New Moon needs a nerf

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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I was surprised to see Tsukuyomi’s New Moon go untouched yet again in this patch (ignoring the increased recast cost which is largely irrelevant). This god power was immediately called out as OP the moment it was first described, before Japanese was even released. And still this god power provides astronomical value compared to other first age god powers.

For the purpose of illustration, I’ll compare to Odin’s Great Hunt. Why this comparison? Because both god powers provide a direct resource value which is easily measurable.

Great Hunt provides a replication of huntable animals UP TO a resource value of:

  • Classical: 600
  • Heroic: 1200
  • Mythic: 2100

This food then needs to be gathered, thus it takes time to get the value, and it can potentially be denied.

When used on the Armoury (the obvious choice), New Moon provides an IMMEDIATE value of:

  • Classical: 500
  • Heroic: 1500 (or with Hachiman, 1700+25 favour)
  • Mythic: 3250

This is an immediate return on usage, with no opportunity for denial, and no villager time used. There are also other good options (Castle or Temple) depending on minor god choices.

Clearly there can be no dispute that this is inherently unfair. Some possible nerf ideas:

  • Technologies take a long time to finish researching, instead of researching almost instantly
  • New Moon can only be used on one technology at a time (with a small favour recast cost)
  • New Moon can only be used on certain buildings (exclude high value buildings)
  • Japanese get two different buildings for Armoury technologies, thus indirectly nerfing New Moon

Anyone else have good nerf ideas?

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While i agree New moon is very good, there are quite the gaps in this comparison.

You can recast great Hunt a lot faster than New moon. If you are going by Just 1 use then sure.

God powers like prosperity ir rain grant you a lot more resources. But you are picking the god power that brings less value while ignoring its advantages. Great Hunt also grant favor thou New moon grants bushido.

Even in your comparison your “obvious” choice in armory is less value in classic age, where great Hunt is gonna be used and you can get 1-2 more casts before japan gets 125 favor for the second use.

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I should clarify I’m talking about reasonably high level 1v1 play, because that’s where balance is most relevant. In this case, Great Hunt is rarely recast, and if so it’s more likely to be done early before the hunt runs out on the map, thus getting less value.

At this level of play the meta is very well established for New Moon, which is to get it on Heroic age armoury upgrades in most situations.

The comparisons to Rain and Prosperity are a lot tougher, as these have various moving parts, such as investing in farms, or which upgrades you have, or whether you use the Pharaoh. But without having crunched the numbers, I can at least say you would need an astronomical number of villagers on farms, or a lot of recasts, to get anywhere near the food return from Rain, which is admittedly a mediocre god power these days. As for Prosperity, I won’t argue that it’s not an overperforming god power, but still would take a lot of villagers or at least one recast to get a similar return as New Moon.

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Good, lets talk on that level

Indeed. Because theres more value early on for the Hunt and later on the favor is rather spend else where. That speaks more about the weakness of value in recasting great Hunt compared to other uses of favor rather than anything about New moon.

If your post was that great Hunt rarely sees recasting then go for it but you are not. You are simply using it for the numerical resource value it gives while completely avoiding the fact that if you were to recast it you would get more resources than New moon (Granted needing villagers and being less instant)

Its not that established on armory thou since tengu were a very potent fast heroic timing with New moon on temple.

Theres also more things at play, like the classic age tech that grants a lot of gold and how strong tengu were.

True, yet they still grant significant more value, so theres a tradeoff, its not as instant, its Cheaper to re cast and requieres preparation.

Both of this are wrong. Rain is worse than prosperity, and you would need less than the 100 favor investment to get more than similar value in each of the ages wirh normal gameplay (minus archaic for obvious reasons). Plus having the added benefit that its always value. Unlike New moon or prosperity since you can run out of gold mines or upgrades.

For prosperity even currently you get more than enough resource value wirh its 2 current uses. While aging up to classic age and while aging up to heroic. Even then the recast is half of current New moon and willl def give you.

To me its not the value it gives of researched resources saved but the fast timings it allows. If anything you could reduce the research speed so its not instant but theres no need to butcher it to only affecting one tech, destroying strategic variety by limiting where you can use it or messing the other 2 gods with making New Buildings for their upgrades.

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You are trying to prove the right point but with the wrong argument.

New moon isn’t necessarily OP in terms of absolute resource value, but it is the opportunity value it provides that makes it OP. Being able to get the armory upgrades for free in less than 10 seconds or spawn several MU provides great strategic value that cannot be simply measured in terms of resources.

Also prosperity absolute values are offset by the extreme gold usage of eggy.

3 Likes
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My post is about how New Moon provides a disproportionate value when considered within the context of actual gameplay. I simply chose Great Hunt because it’s an easy comparison.

Recasting is irrelevant in most cases because it’s rarely done other than for god powers that are cheap and intended to be recast (e.g. Valor), or for those that provide significant value in an actual battle (e.g. Restoration).

That said, one use for recast costs is to get an idea of the value at which the developers believe a god power to be. Given New Moon is now the second highest first age god power recast cost (and even higher than most Classical age god powers), only behind Gullinbursti, it says a lot.

The temple usage of New Moon is for sure another very good option, but you only reinforce my point. The most common god path for Tsukuyomi is Inari Okami → Hachiman. For all temple technologies combined, that’s 1280+132 favour in Heroic. I don’t recall the old rule of thumb for resource-to-favour conversion, but I’m pretty sure it was at least 10-to-1. So if 132 favour is worth 1320 resources, that’s a huge whack of instant value from New Moon.

With all due respect, you seem insistent on the value of recasting these god powers, like Great Hunt, Rain, Prosperity. The reality is this is rarely done in practise. But what is done in practise is Tsukuyomi dominating the rankings, and that dominance is heavily aided by the undue power of a one-off usage of New Moon. It needs to be nerfed. What that nerf looks like could be anything though. I was just throwing out some ideas for consideration. Perhaps the devs could just throw it out and do something completely different with the god power. Do you have any suggestions?

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I think both points are pertinent actually. It’s the combination of resource value + time invested. Hence why I mentioned in my original post that Great Hunt “food then needs to be gathered, thus it takes time to get the value, and it can potentially be denied”, while New Moon “is an immediate return on usage, with no opportunity for denial, and no villager time used”.

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You choose a god power to take advantage of it not being recasted and not being as strong. You could have take lire or another like liure, Rain or prosperity.

When you want to assign full value to god power given recast is very meaningful. Otherwise its pretty dumb comparing things like kusanagi or shockwave to gullen. Theres a lot of value and importance in how value you get on the free usage, but also on the recast cost. Its one of the key mechanic of retold and its why cost changes constantly change when people discover how strong things are. It was for example what lead to the New moon recast cost increase, which was something that did take place.

If you only measure things by their 1 usage, specially for “value given” you are gonna crippled the smaller scale god powers that bring their value in their constant use. Just savuing 1 unit with solar shield is not much. But having that every fight is quite strong. The added uses do count.

Its is good value. Buy the issue again is not the amount of resources but the speed at which you get it.

This is false thou New moon is recasted with some frequency. Def more than great Hunt for example. Specially in games where tsukuyomi is either bound to used it before its ideal timing or as part of a mythic timing with the New free usage (3 cast total).

I did. Increase research time. Could also be a count down and when it finishes it grants all available techs instantly

You focusing on only the value aspects which is not whats Best of New moon. How fast it allows timings is the issue, specially with the temple play in which you also blitz 2-3 tengu that get the increased research speed.

Just on value its good but its not as potente as you are making it out to be. The key issue most competitive players have landed at in the balance discord is the fast timings it gives. Since value wise theres higher bountys.

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Lol this is a confusing chat :joy: So far it kinda sounds like you’ve been disagreeing that New Moon is OP, but now I’m not sure. I should point out, as I did to the other person, that I did in fact mention the speed factor in my original post, and my first suggestion in the list I put up was to slow down the pace of researches. You were the one that fixated on the direct value comparison.

I don’t want to rehash the Rain and Prosperity stuff. I did in fact choose Great Hunt simply because it was the easiest direct comparison in terms of resource value provided. That choice wasn’t done with any nefarious intentions, as you are suggesting.

I also don’t understand your determination to factor in recast cost for god powers that are rarely recast in actual games. Balance should be around how the game is actually played, not how it hypothetically could be played if people felt like it. In Boit’s tournament (in which I’m admittedly running a little behind) so far I’ve only seen New Moon recast once, despite Tsukuyomi being the most used god. I don’t recall seeing Great Hunt recast at all. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for recast cost, because there is, but that should be figured out after the initial usage has been appropriately balanced.

Lure is one I forgot about. It’s another tricky one because Lure has the added benefit of being a dropsite, but the drawback of being very slow to bring in hunt, and unreliable in how much it brings in (whereas Great Hunt is a straightforward one-and-done type thing). There is also the potential to deny the hunt being lured in. Lure has the potential to bring in:

  • Classical: 1300+3 chickens
  • Heroic: 1500+6 chickens
  • Mythic: 1900+10 chickens

No doubt the potential in Classical age is really strong. After that there’s a massive dropoff in potential value, and more importantly, far less likelihood of getting anywhere near that value because most of the hunt will be gone anyway. What’s interesting is the dropoff in value as you age up when compared to New Moon. Yet again, New Moon offers way too much value in later ages for a first age god power.

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To summarize i agree its a strong god power, i find the vacum “value” argument weird and bad since theres better god powers in that sense, specially when you account for recast which like it or not is a mechanic in retold. Rather woudl favor a nerfe to adress how quick it brings the techs and the fact that it affects military production as well like one of the options you proposed.

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I dunno what the devs were smoking when they thought instant expensive techs coming in wasn’t enough, so they added the production boost lol.

Actually I was thinking in the shower that if you make the techs take a long time to come in, it presents an opportunity to destroy the building and deny the upgrades, which is a good thing. That would encourage people to use New Moon earlier. (It’s just my own personal opinion that the game should be designed at least to some degree so that god powers should be used when they are available, and not held onto for half the game).

It would be even better if there was a visible icon or something over the building, so the opponent can see where the free techs are coming in. At least that provides some counterplay to such a strong god power.

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You can use New moon on tower to defend but yea thats def not the desired use.

Its your opinion and sure, have it, but that would mean to change a lot of god powers. Things like guillen or Cease fire or sentinel are reactive. You dont need them unless you are facing danger. Should freyr use it always on archaic/classic age? Should Ra make farms in archaic for rain?

Should thor create his gold mine in archaic? Nuwa its clay paesants in archaic always?

God powers also scale with age and that alone should be a valid reason to make greedier plays and wait on them a bit to get more value.

I do agree with allowing counter play for New moon besides guess work with deco. like you can disrupt prosperity by trying to idle vills, etc.

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The best way to nerf new moon, if it even needs a nerf, is to make the techs come in slower.

You can’t just look at two godpowers in a vacuum, you can’t just compare new moon with great hunt and say that new moon provides more value. Great hunt is usually used on the first hunt pack, which means that it’ll provide value right away, its effect will snowball you into the midgame. Same with prosperity, you use prosperity to go for a quick 3 tc, or you use it to get a bunch of priests out while building a 2nd tc. Rain can provide you with an insane amount of food lategame and it has a low recast cost.

You can cast new moon on the tower, we see new moon cast on the watermill, you can use it on your stable, your armory and your temple. These are all viable options that we’ve seen on a high level. You speak about high level 1v1’s but then you say prosperity is never recast, rain is never recast and new moon is never recast which is simply not true, all these things happen.

You can’t look at new moon in a vacuum, the god revolves around having it. Most of the bonuses revolve around techs. He doesn’t have cheaper eco upgrades, he doesn’t have 0 cost buildings, he can’t recast solar shield a bunch or kusanagi.

After the tengu nerf tsuku is now sitting at a solid 50% winrate, let’s not nerf the thing that makes him fun please.

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To be clear, I haven’t at any point said those god powers are never recast. I said they’re rarely recast, and that is factually true. If you disagree, it’s time you provide some evidence. I’m sure you’ve been watching Boit’s tournament, as I have. Please point to the plethora of games where these god powers are being recast in this tournament, or stop spreading misinformation.

It is true that you need to look at other bonuses of the god to put context around what a god power is actually worth. The only problem is that’s kinda difficult to work out because there are a lot of moving pieces, and I’m not really here to do the complicated analysis when I think it’s bleeding obvious that New Moon is broken. But just for your amusement, to set out some sort of comparative analysis, I checked how Amaterasu compares with the free gold from Bushido. I think this is the fairest comparison I can get, because both are Japanese gods, and Solar Shield is kinda beaten out by the attack boost that Tsukuyomi gets from Bushido.

I checked one of my own games, and two recent games from Boit’s tournament. From what I can tell, very roughly, it takes Amaterasu 10 minutes to reach Tier 2, and another 5 minutes to reach Tier 3. The three games I checked all finished in 20 minutes or less with Tier 4 never being reached. By these numbers, that comes out to 1500 gold in a 20 minute game, which is the average game length in Retold. Compare that to 1500 resources from the Armoury in Heroic age for Tsukuyomi, and even more from the Temple, and he is coming out ahead of Amaterasu in most games.

As for New Moon’s uses, the meta has clearly settled on using it on Heroic age Armoury or Temple. Other uses have generally fallen out of favour. I mean sure, some people might feel like being creative, but the vast majority of people are seeking that max value. Ironically, because the value is so good, it puts people off using it in the other ways you mentioned, because that just feels like a waste. Nerfing New Moon in some way will hopefully encourage more variety.

It may very well be that slowing down the research time is the best solution, but the more ideas we put forward, the more likely the devs settle on a good solution that allows New Moon to provide lots of variety in its uses.

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It could be reworked that when you use it you automatically queue the upgrades for free but they take 25% longer to research than when paying full price. If the building is destroyed during this time, you lose the bonus but there is no indication that the gp was used.

This way, you keep the resource value but remove the timing impact.