Supply and Demand.

[Alfryd]

This is probably another one of those pie-in-the-sky Majesty 3 suggestions- but the dev diaries got me thinking about R&D at buildings, and this is a relatively simple suggestion: What if techs/upgrades became cheaper/faster to research, depending on how frequently related techs were in use or demand at that building?

i.e, imagine that you had a tech tree similar to the following:

healing salves  ---speeds healing of injury
  |- comfrey balm (requires comfrey) ---alleviates poison and restores HP
  |    |- panacea  ---cures any form of poison or disease
  |    \- lotion of regrowth  ---removes ability damage, restores max HP
  \- potion of stamina  ---regenerates fatigue damage
       |- elixir of haste  ---increases move speed and action rate
       \- royal nectar (requires mandrake root)  ---boosts mental stats

The more visitors you get to a particular building, and the more demand there is for a particular service, the cheaper it becomes to research related techs. For example, lots of heroes buying healing salves and stamina potions will reduce the price/research time for elixirs of haste and/or royal nectar, etc. etc.

Thus, there is an economic, as well as strategic advantage to be gained from picking techs that complement your heroes' needs.

-There, simple.

 

[Draxynnic]

Sounds more like an economies of scale thing than a supply/demand thing - normally, increased demand causes the price to rise.

Of course, you could interpret it as the building's owner requiring less government support to research more product if what they have is selling well, both because they have more money to invest and because they have more of an expectation that the new product will sell.

 

[Spiderman]

I think it depends if there's a limit on potions like in Maj 1 and what the decision tree for various heros says. I mean, pretty much the first thing a hero does right off the bat is get healing potions. So obviously they're in demand right then. When every hero reaches their limit of 5, they're not going to buy any more, so demand drops.

Likewise, if the decision to buy potions is way down on the tree for some reason, demand drops.

 

[Alfryd]

Of course, you could interpret it as the building's owner requiring less government support to research more product if what they have is selling well, both because they have more money to invest and because they have more of an expectation that the new product will sell.

Precisely. I'm also assuming hero AI has been improved enough that they don't go off buying items likely to be essentially useless to them- like wizards and healing potions, or adepts and speed potions.

 

[Draxynnic]

Well, wizards and healing potions are something that would be useful if low-level wizards didn't have so few hit points that any hit would kill them. That said, I have seen times when the wizards weren't getting one-hitted, and when they do, they typically take a swig of a potion as soon as they get hit - can be a significant extension of their lifespan as long as they can survive single hits.

Adepts and speed potions... yeah, it's overkill, since speed potions are normally used for running away and Adepts will tend to outrun anything anyway. I suppose you could argue that it gets them to a refuge so they can recover faster...

 

[Hassat Hunter]

Wizards and healing potions were very handy.
They were intelligent, so bought them often... it helped them survive Giant Rat attacks instead of dying on them. Aside from that since they couldn't visit the blacksmith pre-NE it was a good way for them to actually put their reported goldmoney to good use (read: give it to us). Often I would research Amulet of Teleportation for them just to rip them off their cold hard cash .

Adepts and speed potions are a whole different issue though, considering Adepts cannot even use speed potions (!). Oh well, they could only carry one so it was just a one-time waste of 100 gold. The AI-issues with regeneration elixers are far FAR worse. Pure waste of hero cash, but needed to get Shapeshift and Invis. Potions .

 

[Alfryd]

Yeah, what I mean in general is that heroes should purchase potions only if they have good reason to suppose they'll prove useful in future, based on experience of past encounters.