See that fact that you say that suggests something about the game is wrong.
1 Like
I think making it so that the losses arent statistically = to the enimes size would make me want to put him in more (and encourage other stuff thats interesting like big fights, tactical decisions of if to split forces etc)
a priority type system would mean definitely mean that would be fixed, but iâm unsure if it would have other bad knock on effects
a saving throw would have to be very high probably - im not sure thats a good route - if the saving throw for heros is too high I might just have mighty generals in the âarmyâ - why have foot soldiers without a save?
You know, in my Elven balancing thread I touch upon this idea. The General is another example of the theme I touch upon there with a lot of the elf cards; except I actually think the General is a pretty good idea.
Part of what I talk about there is balancing opportunity cost. If I deploy a single Swordsman unit, whats the best way to complement that ability? Another Swordsmen gets me 500 more strength for 250 gold; typically. The General gives me 200 + (5 * 50) = 450 strength for 175 gold. In this case the General does make sense to use, especially if you have more than 1 swordsmen to start. For a lot of the elf âgeneralâ cards that payback is at a much worse 3 or 4 to 1 ratio.
keep in mind for the elven archer one the mana cost doesnt go up which is a hidden advantage
I agree about rather losing a unit than a general, but I can understand, in-game lore-wise, losing a general. He is either likely to be on the front lines, or to be a huge target (to an enemy that thinks strategically at least, meaning not your standard zombie but maybe against a boss). That doesnât make as much sense for something like a Tavern Keeper or Healer. (By the way, this might mean that bosses should ignore those extra saving throws.)
I donât think diminishing valour for range attacks is a good idea. To me that limits my options and railroads me into a path instead of letting me choose a path. I think range and melee should both be equal options and you play with which one fits your style or maybe the per-situation need. I think getting to do range attacks actually has a lot of drawbacks. You still have to spend gold, you are unlikely to defend a town in a pinch (like you could with melee), you still have to carefully maneuver the unit around to avoid fights (unlike with melee) and you have to keep a good supply of mana (something that limits my ranged attacks quite often). Thatâs why I also rely heavily on crowd control, because my ranged army canât clean up and save towns like Orc melee armies can.
The sole reason why I donât do melee is because of the score. I am almost always trying to get the best score I can in a game, given the situation. This means that even if we have AFKers, Iâm not just trying to beat the game; Iâm trying to get the highest score we can with that disadvantage. It doesnât matter that that highest score will sit near the bottom of the charts and be ignored, or that my actually-good score wonât mean much next week when a balance change comes through that (intentionally or not) allows for even higher scores. Iâm still trying to get the best score I can. That means no melee battles. Melee battles are still a very good option, itâs just my choice of how/why I play the game that I donât do them. (Limiting valour for ranged attacks would now hamper my ability to play it, and force me into melee more often, instead of letting me choose how to play; thatâs a difference I try to get across with many of these balance changes and why I often donât like Eshalâs suggestions of new mechanics.) When I play games with Eshal now, he is more about completing the game fast, so melee is quite often his choice of combat and my ranged playstyle slows us down. The choice and balance between the styles seems good.
As a result, I think the real problem (if there is one) is how the score is calculated. Eshal had a few suggestions on that a couple of weeks ago that may be worth revisiting. I donât know if I particularly like his suggestions (I, at least, didnât oppose them), but I think maybe something in that direction is the real solution for encouraging more people to choose a melee style of play.
1 Like
agree entirely with 2 exceptions
- i didnt see (or at least canât reacall) Eshalâs suggestions so I cant comment on them
- keep in mind in the olden days often generals would ride around with better armor than the peasants fighting, the chance to get killed is also why I think the strength squared (or something like that) is the way to go anyway, it would encourage him in while it being a risk
1 Like
With the generals, buff dealers issue, I think the easiest solution is to have it be based on priority. It would just be a number by a unit showing âthis unit has a priority of 1 in combatâ, units of priority 1 would be frontline soldiers like dwarven hammers, giants, you know, melee units. Priority 2 might be goblin/elven archers. Priority 3 would be generals, casters, buff granters. You could expand the priority list depending on how specific you would want to make it, but the point being that in combat, first the strength of all Priority 1 units are added. If it is enough to overcome the enemiesâ strength, then only they are included in the calculation for losses.
If, however, the enemy can overcome Priority 1 units, then Priority 2 units strength are added and they are also included in the damage given.
Finally, if the battle is a complete rout then Priority 3 units would have to also be put up on the chopping block.
The number of casualties in a battle would remain the same, but certain units would be less likely to unexpectedly die.
I actually do this a lot when I play goblins. Because I donât want to lose gold production and, most importantly, donât want to lose score by having a higher casualty rate, I will often build an army of Foolhardy Bigwigs and Mad Pirates to get a high strength army with a low number of units. I will then send them in where I have to do melee (usually against a zombie group of nearly equal size) so that when they die, I only lose a handful of score points instead of the large score loss I would take with a standard 20-60 unit army of the same strength. This is purely motivated by score and not any other benefit (like strength to gold ratio, which I think is actually worse this way). It would, however, incidentally give me a good boost if the saving throw thing were in place.
This is getting far too late for me to continue much longer, but another idea that may solve different problems - (slowly) regenerating hit points for some units (heros, dragons etc)
It seems like there are two different issues being discussed here; it think itâs valuable to separate them.
- The current system produces a disadvantage for bringing overwhelming force to a fight. If I come into a fight with ten-to-one odds, I should lose fewer troops than I would if I brought an evenly-matched force. Instead, I may well lose more. The current system makes it so that the best play in any melee fight is to trim down your army to the least valuable set of soldiers that will just barely get the job done, so you donât risk losing any more than necessary to a bad RNG. This also is the main reason that ranged combat is always a strictly better solution when possible. To me, this is the more pressing issue.
- The second issue is that Heroes and âbigâ units are just as likely to die as the lowliest footsoldier. This has secondary effects, like requiring extensive micromanaging for spellcasters and devaluing âgeneralâ-type units.
For what itâs worth, I quite like the idea of Squared Army Strength to lessen the impact of #1, and variable Armor/Saves seems like a sensible way to resolve #2.
2 Likes
Canât seem to quote on phone so
It seems like there are two different issues being discussed
I agree - but part of the reason is I think a fix for one would fix the other
The current system produces a disadvantage for bringing overwhelming force to a fight.
Agree entirely with what you said under this
The second issue is that Heroes and âbigâ units are just as likely to die as the lowliest footsoldier
This one I wonder if it would mostly be fixed by fixing the first issue - you probably want some risk if things are in combat but if they lower the odds of losing everyone it might be worth it - I return to the comment about the mighty general - if his bonus meant I would lose a lot less foot solders he would be in for most/all fights, also large units like dragons would be less flukey in being destroyed by something minor
On the other hand this wonât fix for instance wizards in combat
tl;dr I think army strength squared has a lot going for it - easy to explain (imo) and fixes 1 and mostly fixes 2, if it did work then we could see whatâs left of 2 to fix and if itâs worth extra rules
Hey Guys, I just wanted to drop into this thread and let you know I have been thinking about this issue a lot this week while messing around with the menus.
Penny reminded me why I rolled back the strength squared damage that I implemented a few weeks / months ago. It was because, at the time, I wanted melee and ranged damage calculations to be the same, but if you apply the squared strength to bow fire, all of the sudden your bows do nothing to big stacks of creatures. Even worse for things like the dark forest witch.
Now that I think about it some more, I donât think it is too much of a big deal to have separate range and melee damage functions - they are different after all. (Iâm not even sure players expect it to be the same)
I like being able to say, âthe bigger your army, the less damage you takeâ. It sounds right to me so I think we just have to do it.
With regard to the second issue, losing heroes in melee, I donât feel like this issue is as important and we should just try and make the decision to include a hero or not in a battle intresting. You should leave the wizards out if they arenât contributing.
2 Likes
Great! I was actually thinking about that, how most all ranged attacks would do no damage if the same rules applied. I like how ranged does damage at the moment and it also makes perfect sense for ranged to do a constant amount of damage. After all, 25 arrows will kill about 25 dudes, no matter the size of the army.
I like the idea of squared damage a lot. I also like the idea of scaling buffs for the size of an army, to allow certain races to get bigger bonuses from huge army sizes.
With regard to the second issue, losing heroes in melee, I donât feel like this issue is as important and we should just try and make the decision to include a hero or not in a battle intresting. You should leave the wizards out if they arenât contributing.
My main concern with this is actually just the micromanagement issue. Iâm all for interesting decisions as to whether or not to include a hero in battle, especially if larger/stronger armies mean fewer casualties meaning an incentive to leave them in, but are there any plans for tools with which to more easily direct a unit to not engage along with the main army?
Iâm mainly thinking about scenarios where you may, for example, have a Shaman Priestess and an army including troll units. You may direct the troll units ahead to engage an oncoming force of zombies, but the support unit you want to keep close by is faster and will race ahead unless you micromanage her movement and keep her behind the trolls.
Itâs not necessarily a major problem, and maybe Iâll just have to log on more often to ensure that my casters donât race ahead of my main army, but it feels a little fiddly.
Perhaps a different type of following, rather than being merged into the army itsself? Perhaps they can be part of the stack, but wonât partake in the fighting and if the army loses they move back a league to the spot they came from? And the zombie horde automatically follows them? Wether or not their buffs would still apply would be up for debate.
I also like the squared power for handling army strength differences. It encourages making your stacks as large as possible, but without making such a stack uber-powerful.
The additional saving throw is not a bad idea, and should be relatively easy to implement, but I personally donât really like it since it does not seem to fundamentally solve the issue of your special units getting axed when they shouldnt. It just makes it less likely (though that might reduce the problem enough that it becomes a non-issue).
1 Like
Can i suggest a solution on the hero thing?
Heroes die last in combat. That way, if you are confident of victory, you have no real reason not to keep your heroes in the fight. If you have an army with a hero in it lose or get overwhelmed, then you still lose your heroes. If a hero is caught on its own, it has the normal (current) risk of death even if they win.
This would likely drive players to embed their heroes in larger forces â or simply attaching them to at least une unit (to serve as protection). That⌠seems intituive to me and adds a level of tactical descision making when you decide to pull a Hero away from a unit (âdo i really want to do this?â Is it worth the risk?")
1 Like
and on ranged attacks.
It makes sense for ranged attacks to be more desirable than melee. These are zombies, after all and its very much in genre to want to shoot rather than get in close. I think the mana costs for ranged attacks (while melee is free) are reasonable offsets.
I do like having my heroes at risk in combat, I just think some of them make sense to have a smaller chance of dieing than the others, from a lore perspective. To that end, I am in favor of the saving throws and squared damage, but not the priority system (which Praetorianâs âheroes die lastâ comment above is a part of).
Actually, I just had a thought on the âmicromanaging spellcastersâ front. The way that combat works now, you know going into combat whether or not you will win, and there are very few things that can make you unexpectedly lose a battle. This is one of the reasons that you as a player know when it is safe to engage while pulling out expensive and important units. In light of this, perhaps the most convenient option to counteract the fiddly nature of micromanaging spellcasters is simply some sort of ânoncombatantâ checkbox.
If this box is checked on a unit, and they are stacked with units who are not checked as noncombatants, then the noncombatant will simply not take part in combat. This way, you could set your expensive but puny casters to follow an army without risking them for the minimal return they provide in direct combat. And of course, if the noncombatants are left without combat-units to defend them, they can be engaged like any unit. In fact, if their side loses a battle, they will die along with them. They will simply not contribute to battle and have a 100% chance of survival on a win.
This is effectively the same as what is already happening with players who are micromanaging units, sending casters away from their stack a half-league before battle. The main difference is that it is more intuitive as a tactic that new players can use, and more importantly, does not require you to be able to log on before every battle to ensure the safety of your casters.
I donât know how this would interact with buffs or anything like that. I suspect buffs would need to be disabled while not a combatant for the sake of balance. I donât feel like this change should allow players to have more power by keeping their generals safer than they already are, it just replaces a fiddly, login forcing tactic with a simple mechanic.
4 Likes
to me that sounds a very elegant fix