Deployment Changes

The deployment changes we have been testing in Experimental difficulty are now live as the default mode.

Thanks to everybody who helped test this mode and provided feedback.

We’ll continue to monitor its impact on the game over the coming weeks.

Will the initial zombie spawning rates be reduced to balance players not being able to grab initial settlements as quickly? Or are you purposely increasing the difficulty of the game overall?

I dont think a slight increase in difficulty will hurt too much.

Most people dont have too much trouble in Normal difficulty, and I would not mind at all if Nightmare mode became a game you were not intended to win, rather the best players stay alive the longest!

I disagree for several reasons:

  • The zombies win by overwhelming whatever defenses the players hastily set up. The players win by striking out and taking risks to curb the zombie hordes. If players are no longer expected to win Nightmare, they really don’t have much reason to strike out & take risks to burn corpses, removing a vital component of the gameplay in favor of turtling.
  • Players will put less effort into their game if they know they are intended to lose.
  • If the players lose the game, they get eliminated one-by-one. By the end, there is only 1-2 players holding out for several days, which utterly kills the game’s core gameplay: Cooperation. (Granted, this could be mitigated by ending the match the moment one player is completely eliminated.)

I’m excited to see what happens on higher difficulties.

Will Spider Rider and Marsh Prince get reworked? Spider Riders ability had pretty limited functions, and now I can’t really see a use for him.

I’d love to see him get some sort of CC instead, even if it’s not very good, as I think goblins deserve SOMETHING besides Ice Lord.

I also agree that making nightmare virtually impossible to win isn’t a great idea, only because this is a game where each game requires serious investment from the player over a long period of time, and committing to a 10 day game I know I’m going to lose just doesn’t sound fun.

I personally think something should be done to keep nightmare winnable maybe 60-70% of the time by smart players who work well together.

We’re looking at adding a trait to some heroes - Marsh Prince, Forge Urchin, Wolfpup Handler (and maybe the heroes recalled by the Spider Rider), so that they won’t have a deployment cool-down after they are played.

2 Likes

Any chance we can get the now ‘legacy’ game mode back as an option for user created games?

I like the idea of those units not being affected by the deployment counter, but will there be some indicator to know whether or not the unit is one that previously deployed?

I also think instead of them going into your deck, if they went to your hand (at least with spider rider) it would give them a pretty solid boost in viability. It would also give them a quasi Tangle Mage ability of being able to move units from 1 settlement to another, except way more expensive because you’d still have to redeploy the unit.

Spider rider especially would then synergize really well with Little Wizard, and make for some interesting tactical choices.

I feel like goblins in general are going to need some love as two of their main strengths have been nerfed pretty hard. They often relied on ranged attacks to deal with enemies, and their best tactic generally revolved around generating a boat load of gold and popping out a ton of units at once. The fact that they’ll be getting a lot less valor, and are second only to dwarves in settlement costs, means these poor little guys are probably not going to see much play… Which is sad, because as far as fantasy creatures go, I’ve always been a big fan of goblins. :slight_smile:

So, initially I was against this change, but as I play through a couple games – I am quickly warming up to the new deployment protocol.

I like that it adds another level of decision making. Its not just about grabbing the closest settlements, and going from there. Now, there is a cost/benefit analysis of settlements. The big ones with the accompanying card are the best value, but often too far away or not near the fight, while smaller, less valuable settlements are closer to the fight and better deployment/staging areas.

Still playing through, but right now I am in the process of becoming optimistically in favor.

1 Like

Two things:

  1. Now that this is live, I suggest this topic be pinned for the next few weeks so anyone new to the forums sees it right away when they come by to ask why they can’t place troops anymore.
  2. Since “Deployment Units” (Banners, Standards, etc) now have a cooldown and typically travel with an army, it would be very nice if they had the “spell available” lightning bolt symbol in their quickview so you can see whether or not you can deploy to them without having to click the stack, click into the army, select each Deployment Unit and check whether or not it has a cooldown listed.

Oh right, I didn’t realise banners would not get the lightning symbol because you dont spend mana to activate them.

I might have to write some special code just for the banners. I think they will be a much bigger part of the game now.

Definitely would like to see the ability to deploy to other players’ banners. Always thought this was something really neat about the banners idea and if anything could have used a little encouragement. What if the cool down restriction on banners only applied to the same player? So I could only deploy one card to my banner but you and I could each deploy a card there at the same time. Would remove the need for this opening and closing issue, encourage the use of banners, encourage cooperation in an interesting way, and I don’t think there would be that much abuse since only so many players will have cards of the right race and you still have to plan where to place the banner.

The problem is, and this did come up in our test games (not a theoretical problem) was that other people would use your banner without permissions and when you needed it. Its really anoying.

What I decided was that, you can give a player a settlement, they can deploy what they like and give it back or not.

I realise banners are better because you can march them up into zombie territory.

Penny was suggesting some methods for players to be able to turn on and off other players using your banner, but that seems like and over complication to me.

If it were a similar mechanic giving over settlements (1 valor makes it open to other players to use it) I don’t think it would be that complicated, plus then they would continue to behave like settlements, which you can now turn over to other players.