November 8th, 2017, 11:10
(This post was last modified: November 8th, 2017, 11:11 by Seravy.)
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Ehhh no, that's awful. It means you can't buy things when they are near completion without paying extra, and the most economic way to use gold is to buy a 150 cost building and switch it to the more expensive and let it build normally afterwards.
No, we can't do this through buying costs. (and variable buying cost are counterintuitive anyway)
(also costs are not a solution, the player might be able to pay the higher cost if getting more lucky than average. Or playing dwarves)
November 8th, 2017, 11:25
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Mountains are definitely a bit broken, I've proposed in the past to fix terrain a bit and make it balanced but you didn't like it because it removes some purpose to change terrain. But, you can have not so useless tundras and deserts without making change terrain useless imho.
Coasts and oceans should grant more food: it's what ocean is used for, a city mostly surrounded by ocean has absolutely no production bonus it should be able to reach a large population in time.
Coast: +1 food, +10% economy
Ocean: +1 food, +1% prod
Plains: 1.5 like now
Forests: +1/+2%
Hills: +0.5/+4%
Mountains: +7%
Deserts: +4%/+10% tax (thanks to the caravans)
Tundras: +0.5, +1% prod
With these numbers it's still better to have a plain and a mountain than a forest and a hill.
Some races could have benefits to particular terrains. I'd keep that for the arcanus races, which would nicely balance the myrran retort at cost 1. So:
humans: +0.5 food coast/sea (good buff! they're UP)
nomads, orcs:+0.5 food deserts
lizardmen: tundra? they don't really need it
halflings in forests
And so on...
November 8th, 2017, 11:33
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(November 8th, 2017, 11:10)Seravy Wrote: Ehhh no, that's awful. It means you can't buy things when they are near completion without paying extra, and the most economic way to use gold is to buy a 150 cost building and switch it to the more expensive and let it build normally afterwards.
No, we can't do this through buying costs. (and variable buying cost are counterintuitive anyway)
(also costs are not a solution, the player might be able to pay the higher cost if getting more lucky than average. Or playing dwarves)
The whole point of the suggestion is to make it economical to buy early cheap things, but to make it much harder to make it much harder to rush advanced buildings.
This makes advanced buildings mid-late game without forcing it on the player. You can still buy up to it on occasion, but not regularly or early.
November 8th, 2017, 12:22
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Yeah but if you have 150 left from a 600 cost building and you have to pay 4x for that, you curse the game and wish you bought the first 150 cheaper ten turns ago instead. Not fun. Buying the last 150 on four almost finished 600 cost buildings would cost twice as much as buying one full building from 0 to 600. Again the opposite of common sense and the original game's "the more is done the cheaper" system.
(also amplifying towers, you need to be able to buy those at 2x...and wizard's guilds...)
November 8th, 2017, 12:30
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Certainly not the opposite of common sense - in many projects, the beginning is cheaper. Just the opposite of what we're used to in this and similar games.
It is the opposite of the original game, and it would require some kind of pop up 'this how much it will cost to buy this, do you want to continue?'.
But my point is that it is a way to make the buildings come into play later. Not really a great way, so I'm fine not doing it, but you wanted ideas that would move buildings later in the game without being totally artificial. (Technically, the absolute numbers are artificial, and it should be percentages, but that doesnt work due to not being forced to stick with what you buy.)
November 8th, 2017, 16:04
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As it seems it'll take time to figure out how to solve the remaining two problems (if we can solve them at all), but there have been some real progress today, I wonder if I should do a release now, or wait for a bit longer?
I still haven't even started on draconians yet which would be quite important to do as well...
This is the current changelog :
As you can imagine, I haven't tested any of these in actual games, nor had I played any since finishing the last dwarf game. (Giant Spiders and Werewolves are especially risky changes that might impact the game balance a lot, but probably the lightning change is, too.)
November 8th, 2017, 19:10
(This post was last modified: November 8th, 2017, 19:22 by zitro1987.)
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Some more thoughts:
*I re-iterate the possible need of high-difficulty AI having early access to dispel magic. Your life wizard with buff-stacking may be now more vulnerable
*We can have the armorer's guild require war college, and fantastic stable require Armorer's Guild. For balance, the 3 buildings combined should be slightly cheaper and every race that allows armorer's guild should allow war college.
- War College - 300-350 cost (rushing to this for mid-tier units a valid strategy)
- Armorer's Guild - 550-600 cost (that would be a lot of settlers or resource production, mana-> gold, or mid-tier units wasted)
- Fantastic Stable - 300 cost (since you've gotten this far, it shouldn't be too expensive)
Combined Cost - 1150-1250 (lower than original)
pros:
*Armorer's Guild feels like a true mid-game building like amplifying tower - requires a lot of resources
*Very difficult to rush-win with these units (high-armor golems still a major problem)
*War College can be useful for mid-tier units when you're not quite there, plus you need it for armorer's guild
*Less of a dilemma of fantastic stables vs armorer's guild, now that fantastic stables require armorer's but is much cheaper.
Cons:
*Some racial tweaking needed, especially for races too dependent on armorer's guilds
*Conquering a town with a destroyed early military building can translate to losing a looot of buildings. Earthquake may be too devastating.
*Have life's 'just cause' be more early-game oriented while reducing the armor-oriented buff-stacking strategy with the 2 endurance proposals in forum.
-Once cast, a free holy weapon and/or holy armor is allowed.
or
-A random hero (or a decent pack of mercenaries) triggers, you must use gold to buy.
November 9th, 2017, 00:43
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(November 8th, 2017, 12:30)Nelphine Wrote: Certainly not the opposite of common sense - in many projects, the beginning is cheaper. Just the opposite of what we're used to in this and similar games.
A simpler way to achieve this: from cost=2p to cost = p * log(p), or something along the lines of that.
November 9th, 2017, 01:42
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Note that with c=p log p rush building works like now, it's just that the more production intensive buildings cost more than now. Example: 200->400something, 800->2400
(November 8th, 2017, 19:10)zitro1987 Wrote: Some more thoughts:
*I re-iterate the possible need of high-difficulty AI having early access to dispel magic. Your life wizard with buff-stacking may be now more vulnerable
*We can have the armorer's guild require war college, and fantastic stable require Armorer's Guild. For balance, the 3 buildings combined should be slightly cheaper and every race that allows armorer's guild should allow war college.
- War College - 300-350 cost (rushing to this for mid-tier units a valid strategy)
- Armorer's Guild - 550-600 cost (that would be a lot of settlers or resource production, mana-> gold, or mid-tier units wasted)
- Fantastic Stable - 300 cost (since you've gotten this far, it shouldn't be too expensive)
Combined Cost - 1150-1250 (lower than original)
pros:
*Armorer's Guild feels like a true mid-game building like amplifying tower - requires a lot of resources
*Very difficult to rush-win with these units (high-armor golems still a major problem)
*War College can be useful for mid-tier units when you're not quite there, plus you need it for armorer's guild
*Less of a dilemma of fantastic stables vs armorer's guild, now that fantastic stables require armorer's but is much cheaper.
Cons:
*Some racial tweaking needed, especially for races too dependent on armorer's guilds
*Conquering a town with a destroyed early military building can translate to losing a looot of buildings. Earthquake may be too devastating.
I like the concept, we might remove the destroys dependent building on raze rule to avoid those effects.
November 9th, 2017, 06:03
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Removing the choice of building war college OR armorer's guild OR fantastic stables is unacceptable.
Using "log" in ASM is probably too difficult and we have already know variable costs don't work.
The player can buy a cheap building, switch to the other, buy the rest and pay for 2*200 production instead of 1*400 which would be more expensive. We shouldn't encourage production switching as the best tactic and any form of variable cost results in that.
We either have the ability to switch production without losses OR have variable costs and I'm not willing to lose the former.
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