I’m not sure much here really needs to be changed, but I wanted to point out these scenarios that I have recently been a part of.
There are a few heroes that can send hero cards back in to the player’s hand. At first I wondered why you would want to do that when you still have to pay get them back on the map again, but then I happened to get one of these cards on a large map. Someone had a banner on the other side of the map and I had the gold, so I sent my cards back to my hand and respawned them on the other side of the map. However, after I did that, I promptly sent back some other player’s cards that took the long way to get over there; I’m sure they weren’t happy. I also sent the banner back just to be mean. The game was nearly over anyway, regardless of my leaping in or sending people back, but I realized some irresponsible person could do this to seriously set a game back (and then probably leave, like a lot of them do).
For the banners that pull from the nearest settlement…
I recently had someone park a banner near (and then in) one of my front line, large elven towns. He quickly spawned enough units to nearly drain the town dry. I was hoping to use that town for a bit more for the tax money before doing something similar myself, but now I lost money and didn’t have the units for a defense of my own on the front line. The bigger problem though is that I did start training a group of archers with the 20-some population left. I paid the price and waited 5 hours before a different player dropped their troops in on the banner, completely drying up the town. My units being trained just vanished, but I was still out the gold training cost and time. This is the one that I think needs fixed. Units that are in training should not be able to be co-opted into hero cards (even by the player who owns the town), they should remain reserved for the training.
I thought Banners drew from the closest settlement that the player owns. If you and I are in a game and I put some units on a banner, can it subtract from your units Dex? I think that’s a bit unfair, I personally think it should find the closest settlement that I own and subtract it from there. If I don’t own any settlements for that unit, then I shouldn’t be able to use the banner.
I’ve been thinking about griefing the last few weeks because I have been making a few cards that damage friends and enemies alike.
On one hand nobody likes griefing, but on the other hand, if there is no opportunity for players to come into conflict with each other, there is no challenge to co-operating.
What I’m trying to say is, somebody that is good at Blight of the Immortals will ask if it’s ok to drain a town, or to send a card back into hand, of give the other players time to get into shelter before letting rip the Storm Firar.
We could go and change each card so you can’t mess with the other players at all, but I worry the game would be less exciting as a result.
Fully agree about reserving the population of the troops you are training. Will implement this soon as a bug fix.
Also. As soon as I do some more marketing stuff, achievements, and a few other small things I want to get stuck into a team mode where two teams will compete to save the most people.
Half the map will be Team A settlements, the the half Team B settlements. If there are more people left alive in team A settlements when the zombies are killed, they win.
I can agree with most all of your comments, that’s why I said I’m not sure anything needs to be done about this. I do think that it is rare to play with players responsible enough to care about how they are using that banner though (I have yet to see one), versus just using it. As a result, this will probably be an annoyance for most any game where I get a banner near me. I also admit I will probably do the same and cause the same when I see a banner across the field. shrug