Scholar
Alert
Support
Combat
Type
Power of Wisdom
Gains Wisdom from Allied Combat
As a sponsor, during combat, use this power to “advise” your leader. Your leader may choose to add or subtract 1 might to your fleet for each point of wisdom you have.
As a sponsor, after winning an encounter, gain 1 wisdom. If you lost the encounter, gain 1 wisdom for each of your committed ships.
Legacy: During combat, fleets with sponsor(s) gain 8 additional might.
Scholars read everything they can find to gain new knowledge, from guides on ship ergonomics to the nutrition facts on name brand cereals. While much of the potpourri they accumulate has amounted to nothing, the sheer volume of it has produced some nuggets of wisdom here and there. The intend to share what they’ve learned with the Cosmos, whether desirable or no.
Sponsor: Combat
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As a sponsor, during combat, you may discharge this flare to add 1 might to your fleet for each of your home bases.
Sponsor: Combat
Super Flare
When gaining wisdom, you may discharge this flare to gain twice as much.
Sponsor: Combat
Modifications
- Original alien is named Sapient. Changed to Sage, keeping the same overall theme.
- Original Sapient gets 2 wisdom per win in a tiny match. Removed this clause for parsimony.
- Original Sapient has no ability to subtract from total, allowing it to compete with Anti-Matter or Loser. Gave leader ability to freely prevent the penalty to prevent sabotage.
- Scholar’s legacy creates a greater incentive to have any number of sponsors, providing a significant bonus if only one side ends up with sponsors. Aliens like Animal and General that attract others to ally with them and aliens that are attractive as allies can both benefit greatly from this legacy. Aliens that work alone like Warpish and Virus may struggle a bit more if their combat powers cannot overcome the difference. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Scholar will naturally want to sponsor as many other aliens as possible. Since Scholar will have the most difficulty winning as the leader, it will be looking to earn many of its foreign bases through foreign wins. If not invited, Scholar may take what it can get.
- Other aliens will need to be careful with how much they invite Scholar. It can be an incredibly valuable asset if you can forge an alliance with it, but Scholar can become encounter-deciding in the late-game if it gains enough wisdom. You don’t want a Scholar to betray you at full power.
- While Scholar can be an incredibly powerful sponsor, it is highly vulnerable when acting as the leader. This can make it incredibly difficult for Scholar to win if it has no allies, in contrast to an alien like Warrior or Warpish that specializes in solo victories.
Development Notes
- Despite Sapient’s legacy status, I opted to change its name to make it a noun instead of an adjective. Specifically, I wanted to use an opposing archetype to the Warrior in fiction. The grizzled old warrior vs. the wizened old scholar. I wanted to tap into the idea from that quote stating that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Warrior learns from his own mistakes and gets stronger. Scholar learns from the mistakes of his allies and gets smarter.
- I considered changing the condition for Scholar gaining more wisdom from losses. In contrast to Warrior gaining more experience from losses, Scholar has to lose more ships in order to gain more wisdom. It makes Scholar a more valuable ally in the early-game before it starts building up power, and it gives Scholar more control over how much wisdom it can gain. I think it makes sense for Scholar’s ability to be slightly more complex than Warrior’s to match the wisdom vs. experience dichotomy. Otherwise, I would just give Scholar the same scaling as Warrior. I had the idea to give Scholar wisdom equal to the number of actors in the encounter, but I find it too random of a bonus and too punishing in the late-game when people need to gang up against Scholar to take it out.
- One question surrounding this power is why Scholar cannot apply its wisdom as a leader. The mechanical answer would be that it crosses over into Warrior’s design space and would be strictly better unless Warrior had a much higher growth rate. Thematically, I think it makes sense that Scholar is unable to analyze the battlefield from the front lines, making it ill-suited as a leader without strong pods. It’s one reason I considered the term “Advisor” for this power, but I prefer the Warrior vs. Scholar archetypal conflict that has stood since ancient times.
- Warrior and Scholar are both aliens that scale differently in the original version of the game in tiny matches.
- I like the flavor of Scholar being able to intelligently utilize its wisdom to counter Loser and Anti-Matter, while Warrior’s power is purely a liability against them.
- With Scholar, I wanted to capture the idea of wisdom developed through accumulation of knowledge, to contrast with existing gifted minds like Mind and Genius. Sage and Tutor were other names I considered for the contrast with Warrior, but I like how Scholar specifically captures the idea of someone well-educated through accumulated knowledge, to contrast with Warrior capturing the idea of someone well-trained in combat through accumulated training. It also fits well with the idea of Scholar not being much of a fighter or leader.