Amethyst Dragon Needs Some Kind of Adjustment

The Amethyst Dragon is a bit of a Pariah compared to the other Dragons because its reduction of science effectiveness makes it either a never-use or a must-use Dragon. Namely...

A. At the beginning of the age, nobody has much science, so an Amethyst Dragon's main bonus does nothing.
B. Mid-age, an Amethyst Dragon might be equal to other Dragons in power.
C. At end-age, the penalty inflicted by an Amethyst Dragon might be significant enough that there's no point in using any other Dragon.


I'm not sure this is the direction we want to take with Dragons. What's good about the other four Dragons is that they are generally all beneficial at all times of the age, and the choice of which one depends on kingdom setup, current situation, and other factors. No Dragon is considered a "no-go" or a "must-have" merely because of a single factor (how deep one is into the age).

While it's an interesting idea to have an effect on Science, I can't come up with any good way of solving this Dragon's problem while still tying it to Science. However, the implied effect of an Amethyst Dragon is that it effects pretty much every "facet" of a province - that is, income, population, building efficiency, military efficiency, and so on. If the Amethyst Dragon's effect were to be compacted into a single description, we could call it the "Jack-of-all-Trades" Dragon - and that could be both well-balanced and an interesting option to work with.

I can't give a precise balanced number off the top of my head, but here are a couple proposals we could start from.


1. Amethyst Dragon as the Generic Bonus Booster

All Dragons have -10% income, -10% food, 20% draft loss, and 3% buildings destroyed every 6 ticks. One option would be to take all these numbers to the next level, such as...

-20% income
-20% food
40% draft loss
6% buildings destroyed every 6 ticks


2. Amethyst Dragon that simply gives small reductions everywhere

So in addition to the common bonus for all Dragons, we could have something like...

-5% Building efficiency
-2% Military Efficiency
+5% combat losses
-8% TPA/WPA
-5% maximum population
-5% gains
4% buildings destroyed every 6 ticks

This Dragon is not focused on any particular effect, but just has lots of small effects that end up being somewhat of a nuisance to an opponent. The meaningful point of it all is that the bonuses are static throughout the age: not weaker at age's start and stronger at the end.

Thank you for your time,
-Gidoza