TO KAEL: Suggestions for Balance and Gameplay

from Elemental Forums

Nerfing heroes: Heroes escaping from battle should get some penalties IE retire some experience point and reduce a random  statistic

Aesthetics: Helmets should be more expensive for what they do, and they should come in more varieties. So that we would see more heroes not wearing helmets (which also helps differentiating them) -

Making armies more useful: While only heroes should be able to perform quests and find treasures, I would be curious to see what would happen if they were unable able to carry all the goods they find unless an army is with them (a squire). That would force players to be a lot more careful when attacking a lair or going "aquesting", since their hero could easily retreat from any unwanted battle on the way, but his squire (following army) would not and that could compromise the whole mission. Just an idea on the top of my mind. (maybe small objects could be carried by heroes, gold should be retrieved only if an army is present with them) - I am looking for ways to make armies more indispensable, since as the game is now they are quite useless. Also creating the figure of a squire, who carries the knight's stuff, would make sense.

Important gameplay concept: In age of wonders when they realized that flying units could be too easily used to rush, they made a rule that those units can conquer a city but not control it once conquered. I believe that should be the role of armies: A hero may win a battle alone but if he conquers a city then he cannot prevent its population to rebel unless he has enough troops with him. REBELLION of freshly conquered cities should be introduced. That is present in any strategy game that pops in my mind, from Age of Wonders to Total War to Masters of Orion II. It's a concept that is there for a reason: TO PREVENT CONQUERING SEVERAL CITIES IN A RUSH and assimilate the population. (One can still raze them of course).

Nerfig Magic Items: Researching magic items shouldn't make them available in any city right away, like they were sold at Wall Mart. Players should just get a SMALL chance to see some of them available somewhere sometimes in small quantities and at a much higher price then they are sold now.

Boring micromanagement: Micromanaging caravans is a pain in the butt, and for what? They should be like in the TOTAL WAR series: once researched they just act automatically and hostile units in a certain area should prevent them from passing through.

The Fallen Enchantress' boyfriend can't look like Ken! = Heroes for hire. We need FALLEN HEROES! human heroes should act as random monsters for fallen sovereigns and fallen heroes should be doing that for human sovereigns.

Battle system built around action points: One way to make battles more interesting would be to force players to spend action point in order to make anything (right now heroes can drink a million potions for free!!). Also a 10% bonus for a strategic placement is way too little . That bonus should be much higher (in wargames the defense is doubled or even multiplied by three) - But that assuming the AI learned to take advantage of it, otherwise forget that! Anyway historically 100 defenders in a fortress could easily keep at bay 1000 assailants.

MULTIPLAYER
This game desperately needs multiplayer, Age of Wonders is still alive after 10 years because of it's Play By Email Community. In order to have multiplayer working, players should be able to interact at different levels. Stealth units should be introduced, units that can enter woods without being seen. Maybe outlaw and bandits should be sent in enemy territory without being spotted as belonging to a particular kingdom, so that the other players would just see them as regular monsters, while they can in fact spy around for our sovereign.

Watching towers should be buildable anywhere. They are quite useless against the AI but in a good multiplayer game you do want them.

My impression is also that the pace is a bit slow for PBEM, but that could be fixed by adding a few movement points.

I hate teleport and so does most of the Age of Wonders community, if you want us to like this game make it at least optional (the books of magic could be made optional at the beginning so that one may decide not to have the movement book for that specific multiplayer game)


FRUSTRATION -
We only reported these bugs a million times:

Walking out of a city should cost one movement point, going back in MAYBE could cost 0 but not coming out! Units sometimes come out of cities from the wrong side or refuse to attack an enemy if the enemy is close to the city and there is no free adjacent tile. So they end up regrouping in the same tile as the enemy instead that attacking. (All the same stuff that I said a million times, but wasn't fixed) movement doesn't work right in general, once you have one MP left you can enter a wood, but woods should cost 2 movement points!!

Also when two units join together the fatser one shouldn't lose all its extra movement points. It should be free to leave the group at its faster speed if decides to do so!

The actual food system sucks and is buggy, I am tired to be forced to research farming over and over because everyone is starving as soon as I conquer an enemy city (even if it's producing tons of food)

When reloading a game at the beginning of turns some movement points are missing, mostly movement points given by items (that has been said a million times, the horses movement points were fixed, but nobody bothered to check other items which give extra movement points?)

Heroes with royalty skill are supposed to give prestige in fact they do not


AI = in battle right now the AI always seems to attack heroes. Which is fine unless those heroes have a lot of defense, in which case the AI is wasting its time while it could get rid of more vulnerable units. The vulnerable units are thus free to attack the AI, while the hero absorbs all hits. IMO the AI should target the unit that has the higher attack (the most dangerous one) of those with a defense value inferior to their own attack value (dangerous but vulnerable).  So that they may hope to kill something for a change!!! Heroes should be a privileged target only if they fall under those rules.

6,865 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Important gameplay concept: In age of wonders when they realized that flying units could be too easily used to rush, they made a rule that those units can conquer a city but not control it once conquered. I believe that should be the role of armies: A hero may win a battle alone but if he conquers a city then he cannot prevent its population to rebel unless he has enough troops with him. REBELLION of freshly conquered cities should be introduced. That is present in any strategy game that pops in my mind, from Age of Wonders to Total War to Masters of Orion II. It's a concept that is there for a reason: TO PREVENT CONQUERING SEVERAL CITIES IN A RUSH and assimilate the population. (One can still raze them of course).

By one I hope you mean one army of sufficient strength to actually kill all those people and/or burn down their houses? It always bothers me that an entire metropolis will happily let itself be slaughtered by even a single peasant. Doesn't one of them come up with the idea that maybe they could try to kill that guy instead?

On a related note, should unguarded towns let themselves be conquered by just anyone? Or should the people form a militia to defend themselves? I could live without this feature, but then the game should be balanced so that most towns would need a small garrison, even if the town isn't on the frontlines (to protect them from bandits, monsters, and enemy raiders).

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

These things are never gonna happen, but great post BK!

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Satrhan, reply 1

quoting postImportant gameplay concept: In age of wonders when they realized that flying units could be too easily used to rush, they made a rule that those units can conquer a city but not control it once conquered. I believe that should be the role of armies: A hero may win a battle alone but if he conquers a city then he cannot prevent its population to rebel unless he has enough troops with him. REBELLION of freshly conquered cities should be introduced. That is present in any strategy game that pops in my mind, from Age of Wonders to Total War to Masters of Orion II. It's a concept that is there for a reason: TO PREVENT CONQUERING SEVERAL CITIES IN A RUSH and assimilate the population. (One can still raze them of course).
By one I hope you mean one army of sufficient strength to actually kill all those people and/or burn down their houses? It always bothers me that an entire metropolis will happily let itself be slaughtered by even a single peasant. Doesn't one of them come up with the idea that maybe they could try to kill that guy instead?

On a related note, should unguarded towns let themselves be conquered by just anyone? Or should the people form a militia to defend themselves? I could live without this feature, but then the game should be balanced so that most towns would need a small garrison, even if the town isn't on the frontlines (to protect them from bandits, monsters, and enemy raiders).

Nope, in Age of Wonders Shadow Magic one unit if is alone can conquer an empty city but cannot not raze it. Razing a city takes a few armies.

 

Quoting Trojasmic, reply 2
These things are never gonna happen, but great post BK!

Hey, maybe you are right but the fact is the gameplay of EWOM just doesn't f****** work, they may as well follow my suggestions since they are inspired by games that do work, I give the reference, I give numbers, then they do what they want. I am a bit tired of repeating myself about movement and PBEM multiplayer, in the end if the game doesn't work, I'll be very sorry but that won't change my life, I'll just go back to AOW. :)

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Hey, maybe you are right but the fact is the gameplay of EWOM just doesn't f****** work, they may as well follow my suggestions since they in inspired by games that do work, I give the reference, I give numbers, then they do what they want. I am a bit tired of repeating myself about movement and PBEM multiplayer, in the end if the game doesn't work, I'll be very sorry but that won't change my life, I'll just go back to AOW.


If you have a problem with move speed, it is pretty easy to mod the movement speed of units to be anything you would like. For a while, I was using a private mod I made that gave all units a base move of 5 instead of 2, which very much changed the dynamic of play. Such a mod is fairly easy to do for yourself as the vast majority of units simply utilize the default move points set in the stat. So if you make a mod which overrides this default value, 99.9% of units will move at the new default value. If I remember correctly, only one or two champions had their move speed actually set, and oddly enough, it is set to the same value as the default value. BK, I really think you should try this, as I think it would strengthen your argument.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting kenata, reply 4

Hey, maybe you are right but the fact is the gameplay of EWOM just doesn't f****** work, they may as well follow my suggestions since they in inspired by games that do work, I give the reference, I give numbers, then they do what they want. I am a bit tired of repeating myself about movement and PBEM multiplayer, in the end if the game doesn't work, I'll be very sorry but that won't change my life, I'll just go back to AOW.

If you have a problem with move speed, it is pretty easy to mod the movement speed of units to be anything you would like. For a while, I was using a private mod I made that gave all units a base move of 5 instead of 2, which very much changed the dynamic of play. Such a mod is fairly easy to do for yourself as the vast majority of units simply utilize the default move points set in the stat. So if you make a mod which overrides this default value, 99.9% of units will move at the new default value. If I remember correctly, only one or two champions had their move speed actually set, and oddly enough, it is set to the same value as the default value. BK, I really think you should try this, as I think it would strengthen your argument.

To be quite frank I believe that with movement a few other things should be retouched. For example if units are faster, cities should be further away from each other (you don't want to be able to exit one city and enter the next in the same turn), also the area of vision of troops should be increased a little, so that a player sees where he is going. In general the numbers in Age of Wonders seem to work extremely well for gameplay, so I would just make a try like that. In any case that would be indispensible multiplayer by email, while for single player it's just a matter of taste.

 

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Black-Knight, reply 3



Quoting Satrhan,
reply 1

quoting postImportant gameplay concept: In age of wonders when they realized that flying units could be too easily used to rush, they made a rule that those units can conquer a city but not control it once conquered. I believe that should be the role of armies: A hero may win a battle alone but if he conquers a city then he cannot prevent its population to rebel unless he has enough troops with him. REBELLION of freshly conquered cities should be introduced. That is present in any strategy game that pops in my mind, from Age of Wonders to Total War to Masters of Orion II. It's a concept that is there for a reason: TO PREVENT CONQUERING SEVERAL CITIES IN A RUSH and assimilate the population. (One can still raze them of course).
By one I hope you mean one army of sufficient strength to actually kill all those people and/or burn down their houses? It always bothers me that an entire metropolis will happily let itself be slaughtered by even a single peasant. Doesn't one of them come up with the idea that maybe they could try to kill that guy instead?

On a related note, should unguarded towns let themselves be conquered by just anyone? Or should the people form a militia to defend themselves? I could live without this feature, but then the game should be balanced so that most towns would need a small garrison, even if the town isn't on the frontlines (to protect them from bandits, monsters, and enemy raiders).


Nope, in Age of Wonders Shadow Magic one unit if is alone can conquer an empty city but cannot not raze it. Razing a city takes a few armies.

 




Quoting Trojasmic,
reply 2
These things are never gonna happen, but great post BK!


Hey, maybe you are right but the fact is the gameplay of EWOM just doesn't f****** work, they may as well follow my suggestions since they are inspired by games that do work, I give the reference, I give numbers, then they do what they want. I am a bit tired of repeating myself about movement and PBEM multiplayer, in the end if the game doesn't work, I'll be very sorry but that won't change my life, I'll just go back to AOW.

 

I still don't see how PBEM casn be fun. But the more option the better. Personally I perfer to play AOW:SM live.  Well Ewom is not going to be the game we want and the Devs know it. Which is why they are coming out with FE. So until then AOW:SM and GalCiv2 will have to hold us over.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I still don't see how PBEM casn be fun. But the more option the better. Personally I perfer to play AOW:SM live. Well Ewom is not going to be the game we want and the Devs know it. Which is why they are coming out with FE. So until then AOW:SM and GalCiv2 will have to hold us over.

You should really try to play by email. Of course I was skeptical as well when I first tried it, I was annoyed by the fact that you can only auto fight other human players, but eventually we made certain house rules that worked for us very well. For example we use 2 levels of the map as if they were both surface level in order to make it even bigger (in AOW there is an underground level that can be made to look like a giant underground cave) Also we always start with already a couple of cities and a few small armies, which helps speeding up the fist few turns of the game. Then we strictly remove every form of teleport from the game, to stress the realistic movement and strategic (wargame) experience. Finally we only use huge maps and we plant our starting cities well far away from each other.

What we get in the end is a game that can last many months (one lasted one year and 1/2) and you usually don't get to meet the other players for a few weeks until your had the time to explore your side of the map and have developed a small kingdom.

The first week is kind of slow, but then the games picks up and soon playing your turn starts taking at least half an hour (it can take up to one hour by the end of the game, assuming the maps are big enough and your empire is prosperous).

I played all sort of wargames in my life. Never I had such an intense realistic experience and I found myself eager to open the turn every morning to see if that particular army survived an attack, or if I could finally cast that spell I had been literally preparing for weeks.

You need a group of friends as passionate as you in order to do that, people that don't start whining or quit if they begin to lose. A good way to prevent that is to start a new game after about a month, so that when someone start losing game 1, he doesn't stop playing because he's just getting into game 2 (besides if one starts losing their turns don't last that long, so it won't be that annoying to play and send anyway.)

You should give it a try ;)

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Well the fact that you have to auto combat other people kinda kills it for me. For me one of the funnest parts of the game is the tactical combat. I probably would not be playing AOW:SM today if it was not for the tactical combat. I do love the other parts of the game mind you but this is the one element that I can't play without. I never use auto combat even if I'm just moping up.

I have tried PBEM in the past and it was not for me. I like to have access to all parts of the game and PBEM is very limiting.

 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Well the fact that you have to auto combat other people kinda kills it for me.

It's not too bad a limitation actually, since you do lots of battles against the AI. Also there are lots of strategic choiches you have to make against the other players that go well beyond which dwarf attacks which smurf .You should try it before you judge it.