“… The most significant direct change to champions is that injuries matter more. If you have a champion with 6-7 injuries on him he will be severely handicapped, it may be time to hand his equipment over to a promising newcomer without the battle scars.”
I think it’s great that injuries will matter more in the game. However, if injuries matter to the point that a powerful champion eventually becomes useless or unusable, I think that simply fosters an incentive to reload.
Since I think that the intent is to balance out the power of heroes, I have a suggestion that I think both fits the original intent of this change yet will add increased depth and fun to the gameplay along with interesting decisions about how to use your units and resources.
At the heart of it, the incentive to reload to avoid crippling injury really boils down to two things, I think.
1) No one wants to have a once great champion reduced to the point of zero usability without any possibility of rehabilitation.
2) The game provides no incentive to let them get injuries.
I think both of these can be addressed fairly easily entirely within the framework of the existing game by providing a mechanism for “rehabilitation’ of champions and by making that process fun and interesting.
My suggestion is to add quests for badly injured champions that “heal’ battle wounds or conditions. This provides a (time consuming way) to eventually bring a champion back up to fighting snuff. The quests could be unique to injured champions and completing each one could remove only one or two random conditions/injuries. If they have many injuries, that could take a while. They quests could be triggered only after the champion reaches a certain level of debilitation.
An example of such a quest might be to find a reclusive healer. Once found, the healer might have a quest of their own they want the champion to complete before they will help them. Another example: Find a legendary lost healing spring which might have guards that need to be defeated before the healing spring can be used. Each quest would only remove one or two “wounds” so a champion with a lot of them would have to complete multiple quests to get back to a usable state.
Since the champion is badly hurt and can’t fight well on his own, you would need to send units or possibly another champion along with him for protection and help. This introduces interesting game play decisions about how you want to use your units and resources during the game. Is it better to use my units now to protect that front line over there or defend this city over here or is it better to send them along on multiple, time consuming quests to eventually regain the power of one of my best champions? How many such quests should I let him go on? Just few enough to where he is marginally usable again? Or complete enough of them to where he is a power in the world once more? These are fun kinds of decisions to make.
If such a system was in place, I would not reload and would let my champions get injured because I would be able to have a lot of fun later on in the game trying to bring them back to glory once more. I would welcome and look forward to the interesting decisions I would have to make in order to rehabilitate my champions.
This suggestion also serves the purpose behind the intent of the change quoted above of balancing out Champions power in the game because they still get injuries, still become ineffective, still get removed from play for long periods of the game while they are questing for “cures”. The difference is that this is fun.
Great idea!
Another way might be the city level up improvement of the infirmary, over several (I'm thinking 10+ per injury) turns it could slowly remove injuries from champions garrisoned in the city. A life spell that removed an injury at high mana cost could also be cool. Death would probably want the same thing, as healing is not equal to damaging, though it wouldn't really fit with the feel... unless you had to sacrifice another unit to remove the injury with a lower mana cost for the death school equivalent (because only one race being able to magically remove injuries would be a bit unfair on players).
And as a flip there then could be a way to kill champions such as: death chance on combat defeat = number of injuries on champion*10
Why should it? Injuries are meant to be bad news (and alternative to perma death in WoM) and there should be nothing encouraging you to try to get some injuries.
I find myself reloading less and less after injuries, and I totally ignore pneumonia. When they get that one I'm actually happy weakness to cold is not so bad. But he one that makes you regenerate at 1 health per turn SUX.
Great ideas. As had been mentioned elsewhere, it would also be cool and characterful to have certain spells for this. So Life level 4 could have a Restoration spell that removes all injuries. Life Level 5 could have a resurection spell ( I want Champions to face death). These spells could be part of the normal Life traits, advanced research, or a quest. Ideally all high level. Death could have the same thing, but instead be more Necromatic in nature, maybe giving some penalties and bonuses to reflect the changed nature of the Champion. Others have suggested this and I just want to echo it along with your ideas.
I also think Champion death needs to be added. You could then have quests or the above spells to bring them back. For those against death, just think of the Total War games. Your leaders can and will die there and it works fine. As a fantasy game we can add resurrection and immortality, but these things should only be possible for the most powerful mages or accomplished Champions. You could techs a tech that gives Empire players a new building, a death altar that allows you to resurrect a Champion by sacrificing population. Or a tech that lets a Kingdom player cast Death Ward, preventing Champions from dying outright. There are tons of things that could be done here. Or you could have a high level quest to find a Fountain of Youth. I just see immortality as a major high level goal, not something to have as the default.
Death magic should be able to change injuries into chaotic mutations that don't delete the disadvantage, but add a really good bonus.
Say theres a weakness to cold injury - death magic spell 'mutate' mutates the hero so now though they are still weak to cold they are immune to fire. Of course said spell would be very expensive.
There is already a quest for this.
Hm, I haven't seen this yet. Which is good because I like that there are so many quests that we don't always see the same ones in every game (obviously there is room for even more of that).
It's a high level quest. Gives you a potion that cures the hero's injuries. It can easily be made into a spell. Would expect to see it in quite a few mods.
As to loading... not a game concept as far as I am concerned. Those pansies that reload for a better outcome should be playing on beginner. They deserve no quarter in game design.
Yes great idea. adds some "things to do" in the game
Like it or not, the current system was at least partly created to give a disincentive to reload even if you did get an injury. I quite like the idea of more hard, time consuming quests to heal your heroes.
I'm an advocate of creating, and keep as many 'interesting choices' in the game as possible. Many good ideas here. May I suggest something along these lines: Experienced heros, (mega-heros)? lose all utility after suffering (some) wounds. What happened to a working retirement? Why not let a severly wounded (or just wounded) Hero be assigned a different set of jobs? Say: When retiring (transfering) hero to teaching/advising roles.
Player has three options for heros when recently wounded hero returns to friendly settlement / (capitol only?) / (location of soverign? / (location of couple if dynasic aspect added back to game).
1: Retire hero - removes hero from game, a small amount of experience is added to one unit/leader in same space as hero when retirement order enacted.
2: Reassign hero to training academy - All units 'built' at location start with a 'little extra' experience gained from working with the vetern wounded hero.
3: Reassign hero to Soverign's Court - soverign receives a 'bonus' in skill area (or access to a new skill) based on hero's best skill - as long as both stay together.
4: If dynasitc system ever 'resurrected' , having a 'royal' couple (could be soverign and spouse) adopt (Roman Republic style) wounded hero into family to tutor next generation. This provides either a) small experience added on to each scion as he or she comes of age, -OR- scions born with trait that matches heros major traits get a boost in that trait, -OR- SOME scions, when they come of age, receive an additional trait based on the adopted hero. This might be random, or allow player to choose from among the three possibilities.
endorsement: "Hey, I took two arrows to the knee! (TES Skyrim joke). And my soverign really likes me, gave me this cushy job of tutoring one of the grand kids. Nice."
Maybe wounds could 'potentially', depending on the injury, provide -> extra fear, extra wisdom, or extra administrative abilities.
Like, someone with a scarred face or missing eye could have less accuracy ... but inspires extra fear (less morale) in enemy units.
After playing beta 0.86 I fully agree, there should be some ways to remove wounds (or at least reduce the Mali)...
Especially as some wounds are quite serious: like -1 constitution for one turn...
For me the simplest idea would be a building which each faction can build only once (similiar to adventurers guild) and where the hero can healt.
During healing the hero is immobilized and maybe the hero also loses health turn by turn...
Beside this some spells in this respect could be nice...e.g.
- transfering a wound from one hero to an other
- or killing an other hero/unit to remove a wound....
Just my thoughts...Still in general I love the idea of the wounds...Just some more balancing is needed here.
good idea but i also like buildings healing slowly injuries and maybe some more potion or herbs you find that remove 1 random injury
i dont agree so much on reload, most of the times its impossible to avoid some death and also battles could be very long occasionaly so i dont really feel like reloading that much
anyway i think the statement of injuries doesnt work, when you have a lvl 8 9 champion there are no more champions in the map so if he becomes useless its just bad and makes me sad
also there wouldnt be time nor enough monsters to lvl up eventual newcomer
I agree with most of the above.
A creative way to let us treat the wounded would be very much appreciated. It may just as well be something that takes time, but at least give us a way to rehabilitate our beloved heros!
Love the idea! Giving a quest or even some challenging path to rehabilitation would drain your empire\kingdom's resources and time, but will contribute to making injuries less likely for us to reload our auto saves. I'd be willing to keep my character's injuries if I can have a hope of fixing them at some point, and it adds another degree of freedom for the game play. Maybe there is some technology or quest that we could invest in to make injuries less severe. Degrees of freedom are always "more the better" for these types of strategy games.
How about making this an option on leveling up, so beside the traits +2 something...
remove a random wound (common)
remove a concrete wound (rare)
This would also have the benefit that you have an incentive to still use even hard battered heroes and not just place same in a town or even kill them with a spell...
In the newest version, its a very low-level quest that gives you a potion of restoration. Look for "odd huts" quest locations.
Spoiler: You'll have to fight one single butcherman
Sorry for the necro but perhaps some injuries should be temporary (even if they last a while).
What about a simple XP hit?
A level 3 city building that allows you to remove the champion from play for 10 seasons or so (depending on injury) would be welcome. Maybe Kingdom only. Empire can have a building that heals instantanously all wounds but at the cost of another champion (an organ 'volunteer').
Awesome.
That level 3 building should replace the apothecary.
Right now does anyone select the x% bonus buildings when queue is empty option? I think those buildings should be replaced.
Then again, that might be part of beta 4 (can Brad/Derek answer if the city level buildings are in play for that?)
I like many of the suggestions. One idea would be to "retire" the hero by opting for the path of the governor and giving bonuses to the city or empire if they could earn xp without fighting. A mechanism could be implemented where the 2nd and upper level traits could give negative penalties to fighting directly while making them buff cities. Maybe they could get access to unit buffing traits as well such as extra xp for units defending cities. This would be a way to have a hero whose illnesses make him weak at fighting useful to help the empire.
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