I may be wrong but I don’t think the whole route is mapped out just the path to the next hex - i think they reevaluate it after that, if not
there is a a bug in the documentation/ ai (depending how you view it) - very clear in ironwood river
Sometimes they pause to let another group catch up - I think this is because they haven’t decided which settlement to go to
zombies seem to find out faster than walking all the way across a map that a settlement has been blighted
tl;dr I don’t think that would work with the current ai
DrBwaa - I see two options that would work for this as a game
Focusing on unpredictability from different sources (I probably would more be focusing on random events and the like) making it so leaving a town undefended is lethal rather than a good move
bring the hidden puzzle element to the front more
At the moment it feels to me an uneasy balance between the two I’m unconvinced that units like the dragonhelm knight can exist in a game where other races have no options like them
tl;dr I think there is 1-2 large design elements missing to make blight much better but without knowing what direction its going to take I think its hard to figure out what those would be
Each race should have a defensive unit, or just give the standard units (the ones that settlements train), a new ability. (Defend)
Defend: Cost 1 mana, and puts the unit into defensive mode. Can only be activated at a settlement. Gives the units +1 combat (Or maybe a +1 combat for the entire army this unit is a part of), and this unit/hero will notify their commander if a horde has targeted this settlement.
SO, you can set a unit to defensive or not (Like flying units)
A defensive unit cannot leave the settlement it is in, but when a horde has targeted that settlement and is making it’s way towards it, you’ll get an email notification that they are on there way.
This is a cool idea! A form of “tell this troop to keep watch around their current position” with out-of-game effects is wicked clever! The unit (I agree this would be a base unit power) could lose 6 members (representing scouts to all adjacent vertices) while in Guard Mode or something.
Maybe instead of ‘Defend’ it could be recon… and instead of a + to combat you get a -
Lots of ways to make it work… I just want an email notification so I can login in to defend, if say a graveyard spawns and it going to take something I maybe haven’t defended properly, etc.
I haven’t really spent much time replying to this post mainly because I see it as a mute topic…
In all honesty I don’t think it’s that difficult to plan 12 or even 24 hours ahead. I usually check in twice or maybe 3 times a day at most. The problem to me seems as if it is a lack of player experience rather than a ‘problem’ with the game. Strategy games are not about ‘reacting’ to your situation; rather strategy games are about ‘planning’ what might happen and then bending those odds in your favor.
And the easiest & most reliable way to bend the odds in your favor is to check the game as often as possible. As the game currently is, reaction trumps planning.
This is not a true statement. You’re implying that it is impossible for anyone to predict how the zombies are going to be moving over the next 12-24 hours and plan defenses accordingly.
This may be true for you personally… but it certainly isn’t true for me, or many other experienced players. Strategy is a skill and it can be learned; just as a player can learn to play chess, and will get better over time.
EDIT: You should watch starry_wisdom or a2w_Dex juggle zombies sometime… it really is a thing of beauty being able to control 6 or 8 different groups of zombies with 2 Dragonhelm Knights.
If there’s 2 settlements equidistant from the zombies in the same direction, it is. The RNG makes sure of that. You may as well try to plan the result of a coin flip.
This is where you’re completely missing the point… The correct answer (1 of many different possible correct answers) is don’t let them choose which way to go. CC fixes that problem, or even march your own forces out to cut them off before they reach either town.
Which still often requires micromanagement of some kind. Abilities often need to be at a close range, which mean you need to log in around the right time or the horde moved out of range (or worse, outpaced you). And thats assuming you have the heroes and mana to do so.
EDIT: Ignore this, im stupid
Actively intercepting requires a good superiority in forces, and sometimes they change direction when you reinforce their original target. END EDIT
And if you are fighting elf or goblin zombies they can move 3 leagues in 12 hours, which is often enough to put them near or on top of your towns before you can react in time.
The coin flip situation of Mike doesnt happen that often i think, but when it does it is quite annoying.
It’s a nice idea, but i’m not sure it will work. Mana issues aside, If you have access to email , can check or be notified by said e-mail and are able to easily access Blight, then logging in would probably not be that much of an issue?
Idealy we’d find a way so that we could login 1-2 times a day when we want, rather than have the game dictate it, as happens all too often right now.
I can tell you for 100% certain this is not the case. Zombies move in an incredibly predictable way. They move according to the following algorithm.
Check for the towns around that have the shortest distance; that is as the bird flies.
Choose one of those towns at random.
Find the shortest path to that town and move.
When you reach the next vertex, run these steps again; sometimes towns maybe destroyed before the zombies actually reach them.
Zombie movement is hardly rocket science.
This is only true if they are traveling by road and have no other followers. You’ll find it much more common for them to move at their Plains/Forest rate of 6Hr/League. Not only that, but if there is another group close behind they will stop on the vertex and wait for that other group to catch up. Additionally, zombies spawn from graves and stand there for the first 12-24 hours; so you shouldn’t really have any excuse not to be able to plan for them.
Like I said, it takes some practice, but the fact is you can often plan for where zombies are heading 24-48 hours ahead of time. The way I learned the game was by repeatedly playing the single player maps over and over again until I had a solid understanding of the zombie movement and learned to plan ahead enough that I was ranked in the top scores. Once I hit the real MP games I was rock solid. I’d recommend investing some time doing that; each time try to maximize your score rather than simply win. Eventually by replaying the same scenario like this you’ll learn to anticipate, predict, and to always stay one step ahead of the zombies.
Shrug Preparing for them to go to either path is a valid strategy. If you feel you need to put all of your eggs in one basket and then check constantly to make sure you picked the right basket, then that is your choice. I personally just plan for either route or use CC so as my gameplay choice instead. You are right that you need more information to play perfectly, but I think asking to be able to play perfectly is asking for a lot. I bet it would be nice to play games of chess where you always know exactly what move the opponent will make 2-5 turns in advance, but that is asking for a lot. This is a lot easier than playing a game of chess (thankfully) and so it is a lot easier to still play nearly-perfectly (or completely perfectly if you CC them) with some planning instead.
This is the other side of the recon I was referring to. I would deal with this but I like the current compromise between omniscience and nothing. I’m not sure about this “if a player can do something that gives them an advantage, we should remove it to put everyone on equal footing” concept though. I play games more often than you to get a better collection of cards, should that be removed or limited? Should I not be able to use any cards you don’t have, or add more of a type than you have simply because I was a more active player? Or should we all be given all cards from the beginning so that more active players don’t have a perceived advantage. (“Perceived” is important, because as with the example here, you have the option to play differently (i.e. more CC) and still play just as efficiently, without ever being more active. I think a similar thing goes for those with large decks; the starter decks can still often times be played with very efficiently (though maybe they would need more time).)
I feel like a problem here is that you want to be a very passive player in the game. I want to be an active player. With everything your suggesting, I know everything I need to, I don’t need to anticipate something on my own because it is being fed to me, and there is no real benefit to checking in more than once per day because I have that information and can queue up units for the day, so I can’t really be an active player. There is no engagement in the game that way; it is way to passive and mindless. I would need to have a dozen simultaneous games going (that I intentionally scatter my check-in time throughout the day) so that I can actually be engaged in the game and feel like I’m playing a game instead of watching one. I feel like we are looking for very different types of games. Oddly enough, Blight is my casual game. Most games I only check on about 2-3 times a day. I feel that is right for a multiplayer casual game. The good thing is, I can have one other game going at the same time (like a hard-mode game) that I can check in on quite often throughout the day when I feel I want to be more involved and play a not-casual game.
Huh, weird. I first thought they didn’t, but during some of my recent games i saw a zombie stack change direction after i moved an army on its destination. Then again, they walked right back into someone elses army coming for their graveyard, so maybe it was something else that made them change.
It doesn’t seem to happen often anyway, so it isn’t that important.
**END EDIT
**
Point taken. Though often there are roads through settlement clusters, so it isn’t exactly rare either.
It depends on the situation and difficulty too I think. I’m playing my first hard game now, and 24 hours are more then enough for a 1000-power stack to raise, move several leagues and kill another village or the like (playing dwarves isn’t helping). Then again, during calmer moments you can be offline for several days and still be fine. Assuming you don’t rely on CC of course.
Are you certain someone else hasn’t used a CC ability. Zombies will ignore their rules, but only on the compulsion of CC. If you’re experiencing unpredictable behavior, my guess is someone on your team isn’t using their CC correctly, or at the very least isn’t being very considerate in their use of CC.
The easiest way to tell if zombies are under the affect of CC is to click on them. They’ll be a timer telling you how long they have left until they are no longer compelled.
If by passive, you mean “only check 2-3 times a day”, then yes. I don’t want to feel compelled to wake up at 2 AM or check in 7-8 times a day to play optimally. I also have friends I’m trying to convince to play this game who have declined because it implicitly encourages that kind of gameplay to do well. There could be a good chunk of potential audience that might be persuaded to try the game if it was more lenient about longer pauses between checks.
The problem isn’t in the advantage, it’s in what must be done to obtain it. Experience and gaining bonuses are accepted methods of progression, and even the default decks have enough cards that a novice can still contribute. Having to get up between 2 and 3 AM to tell which way the zombies are going is harder to swallow.
Only 3 of the 6 races have CC, and 2 of those are rather limited. Given the number of maps that have limited races, and chances the heavy-CC races are already chosen by different players, relying on CC to make up for a lack of time severely limits which games can be played.
It is only a reasonable choice if you have the necessary CC or more than twice the strength of the attacking horde. Otherwise you have to choose between putting all your eggs in one basket or dealing with half of your defenders becoming Restless Souls.
Assuming you have CC available, which not all races/locations do. And march forces out of their fortifications & possibly onto the zombies’ home terrain, increasing their casualties by at least 50%, just to be able to sleep IRL? Why are we accepting gameplay that implicitly makes players build specific strategies to keep a reasonable schedule & play the game well at the same time?
And all of these suggestions about utilizing experience and specific tactics to avoid having to check it every 4 hours or at 2 AM in the morning to succeed? Even discounting situations where they won’t work, they all require experience with the game. Experience new players don’t have. And their novice opinion is going to be that the best way to figure out what the game is doing is to check it every 3-5 hours and occasionally at 2 AM, and thus it’s a game that doesn’t respect players’ time or schedules.
Hmmm, I have a feeling you’re making this game out to be a lot tougher than it actually is. Right now I’m playing 12 games simultaneously and I’ve probably spent no more than 5 or 10 minutes with each game all day.
Sorry, I still don’t follow your logic here… Right now I’m attempting to learn to play GO; mainly out of interest in the work Google has done in developing an AI that can actually beat a human in a game with such incredible depth of strategy that it hasn’t been possible until now.
The reason I bring this up is because currently, I can’t win a game unless I have a 3 stone handicap; but that doesn’t discourage me from trying to learn it. I have a very real world view that people spend their entire lives studying and perfecting this game. I don’t expect the game to be something I can just walk into and perfect; if I wanted that I would go learn to play another game like checkers.
That said, if you really do have trouble planning on zombie movement there is always and easy mode setting you could try instead. As I said earlier I would suggest re-playing many of the single player maps each time using what you learn to improve your strategy. Practice is the best way to get better.
Keep at it and I’m sure you’ll be managing those hoards like a boss in no time.
