Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Soapyfrog]

Graeme Dice said:
You've misidentified the cause. The cause was not hording of those items. It was the diplomacy that allowed those players to sit there in absolute peace and grow with no interruptions.

You must be in some interesting games.

[Huzurdaddi]

Forge astral based items or alchemize them into other types of gems and use those.

Alchemize HOHOHO. Saying that is a better use of gems is retarded. And honestly it only is since you are going to death gems and death has some curiously cost efficient spells.

Sorry that's a *relly* bad answer.

As I have said before and now if commonly being accepted: the utility of hoarding is entirely dependant upon map size.

On Faerun and maps like it hoarding is essential. On Aran it is less of a facor.

[Kel]

Soapyfrog said:
This is completely untrue. WIth 17 players on a large map, at least some players will be able to fin the time and space neccessary to horde effectively. These players will win. Period. There is NO counter.

Yes, if 17 players all started hoarding and hoping noone attacked them, then the ones who didn't get attacked would have a head start. Much like they would probably be more powerful if they were just researching or site searching or taking indies or any other part of the game. If you are left alone and noone messes with you, you will probably be stronger than people who engaged in early wars and it has nothing to do with clams.

Seriously, how many times have you been beaten by people who did nothing the whole game but build clams ? I don't mean they had a dozen clams because they didn't have anything to do with their water supply, I mean how many people did nothing but clam thae majority of the game ? How many times ? 10 ? 20 ? 30 ?

- Kel

[alexti]

baruk said:
What do you think, forum people? Sensible ideas or frivolous junk?

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

[alexti]

Kel said:

Yes, if 17 players all started hoarding and hoping noone attacked them, then the ones who didn't get attacked would have a head start. Much like they would probably be more powerful if they were just researching or site searching or taking indies or any other part of the game. If you are left alone and noone messes with you, you will probably be stronger than people who engaged in early wars and it has nothing to do with clams.

That's not always true. Quick and successful conquest is very beneficial in the early game (especially if the graphs are off). And good players often go to war with exactly that purpose if they see they can crush the neighbour quickly. Typically, because they've reached their target research or troop production before the neighbour has counter.

In all games I've played, the winner was somebody who has successfully (and quickly) conquered 1 or more neighbours in the early game.

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Alchemize HOHOHO. Saying that is a better use of gems is retarded. And honestly it only is since you are going to death gems and death has some curiously cost efficient spells.

The only spells that might be too cost-efficient for death would be Tartarian Gate, and that's assuming that you can keep Gift of Health active, or can keep wishing back the chalice every time someone steals it from you, and that you have a nature gem income that's high enough to cast gift of reason constantly. As for alchemizing, 10 casts of summon Lamias will would be a good use for 100 astral pearls, and would possibly be quite a bit more useful than a single doom horror that also requires 20 more nature gems. Or you could put those pearls into gift of health, or forge of the ancients, or haunted forest. All of which are more likely to have game altering effects than a doom horror.

[baruk]

Graeme Dice said:

If I've spent several hundred gold on a castle, why should I not be able to use it for defense?

You still get the defence value of the castle. All that has changed is the attacker gets the option to storm in the same turn defences drop to zero. The storm castle part of the order is ignored if defences are not yet down to zero (probably need to mention this for more clarity).

baruk said:Commanders and units that have travelled using gateway, teleport or cloud trapeze will now suffer from planar sickness. If said troops fight a battle the same turn as their "jump", they start with a fatigue penalty: 20 fatigue times the size class of the unit.

Graeme Dice said:Again, what's the point of this change?

The teleport spell was taken away from the Sphinx, as it was considered unbalanced being able to port one's Sphinx onto an enemy capital in the early game. I wanted to find a way to give teleport back to the Sphinx, whilst making teleporting it onto a capital a more risky prospect.
The planar sickness idea is basically a paratrooper combat penalty transplanted from another game. It just seems to make sense to me to give teleported troops some kind of fatigue penalty.

baruk said: There is nothing worse in the game than when the AI wrongly chooses to ignore my orders. I would rather it followed my orders, and suffer the consequences. I can always change my orders, but I can't easily compensate for what the AI might do.

Graeme Dice said:No, it's far worse to have all your gems wasted when a person sends a single casting of arouse hunger at your armies before they attack.

Yep, thats annoying too, my change to gem usage takes care of that, however. The idea is to render gem depletion sorties a turn to turn concern, rather than a cheap disruption tactic.

baruk said:My solution: mages start each battle in the same turn with the number of gems they started the turn with. For example, if I give my mage 3 gems, he will start each battle in the following turn with 3 gems.

Graeme Dice said:Do you have any idea how overpowered this is? You've just tripled the number of gems that any mage will have.

It would only be tripled were the mage in that example to fight in 3 battles that turn, and use all his gems in each battle.
The gem usage boost would be the same for everybody, in the same way as gem producing items can be made by everyone. For a potential exploiter, the trick would be to have your gem carrying mage engage in multiple battles a turn (which is why I wouldn't have it apply to death matches). Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

baruk said:Limit the total gem output from each type of item on a per province basis.

Graeme Dice said:I've got a better idea. People should stop whining about gem generating items and play on smaller maps. I'm starting to get really frustrated with the people who want to change the game to make it yet another fantasy strategy game where magic doesn't have any significant effects.

I've never whined about gem producers, they are probably fine the way they are. A change is as good as a rest, they say. My suggestion is to make life for the hoarder a little more interesting, by having to spread his generators out a bit among his provinces, or push dominion a bit more. I like to try and think of ways to link important game mechanics to dominion strength, its nice for it to have a little more impact on the game.
With such a change to gem producers, I don't think that they would be rendered insignificant, many hoarders would barely notice any difference in gem output.


Good questions nonetheless, my original post could probably be somewhat clearer.

[Graeme Dice]

baruk said:
The planar sickness idea is basically a paratrooper combat penalty transplanted from another game. It just seems to make sense to me to give teleported troops some kind of fatigue penalty.

A turn represents an entire month. I'm not sure why stepping through a gateway would make you more tired than a month long march into enemy territory.

Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

You can expect to see at least two battles a turn on average for major armies. More if there are multiple opponents all attacking you at once.

[baruk]

alexti said:

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

I'm trying to slay a number of percieved game bugbears at a stroke (some are mine, others are ones raised on the forum I at least partly agree with or have some sympathy for). I think the game could be improved if these concerns are dealt with. The worst is probably micro-management, to which my changes would only add, or make no difference, however.


The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

It is arguable whether these concerns are necessarily valid or important. Its likely the solutions would provoke as much outrage and gnashing of teeth as the problems they are supposed to fix.

[baruk]

Graeme Dice said:

A turn represents an entire month. I'm not sure why stepping through a gateway would make you more tired than a month long march into enemy territory.

<Thinks on feet> According to my dominions medical textbook of dimensional diseases, Planar Sickness Lasts exactly one month of game time. Fancy that!
Who knows what horrors lurk between worlds? It would give me the heebie-jeebies, at any rate.

baruk said:Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

Graeme Dice said:You can expect to see at least two battles a turn on average for major armies. More if there are multiple opponents all attacking you at once.

An army will still have to be cut off from its gem supply when on offensive maneuvers eg. when seiging castles, or taking unlabbed enemy provinces. This means there is some scope for turn to turn gem attrition.
I think my proposed change wouldn't be too unbalanced. The potential horror could be a pretender SC with many gems, using them to cast battlefield spells, annhilating a succession of small armies in the same turn. A willing or unwary set of opponents and some luck would still be required. I would guess that it'd be difficult for an attacker to actively arrange multiple battles. It doesn't worry me because people can and will adapt to the new tactical environment.