Pretender Balance Mod

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Well the crone has FOUR misc slots for one thing. That dosen't suck. Of course the Freak Lord would be wholly superior to the Archmage then, having THREE misc slots and trample, etc. You could tweak here and there... give the Archmage dominion 2 to start maybe.

Except that Trampling often sucks because the unit won't use other attacks (such as ultra-powerful swords / axes) unless the opponent is too large to trample. This is one reason I've stopped using the Earth Mother, and I certainly wouldn't want a fragile little Freak trampling. There's still the 3 misc slots, true, and more importantly the Freak's Fear ability, higher defense and precision, and Last but not least, 3 encumbrance vice the Archmage's 5, compared to the archmage's only advantage, movement 28 vice 16.

When you look at it that way (Fear, 3 misc, better stats, better encumbrance) the Freak is a bargain at 10 points more than the Archmage. But you can't raise the price on the Freaklord, because already no one takes him, so ....

[PvK]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:

quote:

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Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They aren't slow at searching, a rainbow 2 mage gives you about 75%-80% of all magic sites in a province every other turn. Level 3 and four sites are very rare.

I'm aware of that. However, 'every other turn' is too slow. That's half the rate of expansion, and that's assuming you have a searcher for each army you have. Much easier is simply to stay in your capital and cast site-searching spells, which DO search at the rate of your expansion.

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So by the time you have two conquering armies, you already have about 14-16 mages casting site searching spells every turn, using about 30 gems/slaves consisting of all types per turn? I'm impressed...

quote:

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That pretender isn't usable in multiplayer, since even an astral 1 mage will be likely to kill her. You also can't count on forge staying up for more than a few turns at most.

That's if an Astral 1 mage is ever in combat with her. It's not like I'm planning to send that Pretender into combat. The only way I see it likely that you're attacking my Pretender with Astral Mages is if you're storming my capital, in which case I would think that I've already lost.

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So you use the Great Mother as a stay-at-home rainbow mage, because of her improved ability to resist assassination?

PvK

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
So by the time you have two conquering armies, you already have about 14-16 mages casting site searching spells every turn, using about 30 gems/slaves consisting of all types per turn? I'm impressed...

Not exactly. When I do this, I would have 3-4 mages casting the searching spells that my national mages can cast. This doesn't search as well as a Rainbow, true, but I'm also guaranteed to be able to make full use of most if not all of the gems I _do_ find.

So you use the Great Mother as a stay-at-home rainbow mage, because of her improved ability to resist assassination?

Survivability is an issue, but besides that, she's cheaper, which is the entire problem. The difference in cost between an E4/S3/N4 Great Mother and an E4/S3/N4 Human Pretender is not significant enough for me to take the Human Pretender, when you consider that the Human Pretender has a 2 lower _base_ Dominion. The balance point is Dominion 5, where the difference in cost is only 7 points. Anything higher helps the Great Mother, who is _also_ the person who gains the most benefits from that Dominion. I see this as a balance issue.

Another interesting case is that of the Daughter of the Land, who makes perhaps the best 'giant rainbow', because she generates her own Clams and she has a higher base Dominion.

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
Survivability is an issue, but besides that, she's cheaper, which is the entire problem. The difference in cost between an E4/S3/N4 Great Mother and an E4/S3/N4 Human Pretender is not significant enough for me to take the Human Pretender, when you consider that the Human Pretender has a 2 lower _base_ Dominion. The balance point is Dominion 5, where the difference in cost is only 7 points. Anything higher helps the Great Mother, who is _also_ the person who gains the most benefits from that Dominion. I see this as a balance issue.

You didn't post numbers about Earth Mother with those magics versus a human pretender most suited to the task, propably some kind of a druid for initial Nature magic. Also, I would be interested to see how Nagas compare. Could you please post the differences (in points) between the three?

Human pretenders really seem to be wrecked when going for fours... Maybe they should have their base magic sttarting from two, this would give them a chance to let them take four in atleast one path.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
You didn't post numbers about Earth Mother with those magics versus a human pretender most suited to the task, propably some kind of a druid for initial Nature magic. Also, I would be interested to see how Nagas compare. Could you please post the differences (in points) between the three?

Certainly. I thought people were basically ignoring the numbers, so I didn't include them in the Last post. But, to be thorough:

Great Mother: 75 points
Master Druid: 55 points
Great Enchantress: 55 points
Naga: 100 points
(I include the Great Enchantress even though she isn't optimal because her ability is much better than the human average.)

Increasing Nature to 4 --

Great Mother: 8 + 16 + 24 = 48 points
Master Druid: 8 + 16 + 24 = 48 points
Great Enchantress: 10 + 16 + 24 + 32 = 82 points
Naga: 8 + 16 = 24 points

Increasing Earth to 4 --

Great Mother: 8 + 16 + 24 = 48 points
Master Druid: 10 + 16 + 24 + 32 = 82 points
Great Enchantress: 10 + 16 + 24 + 32 = 82 points
Naga: 20 + 16 + 24 + 32 = 92 points

Increasing Astral to 3 --

Great Mother: 80 + 16 + 24 = 120 points
Master Druid: 10 + 16 + 24 = 50 points
Great Enchantress: 8 + 16 = 24 points
Naga: 20 + 16 + 24 = 60 points

Totals:

Great Mother: 75 + 48 + 48 + 120 = 291 points
Master Druid: 55 + 48 + 82 + 50 = 235 points
Great Enchantress: 55 + 82 + 82 + 24 = 243 points
Naga: 100 + 24 + 92 + 60 = 276 points

This is with the Great Mother having a Dominion 2 higher than the rest. If you give them all at least a Dominion of 3 (I hope no one has a problem with this), you get:

Great Mother: 0
Master Druid: 7 + 14 = 21 points
Great Enchantress: 7 + 14 = 21 points
Naga: 7 + 14 = 21 points

So we add 21 points to each of the other chassis, for:

Great Mother: 291 points
Master Druid: 235 + 21 = 256 points
Great Enchantress: 243 + 21 = 264 points
Naga: 276 + 21 = 297 points

This is at 3 Dominion. Any increase in Dominion at this point will give the Great Mother 14 points more than the rest. Working this up a bit... at 4 Dominion:

Great Mother: 298 points
Master Druid: 277 points
Great Enchantress: 285 points
Naga: 318 points

At 5 Dominion:

Great Mother: 312 points
Master Druid: 305 points
Great Enchantress: 313 points
Naga: 346 points

Human pretenders really seem to be wrecked when going for fours... Maybe they should have their base magic sttarting from two, this would give them a chance to let them take four in atleast one path.

If you subtract 65 points from the Naga's total, you will see what giving human a 2-path does for them. (65 = 45 to drop the Naga's cost to human levels, +10 for the extra cost for the first added path, +10 for the extra cost for the second added path)

Hope this helps.

[Chris Byler]

I think these numbers demonstrate the real problem with the humanoids: low new path cost only decreases the cost to get level 1 in that path. It doesn't change the cost to get level 2, 3, 4, etc.

There was a proposal a while back to give some pretender forms a new ability: increasing the level of a magic path would cost less (or more) points. If humanoids paid only 50% of normal points to increase the level of a path, in addition to their low new path cost, they could be real magical powerhouses and have strong blessings too. (This would of course be offset by their low dominion and physical weakness, but it would make them much more interesting to play.)

Or, of course, more humanoids could start with more and/or higher level paths. Frost father water 2 air 1, master druid nature 2 earth 1, crone astral 1 death 1 nature 1, great enchantress astral 2 nature 1, great warlock fire 1 astral 1 blood 1, etc. At the same costs they have now, this would make it significantly cheaper to get to higher levels of magic in those paths, while also making them more different from each other by having preferred paths. This would tend to encourage a 2-3 paths at level 4-6 humanoid rather than a 5-7 paths at level 2-3 one - although you would still be able to do either.

[PvK]

Seems like that might be a good idea (altering the base path costs by a factor, and then giving that sort of factor as an advantage to pretenders like the humans).

I'll be interested to hear the opinions of folks who have played humanoids and rainbows successfully as to whether they think this could be unbalanced for strong RB/human players.

PvK

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Or, of course, more humanoids could start with more and/or higher level paths. Frost father water 2 air 1, master druid nature 2 earth 1, crone astral 1 death 1 nature 1, great enchantress astral 2 nature 1, great warlock fire 1 astral 1 blood 1, etc. At the same costs they have now, this would make it significantly cheaper to get to higher levels of magic in those paths, while also making them more different from each other by having preferred paths. This would tend to encourage a 2-3 paths at level 4-6 humanoid rather than a 5-7 paths at level 2-3 one - although you would still be able to do either.

That's what I say.

Hey, why don't I do it?
Well, let's see if I find the time to do the mod.
(doesn't look good. I'm in the midst of doing a 'scenario', catched a cold lately and have some deadlines to cope with in RL)

A.

[Sheap]

I think if you were to give a few of the various humanoids several natural paths and a high (60-80) path cost this could help solve the problem with lack of diversity among human pretenders.

Right now they are all used as rainbow mages, and one rainbow mage is much like another. Making some of them ineffective in that role, for instance giving the druid 2 points in all four sorcery paths and prohibitive path cost with elements (just an example) would make a powerful multi role mage with a good potential blessing (maybe even dual 9s) which is still not a rainbow mage.

Such creatures would still be weak in combat and (unless used with a nation that has excellent blessability) probably worse than regular rainbow mages at more or less everything. But at least there would be some diversity.

I have decided to take it upon myself to do a minor Mod (I'm still working on the Spell Ref Liga! No worries).

Look for it later tonight with Pretender modifications.