Polycrates
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,288
Summoning is good, but it's very limited in scope and it's very much a mid-game trait. So it doesn't help with getting the technological, economic or military development to rival other civs in the all-important early-game. Plus it's then a military bonus that is limited to one type of troop, which happens to take considerable time between production and combat viability anyway.
It's about the amount of benefit needed to rival the brute force of better-developed economies (either from building or early conquest), and to counter your relative weakness before that point.
I would also assume that in MP, someone like Tebryn Arbrandi is just asking to be dogpiled well before he gets anywhere near summoning.
Philosophical is very much an early-game trait.
30 hammers and one citizen gives 5RP a turn with a Council. That's a lot for an early city, and beats out early cottages in its own right (where to match it early you'd need two cottages, two people working them, more worker turns to build them, and more pillaging worries), especially on higher levels where happiness is at a premium. A library is 60 hammers, and gives a big boost in selected cities, to rival cottage development. In vanilla, a library city would have to shut down all other production while running early specialists (and you needed the expensive library right from the get-go anyway). Here, a bit of micro lets you still get good production pretty much everywhere. So the cost is really minimal, and is probably an outright benefit over cottages in the early game. Cheaper buildings AND the boosted GPP rate together make Philo very powerful (and with the extra food, specialists are much more powerful than in vanilla anyway).
Plus you get the Great People. An early academy in the capital massively boosts tech rate, as do settled sages, and the first couple are very fast and effortless. Plus you get massive tech from lightbulbing. If you were to use your first five great sages for lightbulbing to arcane lore and average the costs, the average research output of each sage specialist, just from GPPs, is an extra 18RPs per turn per sage over the first five sages. Even accounting for GPP wastage (which is easily minimised with a bit of micro), that's pretty massive. It's a pretty nice research path too.
There's different but equally powerful benefits with priests and prophets (especially with Einion Logos).
It's about the amount of benefit needed to rival the brute force of better-developed economies (either from building or early conquest), and to counter your relative weakness before that point.
I would also assume that in MP, someone like Tebryn Arbrandi is just asking to be dogpiled well before he gets anywhere near summoning.
Seeing as this thread is kind of hijacked already, I'll throw this in:
Philosophical is very much an early-game trait.
30 hammers and one citizen gives 5RP a turn with a Council. That's a lot for an early city, and beats out early cottages in its own right (where to match it early you'd need two cottages, two people working them, more worker turns to build them, and more pillaging worries), especially on higher levels where happiness is at a premium. A library is 60 hammers, and gives a big boost in selected cities, to rival cottage development. In vanilla, a library city would have to shut down all other production while running early specialists (and you needed the expensive library right from the get-go anyway). Here, a bit of micro lets you still get good production pretty much everywhere. So the cost is really minimal, and is probably an outright benefit over cottages in the early game. Cheaper buildings AND the boosted GPP rate together make Philo very powerful (and with the extra food, specialists are much more powerful than in vanilla anyway).
Plus you get the Great People. An early academy in the capital massively boosts tech rate, as do settled sages, and the first couple are very fast and effortless. Plus you get massive tech from lightbulbing. If you were to use your first five great sages for lightbulbing to arcane lore and average the costs, the average research output of each sage specialist, just from GPPs, is an extra 18RPs per turn per sage over the first five sages. Even accounting for GPP wastage (which is easily minimised with a bit of micro), that's pretty massive. It's a pretty nice research path too.
There's different but equally powerful benefits with priests and prophets (especially with Einion Logos).
