June Round Release Notes

[Shadow]

First and foremost, the most long awaited change: race spells! Thanks everyone for being patient with me on this one. A lot of the spells are ones you are familiar with, but there are a few new additions and some tweaks which should make things interesting. I'll be watching carefully this round to see how they affect balance, but since I will be playing, I would also appreciate your feedback.

Rat: Battlefield Healers - Losses reduced 20% when attacking. Immunity to fear losses.
Painted one: None.
Stoat: Academy - convert 1% of workers into leaders, at the cost of 4-5 workers per leader. Higher leader/land ratio means higher cost.
Fox: Cloak/Uncloak - hide 1% of your networth each cast.
Wildcat: Pressgang - convert workers to troops based on training settings. The more barracks you have, the less effective it is, and you need at least 20 leaders/land to get full efficiency out of it, so you can't use this on top of a lot of barracks (well you can, but it will be wasteful).
Lizard: Fortify Defenses - Losses reduced 10% when defending, people who attack you take 10% extra losses.
Wolf: Inspire Fear - attacker takes 1% desertions.
Marten: Commerce - 10% increased income, 4% increased income to clan members.
Magpie: Tax Evasion - no health penalty for high tax rates.
Ferret: Rain Dance - 10% increased food income, 4% increased food income to clan members.
Weasel: Prod Market - Increase the available mercenaries by one turn's round worth.

Please let me know if anything in that list is not working as advertised, or if the balance is off.

The other major tweak going in this round is an attempt to balance out the four troop types, which were woefully imbalanced prior to now. The general trend is that people mass skiffs and stoats early in the run and the other types are a defensive afterthought, only used in specific circumstances or in small numbers. A simple analysis of the consumption versus availability (through barracks and merceneries) show why - the upkeep costs were imbalanced, as well as the OP/DP output per barracks-turn or per dollar. The following tweaks address this. If anyone is interested I can post the math that led to the numbers below:

Rats: OP 2, DP 1, cash consumption -37.5%, food consumption -24.2%
Weasel: OP 2, DP 4, cash consumption -6.25%, food consumption +15.8%
Stoat: OP 7, DP 5, cash consumption +30.8%, food consumption +100%
Skiff: OP 9, DP 9, cash consumption +22.7%, food consumption +300%

Note: the large numbers on the food consumption just look bad - the consumption values were so tiny before that even these large relative increases are not very big. Since you get rats 6 times faster than skiffs, for example, the difference is not actually that big. For someone running with a balanced army (eg, 25% on all settings) will not notice any change in their consumption rates. The increased power of stoats and skiffs will make them more powerful on a per unit basis as well, so it should make up for heavier consumption.

The net effect of this change will be that food becomes much more important (read: farmers will be viable because everyone will need to buy food) and indiers will be a little weaker than they were this round since their upkeep will be higher overall so they will be more dependent on the market. On the other hand, running heavy on rats will be much more viable.

This is pretty experimental, so let me know how it compares.

Old murder is back (kill 3% of enemy troops) as well as poison. Sabotage now reduces health just like the new murder did, in addition to killing buildings.

Finally, towers get the axe this round. I am not going to give details of the equation tweak because it isn't necessary, but the net effect is that they will be slightly weaker overall, especially in the defense they add to rats. Should make locking much more difficult. The bottom line is that towers can no longer give you more defense in any one troop type than you already have, so you need a balanced army to get full benefit from them.

If you look in army status, there is now a field which shows you what percentage of your defense is given by towers. This number will never exceed 50% by definition.

Enjoy!

[Shadow]

Oh, and casher was boosted back up by 10%

[Wolf Snare]

nice

[Durza]

Thank you Shadow

[Shadow]

nice

No explosions about changing troop values and consumption and leaving well enough alone?

o_O

[Sevz]

ROTFLMFAO.

I'm not gonna attempt to explain cos last time was like talking to a brick wall.

Great work Shadow and whoever put you in charge. BWOAHHAHAHAHAH

[Shadow]

I'm glad we are at a point where you can't think of actual objections so you resort to your default of "Shadow is wrong" without qualifying your statement. Progress!

[Sevz]

yep, not gonna waste my time  :-X. Keep it up, one day you'll figure it out. De-valuing the stoats and skiffs is a great move  :o
ask yourself. What's the aim of the game? What logical means would one take to achieve success? How could a group extort this?

[Wolf Snare]

your troop changings are unnecessary and are actually too severe

[Pippin]

not sure if its just me but the lizard spell costs way too much to cast

[Shadow]

but you only need to cast it a few times a day

[Durza]

I agree with pip, it costs a little too much for most indiers with the time needed to get that much loyalty whihc could be spent making troops

[Shadow]

alright, ill keep that in mind for next round

keep the feedback coming

[Shores of Tripoli]

 I also agree that the lizard spell is to expensive.

[Shores of Tripoli]

 How often can you revolt?