- Location
- Hell
Mah, but what would be worse than being eaten alive slowly? Having all your friends and family disappear with you.
Time of the Gods: Into the Amber Age
- Thread starter Powerofmind
- Start date
- Original
@Powerofmind
How hard would it be to keep the surface of the water mirror smooth while roiling up the water milimeters below that layer of smoothness? So that gaerig's attack is stealthy and unexpected I mean
Also ideas for the general threadgoer: scry the future, then go into the village and start making predictions for people, while whispering things like "Remember always, Gaerig is 3 steps ahead of you" or possibly "Gaerig has the magic of light and time"
Another thought: demand people create images of ourselves and our greatness at using the energies of the reflecting pond (after describing approximately what those images should look like)
Oooooh this one's fun for generating a bit of free fear via communing: "For the past few years I, Gaerig, have been performing a great labor in the darkest depths of the sea. Soon I'll be bringing the fruits of my efforts here for you to ... 'enjoy'. It might even not kill you. And I'll be free to give you my full, undivided attention again. Won't that be nice"
How hard would it be to keep the surface of the water mirror smooth while roiling up the water milimeters below that layer of smoothness? So that gaerig's attack is stealthy and unexpected I mean
Also ideas for the general threadgoer: scry the future, then go into the village and start making predictions for people, while whispering things like "Remember always, Gaerig is 3 steps ahead of you" or possibly "Gaerig has the magic of light and time"
Another thought: demand people create images of ourselves and our greatness at using the energies of the reflecting pond (after describing approximately what those images should look like)
Oooooh this one's fun for generating a bit of free fear via communing: "For the past few years I, Gaerig, have been performing a great labor in the darkest depths of the sea. Soon I'll be bringing the fruits of my efforts here for you to ... 'enjoy'. It might even not kill you. And I'll be free to give you my full, undivided attention again. Won't that be nice"
I take it this is coming from a person who has never been eaten alive slowly?
More seriously, I think you might be underestimating how bad physical torture is. Emotional trauma like losing people is definitely bad as well, but there is a reason the physical stuff is a level or three lower on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
- Location
- Hell
It's not really something we can accomplish right now though. Gaerig's methods are not very sophisticated at the moment and her knowledge of humans is...scarce. She'd probably kill them by accident before she tortured them to any degree. Humans are just so fragile~ best wait until she has a better understanding of the world before we go there. Quantity has a quality of its own.I take it this is coming from a person who has never been eaten alive slowly?
More seriously, I think you might be underestimating how bad physical torture is. Emotional trauma like losing people is definitely bad as well, but there is a reason the physical stuff is a level or three lower on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
The real danger of over-pushing Vehemence is killing off the population. Go too hard and while they may get used to it, they'll also totally avoid doing the things you can catch them with.
I prefer it the way I've written it since I've written it out that way (stubbornness, thy name is Powerofmind), even if it's a little more complex than necessary, but yours is an accurate simplification.
Mismatched spirits get anywhere from 2/3 to 1/2, depending on attribute values.
The rate of growth for 'non-specialized' Vehemence (not Fear), and 'non-specialized' Rites (not Faith). It refers to you not having the appropriate attribute.
This is intentional. As attributes rise, DE cap also rises, which allows both focuses to commit more and more to Vehemence actions. Since both focuses can make use of the Vehemence mechanic, and it would be shifted to absolute definition, greatly reducing the effect of attribute increases is the only way to prevent DE growth from becoming a question of 'how much amber did we condense this turn from the overflow?' and keeping it closer to 'will this turn plan leave us under-cap?'
These were basically the only ways I could ensure attribute-capping didn't turn the game into massive overflow before your first ascension. There is another option, but that's to reduce total Vehemence/turn to around half. Faith and Fear are still critical attributes, but maybe I can shuffle around some values to make them more useful.
Basically I looked at the system as it was before, and my biggest issue was that every turn, without paying more than a pittance, you could nullify the entire economic aspect of the game. Vehemence deals with Fear spirits, as in order to get the value high they have to effectively salt the earth and weaken future turn incomes, making their economy rely heavily on aggression (to only hurt Pop mod in enemy territory) or high-low alternations (to let pop mod regrow between major terrorizing). For Faith, I didn't want their base income/booster train to be able to lock them in at topped off without significant DE commitments (the AN equation allowed up to half the DE cap/turn before bonus DE growth, which typically only required a 20-25% commitment to push into double-digit amber overflow levels), which would negate the entire point of a fear spirit's high growth. I want to make economy turns a trade-off against progress turns. I want to make planners go 'is it worth it to grow DE towards cap this turn, or deal with X issue?'
If it costs more than 50% of your DE to get an appreciable percentage of your cap as DE return, you're less prone to making huge strides every single turn in multiple areas of player focus, because that will break your bank for multiple turns.
Yes. The equation I'm going to switch to uses a different Population Modifier scale (down to a value that makes the DE equation equal 0, and up to a soft cap value of 4*era tier, max 20), and Fear spirits will typically eat up 2-3 points at once on a high-value turn. If the number goes too deeply negative, you've basically exhausted the population, either spiritually or literally by killing them all off, and making it progressively more difficult to forcefully push through high value turns without doing major raids or attacks on foreign groups.
Approximately 10% of the 200 DE cap (though there will likely be ways to increase that by the time you get there). This is done to ensure that you have to actually consider economy, rather than maxing the attributes and doing whatever you want whenever you want. It adds an element to consider to turns that was intended for inclusion in AN's quest (or why would he have included DE in the first place?), but fell prey to the escalation AN often seems to suffer from working in.
It doesn't take but a moment between a calm and a roil. You don't have to 'prep' a future cast.
Going to sleep, but Aspect of Human would probably be a good entry to understanding human drives. Spirit of Trade might also help with more sophisticated fears.
Currently she just knows death, hunger and loss.
Or mix the two a bit? Use aggression to power domestic growth, then between aggressive phases(when enemies are defeated or subsumed, you lightly abuse your home population which had increased in the aggression phase due to the bits of growth you feed them).
Not exactly super sustainable long term, but long term it's Faith or Both anyways.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Will you put the population modifier (and the change during a turn) in its own spoiler like iwth ambrosia/legend/etc, since it seems to be becoming both more important and more changeable?
Blessings return more DE than they cost, and help replenish the population for future fear turns, we should probably always bless instead of save, barring important fear buy turns.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I will notate the population modifier's change over time in the DE spoiler. Simply know that the more DE you commit to destructive acts to pick up more Vehemence returns, the more Pop mod you can lose at once. Expect a typical loss of between 1 and 2 points per 3 overtly negative Vehemence, though it can be as high as 1 for 1 if you're doing something really excessive (causing an aurora, or making the sea glow, is not overtly negative or harmful, so you can do things like calming or guiding without damaging growth).
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I know the game, and totally used elements of it and it's style as references for how I handled Cold Dark, but I had to crack it open and poke around to find that one. Neat little blessing, I'd say. Too bad you don't really have the proper direction to make that happen.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the problem I foresee here is that you also emphasized the ambrosia economy. While cutting its basis out at the knees.
Because DE is just the lowest tier of a multi-tier economy. It seems kind of like "pennies (DE) aren't important enough, let's make that central, while increasing the amount of food you need to spend dollars (Ambrosia) on, oh and forget about playing with the fifties(Amber) the entire system was named for"
Plus with Faith and Fear now nerfed to that point, it would have been better to deliberately keep swinging between the two in the beginning, never making enough progress to get either.
Last edited:
Yeah I just remembered because if you had a decent defensive fighting force the Earthblood is crazy fun.
Aggro people, they raid you constantly, you slaughter them on your ground and use their corpses to power fertility blessings.
I'm not seeing where the 1/2 is coming from.
Maybe I'm just being blockheaded; could you point out the specifics for me?
Wait a sec. I thought that you were balancing out so that a spirit would expect to sustain about 1VE without exhausting the population. If that is the case, then I'm confused about how this is supposed to work. Presumably, the amount of absolute vehemence that can be sustained grows with population; at the point where your pop can support 3VE per turn or whatever, does that break the Faith Spirit vs Fear Spirit balance?
And again, I am somewhat confused. Is most of the economy supposed to come in from Vehemence? If so, this is going to solidly screw Faith spirits.
It should be noted that even in AN's original system, passive income only just started being problematic near the cap. The overflow game came out because our DE-producing actions had something like a one-into-three efficiency; even without any passive income, committing a third of our DE to churning let us spend the other two thirds freely. In fact, looking back, the main motivation behind increasing our income wasn't even the income itself, but that each two points of income effectively increased our DE cap by one (since we could spend half of expected income for the coming turn).
In your proposed scheme, the effect of attributes on income just aren't meaningful. As an analogy, give the Omake bonus to DE, our current income with Omakes is higher than what a max-stated spirit would get.
Here is the problem with this once you've cut the return-on-investment for DE and passive income - recovering from being under cap is brutal.
For argument's sake, lets say that passive income is 10% of max, and investments increase DE by half - i.e. put in 10DE, get 15DE out. Now, lets say that you exhaust all your DE on turn T. How long does it take you to recover, assuming you invest everything into just recovering DE?
On Turn T, you end with have 10% DE from passive income.
On Turn T+1, you end with 25% DE (10%*1.5 from investments + 10% from income)
On Turn T+2, you end with 47.5% DE (25%*1.5 from investments + 10% from income). I'll round up to 50%.
On Turn T+3, you end with 85% DE (50%*1.5 from investments + 10% from income)
On Turn T+4, you end with 137.5% DE (85%*1.5 from investments + 10% from income). Lets round up to 140%, so we've finally restored our DE, and gotten 4 extra Ambrosia ready. Great! Only it took 4 full years.
In comparison, a "stable" regime spending 67% on churn would remain at cap and generate a free ambrosia each turn (67%*1.5 +30% = 110%). Thus, you could say that stable spending is 1/3 of cap. In other words, in the "splurge" option, you spend 3 years worth of stable income simultaneously, basically "borrowing" 2 years of spending - only now you have to spend the next 4 years paying it back.
Actually, that isn't as brutal as I thought it would be - having to repay the cosmic loan double isn't that bad. Though it rapidly gets worse if you need to spend stuff in the years when you should be "paying things off"; kind of the same way that carrying a credit card balance screws you in real life. I dunno - it isn't as bad as I expected, but I feel like you can get stuck in a pretty deep hole this way.
TLDR: I had a question for you at the beginning. In the middle, I felt that passive income as you wrote it doesn't feel meaningful enough, and the influence of attributes on passive income definitely doesn't seem significant enough. Finally, in the end I made an argument that I mostly talked myself out of.
Since nobody voted for my former plan, I have no problem with abandoning it and doing something remarkably similar.
[X] Plan Calm Seas v2
-[X] Study Stars - Study the skies and stars, seeking patterns that will tell you what was, what is, and what may yet be.
--[X] Read the Future - Look forward to what has not yet been, but may yet be. Will aid you in a number of ways during the turn, and warn you of potential dangers. Costs: 8 DE
-[X] Disrupt Saiga's fishermen to the south. Costs: 5 DE (must reserve at least one destructive act) WARNING: Outside of effective influence range; divine powers will have reduced effectiveness.
-[X] Control Waters*** - You bend the waves to your command, directing them to rise or quiet at your leisure, to punish your enemies, or reward your friends.
--[X] Calm Seas. Costs: 4 DE x2
---[X] Reserve for Disrupt.
-[X] Lure - Seduce and enchant the incautious, leading them to their doom. Costs: 6 DE
--[X] Reserve for Disrupt.
-[X] QUEST: LABOR OF THE MOON-SPHERE - You will return to the Moon-Sphere's resting place and retrieve it for yourself. Costs: 12 DE. (Note: may need to be taken multiple times) x2
-[X] Wander the Depths - Travel away from your shoal to explore the deeper places. Costs: 10 DE
-[X] Bless Petitioner for Growth - Expend some of your DE to empower those who come to your shrine or pray to you, granting them a bounty of life-giving things. Current Skills that can be blessed: Navigation.
--[X] Expend 3 DE on petitioners
-[X] Make Demand - You have need of something and you will tell people what you want.
--[X] Demand that your people find out more about Attrouska.
DE: 8 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 24 + 10 + 3 = 64/64, all DE spent.
Sustenance: 15 - 1(Disrupt) - 1(Lure) - 4(Quest) - 1(Wander) - 1(Demand) = 7, Ambrosia consumed.
Ambrosia: 1 - 1 (Sustenance) = 0.
Potential Gains: Vary wildly with rolls. /is hoping for Spirit of the Gambler.
Capricious One was unlocked specifically by turn-after-turn plans, not specific actions within a single turn. I believe that acting Capriciously turn-over-turn is the way to increase the odds of it happening.
Lure + Calm Seas combo included, may get Saiga's villagers to over-reach themselves (depending upon rolls). Also reduces the odds of them figuring out good counters to Whip Waves. Lure may get Siren on Fearbuy list. Poor rolls here may also increase odds of Capricious One; win/win as far as I'm concerned. Also, Lesser Spirit of Mischief.
Explore for a shot at Spirit of Exploration, for Survival. This will let us explore overland, potentially finding new targets to raid and get legend from.
My hope is to 'aim' our actions at a shotgun of traits and stats that we're interested in, and letting the die roll as it may.
The 'Raid' plan I want to wait on until we have higher attributes and skills - if only for the increased Influence radius, to make said raids cheaper, and extra skill from another level of Avatar (survival, in this case).
----
On the DE -> Ambrosia -> Amber thing, remember, Amber is a high-tier economic thing. We wouldn't have stumbled onto it as Harzivan if we hadn't slept for a decade straight early game.
In addition, Fear spirits don't have excess DE decay quite so quickly (unless something has changed), letting us 'build up' for a few turns if we so desire - which we then turn into a massive turn against an enemy, getting us a large RoI that we can then let decay. Hopefully/Maybe. Of course, as we aren't a crafter, we won't have the ability to do much with it...
Edit: Plan officially listed as a plan (oops).
[X] Plan Calm Seas v2
-[X] Study Stars - Study the skies and stars, seeking patterns that will tell you what was, what is, and what may yet be.
--[X] Read the Future - Look forward to what has not yet been, but may yet be. Will aid you in a number of ways during the turn, and warn you of potential dangers. Costs: 8 DE
-[X] Disrupt Saiga's fishermen to the south. Costs: 5 DE (must reserve at least one destructive act) WARNING: Outside of effective influence range; divine powers will have reduced effectiveness.
-[X] Control Waters*** - You bend the waves to your command, directing them to rise or quiet at your leisure, to punish your enemies, or reward your friends.
--[X] Calm Seas. Costs: 4 DE x2
---[X] Reserve for Disrupt.
-[X] Lure - Seduce and enchant the incautious, leading them to their doom. Costs: 6 DE
--[X] Reserve for Disrupt.
-[X] QUEST: LABOR OF THE MOON-SPHERE - You will return to the Moon-Sphere's resting place and retrieve it for yourself. Costs: 12 DE. (Note: may need to be taken multiple times) x2
-[X] Wander the Depths - Travel away from your shoal to explore the deeper places. Costs: 10 DE
-[X] Bless Petitioner for Growth - Expend some of your DE to empower those who come to your shrine or pray to you, granting them a bounty of life-giving things. Current Skills that can be blessed: Navigation.
--[X] Expend 3 DE on petitioners
-[X] Make Demand - You have need of something and you will tell people what you want.
--[X] Demand that your people find out more about Attrouska.
DE: 8 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 24 + 10 + 3 = 64/64, all DE spent.
Sustenance: 15 - 1(Disrupt) - 1(Lure) - 4(Quest) - 1(Wander) - 1(Demand) = 7, Ambrosia consumed.
Ambrosia: 1 - 1 (Sustenance) = 0.
Potential Gains: Vary wildly with rolls. /is hoping for Spirit of the Gambler.
Capricious One was unlocked specifically by turn-after-turn plans, not specific actions within a single turn. I believe that acting Capriciously turn-over-turn is the way to increase the odds of it happening.
Lure + Calm Seas combo included, may get Saiga's villagers to over-reach themselves (depending upon rolls). Also reduces the odds of them figuring out good counters to Whip Waves. Lure may get Siren on Fearbuy list. Poor rolls here may also increase odds of Capricious One; win/win as far as I'm concerned. Also, Lesser Spirit of Mischief.
Explore for a shot at Spirit of Exploration, for Survival. This will let us explore overland, potentially finding new targets to raid and get legend from.
My hope is to 'aim' our actions at a shotgun of traits and stats that we're interested in, and letting the die roll as it may.
The 'Raid' plan I want to wait on until we have higher attributes and skills - if only for the increased Influence radius, to make said raids cheaper, and extra skill from another level of Avatar (survival, in this case).
----
On the DE -> Ambrosia -> Amber thing, remember, Amber is a high-tier economic thing. We wouldn't have stumbled onto it as Harzivan if we hadn't slept for a decade straight early game.
In addition, Fear spirits don't have excess DE decay quite so quickly (unless something has changed), letting us 'build up' for a few turns if we so desire - which we then turn into a massive turn against an enemy, getting us a large RoI that we can then let decay. Hopefully/Maybe. Of course, as we aren't a crafter, we won't have the ability to do much with it...
Edit: Plan officially listed as a plan (oops).
Last edited:
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Comparing the DE/ambrosia/amber economy to pennies and singles and big bills is a dreadfully inaccurate metaphor. You run into areas where the metaphor falls apart very quickly, as those pennies are the only way to, as an example in keeping with the metaphor, feed yourself. You've never gone to a supermarket and bought bread with coins, and you don't buy weekly groceries with anything less than a couple twenties. It makes no sense that you can only spend singles for medical treatment or housing rent. Amber to big bills is even more ridiculous, since amber only has an especially high value to people with specific skills and traits. That's like saying only plumbers or electricians are allowed to spend anything bigger than a one dollar bill.
The different parts of the economy aren't tiered elements. Ambrosia is not DE but better, and Amber is not Ambrosia but better. In this iteration of the game, most spirits have almost literally no use for Amber at this tier of play except as a bargaining chip. Ambrosia is more useful to physical spirits who need to ensure they can reform/feed themselves (and they will generally have it since they can't spend DE as freely on elemental shenanigans). DE is big for elementalists and wizards. They all have unique uses and value in different situations, and those values are as variable as a particular spirit's skills and traits.
Amber, especially, would be literally useless to Gaerig as she is. What could she do with it? She has no crafts, no arts. It's only useful as raw trade goods to her. What would you need Ambrosia for, if not for sustenance? Each component of the economy serves a different purpose. Just because one component builds into the next doesn't inherently make them more special or somehow 'the next tier of proper play (said with accompanying hoity-toit accent)'.
The more mantles you try to wear, the more of everything you need, and if it was as easy as derisively laughing at the income spoiler to fill one or two of them at once, then there's nothing stopping a hyper-generalist spirit from fucking everybody up, one of the things I've said repeatedly is my main aim to prevent.
DE is the elemental limiter, the basic action component. It is the soft limit on how much you can do in a turn, it dictates whether you can cast 14 different elemental fuckeries, not Influence. Ambrosia is the avatar and commune action component, and dictates how many of these actions you can take. It functions as the soft limit on maximum avatar/leadership you can do at once, it dictates how many demands you can make, how much pantheon management you can handle, or how many figurines you can craft at once, not your Leadership skill that you might not even have, or your Avatar skill that would be an unreasonable hard-cap for crafters.
Amber? Amber's just another material, a reward for letting things stack up high enough to get it. A crafter doesn't have to have amber to make weapons or gear. You don't need amber as the universal currency of the gods. But it helps.
A faith spirit can get up to about 18-20 DE per turn passively, and get about 6-7 DE per Vehemence with the same attributes. This is about 1/3 at the top end of the spectrum, but starts out higher, at around 2/3.I'm not seeing where the 1/2 is coming from.
Maybe I'm just being blockheaded; could you point out the specifics for me?
A fear spirit can get up to about 6-7 DE per turn passively, and get about 12-13 DE per Vehemence with the same attributes. This is about 1/2 at the top, and starts at nearly 1 to 1.
*opens mouth*
*closes mouth*
Each side also has their unique element that lets them cripple their core for a taste of the other side, which actually applies pretty directly to the faith/fear DE repayment rate and balance between them. Faith, who needs to stay, if not near-cap, then at least above 50% much of the time to keep running smoothly, gets their Grand Offering, which punches their pop mod in the gut to very quickly make up the potential repayment turns (seriously, you don't get to see this particular equation, but a decently statted out faith spirit can basically hit their cap from 0 if the conditions are good). Fear, who can get stuck if other spirits are clever enough to deny them access to foreign pops, can trade their more explosive (at cap, a high Vehemence turn can be as good as 6:1 in return on investment, very easy to get out of those repayment turn ruts with) Vehemence gains for a more stable Appeasement decree.
I would like to take this moment to be especially thankful to those of you who have mechanical concerns or issues with perceived checks and balances that you've brought to my attention in-thread. For those of you who I could explain myself to mechanically, but still made me consider Watsonian arguments and reasons for my arguments, and for those of you whose concerns were more founded from a Doylist perspective for elements I was too focused on the narrative of; you have really made my efforts feel worthwhile and are ironing out the kinks in such a great setting. Again, thank you for discussing these issues with me. It makes the experience of writing all the better for me to have these direct interactions with you, and I hope the feeling that you're getting a fair shake makes your experience as questers all the better, too.
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
I love how @PrimalShadow is so distracted by @Powerofmind's math that it's like he's being actively prevented from participating like before.
This is highly amusing, ngl
This is highly amusing, ngl
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
We decided to bring in the dancing lobsters
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Mostly math. There's also a fairly active argument regarding the merits of pushing for Capricious over solidifying existing traits and skills. Personally I'm just glad that my left brain hasn't shriveled up into a raisin from not having used anything more complex than basic economics for the past four years. I haven't written a real equation since I was 22.
Maragas
Nothing to see here.
- Location
- Tree House
Oh come on ! Why not Penguins ? Only cool Lobster is Zoidberg !
I feel your pain.I really do.
Believe it or not I find optimizing systems more engaging than trying to play the game, especially at this point when I'm not that immersed in the game to begin with.
Oh. I was talking about just the standard discount ratio - the way you go from /10 for matching stats to /15 for mismatching ones. But what you are saying is true too.
Yeah, that would help. Fair 'nuff.
My only remaining objection is that the income just doesn't feel significant, in the sense that there is apparent tangible improvement from raising stats. For example, at this point I personally just wouldn't consider attributes when considering ways to increase income.
@Powerofmind something to keep in mind is that the more churn there is, the more churn there is. Shocking, I know.
But from a Doylist perspective high churn is bad. It's make-work that adds to plan complexity with no real payoff for players. It serves as the stabilizing foundation on which all other story elements are built on, but does not in and of itself contribute much to story being built by the game.
Of course, this mostly applies to the Faith side of things, but I thought it was worth pointing out
But from a Doylist perspective high churn is bad. It's make-work that adds to plan complexity with no real payoff for players. It serves as the stabilizing foundation on which all other story elements are built on, but does not in and of itself contribute much to story being built by the game.
Of course, this mostly applies to the Faith side of things, but I thought it was worth pointing out