Magic Scale

[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.