But… I… don’t… friends? (But seriously - this is something I totally forgot. 
)
Well yeah…gryphons but those are really the heavy hitters in the dwarf deck isn’t it?
I was thinking more akin to a ground cavalry card a la Knights or Wolf Riders, not as strong of course for balancing reasons.
Also I still need to get my Gryphon Rider card…the art for that one IS SO COOL!
Random idea of the day: A boss unit that teleports everything within 1 or 2 leagues to it’s position instantly, both living and undead. Would make it either really easy or awful based on what’s around.
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The great, angry, evil, vacuum-cleaner elemental.
Ability: This is going to suck
Teleport all units within 1 league to the G.A.E.V.C.E’s locations.
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Jay & Penny— First off, you have to know how much I love this game, and how much I want it to succeed.
But I think you’re being a little dismissive of Anderty’s point: currently, there’s no existing framework for social networking. I despise Facebook and while I do have a few friends, they aren’t gamers like me; instead I’d like to make friends through the game. I’ve already met some great players, but have no in-game way of contacting them or inviting them to a game. For example, I’ve played two games with Anderty and think he’s a great player but have no way of getting in touch.
As you prepare for the formal launch, I think this may be an issue for you. Guilds are the obvious, most common route for getting players together. A player-player messaging system is another helpful feature.
So right now, I just play public games, which are really hit or miss. There’s nothing more frustrating in a 6 player game when 1 -2 players go MIA and another checks in once a day. I understand there’s real life, and I understand things come up, but part of the beauty of this game is that it’s not a crazy time sink. It’s perfect for people like me who have a full time job. (Tangent there.)
With a guild system, good players would get together, create a positive culture and help new players understand the game mechanics and more importantly, game etiquette. As well, I think guilds would lead to more games in similar time zones with quicker launches.
I do not intend this post in any way to be negative; it’s just that in my experience games, whether console or browser or mobile, are ever more social experiences. I want that to be the case here.
You’re doing brilliant work.
PS: I’m obviously hoping Kongregate (chat) can help facilitate this, but I still think you want something in-game when you can get to it.
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Yeah, somehow I didn’t manage to write down like you did it. Well done. There’s really lack of social networking with new people you don’t know, which in the case of gaming is one of the most wonderful things. Yes, we have forums. But we still want to do it comfortably, from the interface where we can always track our friends and share the fun.
Guilds would also help create positive peer pressure, lessening the likelihood of players mailing it in or dropping out of the game.
Apologies, I didn’t mean to me dismissive, and I agree that the game needs some better social networking features built right in.
A few months ago I spent some time researching what guilds mean in various types of games and what a guild might look like for Blight.
At the very least I would like to have a friend list and a friend activity feed (where you can see when friends join games. ) We’ll also need a block list to prevent people stalking / trolling you.
Beautiful. Thanks!
Okay, maybe Gnome mounts might be a bit to much…how about Dwarf/Gnome druids instead?
Get some spellcasters into the dwarven ranks. Maybe have the ability to pin down targets with vines? Would be a good combo with Artillery. Have them be as fast as a mount perhaps (Or similar speed to an elf) so we can have some runners which was my grievance with my previous post. Images courtesy of STIVEN VALERIO and Dungeons and Dragons.
Typically, by a father of classic fantasy lore (Tolkien) and other fantasy settings, dwarfs are absolute nature haters. Gnomes, on another hand, are opposite, so meeting dwarf druid in almost all those settings would be extremely strange, while gnome druid - ok.
And I actually love this more than mounts. From one point, I don’t care 'bout as moving units in the dwarf army, as they have mountain king and usually, near spawn settlement, gryphons are near. So, some kind of cool spellcasting unit or gnomes sounds good.
And here I remembered another suggestion I forgot to type - can we, please, have in maps just a little bit more bridges, not those water passes? I feel that sometimes those water passes are too much to watch on and replace some of them with bridge image would appeal overall feel more, IMO. Maybe on those passings, where roads go. Then it’ll look awesome.
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Hence I suggested a Gnome as well, I admit I kinda love this card in my Dwarf deck…hence I got like 5 of 'em. 
So more Gnome cards, the better.
I got a thing for other races being part of a faction like Gnomes in a Dwarf deck or Giants in a Human deck.
I kinda disagree we have to follow Tolkein’s example most of the time, such as no spellcasting dwarves who all act stereotypically, but I think for the Lore of this game Jay and co created I agree with you there.
I might just suck as a dwarf player but I don’t really like spending lots of valour in the start of a game to recruit another dwarf thaig or a gryphon nest while I got loads of cheap elven/human villages nearby. I invest in those gryphons midgame of course when I got valour to spare and can open up a offensive on the other side of the map by claiming towns there. That might be just my playstyle though.
That’s why Mountain kings are must-have. It even ads right flavour, as I ever imagined that dwarves rarely move in big numbers where they want. They almost always are led by their leaders (they enjoy it so much), so, get those kings to do some job. X)
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I got two Mountain Kings in my deck, could use a bit more 
That brought me to an idea. How about a weather.
Snowstorm in Hills.
Sandstorm in deserts.
Rainstorm in forests.
Windstorm in plains.
Fogstorm in swamps.
(…storm is optional. placed for fun. 
)
Such weather conditions would change movement speed and may be the strength of mortals and immortals. Also, it would be easier to implement IMO. (Cuz maps are pre-made in images.)
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I have two more suggestions with regards to making it easier to manage a huge army made up of many different types of units in one place.
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When clicking on an army, would it be possible to display the combat experience level of each unit next to its name, in the same fashion as it is shown on the map, next to the portrait of the leading unit of an army?
The reason I would appreciate this is the following: Say you have collected lots of units from different places together in one location in order to go on a big crusade against the Undead. Instead of having something like 20 different groups of e.g. Elven Archers, you would want to merge them into 2 or 3 groups, and obviously in such a way that you merge the newer and unexperienced units into the more experienced group, in order to maximize the combat bonus. Now when dealing with a huge stack of sometimes 25, or 23, or 19, or 21 Archers, it is very annoying to try to find out which units to merge into which, because you first have to click on each individual group, scroll all the way up, look at its combat strength bonus, and try to remember that while you do the same for all others. If the combat experience was displayed right next to the name, without having to select the group to see it, things would be much easier. -
Could you make gathering units into an army more flexible? Instead of just offering the option to collect all units in a location into one big army, maybe it would be possible to select a unit group, click “Gather units”, and then display a list of all available units and select the ones you want to group into the new army by means of tick boxes (also offering tick boxes for “select all” and “select none”)?
Example: You have a large stack of units somewhere, and you want to send them off in separate groups and directions according to their speed. The only thing you can do right now is select a unit, make all other units follow it, then manually make all undesired units unfollow the army again, and send every remaining grouping off onto its desired path, without having the possibility to create another sub-army (because if you try to make units follow a different leader, they will ALL do this, and you lose all previous groupings and commands).
These changes should hopefully not be too difficult to implement and would improve the handling of large armies considerably!
Other than those minor impracticalities, I must say you have created an absolutely stunning and amazing game, with a concept, variety and complexity that I’ve long been looking for! Great work!!
This is already possible, when selecting one unit you can scroll down to the list of other units and drag their icon to the left. They should come along a bit and display gears and an upside down v, allowing you to have only them follow the selected unit.
And about your first problem, I’m not sure but I think the merger would always gain the experience level of the greatest veterans amongst them regardless of which unit you selected. So that shouldn’t matter in the first place unless you were indeed trying to create multiple larger groups of the same unit.
I had a few ideas of my own while reading through these suggestions:
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If a hero falls in battle, a heroic immortal rises which will make the horde more powerful with their buffs. It’s off course impossible to expect the developers to just double the game’s artwork to apply this, so don’t actually show a new sprite.
This should only apply to a select group of heroes, like the tactician or butcher for buffs. And for mana heroes, either nothing at all or having those immortal heroes cast their skill once when they rise, like the hound master scaring off the nearest mortal unit if there is one in range, but only when he rises.
F.e.: My vicious sergeant and his orcs fought valiantly against the undead blight but eventually fell to their overpowering numbers. Now, the horde which consumed them looks just like any other horde, but when I click on them to read their discription I see a +3 strenght buff added.
This should make the undead even more dynamic and interesting without making them too OP, because it will be the player’s shortcomings or calculated risks that cause these buffs to appear. -
I already saw there was some talk about this issue a few months ago, about how there is no immortal lord appearing when a mystical creature or other immortal lord corrupts a manapool. How about making all these special units all summon the same immortal lord or a group of undead fairies (whom apparently inhabit these pools according to the lore)? Something like ‘The spirit of mana corrupted’, an immortal lord that reduces the mana production of all uncorrupted manapools to 0. Maybe with the added extra that a pool priestress can instantly kill it by rejuvinating the pool?
We were tired. Our numbers stretched thin. Our hope all but extinguished. So when we heard word of an immortal mystical beast rushing towards the nearby manapool, we couldn’t muster up the strenght to stop it. If only we had, for the beast that rose from that well was more terrifying that any immortal lord we ever heard of. It was a piece of the spirit of Alundria herself, corrupted and angry. We had forsaken her, allowed her to be defiled like this. And so, she had forsaken us as well, denying us her power in our time of need as all her other wells dried up.
(The following is supposed to be a 3, it’s automatically changed to a one in the preview)
- Something to clear out cities and villages that are doomed already. I know it would be too easy if you could just empty all the villages before the undead reach them, but sometimes I wish there was an option to do this aside from training all inhabitants to become soldiers. Quite often I’m just throwing any excess funds into isolated areas to assure I can move out as many mortals as possible before the undead roll in, but for some races this is just impossible.
There are three ways I imagine this to be possible:
-An ‘Evacuation’ button, allowing you to select a city and tell their civilians to move to another city of the same race. The refugees are extremely slow (maybe even as much 24h/league on roads) and the evacuation costs valour to prevent early-game abuse.
-An ‘Evacuation’ button, limiting your options to have the civilians in villages evacuate to the nearest city, like they did in medieval times. Civilians in cities can’t be evacuated. That way, you’ll be able to hole up in a fortified position without having to worry about leaving a nearby village to it’s fate.
In both cases, you can’t train the refugees into soldiers or collect taxes until they arrive at their destination, and the concentrated population would decrease your unit/hour production in the area so it shouldn’t make the player too OP.
-Death squadrons. (Sorry if these already exist, I haven’t seen all the cards yet and only know of the pirate with a minor similar ability.) Special hero cards with the option to slay the population of a settlement at high valour costs. And I mean high, like 20 valour for a city. This to either make sure the player knows the costs of genocide and will only use it for the greater good, or to create a ‘dark player’.
A dark player is the hero that this map needs, not the one it deserves.
If the death squadrons would allow the player to go into negative valour, this could make for an interesting player dynamic for cooperating experienced players: One player with a lot of DS cards will initially spread out just like his peers and capture the nearest few settlements. Then, the other players will each give the dark player one of their newly gained settlements where he summons one such DS card.
Having DS in every corner of the map, the dark player will then rush to the largest settlements that can’t be saved and destroy them before the immortals can. A lot of immortal strenght is prevented from rising, but one player will be deeply despised by the population (massive negative valour points) preventing him from growing. But with his sacrifice, the other players can clear out the map and maybe send him the valour he needs for redemption around the endgame.
Needless to say, this will only work early-game with groups that actually cooperate, not something that will work for newbies in normal maps or single players. For them, the card will be a late-game hero or too costly to be used.
- And maybe do something about the common archers from the elves and dwarves. Their ability to attack a specific target at range makes them rediculously effective against immortal lords. When I have 5-6 elven archer units facing an impossible to beat force, I can usually kill the immortal lord despite their small chance of success. And that’s without abusing the bug that the cooldown resets when you fuse two groups even if both already fired. So maybe make it so that you can only range attack a lord once a turn?
Thanks for the quick answer - I wasn’t aware of the sliding left and adding to army option.
With regards to merging units: Are you sure? Back when I started playing this game (a few weeks ago), I read in the help pages that when merging units, only the buffs of the unit that is merged INTO (i.e. the unit selected first) are preserved. So when merging 2 groups, one with combat experience 10, and the other with 0, one should select the one with 10 first, and merge the other group into it. I am always extra cautious to do it that way, haven’t tested it the other way. Have you?
I haven’t, that’s why I said I wasn’t sure. I never saw the experience icon dissappear after fusing, but that might just be luck or not paying too much attention.