New Suggested Features

[Orcrist]

Hey everyone- I think we should start brainstorming some new features that would change up the balance of the game a little. Here are some of my suggestions to make the game more balanced:

First and foremost- we need to have a running guide, so people understand how to play the game.

I'm going to go through the races first:
Rat
Luck of the Devil is a great skill (can buy 6 tickets instead of just 3) , but the lottery isn't worth enough. I remember that in the first era, winning the lottery basically guaranteed a top spot because it was worth so much. Make the lottery worth at least 5% (maybe even 10%) of the total money in the game + ticket charges. Have the lottery run once per week (since it's worth so much). It will suddenly be a huge event. Also, make rats have a greater chance to win skiff races.

Weasel
This is truly a broken race now...I would raised the defensive bonus to 20%. Lower the attack penalty to -5%. Have corsair based on workers, but make it very powerful....so powerful, that all skiff lovers will be weasels because it is so easy to get skiffs with corsair (make sure it's a minimum leader ratio of 95 though, so it's not too easy to do).

Wildcat
Wow- this race has gone from nothing to one of the most powerful and back down to one of the broken races. I would suggest giving this race a huge training bonus (+20%) as well as a huge cost reduction (-15%) and a food cost reduction (-10%). Then, give them massive leader penalties (-25% leader growing rate, -25% loyalty growing rate). Have pressgang based on workers. This will be a big indy race.

Fox
This race should be the one of espionage and sneaking. Leave their bonus where they are, except make their leaders powerful. They should have a huge espionage success rate (they should be able to make an espionage mission with 75% of the leaders normally needed by other races). They should be able to do the other offensive missions with only 90% of the leaders that it would take for other races (aka, if all other races could murder Joe with 1,000,000 leaders, the fox could murder Joe with only 900,000 leaders). Also, let the fox's special ability allow them to change how their networth appears to everyone (including espionages) by 10% (so if a fox with 1,000,000 networth successfully cast this spell, s/he could make their networth anywhere from 900,000 to 1,100,000), and here's the kicker- other races take networth attack penalties based on what the fox put his/her networth. So if a fox put his networth at 110,000,000 networth instead of his actual networth, 100,000,000, people would take attack penalties for attacking an empire of 110 million networth instead of just 100 million networth.

Ferret
Honestly, I've never used this race before. I don't even know its special ability. Maybe we could make this race an attacking superpower. The ability could be Commanding Presence, it would give a +10% attacking bonus to the next 5 attacks (it would cost alot of loyalty). I need some help from you all on this one...

Stoat
This race should be the leader attacker. Stoats should be allowed to get leaders up to 180 per hut (instead of 175 per hut), but they can only get it by using stoat academy. Stoat Academy should also give a +5% bonus to all leader attacks in the next 30 turns. They should have an attacking bonus with leaders, but also should lose considerable more leaders than other races, as well as lose 8% health per leader attack. Their defense penalty should drop to -20%. Training penalty should be -10%.

Flitcheye
This race is supposed to be used for the whole "burrowing" and moving locations idea. I'm not really sure what to do with this one...Suggestions are gladly accepted.

Lizard
I think this race should be super sacking and capturing. I'm not sure about this race's current ability, but let's make it Captivity Training. Have lizards get a sack and capture bonus of 15% (so they capture 15% more food/money/leaders than normal IF they break). Give them hefty leader penalties (-10% leader growing and -10% loyalty growing) as well as higher food costs (+10%). Training should be a +10% bonus.

Wolf
This should be another leader race, but I can't decide how to make another strong leader race...I think the race bonuses are strong, but we need a good leader ability. I think a good one would be Defensive Stance: for 48 hours, guards are 1.25 times as effective and defenses are raised. The cost would be alot of loyalty and 5% of total army (except leaders).

Marten
Everyone wants to nuke this race. I disagree- I think it's almost perfect. The only touch I would make would be to give this race a -25% merc cost instead of a -20% merc cost, and make leaders eat less food for this race ((NOTE- BEFORE YOU FLIP OUT AT ME, READ THE REST OF THE POST- YOU'LL SEE WHY I GAVE THEM LESS OF A MERC COST))

Ermine
This is yet another race that I'm not familiar with. I think this should be the food gathering race. The should have a spell called Golden Rain- it is the equivalent of the goldmine- 2x the amount of food for 1.5x the cost. Also, they should have a hefty defensive bonus (+15%), as well as no aid bonus (YOU'LL SEE THIS LATER AS WELL).

Painted One
Hmm. I can't think of any great uses for this race, except one interesting idea. It could be ok. Here goes: Worker's Union- they grow TONS of workers....as in max out workers with 3 casts (and it's not too expensive). Then, give them a massive cost reduction (-20%) and cash growing bonus (+20%). ((ONCE AGAIN, YOU'LL SEE WHY THIS IS SO POWERFUL LATER))

Crow
Ahh...Finally the last race. Instead of making this race a huge challenge, because the other races are getting such big bonuses, let's give some to the crow. The crow will be super powerful at getting loyalty (+35% growing rate). For crows, the special ability should be Incredible Loyalty: every turn is like earning- gain +25% more loyalty than normal- for the next 100 turns. When you earn while incredible loyalty is active, they stack (so you gain +50% loyalty those turns!!!).


Ok...now let's go through other changes that could make the game more interesting...

BUILDINGS:
Markets and Growing Cash
They should now be based MUCH more on workers...so much so that people build more tents than markets.

Barracks and making troops
The more workers, the more troops made- there should definetely be a corollation, but I can't think of it yet.

Camps
Wow, what a useless building right now. Instead, have it only 10% of land need to be camps to get a -10% cost on mercs ((YOU'LL SEE WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT SOON)).

Huts
Perhaps the most perfected building- don't change anything. Just make sure that leaders grow all the way to fill huts up to 100 (small bug that sometimes occurs).

Foragers
Very good- maybe have the make a little more food?

Towers
Very good. This is a topic of debate, but I think we should only make towers effective if they are manned, so you can't get the tower benefits without the troops...

Cities
Not used very much. They could be expanded, where you need to build buildings in cities, and you would have a capital and other such cities, but whether we want to take this game in that direction is once again a topic of debate.


CLANS:
Ok, we should make clans more cooperative and beneficial, so the top players are basically all in clans. There should be only a 10% aid bonus to clan members ((BROUGHT UP LATER)). There should be a clan treasury, clan tax (only money and food, not troops). One more thing, leaders and assistant leaders should be able to see all clan members' empire status pages (taken from valhall).

OTHER:
Only a few things here, and this is it. This is perhaps the most controversial part. First off, mercenary buying prices should be increased by at least 40% and selling prices should be lowered by 50% (by this I mean you pay 40% more for mercs and only get 50% as much as you used to from selling). This way, the martens still can leader loot and get troops, but the public market will be used much more. The game will have an actual economy. People will only used the black market in desperate times. Finally, there should be an aid bonus of 30% of troops sent. This makes it difficult to aid someone to the emperorship.

Conclusion
Whew- I spent 45 minutes typing this, and I'm tired now. I may have made some mistakes and made some races too powerful in your opinion. By all means, tell me. I will constantly edit this, about once or twice a week, to fit the bill. Hopefully, we can eventually use this as a basis for upcoming updates in the code.

Regards to everyone.

[Neobaron]

Me Likey.

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Unfortunately, the likelyhood of anyone doing something is very low.

[Ruddertail]

For barracks, how about the Vallhall "worker ratio" thing? An equation based on your works, tents, and land would deterimine a "worker ratio" which would affect your market and barrack production.

The one things I don't like about dropping the BM sell prices is that it'd be almost impossible to indy. Indy normally relies on BM(Merc) selling to supply it with cash.

Trying to make them sell on the PM might work, but then you're giving leaderers another major advantage (they'll have plenty of troops to chose from, while indys depend on leader players for their very livelyhood, and have to wait for their troops to be bought before they could make a run.

Unless you plan to make markets insanely more powerful, in which case indies could just build markets. But that messes up the normal troop-sell indy.

So I'd say make troop selling stay the same, or go maybe make it 10% lower... With raising the market buy, some indies would still sell troops on the market, but if there were no leader players buy for a few days, indies wouldn't become crippled.

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Unfortunately, I'd also have to agree with Neo. Likelihood of implementation? Low.

[Orcrist]

The whole reason I suggested the change in BM prices is that everyone who leader loots relies almost completely on massing cash and buying BM troops. Changing the BM will force EVERYONE to the PM and will "cripple" everyone, bringing up a complete change in strategies...

[Ruddertail]

Not really. For a leader-looter, if there aren't troops available, they can always just keep making loyalty and looting until there are. They don't have to buy troops every day, except for a few to do landgrabs with. Which they could still afford off the BM.

Whereas an indy has to sell troops and get cash for them every day, or they run out of cash. They can't keep piling up troops, because the support costs run them into the ground.

They can't keep piling troops on the market, either, because of the limit (40% of your troops) and the fact that generating the troops will still give them the support costs, even if they stick troops on the market as fast as they make them. They could sell, true, but that means they're dropped to half efficiency. Which isn't good.

PM selling should be far more profitable, so it is done when possible. However, indies should be able to self subsist fairly effectively, for at least short periods. Leader players can still store cash, indies should be able to do something other then sack the heck out of leader players.

[Orcrist]

Lol- ruddertail, if a leader-looter doesn't buy troops, he/she is screwed. I have never met a leader looter than can hold a high position that doesn't buy troops at the end of every run. Leader looters sell/store almost all troops and then make cash so that they have low support costs. How on earth would they hold onto their land or their leaders without their troops? Like I said earlier, changing the BM makes EVERYONE change their strategies, which is the entire point- changing the game up. It will force balance.

[artu]

pretty ambitous :-D but i like the ideas :wink:

[Ruddertail]

Sure, they can't hold a high position, well, not without massive quantities of food. But they can still run. Sure, they drop down in the ranks for a few days, but at the end they have so much food and cash, or so much loyalty, that when troops come available they can buy twice or three times as many troops. No let loss, even though they drop in rank for a few days.

Whereas the indy player cannot run without getting a boost of cash every day. At least, not as effectively. Sure, he can BM sell, but with that at half power, that means his runs are half as usefull as normal.

It's not a question of whether he can hold net, it's a question of whether he can make a productive run at all. Under your policy, the leader player always can, but the indier sometimes can't.

[wolf bite]

I have looked this over and find a lot of good ideas here. As far as the increases in race powers, I agree that a ?5 or +5 is nothing to really make the race and we could have bigger numbers to distinguish between them. I have not commented on everything because I either agree or am undecided, so I let those ideas stand on their own. Mostly I have posted where I either disagree or have something to add to your ideas.

Rat
There is a perfectly good reason the lotto does not get big anymore; the code was rewritten, for the better in my opinion. When no one would win the lotto it became so big that whoever did win would take over the game because of dumb luck. When the musket was first invented, archers complained that a lifetime of experience could be killed by a gunman with an hour of training. I think the code now says that someone will always win 1 out of ten times. Then it scrambles the numbers and randomly picks one. This way a random new person that is playing the lotto can gain enough funds to help them out. Assuming we ever get a larger player base again of new people, this will be a great asset to them. The top players don?t need it.

Fox
I like the idea of a race designed to be the spy of the clan that has a better then average chance to spy and damage the enemy. But maybe less of an ability to use the magic for self-help such as poor Leader looting. Strictly a leader assassin that has better odds in offensive to take down the big hoarders of goods.

Fl itcheye
I have played this one before in the beginning, really did not see much use as almost everyone opens raiders anyway, which makes them just as venerable. I would think a good change would be not only do they burrow but they are also the army snipers. People have to open raiders to attack them, but their outgoing raiders are always open.

Lizard
They have more powerful scouting. This can be a good race for a fully none aggressive player. But even making their scouting better even better would help them out and make them more popular.

Crow
This is for those that want to prove their vanity by giving themselves a handicap that everyone can see. Your ideas what to do for them could be used on a different race.

Camps
Camps play a big part when people are ending the round and want to buy out mercs at a great price. I don?t care much for them at all. But checking accounts a lot of people manage their oversized armies by the reduction of maintenance for armies by having 30% camps.

Towers.
I don?t care for needing to man them because if your attacking army is not rat, then either you run your turns with no rats to save cash, and are fully venerable despite towers, or you are forced to buy and sell rats all the time. Leave them as they are.

Cities
The problem is that they still take up 1,000 land and destroy the self help for leader players and their defense ratio. Thus I would have them take 1 land but put safeties from people hording all their land in cities. Such as only 40% of land can be cities and if the person drops in land too low, the city turns back to land. Further once someone can take away one, they have them all. This is not right. There should be a time limit on how fast they can be taken. I once watched a game where someone saying they were a teacher talked a new guy into building all cities, then took them all, the new guy deleted and never returned.


Wolf Bite

[Orcrist]

Ok Ruddertail- I see your point. Maybe we could find some way to give the indyer a leg up- say by finding some way to lower troop maintenence...like have 10% camps to lower troop maintenence by 15%or something like that.

Wolf Bite- I like your ideas about the fox.
For the rat, it simply will not be used if the lotto isn't beefed up. It doesn't have to be ridiculous, but it should be more powerful.
For the crow, fine- we can leave it as a nothing race. Let's take everything I said about the crow and just apply it to the ermine.

[artu]

i just dont use camps or tents i just build markets and foragers and towers :-D

[Ruddertail]

And that information is relevent to this topic how...?

It's not even agreeing or disagreeing. It's just random info on your build. Please don't post it on a serious discussion of game features.

Orcrist:
How about 10% = 15% less support costs plus Merc sell is worth 10% (of original cost) more. So, 30% camps would mean support costs are 45% less, and Merc sell is 80% of original value, instead of 50%.

Of course, numbers may have to be adjust: we want to allow indies to run without selling troops on the market, while at the same time making market selling more benificial.

Of course, leader players can still run at max efficiency. Perhaps have sack gain slightly more each attack, so that it becomes rather dangerous for leaderers to leave more then a few days worth of food or cash sitting out.

[Orcrist]

I like it Ruddertail I like it. The one thing I wish they would implement more than anything else, however, would be a clan treasury. It would bring the game to a whole new level. Oftentimes, people work together outside of clans, but act as if they are in one. They support each other with aid packages. It would be cool if we could put an aid penalty of, say 15%, and then put in clan treasuries, where someone can withdraw with only a 2% penalty and no loss of turns. The only things able to be stored in the treasury would be cash, food, and loyalty. This would bring teamwork to a whole new level.

[Ruddertail]

Why any penalty at all on treasury?

Just make it no penalty, and limit it by clan NW, so that a clan can't store all their cash and food in it.

And, possibley make a minimum amount of time between using the threasury and when the player can be booted, to prevent people from joining up, using the treasury to transfer, and then being booted.

[Orcrist]

Hmmm- I see your point. I was actually just trying to enforce a penalty on aid OUTSIDE of Clans and Clan Allies- this would make clans much more common and would hinder people working as a clan, but using to their benefit single warlord advantages.