Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

[Hearteater]

I almost feel like there should be a mechanic to discourage a player from certain really beneficial moves.  Call it Faith maybe and doing certain actions around a town reduces Faith from its default 100%.  So doing stuff like Smiting their building might lower the Faith of that town, even if your actions are really in their best interest (say to Smith+Replace).  Some actions, such as helping one town might give them Faith, but lower the Faith of another town.  I'm not sure what the effect of hitting 0% Faith.  Maybe it causes units/chapmen to abandon the field, or maybe just flips them to Bandits.

[madcow]

I haven't gotten far enough into the game to tell, are moonstone/sunstone shared regardless of faction?  That's what I meant by universal. If you use a token on one side, if the other is just as built up it could do something similar.

Didn't realize there was a godly limit though!  I'll hold off on too much about that idea until I can actually play around with those late game things.  I do like the idea of randomness in what you have access to on either side as a way of adding more game bias though.

[Mick]

It sounds like faith would essentially be a different type of resource. If the really beneficial stuff is too easy to do, perhaps it could just be more expensive in some other way.

[Greywolf22]

Just to chime in a bit...I like the idea of victory points myself (seems less arbitrary then simply a score), and a number of board games use them as a means of determing an outcome of a game.  I think it will all be in the execution and how they are balanced across the game as a whole.  I also think that the "balance" of how VP are used will most likely change somewhat even once they are implemented.

I think having a good base for how they will be used is key, but like all things I imagine it will somewhat morph a bit as people use them.  I think that's the nature of things, even board games occasionally release enhancement packs to help the dynamic of victory points, luckily in a digital game these can be tweaked if needed.

I think it's hard to say how well or not they will work without giving them a shot first.

[Professor Paul1290]

Unless I'm missing something, aside from maybe being required to win (maybe), it sounds like VPs are pretty much scoring with less finicky granularity.

Do they need to be called Victory Points? It sounds like most of the actions mentioned so far would be the sort of things that would suggest to a faction that "The Creator is on your side", so maybe just for theme they could be called "Belief Points" or something similar.

I must admit this VP system while it seems OK, doesn't float my boat to nearly the same extent as an overall Carnageometer.

I don't see much reason why this couldn't also act as a "Carnageometer" (I kind of like that term by the way). It just wouldn't be as fine-grain.

Getting VP for a faction taking a town sounds pretty reasonable.

Perhaps you could also get VPs for things like keeping unit production going or for having units in combat.

I guess to pull a rough example out of my ass (with a little thematic justification):
+1 VP every 10 - (number of unit types being consistently produced) with a minimum of 1 turns in a row a town is producing units. (factions like seeing their army grow)
+1 VP per connected building when an opposing town center is taken. (factions like taking the other faction's stuff, especially big stuff)
+1 VP every 5 turns where a faction kills at least 1 opposing unit. (factions like seeing their soldiers fight effectively)
+1 VP every 3 turns in a row where a faction has the majority of kills. (factions like winning)

(Yea this is probably rubbish as I just pulled it out of nowhere, but you get the idea.)

[chemical_art]

Hearing the term vp.does help a lot for.me actually. silly i know.

Calling it faith, or tribute, etc with.the idea that these acts by poins bring on the strength of.monsters and such actually helps a lot.

Especially if in the end these acts of.faith. feed the gods like in clash of.the.titqns and eventually everyobe feeds you.


Will try to explore more later.

[tigersfan]

Calling them something else is definitely on the table. I think that what they are called is far less important than their function at this point.

[Pepisolo]

Unless I'm missing something, aside from maybe being required to win (maybe), it sounds like VPs are pretty much scoring with less finicky
granularity.

Actually, you raise a decent point here. I think there's still a bit of confusion (at least in my mind) as to exactly what these Victory Points are supposed
to be and how they differ from having a regular scoreboard.

"Use a really strong god token? 3 VPs (get score increase.. what's the difference)! Get an enlightened city? 1 (score increase)! Each additional town? 1VP
(score increase)! Lose a town to the bandits? -3VPs (score decrease)!"

Seems like a circuitous route to coming up with a simpler scoring system. If you want to make a much simpler scoring system, then... just make a simpler
scoring system. No need to transform it into this VP concept.

Do you really need an extra winning condition on top of Edicts? Are we now going to have further sub-options at game creation? For example, choose edict,
then choose VP target (difficulty). Seems a lot more complicated than just having a simple scoreboard. I'm really not big on these layers of conditions.
Seems like a much more artificial way to strong-arm the player into playing and replaying.

Really, I don't see why you can't just start the whole scoring system from scratch, but simplify it a bit. You're going to have to start this VP from scratch, anyway.

[Hearteater]

Victory Points end the game when X are acquired.  Score never ends the game.  With Victory Points, not winning the game in some manner (Victory Points or completing special Edict) before you finish all the turns means you lose.  With a score, finishing all the turns without losing means you win.    That's the difference.

[Pepisolo]

Victory Points end the game when X are acquired.  Score never ends the game.  With Victory Points, not winning the game in some manner (Victory Points or completing special Edict) before you finish all the turns means you lose.  With a score, finishing all the turns without losing means you win.    That's the difference.

So you're saying VP's are exactly the same as having a scoreboard then, except with an extra winning condition attached. If so, then this is just a slightly more complicated version of having a scoreboard -- which was apparently too time consuming to develop. Hence, what's the point? I thought the goal was to reduce development time...

[chemical_art]

Victory Points end the game when X are acquired.  Score never ends the game.  With Victory Points, not winning the game in some manner (Victory Points or completing special Edict) before you finish all the turns means you lose.  With a score, finishing all the turns without losing means you win.    That's the difference.

So you're saying VP's are exactly the same as having a scoreboard then, except with an extra winning condition attached. If so, then this is just a slightly more complicated version of having a scoreboard -- which was apparently too time consuming to develop. Hence, what's the point? I thought the goal was to reduce development time...

Second

[Hearteater]

No, I'm not saying that at all.  You don't get VP for anything that isn't part of winning and ending the game.  So you likely won't get points for stuff like units dying.  VPs are restricted to just the key things you want people to accomplish.  Score applies to anything interesting, or difficult, or any of a number of other criteria.  They are very easy to balance compared to making a score that isn't just completely random nonsense.

VPs also do not prevent a score from getting added later.  In short, VPs take much less time to implement because they basically break down to: "Is this a major objective we want the player to accomplish to win the game?  Yes: It's worth 1 VP.  No: It isn't worth any VP."  Just picking score values for everything can take 8+ man-hours.  When your game is within weeks of release, spending a full work-day just coming up with reasonable score values (which will all change later when the game is better balanced) is just not justifiable.  When the game is better established, sure.  But not in crunch prior to release.

[windgen]

I missed the alpha signups, so I haven't actually played the game yet.  But the best comment in this thread so far was this:

As the edicts are written now, I can see many players simply ignoring much of the game's content because it hurts you more than it helps. VPs are a way to counterbalance that. If you focus on nothing but VPs, you will lose by genocide. If you focus only on preventing genocide, then you won't get enough VPs. Harder difficulties can make that balance more razor thin.

One of this game's strong points (at least from what I've read) is that the game forces you to mess yourself up, and you're rewarded more the closer you get to making yourself lose.  Exactly what mechanic accomplishes this -- whether you use the old scoring system, the new victory point system, or something else entirely -- isn't as important as having something to fill the role.

[chemical_art]

If VPs were meant to do things the player does to win, why are.they neded at all?

[Pepisolo]

No, I'm not saying that at all.

Then you should be more careful when you make narrow statements like "That's the difference" when somebody questions what the differences actually are.