sea creature

[piranha]

I have used the sea serpent a bit and think it might be too annyoing in its current version.
Any thoughts about making it cost move to convert between land and sea so it will only be able to step 1 tile from shore?


I feel it kind of takes out a bit out fun strategy which is to hold certain points to secure a land area from invaders.

It would allow it to attack cities that are just by the water while all others would require 1 more turn.

[KGB]

Piranha,

I agree with that idea. Right now it's possible to move from one side of a river to another in 1 turn with 24 movement. Probably a bit too powerful given it can carry a hero too. I think that 1 square limit is perfect as it makes it just like a regular boat. Can covert into the water, back to land, or attack a coastal city and use all it's movement. Note that moving through swamp next to water should not cause the conversion penalty since both cost only 1.

A few of other things while you are making changes:

1) Now that you are using a base 100 system, I'd suggest changing the city walls so that each level of walls gives 2% defense. So you go from 0-16% (L8) instead of 0,5,10,15. That way each level of walls increases defense and view radius. Leave the upgrade costs as is. Also I'd chance the 2 siege units to reduce the walls by 6 and 12 so they effectively remain the same as they are now.

2) The Archon's bonus of 10 is too weak. It's the 5 turn pinnacle of anti-hero power and it's only a factor of 10. That means a hero can overcome that with 3-4 upgrades. The Archon should at least be a 12 to prevent heroes from over coming it's power too easily. Plus you can later add a 3 turn with a 5 anti-hero bonus like the Pegasi is bascially a 1/2 powered Red Dragon.

3) I still believe the Valkryie is a pointless hero. I'll never take one again. The 4% vs 3% of the Paladin isn't worth taking given the Paladin gets 3% on defense, searches ruins far more effectively etc. Since heroes *still* level too slowly (no XP for capturing cities) 90% of heroes will die at L1. In fact all the heroes are too nerfed in my mind now. They should be back to +5 as they were in Beta3 where I thought heroes were better balanced as even a crappy Pegasi is now more valuable on offense than a Hero! If they go back to +5 and the Valkryie went to +3 more on attack + moved 16 then she *might* have value. Might.

While you are at it, I'd drop all the maximum's on the heroes. Not sure why you are restricting hero move for example to 18. Why not let players decide how much they want as it opens up other possibilities for strategy and tactic's. Same with the hero bonus's, there is no need to cap any of them, just make them more expensive at a certain point if need be.

4) I haven't seen an item list yet. But if Jeremy truly snagged an item that is giving his hero +15 or +20 combat and +20 Assassination (personal, not stack) then the items need a serious overhaul. In general items shouldn't be giving out bonus's that are more than 1 hero level worth of points. A +20 combat bonus is 2 hero levels. That's a VERY powerful item worthy of a L3 ruin. The addition of +20 assassination makes it worth 4 hero levels which is an artifact in a game where you rarely see heroes level up!

KGB

[ams16]

I agree that the sea creature shouldn't be able to attack inland castles immediately. I actually think that it shouldn't be able to attack inland AT ALL. (I would say that you sea creatures can only move in the sea and swamp, and can't move on land at all.)

As for KGB's points:
1) Totally agree.
2) No opinion. Haven't played with it yet.
3) I like the fact that the heroes are less powerful. I'd prefer this to a hero-centric game. Though I don't think there is a need to cap heroes.
4) An item list would be interesting.

[piranha]

Items are overpowered. I will change them. I thought that if you gonna risk your hero in ruin you need a decent award but they are too good at the moment.

KGB any thought on sea creatures not being able to move on land? I'll talk with snotling about it too and see what we think.

About the archon, I think two versions of archon might be a good idea, one cheaper version with low anti-hero bonus and one better.

The valkyrie might be bad compared to the paladin when you buy her but after leveling a bit she will become very good at attacking. That should be useful? Perhaps if she start with slightly higher values.

I will fix so cities give XP too. Any thought sbout how much it should give? Units give 30, 100, 150, 200, 250 depending on turns it takes to build (heroes are considered 1 turn at the moment)

[KGB]

Ams16,

The problem with weak heroes is that the game simply becomes a city grab. Most cities wins because if you get 15 and your opponent gets 20 you are going to be strangled to death by the 5 city advantage making 5 extra men a turn. That in turn means virtually every map must be perfectly mirrored or else someone will be at a disadvantage. I would suggest that will make for a very boring games. The presence of good heroes and especially powerful ones is the only equalizer to having fewer cities/losing a couple of cities.

Right now the Paladin is the only hero that makes sense to take because he gets the huge ruin search advantage (which is all heroes are currently good for), the movement is equal between heroes and the bonus's are so tiny. You are far better off making a Pegasi than using a hero because you'll need a L4 hero to be equal to a Pegasi and a L12 hero to be equal to a Dragon. That's *WAY* underpowered especially since now there can be other units besides Archons to negate some of the heroes bonus's.


Piranha,

Sea Creatures - If they can't move on land, how can they get into the water? LOL. Any you find in neutrals that aren't right next to water are a waste. They were really envisioned as being used to wreak havoc with boats and raid coastal cities. So attacking coastal cities is fine I think. Just land travel really needs to be restricted. How about you reduce their move to 12 but make their water cost 1/2 instead of 1. That way they can move 24 on the water still but will only be able to move 2 squares a turn on land. That makes them very slow and only useful for water/coastal raids.

Archon - Yes. The Pegasi/Red Dragon is the model you want. The Pegasi is basically a 1/2 dragon (3 turns vs 5, 1050 vs 2000 gold, +5 vs +12, 18 vs 24 moves, 5 str vs 9). You want what ever unit to use that same model (you can call it a Demi-Archon if you don't have another unit to take it's place and just color it different like you did with the Green Dragon. But the Crusader would serve here quite nicely as the 3 turn anti-hero unit).

Valkryie - She needs at least a +6 attack to be equal to the Paladin who is always getting +3. You can lower the level up value to +5 so she goes 6/11/16 etc but her initial value of 4 vs 3 isn't worth bothering with her given the Paladin also searches ruins so well. She also needs more base move to use the attack power more often. Even 16 moves makes a difference.

XP - Just give a flat 200 per city. It may seem like a lot but since the XP table goes up rapidly after you get a couple of levels the 200 won't be much XP any more once you pass L4 or so and it will still take 4 neutrals (with 1 turn unit) to get Level 2. As for units, I'd increase the L1 to 50 just to make it all nicely linear. I doubt these numbers will be too much XP and may be too few.

Ruin Re-population - I forgot to talk about this. But in our test game I saw last turn that 2 ruins already re-populated. Either there is an error (all ruins re-populating on a single success) or the re-population chance is too high given at most 4-5 ruins have been searched. I am not sure what the % chance is but I'd suggest it be *really low*. Warlords IV used 1% per turn for each ruin. Seems really low but when 20 ruins are on a map and all are searched it works out to about 19% chance (.99^20) per turn of 1 ruin re-populating and 2% of 2 or more. By the time you get 40 searched ruins on a map you are getting something every couple of turns re-populating (.99^40). That seems about right.

KGB

[kenc80]

I dont understand why we are underpowering the archon. She should be the ultimate hero killer. Slow-ish but deadly to overpowered stacks. Recently I was in a Beta 3 game where my opponent bofa had multiple Level 3 heroes running around and my only chance was to invest and hide a plodding archon. It ended up working and I killed off his heroes with some luck and devils involved as well but why is the archon not still totally negating as it was before?

I am glad to see my favorite unit the mighty pegasi is becoming more revered in B4. All hail the pegasi!

[SnotlinG]

Just uppdated the ruin repopulation code:
After turn 5 its a 50% chance ruin population will be triggered.
If triggered, there is a new chance (number of explored ruins / total number of ruins) that a ruin will be re-populated. This should make it much more rare than previously.
Currently a maximum of 1 ruin per turn can be repopulated

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

Interesting formula since it doesn't matter whether there are 10 or 50 ruins on a map the chance of re-population is the same. Once 50% of the ruins are searched the chance of re-population is 50%*50%=25% (1 every 4 turns) and once 100% are searched the chance is 50% (1 every 2 turns).

Those percentages seem fine to me.

KGB

[ams16]

Is there any way to make it so that sea creatures never show up in land locked castles. I really don't think sea creatures should be able to land travel at ALL.

[SnotlinG]

SeaCreatures currently never exists in Neutral castles.
They can be part of the players starting units though...