Comprehensive Age 78 Race/pers balance proposal
Intro
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The time has come again for us to start discussing changes for next age. And as is my usual custom, I've already been theorycrafting about a number of things and wanted to lay out a full proposal for races and personalities since a lot of those things are intertwined with the rest of the races/personalities.
First some high level points. I think everyone can agree that sage was too strong this age. In general, I think sage is a problem. Unlike the other personalities, which provide fairly unique bonuses or capabilities, sage's bonuses are about making a province better at everything. If the bonuses are too strong (they were this age), sage is not only offensively strong, but defensively strong as well, making it very difficult to deal with. If the bonuses are too weak, sage doesn't do anything and is easily destroyed. It's a degenerate location in the game design space. Thus I propose simply removing sage from the game. (Hey, gotta always nerf what Emeriti wins with amirite?)
I also felt faery was too strong this age. Elites aren't difficult enough to come by even at that price if you EOWCF pump properly, and with that much defense it's pretty easy to be unbreakable and do insane thief damage with faery's bonuses. In general, the offense to defense ratios of attackers to t/ms felt ok this age, but faeries felt like they got a free pass to late-war dominance properly played. It's fine for faeries to have an easy path to being unbreakable, but they have to give up their very strong offensive bonuses and fall more into a supportive role. I thus plan to bring casting on mates back to faery from paladin.
Now, with that change, bloodlust needs to move from a personality to a race, because really that spell is a bit too strong to be available to anyone with a faery. Good thing i already wanted to do that anyway. Last age changes saw spells being moved around to align with the strengths of the race/personality they landed on. For example, invisibility on rogue and revelation on sage. I think this is a good thing, and so with bloodlust giving bonuses to offense and casualties, I think it really belongs on orc. I'll also be moving more spells around to reflect this design principle.
Additionally, paladin is really awkward without casting on mates right now. It's already very weak, and that pretty much takes away its only benefit. I plan to rework it into an enchanter personality (I proposed something similar last age) that is focused on buffs and debuffs.
Science was too easy to come by this age. I propose slowing the rate of science generation and making the numbers a bit cleaner by requiring 50 scientists per category for soft cap, starting with 50 scientists, and generating 12.5% of a scientist per tick. That's 3 scientists per day, 100 days to soft cap every category with zero investment, so with a 12-week age, you're soft-capping all but one category, which seems more reasonable. Whether abduct comes back or not is out of scope for this proposal, but it would change where revelation lands.
Finally, I still see A/T as depressingly unviable and would like to add a personality that makes it possible, but I'll leave that for a separate post as it's a separate conversation.
So without further ado, here's my proposed changes. You'll see that I'm adjusting military numbers up ever so slightly to try to achieve good overall balance (higher numbers are easier to tweak!).
Races
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Avian (light/fast attacker)
+ -30% attack time
+ +30% birth rate
+ +30% training credits
- Can't use stables
Elite: 9/2 950gc 9nw
Spellbook: Aggression
Rationale: Avians felt slightly underwhelming this age. Giving them a solid boost to their raw numbers will help them keep up with increasing numbers across the board and let them continue to gobble up land at a scary pace, but with the obvious weakness of a still weaker than average military with no horses.
Orc (heavy attacker)
+ +20% battle gains
+ Free draft
+ +15% enemy casualties when attacking
- +10% own casualties when attacking
- -15% TPA
Elite: 9/2 950gc 9nw
Spellbook: Bloodlust
Rationale: Orcs are all about hitting hard (ORC SMASH!). The only change here is swapping out RM for BL, giving orcs more offensive power to continue to smash and bust through high-def targets but opening up a bit more weakness to mages.
Human (econ attacker)
+ +20% building and training credits
+ +30% income
+ income penalty protection
- -15% WPA
Elite: 9/4 1200gc 10.5nw
Spellbook: Inspire Army and Mystic Aura
Rationale: Increase human's capability to sustain while attacking slightly. Human loses some power as an option with the removal of its clear best pairing, sage, but the bump to its elite lets it keep up with the across the board numbers bump and continue to compete as an attacker option. Mystic Aura will give strong, active players some challenging counterplay against mages taking advantage of human's clear weakness, econ control via magic.
Dwarf (adaptable, tanky)
+ +20% BE
+ Free building construction
+ -50% construction time
- +50% food consumption
- can't accelerate construction
Elite: 8/5 1000gc 10nw
Spellbook: Inspire Army and Quick Feet
Rationale: Dwarves seem fine right now. With others getting a bump to numbers, though, they need something to keep up. Giving their elite a boost will let them continue to be an effective attacker. Quick feet is also a great match for dwarf because it lets them keep their armies moving as fast as their construction times and lets clever players sneak in hits and get home before their opponent, all tanked up with their high-def elites.
Elf (mage)
+ +30% WPA
+ +20% tower land effect
+ +2 defensive specialist
Elite: 7/4 900gc 9nw
Spellbook: Blizzard
Rationale: Elves are in an ok spot as well. They just need a defensive boost to keep up with the increased attacker offense numbers. I also don't see why they really need inspire army, and I'm adjusting heretic to be less about duration spells, so blizzard seemed to fit with elf decently well.
Halfling (thief)
+ +30% TPA
+ -50% thief cost
+ 2/2 soldiers
Elite: 5/8 1000gc 10nw
Spellbook: Aggression and Inspire Army
Rationale: The +5% pop/-5% BE thing feels weird on halfling because they'll really want that BE for TDs. It cuts against their role in design space. To compensate for the pop decrease, their elite gets a boost to bring it in line with increased military numbers across the board.
Faery (support)
+ Can cast self-spells on kd mates
+ +25% self-spell duration
+ Self-spells cost 2 mana
+ Intel ops cost 1 stealth
- -10% income
Elite: 3/9 1200gc 11nw
Spellbook: Greater Protection, Tree of Gold, Mystic Aura
Rationale: Faery gets to be uber tanky, but can't be allowed to have offensive bonuses on top of that like last age. The cost reduction for self spells and intel let faery contribute to the kd quite a lot and still have some mana/stealth left to deal damage, but it won't be oppressively strong.
Personalities
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Mystic (supermage)
+200% guild land effect
+1 mana/tick
+75% magic sci effectiveness
Starts with: +800 wizards
Spellbook: Meteor Showers, Chastity, Paradise, and Mage's Fury
Rationale: Mystic should be more focused on casting more spells than doing more instant damage given their typical focus on MS and MV'ing MS from allies
Heretic (maximal instant spells and ops damage)
+100% guild land effect
+20% spell damage
+20% sabotage damage
-66% thieves lost on failed ops
No wizards killed from failed spells
+30% magic sci
+30% thief sci
Starts with: +400 thieves, +400 wizards
Spellbook: Nightmare, Fools Gold, and Paradise
Rationale: Heretics, on the other hand, are about dealing maximum damage with instant spells and ops. I also considered moving GA to heretic, which I think could be up for debate, making them the "removing your defenses" personality with NM and GA (could even consider AW as well). Also, don't really see why heretics don't get paradise (same with enchanter).
Enchanter (Paladin rework, buffs and debuffs)
+100% guild land effect
+30% magic sci effect
+25% combat spell duration
Starts with: +800 wizards
Spellbook: Revelation, Reflect Magic, Divine Shield, Scientific Insight, Illuminate Shadows, Wrathful Smite, Magic Ward, Barrier of Integrity, Pitfalls, Gluttony, Chastity, Paradise
Rationale: Enchanter is all about buffs and debuffs. It has a clear favorite to pair with faery to apply buffs to allies, but could also work well with Elf, for example, to apply debuffs to enemy T/Ms. Also is a better place for pitfalls than war hero.
Rogue (superthief)
+50% guild land effect
+75% TD land effect
+50% thief sci
+1 stealth/tick
Access to all thievery ops
Starts with: +800 thieves
Spellbook: Invisibility and Paradise
Rationale: rogue is fine as is, especially with faery not being absurdly strong paired with it.
Tactician (tactical advantages)
-15% attack time
Accurate espionage
Access conquest regardless of net worth
Starts with: +800 soldiers and creds
Spell Book: Clear Sight and War Spoils
Rationale: War spoils really belongs here and not on war hero. Tactician can make strategic use of it by using its extra speed to get home before war spoils can be punished in some cases. Conquest access with war spoils on tact might also hopefully just maybe possibly breathe a little bit of life into growth as a semi-viable option. I doubt it though.
Warrior (military power)
+10% Offensive military efficiency
+30% Military sci
Starts with: +800 soldiers and creds
Spellbook: Fanatacism and Greater Protection
Rationale: With bloodlust's move to orc and the numbers adjustment to avian, fanatacism can find a home in warrior. That plus adding back the military science boost keeps warrior's offensive capabilities about as strong as last age, and with that and GP it also gets some defense bonus as well, which should make it a bit more attractive as an attacker pick.
Undead (durable attacker)
-30% own casualties
Spreads and is immune to the plague
Starts with: +800 soldiers and creds
Spellbook: Animate Dead and Town Watch
Rationale: UD's identity is really about being very durable. Lower casualties lets it sustain and resist chains. Plagues make chaining less attractive and discourages T/Ms from keeping you down. So TW instead of GP makes more sense here as a way to double down on the durability aspect.
War Hero (war and honor)
+100% honor bonuses
+25% dragon slaying strength
+1 offensive specialist strength
Convert specialists to elites
Minimum noble rank of Lord, increasing one rank with every war win
Starts with: +800 elites
Spell book: Hero's Inspiration (Palandin's Inspriation renamed)
Rationale: War Hero was much better this age, but still has the difficulty of losing it's key bonus when you get chained, which will happen as this is an attacker-focused personality. Giving it the ability to hold its rank through a chain lets it sustain this bonus. Its spellbook is a natural fit for a personality that will hoard a lot of expensive-to-maintain elites.
Conclusion
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This set of changes intends to fix balance issues in the current age, find more natural homes for spells and bonuses, sharpen identities of races and personalities, and fix some high level design issues with the current state of the game. At the very least, I hope it provokes much discussion in the coming weeks as the end of the current age approaches. As I've said before, even if my ideas are bad, hopefully they'll at least give someone else who is better at this stuff some inspiration for better ideas!
