Foremost, I apologize if these mechanics or feature adjustments are already in Legendary Heroes, or by an earlier FE patch, I just never had the chance to post this huge wall of text. I wrote these ideas down 2-3 months before LH was announced, but hopefully they can contribute to the success of the product. If anything within this seems ineligible I probably didn't elaborate clearly or didn't finish any thoughts. I highly doubt it though, since I wrote extensively.
Thank You Stardock & Community.
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Global Unrest Penalty Theory To Avoid Civ4 "City Maintenance" Pitfalls: I created this thread to post many ideas of mine strewn together, centered on the upcoming expansion feature that was recently revealed by Frogboy, (if you haven’t discovered it yet, within Vendetta187’s City-Spam thread. link here) that is going to radically alter the current gameplay of EWoN. Considering how important of an update, and improvement in my opinion this is, I feel obligated to share some ideas I’ve been brainstorming these past couple days borne from the discussions in the AI and City-Spam threads. I am very passionate about this game, I really enjoy playing it but I also carry cautious reservations about how it is implemented like many other gamers here have shown, so hopefully I can expect you all to join in this discussion and react critically to my suggestions.
I basically agree with everyone, more or less. Cities being instantly razed is dumb and counter-productive, don't see any benefit from it. Needs to be fixed in by 1.3 with varying degrees of "death, doom & destruction".
This post covers differences between "Monster Razing", "Factional Razing", "Factional Occupying", and lastly "Tier-based Injury System".
-----Monster Razing-----
1. When a Neutral/WildLand monster(s) enters or defeats your City Militia, the City should lose one random Improvement, and a halve of its Population generically.
2. The City should suffer a temporary Unrest modifier for several Seasons involving "fear and chaos".
3. The monster stack that ransacked the City should be forced by an algorithm to do the possible followings plans:
3a. Retreat from stroke City and return promptly to its intact Monster Lair, than do whatever it pleases again.
3b. Retreat from stroke City by five tiles away minimum till it has no "aggro" upon the City again.
3c. Retreat from stroke City initially fulfilling either algorithms "3a" or "3b", unless it detects enemy unit(s) that are at least 1/2 halve its stack strength within its Line-Of-Sight. Monster(s) will now intercept visible enemy stack(s) worth its fight to destroy them, and if they're victorious, promptly continue repeating "3a" and "3b" again.
-To make it all the more interesting however, let's give each individual Creature Type, different rewards for entering a hostile city, and different penalties inflicted upon the stroke city! Thus, they'll be a major difference, and major excitement factor involved between not being afraid of letting a Cave Bear or Mites ransack your city, to a Dragon creature type or Elemental creature type doing so.
Bandit: Factions City loses 1/10 of its factions total Gildar, and 1/10 of the cities total Population. +20 Unrest for two Seasons.
Beast: Factions City loses 1/4 of its total Growth (one Season), and 1/10 of the cities total Population. +10 Unrest for one Season.
Elemental: Factions City loses 1/4 of its factions total Mana, and 1.5/10 of the cities total Population. +25 Unrest for one Season.
Dragon: Factions City loses 3/4 of its total Growth (two Seasons), 4/10 of the cities total Population. +40 Unrest for four Seasons.
Construct: Factions City loses 1 Enchantment if it has any, 2/4 of its total Materials (one Season), and 2/10 of its total Population. +30 Unrest for one Season.
Faction Unit: (Sovereigns, Heroes, Trained Units & Monsters of any Faction) Factions City loses 1/10 of its factions total Gildar, and 1/5 of the cities total Population. +30 Unrest for one Season (only applied if city is retaken within the next turn)*
Notes:
Each Faction City can only be "Monster Razed" once per turn.*
Every Creature Type including Faction Units, only raze one Improvement per conquest.**
Only Faction Units actually capture the hostile city after victory, Monsters upon victory enter-and-leave the City tile they attacked and back onto the tile they stroke from.***
The Creature Type that qualifies for the majority of the monsters stack will have its Razing effect activated.****
Lastly, Monsters will ONLY raze your city once it no longer has any Improvements to destroy except the nameless starting tile.*****
-----Factional Razing-----
However, when one faction besets itself onto another factions City, it shouldn't be allowed to instantly raze it either. In order to completely destroy a City, every Faction must spend 3 consecutive turns per "City Level" in order to raze the city. This same rule between faction-to-faction should equally apply to the faction's own cities, so we don't have players scorch-earthing the AI to cheat the game.
From now on, the amount of Production it took to build ANY Improvement in a city, 50% of the Production spent must be "Queue Build"'ed in order to remove specified Improvement from your City. So for example, your City's Production is 50 points, it takes 200 points to build Granary, thus it took you four turns to build that Granary, but in order to Raze it you must spend two Seasons accumulating 100 points to permanently remove the Granary from the City. However, you'll earn back that 100 points of Production you raised to remove the Granary by instantly down-paying the next Improvement you Queue to build in that City. So if you made a marvelous mistake in a certain settlement of yours, you can remove it in return for spending time and Production to do so, and those spent points onto another Improvement for your sweat & tears.
Village (level 1) = 1 turns to Raze.
Conclave/Town/Fortress (level 2) = 3 turns to Raze.
Conclave/Town/Fortress (level 3) = 4 turns to Raze.
Conclave/Town/Fortress (level 4) = 5 turns to Raze.
Conclave/Town/Fortress (level 5) = 6 turns to Raze.
Thus, the idea behind this system is that Monster's, Faction's, and Gamer's can't remove an integral landmark in a game session without spending precious time to do so, both at the stress and relief of the player. No longer will any player 90% of the time have to deal with losing an entire City due to one simple turn, and no longer can any City be wiped instantly and discarded from the game. Now that Rome, that New York City, that Neverwinter (Dungeons & Dragons) just lose its importance, its deliberate purpose for its existence whether being a financial, militaristic, or researching center in one full swoop but require an incredible length of time to be cremated. For as it took centuries for Rome to rise, it took centuries for Rome to fall, and be economically, financially, militarily replaced by the Nordic hordes coming south and its brother Constantinople, to take its grandiose place in Europe.
(And also, the Byzantium player built the Great Wall Wonder, the Roman's didn't...)
-----Factional Occupying-----
One last gear in this suggestion for Factional Razing, is what I have been suggesting in posts made in the AI and City-Spam thread: When one Faction occupies another Factions City, this currently happens in Fallen Enchantress:
<!-- ** city occupation unrest ** --><OccupationInitialUnrest>50.0</OccupationInitialUnrest><OccupationTurnsBeforeReduction>5</OccupationTurnsBeforeReduction><OccupationMinimumUnrest>0.0</OccupationMinimumUnrest>
I want something superior then the way this is currently handled, (which I will either tonight or tomorrow post a thread containing many ideas concerning the upcoming expansions Global Unrest Penalty) because the "City Occupation Unrest" feature will be grossly inadequate to handle Global Unrest.
I would entitle my version "City Assimilation" because having the Global Unrest Penalty future in-mind, when one Faction conquers another Faction's City, depending upon several factors involving the City, Conqueror, and Occupational Choices, the attacker must effectively garrison the city before they can exploit it.
-Hostile cities are no longer usable till they're Assimilated by an enemy Faction. During Assimilation, the occupiers must successfully garrison the City the whole duration, never leaving it undefended, or it reverts back to its owner's control.
-Occupied Cities offer no Output, no connected Resources, no Global Unrest,
-Hostile cities will only add onto its conquerors Global Unrest Penalty until it is fully assimilated
Encompassing Example:
1. "Burn The City!": Immediately begin the Razing process (6 turns), and City now has 50% to revolt per-turn infinitely, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry. 2. "Butcher The City!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process 4/5 the clock (4 turns instead of 5), halving 1/5 of the Population plus "Monster Razing" = 2/5 Population loss. City now has 25% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry. 3. "Puppet The Master!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process (5 turns), and City now has 10% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry. 4. "Fly Our Flag!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process (5 turns), and City now has 15% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry.
1. "Burn The City!": Immediately begin the Razing process (6 turns), and City now has 50% to revolt per-turn infinitely, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry.
2. "Butcher The City!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process 4/5 the clock (4 turns instead of 5), halving 1/5 of the Population plus "Monster Razing" = 2/5 Population loss. City now has 25% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry.
3. "Puppet The Master!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process (5 turns), and City now has 10% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry.
4. "Fly Our Flag!": Immediately begin the Assimilation process (5 turns), and City now has 15% to revolt per-turn only-once, spawn half the size of its original Militia except equipped with its Faction's up-to-date weaponry.
"Revolt" is an event that can only occur once per Faction Assimilation phase, in which the City has a chance depending upon multiple variables, spawning 50% of the cities Militia again but equipped with the Faction's latest Weapons technology. When an Revolt occurs, the occupiers immediately begin Tactical Combat with the Revolt Militia in city landscape, under the control of the defending Faction.*
"Burn The City!" Assimilation choice, is the ONLY choice of the four that can allow every turn being Razed, to spawn an army half the size of the cities original Militia to immediately initiate Tactical Combat with the occupying Faction.**
Level 5 cities can be instantly razed if they contain no more Improvements for Monsters to take in its place.***
-----Tier-based Injury System-----
Sanati&Kongdej:
Some of the Injuries Heroe's sustain currently is retarded, like Rotting Wound which removes 25% of the characters total HP. I don't have an issue with any individual Injury actually, just the fact it's too random honestly. If I was one of the developers, I'd categorize all the Injuries into several tiers totaling from 1-to-5 foremost. The first tier has the weakest negative modifiers, whilst the fifth tier has the strongest negative modifiers like Rotting Wounds to me is thus far.
The first death any Hero has in every game session, randomly chooses from the first tier's Injuries.
The fifth death any Hero has in every game session, randomly chooses from the fifth tier's Injuries.
Once every Hero experiences their 6th death, the system does not start over - Oh ho ho no it don't - it now simply proceeds to permanently and infinitely attach a percentage chance to each of the tiers to occur after the 5th death. Thus the first tier will have a 10% chance to be chosen on each consecutive death starting 6th, and the fifth tier has a 50% chance to be chosen on the next consecutive death starting 6th. Once a tier is randomly landed upon by the system, it will just randomly choose any of that tier's Injuries with equal opportunity.
Notes: (10%/20%/30%/40%/50%)
I still believe that a Dragon or Construct should essentially annihilate a city when attacked, its fun to have such turmoil like you suggested but there are creatures to be feared and by losing their teeth they become boring and bland.
The environment is as much your enemy as the other factions, and it stands to reason that they should even be capable of destroying empires when given the chance, let alone city's.
Just like in a factional war, your enemy's can destroy city's fairly easily, so why not giant creatures like dragons?
Hm interesting ideas. Especially the categorized injuries appeal to me.
I think the Razing system is pretty complex though. Not sure if it would be neater to have a less complex one.
As lovely as it would be realistic fantasy-wise, bringing your changes to current gameplay reality is no different from the way it currently is - instant-razing once an enemy Monster graces your settlements. Which is nothing but aggravation currently, and utterly dysfunctional to the flow of an entire map session from "Early Game" to "Late Game". Not just for players, but AI too.
Hypothetically say that Monster Razing was implemented, an instant-raze from Dragons and Constructs would still be to severe a consequence. The ultimate purpose of "Factional Razing" and "Factional Occupying" is to curb the ridiculous effects in the cause-and-effect's of conquering settlements. The Civilization series perfected this aspect so well that it is not even brought up AT ALL from my knowledge over the years.
This is extremely serious and debilitating in my perspective, the current system of taking and handling settlements, especially when we now have a Global Unrest Penalty directly correlated to the amount of settlements you possess. We want to circumvent instant destruction of settlements upon every game session out there, to prevent aggravation, griefing, as I see in my personal philosophical view that the most important settlements when it comes to resources, geography, strategy, should be valuable enough that they're not taken for granted by both player's and AI's, against each other, and will mostly than not attempt to capture and assimilate them than instantly raze them in gamey fashion. These settlements that for the most part existed since the first several dozen turns are almost as permanent as Wildlands, because they're the fundamentals of x map, and in x map their loss via razing would cripple its interdependent settlements in at least one way possible. Its not that I want the Faction Capitols on every game map to be as millennial-grounded as "Rome", but that they're in a reasonable fashion taken seriously by the gameplay to be nurtured, kept around, then instantly razed.
The most I could see coming from Dragon's and Construct's invading settlements, is that Neutral/Wildland Monster's have a chance in increasing increments based upon the invaders level, to vacant the settlement instead of its raiding penalty to occur. In the event of settlement vacancy, the owner loses complete control and anyone Faction can claim the vacated settlement. If the original Faction Owner retakes the settlement, they'll get a moderate percentage of its total population amount back that fled and did not die from the invasion. If any other Faction conquers the neutralized settlement, they'll have to completely repopulate it, and undergo Assimilation for the purpose of simulating the complete administration of an unknown demesne.
*My last note would be, is that Faction-owned Dragon's and Constructs behave like all their other units do as ascribed in the OP, if not already listed.*
I'll admit it is fairly complex, with great detail in its structure, but to really grasp this aspect of the gameplay and make it induce balanced consequences and rewards, some depth of detail injected should be necessary. I mean, the purpose of different Creature Types performing different effects upon capturing settlements spices the gameplay up, and makes it reasonable concerning balance and structured levels of intensity. Players shouldn't be penalized for losing an entire settlement because a Strong-level creature ROFLstomped it in one turn, when they had since Turn-21, and its now Turn-267.
So, Monster Razing for all intents and purposes, is to create some genuine differences between certain Creatures hitting settlements with natural reactions of emotion being emitted by us players (and somehow AI Intelligence) when random monsters come within visible proximity of settlements. And importantly, REGULATE and BALANCE the amount of damage Neutral/Wildland creatures can ultimately perform upon settlements in various ways.
Factional Razing is the other part of this multi-tiered approach of handling instant-razing by preventing both Player's and AI from instant-razing settlements in one turn/season, that are as grandiose and built as Minas Tirith, Calimshan, Manhattan, Venice, etc, and are as literal important to x maps Factions in maintaining their presence and rise throughout the progression of the map session. And also crafted to give Player's and AI difference choices in managing Settlements that'll in the future massively affect their Unrest Penalty, or not at all, depending upon multiple choices in occupation.
Excellant suggestion!!!
Definately brings more RPG interaction to the table with decision making when conquering a city or having a city conquered.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I agree with 100% of it, but definately enough to say this is the right direction.
Shameless Bump*
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