Brokenbone
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2007
- Messages
- 405
All right, I've tried it out now... my limited playtest (single player) is that I'm getting pretty decent good results, and the bad results are not all that bad. This late in the game, your "Rift city" should have someone in it capable of curing disease, which knocks out many of the worst effects of mutation or the occasional disease or plague. Anything which spawns a "boss" or light stuff like orcs, skeletons, bears, or spiders should be wiped out by the local troops the turn they spawn, or better yet rangers will capture some critters. Things like poison or falling rubble aren't worth mentioning.
Bad effects that you cannot avoid are pretty limited. Enervation, Crazed, Crazed/Demon, "never returns from the depths", or certain bad Mutation effects like Weak, Vulnerability to Fire, maybe a few others... they're the price you pay.
Good effects, there's lots of them. Gold, golden ages, great people, the tile you're sitting on all of a sudden becoming a mana or resource source, free techs, free XP, spirit guide promo, the list is pretty good.
I've been playing a Dural game, finally got my "Rift city", I was running Empyrean so I had Chalid buffing the whole city with Valor, maybe a dozen Iron Champions (half upgraded from Radiant Guards, and the weaker group following a Tactician who'd feed off their XP), a few Longbowmen, a couple Professors to cure disease (and for some reason I thought "Courage" improves dungeon results, which comes from their "Hope" buff), Karlsson is sitting in the city as well. Some animal-subduing rangers are also there.
Over call it "less than ten turns", with virtually everyone participating in exploration (20 explorers per turn), maybe three units have been Enervated, one simply "lost to the depths", various mutations which post-Cures, were beneficial. TONS of monsters, all easily mopped up by Valor'd champions or sometimes caught by rangers (spiders, bears), lots of XP. I regretted not having any direct damage mages with things like Maelstrom, no Air mana *shrugs*
I probably scored one technology (Divine Essence, which upped four of these Champs to Immortals), got 3 great merchant prisoners, 1 great general (tactician who started leading more of the Champs), 1 great engineer, LOTS of gold, a golden age, a couple guys got "spirit guide", a few "learned much from other adventurers" (award of a couple xp), and many times, my city tile itself ended up a resource source... Copper for awhile, Death mana, Spirit Mana, I think eventually Nature mana. You never know when you're going to lose that resource though. I think also one Compelling Jewel, one Ring of Perception, a Heart Amulet, a Rod of Winds, and a couple potions popped too (which themselves would've been worth thousands of gold if I'd built the Bazaar instead).
I did not risk my actual Heroes in the exploration. Karlsson already had a decent mutation on him, but I didn't want to risk things like Crazed/Demon/Enervation. Chalid is un-mutated, so he'd be at even greater risk.
Anyhow, this was in single player, maybe I would've never had the luxury to have such a big fat garrison doing nothing but "exploring" in MP. It did feel like a LOT of bang for the buck, the city became an XP, gold and great person fountain, sure it's late game, but if you compare that against a one time "lightbulb" from a sage, adding them to a city or other normal things to do, the rift business is very, very attractive.
I think that despite the observation that "this late, good stuff is minor", above, I'd differ on the point as soon as you start noticing great people popping. Sacrifice one Great Sage to get potentially more Great People if you're a risk taker? Yes please. All the gold and other goodies are a bonus worth crippling the occasional nameless, faceless Champion for.
Bad effects that you cannot avoid are pretty limited. Enervation, Crazed, Crazed/Demon, "never returns from the depths", or certain bad Mutation effects like Weak, Vulnerability to Fire, maybe a few others... they're the price you pay.
Good effects, there's lots of them. Gold, golden ages, great people, the tile you're sitting on all of a sudden becoming a mana or resource source, free techs, free XP, spirit guide promo, the list is pretty good.
I've been playing a Dural game, finally got my "Rift city", I was running Empyrean so I had Chalid buffing the whole city with Valor, maybe a dozen Iron Champions (half upgraded from Radiant Guards, and the weaker group following a Tactician who'd feed off their XP), a few Longbowmen, a couple Professors to cure disease (and for some reason I thought "Courage" improves dungeon results, which comes from their "Hope" buff), Karlsson is sitting in the city as well. Some animal-subduing rangers are also there.
Over call it "less than ten turns", with virtually everyone participating in exploration (20 explorers per turn), maybe three units have been Enervated, one simply "lost to the depths", various mutations which post-Cures, were beneficial. TONS of monsters, all easily mopped up by Valor'd champions or sometimes caught by rangers (spiders, bears), lots of XP. I regretted not having any direct damage mages with things like Maelstrom, no Air mana *shrugs*
I probably scored one technology (Divine Essence, which upped four of these Champs to Immortals), got 3 great merchant prisoners, 1 great general (tactician who started leading more of the Champs), 1 great engineer, LOTS of gold, a golden age, a couple guys got "spirit guide", a few "learned much from other adventurers" (award of a couple xp), and many times, my city tile itself ended up a resource source... Copper for awhile, Death mana, Spirit Mana, I think eventually Nature mana. You never know when you're going to lose that resource though. I think also one Compelling Jewel, one Ring of Perception, a Heart Amulet, a Rod of Winds, and a couple potions popped too (which themselves would've been worth thousands of gold if I'd built the Bazaar instead).
I did not risk my actual Heroes in the exploration. Karlsson already had a decent mutation on him, but I didn't want to risk things like Crazed/Demon/Enervation. Chalid is un-mutated, so he'd be at even greater risk.
Anyhow, this was in single player, maybe I would've never had the luxury to have such a big fat garrison doing nothing but "exploring" in MP. It did feel like a LOT of bang for the buck, the city became an XP, gold and great person fountain, sure it's late game, but if you compare that against a one time "lightbulb" from a sage, adding them to a city or other normal things to do, the rift business is very, very attractive.
I think that despite the observation that "this late, good stuff is minor", above, I'd differ on the point as soon as you start noticing great people popping. Sacrifice one Great Sage to get potentially more Great People if you're a risk taker? Yes please. All the gold and other goodies are a bonus worth crippling the occasional nameless, faceless Champion for.
