Unit/City bonus

[KGB]

When I click on enemy/neutral cities/armies I can see their defense rating (cities) and bonuses (units).

But when I click on my own cities/armies I can't see what defense/bonus's I have. Is there some place I can see this information? If not, can it be added in an upcoming update.

Also what gives a city a 1 shield defense and a 2 shield defense?

I see you've added the bonus's to units in the middle of the game. I wish I had known you were going to do this. I would have bought different production with my gold. Especially since some units got bonus's quite different that what that unit normally has in Warlords 2.

Speaking of which, are you going to properly give units their movement/strength/bonus's as per Warlords 2?

KGB

[SnotlinG]

For your own city-defence, you will see if the city has 1 or 2 shields by clicking your city, and then click the left button (City information) in the city-popup. It will show you the defence-level of your city, as well as the income etc. Maybe we should add this to be presented in the terrain-onmouse-over field, i´ll see if that would look good.

For your own troops, you can (since just a few days back) see the info in the city also, i.e. in the production-screen, as well as the buy-new-production screen. We will of course add something like "View stack" soon, just havent gotten around to it yet.

City defence is given by number of possible unit-types the city can produce. 1-2 unittypes= 1 shield in defence, 3-4 unittypes = 2 shields in defence. We are thinking of modifying this slightly though, making the city defence level independent of the citys production capabilities, but that will be a bit later, not in this ongoing beta and most likely not in next beta as well.

Units have had bonuses since the start of the beta-game, but unfortunately you havent been able to see them until now. Which unit bonuses are diffrent you mean? We have pretty much been using w2dl as a base, only difference I know of is the orc has been changed from moving in forest/hills to swamp. We are currently discussing to make some small tweaks for the units though (mostly in cost), but that wont happen until next beta phase at the earliest.

As for unit statistics, I think we have it pretty much setup as w2dl. Which units do you think are differing?

[KGB]

SnotlingG,

I don't recall the Unicorn giving a -2 stack enemy bonus. It always gave a +1 stack bonus. At least all the versions I ever played. Only the Elephant gave a -1 enemy stack bonus. The other units look more or less correct.

I also don't recall Wolf Riders being 1 turn units (they were 2 turns) and Pegasi were 3 turns, not 2, same with Gryffons being 3 turns not 2. So many units are overpowered right now because of the build times being skewed so that they are literally churned out much faster than should be possible.

Thanks for the tips on how to see the unit bonus's. The thing about doing it in the production screen is that if you are in the middle of making a unit (say 2 turns into a 4 turn unit) you can't click to see the bonus or else it messes up the build time. That's why a mouse over or just having the info under the units in the production screen would be handy.

One thing I still can't see in the buy production menu is the upkeep cost for a unit. I also can't see the bonus for any unit that I can't buy. So for example until I can afford an Elephant I can't see it's bonus's/upkeep so I can't be sure I want to save for one.

What would also be very nice (which War2 didn't have) would be to list the combat strengths under each unit in the combat screen. That way you could see the final strengths after all bonus's were applied.

KGB

[piranha]

I'll jump in and answer some things.

I loaded W2DL to take a look and you are right about wolf, its 2 turns. But the rest of them are the same as w2dl, griffon is 2, unicorn -2 stack, pegasi 2, . But we have also talked about units being imbalanced so we are going to make changes to them before the next beta.

I also agree about units that you can't afford should be clickable so you know what they are. Seems logical now that we have the buy button.

[KGB]

Piranha,

Thanks for taking the time to download W2DL.

I actually never got that version of War2. I had the original version that came on Floppy Disk and then later got the Scenario Builder (1992-1994 time frame). By the time W2DL came out on CD-Rom in 1995 I had moved on to War3.

No wonder I've seen SO many people complain that War2 armies are unbalanced. I always wondered what they complaints were about since the version I played didn't seem that bad. Now I know. I can't believe they changed Pegasi/Gryffons to 2 turn units (from 3 turns) and changed Unicorns from +1 stack to -2 enemy stack. Those are HUGE changes to the balance that were not needed. Of course SSG (now Infinite Interactive) games have never been known for game balance. Sigh.

You'd do much better to download the original War2 and base your army combat numbers/bonus's/production turns from it.

KGB

[Guest]

As you have asked for feedback on units for beta 2 here are some thoughts:

Three main things to consider:

1. The influence of STR in a battle
2. Amount of turns to produce a unit
3. Powerful bonuses on certain units.

All above things are related and must therefore be considered as a whole.

STR does not currently effect the battle as much as it should. As a result 1 turn units do stand a very good chance vs 2-3 turn units with higher STR. The battle calculation could be slightly adjusted, perhaps a 18 Dice instead of 20.

Some units (eg pegasi) with very powerful bonuses are being produced too fast.
Some examples (I take these numbers out of my head, they might be slighlty inacurrrate):
2 turns Pegasi gives + 1 stack // 5 STR // 24 Moves and can fly.
If you compare the Pegasi with Elephant.
Elephants are produced in 3 turns has -1 negative effect. 8 STR and 16 Moves (no flying )
I think the Pegasi and elephant are equally powerful, I think the Pegasi should be 3 turns as well.

I think the terrain bonuses are well balanced.

Making STR more influent and adding 1 turn to production of Pegasis would make a lot of differance and benefit the game balance.

Some minor tweaks:

Griffins are fine at 2 turn production cycle, though their movement could be reduced (would fit well with their city bonus).

Orcs with +2 in open terrain makes them a bit too powerful. Perhaps lower the STR with 1 or slightly lower their movement.

[bras]

Can I ask you, how does the city bonus actually function? For example, if the city has two shields, does this imply that when the city is attacked, the defenders will have +2 to their STR?

[KGB]

Bras,

Yes.

Of course this gets modified downward if the enemy has siege units.

KGB

[kenc80]

I would agree with KGB on the W2 unit balancing vs W2DL. although I sure like getting flying demons in 3 turns

I actually have a playable version of the original W2 that works (without sound) on my XP Pro machine. Someone named Wooger made it and it works really well, its modified to work without having to use one of those dosbox type things. You can just double click the .exe and go.

Ive been playing it recently since this came about and it still runs great. Actually KGB you are mentioned in the readme haha.

If anyone wants i can mail it to them. It obviously shows all the W2 balances as Fawkner intended them, might help with this port.

As always, huge props to pirahna and snotling for undertaking this massive project. I know we complain but man this is awesome. I cant emphasize it enough. Great job!

[Masterdisaster]

I must agree with kenc80. Excellent job! You know, the base code of this could be very usefull to remake other classic TBG's. Maybe at some time you may think about making the code open source?