Investing into Spell Circles/custom character creation

[Apheirox]

Hi,

It seems to me the custom character creation system is deeply flawed. Some picks are clearly drastically better than others, and Unhallowed can take a certain 'negative' pick(s) that don't impact them at all to gain even more points.

I'm also confounded by the concept of these spell circles. You can invest almost all your character points into reaching a high level of a spell circle - but is there any point to doing so, at all? Isn't the only difference between investing one and seven points into Death magic that I then start the game with a few more spells already unlocked (that are mostly too costly to cast for an early game empire, anyway)?

Unless there's something I'm not aware of it's easily better to create a character with many perks and just one point into the spell circles you want since just this single point seems to unlock the entirety of that circle's spells through research anyway.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally posted by Apheirox:

is there any point to doing so, at all? Isn't the only difference between investing one and seven points into Death magic that I then start the game with a few more spells already unlocked (that are mostly too costly to cast for an early game empire, anyway)?

No. There are two differences. First your named, and second is _ability_ to reach high-level spells. If you haven't magic high enough, you cannot get spells of higher tiers. At all.

[Apheirox]

I see now. That makes quite the difference. I've tried a few rounds but never got very deep into the game, because the UI is just frustrating. It seems like an interesting game but it's soooo.... clunky. Just moving units around is a hassle and cities require a silly amount of micromanagement which is difficult when they all look the same. Currently, most games I've played so far have been just spamming cities all over the place with very few defending units since there does not seem to be much need to defend them and many lairs have so powerful defenders it doesn't seem to make sense to try to tackle them with just basic units (advanced units locked behind extremely expensive building requirements).

Thanks for your reply.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally posted by Apheirox:

Just moving units around is a hassle and cities require a silly amount of micromanagement which is difficult when they all look the same.

Actually, it's modeled by Master of Magic. Quite standard requirements and abilities of 90s. Civilization, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations - you named it. (And I would be glad if they taken _more_ from MoM, but, oh, well, this game is closer to it then any attempt in last fifteen years - and there was many). So I am not exactly understand your complain about complexity - I am biased, because I am too used to _this_ way of things. :)

Can you, please, explain what is wrong with micro? I believe, there is not much of it, actually. Research, building, unit moving... What am I missing?

[trikcat]

I think, really, have some unbalanced moments in circle-spells in create stage...
(sorry for my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ of MoM)

Given value "1spell = 1 circle" is not really good. Because circle you can get after in magic objects, so in beginning the circle is not so needed as perks. Also have two major category (not one as in MoM) is super (thanks game-programmer for it), and circles are many.

I think, need in "spell/circle" some EXP-system at start stage, for example: 1 circle = 1 spell(I), 2 circle = 3 spell (I), 3 c = 4 sp (I) + 1 spell (II), 4c = 4 sp (I) + 3 sp (II), and so on...
This can get up cost of "perks in circle" at start game and balanced with uniqe caster perks (as warlord).

[Apheirox]

With regard to the movement, I'm talking about moving units over longer distances (or any distance at all, really...). If there's any diagonal square movement that will cost 1.5 movement rather than 1 that really messes up the pathfinding. I play with slow (well, non-fast, I suppose) movement setting so if I try to move units longer distances they'll often not expend their movements points fully unless I micromanage them every turn (many situations where a unit group will have 1 movement point left, but instead of moving north/east/west/south/whatever and expending that last point getting closer to the target they'll instead just stop because they're trying to move diagonally, costing 1.5...). It's very noticeable when moving slow infantry units around on slow movement speed. You basically have to manually move every group manually every single round if you want optimal movement. The issue is pronounced since I'm playing Unhallowed and have no way of building roads (that I'm aware of, at least).

With regard to the economy itself, it's super annoying there's no overflow. I can't understand why developers keep neglecting it in many games. If you accidentally invest 79 Power into increasing Spellcraft when 80 was required to gain a full level, you'll end up waiting two turns and paying 79x2 Power for it instead of just the 80, if you aren't paying attention. Same with production in cities, and research, as well. Endless micromanagement in this game and like I said it doesn't help all cities look exactly the same and have very little information available on the city screen itself (the production/food/negative energy bonuses aren't listed, you have to exit and use the surveyor tool for that information). UI is quite awful.

Another thing that bugs me - but that's a matter of taste, I guess - is population growth seems to be extremely slow, even on the growth-based races. Growth is reasonably fast while cities are very small but then it slows to a crawl from size 4000-5000 onwards, even in the cities with full population capacity (25,000). The largest city I have in my current game is one I captured very early from an AI (which seems to completely neglect expanding, hence large city size): It now is size 8000, max pop 19,000. It grows at only +40/turn, so it takes 25 turns to grow just one pop size, and it isn't even half full so growth will slow down even more... I dunno, it just seems pacing is off. I'm on turn 82 already, am I supposed to wait some 300+ turns for cities to reach maximum size? It seems excessive. I'm still building mostly just basic units because cities aren't large enough to have the kind of production that can support advanced units. So I'm just managing this huge number of tiny Unhallowed cities (30+) all of which produce very little yet still require so much micro... Everything is so slow!

[Thewizardlord]

Originally posted by Smiling Spectre:

Originally posted by Apheirox:

is there any point to doing so, at all? Isn't the only difference between investing one and seven points into Death magic that I then start the game with a few more spells already unlocked (that are mostly too costly to cast for an early game empire, anyway)?

No. There are two differences. First your named, and second is _ability_ to reach high-level spells. If you haven't magic high enough, you cannot get spells of higher tiers. At all.

He's kinda right though.

In general the rainbow mage is strongest rather than specializing because as he says it's pointless to get the higher tier spells from start because you can't cast them and they aren't really always much better for their cost

Also it's fairly easy to pick up spell circles as rewards ...

[Prester Lewin]

But then you get to the thing that really frustrates me, that there are so many spells and, in early or mid-game, you soon get offered a lot of spells to research that are all going to lock up your reasearch for 20, 30 or more turns. I wouldn't mind so much, but I often don't want ANY of them. I know I'm never going to use any of them, but that's what I get offered, even when I've recently gained a couple of new spell circles that should open up cheaper spells I'm MUCH more likely to use.

Right, so use Wizard's Roulette, you'll say. But at 40 cost, that's expensive for early or even mid-game and it often makes virtually no difference to what you're offered.

The gist of the problem is this. 1 There are far too many spells and circles in the game. 2 There is no way to direct research into low cost/high cost or particular circles, other than what you're offered in that wretched research screen.

There's a lot of frustration in PQ, but this is one of the worst elements in it. The only way round it is to mod the casting cost of WR, which is a very simple bit of modding you can now do, but it doesn't alter the fact that you keep getting offered the same spells you don't want at all.

What would be better is the option to pick spells on the research page and say "don't offer me those again" or at least, push them to the back of the queue.

[Smiling Spectre]

I think, it's a part of game, Prester. You may be lucky and get some cheap spells, or you can be not-so-lucky and get other, not so cheap... but what the problem? Do you _need_ this cheap spells? Why didn't you get it from the start then? *shrugs* In most other similar games problem is that you cannot select at all, or select from 2-3 spells _at all_, so I see no much problems in it.

[Prester Lewin]

Why am I not happy to learn spells I have no intention of casting ever or that cost far too much to learn and/or cast to be worth the effort? I'm not happy because it's possible to get locked up learning useless spells all the way from turn 10 onwards (I'm allowing 10 turns because you usually do get a few cheap ones at the start). The ability to learn new spells is supposed to help me, not waste my resources. It's probably fair to say that in most playthroughs I get as many spells I'll actually use as loot as I do by learning them myself.

[azdgari]

Master of Magic sorted your researchable spells by their cost, and so the spells you had available were - unless you'd recently picked up more spellbooks - the cheapest available. In PQ, the only reason you get cheap spells showing up early is that you have so few spell circles. There is no sorting involved. So why not *sort* the damn list so that the cheapest spells are always first?

[dergefata]

Originally posted by Prester Lewin:

it's possible to get locked up learning useless spells all the way from turn 10 onwards

Nah. That only happens if you let it happen by choosing the wrong spells to research. If you go deep into a school and start trying to research really expensive spells early on, you've set yourself up for a hard time. Similarly, if you go rainbow (or rainbowish) and try to rush a certain spell, you're setting yourself up for trouble, again.

The optimal research path is to rush a Great Library in the first few turns and let your per-turn research net you only your cheapest spells, even if you don't much want to cast them. That way, you'll never get cheap spells as rewards from features. And once you've picked up several Great Libraries - and I've never played a game without a few that were nearby and had exploitable weaknesses in their garrisons - you'll be picking off those cheap spells in a single turn, all the while keeping your power fully devoted to Spellcraft. So when you get a new spellbook as a reward from a feature, you can get those T1 spells out of the immediately.

As long as you force yourself to get the cheapest spells out of the queue first, you shouldn't find yourself locked in a research trap.