Wizard training

[Araqiel]

Here to talk about the speed of wizard training.

This age has been the most boring in my experience yet because it takes so long to recover from wars. The main issue is wizard training and how long it takes to recover from massacres, AW & props. FREE have been on both ends of the stick, we have murdered opponents T/Ms and had ours decimated too.

- As a pure/hybrid thief, you are fine. Retraining thieves is not a big issue throughout the entire age.
- As a mystic or (especially) a hybrid spellcaster, you are totally screwed when it comes to recovering wizards. It is plausible to see a province go from 8wpa raw to under 1wpa in a single tick, to recover it takes several real life days.

It is not feasible to go into wars with 2-5 of your provinces having no wpa, when that is their role. Not very useful having a 2wpa faery mystic who can't even MS attackers; you are basically fighting with less provinces. No one goes into wars when this is the case.

I get magic is powerful and there should be counters to it, but please give players a better way to train wizards post war. It is not a fun experience, for anyone.

[pierniczek]

Here to talk about the speed of wizard training.

This age has been the most boring in my experience yet because it takes so long to recover from wars. The main issue is wizard training and how long it takes to recover from massacres, AW & props. FREE have been on both ends of the stick, we have murdered opponents T/Ms and had ours decimated too.

- As a pure/hybrid thief, you are fine. Retraining thieves is not a big issue throughout the entire age.
- As a mystic or (especially) a hybrid spellcaster, you are totally screwed when it comes to recovering wizards. It is plausible to see a province go from 8wpa raw to under 1wpa in a single tick, to recover it takes several real life days.

It is not feasible to go into wars with 2-5 of your provinces having no wpa, when that is their role. Not very useful having a 2wpa faery mystic who can't even MS attackers; you are basically fighting with less provinces. No one goes into wars when this is the case.

I get magic is powerful and there should be counters to it, but please give players a better way to train wizards post war. It is not a fun experience, for anyone.

The problem isn't game mechanics but it's something that you are doing wrong.

[neanderthal]

It's actually very simple. More guilds.

[Sheister]

Even with more guilds, it takes several days to recover. This is something that is a problem in terms of game pace. Wheras other games you just go from war to war constantly, here there is this real life time cost. Given the nature of utopia, I don't have a good solution for it because the time/power curve is a big part of the game itself, but it would be nice if there was some wizard regeneration bonus in EOWCF to reduce the time a bit. I am aware of other games that record start of war stats and then provide an increase on resource regain in an end of war cf kind of period that allows for faster recovery times capped at those starting values without sacrificing the playability or giving people an overpowered reward for warring at all. Perhaps something like that could be nice. However, the overall problem is that we need to have balanced time/power curves or utopia breaks completely.

[Bart of Sparta]

Solution: EOW CF back to 96 hours, +50% wizzard training in EOW CF.

[Swagger]

Yeh I don't see either FREE or Hipmunks warring anytime soon after our current war. AW and massacres...AW and massacres everywhere!

[citadela01]

Ive been charging this particular windmill for as long as i can remember playing utopia.
Its terrible game design, there is no reason to not make wpa easy to recover, or even trainable like thieves.

[Sheister]

Solution: EOW CF back to 96 hours, +50% wizzard training in EOW CF.

But limited to a certain extent Bart. It should not be a means for people to gain a power curve jump on competition in wizard training. That only would encourage "fake wars" or agreed wizard pump wars. It needs to cap at some point I think.

[lampost]

I think the setup is good. There has to be cost/benefit to choosing certain races/personalities. Certain costs/benefits to warring the whole time. There has to be variety in the game. We could easily make 24 hour recover time and everyone gets restored to 4tpa/4wpa, ability to train wizards and a bunch of free credits etc. But that would just make it more boring. It takes away variety.

For example if you are worried about playing feary mystic then play elf mystic which can potentially convert into attacker later age. Or go less feary mystics. All these things should be variables which are taken into account, and make the game more fun. Plus if you have a bigger kd bullying you and the threat of massacres and AW are reduced then it just takes away options. Another example, if you make wizard training easier then AW as a potential weapon is greatly reduced. There are many examples of how it removes variety. I'm sure people can think of better examples or I can when I wake up.

Thats my opinion. Dont give magic buttons, while at the same time keep the game simple enough to play.

[Bart of Sparta]

I think the setup is good. There has to be cost/benefit to choosing certain races/personalities. Certain costs/benefits to warring the whole time. There has to be variety in the game. We could easily make 24 hour recover time and everyone gets restored to 4tpa/4wpa, ability to train wizards and a bunch of free credits etc. But that would just make it more boring. It takes away variety.

For example if you are worried about playing feary mystic then play elf mystic which can potentially convert into attacker later age. Or go less feary mystics. All these things should be variables which are taken into account, and make the game more fun. Plus if you have a bigger kd bullying you and the threat of massacres and AW are reduced then it just takes away options. Another example, if you make wizard training easier then AW as a potential weapon is greatly reduced. There are many examples of how it removes variety. I'm sure people can think of better examples or I can when I wake up.

Thats my opinion, dont give magic buttons while keeping the game simple enough to play.

The major point is that those mechanics were introduced in a period when:

1. Massacre was weaker.
2. Greater Arson was significantly weaker.
3. Rogues had less tpa/higher thief losses? (I know that when I came back ~7 ages ago rogue had neither 2x TDs nor the science bonus).

This is a double-edged sword. Rogues both have greater damage output due to the buff to GA, AND Mages are more easily disabled.

Pyro ran elf/heretic and elf/rogue who both had high raw numbers, TDs, AND WTs. After 1-2 massacres + rogue op run, their wpa was reduced by 90% in a matter of ticks.

I know it's a far stretch comparing attackers and mages, but can you imagine an op that kills 2.8% of an enemy's offense/op?

Again, there are ways to work around it, but it severely limits viable options (assuming you are faced with opposition that knows what it's doing).

[jmiedema]

I agree Wizard training is an issue this age (particularly as a heretic where you actually need good wpa (for nightmare) but have no good way of getting there. (I've ran 50-70% guilds almost all age, except during conflict where I drop to about 15%).

I think a decent solution could be to increase overall guild production from 0.02 wizards/tick to 0.03 wizards/tick. HOWEVER also add to Fortified Stance "-50% wizard production".

This would both serve to help the wpa recovery situation (allowing mystics to recover even faster, as they are the usual AW victims) as well as nerfing fort/buffing normal/agg. It is good for there to be more reasons to stay in normal. As fortified is still currently too strong.. Only time you dont want to be in fort is when you are exploring/sci pumping really. Nerfing Fort duration didn't nerf Fort power, and I think nerfing wizzie production in fort would cause there to be more strategic choices involved in Fort rather than "well we can go into fort so might as well".

In Summary:
1. Increase Guild production from 0.02 to 0.03 wizards per tick
2. Fortified Stance: -50% Wizard Production

[Bart of Sparta]

I agree Wizard training is an issue this age (particularly as a heretic where you actually need good wpa (for nightmare) but have no good way of getting there. (I've ran 50-70% guilds almost all age, except during conflict where I drop to about 15%).

Been saying this from the start about heretic. Nice in theory, not so good in practice.

[jmiedema]

Been saying this from the start about heretic. Nice in theory, not so good in practice.

Yea, will be interesting. Late age I think is where heretics will shine compared to Mystics, as there is a point where a mystic doesnt really need more wizards, and the more wpa you have the more wizzie explosions hurt, so late age with high wpa heretics should have more sustainable wpa. Once a heretics hits the wpa numbers they need to nightmare effectively they will be very very good. Problem is just getting to that benchmark.

Also, no losses on thief fails is good, but played rogue last age so kind of underestimated how many thieves you can lose on successful riots and successful Steal WH. I have kind of been forced to run both TD's and WT's together. at least BE doesnt affect the heretic as much as a rogue though so can run less homes to allow for the TD/WT combo.

So far Heretic has been interesting.. I think I would feel more powerful being a rogue, but time will tell, lots of age left.

[Bishop]

Even with more guilds, it takes several days to recover. This is something that is a problem in terms of game pace.

Its not a problem in the slightest.

[Panthira]

I think the point is to get away from every pers having pumped up wizards. For example, an Orc Tact would not be a mage and why would she have pumped up wpa? Last round I saw orcs sitting in eowcf with 60% guilds gaining massive wpa.