5.58 Brainstorming thread

[Seravy]

So, we have a few unaddressed issues we couldn't deal with in 5.56 left :

- Draconian problem 2 : I'm unsure what to do with this one, but the extra racial armor and breath attack is clearly a lot more powerful for a life player and the two amplify each other. Unbuffed the breath attack will not deal significant damage, but with buffs it will be strong at eliminating enemy figures and the retaliation damage will have a hard time to break through extra armor. Furthermore Draconians can position themselves to attack the nonflying enemies together so suppression penalties will likely apply to at least some of the retaliation. Prayer in particular is extremely relevant, raising defensive power and breath damage simultaneously and significantly. To a lesser extent Heroism can too but that one is mostly obsoleted by the existence of War College by the time you mass produce halberdiers or better.
-Negate First Strike to apply vs throw and breath - this is too difficulty and major to be added to an update that's urgent due to fixing a bug so it'll be postponed for the next one. Also, which this helps the AI a little, ultimately breath and thrown will still favor the human and the AI will still not be able to use it effectively. Maybe rethinking the thrown/breath mechanic and allowing it to be used on the defense is a better long term solution? It still maintains the main benefit of the ability (hitting before normal melee retaliation), but takes out the unit positioning element which is not just an AI problem : if the AI knew how to play it better - not that such is possible, just in theory - we'd have a very unfun game where units stare at each other as whoever moves first, loses. Of course there are ways to break out of that, but it rises game complexity to unhealthy levels either way I'm afraid - we have to remember this is a game where you fight hundreds of battles, and thrown/breath is a very common ability.
-Dark Elf large neutral cities can have an Armorer's Guild at start which violates the turn limit for building one. We should likely replace that with a different building, problem is, it should be for a unit with no ranged attack and the race has no other such unit.

Furthermore, I discovered there is no building destruction if a city is conquered without combat. This opens up the possibility of abuse : make the AI summon something, kill all units except the summon, retreat, send whatever leftover unit you have around into the empty city : voila, no buildings lost.

[Nelphine]

You'd still have destruction from the battle with the summon. I don't think that abuse actually happens enough to warrant changing that rule (it makes sense nothing is destroyed when there is no battle, and without abuse, it only hurts the player as the AI always has garrisons.

[Seravy]

If you retreat exhausted and didn't step on city tiles, there is no destruction. Destruction comes from turns ended on city tiles, Vortexes doing the same, and the attacker winning the battle.

[Nelphine]

Right, but the number of battles where a) you kill all the enemy units and b) the enemy uses a summon and you do NOT kill it and c) you avoid destroying buildings and d) you avoid taking so many losses that it doesn't matter if you destroyed any buildings anyway and e) you retreat exhausted and f) you have another stack available to attack the same city on the same turn and g) you're not already winning by so much that the buildings actually matter

Is a very small number of battles. 

Yes you could try to abuse it but I don't think anyone would be able to actually abuse it often enough to warrant the change given that the current rules are intuitive, and in nonabusive situations, penalize the player

[Sapher]

Regenerating units for the defender also prevent that tactics

[Seravy]

idk, I don't understand Russian so I have no idea why Sapher only used it in one or two battles. Also a lot on your list isn't really an additional condition :

A. You have to kill all enemy units to win in the first place so this is already done.
B. The enemy using a summon you have direct no control over, but Chaos, Death and Nature all have one. Indirectly, if you kill all but one enemy unit, next battle the AI is almost guaranteed to summon because it's low on units. This does take an additional battle though. Not killing the summon is entirely up to the player, most of these summons are easy to avoid or trick into staying behind city walls.
C. You avoid destroying buildings whenever you can and even if not, you are still avoiding the additional 40% destruction rate which is probably at least 3/4 of the total.
D. Early game AI has no casting skill and usually minimal ranged units. As you take out ranged units first anyway, this is again not a real requirement. Late game it's different, this tactic clearly isn't going to work for the late game.
E. Completely in the player's control, either you press done instead of winning or not.
F. Not needed, as long as your stack is good enough to leave the weakest unit behind, that will work.
G. We are talking about an early game tactic so this is again not relevant.

Building destruction is our primary means of discouraging early game expansion, if it can be bypassed in the early game specifically, that's a major problem.

Regenerating units, yes, that's a good point. Werewolves are pretty much the only one available in the early game though unless on Myrror. (I guess they are the reason why you stopped using the tactic, purple had some in almost every city.)

Oh I forgot to add to the list of issues :
-Alchemy+Archmage+Conjurer+Specialist together might still be too powerful, or summoning centaurs (especially when boosting casting skill) might be too powerful. Not sure which but more likely centaurs?

[Seravy]

Speaking of Centaurs... it was one of the earliest additions to the game to fill an otherwise empty spellslot. Now that we have room for new units, maybe a new Nature creature could be a better solution?
I'd say Construct Catapult, Fairy Dust and Ice Bolt fills the role Centaurs do fairly well (ranged combat summon, way to deal damage using combat skill) so it's not really necessary. Instead, we could have
1. A combat summon that's not ranged but moves 2 or 3, making it completely different from the existing options (both capatult and earth elemental moves 1), in fact that would be unique even if including other realms.
2. An overland summon that's actually decent for garrisoning, to get rid of the "sprites in fortress" problem.

Or, if we remove one more spell, we can have both. (but we need to come up with actual creatures, and someone has to make all the combat sprites and unit icons)
Some candidates for removal could be Fairy Dust (good but redundant with fireball, although if we remove it, Nature ends up with no common direct damage and we lose one of the three Cold Element effects in the entire game) or Resist Elements (We already removed this same effect from Bless and deemed it too powerful, AND it's redundant with Elemental Armor as well. Still, I rather not remove it as that leaves Nature with no common buffs.)

[zitro1987]

If Centaurs are removed as a spell, then we can boost the fighter-guild tier centaurs (and add a bit to its cost):

*5 melee (was 4)
*5 range (same)
*8 shots (was 6) - this is important, and why it involves a fighter's guild unit.
*2 armor (was 1)
*6 resist (was 5)
*90 cost (was 60)

A combat summon that is higher-stat plus 3 speed seems great. "Lesser Earth Elemental". It could have +1 to hit, 10 melee, 4 armor, 15hp and 2-3 move (and similar stats as fire elemental) but no abilities whatsoever

An overland defensive summon also sounds like a very good idea. A ground unit that moves 1 or 2, shoots ranged (weak shots), has higher armor/hp.melee (whatever boosts strategic rating).

I don't like fairy dust and couldn't care less if it is gone.

[Seravy]

One more problem I noticed : If you web the last remaining monster enough times in a row, you win the battle because neutrals disappear if they can't do anything for 4 consecutive turns. This way it's possible to avoid the rampaging monster damaging city tiles. So this convenience feature seems to be abuseable as well
(also if you do this you get exp for the monster(s), making it even worse)

[Nelphine]

Why.. is that a rule? Aside from web or stasis when could a unit ever not do anything?