The Sage... lets redo him

[Mnsdiow]

The current Sage design is lousy because:

1) Rogues get revelations spell and sages don't ... isn't this very dumb ?! I mean can you imagine this?

2) Sages don't play tactically in an interesting way. You just see human sages sit and pump labs a bit and hope to get ahead.

so lets change from:

-30% Abduct Losses (Dumb! This is like giving mystics -30% AW losses)
Sci Effectiveness +30%
Starting Scientists +50% (bonus staff for personas are expressed as +X not as multiple bonus... so why break convention?)
Access to Amnesia (but not revelations? oh god)

to:
+5 Starting Scientists
Scientists graduate in 33% of normal time (so a 72hr graduation period becomes 24hrs)
Maximum scientist cap in each category +3 each (so you can have 33 scientists on alchemy)
Access to Amnesia and Revelations

This is tactically more interesting as it opens up the possibility of being sometimes worth it to re-assign scientists to other fields.
ie- genuine configurability.
Its at least a bit more interesting than the current design.

[StratOcastle]

Rock on.

[elmoheadbutt]

I think this belongs in suggestion

[StratOcastle]

It might, but new forumites are more treasured, in my mind, than order.

Most ages I'm not optimizing my style because the environment doesn't require my greater interest.
I'm a fan of sage in its current form, particularly undead sage. I noticed one undead sage this age and my kingdom mate laughed.

I'm well aware of the undead sage dynamic. Most players would impress themselves with dwarf heretic last age, and it was wonderful. Very synergistic. But undead sage completes that circle. Because it is bonafide core, not a hopeful turtle.

Amnesia is the brother of Nightmares. In war I learned I could drop an Amnesia spell here and there on provinces I had done Amnesia runs on in hostile. This could obviously be expanded.

Now a bunch of guys might think FB or some other convention, but you have a kingdom to serve. The idea here is to open enemies to even more FBs or anything else. By reducing the experience of the scientist base of your enemies you reduce their versatility and gumption for stacking scientist. Sure, the moving effect will be the same but the foundation of experience is what we're aiming for.

Undead sage is menacing out of war. Go to UF with them and it's an abduction-amnesia festival. Extra mana, man.

There are lots of great builds and stuff you can do to each of them. Undead sage is a very fun build for me, so I try not to run it. Seems counterintuitive? It is a griefer build, and though I enjoy the design I want to avoid the temptation to ruin a day for someone.

[PJorv]

Unlike mystics, who can get AW'ed and be back into the game several days later due to their high wiz production, if you get heavily abducted as a sage your age is most likely ruined as the time to get back to the pre abduct point could take several IRL weeks if you do nothing but abduct only (that means you don grow in land, and if you need to war you're SOL and will have to war with a gimped province). You can't give a sage the means to produce scientists fast enough that in 1 week you're back into having the highest numbers of scientists because then everyone would farm sages and that would not be fun.

I'd keep to give them the abduct protection bonus, imho in the range of -50% and -75% because unlike other provinces their entire personality bonus relies on scientists, and having that taken away only makes you progresively weaker in comparison of other personalities whose strenghts remain relatively constant over the age.

The sci effectiveness bonus is the core of the sage personality, its what makes it a worthy pick in comparison to other personalities. How big should it be? Currently if you compare the real bonus (that is, the difference between a fully pumped sage and non sage prov with no other sci bonuses) per individual science is not that much when you have to consider you actually have to pump the sciences to their soft caps (now you can go beyond but I dont know how's the curve of diminishing returns).
For example, here's the additional sci bonuses you get as a sage (that extra when compared to a prov with no sci bonuses, ex the base 30% income for a sage is 39% to net a 9% difference) when reaching the old sci caps:
- Income 9%
- Tools 6%
- Population 5%
- Production 36%
- Military 5%
- Crime 30%
- Channeling 38%

To reach all these bonuses you need 230 scientists. Not an easy thing to do unless you're very active with the abducts, which you will since your entire personality depends on hoarding scientists, and after a certain point you'll be a tasty abduct target yourself even with your abduct protection so in theory that will slow you down.

Another question that needs to be asked is are all those bonuses (after investing loads of time into getting to their soft caps, mind you) equally or more worth it than other bonuses like for example the current war hero (honor bonuses are multiplicative, and having +100% of them would make you will have similar effects as long as you arrive to baron or viscount, and that doesnt count the dragon immunity, +5% gains, etc) or other personalities.

I believe sage is deemed weak because when accounting the maxed softcap bonuses Sage is weak when compared to other personalities, plus having the downside of being able to be gimped if you get heavily abducted later in the age rendering you useless because it takes a lot of time to recover scientists.

However the strength of sage in my experience has never really been spreading scientists all over the place but in specializing scientists into a few categories, and stacking them with racial bonuses for an even greater effect. Humans and Dwarves can get silly when stacking income or BE (I recall one age when I had a dwarf close to 180% BE back when sci was uncapped) which turns them into very strong provinces because then you're now able to capitalize into a much greater effect to have a noticeable advantage over other provinces in a singular area, but having into account that you had to work to get that advantage and there's the chance it could be taken away.

How much should the bonus of Sage be? A little to low and they are the gimped personality of the age, too much and they were overpowered because top kds used to go all sage and sit pumping books all age (an stigma that remains even when now if you go to the top of the land charts you cant really abduct effectively due to CFs everywhere and bottom feeding nets little gains). I think +30% Sci effects is a good start, but it all depends on how the diminishing returns after reaching the old sci caps are (which btw i dont recall seeing any information about how will they behave, making difficult to evaluate how good will the personality). If the diminishing returns allow Sage to increase further some of their bonuses, then the personality has a chance to compete with other personalities, but if the returns are too steep, well Sage goes into the bin with Warrior for the rest of the age.

Regarding spells for Sage, I think Revelation should be a Spell for them. I mean why not? We've discussed the personality revolves around scientists and those can be taken away, either a permanent sci generation bonus or the revelation spell would help sages reach the point faster where they are comparatively useful as other personalities that are useful right from the bat. This would make them more viable because kds dont want to carry sages calling them selfish (which is not because the sage will should be able to carry his own weight later and more to compensate the rough start).

As for amnesia like Strat0 said its like the Nightmares little brother, except that to have it you have to pick a personality that doesnt make someone lose about 30%-50% of their at home army when nightmare. Amnesia is just not as useful as Nightmares or other offensive spells, be it fireball, MS, NM, Fireball/Kidnap + Chastity, LS, Expose thieves, etc. At best you'll make a province lose a few % of sci effects of pop and ME which will render you just a tad easier to chain, when you could've used that mana for other spells to destroy their economy or open their army enough to be chained and disabled quickly.

I think amnesia should be changed, losing scientists training hours is fine but its not that useful. Perhaps if we could add a short duration negative penalty like chastity does then the spell would be more worthwhile to cast because it applies an inmediate weakening effect and a more long lasting, but less noticeable, effect. An example of this would be a sage province casting Amnesia on a target province, and the target province receiving a -15% sci penalty for 1-4h, while taking the current training time damage Amnesia does. If casted again then the sci penalty refreshes again for 1-4hours and another bunch of scientists lose training hours. Numbers would need to be tweaked to make it balanced, but the instant sci penalty would make it more worthwhile to bring sages into kingdoms because they would now bring more utility and would have the ability to weaken enemy provinces with very high sci bonuses without having to invest a ton of mana on a single province.

Regarding starting scientists, +15 seems fine to me, its comparable to other personalities starting bonuses that allows them to capitalize on their personality gimmick (wizards for mystic, elites for others, etc).

[RattleHead]

I would rather see Sage get a +% gains on Abduct attacks, than to have -% lost when attacked. This bumps Sage more towards an Attacker personality because clearly a TM won't be able to make a much use of this(some scenarios it could be great for them, though).

I like the idea of combining the above with either increased base generation, or access to Revelation as OP has suggested. Sages may become Scientist farms, but getting pillaged for all your scientists wont be the end of the world, they will be able to claw them back more effectively, or generate more! I think the idea of Sage retal would be a decent deterrent as well, and more interesting than just reduced gains. You could give them a military losses perk on abduct attacks to soften the blows from having the Sage target on your back, too.

I also like and have tried to share the idea of a slightly quicker Scientist progression on Sage. Hard to say if it would be best to do so as a %, or as a flat hourly rate. I think if we said something like '-6h from each Scientist Rank', that would result in some pretty nifty perks.

It would greatly decrease the disincentive to moving Scientists, if Recruits turn to Novice after a single tick. Either way it is calc'd it would also result in lower NW/Science effect.


Sage
Bonuses:
-6h for each Scientist experience level
+30% Science Effectiveness
+50% gains on Abduction Attacks
-50% own casualties on Abduct Attacks (attack+defence)
Starting Bonuses:
+10 Starting Scientists
Spell Book:
Amnesia, Revelation

Go and cause havoc! Sages will populate the server with extra scientists, and likely become a target in the process, but they are also going to be bullying people and raking in the scientists as well. I certainly agree it is an interesting dichotomy with Sage, they are often either completely overlooked, or considered totally OP.

[Drys]

I like the idea of giving sage the ultimate flexibility by reducing the time for scientists to level-up. All the other personalities are "specialists" in one or two areas. That would make sage stand out as the "flexible" personality. On the race side, dwarves fill a similar role.

Lore-wise it makes sense as well. Sages would be knowledgeable in more than one discipline, so it shouldn't take as long for their scientists to become "experts."

[Mnsdiow]

There was some d*ck talk here earlier,
but it seems the moderators have deleted it.

What was that about?

[Mnsdiow]

Another renaming is more important:

Scientists should be renamed to either:
Wisemen
Sages
Gurus
Druids
Elders

Why? Because "Scientists" is a modern flavoured word.
The troop types are appropriate for a fantasy/medieval game.
There are ogres, knights, archers.
There are no troops named Battleships/M-1 tanks.

[Mnsdiow]

Addressing the abduction of a Sage's scientists...

The sage persona doesnt need an inbuilt defence as there is a building type devoted to this purpose.

Yes you can wreck someones age by taking his valued possessions, he can abduct back!

Otherwise the game could include a "Wisemen go into hiding" button on the science page.
When you press it, all your scientists go into hiding for 3 hours.
They don't give a bonus during this time but if your enemies try to abduct during this period,
they get the message
"My lord we could not find the scientists of <province name>
we tortured and killed <2d10> of his peasants but did not betray tell us where they could be hiding"

I mean you could do this and it would add some interest and mind games I suppose.

[Goodgame]

And why do scientists go to Universities to hide from abductions but laboratories apparently teach students how to be scientists? I'd think universities would graduate the students into a 'recruit' and then perhaps they could hide in their labs. Always seemed backwards to me.

[RattleHead]

laboratories are where the 'applied' science happens, as well as the practical learning your scientists will need in order to transfer their knowledge into action within your province.

if they are all located in universities rather than spread around your province, its easier for your army to defend them all from raids.

its a fantasy game, work with us here...

[elmoheadbutt]

Addressing the abduction of a Sage's scientists...

The sage persona doesnt need an inbuilt defence as there is a building type devoted to this purpose.

That's like saying tacticians don't need - attack time because there's already a building type devoted to it.
That's like saying warriors don't need + OME because there's already a building type devoted to it.

... and so on and so forth.

[Sephi]

sages have perfect growth potential and can be warring monsters. Yes you need some GS all age, combined with some labs OOW if you want.

38 military scientists means close to 20% ME bonus. Easily reached, now combine it with high forts and tgs and you get 175% DME on both. Faery even more.

More active roles and early age stuff, sure but I am fine with my dwarf sage.