Multiple Zombie bosses of same type just annoying and leveling ideas

Having five masters of coin roaming a map and firing off at different times doesn’t really amp up the concern level. One creates tension, makes you have to plan around things. “Oh, we need to handle this!” Half a dozen is just flat out annoying and makes the game play drag. Perhaps simply up-powering the zombie horde that hits the well a bit would be a better option when there is already 1 type of that boss roaming the map.

Also, the leveling of armies and heroes feels a bit off.
I can take a horde of Goblin Savages ( 6 power each with 60 members = 360 power ) stick them to defend a fortress with an inn-keeper and you’ve easily got a 1k unit. Do the same thing with the dwarven king that starts at 400 and you have a 410 power unit. I feel like a percentage boost as opposed to a flat +1 would feel better, and more thematic, and interesting, would be if the troops had different tags they gained through battle. ( And not just these wimpy I went after a single zombie and killed him so now all my troops get +1 power battles. ) Also, archers,artillery, and the like should be able to gain some XP for doing their job from afar.

After a certain amount of experience maybe instead of just a simple +1 they gain a tag that grant bonuses, and are perhaps limited to different unit types, for maximum flavor. Things like…

Fleet footed/Swift/the Quick - units move faster
the Brutal - Units are 10% more powerful
Elusive - unit can bypass zombie hordes ( as if flying. )
Veteran/Battle Hardened - Units get a +20% saving throw
Glorious - Units receive 50% more valor from combat
the Brave - cannot be targeted by fear compulsions
Skilled/Experienced/Wise - cool down on power is reduced by 25%
Champion/Hero/Expert - Applies a 5% bonus to troops fighting with him
Eagle Eye - range distance is increased by 25%
the Holy - cannot be killed in a battle in which their side wins.

These are just some random power ideas, but I feel as though it would add a lot more flavor and make the individual troops a lot more interesting, because then we could have things like

Elusive Elven Archers, The Holy Cyclops Priest, Skilled Artillery, The Brutal Dwarven King, The wise Forest Dryad, Battle Hardened Human Swordsmen, Glorious Veteran Knights, etc.

which would just be cool and make each of the units in the game a bit more unique and add flavor, and make leveling up your guys a bit more fun.

1 Like

To me, this mostly seems to be a problem with the resource-stealing heroes, who probably need a revamp anyway. Most other zombie heroes have a very limited range ability (i.e. don’t need to worry about it most of the time), or an ability which doesn’t really cause exponential problems when they stack. The only other heroes where I see this problem are the Elven terror-lord (because approaching multiple of those would be nigh-on impossible), Human dreadlords (cause they keep interfering which eachothers “pulling” like a ping-pong match) or Human necromancers (for opposite reasons: Having two in the same place just makes the second one redundant).

Don’t think this is a big problem. Most leader boosts are race-specific and of the appropriate level, and fortification boosts depend on the race’s playstyle and can be a bit weird when you use other races on it, but that never came across as a big problem to me.
As for the bonuses being useless to heroes or special units: I think that’s fine too. The main reason you use heroes is either for their ability or as a quick risky power-boost, while having special units scale would probably get unbalanced quickly (and most don’t need it for their current costs).

I do like the bonuses for leveling up, but i’m not sure how well that would be implemented. It might result in a lot more micromanagement for the player and a balancing nightmare for the devs. If we can do it well, it would be quite an improvement though.
Also, do you think these should be set for certain levels/races? So lvl 1 humans always gain trait X, lvl 2 Elves gain trait Y etc. Else it would get rather unreliable, and the merging could turn into a nightmare :slight_smile:

Agreed on this. It’s kinda weird that they don’t level up from that.

Also, even if the trait system isn’t implemented, I do think that having some way to individualize your units (manually or automatically) would add a lot to the feel of the game.

I totally agree, some are certainly more annoying than others, and things like the Ironhide Dwarves are already just a tougher version of zombies already.

While I think it’d be more fun if they could all be randomly assigned to every group, it would definitely make merging a pain. For army type units, your idea of just a single trait that is applied sounds like a pretty good compromise. Single heroes, which Jay was considering making unmergeable, could still get random traits. The code there could likely be shared with code for Artifacts/Items that power up heroes, which is something I think Jay was considering as well.

Since the level ups would just exist within a single game session, I don’t think it would result in that much micromanagement.

Of course long term leveling of cards would be a completely different and exciting feature, well in line with other online games and their methods of encouraging folks part with some of their cash, but that sounds like a topic for another thread.

1 Like

Hey, Great ideas @kuzniar!

We already have some plans in place to do another pass of most of the bosses. A lot of them are just not very scary, and the resource stealing bosses are just kind of annoying. (We are thinking of changing them so they make everything more expensive rather than stealing the resources)

We are also keen to make more of the bosses get bigger with time, so there is more time pressure to kill them.

You mentioned Ironhide - I was thinking of having him give is “must be killed in melee” ability to all surrounding zombies. Very scary if you are relying on cannons for defense.

We were also thinking of making an elf boss ability where surrounding somebody can only be killed with range! Very Scary if you are Orc or Human and just dont have many ranged units!


I’m also agree that the +1 is a little weird. When I first implemented the system I wanted it to be simple. I thought it was interesting the goblins gained more than trolls. But it does suck that my dragon flying around going into combat, risking his skin, is only getting +1 for each combat. I will seriously consider a +10% for each combat instead!


I like your idea of the flavor bonunes. But the way this game would do it is to convert one of the standard soldiers to his own hero card with a power that gives that ability to all units he is with!

1 Like

Not sure if that’s a good idea, simply because most races don’t have easy access to ranged abilites. Orcs and dwarves rely on card units or dragons for any ranged advantage, and i’m not sure if humans and trolls have any at all. It could get really problematic if the players didn’t take the right cards, or if their cards/dragons got killed earlier. Arguably you could say the players should prepare for such an occasion, but it still seems rather limiting.
Perhaps give them a melee advantage instead? Like a 75% extra saving throw or something?

You mean he essentially turns into a leader hero? That would be a neat idea, as if some of your veterans rise up to become legends out of their battlefield achievements!

If it’s an elf boss, there will be elves in the map, you will have had the opportunity to at least get elf bows!

True enough. I just think that a boss who is completely immune to 90% of your units is liable to cause a lot of frustrating situations, since it sounds like it could just walk up to any army or town and kill everything if it isn’t sniped with ranged attack. With the Ironhide you could at least chuck all your archers at it and kill it that way :slight_smile:

Thats true!

I like the idea of the resource stealing bosses working differently. I like bosses liked Jester King that ask you to change your strategy to keep them in check, and wonder if the resource stealing bosses would be more interesting in their abilities were nerfed, but also allowed them to improve in combat as they stole from you.

So perhaps the gold stealing boss would only steal 200g from each player every 12 hours… but for every gold he’d gain 1/2 point of strength.

I particularly like this idea, it would give us a reason to engage in direct combat a little bit more early on in a game.

1 Like