Hi Guys,
I would really appreciate you help testing a the experimental deployment mode. In this game you can only deploy one hero at a location every 6 hours.
I’ve created a game in Crown and would love you to join.
password = pass
Please keep in mind that we are looking to make this experimental mode the standard in the next few weeks unless we discover any fundamental problems with the design.
Hope to see you in game.
Well I’m in, this is one of the first games I’ve joined since starting to get better from feeling ill, so I may be a bit rusty.
Really I think I need 2 games to have a proper idea of what this change is like
already 2 comments come to mind
I personally still think this is going to be a disaster, but at heart I’m a scientist and I love looking at something and saying you know what I was completely wrong about that.
Lets see if this is a disaster or if I’m wrong or somewhere inbetween.
I would add this if we move ahead with the idea.
please keep an open mind! It should be no more time commitment that if you were relying on building armies. Relax, enjoy the game.
Great to have you back btw!
Hey Also, this might change the way we set up the player starts in a map as well. We could start you off with 3 locations instead of 1 so there is more thinking to do before the game starts!
I’m in! Let’s rock!
Personally I don’t see this change requiring more starting towns, but I do think it’ll make things harder! Looking forward to it–good luck!
If I wasn’t keeping an open mind I wouldn’t be joining, I’m serious that I like being proved wrong. If I am proved wrong it will cause me to rethink what makes a game interesting which are interesting thoughts.
As a side note - it will require more time commitment as by the time I am building armies its the end game and has already been won - 95% of games building armies is not time critical for me. I will just train in about 10 locations and log on whenever.
I have already had to set an alarm with a little wiggle room for response - this puts it in the 10-20% most time critical alarms I have set for this game already.
anyway as I said I need a second test here it is
password = pass
I hosted 2 matches of Experimental not that long ago.
Just got a spot open. It’s urgent if someone wants to join the positon because in 6 hours time the Trolls will be completely wiped out. If you do join in time, if you make your way over to the Hydra’s, you should be able to start a really strong defensive effort.
Some feedback is, I like how the mode plays. I think starting with 3 settlements in the beginning will take away from what makes this mode unique. I like how it’s a very slow start and you can’t make too far a move or you won’t be able to put out that many units later on. Something I learnt a little the hard way in the above Iron Crown match.
If 3 settlements are added to this mode, I think they should start with the 6 hours cooldown for Hero and Unit Training spawn cooldowns on them at the start. So you can’t put out a bunch of units in the starting hours and will at least need to wait for 6 hours to pass. Also a Valour reduction would be good as well I think to pay off the extra settlements you own.
Hey y’all, wanted to see how things started too play out before responding.
I like this idea esp. because it really makes you choose what units you play at first more carefully, but I do think it lends itself to more micromanagement early on because it’s important to have a few units grabbing settlements early,which means more reason to check in every 6 hours, as opposed two being okay checking in once or twice a day.
Ideally queuing would be an option.
I also like 3 starting settlements, but wonder if that would affect race balance as 3 dwarven settlements is a significant income difference vs. 3 elven settlements.
I wonder if maybe there’s a middle ground… for example: starting with one settlement could produce say, 3 hero units at once, but then would have to store up “charges” (or whatever you would call them) at a rate of 1 every 6 hours.
So basically, if you waited 18 hours, you would be able to do 3 at once again (for people who check in less frequently) or you could drop 1 every 6 hours.
that way you’d still be able to drop more than 1 unit early game, but after that initial burst it would be back to the once every 6 hour thing.
Does that make sense?
I think that this mode makes a lot of sense and is a necessary change. This is how any strategy and/or card game should play out. Rather than being able to play all your cards and your full strategy at the start of the game and reaching full power, you need to gradually build up your arsenal and work up to a point where you can unleash your powerful combos.
It will initially feel like something has been taken away, but the result is that you will have to work harder and think more strategically about how the game will play out, which is really what we want from a strategy game. It should be more satisfying to reach the point where you can play your powerful combos. Is it slow? Sure, but it is the “slowest real-time game you’ve ever played”!
I don’t think that the starting positions should necessarily have more towns (not just because I’ll have to re-do ALL THE MAPS haha), but I think this could be an interesting difference between Normal and Nightmare difficulty modes - start with 3, 2, or 1 towns - so effectively you have less of a head start and the zombies have more.
I’m currently playing as the Dwarves and I don’t think it’s making that much difference in practice. Sure, I would have played more Cannons and smashed all the zombies, but that would have made it really easy. For some races, I didn’t even need to claim towns before, but now expansion will become a lot more important, particularly early game. I also initially forgot that you can even build units.
This way we can keep the awesomely dominating card-combos, because you will have to work hard to get all the cards down and be able to pull them off, not just start the game, smack down all the cards, and wham game over for everyone!
Yeah, still really hoping this doesn’t happen. I understand that designing a game and balancing can be tough but this just seems like it’s the wrong direction. I know we’ve already had a long discussion on this in the past so I won’t rehash everything said there.
At the very least I hope you do something with the basic units as there is almost no point in bringing them with this change.
I feel like it just removes too much from the game. Basically for me it boils down to a quantity over quality solution.
I’m in the liking this better camp. I’m also new enough to the game that I haven’t fully explored some of the combos available,so I’m not as attached to the current meta of gameplay.
I don’t mind the added difficulty/slower gameplay, but I’m a glutton for punishment and love difficult games.
Why wouldn’t you use standard units? you can still train them even if you’ve played a card. If anything I think they’re more valuable now…
2nd edit However, Spider Rider may need a tweak if this goes into effect as a standard rule. Bouncing multiple heroes when you’re more limited in how many you can play seems like a serious loss of tempo.
I was going to wait until I had played longer but if other people are going to chime in before the game has even reached the mid point I may as well as well.
I am surprised at how little has changed to be honest. My main concerns are ones which will play out later.
to summarize the things I find interesting in blight
picking combinations of races and cards that are interesting
planning out moves which require a large amount of thought and planning to execute properly
I think both are at deep risk.
the first one - combination of cards.
I like multi race decks massively - they allow you to pick the interesting cards from each race that will work well together and allow far more permutations than a single race will allow. Now that i’m not able to grab a single city and drop all of that races cards that will have to be severely curtailed, possibly even down to having single race decks with a few other cards.
As a separate problem as you cant cycle through your hand as quickly early game you need to jam it fill of the cards that you need early game and have less of most the other cards.
I am feeling this already - my hand is full of eleven cards which would of already been played normally. I am reserving judgment if thats just an early game issue.
second point - planning moves
so for me I see no real reason to plan more than about 12-24 hours ahead, beyond that factors start becoming uncontrollable anyway and you will probably be able to fix issues that arise in that time anyway.
before I had lots of thoughts along the line of combination of deploying cards, what are the chances if I play one card what are the chances the second I need will be the next one drawn vs using cards that I know I have and the many permutations of this problem.
A good example when I have multiple cards that will help on different fronts where do i deploy what cards and as I deploy cards do I double up on one front. Often the first card is obvious the question was how many cards to I play there - now that is the only card I can play.
Once again I have felt that already (well in my hand I have 1 dragonhelm knight & 1 houndmaster), the west side is more critical, it needs a houndmaster, the east side can wait 6 more hours. thus the course is obvious. removing many possible permutations of options. (what I was saying about the early game going from 15 mins to 1)
I think as we hit the mid game this will just become more and more dramatic - it has become easier not harder to see 24 hours into the future which is all I care about. Once again I will revisit when I have finished the game.
I’m also reserving judgment, but 21 hours in I can definitely say that it feels much less impactful than I’d expected. Certain bosses are scarier in the very early game (e.g. Master of Coin, since you spend your starting budget more slowly), but overall I’m not feeling at all hamstrung. I do think the change is more impactful for more spellcaster-heavy races like Elves and Goblins, though.
And it clearly puts the kibosh on that Rogue Lord abuse someone found the other day 
This would seem to devalue the Marsh Prince and the Spider Rider significantly.
Something to consider is how this disproportionately negative affects Trolls. The problem is Trolls’ speed. Its already a major hindrance, but is overcome to some extent by the Tangle Mage, Marsh Prince, and their defensive mindset.
With the limited deployement option, this makes things even harder for Trolls. The standard tactic I use with Trolls is to lure or anticipate the areas immortals will attack, slowly build up gold, and then plop down adaquate defenses just before the bad guys arrive. This process is no longer possible.
The problem is exasperated by the trolls’ slow speed and limited gold. They way things are moving, the core strategy is to capture a number of settlements and use them to populate units and heroes, and then have them converge on a threatened location. For fast races like Elves, Goblins and Orcs, this isnt as much of a problem. They can move to, capture, and build in a lot of different settlements quickly. They can then relocate those new units to key spots in time to meet oncoming threats. Trolls cant. Not only are they proportionally slow in capturing new settlements, they are just as slow getting units from those settlements to the areas they need to be.
Trolls already get hit with slow speed, low population, low gold intake, little crowd control, no nuke options, and a very limited signature monster (hydra) – they dont need this to further frustrate their play.
I like the deployment limitation. It requires a bit more thought on where you go initially and places a little more emphasis on training units, both of which I think are good things. And it doesn’t feel like it changes the game that much.
I don’t think there is a need to have more starting towns. I think that initial phase of having very few resources and having to choose how to deploy then is good and I wouldn’t want to lose that.
One thing I would be interested in discussing is whether it makes sense to add more deck construction limitations in terms of maximum number of a single card and / or minimum deck size. I find that right now I tend to do what at least I think is the “efficient” thing, generally using cards from a single race and using say 4 copies each of a couple of the best cards. This ensures I get those cards early and creates lower variance of hands. But it is also in some sense less interesting. I play with the Desert Maiden but none of the other Orc heroes that grant army bonuses for example. Of course I could just play with different decks myself but I would rather feel like I was developing a creative solution to the constraints of the game rather than just internationally limiting myself. In connection with this maybe you relax the requirement to include the default cards (e.g. maybe I don’t want four Woodland Assassins in my elf deck).
still looking for 2 players on the iron crown game
password is pass
I’m in!