Ahem, don't put words in my digital mouth. Easy healing magic would break the game, but with some form of proper balance it would be just another strategic choice.
Thats what I said.
Similar, maybe, but the way you phrased it made it sound like you thought I thought healing magic would unbalance the game, no ifs ands or buts.
Yeah, it is. Easy steel isn't certain, nor is it a guarantee of anything. If healing magic with no consequences was added, it would be both certain and a guarantee of "Send me your delimbed, your broken-boned, your dying. Everything will be okay."
Neither is healing magic. You can near guarentee easy steel. You cannot even guarentee a world will generate with healing magic.
First off: How often is the flux reader on the embark finder accurate, and how often do you find iron ore? Second off, if you can get a healer, and the game is much easier due to it, the late game will be drastically changed. I don't think that all endgames should be the same by any means, but if it's a difference between one major industry fed by a couple others being the difference between life and death for dozens of dwarves and only losing dwarves who don't make it to a cleric in time...that's not the good kind of difference.
if there was a healer out in the battlefield, all 4 could possibly have been saved
No that would have just saved an additional Dwarf.
You know a few things dwarves often die of? Blood loss and suffocation. Know what healing magic could save dwarves from if it could save them before those killed the dwarves? Arrows, hammers, spears...pretty much everything short of an axe or a lightsaber.
Randomly getting a world with healing magic or not is not difficulty, it's randomness
It is randomness yes, in the sense that it randomly generated an entire world in which healing magic exists.
If a world is generated with "Healing magic" then it is part of the world. It is as part of the world as everything else is.
Hunky-dory. That's like saying a game is balanced because everyone has a chance to be a 20th level wizard and not the 1st level peasant everyone else is.
What I'm suggesting is that healing magic would of course make the game easier
Yes but how much easier? certainly not "Easy Steel" easier. Not Trap maniac easier (even after it is fixed).
Where exactly does this "Easier" lie?
It depends.
We're working on deciding how to make it not break the game to the point where healing magic is the new danger room.
but it does at least make the game a little harder, in that it's got a very high value, attracting more invaders
The best kind of resource would be one that is greater then its worth.
Pronoun issues. Greater than what's worth?
It would be fun to have magic be randomly generated, and each time with different drawbacks and benefits
It really will be.
It is why I am trying to deal with balance for balance sake shoving its way into this simulation game.
More like "Balance for fun's sake."
Ok then, so the enemies get it too. So I guess you're agreeing with me?
No I am definately not agreeing with you there. I know enemies will get it too in that situation however that wouldn't be a "balance" so to speak because the value of healing for you is much greater then that for the enemy.
How many times would you really care if a dangerous enemy goes back to heal at base? never.
How many times does a truely dangerous enemy get away after doing real damage? never.
In otherwords it is a non-balance as you define it. It is like Dungeons and dragons where things like "Once per day" abilities are different for enemies as they are for you. An enemy doesn't have to preserve their power for future challenges that day and thus they are free to use it nonstop.
In this case the issue is that you either lose or you do not lose. If you lose then healing didn't help. If you do not lose then healing you do not care about. Enemies do not whittle down and they do not lose competence and the few units that do not repopulate are the kind that either die or do not die. Thus enemy assaults are no tougher with healing magic as they are without healing magic.
Think of it this way. Would a goblin siege be tougher knowing that right on the side of the map there is a small army of Legendary Surgeons and antisceptic scrubs? Of course not.
Of course, it's different if the medics healed the greenskins in the field...just as bad, but in the opposite direction. Goblins can heal themselves in combat? Great, now I need to keep a healer around so I can too. Both sides are broken =/= balance. It certainly =/= Fun.