Magic Scale

[Graeme Dice]

I can remember discussions about Dom I where some considered it to be standard practice to take drain 3, as it had very little effect when you could boost you research just by spending more gold.

[Yvelina]

Speaking for myself, I consider magic 3 a no-brainer. Dominions II is won through magic, and research is vital to the war effort. While it is true that you can buy more research with more gold, it is hard to do so in the beginning, and your maintainance cost shoots through the roof. Maybe it could work for some nations. For my favorite nation, Vanheim, it would be insanity.

Vanheim has four mages that can be used for research. In Magic 3 the research per maintainance cost is 1.2, .8, .83, .75. Note that I start by buying the worst researchers (dwarves), at least until I get enough random picks for my casting and forging needs.

Now, lets consider Drain 3. The points/gold become .2, .2, .33, .16, We are talking an average of six TIMES less research per mage. Even the best researcher is a full four TIMES worse. Yes, if you have four times as much gold, this may make sense, but you will not.

The mathematics may be different for independants and other nations, but I doubt they are that much different. Drain for anyone but base Ulm is suicide, unless you intend to somehow win the game without magic.

[Graeme Dice]

Yvelina said:
Speaking for myself, I consider magic 3 a no-brainer.

I don't, since it has severely diminishing returns over magic 2.

I'm also referring to Dominions I, where there was more than twice as much gold in the economy.

We are talking an average of six TIMES less research per mage.

You can always use owl quills on dwarves.

Even the best researcher is a full four TIMES worse. Yes, if you have four times as much gold, this may make sense, but you will not.

A better comparison would be to look at magic 2 vs. magic 3, and to include the purchase price where you'll notice that the difference is very small.

Drain for anyone but base Ulm is suicide, unless you intend to somehow win the game without magic.

Ermor can get away with a drain scale quite nicely.

[Zen]

In Dom1 you could also convert Astral to RP.

[Yvelina]

I was talking about drain being suicide... now, if you are saying that Magic 3 is not worth the 40 design points over Magic 2, that may be perfectly reasonable. When I decided on magic 3, I mostly did it by comparing the loss of research to the loss of gold from death/sloth, and decided that magic 3 made sense. It is also the difference between getting to Alt2 in two turns, and having to take one more turn before sending my pretender on a rampage.

I can believe that for even slightly different pretender designs, magic 2 may be better than magic 3. But I have trouble imagining how drain can be a good idea. Do you mind explaining why you would take drain with Ermor? Even without drain, you can easily afford a monster pretender. Investing 6x40 more points in it will not allow you to do two things per turn, while it would deny you 6 more research points per mage.

As for the suggestion tha I use quilts of dwarves, I will just assume that you were joking. There are better uses for air gems in the early game, especially for Vanheim.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Yvelina said:
As for the suggestion tha I use quilts of dwarves, I will just assume that you were joking. There are better uses for air gems in the early game, especially for Vanheim.

If Graeme is joking, then count me in the jokers bandwagon as well.

[Cainehill]

Yvelina said:
I was talking about drain being suicide... now, if you are saying that Magic 3 is not worth the 40 design points over Magic 2, that may be perfectly reasonable. When I decided on magic 3, I mostly did it by comparing the loss of research to the loss of gold from death/sloth, and decided that magic 3 made sense. It is also the difference between getting to Alt2 in two turns, and having to take one more turn before sending my pretender on a rampage.

I've taken Drain 1 with Vanheim and done very VERY well, when the game ended from lack of interest (4 AIs, including the Caelum Norfleet had started) I think I may have been the only one holding my own or advancing against the AI'd nations.

I went with the assumption that Helheim can afford ... Skull Mentors, is it? Good death income, earth income, and dwarven hammer capable mages.

No doubt it wasn't optimal (nor was having Astral 3 or 4 on my Ghost King pretender), but as an experimental whimsy, it worked quite well. First through the use of skull mentors (yes, there are much better usages of death gems, especially at conjuration/summoning 6 and 9), and also by conquering past my dominion and setting researchers outside the area of drain - easy enough for any Vanheim theme to manage.