late game is hell with no tome limit

[just.dont]

Affinity influence and exponential cost increases should probably be added to the research. So e.g. it would be taking more and more time to research stuff with every additional tome (perhaps even more when picking tomes on the same level beyond 2nd and perhaps even more for opposing tomes), while it should probably take less time to research stuff that corresponds to your affinities (easier to specialize).

I don't like the idea of hard limits for tomes too much, but currently it's definitely TOO easy to research basically everything.

 

[Olauron]

Actually this is a bug, not a feature/design choice, Tom (one of the lead devs) said during a dev stream that you can only get 9 tomes (two of each tier and one tier 5), obviously he was unnaware of this bug at the time (or it didn't exist then).

This is not a bug and this was never a bug, this is explicit design decision: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/tomes-of-magic-info-compilation.1566567/post-28879508

 

[Eggs Loves]

Games are very short so I see little point in this. I'm at turn 70-80 on normal and game is almost over (I could have rushed expansion victory but I didn't bother). AI also seems to be reaching the endgame around that time as well, having seed + root built. If you're researching extra tomes then you probably either have insane research and are snowballing, or you're actually way behind and the AI can't close the game for some reason.
EDIT: I guess map size and difficulty level can affect game length... I played on standard size with 7 players.

 

[fodazd]

I agree that an exponential cost increase would be much better than a hard limit.

 

[CyberianK]

Games are very short so I see little point in this.

I think that largely depends on diff, world and size settings.
Smaller to standard seems winning in 30-50 turns if you go for it. Not thinking of supersmall rush which is way quicker ofc.

On larger Brutal maps (or hard rough world) it looks like only the Magic victory is fast due to the easy research mentioned in this thread and if you explicitly go for it. That said I suppose many players who like to play bigger maps and longer will intentionally disable the Magic victory.

 

[Uriak]

This could be fixed with some soft limits (ie increasing costs of discovery/maintenance)
But it raises indeed the question of if the scenario here is not an outlier ? Some people wants larger maps and more ennemies for longer campaign but it doesn't seem to be within the scope of most of the design. If a certain type of victory is cheesasble that should be looked into and fixed of course.

Most 4X ends up with sameness in the very late game, in general, unless you hard lock most decisions, which can be a thing, but then you'd end up with many turns of nothing more to add to your tech or cities bar some repeatable advantage and wouldn't be this even more boring ?

Let's keep in mind too that in the future the number of available tomes will grow too, before applying a big change to this.

 

[Gyrvendal]

Instead of strictly limiting it I just would like a slightly exponential increase in research cost for everything past the first tome of each level.
Sth like

1st Tome 100 % Research cost
2 Tomes 140 %
3 Tomes 190 %
4 Tomes 260 %
5 Tomes 360 %
6 Tomes 500 %
7 Tomes 700 %
8 Tomes 980 %

So only slight increase for the required second tome but if someone goes off path it quickly reaches a point where its more costly than going higher

Its a bit silly how currently researching 6+ Tier 1 tomes first is stronger than going for tier 2 and 3 instead.

Something like that would work. I just don't want a system that increases overall cost for all tomes based on number of picked tomes. It should only affect the specific tome you picked third or fourth or whatever. Also tome completion should require at least 3 spells researched from that specific tome, not overall.

 

[Uriak]

I'm a bit torn about both solutions (keeping early tomes easy to acquire vs increasing with numbers) both have issues

- leaving the cost makes grabbing a bit of all "too easy" and limits variations. In game like civ where early techs are mostly defined by their order of acquisition it's not an issue, and would feel weird to have some basic stuff still unknown past a certain points. But here these tomes are here to introduce side grades

-ramping cost can create a situation where skipping a tome can be quite punishing. I really didn't like the feel of the tech pool in endless legends (at least when I played it) where each sucessive tech would cost more and more regardless of it's level.

So yes maybe a very light geometric increase could be a thing.

 

[Kevin Ross Brown]

Games are very short so I see little point in this. I'm at turn 70-80 on normal and game is almost over (I could have rushed expansion victory but I didn't bother). AI also seems to be reaching the endgame around that time as well, having seed + root built. If you're researching extra tomes then you probably either have insane research and are snowballing, or you're actually way behind and the AI can't close the game for some reason.
EDIT: I guess map size and difficulty level can affect game length... I played on standard size with 7 players.

Sim City playstyle can go on easily for 200+ turns. So can kingmaker games where you mostly sit back and feed resources to an ally and see what happens.


So it's an issue for a significant number of players.

 

[Bomdur]

I think that an increase in research and the ability to set the tome limit will be nice.
I've 15h+ and until the 2nd Tier 3 tome the phase is nice but after that you just "rush" through tomes like crazy. For the time you have the ability to recruit tier 3 units you have unlocked tier 4 units making them a bit obsolete.
Also, make the tome limit custom. So if you want a game only with early tomes we can have that.

 

[Bankipriel]

You could try to set game speed to slow in the advanced setup which would simply increase the amount of stuff you need to research and progress ...

I fear this will have the same affect it does in Stellaris, where the human player will adapt by focusing even more on research, and the AI empires will be terribly weak "technologically" because they won't adapt.

I mean, I'm still gonna try it out here, because it's how I play Stellaris as well XD . . . but I think it's going to cause the same problem. The work-around in Stellaris is to just crank the AI difficulty to make their empires stronger, but this leads to a really brutal early game, until the human player can get ahead "technologically".

 

[Nereid]

Instead of strictly limiting it I just would like a slightly exponential increase in research cost for everything past the first tome of each level.
Sth like

1st Tome 100 % Research cost
2 Tomes 140 %

I would not just increase the cost for each tome above a certain number but also for already picked tomes of an opposing type. E.g. if you pick a chaos tome and you already have an order tome the new chaos tome should be way more costly and even more costly if you own a lot order tomes. Each type of tome should have one or two types that oppose it and makes picking those a costly choice.

 

[Big J Money]

They could also limit the number of Tome levels we can have. This way we can still choose any Tome we want, but there's a limit that helps people picking smaller tomes to keep up with those picking big ones (i.e. they get more of them).

TI tome counts as 1 level, T2 counts as 2 levels, etc.

If someone does the "ideal" run of 9 Tomes, that would match a level limit of 25 Tome Levels (2+4+6+8+5). So maybe a good limit would be 28 - 30 Tome levels, max.

 

[Crimsonraziel]

If someone does the "ideal" run of 9 Tomes, that would match a level limit of 15 Tome Levels (2+4+6+8+5). So maybe a good limit would be 18 - 20 Tome levels, max.

Either I'm stupid or your math is totally off. A limit of 20 would block you out of tier 5 entirely, even on "ideal runs".

 

[Big J Money]

Lol, yes I was off because of a typo, oops. It was supposed to be 25, not 15, and I didn't notice for the rest of the post. Fixed.

 

[Silesian Burd]

Gosh, how quickly do you get new tomes? You have only 150 turns in order to avoid that sort of thing.

 

[Szeron]

It's nice to see I'm not the only one who came to this conclusion.

Ancient Wise Ones really showcases how badly the Tome system.. unravels.. after T5. 'Late game' effectively becomes a bunch of Rainbow Wizards 'gruging' each other over the heads with the most horrific magically-infused abominations they can muster. While it's poetic, and probably a bit thematic, it's not really fun or interesting as a climax to the conflict.

My proposal:
Part 1: Introduce Tome Caps per tier.
T5 = 1 tome
T4 = 3 tomes
T3 = 5 tomes
T2 = 7 tomes
T1 = Unlimited?
(Think of it as the wizard tower only being able to contain so much magic; tier access could also be restricted by Wizard Tower level.)

Part 2: Add a Realm Trait
Unbound Potential - Removes all tome caps(including T5) and Affinity requirements for higher tier tomes. Become the ultimate Rainbow Wizard.

Part 3: Add repeatable 'filler' Research once you've run out of tome research.
Examples: A repeatable research project that grants you 300 gold, 200 mana, exotic units like Unicorns or Swamp Trolls instantly summoned at your capital, etc.

 

[oatbear]

I never got that far into the tome levels that I was facing this issue, but I was surprised to find that when you unlock any two T1 tomes, you could unlock any T2 tome. I would have expected a bit more of a "tree-like" behavior. E.g., to unlock a T2 of a certain affinity, you need at least a T1 of that same affinity, and so forth. You cannot just learn Biology 201 because you took Math and Psychology 101.

 

[Cybersbe]

I never got that far into the tome levels that I was facing this issue, but I was surprised to find that when you unlock any two T1 tomes, you could unlock any T2 tome. I would have expected a bit more of a "tree-like" behavior. E.g., to unlock a T2 of a certain affinity, you need at least a T1 of that same affinity, and so forth. You cannot just learn Biology 201 because you took Math and Psychology 101.

Affinity restrictions don’t come in until tier 4.

Though that doesn’t mean much when it’s as easy as it is to breeze through tomes.

If it were up to me, I’d like it so you can only have 2 tomes each from tiers 1-4 (as for Tier V, well, you already can only have one). Or otherwise set a hard limit on the number of Tomes you can have total.

 

[evilcat]

So after 100turns I completed tome tier v and after that it was pick whatever. And generally next turn to victory.
Maybe there is some problem of unlocking everything. But it is late game.

There could be a game creation slider with technology cost up or down (quicker).
There could be a cost multipier for spell cost with each tome. Like 1.1^n. or some other value. Since problem is profund late game maybe start with smaller value and increaste it gradually if problem will be still present.
Tomes tiers are arbitrary so it may happen that we need 3 or 4 tomes from one tier, becouse cool tomes ware on tier II. Havent played faction when really needed more than 5 tomes from one tier are really needed.

It is nice idea that after you research 9 tomes you can pick pass the cycle option, so for 4 picks you can pick no spell reward from list of 3: Random unit or army or rare item, Gold or Mana Or Imperium , Food or Production or Draft inpulse in the cities. And that reward for 4 picks, after which you can either pick some tome or pass the cycle again.

EDIT: Or from 10th tome all your spells cost max value (10k?) so late game rush will be slowed down.