Developers requesting feedback: near-term changes to mountsains & mythologicals

[Pepisolo]

Well, bear in mind, this is all it would be:

1. New raw resource on the sidebar, labeled "souls."  It shows how many you have, and hovering over it allows you to see how souls are generated and what they are used for.
a. The tooltip explaining just says "1 for every human unit of this faction that dies, 5 for every building of this faction that dies."

2. New option in the direct actions, which lets you place souls like you would other raw resources, just in case you need to.

3. New "souls" resource requirement on the mythological creatures, which shows the amount needed and the brief description of where you get them.

And... that's it.  Pretty simple to me, really.  It even has the bonus of still allowing all-monster play, SO LONG AS you have them destroy enough buildings on each side.

In that case, the implementation doesn't sound too bad at all. Still not completely sold, but I'm not against it either. I guess I'm worried about adding any mechanics that complicate the game unnecessarily -- not saying that this change is not necessary, though. I don't want this game to start becoming very complicated, treading on AIwar's turf so to speak. I think I'm gonna stay neutral on this point as I'm really not sure. Not very helpful, but that's just my current opinion.

[x4000]

In terms of too complicated:
1. Mechanically speaking, no -- I don't want this to ever approach the number of things in AI War.
2. Brainpower-requirements speaking, yes -- I want this to be jut as engaging as AI war at a high level of play.

I don't think that the two will step on one another's toes, as that's something that just has a very different feel between them, and some people will naturally prefer one over the other.  Plus they are different genres.

[Pepisolo]

1. Mechanically speaking, no -- I don't want this to ever approach the number of things in AI War.

This is the area I'm a little worried about. It seems to me at the moment that SC can be picked up and played by a wide range of people, to the extent that I think that it deserves coverage on a site like Jayisgames whereas AIwar, not so much. I wouldn't want this game to lose that appeal. This is why I'm wary of any extra counters/mechanics being added unnecessarily. You already seem to have the intent that this game will not become mechanically complicated, though, so if you think that adding this new souls system will not significantly affect accessibility then you are best positioned to make that call. I won't comment any further on this idea since my opinion is not very strong on it.

[Teal_Blue]

Regarding Changes to Mountains and Mythologicals -

1.  Actually, i had agreed with you on this, but want to change that now, I prefer the way mountains are now. Someone mentioned having a path necessary to the TC, so perhaps that means that i can't wall off a town completely, but still use mountains as a Tower Defense tactic to route the opposition.

2.  Disagree, if Mountains now become 'crossable' then that itself makes that defense vulnerable. Any further lessening of the tile just takes part of the reason for using mountains away, and #1 makes mountains no longer cheesable, which should be sufficient.

3.  Disagree, again, if Barracks and Siege and Trojan Horse are all able to come through Mountain tiles, then any further penalty is really just something too much and should not be considered.

4. Changed again. Now i'm not sure. Just my opinion, but i worry about changing things too much.

That is just how i am seeing things, thanks for listening,
-Teal

[sarudak]

Why not just make mythologicals more costly? Isn't that already there as an intended balancing method? Why add another method before trying to adjust the already existing method to fulfill the intended goal?

Well, that certainly could be done, but that:

1) Makes the early game really hard in terms of using mythologicals.
2) Doesn't address an all-mythologicals approach particularly.
3) Nerfs mythologicals super heavily (or else doesn't really change much).

Some tuning, sure.  But in terms of a fundamental different magnitude of cost, which is what would be needed... I don't think that would work.

Ok but I still think you have options available to fix this problem without adding more mechanics to a game that already feels a bit over-burdened with them. For example what if the AI behavior of human and mythological units was different? Human units might be more inclined to hunt down bandits where mythological units would have a high chance to bee-line to the heathens. This would make building military far more important. It would also make building isolated resource only towns dangerous because if they're blocked off by mountains and a bandit fort spawns by them they're screwed. And it maintains mythological units place as balancing pieces between blue and red. That kind of solution would solve multiple problems without adding non-intuitive arbitrary rules like mythologicals not being able to damage bandit forts.

[Pepisolo]

OK, I guess I lied when I said I wouldn't comment further. This souls idea is very specific to only mythological units. What about the long-term Chaos idea which I thought you might get far more bang for your buck out of. This could also have solved those instances of mythological cheesing as well as helping fix a myriad of other potential problems and potentially even adding a fun factor. Now there is the potential to have this souls resource AND a potential chaos meter? It's all adding to the complexity. Not sure what your plans are going forward though, if a Chaos idea is implemented would the souls idea then be stripped out etc. I'm just wondering if this game over time is mechanically going to become far less accessible than it is now, so I think extra effort should be made to refrain from adding new mechanics/counters etc if at all possible. This souls one seems purely a one trick pony -- it's stopping the mytho cheese, but that's about it.

[madcow]

I liked the idea that (I think I saw somebody suggest) of having mythical units use another resource tied to units killed, I think it was called souls or sacrifices or something.  Perhaps do it as a turn-drain (rather than an upfront cost), and if you can't pay the upkeep for a mythical unit, it turns yellow. Kills by mythical units wouldn't produce souls/sacrifices, though having one killed by human units certainly could.

[LaughingThesaurus]

1. Give some units mountain crosser, make it cost 1 (or just fewer than normal) points to cross mountains when they have that ability.
2. Not into this idea. If units can cross mountains, that's enough of a weakness.
3. I like the increased movement point cost combined with change 1. Any unit (with enough move) can cross mountains, but mountain crossers can cross them much more quickly. That sounds good to me.
4. I don't know. It means you have to throw down mythologicals in order to assist those who have lost the most. I've actually thrown down mythologicals just for the sake of causing chaos. If you do add souls, don't make them a cost for everything mythological, but perhaps for the most defensive mythologicals. Score should be enough incentive to throw down the chaotic mythological units, rather than making players lose units to do so.

[Teal_Blue]

Why not just make mythologicals more costly? Isn't that already there as an intended balancing method? Why add another method before trying to adjust the already existing method to fulfill the intended goal?

Well, that certainly could be done, but that:

1) Makes the early game really hard in terms of using mythologicals.
2) Doesn't address an all-mythologicals approach particularly.
3) Nerfs mythologicals super heavily (or else doesn't really change much).

Some tuning, sure.  But in terms of a fundamental different magnitude of cost, which is what would be needed... I don't think that would work.

Ok but I still think you have options available to fix this problem without adding more mechanics to a game that already feels a bit over-burdened with them. For example what if the AI behavior of human and mythological units was different? Human units might be more inclined to hunt down bandits where mythological units would have a high chance to bee-line to the heathens. This would make building military far more important. It would also make building isolated resource only towns dangerous because if they're blocked off by mountains and a bandit fort spawns by them they're screwed. And it maintains mythological units place as balancing pieces between blue and red. That kind of solution would solve multiple problems without adding non-intuitive arbitrary rules like mythologicals not being able to damage bandit forts.

Wow! I really like this!!  If it is do-able, then i vote for this. 

-Teal

(yeah, i know, i'm easily swayed. But i really like not changing things too much. That is my new mantra. It may not work with all problems, but hopefully its a good yardstick to keep things even as we go along.

[Misery]

Ahaaaaa, another feedback thread.

Okay, let's have a look here:


#1:  That sounds like a fine idea, BUT, you'd have to make sure there was some incentive to use the units that were capable of it.  Otherwise you'd basically just get a reaction of: "Well, why would I want to use this unit?  He'll just bypass my mountain barrier!".   Not to mention that the mountain walkers would have to be very strong, or they'd still simply be no threat against a walled off city/area.   And typically normal, non siege human units arent meant to damage cities.

This though goes along with another issue that I've been aware of, which is:  How do you give the player incentive to use the units with more requirements?   Like the Norse archery ranges, it's easy for someone to plop those down and spam thrower types.... and that's it.   I keep thinking there needs to be a bit more incentive to drop down some of the other things like wells and deer parks or whatever to get the units that want them, instead of just being content with letting these buildings put out just one unit type over and over, which I strongly suspect is what alot of players do.   So.... yeah.   I dont mean to bring up even MORE issues in the feedback thread, hah, but this suddenly reminded me that I'd been meaning to mention this one anyway.  It seems important, particularly if you're doing things like giving some of them mountainwalk or whatever.


#2:  Hm.... having mountains not affect line of sight normally doesnt entirely make sense to me.   It's a bloody mountain;  how does one see past it?   I could see it INCREASING line of sight (and maybe range?) if something is on top of it, but.... yeah, not blocking line of sight is likely just going to seem illogical.   I can see siege units firing OVER it though, maybe.

#3:  That sounds fine.  I assume units could overspend in that way as well, then?  I know attacks work that way but I dunno how it is for movement.


#4:  The soul idea sounds really good!   Getting the human military units to fight is pretty much half the point of the game, so having a resource like this sounds like a great way to entice the player into doing it.   Particularly when they're already at a score gate point.    You could probably do alot of interesting things with this idea;  not just with the myth units, but with other stuff, and it might open up even more once you guys get to the point of doing add-ons and such.   It might indeed solve the problem of players using JUST myth units without any normal army nearby.

I would say, have varying amounts of "soul energy" or whatever depending on the unit.  That bit about differentiating units might come in handy here.   Harder to get units (AKA, the ones that require more resources or more types of resources, or both) could be worth more, enticing the player to try to use them when they can.  These might also be ones that could get mountainwalk or other abilities, to differentiate their function.


And finally, about the issue of complexity:

While I agree that you need to be careful, and at least try to keep things somewhat accessible, I also think that there's only so far you can go with pure accessibility before it starts actually impeding on the design.   You can really only worry about this one so much, particularly with a deep strategy title like this one.  Chances are, alot of the players that are going to really be interested in this game are probably used to alot of complexity in their games as it is.   I think this is one of the appeals of this one.   And really, for all of it's parts, the game seriously is not that hard to learn.   The only part people seem to get a bit stuck on is the production-goods, but that's fine.   Everything else?   Nobody really seems to have too much trouble with.   But yeah, worrying about that one too much is only going to stifle things, and that'd be a shame.    One way or another you're GOING to run into a point, probably sooner rather than later, where the complexity is going to go up no matter what.   Particularly as you get into expansions, or bonus DLC, or whatever.


The trick isnt so much keeping complexity away.... the trick is just making sure that your mechanics make sense (which for the most part they currently do) and are explained well by the game.  If you do this, and also explain them well in your patch notes, and if player questions continue to be promptly answered as so far they have been, then I dont think you'll have any issues.   And in the end, the game will be better for it.




So, that's some of my thoughts on this.... hope it helps.

[Bluddy]

A few more ideas for dealing with mythos and the whole mythos vs troops balance:

- One solution is that bandits could have magician units they'd put out that were very weak against regular units, but could capture and turn mythological units.
- Mythos could lose interest in fighting the enemy, get bored, and walk to random parts of the map. This is an interesting idea because placement is one of their big advantages, but what this idea means is that without placement, they'd be useless. i.e. placement is the only thing that counters their lack of focus.
- Another way to look at it is that mythos already have a disadvantage: they destroy towns. The problem as seen from this perspective is that it's too easy to rebuild towns, since a mytho-dominated strategy requires that you constantly rebuild. If town building costs (especially town centers) went up as you built them, you'd have an incentive to appreciate the scalpel-like troops rather than the hammer that is a mythological creature. This would also give you something to spend your built-up resources on, which is an issue by the mid-game.

[Zeyurn]

I really like the idea of another resource for creating mythological (possibly even god) stuff that you only gain by units of that faction dying.  It keeps the 'you need to save the underdog!' feel because if one side is getting horribly hosed it will have the resource it needs for you to try to give it an edge.

I'd keep most of the other resources the stuff needs still the same though because there needs to be a point where things are so far gone you just lose.

[Misery]

A few more ideas for dealing with mythos and the whole mythos vs troops balance:

- One solution is that bandits could have magician units they'd put out that were very weak against regular units, but could capture and turn mythological units.
- Mythos could lose interest in fighting the enemy, get bored, and walk to random parts of the map. This is an interesting idea because placement is one of their big advantages, but what this idea means is that without placement, they'd be useless. i.e. placement is the only thing that counters their lack of focus.
- Another way to look at it is that mythos already have a disadvantage: they destroy towns. The problem as seen from this perspective is that it's too easy to rebuild towns, since a mytho-dominated strategy requires that you constantly rebuild. If town building costs (especially town centers) went up as you built them, you'd have an incentive to appreciate the scalpel-like troops rather than the hammer that is a mythological creature. This would also give you something to spend your built-up resources on, which is an issue by the mid-game.

I think the issue of increasing costs over time had been brought up before, and ultimately rejected for one reason:  It would make the costs overall harder to learn.    I personally dont think that the player needs to memorize the numbers of every single resource costs, but obviously there will probably be plenty of players that do memorize those numbers, and the moment you start increasing them, things get unnecessarily more difficult.

Not to mention that I think one of the nice points about the citybuilding system is that it does not at all feel like it has any funky arbitrary requirements to it.   If you can see a strategic use for a city that is almost entirely diamond-producing buildings..... you should be able to build it, I think.   There's tons of different tactics with the city stuff and it'd be a shame to see that hampered, or more confuzzling.


That being said, the resource-bloating over the course of the game DOES tend to mean that numerous resources become unimportant in the second half as the player has so many that it just doesnt matter.... that's always been a bit of an issue.

[nas1m]

Ok but I still think you have options available to fix this problem without adding more mechanics to a game that already feels a bit over-burdened with them. For example what if the AI behavior of human and mythological units was different? Human units might be more inclined to hunt down bandits where mythological units would have a high chance to bee-line to the heathens. This would make building military far more important. It would also make building isolated resource only towns dangerous because if they're blocked off by mountains and a bandit fort spawns by them they're screwed. And it maintains mythological units place as balancing pieces between blue and red. That kind of solution would solve multiple problems without adding non-intuitive arbitrary rules like mythologicals not being able to damage bandit forts.

I think this change alone might have a very significant positive impact on how the game plays out.

I played some more yesterday and one of my major troubles during the Age Of Man playing on Hard is to cope with the Bandit keeps - not because I am not able to produce enough of a human military to take care of them, but because they simply won't do it. Instead, they beeline to the opposing faction's city to continuously attack buildings that will take them 30 turns to bring down.

And all the while the Bandit keeps keep on churning out more higher level units which eventually leads to most of my military being obliterated without taking a single Bandit with them... I am only able to break this stalemate later once I got some Myths available.

I cannot emphasize enough how much this annoys me. I mean, some unreliability is totally okay and cool (see the whole free will part etc.). I like this as well. But coming up with a starting build that is able to produce an amount of military that should theoretically be able to cope with the first few Bandit keeps at least partially and then seeing it wasting their time with pointlessly scratching the surface of near impenetrable walls is  - not fun .

Changing the target priorities of human military would be a huge step forward to solve this in my opinion .

[nas1m]

#4:  The soul idea sounds really good!   Getting the human military units to fight is pretty much half the point of the game, so having a resource like this sounds like a great way to entice the player into doing it.   Particularly when they're already at a score gate point.    You could probably do alot of interesting things with this idea;  not just with the myth units, but with other stuff, and it might open up even more once you guys get to the point of doing add-ons and such.   It might indeed solve the problem of players using JUST myth units without any normal army nearby.

And finally, about the issue of complexity:

While I agree that you need to be careful, and at least try to keep things somewhat accessible, I also think that there's only so far you can go with pure accessibility before it starts actually impeding on the design.   You can really only worry about this one so much, particularly with a deep strategy title like this one.  Chances are, alot of the players that are going to really be interested in this game are probably used to alot of complexity in their games as it is.   I think this is one of the appeals of this one.   And really, for all of it's parts, the game seriously is not that hard to learn.   The only part people seem to get a bit stuck on is the production-goods, but that's fine.   Everything else?   Nobody really seems to have too much trouble with.   But yeah, worrying about that one too much is only going to stifle things, and that'd be a shame.    One way or another you're GOING to run into a point, probably sooner rather than later, where the complexity is going to go up no matter what.   Particularly as you get into expansions, or bonus DLC, or whatever.

The trick isnt so much keeping complexity away.... the trick is just making sure that your mechanics make sense (which for the most part they currently do) and are explained well by the game.  If you do this, and also explain them well in your patch notes, and if player questions continue to be promptly answered as so far they have been, then I dont think you'll have any issues.   And in the end, the game will be better for it.

I can only second this. As always Misery managed to find better words than me ...