“… 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.
The current injuries system is too punishing to be fun.
I love the idea. You could even have them bring a potion back to him, but make the quest super hard.
I still want to sprinkle in some injuries that are even worse. Broken back, champion's carry capacity cut by 3/4. Champion loses his arm, cannot use two handed weapons, or a weapon and a shield+loses X hp. I want the injuries to be just awful. That way you will just not carelessly send them in to a fight to game exp. If they get hurt, one injury would make them almost worthless.
I also want the sovereign's to get injuries, so people are less careless with them as well.
I find injuries to be reasonably balanced, at least on Challenging difficulty level. It is very rare that I have to retire a champion because they're injuries are just too debilitating. Not sure how it is on harder difficulties.
They should also allow Champs to die. Inguries are nice and all but I don't 'fear' them. However death is different and puts that fear of losing a Champ in the game. Of coarse you should also have thinks like raise dead and resurrect and of coarse magic items that can bring a champ back from the dead but these to be rare and hard to get or learn if a spell.
All we need is a little experimentation. Lose a limb, doctor/mage gets to add a new one.
Heh... that's actually not a bad idea. If you get an injury, instead of healing it, you could turn around and build something cool to take advantage of it. Did you get a terrible disease? Here's something to spread it to all your enemies. Now THAT would be a reason to not reload whenever your heroes get killed.
I think the heroes should be killed and/or some of the options should be much worse injuries. One of the reasons people walk around with the heroes because if they get hurt, it is not that bad. At least one maybe two. I think there should be a couple of them that should just be awful. I also think the Sovereigns should get injuries as well.
It would stop just wandering around fighting, because then if you lose there is actually a consequence.
This feature is a reload 100% of the time. I do not like the current implementation at all ... how does a person get permanent pneumonia?
About half of these afflictions should expire after a given number of turns. The other half, say blind in one eye, could be permanent. It's an easy fix and makes the feature more compelling.
Maybe include a high level spell, obtained through the tech tree, that is expensive in both mana and money but can remove one chosen affliction per casting. That way you can 'fix' your favorite champions, or at least get rid of truly obnoxious maladies. This would also be a relatively easy implementation.
Could not agree more. I never ever restart a game
I am completely on the other end of this. I want the injuries to be worse. There is no loss when a champion dies during a battle. He gets an injury, keeps all their stuff and you move on. In MoM, you finally got a champion, you made three artifacts for him, you carefully exp them up to Demi-God level, then you do something stupid like get him trapped in a monster den with 4 sky drakes and he gets killed. The champion is gone, and so is all the magic items you made for him. That was awesome. You don't get that with the injury system. You just keep sending them on missions to get exp, because some of the injuries are nothing, and there is already a potion to get rid of all injuries. There is no loss.
It is even worse with Sovereigns. There is no after math what so ever. You can walk them around with absolute indifference. Sovereigns also need to be susceptible to injuries so it would actually matter. You spend a little mana, take the down time and off you go, fully equipped with no problems. I think it is part of the problem with immersion into the game. You just don't get connected with the game because there is no consequence.
KingHobbit, we are not totally at odds. I don't have any problem with a chance for death ... but it's only one outcome from a scale of outcomes. Champions are too rare, too useful, and too essential to game value to allow them to be reduced by a half dozen permanent injuries. Also, the world is just to dangerous (and equipment too hard to obtain ... especially in the early stages) to avoid having them fall in battle.
As a compromise, if the battle is won the injured champion will live; otherwise, they will die. If they live they still get a 50% chance of a permanent condition ...
One final point, if death were an option, please no resurrection spells. Resurrection spells are ridiculous and defeat the point.
If death were an option, some people would want a resurrection spell (expensive, high level), but would be free to spend their research and mana on other things if they wanted more challenge.
Edit: that said, for now, permanent injuries are at least a middle-ground between losing everything and losing nothing.
I think they are too essential. I already want the champions to be nerfed. None of them should have magic, unless they were imbued somehow by the sovereign. The essence of the game was there were very few (sovereigns) that had access to the worlds magic. Now everybody does. I liked the original concept better. Since that doesn't seem like it is going to change, then make the injuries worse so they become less important. I would agree with no resurrection spell.
I do like the idea if the battle is won, then have a series of minor injuries, or perhaps some temporary injuries. However, if the battle is lost, then no holds barred. Make the injuries catastrophic----and make it apply to the sovereign.
KingHobbit: The fundamental problem is that champions are SOVEREIGNs. The original concept was much better, I agree, although I think that having a few natural CHANNELERs, dedicated sorcerers with expertise in a single school, would be good. The remaining champions should be tanks, admininistrators, etc.
In truth, I dislike the proliferation of Sovereigns so much I am inclined to MOD the game file.
stein220: The problem is that the permanent injuries do not work effectively as a middle ground if they are always permanent and severe. Champions bring a lot of flavor to the game and add persona to your kingdom/empire. With no reasonable chance of a temporary injury or cure, I will always reload when they fall (or abandon the game) ... I would prefer the champion dead than riddled with a list of maladies, often ridiculous (Typhoid either kills you or it doesn't and a gangrene hand would be lethal unless you loose the hand).
loggerhead: I completely agree. I certainly want to feel some trepidation when I fight an army that is led by a champion, but when I run into the army that is led by the sovereign it should be epic. Right now they are all just splish splashed together. Too many champions, and not enough separation between champion and sovereign.
Perhaps having a level-up choice of removing an injury instead of upgrading might help. I don't quite understand the save/reload mentality it's like playing poker and automatically folding because your hand sucks- not exactly the point of the game, or any game in general imo but whatever. People are going to do it anyway in a myriad of circumstances so they shouldn't really be catered for.
I would like a level up option that could eliminate some of the injuries. Again I would think you would need to classify them into major and minor. I still want major injuries that are permanent. A champion lost an arm or something--that would add some character to the champions. I also like the OP that develops quests to eliminate injuries.
Leeboy26: This idea that there is only one way to approach a computer game has come up previously, although they did it with less respect than you have shown. I ignored them, but for you I will respond.
You are probably a competitive player. You might see the game as a series of obstacles to conquer and achieve satisfaction in your accomplishment, in winning. That's poker ... it's the end that matters. I have no issue with that.
I am not a competitive player. I have always approached role playing games in the same manner as I might approach a piece of writing or a drawing ... for me it is an interactive story, a creation. It's the path that matters ... and I either like it or I don't. I would however, like to minimize the number of times that I am required to use my 'eraser'. It erodes my fun.
Why should Stardock care? Because I pay for my games, of course. To be successful, they need to somehow find the ideal compromise between yourself, myself, and the whole spectrum of gaming approaches that are out there.
I guess that's why they are basically crowd-sourcing this release.
being a player rather happy to reload (and having to at riddic.) I have to say that for me the injury-system works out. I take the odd injury alright saving me a reload. Don't like army-debuffs like typhoid. But those are rare and there are some sweet ones like hallucinations and gangrene hand doesn't hurt anymore midgame. So I don't see urgent need for a redo, doesn't mean it can't be made better but its head and sholders about other stuff I know up to and including its spiritual ancestor MOM and the more recent AOW: SMSince I'm all for new quests I still like your suggestion. (I think the number of quests existent might easily be quadrupled or quintupled and the active ammount of quest nodes doubled for a given game with ideally heroes also being recruited exclusively via quest-nodes in my book...)
KingHobbit: Yes, that would be cool to include an injury like a lost arm; however, they would need to add code to prevent two handed weapons, shields, and possibly penalize the offhand strike. I like it, but I'll bet they consider it too complicated.
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