Topic: Of Buildings

[HW - Halmond Westerly]

I like option 2 + option 1.

Allows for a merchant of Venice (custom house + shipyard) or Knight Templar (training grounds + custom house) or War King (Training Ground + Shipyard) or any other mix which makes each regent/theme more unique.

Good points. I agree on these things.

[JB - Jana Boulderbrew]

Could an academy also make 1 potion/level and be a wizard/priest building?

[WM - The Waste Mage]

Could get rid of allows holy units as a CP buy and base it on cathedral level. 1 free Unit at each level or every other level depending on how high buildings can be built this game.

[MS - Meaghan Smith]

I could see Academy and Library combining (more benefit to a caster for the spell levels, but being able to have higher research is also handy for others --- getting to elite caravels took a lot of actions and resources, and dramatically helped that I had a library card to Rhyel's Library V for the +5 bonus).

[JB - Jana Boulderbrew]

Maybe combine library, alchemy lab, and academy into a single university for priest/wizard:

+1 research per level
1 potion per level
recruit Lt at level of university

[MS - Meaghan Smith]

Schools and Gymnasium - while I like the effect, rarely did anyone charge (or if they did it was easy to find someone else who did not or could cut a deal for going). Regents sending their children to school or gymnasium should have to pay a cost. It needn't be to the owner, but it should be .5 GB or so per person sent per year. This would reflect travel expenses, security (no one's kids/heirs would be without some form of retinue/security team), and any supplies needed.

[JB - Jana Boulderbrew]

Schools and Gymnasium - while I like the effect, rarely did anyone charge (or if they did it was easy to find someone else who did not or could cut a deal for going). Regents sending their children to school or gymnasium should have to pay a cost. It needn't be to the owner, but it should be .5 GB or so per person sent per year. This would reflect travel expenses, security (no one's kids/heirs would be without some form of retinue/security team), and any supplies needed.

I probably got the rules wrong, but I assumed children needed to stay with their parents until age 15. I never shipped kids off to boarding school and assumed I had to build them myself.

[TH - The Hunt]

I don't think a laboratories should be rolled together with anything else. Potions are very valuable on their own, and if they came as part of a package, that'd generate a surplus of product for a realm that's already clearly doing very well. I also think laboratories should be limited by a linked source holding even if they're built by non-wizard regents. Priests might have the expertise, but potion-making also requires unusual raw materials.

I've always assumed children sent to school in another regent's realm essentially become hostages. That would mean they don't travel back and forth, and the school owner is fully responsible for their safety. I don't think free schooling is a problem, for this reason. The problems would show up when espionage actions were taken targeting the school... or when the school's owner wasn't trustworthy in the first place.

[TH - The Hunt]

I think spy rings are important to keep in play, since they allow a regent to focus intently on a particular target... and allow others to expose that they're doing this. I think it's good to keep them available to all regents, too.

I still think thief regents (not the guilder or bard sub-classes) should receive a free espionage action (but still with the 1 GB cost) each turn. This would let them use their unique (and otherwise unusable) skills to do some information gathering, create random events, or just generally to be a thief, rather than focus on business all the time. Without this, there seems little reason to play a thief instead of some other rogue or spell caster, and those who do are at a big disadvantage, without any particular role in play.

This free action does seem less deserved for multi-class thieves, though. Maybe they wouldn't be able to use it on the same turn a realm spell is cast or a war adventure is performed, to represent that their focus is elsewhere.

If the customs house gives up to 3 free espionage actions per turn, that seems like way too many. If it only gives one free action when that level of building is built, as a one-time thing, that seems unlikely to be worth the 10 GB. The extra trade route benefit, though, is downright dangerous. If two regents had level 2 customs houses, that's 20 GB spent to give them each +5 GB per turn from a trade route. It'd pay for itself quickly, and rapidly spin out of control.

I don't like characters starting at a higher level from going to an academy, but if that's how it works, I think they should receive 1000 XP per academy level rather than simply a higher starting level. This would mean a level 1 Academy produces level 2 Rogues, and a level 5 Academy produces level 4 Rogues, level 3 or 2/2 characters of other classes, or level 3/2 multi-class Rogues. Which seems both more sane and more balanced.

[WB - Water's Blessing]

Mages, when they educate, are almost always portrayed as tutors, with the one exception of the Imperial College of Sorcery. I don't think academies are inherently a "mage" thing. So, thematically, I don't think it's what we should do. Mechanically, I think combined labs/academies would be too powerful. Labs are perfect on their own.

I think 3 bonus actions might be a little too strong. A surfeit of espionage actions can undermine militaries and yet again make guilders central to warfare rather than peripheral. Maybe instead of extra actions (beyond the first) the customs house extends the range? You get a free espionage action with customs house, but can only take it in the province that hosts the house. Each level of house extends the range by one or two provinces (in addition to the bonus trade routes at 2 and 4 or 5, which I like).

So, nine "focus buildings" -- three focused on military capability (training ground, siege works, ship yard); three focused on action enhancement (cathedral/politics, customs house/commerce, academy/research, monolith/magic) ; and two on resource production (lab, "resource extraction" building) -- and just let people pick two with mix and match as they like?