Well actually I just read sephi's ("master of mana" /successor of Fall from heaven Mod) comment when he actually played Master of Magic.
In Master of Magic a lot of Barbarian Units running around, even much stronger.
In FE we've the situation to make this barbarians completely dump and only acting in Wilderness or let them attack cities which leads to the problem that often too much defense is needed and means either too much resources go to defense or a unlucky person/AI just get overrunned.
The solution is to let barbarians do some damage to the city but not destroying it.
It can be something like destroyed building or stolen resources or even some funny stuff like a giant spider uses town houses as new home and add "negative building" to the city - which may be handled in another way somehow.
Bigger Barbarian Forces like fire demons coming from quests/dungeons may still destroy/conquer cities but the usual bear/spider/what-ever-beast should not but still need to influences cities!
And don't get me wrong. I know about the bug in 0.77 (forces tries to double kill pretenders and kill AI nations very frequently). Actually I WANT the wilderness creators acting in a way with cities near by just not as harsh as destroying the whole city.
In moment the lairs/walking monsters are there to get destroyed. they try to catch stupid heroes at best. Not that thrilling for me.
Some good points here.
I suggest killing population at a rate of (race base HP) / (total attack value of the attackers). Faction AIs bent on destroying the city can linger there until the city is destroyed or they get chased off or killed. Monsters would probably attack for a turn or two and then retreat again.
Buildings should probably have a chance at being destroyed too, but I'm not sure what kind of mechanic should be used there. You would expect the fiercer the attack, the more gets destroyed.
Simpler is usually better, but something more realistic than a flat rate would be nice.
Maybe just as simple as having the enemy destroy one building per turn until they are eradicated or the city is destroyed would be a good compromise.
good ideas
I never have a problem with this, but I am worried for my beloved AI. Even after the bug is fixed that seems to get them killed s easily, they are going to have problems with the monsters. Adding a whole new game mechanic or destroying buildings may not be necessary. Perhaps the capital city should just get more defenders for being, well... the capital city. If we had 4 stock defenders for a capital, problem solved. No change to game mechanics, no extra coding, and monsters don't become mere annoyances to cities.
On top of that, make a total of 3 defenders from Bell Tower and 2 more from Fort and now we have a realistic early game defense against monster rushes. It will also prevent early factions from wiping each other out of the game. You can expect a quick core mod if this problem persists on release.
I don't mind a stock of 4 militia defenders for capital cities.
Problem solved because of auto defenders? Well maybe we should add just an auto army of the best units in each AI city to prevent player conquer AIs cities with 2-3 heroes...
Thats not the point! There is absolutly nothing we gain here. Whats the difference of having this monsters/barbarian when they do absolutly nothing just waiting to be killed for XP?
Destroyed buildings hurt a bit but its far away from cripple an AI. For sure the AI as well as the player needs to make decisions here to either defend with more or less (to risk something some time)!
FE lacks on decisions! Not sure you see that but in moment the whole game is build on random stuff (heroes always go random quests, get random perks (we usually take rarest when fit), etc.) and not-important stuff (weapon a or b, just build every building, research give nothing really needed for specific tactic), the real decisions are to build pioneer now or after next building.
So for sure wilderness should influence the game somehow and for sure there needs to be some decisions made!
(and I'm the last one not thinking on a challenging AI)
The 'Royal Guard' pre-built unit (/name) could be taken out & used for the '4 man' capitol garrison, never seemed right to me to have an entire army of Royal Guardsmen & this way their name would actually serve them justice
The advantage of stronger pre-built militia is that they protect the city, but can't be used to attack other cities.
yea. Maybe just use the Royal Guard unit as an immovable militia(is it even militia at this point?) on Capital Hill.
@calmon,
The 4 guard bonus is only given to capitals. Every other city would have to provide its own defense. The point is to allow monsters to raze an undefended village, but not sack a capital and ruin the game. There should be consequences to not defending. At the same time, it is better game design to keep capitals in the game as long as possible. You don't want to get a message saying the AI has been wiped out by a troll, simply due to lack of defenses. You also don't want to see your capital sacked on turn one by a spiderling.
I agree with your other point. The game currently lacks decisions. I will wait until later in the beta to worry about this. Much of the problem comes from lack of AI and balancing issues.
And while we're at, an option for the Sovereign to stay in the Capital upon founding, like in WoM. Currently there is no way for the Sovereign to stay in the Capital after it has been created, even if the option to garrison units in a city is turned on. That option does not make the Sovereign stay in the newly created Capital.
Also, I strongly agree with the 4 guard bonus for capitals. It would make a huge difference, both for humans and AI.
Whether the capitol should get extra defenders to prevent a rush or early game KO by monsters is a different issue.
The issue is that completely destroying a city regardless of its size or the strength of the attacker is an unrefined game mechanic. No one denies that having enemies overcome your city's defenses should have consequenses, but a city of hundreds of people with buildings that took dozens of turns to build up should not just "poof" disappear.
I did this to an AI player yesterday. Scouting his border, I noticed an Obsidian Golem, which came after me. I outran it, and a couple turns later his nearby city of 200+ people vanished. He was higher than me on the power scale until he lost this city. If the Golem just pounded on the city for a turn or two and then left for a while, triggering defensive actions by the AI, then he would have kept the city and probably have a stonger military for it. Losing the city just crippled him.
My point is that getting attacked should not necessarity be crippling. It should be bad and it should set you back, but total, instant destruction is very... binary. Letting some spiders wander into an undefended city should not have the same consequence as summoning a Clambercoil Dragon next to one of your main cities (which I have done. That was fun), or being attacked by a massive AI army.
Yes, I agree with that.
Cities should be destroyed by an invading force. The trick is to balance the game so that a large city can defend itself proportional to the level of infrastructure and number of citizens. Right now a large city has so few defenders that a rather weak unit can defeat the city and raze it. If the defenders are properly balanced, killing them would be the logical proof that razing is possible.
In essence, I am happy with the current razing mechanic, I just think some balance to defense is needed. It seems like adding new game mechanics is off the table at this stage in the beta. A high risk, high defense system is within current game mechanics.
I would say that cities could be destroyed by a sufficient invading force. That is why a mechanic that kills population and destroys buildings based on attacker strength works. A big enough stack can raze a city in one turn. But if some hungry Ogres just come by for a snack, people run away, wait for the threat to pass and then return. Some people are killed, some stuff gets wrecked, but there is still a city there.
Completely razing the city immediately just seems so MoM/early Civ where cities were just a square on the map and if((enemy @ city) and (battle = lost)) then city = 0.
I don't disagree per se with the idea of upping the militia, I just think it is a different, though related, issue.
Agreed. I find it silly that a lone bear cub can destroy my entire civilization just because I'm not there to defend it. Or there one turn too late.
I shall join this chorus of agreement.
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