Random Picks and Modding...

[Scott Hebert]

I doubt many of you remember me, but those that do might remember my rather silly passion for 'brute-forcing' certain things.

Well, I am currently trying to work out accurate gold costs for random picks on mages, using Illwinter's baseline as given on their website. I have discovered a rather unusual event.

It needs tweaking, but a general rule of thumb is that a fully random pick is worth 25g regardless of the mage's fixed picks. Elemental or Sorcery random picks are harder to quantify (at least, on mages that have both), but I hope to have those quantified soon.

Now, a few caveats regarding this. It assumes that the random pick is fully random; i.e., it can be any of the 8 paths, and it is not bound to any other random pick (such as in the case of Atlantis's Kings of the Deep). It also assumes that each of the 8 paths of magic are equally desirable. That is, Fire magic is no better than Air magic is no better than Death magic is no better than Astral magic. This is Illwinter's assumption on their site, and I have followed it.

What prompted this is the at-times rather obtuse pricing of mages in the game. Certain mages are drastically undercosted (High Seraphs, Circle Masters, Daughters of Avalon), while others are drastically overcosted (Master of the Five Elements, Pans). I hope the end result of my research will be a balance mod to redress this.

Something else that I hope to glean is the 'formula' for calculating the cost of commanders, beyond the very simple. I feel that I have a basic grasp of it, but the quantification of various 'specials' needs to be tightened.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I will check when I can.

[tinkthank]

Hey, this looks very nice! -- but one word of warning, if I may: With a few exceptions (most notably: The Arch Seraph, who really could be a lot more expensive in my book), the over- and under-pricednicess of mages is not something which needs much, if any, fixing, because it is itself the result of balancing. "Balancing" the mage prices without drastically changing the rest of the nations -- in essence, creating a whole new game -- would make for disaster.

[Endoperez]

Illwinter has stated, that non-standardly priced mages are priced cheaper/more expensive on purpose. However, I still think your balance mod will help by adding an option to those who don't like the current pricing.

I don't remember your name, but I remember some of your threads and ideas... I was going to link your old thread about Exalted mod and the pricing of random magics that followed from it, until I noticed who started it all...

Welcome back!

[Chazar]

Sorry, but I think that this is futile: All these pricing rules can only be rules of thumb, to ensure that user-made mods are not too unbalanced!

It would be boring if all nations would be equal, hence e.g. Caelum is defined by its cheap mages as Ulm is defined by its superior Infantry. Once these basic difference have been decided, gaming balance is then an entirely different issue. Since Caelum has cheaper mages, other nations should have other advantager or caelum should have another disadvantage, but that is an entirely different topic for a different thread.

So establishing a rough gold cost estimate is useful for modders who do not have the experience and the a lot of test-gaming-time, but still want to add new thins to the existing game (assuming it is balanced). So apart from that, what is the point then?

[Scott Hebert]

I am aware that non-standard mages are supposedly there for 'balance purposes'... but having played the game for some time, I have to question this. Let's take for example the most likely culprit, the High Seraph of Caelum.

It is RIDICULOUSLY under-priced. As I recall, it is 3A2W1?, correct? By my calculations, the price for its magic ALONE is 257.75g. Then add the base price of 30g for a commander (though I'm working on refining that), and you get 287.75. Then, let's take into account that it flies, and is cold-immune. Say another 20. That's 300g.

Caelum gets this for 175g, instead.

Well, then, I would expect to see outstandingly bad troops for Caelum (ignoring, for the present, the fact that magic always outstrips troops). Well, they're certainly fragile, for the most part. However, that is to balance that nearly all of their troops fly, and naturally have magic weapons. What non-flying troops they have are quite good, so I don't see how Caelum's 'good mages' are balanced by their 'bad troops'.

Well, what about their priests? Maybe they just have no good priests? Nope. Their only priest(ess), the Seraphine, is Holy-3 AND Stealthy. No, you really can't say they have bad priests in the least.

Well, what about bad scales? Are they balanced there? You look, and no. Far from it, in fact. They want Cold-3, which is another way of saying that they get 120 free points. Now, even if 80, say, of those points go into upping their Pretender's Dominion so that they naturally spend time in their Dominion, that's still more points than the average nation gets, and that's a higher Dominion. As it is, Cold is better than Heat because most Undead/Underwater nations take it, so it's more likely to be a Cold world than a Hot one.

So, personally, I don't see where Caelum is all that hampered by other factors that they deserve to have a mage on the order of the High Seraph, that cheaply.

For myself, I do not think that the ideas espoused for balance should work that well. Balance each part of the game against themselves, and you end with a balanced game. Balance does NOT mean equal, though. Ulm has good troops, yes... except against Undead/Magic/Giants/Armor-Piercing attacks, etc. Ulm also has a good mage, if a limited one. (The Master Smith, by ANY calculation, is undercosted.)

In any event, if/when I release a mod for the mages in the game, people who don't feel there's an imbalance in the mages don't have to use it.

[Scott Hebert]

I have finished my analysis of random picks. The 'general rule' of 25g per pure random pick is rather borne out. It gets higher with more paths, and it seems to dip on the second random pick, but it's rather set, otherwise.

I will start working on an analysis of the commanders in the game, to see if I can 'pin down' at least some of the variables involved in it. Any suggestions as to how to do this would be appreciated.

[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:

---

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:

---

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.