Death Match Competition

[JimMorrison]

My suggestion:

Leave the trident the same, or only improve it slightly, it would essentially just be the *** end of the deal.

Make the real reward be a semi randomized (but based on size of map + date in game) treasure trove of gold and gems, and possibly a random item or two sent to your lab. A little time spent working out the math could easily yield an intriguing but not unbalancing reward system.

In any case, it really should be taken into account the potential level of gearing of the participants. If you can assume that in year 3 most people would spend a minimum of 50 gems on their champion, then why should they not expect to get at least that in return if they survive? What if the spoils of the arena were mostly made up of the gear of the losers? You put enough incentive in there to get the arms race started, and then let avarice escalate the war until you can bet people are throwing nicely geared thugs into the arena in the hopes of being the winner.

Or another alternative, give the winner a random assortment of monster summons as reward. They're arena beasts, of course, crocodiles and bears and lions in early game, branching into bog beasts and manticores and elementals later on.


The sad part is, even as I brainstorm on this, it starts to become more apparent that any incentive that actually works in MP, will probably reach levels that are essentially imbalancing to the game. Perhaps if the losers of the matches were resurrected and sent home? If you remove the harshness of the penalty (they wouldn't have afflictions removed, however), then the small reward is more palatable, and you also don't have this random event hamstringing the AI by tempting in their prophets and pretenders to almost certain death.

[Dragar]

Maybe something like creating a specific promotion/ability for the death match winner, call it Tournament Champion

Its effect should be something very valuable for any combatant, a chunky Awe plus hitpoint bonus, something like that. Something that is powerful regardless of how many turns have played in the game.

[MaxWilson]

How about: the winner of the death match is Immortal until the next death match arrives?

-Max

[reverend]

In any rate, this event need improvement. Maybe even a warning message earlier than just the turn before, giving players time to properly equip a hero for the event.

[NTJedi]

reverend said:
In any rate, this event need improvement. Maybe even a warning message earlier than just the turn before, giving players time to properly equip a hero for the event.

I completely agree.

Currently the arena death match is mostly ignored by players for SP games and MP games since the prize is not worth risking the life of a good commander.

I like the idea behind the arena death match, but its prize needs to be improved so most players will want to risk the life of a good commander.

The reward should be scaled based on the current game turn, something like 10 random gems on turn_10 and 70 random gems on turn_70.

[JimMorrison]

NTJedi said:
The reward should be scaled based on the current game turn, something like 10 random gems on turn_10 and 70 random gems on turn_70.

But think about that, really. Say on turn 30, the DM is worth 30 gems for the prize. How many gems do you have on a decent thug at this point? If you're only hitting a few choice slots, maybe 20-25 gems? Would you really want to risk that thug for a 3/2 payout with 6-8 other people competing for it?

[Twan]

Instead of a reward, a punition for nations not trying to win the death match can be considered, or both punition and reward.

Winning death match should be an important matter of prestige for pretender gods nations.

Something like -3 morale for all troops if the nation sent nobody to the last DM, -1 if it sent someone but this champion was killed in his first fight, +1 if it sent a champion who had one or more victories, +3 if the nation won the last DM.

Or same kind of bonus/malus for dominion spread.

Of course it would need some code (and nations like LA Ermor would be immune to the bad effect) but it would also be ultra thematic IMO.

[PvK]

It's currently worth sending a low-level fellow who could use a trident and whom you don't mind losing... except the odds are fairly low unless no one is bothering, and the AI usually sends inappropriate units such as pretenders and prophets (meaning N-1 such AI units die whenever the arena happens, and appropriately lowly contestants are extra-unlikely to live).

The AI sending powerful units seems like the biggest shame of this to me, since it impairs SP games a bit. I'd say either the AI shouldn't do that, or the prize should be improved somehow so it's worth gambling a pretender at low odds. Like, if the winner got all of the defeated contestants' magic items delivered to their lab (or at least looted to the commander) and maybe a prize of all the gens and gold cost of the defeated units.

[JimMorrison]

PvK said:
It's currently worth sending a low-level fellow who could use a trident and whom you don't mind losing... except the odds are fairly low unless no one is bothering, and the AI usually sends inappropriate units such as pretenders and prophets (meaning N-1 such AI units die whenever the arena happens, and appropriately lowly contestants are extra-unlikely to live).

The AI sending powerful units seems like the biggest shame of this to me, since it impairs SP games a bit. I'd say either the AI shouldn't do that, or the prize should be improved somehow so it's worth gambling a pretender at low odds. Like, if the winner got all of the defeated contestants' magic items delivered to their lab (or at least looted to the commander) and maybe a prize of all the gens and gold cost of the defeated units.

See that's exactly where my train of thought went. Then I started to think about how large the rewards could get, especially in larger games with 18-20 or more nations, and the train derailed.

I think it's going to be hard to make the reward feel truly compelling, without making it potentially incredibly unbalanced.

[MaxWilson]

Immortality is thematic for the "death match" champion, and is still valuable in the late game. It's not readily abusable because it's restricted to your own dominion (and also makes you lose all your items), but it does confer the ability to heal afflictions and that's useful everywhere.

I do wonder: in the game right now, if the "arena" site is somewhere within your dominion and you send an immortal unit to the fight, does he come back to life when killed?

-Max