[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Because all the other magic i suggested that didn't involve MR is useless, clearly.

I did specify sorcery magic, which is the main strength of quite a few nations. If you nix that, you basically screw those nations over by forcing them to play with stuff they're not good at using research that's probably not in their best interest to go for, all other things being equal. IOW you're forcing them to play specifically to counter you instead of what's in their own interest. That's bad balance.

Their spells are balanced *for Ulm* at level 6. Ulm is going to have Drain scales. (If nothing else, their capital is going to be at Dr3 no matter what they do, because they have a capital site which increases Drain). Their best research mage provides *5RP* per turn, and their 5RP option outside the capital isn't even sacred. Pythium can *double* that before considering scales, and *all* its mages are sacred.

That's exactly my point.
If you give Ulm level 6 spells that are equivalent in relative power with spells others get at 9 magic (which is over *3* times as many RPs), on the (IMO flawed) assumption that both will get there at the same time, you've basically removed Ulm's research disadvantage, or Pythium's research edge, from the game.

Or to put it another way, you've made Ulm as powerful at one rex level 6 and 2 rex 3s as other nations are at *multiple* level 7+, which nullifies part of the point of being able to race up the research tree in the first place.
Since Ulm not only has that, but also superior troops that'll dominate the early and midgame battlefield, and probably the late game one as well because even typical "screw your army" moves like a Master Enslave with all pen boosters and a communion from hell isn't likely to make such a big dent in a late game Ulmish blob...yeah

I mean, there's already quite the hubhub about vanilla Ulm being top tier or borderline OP in the latest CBMs. And your nation makes CBM vanilla Ulm look like non CBM EA Agartha.

As for other nations' mages being sacred, that only really matters in the very long run. In the shorter run it means having to plop down a 400g temple everywhere (how many turns of slashed mage upkeep does that cover, paid upfront too ?). Since Ulm's big spells come in the short run... yeah.

And then you have to consider that, outside the capital, to get a iron blizzard caster they have to hire a 3RP Black Priest instead of a Smith.

So ? To be able to rain as much death as long as a Blizzard spammer can, Pythium has to recruit communicants which have no RP *at all*.

There's no reason Pythium can't run as scales either. If you aren't running scales as Pythium, you should be getting other benefits to compensate - benefits you chose over having those scales.

What benefits ? Sacreds ? That's a laugh, considering the kind of tools BR Ulm has to deal with those.

....And pythium can make lanterns and owl quills. I might note that MA Ulm has no native F income, and rarely gets better than F1 to enable site searching.

Not as many of them per gem. As for the income, natively Pythium won't have much F either, and Owl Quills come with a severe opportunity cost on A gems.

Fog Warriors would go a long way.

Fog Warriors is a level *7* spell. That's 1760 research points (need Thaum 1 too) if they beeline for it. BR Ulm can have its two go-to spells in 400. You said you expected Pythium to have double the research rate ? They'd still only be halfway to FW, with almost nothing to show for it on the field. Yay Phantasmal Army ! Aren't Ghost Wolves just da bomb ?

And what about nations that aren't Pythium ? Or are you balancing against an optimal play by one of the best vanilla nations ? What should, say, Ermor do ? Forego raising skellies entirely and hope to have FW up before your dedicated undead killers (or just the flails) show up ?

Besides, Fog Warriors on its own wouldn't save Pythium. Its legionnaires still won't break 25 armour any time soon with their shortswords while steadily getting mulched themselves. Thunderspam would, but then a) that's even moar research and b) that's a lot more mages out in the field than 2, which slows down research, which hurts them a lot long term.

As for mass crossbows, Ulm has tower shields, indy crossbows are not all that common in the MA, hard to mass unless you plop down castles specifically for them (and don't have sloth), and mapmove 1. Ulm for its part only has to bring a hundred or so Lion Tribe shortbows on "fire archers" to blow them away.

No one does?

Sacred nations do.

Yeah, I don't understand that at all. Its inconceivable to me that I'm not trailing in research. I think the explanation is more in what everyone else is not doing, and less in what I'm doing. I've even had to commit substantial mage forces to combat. So something is weird in that game, and it has nothing to do with Ulm having a stellar research rate. (Seriously, i'm not even to Const 6 yet!)

I didn't say they had a stellar one. But it's not as *OMG horrible*, which you seem to be assuming.

5 RP per castle is about as good as most other nations have it without magic scales, except for those nations that have superb mages to compensate for the fact that their troops are utter crap (Bandar, Shinu anyone ?) and thus need the research edge to even be able to compete because large numbers of their mages will be busy shoring up armies at any given time. You have 5 RP with 120 cool free design points to show for it. And if any of your neighbours is running Magic, it's yowza time for you because you can let his dom into your lands anyway. Don't need temples in your forts, remember ?

As for "they must be doing something wrong", Myconos has been turtling the whole game, is a pretty OK research nation running Magic 1 scales, has never been in a war and still doesn't have twice as much research as you do. With 4 castles to your 2. Red Woods doesn't either with *6*.
Admittedly I've been forcing a handful of their mages to patrol, and killed about 20 of them too. Still, that should tell you something.

I must have said this far too many times already, but you're seriously underestimating Ulm's research, or overestimating that of other nations. Or maybe you're just too used to playing with folks who'll take Magic 3 all day, everyday, I dunno. But then it'd be poor design to balance against that.

The only reason i'm not a flattened pancake is because my aggressors found themselves attacked from other sides. I haven't been conquering anyone - i've been defending myself from aggression. Gained a whole 2 provinces relative to what i had initially. And 3 of my provinces have basically zero population thanks to Sylvania (including their capital and another province that had >10k people before).

How do you figure ? You've got twice as much land as any other nation besides me, and I've taken over all of Sylvania's lands plus some of RW's on a transitory basis. Doesn't really matter how many that is above what you had when Sylvania tried to be clever - it's still a large advantage.

As for "I only live because somebody attacked my aggressors", that's what typically happens isn't it ? Not that you weren't holding your own against both Sylvania and Malaz at the same time. You probably would have been proper screwed with the fairies joining the fray, I'll give you that. But handily winning a 2-on-1 is already pretty remarkable in and of itself, no ?

Anyway, Ulm's infantry are supposed to be able to be made ridiculously strong. *That's its endgame*. There are *piles* of answers to infantry.

I agree. The problem is that right now it's not its endgame in your nation. It's its early game. It's its rush game, fer pete's sake !

There is not a single MA nation out there that can handle hordes of 25 prot regulars without some *serious* research and mage-time investment. Of those, you've made sure to eliminate quite a few with the super MR, the relief (admittedly the Steel Standards come a little bit later, which gives things like skellyspam a very brief window of opportunity, if a huge cost in mage-turns) and spies that come with barely an opportunity cost.

To be able to match your troops pound for pound, others will need summons, which cost gems and mage turns that will always be in much tighter supply than gold, *and* some good battlefield support to boot.

As for the late game, your armies will still rock everyone's favourite summons' faces with weapons of sharpness, battlefield luck, battlefield relief, battlefield berserk, battlefield elemental resists, battlefield enemy-only destruction (only the last one costing gems on a per battle basis, natch, so no hope for your enemies of leveraging your extreme reliance on a single gem type by forcing you to spend lots of them in skirmishes)... *while also having a massive advantage when it comes to SCs* because you can gear yours like it ain't no thang and the Iron Angel is basically designed to make SCs' lives miserable if the recruitable cavalry thugs weren't quite enough for your tastes.

Yeah, I don't see no balance problem there !