this is a real problem, and that replacing by another spell is a solution, we can start discussing the condition when the spell needs to be replaced by a lower tier spell. We can trigger it on turn count, existing researched spell tiers, total "owned" RP which is conveniently stored in the spell of mastery remaining cost, etc.

[teelaurila]

Is it really a problem because the casting cost of the spell will many times be nigh prohibitive anyway?

And even if it is OP, is it more so than getting a lucky item of comparable value at the same game point? The item you can just use, the v.rare spell still needs to be cast.

I've won games (or at least quickened my win) via both rewards. Could be kinda boring if this did not happen, no?

[Seravy]

Yes, Suppress Magic when I only have commons is definitely a problem, same can be said for most global enchantments.

The game telling you "too bad you lose, the AI just found Armageddon/Death Wish/Suppress Magic/etc" in 1405 is way worse than the AI having a powerful item on a random hero that likely stays in their fortress, and even if not, can usually be killed with uncommon spells unless it has 3 items of that level.
And let's not try to imagine how the game goes if the AI happens to have Sky Drakes in 1405. They might need to wait 5 turns to summon one but that one will be way more unstoppable than the hero with the item and more will be coming as time goes on.

By definition, (most) spells are global and affect the entire game. Items are local - they only affect the area where the hero is.

[zitro1987]

Can it instead roll 2 rares if the turn # is low enough?

yes, cost may be high and some globals don't benefit a lot if too early, but if you get a colossus or certain combat spells, the reward is too game-changing.

[Nelphine]

This has several factors. I've considered it, but it's a very difficult problem.

First: Generally speaking there are roughly 7 lairs/nodes/towers (split between both planes) that reward either very rare spells OR books/retorts. So these are not exactly abundant. Doing anything to reduce this can easily feel like they are simply removed from the game due to the AI getting them.

Second: The AI will conquer these lairs purely based on quick combat strength; unfortunately, this varies wildly by AI - if you fight a mono life barbarian he can be conquering these nodes by 1404 without difficulty. On the other hand a sorcery AI playing something like klackons could very easy take until very rares (1412-1425 depending on difficulty) before they can conquer them.

Third: If the human wants to get these treasures on higher difficulty, they have to plan to get them early, due to point 2 above. This generally means that if you play for treasure, you can expect to break the majority of these no later than 1410 regardless of difficulty.

This leads to problems with the proposed solutions:
Increasing treasure value cost - will be too similar to simply removing them from the game.
Turn count, varies extremely wildly by playstyle. Setting it too high, in order to ensure it doesn't happen early, will just mean they don't happen at all if the wrong AI is in the game. This would be far too similar to removing it from the game entirely.
Existing researched tiers: This will vary wildly by number of books chosen. My standard 4 book life game only has to research a fraction of the spells that a 6/6 dual realm wizard has to research in order to reach the rare tier.
Total 'owned' RP: same problem as turn count - this varies wildly by playstyle, and the barbarian AI will crush these too fast.

My proposed solution, I think is this: When you find a spell, you don't immediately know it. Instead, you get it added to your research list, and it will be the next spell available for research. This allows you to get access to the spells, but you'll still need to research them, so they'll still come into play at a more appropriate time in the game.

Potential Problems: This may not be codeable. If you find multiple spells in a row, which one gets chosen next? (I don't really think this one is a big deal, but it's still technically a problem). If you find too many spells, especially if you get 'lucky' with rares and very rares, you could end up with your entire researchable list consisting of rare/very rare spells, when you're still researching commons. My preferred solution for this is to only allow a max of 4 'found' spells to be available for research at any given point, but that becomes even more difficult to code, as you still need to keep track of which spells were found, and what is available.

[Seravy]

No, people can only find one spell at a time, that's what the procedure that generates the text expects. There might be a way to just dump the excessive into the gold reward or something like that but for that I probably need to use some ugly hack. I'm not entirely sure there is a need for such compensation - Even an uncommon spell is fairly good for 2400 treasure points and a rare is amazing.

The only problem I see is, this might generate incentive to not crack lairs too early. (the same way as the old "spells rank up if all known in target tier" system did, albeit this isn't as bad as that was.)

[zitro1987]

Can you disable [advanced] spell rewards for AI and possibly leave spell reward system unchanged for human?

Change them to books/retorts or some other good reward for AI?

[Nelphine]

Also did you see my suggestion 3 posts up Seravy? I posted almost same time as you.

[Seravy]

Instead, you get it added to your research list, a

This is a good idea. If this is done however, the treasure point value of these likely needs a major overhaul? A single spell for 2400 when an entire book is 1000 sounds unreasonable.
But cost changes would make them appear more, that's not very good either.

...what if we trigger this based on turns/already owned RP/whatever? So you can find spells already researched normally, but as unresearched if they are too high tier too early?

and it will be the next spell available for research.

This sounds difficult but I guess it can be done if necessary. I'd prefer if it was limited to one at a time though.

Can you disable [advanced] spell rewards for AI and possibly leave spell reward system unchanged for human?

Change them to books/retorts or some other good reward for AI?

While I prefer not to make rewards different for the AI, I see no reason why we can't do this to both : if the "too early to find" condition triggers, the player gets a book/retort instead of their very rare spell. We can't do this with rares though, they aren't worth that much and are too frequent - question is, are rares enough threat to the game to even need that? Probably not.
The only problem with this one I see is, book treasure is, well, random. If you get a book in your realms, you got your unresearched very rare and some extras. But if it's a new or low book realm, you only get commons/uncommons (albeit, in this case you have access to up to 10 spells in trade which is a huge deal. Every realm has some really nice commons that matter even in the late game.). Retorts are probably even better than books if found so yeah, I don't think we need to worry about this resulting in worse treasure than the intended very rare. We might need to worry about it becoming far too good, though - but if someone takes out a 2.4k+ budget lair early that had the elusive "very rare spell" drop, maybe they deserve that bonus.