what about an option, that a player can control the zombies? All rules stay the same. Zombie abilities also have costs (I saw this some time ago on the cards) and the player controlling them can set the move orders, get more zombies automatically spawned from blighted villages. Also the difficult spawn rates remain the same. It’s just I move them around, not the zombie movement AI and activate the casts.
As we saw the ability costs on the zombie cards, we thought that this is the preparation for that feature request. But so far, I did not found something going in this direction, so I’ll write it down
Of course. Let me create a game, FFA@level 0, zombie control@level 3, because as the zombie mastermind you need some experiences. You have alot of units in the beginning in different locations. Maybe this special mode is only for premium, or the hc for winning have to be paid from the living/undead to avoid exploiting this. (I’ll start 100 games with a dummy zombie controller doing nothing and the teams collect the reward without fightback.)
Or cancel the level restricting. Every living player pays 1HC on a 6 player map, the zombie master pays 6HC. Defeating the plague brings every player back their 1HC + 6HC/6 = 2HC resulting in 1HC won. Zombies rules, resulting in 6HC + 6*1HC = 12HC resulting in 6HC won.
It’s certainly an idea people have been toying with for a while
Zombies might be a bit too powerful in the hands of a skilled player though, since their main disadvantages are their lack of strategy and predictability. You’d also get the Neptune problem where the player’s who can no-life the game the hardest have a distinct advantage.
The biggest problem is probably the lack of currency for the immortals. The zombie-players have no need to worry about money so they only need to focus on spreading fast and getting their hands on unprotected settlements and mana wells even faster. That is already OP enough without having to worry about player-controlled immortal Gryphons wreaking havoc amongst the map. And adding zombie-money for hero cards would only make them more OP so that’s no solution.
So I was thinking, maybe give the zombie faction a different currency called ‘control’ (or whatever) that is required to make them move. You, as the necromancer, need to carefully weigh your options as you spend your control to make zombies move, costs per league to avoid people just setting a week-long trajectory. And then it’s just a matter of determining whether the horde size factors in on the costs. I’d recommend against it.
If the horde size doesn’t matter and each horde requires the same amount of control to move, the immortals won’t be splitting up in tiny groups spreading in all directions to create one hell of an chaotic mess and will instead form hordes that the player can actually react to. This way, the players won’t have to spread out their forces to protect every single settlement nor will their garrisons have to remain in these settlements until they can eventually spare troops to send out. (Which would result in very stale and slow games.)
Preventing anti-hording should help against the OP factor of the immortals that even a single one of them can slaughter an entire village instantly and raise hundreds of zombies in its wake. Sure, even the weakest mortal can give a whole den of mystical creatures their eternal rest instantly as well, but player-controlled immortals should be able to strategise against this.
That might actually work, though the Zombie player could partially solve it by sending swarms of lone zombies out as scouts and “hunters” for the small settlements.
It would also depend on how far the fog of war goes. Make it too short, and you risk infuriating the zombie player cause they keep getting hit by invisible hit and run attacks. Make it too long, and you partially negate the whole point of the fog.
Still, it would provide a pretty interesting metagame.
