Why are Sages fair? Opinions wanted!

[johan osterman]

Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost. So while giving Sages a high resource cost might make them somewhat scarcer it would be inconsistent with the other units. So unless you deck out the Sages in some enormously heavy armour or you start to assign resource cost to all mages, perhaps lab flasks etc takes resources that competes with weapon making resources, I do no think it is a particularily good idea.

[Boron]

Panther is right imo .
I can't think of a situation in which i don't build 1-2 sages a turn if i can no matter which nation i play .

Research is just so important and the sage and the loremaster are the two best researchers .

In my last machaka game with vh research i found 1 loremaster and 2 Sage sites and recruited 2 sages + 1 loremaster each turn and then had researched all important stuff for me on about turn 60 with VH research .
If i would have wanted i could have even researched everything on turn 60 in that game but i had other priorities , especially forging with forge up occasionally in this game .

Sages are a no-brainer atm

But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

[Chazar]

Boron said:But in Dominions 3 with the new feature age sages are probably already 80+ years old and die after around 30 turns so they are not anymore a nobrainer there i guess

Hmm, how do you get all those 80+ year old sages if 12 turns are a year? So the conclusions is that a library burns out after a certain number of sages have been recruited, right? Now that would also limit the sages...

Edit: Clarification: The library runs out of recruitable sages because there are only people below 60 in the province left. Since 12 turns are a year, the population wouldnt age fast enough to produce further 80 year old sages anymore...I am joking!!!

[Boron]

Chazar said:

Hmm, how do you get all those 80+ year old sages if 12 turns are a year? So the conclusions is that a library burns out after a certain number of sages have been recruited, right? Now that would also limit the sages...

You get them because they start at the age of e.g. 78 years when you recruit them ... .
Once they are then e.g. 80 years old ( = 24 Gameturns ) they have each turn a 5 or 10% probability to die of old age

Another idea a bit off topic but concerning slightly unfair stuff would be that AQs and other powerful creatures serve you for 10 turns when you summon them but after that in order to keep them serving you they demand resources .
AQs would e.g. be free for the first 10 turns , demand 2 Airgems per turn for the next 10 turns of service , then 5 Airgems for the following 10 turns of service etc. .
And they would keep the equipment .
Would also make the Uniquesummoning more interesting because you can try every 10 turns out of the blue a summoning and get maybe a fully equipped AQ .
If the AQ gets killed you get only an empty AQ though .

What do you think ?

[Saber Cherry]

Just to be clear, I don't think there is any reason to nerf sages. That said, they're basically lazy academics who want to sit around in library lounge sofas all day. They're probably old and frail, and have a lifetime of resentment from being picked last for the sports teams in school.

...so, to be "nice and thematic", give them 6 HP, 15 base encumbrance, 2 AP, and a new weapon, "Feeble Slap" (-4 damage, -2 defense, -2 attack). And make them a little confused in chaotic situations - randomly swap the order of their spell scripts for combat. And last but not least, since forging smacks of "real work", give them a -50 forge bonus=)

0 strat moves might be interesting, too.

"Sir, Ermor is invading! Their ghoul hordes will eat you alive! We have to leave now!"

"Ehhh... what's that you say, sonny? Don't play soldier in the library, you hear? Now let me finish this book."

[Chazar]

johan osterman said:
Chazar: Giving the Sages 40 reource cost would be a little at odds with the rest of the game. Reource cost on uniits reflect their equipment, heavy armor high resource cost.

Well, I am pretty aware of that (see my post in this thread below/above), but I cannot think of any other reason why this would be a bad idea. I think this is similar to Kristoffer O's argument in the discussion about province size. So it's merely a task of coming up with a sound explanation if the game mechanics work out fine...

What I really want, similiar to what I said with a twinkling eye a post ago about the aged sages, is that one could only recruit one sage every other turn, or maybe only one sage per season.

Maybe there are even more troops that can only recruited in a certain season anyway (some sacred units can only be recruited at a certain festival point - equinox, solstice, moon position,etc.)