Valkyrie vs Assasin

[magian]

???? What the?! No, being able to produce troops does not make the site a city. I listed 5 attributes of cities, and the sites I propose possess only one of those attributes. Unit production is only arguably the most important attribute of a city (points towards calculating victory are also quite a big deal).

People are going to be confused by all the new rules? What new rules? They build troops just like a city. That you can't vector to them? Just represent them by an x on the vector map (like a city with maxed out vectors). I'm not seeing what is so hard to grasp here. Compared to most of the features of Warbarons, what we are talking about here is pretty intuitive.

Sure, size 1 cities would be great. But it was you that said they would require a bunch of new graphics. I seem to remember piranha saying that they already had the graphics for the mercenary buildings. Why not put them to good use?

[KGB]

Magican,

???? What the?! No, being able to produce troops does not make the site a city. I listed 5 attributes of cities, and the sites I propose possess only one of those attributes. Unit production is only arguably the most important attribute of a city (points towards calculating victory are also quite a big deal).

You listed the following features of the site that produces units:

1) They would not produce gold.
2) They would have a limited selection of units they could build (maybe just one).
3) It can be razed/pillaged/rebuild. You have to rebuild/buy the production if it's razed/pillaged.
4) They may/may not vector armies to/from them (to be decided).
5) They would only allow 1 stack to defend them.
6) They would not have walls that could be upgraded.

I replied that #1, #2 and #3 are already features of cities. #4 will almost certainly have to be a "yes" for units produced there otherwise they will be useless due to distance from front lines. So really 4 of the 6 things you listed are features of cities.

#5 would by definition become a feature of a 1x1 city.
Thus only #6 would be unique to the site.

So my point again is why have a site that can produce units with these features when the map maker can simply place a city there and get 4 of the 6 features. In my mind there is no good reason to introduce such a building into the game with these features. I'd *much* rather have a 1 stack city (whether it's size 2x2 to use existing graphics or 1x1 as you suggested) than a merc building with the features you've laid out.

Also right now in the stats window one can look at the enemy city count (non-ladder games) and know the amount of units the enemy can produce. These sites would have to now be added or at least counted in the stats window separately to give an idea of the enemy production capacity.

KGB

P.S. If I understood your much earlier comments correctly you want to inject more units into the game. I think there are much better ways to do it than merc buildings. Things like more allies in the ruins when you find allies, mercs that come for hire DLR style, merc/ally rewards for quests etc.

[piranha]

Its true that we have art for buildings that would be fun to put into use.

buildings_big.png (543.38 KiB) Viewed 8952 times

The third building from the left in the middle row was thought to be a building dealing with magic / academy. The building 2 steps to the right was planed to be a building that allow you to buy heroes in a specific city. This was during development of beta4 when you could build stuff in cities.

Another idea I came to think about when you discussed current gold sites. Would it be a fun idea that a gold site starts at say 50% gold generation, and increases say 10% per turn (could increase by 10% even when natural is the owner) and loses 50% when changing owner.
That way you would benefit from keeping your sites safe. Or is that just boring management having to guard your sites from sneaky crows?

About the merc/1 tile city/unit upgrade discussion I'll continue to follow it and see all the pros and cons that you bring up.

KGB: #4 You could allow units to vector away from the site (required feature) but not to the site.
#7 You could change the terrain from city to the terrain they are located on.

[magian]

Thanks Piranha!

Some of those graphics seem quite suitable to me. The central castle would be good for human troops (like heavy cav, inf or crusaders). The tower on the far right top could work for wizards, but so could the funky gold building 3 from the center left. The cave next door looks sinister enough to house some nasty monsters. The circle of stones could looks about right for summoning demons, devils and maybe elementals. The happy trees are obviously elf-infested. Those portals could be on map vector points, or could work for archon summoning.

KGB, you forgot feature 7. Collecting cities is how you win the game (in all but special scenario situations). Also, cities do produce gold, unless a map maker is feeling particularly cruel. People expect them to produce gold. That makes them self-sufficient. They produce the gold to build and upkeep your armies. These sites would rely on external sources of gold.

[KGB]

Piranha,

A lot of those buildings look suspiciously from the Warlords Battlecry series. Not saying they are, but they sure look like it. But you definitely have a *lot* of buildings there. I think they make sense for the plan you originally wanted to use them for: to indicate a city was producing better units (extra strength, move, faster production times, more hits etc). IMHO, producing better units is something the game really needs more than merc buildings injecting more units into the game.

Regarding Gold Sites: I'd hate if my sites started at 50% and took 5 turns to reach 100. On the other hand if you want guards to matter then you could go the Warlords Battlecry route. In that game adding men to resource sites allowed better production (in Battlecry it was a specific non-combat unit). For Warbarons purposes you could let every defender of a gold site increase production by 10%. That way keeping 1 defender there generates +10% gold. I'd still do the -25% production each time it changes hands and require gold spent to repair it.

Regarding feature #7. I've asked for this feature for cities many times. DLR had it and it made cities in forest/swamps/hills etc make way more sense that always being considered not on any terrain.

Magican,

The real question of adding more buildings is the following:

1) More game complexity despite what you think. All the new sites and what they do have to be learned. Many maps already seem full of extra stuff now to me and adding another 4-5 building types (merc buildings, hero buildings, vector points etc) would only make it worse and harder for the game to be learned.
2) Map balance. If you read the forums regularly you know that players already whine a lot about the smallest imbalances on a map. Adding more sites that produce units will only make it worse. I can already see someone complaining that their merc site only made Lt Inf while someone else's made Elves and that wasn't fair. It really puts a lot more on map makers to balance this all out.
3) Potentially lots more units in the game. You think there is not enough. Personally I think there is lots by mid game and often I am managing 150+ armies a turn in 20+ cities and in late game it can be 250 armies and 40 cities. I don't want a ton more places to make men to have to conquer (because you *will* have to conquer them to deny them to the enemy) and prolong games and have more micromanagement. Also more men = more times that cities are full of 32 defenders which means more times the Assassin ends up being too good on defense.
4) Finally there is the question of the AI. Right now it's a very simple AI with simple goals. If you add all these new buildings then the AI has to change to deal with it. It may not matter much now but if the long term goal is to improve the AI then each new building type makes that task that much harder.

I still firmly believe that cities should be the *only* place to produce units. That allows cities to remain the most important resource in the game as they should be. If more units are to come into play they should come by another method. Whether its ruins, quests, random offers like DLR, heroes summoning units like DLR or some other mechanism.

KGB

[Chazar]

KGB's suggestion for money sites increasing their income with defenders seems really bad to me: This requires micromanagement by moving troops to money sites! Ugh!

Piranha's idea is much better, since it is fully automatic. You do not have to worry at all about money sites. Even a beginner who does not guard his money sites at the far back benefits from it. It gives a mild incentive to guard money sites, but it does not make it a big necessity.

Actually, I would propose that money sites start at 100%, but loose 40% for each conquering and regenerate 10%. So the initial loss by conquering from neutral is smaller, but frequent conquering can reduce it to 0 income, but it will slowly grow back. Again, this is all automatic (as well as thematic).

[magian]

KGB,

No, I am not looking to add more units to the game. In my maps, I would use troop producing sites to replace cities in places where I don't want all the defensive attributes of a city.

I really don't see this being a huge hurdle to game balance or player comprehension. Some very popular games have a plethora of locations types (HoMM springs to mind). Compared to the complexity of the current battle bonus system (which I still don't fully understand), troop sites would not be an issue.

And whiners are going to whine. That is what makes them whiners, if they didn't whine they would cease to exist. But, seriously, some of the maps on this site are far from balanced (middle earth springs immediately to mind), and people still seem to enjoy them. I know I do.

[KGB]

Chazar,

KGB's suggestion for money sites increasing their income with defenders seems really bad to me: This requires micromanagement by moving troops to money sites! Ugh!

I didn't think this really required any micromanagement since you got 100% income even if it was empty. Just that you could get bonus income for leaving defenders there. It could be capped at something like +20% for 2 defenders to stop abuse of trying to get +80% income on sites that generate a lot of gold.

Actually, I would propose that money sites start at 100%, but loose 40% for each conquering and regenerate 10%. So the initial loss by conquering from neutral is smaller, but frequent conquering can reduce it to 0 income, but it will slowly grow back. Again, this is all automatic (as well as thematic).

I'm OK with this. But I'd suggest 25% per conquer so that in 3 turns after the initial conquer you are back to 100% income. 40% is a big loss of income. If a crow takes your site and you retake it, you are down to 20% income taking 8 turns to return to 100%. At 25% it would take only 5 turns to fully regenerate if a crow takes and you retake.

This should be easy to implement in .091. If it is, I suggest the average gold amount for sites increase slightly. Right now there are a lot of 8-10 gold sites that are kinda useless and hardly worthy of conquering. It would be nice if the minimum on random maps were 12. Even better would be if the amount of gold for a random site were tied to the distance to the nearest city. The further away, the more gold it gives. Say distance of 1-8 squares would be 8-14 gold, distance 8-15 would be 12-20 gold, distance > 15 would be 20-35 gold.

KGB

[strach]

My solution to the problem of assasins in the city and too weak paladin: give paladin possibility to stack more than 8 units, let's say 12. Let this be his other main skill beside command - 10 skills points for one more slot. This would give them posibility to conquer cities using multiply counters. 12 slots gives you enough space to put an archon, ranger, DK, devil, medusa, siege, and considerable amount of cannon fodder to take over even the strongest citires. That would also increase the use of palladin in the late game - he would be especially dangerous when reached max command and max number of stack slots.

[KGB]

Strach,

Interesting idea. I wouldn't even level the Paladins command. I'd just want him for the +4 stack slots and use a Valk/HL for Leadership. So it might be a bit unbalancing as hero fights would now require a Paladin so you had +4 units.

That said, I suspect it would be *buggy as hell* to implement. For example would 2 Paladins in 1 Stack give +8 slots, 3 +12 slots etc? What happens if you try to remove just the Paladin from the stack leaving 11 units in a stack that should only have 8?

KGB