Random Picks and Modding...

[Scott Hebert]

Graeme Dice said:

At 15 gold, I'll have 10 or more castles recruiting nothing but consorts. That way I can completely shut down an opponent's economy. With 100 consorts you could shut down something like 10 provinces a turn, and never lose more than 1 in each province.

Presuming I kill any of them before I'm right on top of you. You do have a point, though. Perhaps a blanket increase in their cost is in order. (All spies.)

Would it be better if catching a stealthy unit created an Assassination-type encounter?

You don't patrol unless you are trying to catch spies or assasin's, and then you'll use enough cheap units that the bonus on a commander doesn't matter too much.

Well, as a note, Assassins and Spies have become cheaper, so patrolling might be useful.

Which doesn't matter much past turn 5, as you'll be recruiting nothing but Crones as soon as possible.

I don't necessarily agree with that, but then, I don't have your vast experience playing this game.

Man is limited to a single crone per turn, which isn't nearly enough to keep up in most cases.

Perhaps. Again, you are the experienced player here.

Man doesn't benefit from the capitol only reduction. Man is hamstrung by the capital only restriction for everything past the very earliest parts of the game.

And they benefit the same amount as anyone else by the capital-only cost reduction. Now, I may revise the reduction I give so that the reduction is greater the more capital-only commanders there are. That would solve this issue (about the only one it wouldn't solve would be the Bane Spider one).

You have to price commanders based on what they can accomplish. Empoisoner's are just about the only assasins that you'll ever be able to make use of besides taking out independents early on.

[/quote]

If you say so. I've seen quite a few 'assassin builds' around that are quite effective at any point.

[Graeme Dice]

Scott Hebert said:
If you say so. I've seen quite a few 'assassin builds' around that are quite effective at any point.

They might be able to kill any human commander they run across, but that's not going to help you very much when somebody takes the fairly simple step of recruiting scouts, 30 gold commanders, and H2 priests for your assasins to spend their turns against.

[The_Tauren13]

Or maybe dump the equation and pull something like this:
Code:

---

Morale   Cost

   0     0.00

   1     0.05

   2     0.20

   3     0.32

   4     0.41

   5     0.47

   6     0.50

   7     0.70

   8     0.85

   9     0.95

  10     1.00

  11     1.10

  12     1.30

  13     1.60

  14     2.00

  15     2.12

  16     2.23

  17     2.33

  18     2.43

  19     2.51

  20     2.60

  21     2.67

  22     2.74

  23     2.79

  24     2.85

  25     2.89

  26     2.93

  27     2.96

  28     2.98

  29     2.99

  30     3.00

---

Graeme Dice said:
I'd say that Caelum's mages are a good baseline for what every nation should have.

Right. Lets make national troops more useless than they already are. And lets make most battle summons more effective than most ritual summons. What a fun game!

Graeme Dice said:

They might be able to kill any human commander they run across, but that's not going to help you very much when somebody takes the fairly simple step of recruiting scouts, 30 gold commanders, and H2 priests for your assasins to spend their turns against.

If I can spend 50 Gold and a few gems to make my opponent lose 30-50 gold per turn, I'll be happy.

[Saber Cherry]

The_Tauren13 said:
Or maybe dump the equation and pull something like this:
Code:

---

Morale   Cost

   0     0.00

   1     0.05

   2     0.20

   3     0.32

   4     0.41

   5     0.47

   6     0.50

   7     0.70

   8     0.85

   9     0.95

  10     1.00

  11     1.10

  12     1.30

  13     1.60

  14     2.00

  15     2.12

  16     2.23

  17     2.33

  18     2.43

  19     2.51

  20     2.60

  21     2.67

  22     2.74

  23     2.79

  24     2.85

  25     2.89

  26     2.93

  27     2.96

  28     2.98

  29     2.99

  30     3.00

---

That looks really good! My suggestions:

Cap minimum at .5, and cap maximum at 2.5. Morale 20 is NOT worth any more than morale 19. Not even .1%, and certainly not the 4% or so that your chart lists... since above 16 or so, units will almost never fail morale saves or repel rolls. I've never seen units with 18 morale retreat (when in their own squad).

Morale below 5 (from what I understand of the morale formulas) no longer has any real effect. Units with 5 morale will virtually always fail morale saves and repel rolls (that hit), so a morale 1 units is as useful as a morale 5 unit.

Thanks for generating the chart!

[Endoperez]

And that loss would be far more than 30-50 gp, as he would never know just where that assasin was going to be the next turn... Especially if he has flying boots. One would need to have 5+ scouts with any army that moves near enemy area, and either lots of scouts or lots of patrollers (or pd) in research provinces.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Right. Lets make national troops more useless than they already are. And lets make most battle summons more effective than most ritual summons.

Are you still hung up on false horrors? They are decent, but it's not like there's no easy ways to get around them.