Version 0.9 launch info

[Nighthawk]

Yay, guinea pig! haha...

You were right about the notification, I forgot which e-mail address I was using for Warbarons.

I was really looking forward to the game, unfortunately, my opponent didn't make his/her first turn.

[Blackadder]

Drastic change to Paladin seems too much. Why not meet in the middle and make it 13?
Also, flyers having to pay 2 movement points, and thus fall behind a stack on a road is bothersome. Why was there a need to do that?

[KGB]

Also, flyers having to pay 2 movement points, and thus fall behind a stack on a road is bothersome. Why was there a need to do that?

Balance reasons. Flyers had no downside and all upside given: they flew to avoid terrain, they could hide out on mountains/ridges/water and not be attacked, they had the best movement rates in the game so they could not be caught by anything but Wizards. Almost no one made powerful ground units, just 1 turn city defenders and fliers. The added bonus is that there are FAR fewer crow attacks possible now on turns 1-3 when players have no armies so a lot of maps are much more playable.

Now you must send fliers out separately on a direct path to where they are going and have them link up with stacks using road movement or else send them out a turn earlier so they get a head start.

KGB

[TheVic]

Instead of 2 moves / square, halve flyers movement point and make it 1 point / square as the sky always a good path (i.e, same as road). At-least until different weather is introduced... To compensate that then city movement bonus cost is lost, make city movement free or add one extra movement point again.

The current +2 bonus was much smaller then losing road and Dwarf/Sandworm bonus. Adding some more movements and visibility would help the problem. And that movement bonuses is less effective for flyers now is very important for the discussion.

Changing will make flyers movement be the limiting factor when riding them with a hero, instead of hero movement, just as it should be when flying. Reduce all hero movement by 2 to compensate that they can fly cheaper.

Running along a road and see the flyers be left far behind feels strange, but is ok.
Even a "hastened" Dwarf lead army outrun a flying army! (8+2+2 movement = 24 flying points)
Whenever you bless units (+2 speed), then the problem is enhanced as flyers only get half the bonus on roads...

[KGB]

Instead of 2 moves / square, halve flyers movement point and make it 1 point / square as the sky always a good path (i.e, same as road). At-least until different weather is introduced... To compensate that then city movement bonus cost is lost, make city movement free or add one extra movement point again.

How does this help? Half movement for fliers and only paying 1 cost = exact same number of squares as they move now at 2 points per square. Where it would really be noticeable is that ridges/mountains that cost 4 would suddenly be almost impossible for fliers to move across so that would have to change as well.

The current +2 bonus was much smaller then losing road and Dwarf/Sandworm bonus. Adding some more movements and visibility would help the problem. And that movement bonuses is less effective for flyers now is very important for the discussion.

Sure but the number of times you can use the Sandworm/Dwarf bonus is very few. It's very map specific and you can just choose to not play maps with lots of that terrain if you don't like the fact they don't get that bonus. I don't consider this to be important at all given fliers got +1 square of movement at all other times.

Also this change affects all players equally so it's not like one player suffers here while another one doesn't. Instead what has happened is that a lot of units that were never being used are suddenly viable because they offer something fliers don't on maps with lots of roads (or sand/hill terrain if Sandworms/Dwarves are available).

KGB

[magian]

Making flyers pay a movecost of one instead of two, and halving their movement, would allow them to get more benefit from movement temples and stack movement boosts. Mountain movement cost would have to be reduced to 2.

My only concern about a change like this would be the effect on heroes riding flyers.

[KGB]

Magican,

More movement (2 squares instead of 1) when blessing is an excellent reason *not* to switch to that model as that would be a huge difference compared to all other units only getting 1 more square (and many times not even 1 square if they don't have terrain movement bonus). Plus if you change Mountain cost to 2 then 1 bless = 1 move over mountains where right now it equals 1/2 move over mountains. Then as you noted there is the change to heroes now only using 1 movement instead of 2.

Personally I think the current model is much superior to the old one. I can't see any reason to go back or to grant fliers more movement than they already have. Especially since I am seeing many more other units now in play than I did before. On many maps (Battlefield, Midgard, Salmon Run, Midieval Britain, High Seas Combat, Strongholds, Narcissus, Ulumnya, Hibbletops, Colorful Snowflake, Pitfall, Barbarian Coast) there are either no or virtually no roads. On those maps fliers are actually better now than they were due to the +2 movement they got. On the rest of the maps you know that roads play a big influence and so you should be buying your production accordingly and using your fliers differently than before.

KGB

[smursh]

I also like the new system. Please note that most flyers already have very high movement. This gives non-flyers movement advantage on roads/favorable terrain, but that is no different than a dwarf moving fast in hills compared to a lt. calv. It makes terrain more relevant for overall movement since fewer people take flying units.