Stardock, you're getting down to the end of development, and I don't know if you've really answered this question. WHY are cities in this game? What do they provide that you aren't throwing at the player in wads and piles from the open wilderness? They certainly aren't the only means to success, equipment, or money. The only "vital" purpose they really seem to serve is to provide a fail-safe for if your Sov should happen to die, and that's really only likely early in the game. Once you scavenge a few goodie huts, cherry pick some lairs, and apply some appropriate caution, you're really pretty safe without. Goodie huts provide such a fountain of resources beyond what cities are capable of providing for your sov, that cities are redundant, a drain on your sov's time and energy and a boat anchor on his progress. They are just a thing you have to babysit, and they need more from your sov than they provide for him, because all the stuff he can pillage from the world easily, more than sufficiently equips him, protects him, and makes him capable of demolishing anything and everything that he comes across, and in a surprisingly short amount of time.
I've noticed the last few games that I've played, there's just no impetus to create cities. And even when you do, they are a fully seperate entity from your sov after that point. They don't provide him with anything vital. There are no dangers in the wilderness that he can't tackle without them, given enough time and the proper equipment. Troops aren't "needed". Gildar isn't "needed". Crystal and iron isn't "needed". Horses, wargs, influence, every single thing a city can produce, none of it is "needed" by your sov to function fully autonamously. Once your sov plunks his first city down and sets off into the wilderness, you are essentially playing two different, hardly connected games at once. On the one hand, you are playing a turn based action rpg-lite with your sov, and on the other hand you are playing a city building sim-lite, and the two really never need meet.
Sure, once in a while your sov might need to run back to protect your city building game from getting some of his rpg on it, but for the most part you are playing two seperate games that just happen to be co-existing in the same sandbox, and the sov can win the RPG game without the city. I just finished doing it. Medium sized map, 5 opponents, world and opponent AI set to Hard, monsters set to dense, all other settings on medium/balanced/defaults. Conquest victory. Could easily have pursued master quest.
Here you can see how my population only budges at the very end of the game when it was nessecary for me to briefly hold cities long enough to raze them.
And here is the fully populated graph
Here is the world before and after I took Tarth's final city in the lower right corner, so you can see I had no other cities on the map. Forgive the extreme size needed for the detail. I did keep a few outposts that happened to have attached shards, but I honestly didn't end up needing them in the slightest. Stoneskin + Regen carried me easily through the whole game. I eventually cast natures cloak (the elemental protection spell) and once cast blindness, but that was all, magic was generally unnessecary.
Before:
After:
The details on my Sov at the end of the game:
Ended up with both path of the warrior and assassin, crushing blow, sweep, double strike. A champion's spear + the piercing% level 2 skill. I was auto-resolving against essentially everything without fear, wearing just that crappy armor. Ivory helm, reinforced chain shirt, some junk leather, a darkling cloak, longstriders. The brief periods of time I held towns before razing them were enough to rush through the magic tree to get me tireless march. Potential 3 and Trainer 3 helped pack on levels, and by the mid 20s, most of the content was easily trivialized. I cleared the entire map of monsters, lairs, and quests. You can see my 55 faction prestige as a result of having the heroic faction perk. For the 5 turns I did have to hang on to cities before razing them, they grew like crazy.
And here's my final ranking:
So, look.
I love this game. Please don't misunderstand me. But, Derek. Brad. Jon. If you don't see this as a problem, you are sticking your collective heads in the sand. If you are trying to make a genre defining 4x game where you can beat it -- not only beat it but *STEAM ROLL* it -- on one of the higher difficulty settings with one (1) unit and zero (0) cities, something is WRONG. This is related to the problem where there is no impetus to build trained units, but this is a deeper symptom. This is indicative of a core flaw in the game. There is zero, ZERO need to settle a city, to grow your empire, to design units, to make anything, to research, to build, to expand. Your cities exist to.... make gold to build buildings to generate research points to research new buildings that make gold and generate research? What a meaningless loop. Beyond that the don't need meaningfully interact with your god-sov and his rampage of the countryside. In fact even trying to is a less efficient way of winning the game, as it just introduces more weaknesses.
Guys, you need to think about why this is, and what can be done to make these two games, the RPG and the city building sim into one game - Fallen Enchantress.
Thank you for saying this.
It has been said by others, including myself, and when I have the time I will hunt down the links to their quotes.
But I do not think ANYONE has said it so eloquently before.
Once again, thank you.
I am just assuming they are going to balance soveriegns and units any release now but I think there is something holding them back and its they can't decide if they want it to be an rpg or an empire builder, which goes to the point they left some of the core design questions unanswered. It seems they have made the decision up to his point its an rpg but they never successfully integrated the city building into the rpg. Units need a buff and sovereign xp needs a massive massive nerf. The unit sizes should get bonuses versus smaller unit sizes and sovereigns should be really vulnerable to the larger unit sizes.
Also if they just want to go all out hero fest, which I don't think is actually wrong. All they really need to do is move henchmen and tomes to things all players get through tech, remove the unit techs/buildings and adjust everything else accordingly. That probably wouldn't end up too bad.
I agree with much of what you have said.
Simply put, until beta 5, this delicate dance between the role of the super heroes (the champions) and the role of your civilization has not gotten a lot of attention.
And make no mistake, it is a delicate balance between the two. I think what you will see, in Beta 5B (the thursday beta) is the first balance pass that addresses the very issue that you, and us, have been concerned with for some time.
IMO, the challenges include, but aren't limited to the following:
In the above 3 issues, cities provide no benefit. In fact, they provide a disadvantage because they simply provide more fodder for the player to level up with.
These aren't game mechanic issues, they're issues with balance vs. fun vs. challenge.
It'll be interesting to see how people feel about Beta 5B. Troops get trained a lot faster, are relatively better than they currently are and you won't be finding great weapons right off the bat, you won't get as much HP per level. A high powered champion will still be awesome but they won't be, we hope, insanely powerful.
Another thing that helps is that Beta 5B will be the first beta where the AI's combat abilities are hooked up. So you'll start seeing monsters and such being a lot tougher to kill because they're using their abilities.
Extremely well composed argument, thank you. Perhaps the title of this topic should read "Cities +PLUS Champions". Another idea has been proposed to solve this issue by better linking champions and troops, with the creation of additional "general type traits" and mass buffs that affect the army; at the same time that rewards are better computed.
The solution to balance appears to be conjunction.
Of all the ideas proposed I think the simplest change that could contribute from the city side would be to add a new, different, more expensive pioneer with a materials and/or gildar cost that can only develop cities, the current cheaper version being modified to construct just outposts. Buildings could also have increased material costs.
Goodie huts should also then be updated to contain more gildar, resources and materials, and fewer champion boosting items.
Adding more incentives for a champion to stay close to home and/or be stationed within a city or outpost would also go a long way towards making troops much more useful (such as contributing a point to each elemental shard power for every level in the corresponding school of magic while stationed, at the same time that some new unit traits are created relating to shard power). Path of the Governor could use some attention.
I really hope somebody from the dev team is reading this thread.
Edit: Oh, hello Frog.
cardinal direction your link is broken.
Can't wait for the balance changes.
Thanks mate, fixed. Me too.
One thing I'd also ask is how much kiting is being used with these champions in battles? Leveling up with just champions means taking out some pretty nasty monsters.
We had talked about having a turn limit on tactical battles so that if you hadn't "won" by N turns, it would be a draw. But that would require code changes and we're at the code feature lock down point.
Kiting.. might want to get rid of that tac map with the lake in the middle, just saying ...
@frogboy
monsters are not a problem once you know what monsters you can defeat with the current gear. if there are too strong monsters, you can simply ignore them and farm weaker ones until you get a nice weapon. in my opinion lairs and monsters should not drop any weapons/armor at all, instead clearing monster lairs should be a requirement for further city expansion and you only get good gear by building up an empire, i.e. research. perhaps certain strong monsters or lairs should reward the players with recipes/ingredients for stronger weapons/armor. this way your heroes can not progress unless supported by a strong empire. an alternative could be to go the HoMM3/5/6 way and eliminate heroes as direct combat units.
A couple solutions to regeneration abuse are limiting it's healing ticks in battle to only activating on turns in which the unit neither moved or performed any actions; or restricting and adjusting it to be solely a strategic map spell.
It'll be interesting to see how people feel about Beta 5B. Troops get trained a lot faster, are relatively better than they currently are and you won't be finding great weapons right off the bat, you won't get as much HP per level. A high powered champion will still be awesome but they won't be, we hope, insanely powerful.Another thing that helps is that Beta 5B will be the first beta where the AI's combat abilities are hooked up. So you'll start seeing monsters and such being a lot tougher to kill because they're using their abilities.
I'm drooling.
So looking forward to beta 5b!! Keep up the good work guys!
There are quite a few completely different kinds of kiting. I see at least three types:
Mage kiting with spells - mana costs should take care of that.
Archer kiting with a bow - have limited ammo.
Fighter/assassin dashing in and out - have an automatic attack against anyone breaking out of melee.
And for everyone, have regeneration unable to heal more than N times your health per combat. Once it has run out, flash a message "Your body has been so abused, it cannot longer heal itself without some rest"
Artificially limited turns are going to be abused, you better believe it. I could make a troop template with high initiative, decent dodging and a horse, and use them to stave off monsters I cannot fight. On most maps you can avoid someone slower than you.
Good points. I feel regeneration is the only truly broken mechanic in need of immediate repair though, and taking your special troop template into consideration, would opt for just restricting it to a strategic map spell (regeneration taking longer than the few seconds simulated by a round of battle).
i don't think kiting is a problem. it might be once it becomes actually hard to progress with the sovereign alone on the map, but currently the main problem is getting too powerful equipment too quickly.
Exactly. Although the archer with limited ammo should have a different solution, because how much ammo do you give the archer and that would make them useless if the monster requires much much more.
The regeneration bit can be fixed if there is a fixed number of actions first then you regenerate... not every time you take an action. Say every 5 actions done in tatical combat (or (N) * (number of entities in the match) number of actions).
Kiting is not a problem at all, adding a turn limit will have little effect on my personal ability to kill the monsters with champions. I don't use kiting at all really, though it would help if the AI didn't waste turns moving forward one space at a time when they should be charging forward.
I think the main AI change you could make is that AI controlled units need to stop attacking adjacent units exclusively and run around to get at your weaker units that are hiding in the back. Currently it is way to easy to rotate weaker units or to keep archers safe in the back.
Agreed I did game the AI unintentionally by having my pioneers in the back and the AI couldn't get to them, they ignored my other units. I'll wait to see what is next from the AI, as this last jump from 4 to 5 was huge. Now that we are feature locked they can focus making the AI devious.
I have a simple idea to fix the problem of not needing cities to complete the game:
Advanced traits should require buildings, which should require tech unlocks.
Want an assassin character? You need to build an Assassin's Redoubt. Want a wizard character? You need a Wizard Tower. And have more impressive traits require more building upgrades.
Without these traits all that should be available are basic random attribute boosts (+1 attack, +10 weight capacity, etc.)
This would inexorably tie the Sovereign and their Champions to the cities of the realm.
I have mentioned this several times before.. but technology should have a limiting factor on hero levels. After you reach lets say level 3, if you haven't researched heroes, your champions suffer a 75% xp reduction (as an example). Champions should use the =same= weapons that regular units do, but with different mechanics, or increases to attack power, initiative, defense, etc based on level. Not find allpowerful gear constantly lying around everwhere.
The regular units and cities are, as the orginal poster states, disconnected with sovereign/champion strength.
This is all great stuff. I did the same thing on the highest difficulty, winning 3 games in a row with no towns, no research, no mana nodes, no outposts, etc.
I think kiting is some of it, don't make boots +1 move, give them something else like ignore terrain.
Don't make horses +2, make them +1.
Give some monsters a charge ability.
Give some monsters an attack when enemies walk away from them, maybe give it to spears or axes also.
In addition it is ok to make the game a little bit about heroes, because that's fun no doubt, but make the towns about heroes too. The tech tree should have +3 HP for heroes and +3 dodge, and +3 spell pen, and take those things off of the heroes. Give heroes just trait choices when they level, not stats, let them gain those stats by teching up.
Make some 1/empire buildings that add to your hps, dodge, precisions, spell pen, damage, etc.
Now people are building and researching to make great heroes. It ties the whole game together and lets you have powerful heroes still because that is actually really fun.
People can then choose which buildings and researches to build, focusing more on spellcasting or units or melee.
Goodluck with whatever you decide. I hope you have time to tie the game systems all together even more than they are now.
Thanks from a huge fan of the game.
Mike Donais.
+1 OP you have it spot on.
I bought this game hoping for a modern MOM... its just no way near that yet.
If you have such a big problem with kiting, try giving some of the monsters an attack similar to the thrown daggers, at range 3 to 4 tiles... (And used after moving).This will make sure damage tickles in slowly.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Interesting. Potential side effects/flaws of this that I can see: (trying to think ahead)
1) I can see Tutelage becoming OP. I can also see potential traits being picked again, just to grind through the early levels.
2) I can see path of the mage becoming more useful- if loot isn't as good, magic will be.
3) Glad you see the Tarth city nerf, because without that working, Tarth cities would have been insane.
4) One recommendation: make the Tower of Dominion repel monsters. I can see monsters killing too many AI's otherwise potentially.
5) If these champ nerfs are strong enough, perhaps adjust the XP penalty to champions some.
I do think what you're doing is the right idea, I just think it's going to be a big change, and may be considered unfun initially, as nerfs always are (nerfing is necessary- I've seen what a culture of non-nerfing does to fighting games)
Practically none. I auto-resolved 99% of the combats. Seriously, kiting is such a non-issue to me, it's not even worth mentioning in this thread, Brad. I was auto-resolving against forest drakes by my mid-teens and everything but the very very hardest epic quest encounters by level 20-25. The only reason I didn't auto-resolve those is that some of the dragon's eye quests with the dragon + craig spawn + earth elemental armies, I was unsure about and ended up needing to use some healing items, but never EVER kited. I didn't auto-resolve the pit of voices boss, but one-shot Waerloga the Dragonlord anyway. I auto-resolved every single fight in the arena quest.
I used regen to minimize down-time between fights, since I didn't have a city to rest in, not as a mechanic to cheese my way through fights.
Kiting is not the problem you think it is.
I could get behind this. I would even be behind somehow limiting max sov level with tech unlock.
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