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gladis

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Sep 16, 2018
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This thread is created to discuss the balancing of rewards of Wizard Tower Ruins etc. which provide Secret Spells (https://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/Secret)

As you see the amount of Research Points for Dragons, Elementals, Feathered Serpent as well as for Combat Spells is unbalanced.

E.G Summon Obsidian Dragon is valued at 600 RP whereas the Feathered Serpent is at 900 RP.

As the Serpent consumes more RP, you get 300 RP less as reward than from the Dragon reward. This is totally imbalanced of course.

And think about other T4 need 1600 Knowlegde (Chtonic Guardian or Angels), whereas „regular“ Elementals (Earth, Air, Water, Fire) need 700 Knowledge.



My proposals would be:

Summon Blight Elemental (800 RP), Feathered Serpent (900 RP), Spirit Elemental should all be valued with 900 RP.

Feathered Serpent might be weaker than the Elementals and therefore could be 800 RP?

Summon Phoenix and Obsidian Dragon should all be valued with 1600 RP (are 600 RP).

Summon Bone Dragon should be valued with 1300 RP, because it´s weaker than the other T4 (no regeneration) (currently at 600 RP).

Recharging Mana Currents (280 RP) should be 200 RP.

Great Reawakening should be valued with 460 RP (is 280 RP),

Great Stoning (460 RP) should be 280 RP.

Greater Reanimate Undead (280 RP) should be 400 RP (weaker than Great Reawakening?).

Hailstorm (460 RP) should be 280 RP.

True Resurrect is currently 600 RP. We changed the spell in the Single Player and PBEM balance mod – any opinions whether 600 RP are fitting?
 
It depends on the situation which of the three units is better (blight, spirit elemntal, feathered serpent) so I think it didn't make a big difference if it#s 800 or 900 RP.

More important is the thing with the RP for obsidian dragon and phoenix. 1600 RP sounds fair and would be the same amount you need for chtonic guardian for example. Is there another T4 which costs 1300 RP? Bone dragons are a bit weaker than obsidian dragon and phoenix but it would be good to compare it with other T4 units.

For the other proposals I am not yet sure. Havn't used these spells so often to give a valid statement.
 
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Horned God, Eldritch Horror cost 1600 RP. Dread Reaper 1800 RP if the Wikia is right: https://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Summon_Dread_Reaper

Sorceror´s Summon Node Serpent is only at 400 RP (might be Special because it´s THE summoning class).
But Feathered Serpent should be not more than 800 RP then.

My Combat Spell proposals are just quick ideas what and in which direction I would Change stuff.

/gladis
 
i agree that it is unbalanced that t4s are valued less than a feathered serpent... But i d be careful to reduce those mass spells. They are all very useful and should not be too cheap. great stoning seems weaker, but it can be very handy and a game changer in combat. also in hero-less combats, where you dont want your troops to engage in a melee fight...
 
As you see the amount of Research Points for Dragons, Elementals, Feathered Serpent as well as for Combat Spells is unbalanced.
This matters because as explained here https://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Structures#Reward_sets the rewards depend on the reward value, which is site specific, and of the "cost" of the rewards. A skill with a higher RP cost will consume more of the reward value. So if some RP costs are very high (and exceed the reward value of the site), the skill might never be provided as a reward. Or it might be provided but with less "extra reward" (e.g. the gold or RP or mana you get on top of the main reward).



Here are the RP costs of T4:
- Dread Reaper: 1800 RP
- Shrine of Smiting: 1400 RP
- Horned God: 1600 RP
- Juggernaut: 1500 RP
- Eldritch: 1600 RP
- Manticore: 1200 RP
- 3 Angels: 1600 RP

So I would go for:
- Summon Phoenix and Obsidian Dragon cost 1600 RP (was 600 RP).
- Summon Bone Dragon cost 1300 RP (was 600 RP).

And:
- Great Reawakening is tier V and cost 600 RP (was tier IV and 280 RP).
- Greater Reanimate Undead is tier V and cost 500 RP (was tier IV 280 RP).
- Hailstorm is tier IV and cost 280 RP (was tier V and 460 RP) .
 
Important note: the value of the skill reward for the Wizard Tower Ruins is 900 RP in average (with SDNR or Normal Defenders) https://age-of-wonders-3.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Wizard_Tower_Ruins It means the Secret spells with values higher than 900 RP would not be accessible anymore at Wizard Tower Ruins.

For Sunken City, it's apparently 550 RP. For Forbidden Sanctum I don't know.

So we might want to adjust the Skill Reward Multiplier to be able to unlock the spells at 1600, and also adjust the Excess Reward Multiplier to avoid having very big extra rewards due to the higher Skill Reward Multiplier.
The base gold value of rewards from the Ruins are (5+0.6+0.4)*900= 5400. If we assume we get a Mythical item with a value of 300 (the base value for Mythical items) and the cheapest skill, like Dire Penguin at 60 RP (= 300 gold), and 72 RP, then currently we would get an excess reward (pre multiplier) gold value of 5400-300-300-360=4440 which seems huge to me... Taking into account the 0.2 Excess Reward Multiplier, that's 880 gold.
Basically if we set the Skill Reward Multiplier at 9 to reach a RP value of 1620 = 900*9/5 for Wizard Tower Ruins, to also get 4440 as excess reward (before multiplier), we would need to tweak the Excess Reward Multiplier and set it to 0.11 instead of 0.2.
 
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Re-aligning monster units RP to be more in line with equivalent strength T4 units makes total sense. Seems pretty straight forward. The 3 mentioned combat spell changes are also long overdue.
 
So I would go for:
- Summon Phoenix and Obsidian Dragon cost 1600 RP (was 600 RP).
- Summon Bone Dragon cost 1300 RP (was 600 RP).

And:
- Great Reawakening is tier V and cost 600 RP (was tier IV and 280 RP).
- Greater Reanimate Undead is tier V and cost 500 RP (was tier IV 280 RP).
- Hailstorm is tier IV and cost 280 RP (was tier V and 460 RP) .

Do we agree on that?

Then, as I explained, we need to tweak the reward sets of Wizard Tower Ruins, Sunken City and Forbidden Sanctum so that the 3 T4 Summons remain accessible through these sites.

In any case, we need to push the upper limit of RP max values so that it can reach 1600 RP to unlock Phoenix and Obsidian Dragon.
And then I see two options:
1/ we decrease the Excess Reward Multiplier so that the maximum excess gold value (obtained with the cheapest skill, Dire Penguin, and the worst possible reward) you can get is the same as before.
2/ we take the opportunity to rework the reward set further and make the excess gold reward more responsive to what you get. For instance, the Item Reward Multiplier can be reduced to 0.34 to unlock a Mythical item (currently, it stands at 0.6, generating 540 gold whereas Mythical items cost 300 => that's a minimum of 240 gold which is wasted into excess reward). And the excess gold should not exceed the Sale Gold Cap of 500 so if we consider the player gets Dire Penguin (RP cost of 60) and a Legendary item (gold value of 225), his reward value is 60*5+225=525 vs a max value of reward of 9*900+0.34*900=8406 gold ==> the Excess Reward Multiplier must be about 0.06, which would mean (8406-525)*0.06 = 472 gold as a reward.
With 0.06 as excess reward multiplier and the values I suggested, we would get:
- 1 Mythical item + Obsidian Dragon = about 6 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Obsidian Dragon = about 10 excess gold
- 1 Mythical item + Great Reawakening (600 RP) = 306 gold
- 1 Mythical item + Dire Penguin (60 RP) = 468 gold

I think the Excess Reward Multiplier of 0.06 is not ideal (it should be higher) but it's hard to make it more responsive to the value of items and skills if we keep the Sale Gold Cap at 500 and if we keep skills with such difference in value (from 60 RP to 1600 RP) in the reward set.

Same questions for Sunken Cities and Forbidden Sanctums.
 
Giving your calculations, Hili, I would change the Knowlegde value of Phoenix and Obsidian Dragon to ~1250.
Bone Dragon to 1050.
Spirit Elemental 900.
Blight Elemental and Feathered Serpent 800.

Given your proposed stats and adjusted Knowledge values:
- Excess Reward Multiplier = 0.06
- max value of reward = 8406 Gold
- Legendary Item´s value = 225 Gold
- Reward value Summon Obsidian Dragon/Phoenix = 1250*5 = 6250
- Reward value Summon Bone Dragon = 1050*5 = 5250
- Reward value Summon Spirit Elemental = 900*5 = 4500
- Reward value Summon Blight Elemental/Feathered Serpent = 800*5 = 4000

Those would lead to following excess Gold rewards if my calculations are correct:
- 1 Legendary item + Obsidian Dragon/Phoenix = 116 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Bone Dragon = 176 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Spirit Elemental = 221 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Blight Elemental/Feathered Serpent = 251 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Great Reawakening = 311 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Great Reanimate Undead = 341 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Hailstorm = 407 excess gold
- 1 Legendary item + Dire Pinguin = 473 excess gold

Maybe the Elementals and the serpent could get to 750-850 RP to make the difference to T4 bigger again.

What cripples me the most is the very small difference in receiving a Legendary or Mythical items - it´s just about 5 Gold extra reward! That is because of following calcultion:
Knowledge Reward Value * 5 + Item´s value.
The problem is the high Knowledge Reward Values together with the factor "5". can we change this factor? Or add a factor for the Item´s Value?

Your other proposals seem good.

PS: I did a small Analysis and if it´s possible to add a multiplicator for items, the factor7 could do the trick. Then the Excess Reward Multiplier could get raised to 0,07.
The difference Legendary Item - Mythical item would be 37 Gold which would be similar to the difference of receiving a Blight Elemental instead of a Spirit Elemental which seems appropriate for me. Any other possibility to change this difference of item´s excess Gold Rewards?
 
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Answer from phirpo:
at least with respect to tier4 summon spells i kinda changed my mind. esp. phoenix and obsidian dragon are very powerful and should cost more. although i think that what makes the obs. dragon so strong is owed to a big part to its stealth in the entire ug. although ug is way easier to defend, the obsidian dragon is kind of the trojan horse. the cost that this fact generates alone... anyway, i dont know how much more it should be expensive.