Pushback against certain types of runaway success?

[vehementi]

One thing that occurs to me about this is the bandits themselves.  They are meant to be a threat, which makes sense, but often what they actually are is more of a stopper.  The game's basic concept at the heart of everything else is the idea of red VS blue, with you trying to keep both alive and both fighting as much as possible.   But when there's bandits around, it very often ends up being red & blue Vs bandits, with the red and blue armies not clashing very much as a result.   Which also means that buildings arent getting attacked very often, and thus resource generators are not being threatened, AND it also means that its easy to be in a situation where you can safely use your AP points for a few turns to expand, without having to worry too much about the front lines.  The numbers of human units also contribute to this.  The fewer there are, the less chance there is for things to go out of control. There's the soul system, but I still feel like there should be more incentive to produce human units.  That would increase the chaos quite a bit, if the player was encouraged to produce more units than are necessary to take down the bandits.

This is definitely what I was getting at when I said that it's easier to reach score caps with tons of bandits.  red and blue vs bandits is exactly what happens in all of my games.

[Teal_Blue]

Pushback against certain types of runaway success?

Just a thought that has occurred to me, though we may be too invested into the Bandits at this point to change that, but one of the posters recently said that all their games were red and blue against bandits... with the meaning i am assuming meant that it wasn't quite the red vs. blue purity that we thought it would be originally. (whether true or not)

Regarding that... i once played a game, sins of a solar empire to be exact, where the bandits were 'purchaseable' by the factions.

If we were to try to apply this to SC, it might mean, that for XX resources one side or the other might be 'scheduled' by the AI to choose a side and then launch against the other.

As an example, red 'buys' the bandits and launches them against the blues, the bandits attack the blues flying the colors of the red and are counted as red losses when they lose men.

In this way, a certain amount of resources are used by the factions against the other, but not chosen by the player who may have preferred to hoard the resources for other uses.

In those circumstances, what that may mean is taking resources and applying them to other uses 'between' the timer that launches the bandits against one side or the other... in essence a mercenary army for one side or the other that has to be countered by the player. 

This might make building large reserves of resources very difficult if not impossible and also put the emphasis back on red vs. blue in the battles.

p.s. Also in this way, the battles can't rage against a party (bandits) and not throw the game balance between red and blue out of balance. Any faction using the bandits against the other throws the balance out that has to be addressed by the other side, instead of comfortably avoiding the other faction to raise score and keep a certain amount of equilibrium. Which would certainly not be the case if we have the bandits acting on one factions behalf and throwing balance out immediately when doing so. 

-Teal

[nas1m]

Pushback against certain types of runaway success?

Just a thought that has occurred to me, though we may be too invested into the Bandits at this point to change that, but one of the posters recently said that all their games were red and blue against bandits... with the meaning i am assuming meant that it wasn't quite the red vs. blue purity that we thought it would be originally. (whether true or not)

Regarding that... i once played a game, sins of a solar empire to be exact, where the bandits were 'purchaseable' by the factions.

If we were to try to apply this to SC, it might mean, that for XX resources one side or the other might be 'scheduled' by the AI to choose a side and then launch against the other.

As an example, red 'buys' the bandits and launches them against the blues, the bandits attack the blues flying the colors of the red and are counted as red losses when they lose men.

In this way, a certain amount of resources are used by the factions against the other, but not chosen by the player who may have preferred to hoard the resources for other uses.

In those circumstances, what that may mean is taking resources and applying them to other uses 'between' the timer that launches the bandits against one side or the other... in essence a mercenary army for one side or the other that has to be countered by the player. 

This might make building large reserves of resources very difficult if not impossible and also put the emphasis back on red vs. blue in the battles.

p.s. Also in this way, the battles can't rage against a party (bandits) and not throw the game balance between red and blue out of balance. Any faction using the bandits against the other throws the balance out that has to be addressed by the other side, instead of comfortably avoiding the other faction to raise score and keep a certain amount of equilibrium. Which would certainly not be the case if we have the bandits acting on one factions behalf and throwing balance out immediately when doing so. 

-Teal

This is pure genius . Definitely the most interesting approach proposed so far!

[Misery]

Pushback against certain types of runaway success?

Just a thought that has occurred to me, though we may be too invested into the Bandits at this point to change that, but one of the posters recently said that all their games were red and blue against bandits... with the meaning i am assuming meant that it wasn't quite the red vs. blue purity that we thought it would be originally. (whether true or not)

Regarding that... i once played a game, sins of a solar empire to be exact, where the bandits were 'purchaseable' by the factions.

If we were to try to apply this to SC, it might mean, that for XX resources one side or the other might be 'scheduled' by the AI to choose a side and then launch against the other.

As an example, red 'buys' the bandits and launches them against the blues, the bandits attack the blues flying the colors of the red and are counted as red losses when they lose men.

In this way, a certain amount of resources are used by the factions against the other, but not chosen by the player who may have preferred to hoard the resources for other uses.

In those circumstances, what that may mean is taking resources and applying them to other uses 'between' the timer that launches the bandits against one side or the other... in essence a mercenary army for one side or the other that has to be countered by the player. 

This might make building large reserves of resources very difficult if not impossible and also put the emphasis back on red vs. blue in the battles.

p.s. Also in this way, the battles can't rage against a party (bandits) and not throw the game balance between red and blue out of balance. Any faction using the bandits against the other throws the balance out that has to be addressed by the other side, instead of comfortably avoiding the other faction to raise score and keep a certain amount of equilibrium. Which would certainly not be the case if we have the bandits acting on one factions behalf and throwing balance out immediately when doing so. 

-Teal

Hmm.... I dunno.   This one seems a bit arbitrary.

My problems with the idea:

1.  Having the player just really abruptly lose a huge blob of resources is likely never a good idea.  It can work with the woes, because you know way in advance when they're going to do something, and WHAT they're going to do, and they're super-varied.  So it's not like you are having your resources drained every 7 turns by them, over and over and over.

2.  The cost on this would be difficult to balance.   Too low, and it simply wouldnt matter.  Too high, and the game becomes unplayable.  It seems like it'd be a very fine line... and then you throw the RNG on top of it, randomly choosing when to spend.

3.  The only way this would have a real effect is if it bought *alot* of bandits at once.   Like, a whole ton of them.  If there's 10 bandit forts on the map, and the red guys buy 2 of them.... this wont have much meaning.  Red and Blue, including the "new" red guys just grabbed, will STILL be constantly both clashing against the bandit faction.  But, if one side buys too many at once, it might tilt the balance TOO much, suddenly creating a situation that the player cannot deal with, as it takes time to set up new cities for more military production.  Again, woes can do this sort of thing already, but you get lots of preparation time, and the woe is explained to you during that time, and it's not like EVERY woe just spawns like 40 blue guys or something like that.   Furthermore, if it's only a small number of bandits at once, well, any given bandit fort is pretty easily shut down by just dropping a couple of myth units to either destroy it, or just hold the enemy units in place for a couple of turns so you can get siege units over there.  And if your myth guys die there.... you can just drop more.  Bandits mostly become a threat in large numbers.

4. A player with enough resource-producing cities on each side still wont be affected all that much by this.  I've seen that happen with the "resources all gone!" woe;  if you have enough production buildings when that one hits, well, you're back up and going in just a couple of turns, really, unless you have like a gazillion military buildings.

5.  It's really not much different than the new "ally camps", except it sucks resources out and basically turns bandit camps into more ally camps (albeit with different units).  Seems redundant.



That's my thoughts on that, anyway.


Wish I had some suggestions here, but I havent thought of anything yet.

[KDR_11k]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

[Teal_Blue]

Well, regardless of what idea we use, i think we need to address the practice of comfortably ignoring the 'other' faction while hacking at the bandits and raising our score and still leaving the balance of the game seemingly intact.

Anything that takes that into account seems a worthwhile idea to look at.

Have bandits 'count' as blue or red deaths depending on who kills them, thus throwing balance out?
Have bandits automatically throw balance out as their numbers increase (adding to larger faction side)?
Have bandits kills against a faction count as double, so a single red or blue kill is counted as two?
Have 'ruined' parts of cities become havens for bandits? (increasing bandit presence in a game)?
Have larger (say two or more groups) of bandits start a dooms-day timer that has to be countered by the player to prevent a loss of the game to the bandits?
Have larger bandit groups shorten the timer between woes?


There are no doubt any number of ways that the game can recognize an 'out of balance' situation and throw things into a place where the player 'has to' address it, instead of having the game just comfortably allow players to reap score and skate on red and blue numbers being relatively balanced. That just needs to be looked at and someone deciding what addresses that cheese best.

KDR's idea of having prosperous towns get increasingly stronger is an excellent way to increase that imbalance that i think is at the heart of SC. 


-Teal

[KDR_11k]

If the bandits are acting as a free buffer zone of acceptable targets why not just stop spawning them if the civs get too strong? Then you'll have to make the civs fight each other again.

[Teal_Blue]

I'm  not a programmer, but that seems reasonable to me. Chris and company though would be the ones to say if it will work with what they have, or what they plan to put in place. 

[Ashnal]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

I like this idea. One faction starts to usurp the creator's power via a specific building. Then the creator must wrest control back by employing the opposing faction to destroy that building.

The idea of one side or another developing their own technologies and weapons fits with the free will aspect of the game, and creates a challenge that the player has to balance.

[chemical_art]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

This is what I like the most.

For new players, your own (creator) incompetence can cause imbalances. Over time though, even including woes, great creators can keep a balance fairly easily.

The idea of free will somehow causing balance in of itself causing imbalance through scaling power over time sounds appealing for both a balance and lore standpoint.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

I actually love the idea of prosperous cities building world wonders for permanent benefits actually. It reminds me of coming back to Civilization (being a 4x game). World wonders provide a pretty substantial benefit, and only one faction ever gets one. The other factions have to find some other way of balancing it out. It seems pretty much to be a mechanic tailor made for Skyward Collapse. The citizens can start working on a project if undisturbed for a long time and if the town is very prosperous. The project turns out to be a world wonder that inspires a lot of growth for that faction (or some other benefit. All unit production facilities are taken off cooldown and produce one free unit, all quarries produce +1 stone, etc.). It's almost expansion level of content with the potential art to work on, unless it's just sort of kept to tooltips or something. Imagine that, though. World wonders that are kind of kept out of your hands could be interesting, and the people would look to spending excess resources and time working on those... unless you don't give them a chance.

[nas1m]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

I like this idea a lot!

[LordGek]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

As others have stated, likely easier said than done, but would be a very fun twist.

[x4000]

Well, the idea is to keep the factions kinda weak so they don't overpower each other, right? How about letting very prosperous towns get extra strength if left alone too long and greatly boost the power of their own faction? So the game doesn't automatically push against a faction but the balance becomes more and more frail?

E.g. a town that's too prosperous starts building a babel tower. Once that is complete they become able to copy some of the player's abilities and start summoning their own mythologicals (using their side's resources). Or they start inventing better weapons so suddenly you've got rifle units and such appearing on the field that can completely obliterate a regular force of lower tech units. Even further and they start building tanks and planes before ultimately splitting the atom and raining doom upon everybody. So as the tech goes up there's more and more risk of one side getting a tech before the other and just wiping the other side off the map. Of course having a match end in a nuclear exchange might even cause you to win instead of lose but only if it was mutually assured destruction, i.e. you balanced the factions so perfectly that they invented the nuke almost simultaneously.

What was that Ludum Dare game called that inspired Skyward Collapse? With the nuke silos?

As others have stated, likely easier said than done, but would be a very fun twist.

I think that a lot of this is very interesting indeed, and something I want to explore around the time of the second expansion, later in the year.  Right now I think there is enough going on without this; and the game can only absorb so many changes at a time.  And frankly, a lot of the runaway success worries have seemingly been squashed lately with all the balance changes in general.