Random Picks and Modding...

[Saber Cherry]

Commander factors, in order of importance to me:

Free Summons (e.g. Unholy / Tribal King / Wolfherd)
Magic Command
Undead Command
Amphibious
Command
Flight
Stealth
Sailing
Immunities
Protection
Has a Shield
Strat Move over 2
Survival Skills (forest, waste, etc)
Longranged Weapon (eg composite bow)
HP
Precision
Magic Resist
Other assorted bonuses (Standard, Patrol, Pillage, NNE, etc)

[Scott Hebert]

Saber Cherry said:
Commander factors, in order of importance to me:

Ah, Saber Cherry. Greetings again. If I may comment...?

Free Summons (e.g. Unholy / Tribal King / Wolfherd)

Well, Unholy already has its calculation done for me (Illwinter). Personally, I think it's about right. Unholy-3 Priests can put out a lot of Longdead, but they pay 150g for the privilege.

Tribal Kings and Wolfherds, OTOH, show that just being able to produce chaff isn't all that expensive an ability.

Magic Command
Undead Command

Granted, this is important. I imagine it will be valued at twice the equivalent amount of 'normal' leadership. This of course does not include Leadership (of any type) gained by magic, since that (presumably) is included in the cost of the magic path.

Amphibious

Again, useful. On this note, how much do you think Strategic Movement should be valued?

Command

Leadership is referred to above.

Stealth
Sailing

Sailing is a movement enhancer and as such will be valued. Stealth... not so much. I'll explain more below.

Immunities

Do you think that all immunities should be equally valued?

Protection
Has a Shield

Unless someone can tell me otherwise, Weapons and Armor will be ignored in this analysis. The reason being is that is taken into account on resources, correct? Base (inherent) Protection values will be valued accordingly.

As a base, I am looking at the basic scout. All of its stats are 10, it has no Leadership, it has Stealth(+0), and that's about it. That would lead me to believe the following:

Commander: 10
Stats: 0
Leadership: 0
Stealth(+0): 10

For a grand total of 20 points.

Now, if you 'move up' to the standard infantry commander, he loses stealth, but gains Leadership 25. This might look like the following:

Commander: 10
Stats: 0
Leadership: 20
For a total of 30 points.

From these examples, you might be able to look at the following, for base leadership:

0 - 0 points
10 - 10 points
25 - 20 points
50 - 30 points
75 - 40 points
125 (Is 100 a valid base number?) - 50 points

Does this work out to about the right amount? I don't know yet. But it's my 'working guess'. As for stats, I'm going to assign positive/negative numbers based on most stats' deviation from 10 (Str, Att, Def, Prc, Mrl, MR). Protection will simply be its number. Encumbrance on its deviation from 3 (that seems to be the human norm), with probably a larger 'bonus' if it's 0. For HPs, currently it's just like Str, but it may need to be changed. Do you think that might work, or would it be overvaluing HPs?

I'll do some more work on it, and see what I can come up with.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Saber Cherry]

Interesting. I was not considering a scout to be a commander, since they have zero leadership. The points I included above were just things I consider important in recruiting leaders that will be leading my troops.

I know protection and shields are accounted for by resource cost, but shields are so critical that I would never recruit a commander with low protection and no shield at any resource cost unless it had special abilities (like magic paths) or was dirt cheap. Commanders without shields and armor die like flies when exposed to arrows... seeking arrows... blade winds... flying shards... well, anything, really.

Undead leadership can probably be valued similarly to or a bit more than normal leadership, since normal undeads are much weaker than humans, and devils are much stronger than humans.

Magical leadership, OTOH, I think is far more valuable per unit than normal leadership, not just double.

However, it is very rare to have a gold cost for commanders with undead or magical leadership that is not already paid for with their magic paths, so these points may be moot.

HPs on commanders (the kind that sit at the back of the army in battles, and just lead troops) are much more important than other stats (except protection and maybe MR). HP protects them from seeking arrows, strategic province-blasting spells, projectiles, and damage from auras of friendly units... which are the leading causes of commander death, in my experience. The other stats are usually useless except versus assassination attempts, weak fliers set to "attack rear", and very powerful commanders that you actually use in combat.

When evaluating commanders, it may be useful to have a scale for "pure commanders" in which stats (except hp,mr, and prot) are generally irrelevant, and a scale for "combat commanders" that are intended to actually fight, where all stats are valuable. After all... would anyone pay more for an indy commander that had +2 str, -1 enc, and +2 ap? I wouldn't... but if I had a choice between an indy commander with +5 HP or +5 str, I would certainly choose +5 HP. Precision is always worthless unless it is above 10 or on a leader that comes with a ranged weapon (or magic). Also...

Code:

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0 - 0 points

10 - 10 points

25 - 20 points

50 - 30 points

75 - 40 points

---

I seem to be more in favor of big armies than other people, but I find 50-leadership to be way better than 25-leadership, and 10-leadership to be virtually worthless. I'd probably scale it more like...

0 - 0 points
10 - 8 points
25 - 20 points
50 - 35 points
75 - 45 points

...but it depends on the way you like to design armies and what kind of units you use. Mictlan leadership isn't really as valuable as Jotun or Abysian leadership.

As far as strat moves go, all commanders have a minimum of 2 strat moves as far as I know. More strat moves are almost never useful UNLESS they are combined with flight, terrain survival, AND access to units with flight, terrain survival, and high strat moves. Strat moves are useless underwater. In fact, strat moves may be worthless for normal commanders, and only important for Caelian and combat commanders.

Immunities: They're all very valuable, and more so as the game goes on. Poison is probably the least valuable. The value of immunities increases drastically with the power of the unit, so that inherent fire immunity on a supercombattant is way more valuable than inherent fire immunity on an Abysian commander. Maybe you should make immunities multiplicative rather than additive. For example, Frost immunity could be worth 1.5x, making a Neifel Jarl worth (300 points)*1.5 and a Caelian scout worth (20 points)*1.5 or something like that.

Well, anyway, these are just some random thoughts I tapped in as I was considering commanders, but feel free to ignore them and value units however you want

[Scott Hebert]

Saber Cherry said:
Interesting. I was not considering a scout to be a commander, since they have zero leadership. The points I included above were just things I consider important in recruiting leaders that will be leading my troops.

*nods* Understood. However, I am trying for an 'across-the-board' approach to Leader design, and the Scout is the simplest in terms of number of variables free.

I know protection and shields are accounted for by resource cost, but shields are so critical that I would never recruit a commander with low protection and no shield at any resource cost unless it had special abilities (like magic paths) or was dirt cheap. Commanders without shields and armor die like flies when exposed to arrows... seeking arrows... blade winds... flying shards... well, anything, really.

Again, understood, and I'll look into it, but it's not something I'll be too concerned over. The hoped-for 'end result' of this analysis is to find out exactly where/why certain commanders have such high costs.

Undead leadership can probably be valued similarly to or a bit more than normal leadership, since normal undeads are much weaker than humans, and devils are much stronger than humans.

Magical leadership, OTOH, I think is far more valuable per unit than normal leadership, not just double.

*nods* However, inherent leadership of either type is rare enough that double sounds about right. I mean... I can recall the other day I was playing Broken Empire Ermor, and I Prophetized my original Centurion... and he got Undead General for his heroic ability. That felt like a hat trick.

However, it is very rare to have a gold cost for commanders with undead or magical leadership that is not already paid for with their magic paths, so these points may be moot.

Rather. OTOH, it's most relevant to R'lyeh.

HPs on commanders (the kind that sit at the back of the army in battles, and just lead troops) are much more important than other stats (except protection and maybe MR). HP protects them from seeking arrows, strategic province-blasting spells, projectiles, and damage from auras of friendly units... which are the leading causes of commander death, in my experience. The other stats are usually useless except versus assassination attempts, weak fliers set to "attack rear", and very powerful commanders that you actually use in combat.

Ah. So, commanders like Pans and Triton Kings (which I feel are rather overpriced) should be more expensive simply because they have lots of HPs when compared to 'human' mage commanders?

When evaluating commanders, it may be useful to have a scale for "pure commanders" in which stats (except hp,mr, and prot) are generally irrelevant, and a scale for "combat commanders" that are intended to actually fight, where all stats are valuable. After all... would anyone pay more for an indy commander that had +2 str, -1 enc, and +2 ap? I wouldn't... but if I had a choice between an indy commander with +5 HP or +5 str, I would certainly choose +5 HP. Precision is always worthless unless it is above 10 or on a leader that comes with a ranged weapon (or magic).

I understand that, but commanders don't seem to be 'optimized' for that. I'd rather not go into 'generic commander', 'mage', and 'fighting commander'. It's basically subjective as to what, exactly, those are. Take a Vanherse. Is that a generic commander? (If he commands nothing but stealthy troops, maybe!) Is that a mage? (If he's spamming Phantasmal troops/False Horrors, maybe!) Is that a combat commander? (If he's decked out appropriately, maybe!) It's a judgement call, and one I hope to obviate.

Also...

Code:

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0 - 0 points

10 - 10 points

25 - 20 points

50 - 30 points

75 - 40 points

---

I seem to be more in favor of big armies than other people, but I find 50-leadership to be way better than 25-leadership, and 10-leadership to be virtually worthless. I'd probably scale it more like...

0 - 0 points
10 - 8 points
25 - 20 points
50 - 35 points
75 - 45 points

...but it depends on the way you like to design armies and what kind of units you use. Mictlan leadership isn't really as valuable as Jotun or Abysian leadership.

Well, that's the tweaking stage. Re: Mictlan vs. Jotun, though... I'm trying to avoid that kind of nation vs. nation idea. OTOH, Mictlan NEEDS their Leadership. Abysia and Jotunheim can sort of 'get away' with lower Leadership ratings (because of their pound-for-pound better troops), but Mictlan needs to be able to mass troops.

However, that tends to be a wash. Mictlan spends more money for their commanders (due to higher Leadership ratings), but their units are dirt-cheap, both in gold and resources. Conversely, Jotunheim spends less money for their commanders (due to lower Leadership ratings), but their units are more expensive. This is the sort of balancing that is beyond the current scope of my analysis.

As far as strat moves go, all commanders have a minimum of 2 strat moves as far as I know. More strat moves are almost never useful UNLESS they are combined with flight, terrain survival, AND access to units with flight, terrain survival, and high strat moves. Strat moves are useless underwater. In fact, strat moves may be worthless for normal commanders, and only important for Caelian and combat commanders.

*nods* I was expecting to simply ignore it. Strategic move on the units themselves are much more valuable at the 2+ level, so I've noticed.

Immunities: They're all very valuable, and more so as the game goes on. Poison is probably the least valuable. The value of immunities increases drastically with the power of the unit, so that inherent fire immunity on a supercombattant is way more valuable than inherent fire immunity on an Abysian commander. Maybe you should make immunities multiplicative rather than additive. For example, Frost immunity could be worth 1.5x, making a Neifel Jarl worth (300 points)*1.5 and a Caelian scout worth (20 points)*1.5 or something like that.

Mm, it's an idea, and I understand where you're coming from, but it does have its own uses. I mean, Abysian mages are completely immune to Fires from the Sky and similar spells, for example. I think I'll keep them all even, and see where it goes from there.

Well, anyway, these are just some random thoughts I tapped in as I was considering commanders, but feel free to ignore them and value units however you want

Heh. I ignore advice at my own peril, I think.

[Agrajag]

Just a tiny little thing I wish to say, I think you should make all calculation by multiplying.
That is, for a fighting commander, 100 HP and 20 Attack will be much more valuable than two commanaders, one with 20 attack and one with 100 HP.
So the higher your stats, the better your other stats become, because with the improvement of one stat you increase the usability of the other (increasing HP to 100 as an example, will mean that that commander will live ~10 times more than an ordinary commander, thus making all of his abilities much more useful).

[Ighalli]

I strongly agree with Agrajag about multiplicitive values. The problem with that is weighing the various stats (not to mention abilities) and then normalizing them (to go from the product to the price). The additive math is definately easier, but it should be obvious that a mage assassin is worth more than an assassin and a mage.

[Chazar]

On the other hand, why should a higher attack value make a fragile seraph (having a high cost by these calculations) even more expensive? I doubt that the attack value can be ever high enough to be of a use for most mages...

[Scott Hebert]

Ighalli said:
I strongly agree with Agrajag about multiplicitive values. The problem with that is weighing the various stats (not to mention abilities) and then normalizing them (to go from the product to the price). The additive math is definately easier, but it should be obvious that a mage assassin is worth more than an assassin and a mage.

I disagree, and for a number of reasons. First, on the 'mage assassin' > 'mage' plus 'assassin'... why is that true? Yes, a mage assassin has more options than either a mage or an assassin (and thus should cost more), but if I have a mage and an assassin, and you have a mage assassin, you can only assassinate OR research/forge/ritualize/do magey stuff. I can do both (if not as well as the assassin mage).

For me, the 'opportunity cost' of having multiple commanders has to be worth something. (It's sort of an application of the chess idea of the 'overused piece'.)

Now, should they be equal? IOW, would the mage+assassin's cost equal the assassin mage's cost? Probably not. Even if the mage and the assassin mage had the same magic skills, and the assassin and the assassin mage had the same combat skills, the assassin mage most likely would not cost as much as the assassin and the mage combined, due to some overlap in other abilities. For example:

Assassin: 30g
Mage: 60g
Assassin/Mage: 80g

(These are 'off the top of my head', but the Void Child of R'lyeh, compared with a regular assassin or a 1-path mage, seems to bear this out.)

And yes, it's true that I can only buy one commander a turn, but look at the difference in upkeep should I buy one assassin and one mage, vs. two assassin/mages.

There are all kinds of permutations, but I don't see where a multiplicative system, as opposed to an additive system, is any more appropriate. Perhaps you can give examples of certain abilities that are better on 'better' commanders?