Runesmiths

I've seen some confusion on how Runesmits interacts upkeep reduction so I've done some investigation to clear things up.

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First lets establish what Runesmiths does:

• Reduces research cost of Unit Enchantments by 30%

• Reduces upkeep of Unit Enchantments by 30%

• Shield and Polearms units get +1 rank

Next lets establish the normal rules of upkeep reduction:

• Upkeep reduction reduces both the base upkeep of a unit as well as additional upkeep from enchantments.

• Upkeep reduction has a normal cap of 50% (there are some minor bugged cases where this can be exceeded but I've had trouble tracking down the exact interactions)

Now given this knowledge it may seem like with the 50% upkeep reduction cap that runesmiths has limited value as normal upkeep reduction already affects enchantments. However this is incorrect because of how unit enchantment reduction and unit upkeep reduction interact.

How Unit Enchantment Upkeep reductions work:

• Enchantment upkeep applies to the base upkeep values and reduces them.

• ALL upkeeps are rounded to the nearest whole number, there is no fractional mana/gold costs.

• Unit upkeep reductions apply the the reduced upkeep after it has already been affected by enchantment upkeep. This functionally lets you bypass the 50% upkeep reduction cap of normal unit upkeep reduction.

Due to rounding the 30% enchantment upkeep reduction actually becomes:

Tier	Cost Reduction
T1-T3	50%
T4-T5	33%
T6-T7	25%
T8+	20%

If we combine a 50% capped unit upkeep reduction we get a reduction of enchantment upkeep of:

Tier	Cost Reduction
T1-T3	75%
T4-T5	67%
T6-T7	63%
T8+	60%

Now most unit enchantments are T3 or less so this results in a huge cost saving allowing you to run twice as many enchantments for the same upkeep cost.

TL;DR: Runesmiths lets you ignore the upkeep reduction cap and is super strong as a result.