Alchemist

[Brekk]

Post your advice for playing this kingdom in this thread.

Thank you for contributing to the collective wisdom on how to best play this kingdom in Alamaze!

[Pine Needle]

Just finished 5703 with the Alchemist.

On the whole, I think its a second tier wizard kingdom.

The special abilities (gunpowder and salves) are not game changers. The healing potion is quite powerful as you can create a potion and use it on the same turn. Gunpowder is mostly useless (fireworks and explosive devices) and basically is just a pretty cheap way (10k gold) to generate income (2k/turn). You can only have one per PC, so its limited somewhat.

With this income and mithril, the AL can be as rich as any kingdom. Mithril, again mostly worthless, is converted to gold and creates 2k/turn for only a 5k investment. If there is double mithril, its 4k/turn. This is likely the most effective gold investment in all of Alamaze (maybe with the exception of hidden ore). The way mithril works, this is basically unlimited as a mithril deposit either produces the full amount of your miners (or double) or is extinguished so if you have 100,000 miners, you'll get 100,000 mithril per turn until the deposit is exhausted.

Thus, AL is an economic powerhouse which is kind of boring.

[Ruingurth]

I think the Alchemist should be the only kingdom that could equip its fleets with cannons.

R

[Olorin]

I thought I would go over the Kingdoms one by one for what works and what does not. Figured alphabetical order was the easiest, so I am starting with Alchemists.

They only seem to have a few outstanding characteristics. They are a tier 1 wizard group, which gives them full access to the Summon spells. This is great, but does not make them stand out against the other tier 1 Kingdoms.

Their Companions, Kingdom brigade, and Terrain are pretty middle of the road. They do get Iron Golem pretty early (Level 7).

Then their Cultural traits, which is only Forethought. Nothing outstanding there.

Which leaves Gunpowder. The explosives are nice, but limited in the end game as they only take 1000 pts for each you use. Even 10 or 20 of them is not that much loss to a 200k castle. Fireworks is a cheap means to up morale, so useful but you have to rest to use them. Healing salve replaces the Healing trait, but for cost. Still useful. Poison Flask could be interesting. In theory, if you use 8 flasks you could eliminate their food supply for a turn completely. Rejuvenation Cream is potentially useful, depending.

Transmuting is useful.

Alchemists can be a powerhouse economic. If they could trade the alchemical creations as if they were artifacts that would be an interesting addition to the game. It is a combination magic and economic power, so can push the mages to high power fairly fast.

The problems I see with this Kingdom is that nothing is outstanding. Gunpowder feels severely limited for combat. Poison flask calls for better agents to pull off. Rejuvenation Cream seems more useful to a Devote Kingdom. The ideas are good but the feel is scattershot rather than a thematic whole.

[davekuyk]

Good analysis of the kingdom, Olorin. As you said, good ideas but lacks cohesion.

I'd like to see explosives used in combat as well as sabotage orders. There are a number of possibilities - use of explosives to confuse and distract opposing forces, create smoke to attack from a flank, outright damaging the enemy troops, using the devices as traps (sort of a non-dispellable wall of flame). Versus PCs, the devices could be used in combat to lower the effective defense during a combat (destroy the main gates!). If we can sabotage defenses, why not production as well? Or perhaps destroy a building (mage tower destroyed in a massive explosion). Lots of directions to explore.

[Xerro]

I was looking at the alchemists and had some thoughts. They are the only kingdom with alchemy and it should be their focus. The reality is the cost and orders to execute their abilitys make it a waste of time. They are better off ignoring their defining ability. This is wrong and would be good to fix. Also 2 of their abilitys require agents to use and they have no agent traits. This makes using them hard. To use their abilities require special buildings which is resource spent not developing wizards and orders being spent. I believe that starting traits and numbers on things are able to be modified currently. So lets look at abilitys. Explosive devices needs tweaking to reflect modern defense values. It is a semi dificult mision and if there is any counter espionage it is almost impossible to do. And it is common to see counter epionage on high defense PC IE capitals. My recomendation is it do an extra 5000 to defenses. Lets give this ability some teeth. Yes if several agents got through it could damage a PC badly and permenantly. Which is ok since meteor swarm does this more effectively and still isnt used much. Maybe 5000 is too low but 10000 seems too high maybe?? The rest seem OK. Poison flask also needs agents to use. Apothacary and labratory both take a decent amount of gold and an order. Maybe lower the costs on those. For spells maybe give them rock golems also early. Create gold early is not much of a boon. Overall they are a wizard kingdom which gives them some strength. Boosting the explosives and giving them more agent traits so they can use them would help a lot. The alchemist players should want to use their special abilitys because they are an edge that they can exploit. I am sure their military has already been looked at with a fine tooth comb so I am ignoring that aspect.

[Olorin]

Which leads into what we have been working on. I do not know if the gunpowder items can be changed but that is a good idea. Brekk will have to consider that when he gets back.

There are three things we can definitely tweak; Spells, Companions and traits. I think we need to add a couple of traits to improve the Alchemists; I think Rich (they produce gold), Secretive (kind of a defining trait for the hidden alchemists from history), and Cunning. That would improve their agents and give them a bit more money to spend, helping with those early costs.

Companions, for me anyway, include the Summons. Rock Golems would be reasonable for early. They get all 9 of the Monster Summons, Minotaurs, Rock and Stone Golems. So they have an assortment of reinforcements even without the Companions. We are trying to do a couple of things here, both make them interesting to play and strong enough to square off with the other Kingdoms with an equal chance.

This is where I figure I will ask folks opinions. What Companions would be appropriate for the Alchemists? They currently have Rohirrim, Swampmen, Uak Hai, Wildlings. Should we just stick with those? Or are there some more appropriate or balancing Companions we can use?

[Xerro]

I think with the new summons the troops they have are fine. Their strength comes from their alchemy and summons not their companions. The ones listed are pretty good fodder for bolstering them. None of the other companions seemed to fit and if it takes poorer companions to get better covert traits I think its a good trade for them.