Age 61 potential changes comments.

[Katsuni]

The -10% gains hurts, especially when you have orcs sitting across the table with +25% gains, means an orc is hitting for a net 35% more (and kills 25% more on hits from other racial)

Minor nitpick, it's actually more than 35% more. Not by much, but 38.88% is greater than 35% =P

It's just a minor nitpick, but a -50% and a +50% ratio makes it more obvious of an example: 50 vs 150 is a full +200% bonus, instead of the 100% you'd think. Yes, there's 100 points between the two, but that's not how you compare the two =P

It's not even clear to me that you understand what the purpose of guilds or TDs are, or how DBE works and why that means it would be a real dumb idea to try and replace banks with alchemy.

Clearly, you're having issues with this, so let me break it down a bit further.

Guilds provide two benefits:
1: Wizards which increases WPA which increases overall chance to hit with offensive spells and chance to avoid being hit by enemy spells.
2: Guilds % directly affects the % chance of hitting yourself with personal spells, as well as increasing the duration of those spells.
Towers provide one benefit:
1: Rune production

Once you have enough runes that you can cast your most expensive spell as often as you have mana to cast it, there is literally 0 reason to have more towers, other than for sending runes to allies. As such, as you increase channeling science, you literally decrease the number of towers that are required for the same effect.

At some point, you reach a raw WPA level that becomes so obscene that it's unwieldy; no population left for peasants, thieves, or even defensive military units. The fact is that extra channeling allows one to maintain an equivalent modified WPA while freeing up a portion of ones' population for other vital tasks once you reach this point. This affects a lot of people, bothering both purely focused super casters, to attackers who simply don't have the population to waste on 5wpa raw for defensive purposes.

Everything in utopia is give and take, doubly so when it comes to population constraints. If you have more wizards, that means you have less of something else. Going from 1wpa to 2wpa can be beneficial for defenses, but 10wpa raw gets kinda silly. There's also the matter that your average attacker can't honestly justify running 50%+ guilds long term to reach these levels, meaning that it's easier for them to get a bit of channeling science, due to its' exponential decrease in efficiency, and still gain a relatively reasonable increase in overall WPA.

In a way, you're correct that these sciences supplement your buildings, but the fact of the matter is that your landmass is a zero-sum game; if you add more banks, that land had to come from something else that was also important. If you add a bit more into your Alchemy, that doesn't take up any land and means you can drop your banks by 1-3% easily, recouping the less efficient land cost, and devoting it to something else which will have a greater net benefit.

Seriously, 1% more banks is great when you start with 0%. When you're at 35%, adding 1% has a negligible benefit in most cases, meaning you're simply better off getting 10% income from Alchemy science and dropping your banks a bit.

The point is, due to the fact that buildings are literally zero-sum based, and have diminishing returns, it's simply more efficient to increase sciences a bit in one area, and decrease your less efficient buildings for something else you need more.

As such... yes, you replace buildings with science. It literally frees up more land to use, and if you're properly running an efficient province, you realize that you flat out can't have it all - you have to make strategic sacrifices, and science lets you gain some benefits at the cost of increasing your NW, making you easier to attack by someone with the same networth but lower NWPA due to lacking science; they can flat out devote a larger portion of their population to their military and thereby gain more acres from you with less risk to themselves. This is why something like the +0.5nw increase to elves this age will be a notable drawback for them. Ideally, you actually want a very low networth, but a very strong province in relation to that networth, and while science makes you more efficient per acre for cramming stuff into the same space, it also screws with the networth based gains formula.

In short... the game's a lot more complex than you seem to grasp. Everything is literally a trade-off. There's no flat, 100% straight upgrades. Everything you do, from buildings, to population, to networth, is sacrificing one thing for something else, with only the occasional hard limitation cap in place, such as building effectiveness caps or X workers possible per acre - which even that is modified by your homes to total acres ratio. Everything is a balancing act, and the more you understand that at a fundamental level, the easier a time you'll have attaining a more overall efficient balance.




EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to mention about the TD's, since you mentioned them specifically. Once you attain a reasonable reduction in thief deaths per operation, then additional TD's becomes inefficient, especially in terms of trying to gain extra modTPA. At that point, you're flat out better off capping your TD % and devoting it to crime science instead if you want a higher TPA, or even a better economy. Hell, at a certain point, homes will actually increase your TPA more than extra TD's due to a greater efficiency % for your buildings due to lower jobs available and higher population to spend on peasants/thieves, meaning more income to replace dead thieves and a greater rawTPA. The point is simply that the balancing act is simply too complex to state "more TD = good".

[FR33Willyyy]

Bring back colors in forums!

I don't think Bishop would approve of this- It would shift game mechanics too drastically.

[Cry0]

Minor nitpick, it's actually more than 35% more. Not by much, but 38.88% is greater than 35% =P

It's just a minor nitpick, but a -50% and a +50% ratio makes it more obvious of an example: 50 vs 150 is a full +200% bonus, instead of the 100% you'd think. Yes, there's 100 points between the two, but that's not how you compare the two =P

Yup thanks for clarifying how even more bad it is =)

I am too new at this game to pretend to be an expert but the arguments i have seen for avian in the past is that if you run avian + cleric with Barracks you can out hit your opponents over time and thus out gain an orc. Problem is troop attrition over time.

I would be interested in the value of an avian if you use the racial + cleric atk times & losses buffs as free acres. Do not add extra barracks or hospitals but instead run homes, a ton of dungeons to make up for no stables and more training grounds.

To that extent, a racial boost of capturing more prisoners or something would be nice.

As is, it seems like a pointless race next age. You hit fast, lose army, ****ty gains. Weeee.

[natebane]

Use avians as a pack, when you chain a prov from a few thousand down to a few hundred the acres get more evenly distributed over a few more attackers so none of you bloat too fast. Then more of you maintain better nw distribution and chain something else quickly. I actually think its a bit of a buff.

[fawk]

Concerning this quote:

The -10% gains hurts, especially when you have orcs sitting across the table with +25% gains, means an orc is hitting for a net 35% more (and kills 25% more on hits from other racial)

Just to make it clear that -% attack times gives you more gains than +% to gains.
-30% attack times is roughly equivalent to +43% gains.
Avians current -10% gains and -30% attack time is roughly equivalent to +29% gains.
Basically what im saying is that avian can outgain an orc.

The math is done with 12.5% land gains and base attack time of 14.4hr for attacks during war.
Calculating to those numbers, avians still come out ahead on gains.

So as far as gains, avians are still a contender.
But seeing as how stables got a boost, and avians don't have access to stables, and for other reasons, i think they are still less favorable to be choosen.

[noobium]

Concerning this quote:


Just to make it clear that -% attack times gives you more gains than +% to gains.
-30% attack times is roughly equivalent to +43% gains.
Avians current -10% gains and -30% attack time is roughly equivalent to +29% gains.
Basically what im saying is that avian can outgain an orc.

The math is done with 12.5% land gains and base attack time of 14.4hr for attacks during war.
Calculating to those numbers, avians still come out ahead on gains.

So as far as gains, avians are still a contender.
But seeing as how stables got a boost, and avians don't have access to stables, and for other reasons, i think they are still less favorable to be choosen.

This doesn't account for Avians' not-insignificant power gap with Orcs, and the instant damage from having gains bonuses/penalties being different. The advantage of Avians is not in net gains but due to causing overpopulation damage faster, and suffering less overpop damage themselves.

Avians pretty much suck now.
Age 60 they were potentially powerful, but they pretty much had to pick Tactician and be played by someone with no life. With massacre and raze supposedly being improved, it is understandable why Avian had to take a nerf.
Having the absolute fastest attack time has some advantages but they are very hard to use and too situational.

[natebane]

Dragons: Think food production penalty should be re-implemented. Incentivizes killing it faster and thereby using elites to do it, instead of trying to tank it. Also opens up starvation strategies more.

Troops will slay a dragon at their individual strength. A race with +1 offensive strength will slay at 5 points, an elite will slay at its highest elite value. You cannot oversend when slaying any more.


The Cleric
-35% Your Military Casualties (on attack or defense)
Access to Pitfalls
Starts with +800 soldiers and +800 specialist credits

-Would like to see this personality get revive all dead troops back


The Warrior
+1 General
+10% OME in war
Enhanced Conquest range
Access to Bloodlust
Starts with +800 soldiers and +800 specialist credits

Change the OME bonus from percentage to [elite power +1 (nw free)]
-Orcs and Undead receive same net benefit of 15% like current age, but helps other races more that want to play as attacker in addition to not having hostiles dragged out against your warrior core. Also plays into new elite dragon slaying mechanic well.


The Rogue
+1 Stealth recovery per tick
Access to all thievery operations, including 3 unique to rogues: Greater Arson, Assassinate Wizards and Propaganda
Access to Vermin
Starts with +400 thieves

Suggest a minus thief loss formula such as minus thieves lost equal to remaining stealth left as a percentage. Average bonus would be low if they're active enough, but if stealth is full it gives players incentive to play around with number of thieves to send for max gains. Would mostly be a rewarding mechanic for players new to the game wanting to learn thievery, but not overpowered for very active thieves.



Dwarves
+30% Building Efficiency
Free Building Construction
Can use credits to raze buildings

Can't use Accelerated Construction
+ 75% food consumption

Fools Gold, Quick Feet, Mystic Aura
Elite: 6/3, 700gc, 5.5NW

(+ 50% food consumption)- 75% cuts abit too much into their main bonus, although would be cool with it if the other pen went away


Elf
+30% wpa
-50% defensive losses
+1 defensive specialist strength

Nightmares, Pitfalls, Mages Fury
Elite: 5/4, 800gc, 5.75NW=> to 5.25

[vegnagun]

for those that think rogue double TD bonus is overpowered, then give rogues 50% thief losses on ops. That is the only reason people are pushing for it. Think about it? I just did no TD's on me SoT run on a KD in fort. I was sending 10% of my thieves per op which was 2K thieves. I was losing 100 thieves on a fail and I was losing up to 50 or so from repulsion on successes. Figure on average 12 per successful op. I did 38 ops. I failed 7 of those. So that is 700 + 31*12 = 1072 in thief losses just grabbing SoTs (my actual losses, since I retrained them were 1086). I am playing a human sage with 125% crime science and 3.5 tpa raw. So, it costs me 1072*500= 536,000 gold just to get SoT's?

I am sorry, thats freaking retarded. Thief losses need to be blanket reduced (as I suggested in other threads here) or at a minimum, rogues need 50% thief losses.

I'm sorry am I the only one to realize that it's silly to run ops of any kind into a fortified KD, unless absolutely critical? Definitely shouldn't run that many SoTs on the entire KD. Per the guide:

-50% gains on magic and thievery ops

That's any magic or thievery ops coming into your KD while in fort. And last I checked, SoT was a thievery op. So the fact that you lost so many thieves and bounced so much makes perfect sense.

And I'm pretty sure even the repulsions on the successful ops were overstated because of the fact you were oping fortified KDs.

Also if you were doing a SoT run on A KD in fort (just one), then why did you need to run 38 ops? Even if 7 failed per you, that would mean you got SoTs of 31 provs? Last I checked that was not possible. Unless it was multiple times on certain provs which would make it even stranger you would do that into fort.

So in summary, your calculation of 536k gold lost to just do SoT runs is grossly overstated, by as much as 268k gold, perhaps more, which discounts your entire argument.

[vegnagun]

This doesn't account for Avians' not-insignificant power gap with Orcs, and the instant damage from having gains bonuses/penalties being different. The advantage of Avians is not in net gains but due to causing overpopulation damage faster, and suffering less overpop damage themselves.

Avians pretty much suck now.
Age 60 they were potentially powerful, but they pretty much had to pick Tactician and be played by someone with no life. With massacre and raze supposedly being improved, it is understandable why Avian had to take a nerf.
Having the absolute fastest attack time has some advantages but they are very hard to use and too situational.

I agree with the point about them being situational. This age, my KD had only Tact as a personality on our attackers. It seemed great, we're a top warring KD, very active and it worked out great, as we didn't lose a war all age. However, the thing with tacts (and Avians as an extension) is that during long wars, not only do the troop casualties increase (as it's not possible to run 15 or 20% hospitals that you did pre-war because of hits and incoming land), but aligning armies doesn't work out either. Of course as all tacts, we didn't need to run barracks but with RL commitments, in our longest war of the age, which lasted more than 6 RL days, one where our enemy was extremely coordinated and was micromanaging everything, including ninja'ing our armies as they got home, the tact personality became our downfall. I'd go so far as to wager that 90% of players who play Utopia cannot make army in/out hits with tacts or avians running 8-10 hour attack times (depending on barracks or not) in a war that lasts longer than 5 RL days.

So in short, I've always felt that for most players playing the game, running avians with quicker attack times may seem efficient and OP on the surface, but in fact is a drawback for most players. Even if you have an all avian KD, you cannot coordinate waves because it is nearly impossible to have a KD full of attackers have their RL commitments align up every 8-10 hours...and that doesn't even include sleeping across many time zones. With all the other nerfs that have already been mentioned, I will be so bold as to declare that avians are the worst race by a long shot at the moment. I might be biased because I've never been a fan of them, but they're just really bad, as far as the proposals for age 61 go.

[noobium]

fast attacking is less of a drawback if you know when to use non-land attacks instead of mindlessly going for landchains like most ghettos do, and if you plan ahead of time and build the right things. for instance, overbuild hospitals and build new ones two uniques in advance - you'll have the space. hospitals are not as important as other builds and drakes are cheap so idk what the deal is, but it's just one of those things...

the reasons for avian's crappy sustain is because they have weak starting power and none of the sustainability or economy bonuses other races have, and no particular thief or mage ability. don't blame fast attack times for a lack of strategy or the other faults of the race.

it is true though that fast hits are only as useful as the ability to use each hit for something useful, instead of making empty hits; and of course people have lives to live. people who want to play avian shouldn't bother having lives - problem solved.

[Katsuni]

the reasons for avian's crappy sustain is because they have weak starting power and none of the sustainability or economy bonuses other races have, and no particular thief or mage ability. don't blame fast attack times for a lack of strategy or the other faults of the race.

I would suggest merely that their attack speed compounds the other issues they already face is all. If you attack 30% faster, you simply suffer 30% more offensive losses over time, assuming you can maintain the rotation speed needed. In reality, it's actually worse than 30%, because your army is home more often, meaning any coordinated kingdom will have an easier time nailing your troops when they're at home, because the chances are that, at some point, an avian's going to miss the window when their troops come home for some reason or another.

Toss in issues such as a general lack of sustain elsewhere, and it really doesn't help the matter at all.

A cleric helps to reduce the damage significantly, since the main benefit of an avian is to continually slam an opponent for troop damage, or indirect fire damage such as massacres, but the last age saw avians practically requiring tactician which meant that you simply wouldn't be able to compare an avian/tactician vs an orc/cleric for quality of raw damage output over an extended time. After about 3-5 real life days, dependent upon the skill levels of the kingdoms at war, the avians would simply run out of steam while the orc would still be going strong.

I'd be perfectly fine with an avian having a stronger short term benefit at the cost of having to seriously over-micromanage their province, but they really only more or less break even at absolute 100% best circumstances, and are significantly more notably harmed when fighting targets with intentionally high defenses or when hitting into undead.

Yes, avians are a little harder to overpop, but not by a wide enough margin to compensate for their vastly higher activity requirement and excessively high skill floor that's married to all their other significant flaws.

If anything, leaving their damage output the same would probably be ideal, as they'd still have problems, but at least they'd have a clear and obvious purpose in relation to other races. With the changes as they are, their value is significantly muddied to a point of being not really clear why they exist. Yes, they attack fast, but they don't really benefit from the reasons for why you'd want a fast attacker.

[Markidd]

Think Faeries should get 3/6 elites again (or 4/6 and make the training costs higher). Since Elves have 30% WPA and its much better than 30% Spell damage (instant spells). so 3/6 Elites gives them the chance to have lesser elites and more wizzards to be a bit more balanced with Elves.

or

Give Faeries Clear Sight... So they have a stronger thief defence but will be a weaker Mystic than an Elf.

[Bukharistan]

Giving 3/6 elites would make them so much better than Elves. You have no idea how much space you're saving.

With 125% DME faeries need about 15 elites/acre to have 93 dpa now (most run even higher).
Increasing their elites would allow them to have the same def with 12.5 elite/acre, which frees up 2.5 space for extra wizzards. This is so much more than the 30% wpa Elves get.

At 6.5 raw wpa Elves would come out on 8.45 mod, while faeries could use their extra space to get 9 raw... only above 8.5 raw wpa would Elves be winning out on faeries lol.

[Bo To]

And there is something else - faeries have FoK which benefits all their science not just the channeling and libs(mid-late age) increase even more that advantage. So in total - faeries dont need 3/6 elites but I think their elites shouldn't be cheaper than elfs :).

[Araqiel]

Concerning this quote:


Just to make it clear that -% attack times gives you more gains than +% to gains.
-30% attack times is roughly equivalent to +43% gains.
Avians current -10% gains and -30% attack time is roughly equivalent to +29% gains.
Basically what im saying is that avian can outgain an orc.

The math is done with 12.5% land gains and base attack time of 14.4hr for attacks during war.
Calculating to those numbers, avians still come out ahead on gains.

So as far as gains, avians are still a contender.
But seeing as how stables got a boost, and avians don't have access to stables, and for other reasons, i think they are still less favorable to be choosen.

Hello fawk, how goes it?

Anyway whilst mathematically correct, the fact avians lose the same amount of troops per attack means they will burn out mop a lot faster. This makes a likely situation of not being able to break max gain targets later on - a problem other races won't suffer.

Yes the +BR is nice for eco, but that is situational at best.

Agreed on the stable buff == Avian nerf too. Remove the -10% gains and they will be more viable. Not that I'd pick them over any other attacking race even with that change made.