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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Ore generation rebalancing
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November 23rd, 2018, 09:30
(This post was last modified: November 23rd, 2018, 09:31 by Nelphine.)
Neither of them is a big enough factor. Having adamantium is more powerful than both combined.
(Note what I just said: adamantium is stronger than 3 of your starting picks. This is a huge issue for variance and trying to balance city units.) 
By the way been thinking about what we can do about adamantium (since I admit it's a problem I just didn't think it's fixable without losing something more important) but don't really have good ideas still.
Closest to viable I could think of was mithril being +2 attack and no defense, adamantium being +2 defense but no attack, this keeps mithril as is in total stat points given, nerfs adamantium to half, but retains the "admantium is more powerful" feeling and both still provide enough stats to be impressive. But in the current game code, the two are mutually exclusive, it's stored in 2 bits as : 00 = nothing 01 = magic weapons 10 = mithril 11 = adamantium So there is no room to squeeze in extra information to allow them separately. We'd need to store the adamantium elsewhere somehow and I don't think we have a free unit flag. It also results in display problems because we'd need to be able to show both effects on the unit at the same time, separately.
Right, it's the luck I was talking about. Particularly on myrror, even on fair minerals, you can plan around getting adamantoum early enough to make it part of your mid game strategy. On rich, you can plan on at least one of your first 3 cities having it.
November 23rd, 2018, 12:53
(This post was last modified: November 23rd, 2018, 12:54 by Nelphine.)
Um.
My thought is you've always resisted such changes in the past due to wanting to ensure myrran was worth the extra pick, and the main reason for this is the better minerals compared to arcanus. So, to answer.. yes it might, but what is your own cutoff for when is myrran too weak? Personally, on fair, id love it if we could go the way we did with treasure - define how many of a given resource appears on each plane, and control its location somewhat. But that would be ultra complex, and would require adding modifiers based on continent and whether a wizard starts there, and I don't even think wizards are generated when ores are? But the overall reduction of myrran rich is helpful, but without controlling locations of adamantium, you're still going to get huge swings - some games, you won't have any adamantium on your home plane, and some games your capital will have it, and that's the single biggest fluctuation on armor that a unit can have. Everything else has costs attached to it.
Well... Myrran no longer costs 2...and the number of ores are higher, so are their average quality, it doesn't really have to mean common adamantium, in fact it shouldn't since a +2/+2 is better than warlord, definitely not fair for 1 pick. So I'm fine with reducing adamantium in fact if it really is as common as you describe, I think I should.
If we discard the existing ore generation algorhytm entirely then we could definitely do something like the treasure thing but that method wouldn't work for this I believe due to the land size setting differences, UNLESS we define the amount of ores to scale with the land size equally. Ores are generated after wizards and their capitals, which is why they couldn't be considered in placing those capitals. The other way around, moving the ores depending on the location of cities, should be doable. So yes, we can do that and it would actually incorporate Orihalcon better into the system (it's currently a 1/30 chance of any ore to mutate into orihalcon after generation is done) but it still has a huge downside - the current system guarantees a fairly even distribution of ores on the map. The new one would not since it wouldn't generate the ores "X amount per 5x5 square area". I don't really think it's worth this amount of work though - changing the tables to lower adamantium should be enough, and if we absolutely want additional conditions (no adamantium next to the human fortress I assume) we can do that by retroactively removing those that got generated in a way that violates the rule. However I'm pretty sure we voted against doing that already in the past - I did offer the possibility.
If we put in conditions I would actually like to ban adamantium from being within 7 tiles of any starting wizard, and on the same continent. That way no one, AI or human, is likely to start with it in their first 3 cities.
I'd also like to reduce the variance between the 3 military ores on the 2 planes. Right now, particularly adamantium, there is simply a lot more on myrror. I'd want, I dunno, let's say 5 mithril and 1 adamantium on arcanus to translate to 7 mithril and 2 adamantium on myrror? So 40% more mithril, and 100% more adamamtium, and only 50% more military ores overall? Does that make any sense? Sorry, my numbers might be completely horrible. Oh and orihilacron, I'd like more of. But there's so little right now, I don't know any numbers that would be good.
So, generated some test maps, 10 for each.
Fair land, Fair Minerals Myrror 0 on capital 3 close enough for first 2 cities 7 had none near my starting position Huge land, Fair minerals Myrror 1 on capital 7 close to the capital 2 had none the trend is obvious, fewer sea and more land tiles yield more nearby adamantium. 8 out of 10 is crazy high for Fair, land size really screws game balance up on so many different levels... Huge land, Rich minerals 4 on capital 4 on starting cities 2 questionable (either at medium distance or on a close tile which is on a different continent not visible without magic spirit or other intercontnenal scout) Ok, this is outright broken, every map has adamantium here. We need to do something about it. Now about not letting the AI have adamantium either, there is a problem with it. Adamantium ANYWHERE that's not the AI's 3 starting cities, favors the human. The human will scout most of the plane, say "this city has adamantium and it's not well defended" - it can't be because it's still a tiny hamlet, the AI would need to build up buildings and produce troops since it can't move the units there from elsewhere to defend it, they have to be produced locally - so the human steals the city, and now has adamantium, near to the AI's main cities, which allows him to buy troops and use them to conquer the AI. So admantium near the AI, but not on their top 3 cities, is helping the human. Adamantium far from everyone is fair play, since no one is getting to use it before the first wars are decided. But adamantium near the human, near the AI and on the human's starting cities, helps the human. Adamantium on the AI's fortress or starting 2 cities helps the AI - but even on those 2 cities, only if the AI starts far enough from the human to not get discovered before they build up that city. So if we do make a rule, it'll be no adamantium on human specifically, and even with that we simply even out the balance as the human will still benefit from the adamantium pretty much anywhere on the map that's not the AI's starting city. (this reasoning only applies to early war based games but those are like 99% of what we see nowadays.) note I didn't count mithril but most starts without adamantium had at least some of that so...that's also a thing to watch out for. Oh, actually huge land tends to have a lot more mountain tiles, so that increases the chance of adamantium indirectly on top of having less sea tiles. Restricting Adamantium to Hills might help counter this effect. Similarly, Wet and Dry reduces adamantium - swamp, river and desert tiles can't have any. Quote:; Mountains Here is the new table for ores. 7 is adamantium, 6 is mithril. I also did some tweaks to other ores. On poor, Arcanus gets Mithril on hills, Myrror gets Mithril on hills and mountains, adamantium on hills only. On Fair, both planes get Mithril on both hills and mountains, Myrror gets admantium on both hills and mountains. On Rich, Arcanus gets triple Mithril on mountains and double on hills...this should be the other way around? Heck I don't even think we need this much, I think I should reduce it. So both planes get single mithril on mountains and double on hills, and both planes get adamantium on hills but only Myrror gets it on mountains. (November 23rd, 2018, 10:01)Seravy Wrote: By the way been thinking about what we can do about adamantium (since I admit it's a problem I just didn't think it's fixable without losing something more important) but don't really have good ideas still. Where's orihalcon stored? |
