Issues with sacred power level and enhanced weapons

[ilja2]

Am using version 0.7.0 RC12 for single player.

Got the impression that sacreds overall seemed a lot weaker than vanilla sacreds, so made a batch of 30 MA nations with Sacred Power set to "batshit insane". Looking at the results, a few things stood out to me:

• They were overall still pretty weak. The strongest I could find were 1) One identical to a Van (Vanheim's light cav) except 5 gp more expensive, slightly worse armor, and Air Shield 30%. And 2) One 24 gold indie heavy infantry with fire/cold/shock/poisonres 5. Other sacreds include a 16 gold lightly armored hoburg with poison barbs, a 35 gold unit that's basically a Steel Warrior with worse stats and no resistance, and one that is almost identical to EA Agartha's Ancient One sacred. Vans are fine sacred, but not even close to "batshit insane" and as the strongest one out of 30 it's kinda underwhelming, when most were bad enough that I'd rather ignore them and focus on other troops.

• They were all cap-only, every single one. The above example of what amounted to indie heavy infantry with broad, low resistances would've been fine as a recruit everywhere sacred; low individual power but solid and affordable, like Gath's zealots or BL's white ones. One option might be to weight the odds of sacreds to be rec-anywhere higher if they cost below, say, 30 gold.

• This seems like a straight-up bug, but some of the special weapons don't seem to be working right. The most clear example was on the above-mentioned clone of the Agarthan Ancient One; its weapon had the name "Exceptional Spear" but the statline was identical to a standard spear.

• I assume this is already well-known, but names are often cut-off halfway through a word, both for units and weapons. With weapons, one approach might be that if the base name of a weapon has a space in it, only what's after the last space will be used in the final name (since the last word is generally the noun; broad sword, composite bow etc). So instead of a Composite Bow of B, that causes bleed, it would simply say Bow of Bleeding, which is more comprehensible.

(On a side note though, sometimes the names end up real funny. One of the sacred was wielding a "Just Great Bow" which is a great name. Only missed a "that's" first :P. The sad part about that bow was that it was on a 100 gold elephant chassi, which isn't exactly what you want to pay for one bow, no matter how just or great it is)

[geepope]

So, there are a couple issues here.

1. First and foremost, the sacred slider seems to be 100% busted. The method that looks it up and adjusts the target power level for a given sacred doesn't actually pass the adjusted value on to anything. You can verify this easily by running the same seed with & without batshit insane sacreds on.

2. There are some interesting logic choices in sacred generation. Even when you do wind up with a "high power" sacred, either by getting lucky or fixing the batshit insane slider, it is extremely likely that the power budget gets quickly used up with gimmick magic equipment effects or small, incremental stat gains.

3. Some balance decisions are off. The small, incremental stat gains are priced very aggressively in terms of power budget compared to special abilities and some of those special abilities include better stat gains that use up less of the power budget. Some special abilities which are practically cosmetic or even generally detrimental (e.g. season power) are priced the same as special abilities that actually do something.

4. Notwithstanding all of the above, you still run into the core issue of Natgen which is that most rolls are made largely in a vacuum. Let's say that, against all odds, you wind up with some really cool combination of stats and powers. Natgen will happily stick it on a naked pygmy and say "enjoy your badass sacred!" There are a few ad hoc balance checks on individual elements, in order to tone down a few specific crazy combinations. But in general there's not a lot of consideration for how well the sacred works as a unit or how powerful the nation is overall. To be fair, these are anything but trivial issues.

[ilja2]

Thanks for the response!

I've now done a new batch of 50 nations with the same parameter, and partly I think I was unlucky the first time because this time I got several results that, if not batshit insane, was in the ballpark of the most powerful vanilla variants. Though to compensate, there was a 40+ gold ogre slinger as the cap-only sacred - on two different nations.

1. That's good to know.

2 & 3) Yeah, I feel like overall the special abilities are weirdly random to odd numbers. Base stat boosts to att/def/str etc are typically quite worthwhile, but things like Fire Shield (2) or Castle Defense Bonus (3) are either irrelevant in general or irrelevant on specifically a cap only sacred. Magic equipment could've been quite nice if it actually worked as I suspect it's intended, but right now they're almost always underwhelming. This may be nitpicky though, but I don't think season power is detrimental anymore, it only provides a bonus in the correct season iirc and no longer has a penalty in the opposite.
Some traits also just seem way too common: Cause Unrest, Berserk, and Season Power being the top issues. Berserk is a good ability but I think about 1/4 of the sacreds had it which seems on the high side, where it doesn't feel interesting.
I'd rather each sacred have at least 1 moderate-to-powerful special ability (eg berserk, regen, awe, secondshape, resist all etc) and then maybe one or two minor abilities (eg specific resistance, XScalePower without it being an XScaleNation, fire shield 8 etc). Then the fluff/ribbon abilities like season power, cause unrest etc could be separate and not included at all in the power budget. Buuut that's just my backseat designing leaking out.

4. This is true, though I think there are a few things that would help it. Like, a lot of cases where it puts good stats/abilities on a bad chassi, the issue is that the chassi is cap only. So if there was something like "if sacred gold cost <25, make it req anywhere", that would aid a lot of these situations. And something like "if sacred prot <10, give it some frakkin' armor". And conversely, there could be a check not to make giant archers into sacreds. I hate high price quality archers less than most (avvite archers <3), but I'll never buy a 70 gold guy that shoots a single arrow, no matter how much fire shields or growth power he has.

[geepope]

Are you sure about season power? I've seen it provide a malus in the opposite season in games not too long ago. You may be thinking of Power of the Turning Year, which only ever provides bonuses.

(Increase Unrest already does actually count as negative power budget, but it's difficult to tell since the small offset it provides probably just gets eaten by stats.)

Vanilla sacreds do tend to be, well, vanilla more often than not. It's not entirely off base for Natgen to prioritize stats over special abilities, it just tends to be disappointing when you roll sacreds that are supposed to be extra special and they just have +2 att/def.

Similarly, there is plenty of precedent for sacreds with light/no armor. I agree they should get extra compensation in some form; some combination of bonus defense / lower cost / increased rec-anywhere chances.

I don't think giant archers are necessarily an issue; after a certain point they stop being archers and start being heavy infantry that also has bows, which can be extremely efficient troops. I am planning on making a balance pass on sacred abilities and will probably weight archer sacreds away from things like fireshield/awe, though.