June Round Release Notes

[Shadow]

There is a timer in manage army

should count down three days

[Durza]

every three days, right?

[Shores of Tripoli]

oh ok, thanks.

[Wolf Snare]

Okay, so I'm not sure why steal and sabotage etc are available while attacking for land, bc they dont work properly. They work if you break with troops, but your leaders take losses no matter what. If you fail to break, your leader attack doesnt even show up.

[Shadow]

That's right. It only attempts the mission if your troops break. If troops break, it then does the usual check to see if leaders succeed. If leaders fail, you lose some as per usual, and otherwise the mission goes ahead.

EDIT: woo 9000 posts!

[Wolf Snare]

I meant upon succeeding my leaders took desertions even though target was clanned.

[Shadow]

Oh woops. I'll fix it on the weekend.

...I thought I fixed that already, though. Maybe I overwrote something...

[Wolf Snare]

It wasn't minuscule either like the leader losses a few rounds ago, it was 3.6%

[Shadow]

Oh right, that's what I fixed ^_^

I made it so the numbers reported were accurate, but forgot to make it only if not at war.

Thanks, I'll fix it on the weekend.

[Wolf Snare]

minor, but when you click a warlord it almost always says: Attack? no raiders-- yet you don't need any raiders. lol

[Shadow]

Always been there. It means that they had their raiders prepared (only one of you needs to have them).

[Wolf Snare]

No, it used to say: Attack? YES

The red is unfriendly, you see. At a glance, one would assume they need to prep their raiders

[Wolf Snare]

anyways, what's your rationale behind making skiffs eat 300% more than they previously did? Those flat bottoms surely don't require sustenance. Getting to the issue, I believe you've overpowered rats (t1) and devalued everything else in the game. I think either: balance out the consumption rates to near what they were before, OR raise the NW value of stoat and skiff to 6 and 8. They're virtually gone unused now, surely that's not what you intended?

Rats are simply too easy to produce in comparison to the other troops. However, I'm not bashing your decision in making rats easier on the pocketbook, I just think that the other changes were a bit steep. The fact that rats are easier to produce should remain since it prevents locking, but I don't think the other armies are in sync with the master plan. IMHO: either reverse/ minimize the changes to them, or raise their NW value. After all, having 7 / 5 and 9 / 9 adds to overall OP and DP ratings-- shouldn't this make them worth more in the larger scheme?

I like the race spells from what I've seen, some of them are very interesting and creative. However, I think revising the loyalty costs a bit would help things out. Can you tell me what exactly you changed last set in production of loyalty? Was it only revised for lizard based off of my recommendation, or were all races' loyalty production altered?

One more thing... What was the math behind your changes to troops type consumption?

[Shadow]

Previously, the per unit consumption as here:

Code Select Expand

$config[armtrp][cost][cash] = 1;
$config[lndtrp][cost][cash] = 2;
$config[flytrp][cost][cash] = 3.25;
$config[seatrp][cost][cash] = 5.5;

$config[armtrp][cost][food] = 0.055;
$config[lndtrp][cost][food] = 0.036;
$config[flytrp][cost][food] = 0.025;
$config[seatrp][cost][food] = 0.0125;

Now, remembering that the troop multipliers are such that the troop production multiplier ratios, in order, are 6:3:1.5:1, we can work out the "per barracks per turn" consumption of the troop types. I would like to make it so that each troop type consumes the same cash value of resources in each turn, valuing cash as-is and food at $15 per. With that in mind, the per barracks (ie, 6 rats, 3 weasels, etc) per turn cash consumption values are:

rats: $6 + 0.33 food = $10.95 value
weasels: $6 + 0.108 food = $7.62 value
stoats: $4.875 + 0.0375 food = $5.4375 value
skiffs: $5.5 + 0.0125 food = $5.6875 value

If we average this we get about $7.5, so I'll start there.

Now, if you calculate it out, as-is, rats take 55%-45% cash-food in cash value terms, weasels about 80%-20%, stoats 90%-10%, and skiffs 96%-4%. I would like to make food more valuable and necessary because it is undervalued at the moment in terms of what people are able to do with it, so I would like to make these ratios, in order,
50-50
75-25
85-15
90-10

which means that the per barracks per turn consumption should be
$3.75 + 0.25 food
$5.625 + 0.125 food
$6.375 + 0.075 food
$6.75 + 0.05 food

which would mean that the multipliers would become

Code Select Expand

$config[armtrp][cost][cash] = 0.625;
$config[lndtrp][cost][cash] = 1.875;
$config[flytrp][cost][cash] = 4.25;
$config[seatrp][cost][cash] = 6.75;

$config[armtrp][cost][food] = 0.0416;
$config[lndtrp][cost][food] = 0.0416;
$config[flytrp][cost][food] = 0.05;
$config[seatrp][cost][food] = 0.05;

This little analysis really answers a lot of questions. Right now, nobody ever runs heavy on rats or weasels, preferring skiffs and stoats, and it it obvious why - they are only about half the upkeep cost! Keeping these around makes a lot of sense for attacking, and rats, important though they may be, are left on the wayside until the end of a run.

Now, the final numbers are a pretty drastic increase in the cost of skiffs and stoats, while decreasing the cost of rats. I am a little worried about that because right now rats are far and away the highest valued unit once you normalize for training bonus (see last round's market average prices in the immort), so this might exacerbate that problem. On the other hand, this might be a good opportunity to address some of the imbalances in the troop stats as well which are making it so.

Thoughts? I tend to think the troop types are a little too polarized in their usefulness, and always thought normalizing the average OP-DP of a troop type to the training multipliers made more sense in terms of usefulness. Doing so, we see that the average power (average of OP-DP) per barracks per turn is

rats: 9
weasels: 12
stoats: 6
skiffs: 7

if we normalized this to the average, 9, then we could, for example, see numbers (approximately) like this:

troop - OP - DP
rat - 2 - 1
weasel: 2 - 4
stoat: 7 - 5
skiff: 9 - 9

which would also go a long way toward restoring the balance of usefulness, and the buff to skiff and stoat would potentially offset the reduction they would get from the increased costs discussed above.

[Shadow]

Anyway, I think a lot of the reason rats are popular this round is because of the emp. People are all running rat heavy and as a result are also attacking each other with rats, so everyone masses nothing else in the hopes of being able to defend their stockpile.

On the other hand, consumption is still too low across the board, as indies are able to support themselves even without the market. I will be changing that next round by taking consumption up across the board and removing the bonus that barracks gives.

Unless there is some factor I forgot in the above, however, I am still confident that it should even out once people realize just how much stronger skiffs and stoats are than they were previously.

Changing net values is not really an option, because the net values are set up in the same ratio as barracks production/merc prices (eg, barracks give you the same amount of net each turn no matter what your training settings are, and spending 1mil on merc gives you the same amount of net no matter what troops you buy (almost)). Which is how it should be, I think.

This is a big adjustment, it will take a while before people get used to it and are able to work with it as effectively as they did before.