Hero Offers

[KGB]

What's the criteria (ie minimum gold, percentage change) for a new hero offer?

I'm in a 1-1 game and it's turn 16. I have 3500 gold and have had well over 1000 gold since about turn 8. I have yet to receive a 2nd hero offer. Meanwhile my opponent lost his 1st hero very early. He has had gold ranging from 100-1200 during this time and he has not gotten a replacement hero offer either. In all the other games I've played (at least 10) heroes regularly start offering themselves around 800 gold.

I'm wondering if there is a bug somehow in the game that can prevent the hero offer code from being run (I don't see anything in the debug logs that indicates it checked for a hero offer at the start of the turn) if one player has no heroes and not enough gold for a hero.

Another question I have is regarding a hero offer when you have no heroes. I know the chance was increased but was the amount of gold needed decreased down to something like 100 gold when you have no hero? This is really important in turns 1-5 where I've found that at least one player loses his hero in these critical turns in every game (from 1-1 to 5-6 player FFAs). The loss of the hero in that time is basically GAME OVER because you have no money and no armies and so you fall so far behind that you might as well resign if you lose your hero in turns 1-5. DLR overcame this issue by giving more than 1 initial unit and by literally giving a player who lost his hero another one (no allies) for <100 gold on turns 105.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

The minimum gold is around 500 gold needed.
The chance is about 15-20% I think if you have a lot of gold. If you have no heroes it is slightly higher.

There is currently no decrease in the lowest amount of gold needed for a hero if you lose your first hero early on, meaning it is quite difficult to get a new one very early. Its a good idea though and I think I will do something like this for beta3. However Im a bit concerned this would encourage very risky gambling with your first hero if you know you will get a new one if you die.

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

However Im a bit concerned this would encourage very risky gambling with your first hero if you know you will get a new one if you die.

Players already have to do risky gambling behavior now because they have no other choice. With only 1 starting army your odds of success even on weak cities isn't better than 80% so that means 1/5 games you are going to lose your hero on the first city you attack unless you decide to spend a few turns amassing armies. Many times it's less than 80%.

For example in a recent game I started with a Giant. The only nearby (as in cities I could reach on turn 1 or turn 2 and in reality it was more like 4-5 turns to reach a city with a bat/scout/light infantry) cities had heavy infantry and light cavalry in them. With L2 walls they are 5 strength to my giant and hero at 6 strength. The chance a 5 strength unit beats a 6 strength is about 40%. So the chances of beating both my units is .4*.4=.16 or roughly 1/6. So one out of 6 games like that I will lose my giant and hero.

I don't consider that risky behavior, I consider it necessary behavior because I don't really have other alternatives (I don't consider walking 3 turns or waiting 3 turns to make another Giant to be reasonable while other players get a big initial jump). So if I win great, if I don't, I resign and call it bad luck.

If in Beta3 you change the rules so players start with more than 1 army then this isn't as big of an issue. Because if you think players would gamble recklessly wait till Beta3 or Beta4 when you have hidden maps, fog of war and they can't see what's inside a city or even which cities are strongly defended. They either need more initial armies like DLR provided or they just take a pure guess.

KGB

[kenc80]

So really this comes down to how is the game going to play out right? I mean, if I have a chance of getting a new hero in Turns 1-5 if I gamble and lose um i'm splitting my hero & ally and going out there to battle.

To be fair, I'm not sure which way is better. I never really played DLR - W2 for me, so I am used to gambling or not. But at least in W2...most of the neutrals were light infantry!

I think its worth some serious thought...it seems to me this would really drastically change opening game strat.

But on the other hand, if new heroes keep new players playing and not being discouraged and we pick up more new gamers...I guess I would concede thats a good thing. (if thats your goal)

[KGB]

Kenc80,

Remember in War2, your hero gets a standard (+1 command item) so in reality your hero stack is stronger in War2 than it is here by +1.

The thing is that in games with more than 2 people, right now if you lose your hero on turns 1-5 you are out of the game. I've played or am playing about 15 games so far in Beta2 and I have yet to see a player lose their early hero and play well much less win a game. Those that lose their hero are done. That's because a majority of games are over in 20-25 turns even on the Riverwar/Bullrun maps which are the biggest maps. So if a game only lasts 20-25 turns and you have to wait till turn 7-10 to get a 2nd hero how are you supposed to have a chance?

And remember, there aren't ruins yet on the map. Imagine when ruins get added and while you wait for a hero, other players are searching ruins and finding 3 dragons or 1000 gold on turn 2-5. How will you ever come back from that?

Then factor in fog of war. That won't let you see the defenders in a city. So you won't know where the weak cities lie until you either move armies there or attack them. So if you pick the wrong direction initially you are going to be forced to take a gamble or retrace your steps.

Sure, some players will gamble knowing they get an easy hero offer. Even so, you still lose at least 1 turn getting the offer, you can't be sure which city the hero will come to, you don't get allies, your hero is back to 0 XP and it costs most of your initial gold. That's a reasonable price to pay given at best you are going to snag 1 extra city or a better production city from the gambling. I suspect that in reality players go ruin picking instead of gambling on harder cities.

In reality, I hope that players get more starting armies like DLR did. That would do a lot to solve the problem of being very weak on turns 1-5.

KGB

P.S. The other thing that would *slightly* help players initially is if you made the change so that neutral armies did not get any 'first strike' capability. That takes away that 1-5% chance that a neutral army just outright kills one of your initial armies at a time in the game when you only have 2-4 armies overall. The neutrals shouldn't decide games so there is no reason for those units to have 'First Strike' skills. Leave that for player armies.

[Itangast]

Just experienced same as original poster. 20 turns with loads of gold available each turn and still no hero offer.

Why not add a "guaranteed hero offer" after a fixed number of turns, subject to gold being available?

If no hero offer comes around for eg 13 turns - lets guarantee a hero offer the upcoming turn.

Some games expecially 1 vs 1 is incredible hard to win without several heroes, and by guaranteeing a hero we reduce the luck factor slightly.

[piranha]

I agree here.

I lost my hero and start unit in a 8 player game and it more or less all over.
I think adding a couple of extra start units for beta 3 and perhaps a more strict hero policy.

What do you think about this.
EARLY
A new hero with starting units instead of allie unit for 90% of your capital during the first 5 turns if you lose your hero. The turns and money lost from losing your hero in the first battle is enough punishment.

MIDGAME
For example from 500 - 1000 you can get lucky an get a hero offer.
From 1000+
Each turn you can roll for a hero and then buy that hero or wait till the next turn and make a new roll.
This way you could always get a hero if you have 1000+ of money but perhaps it will be a lousy hero quite often, but the more money you have the bigger chance of a good hero offer (more good allies).

Perhaps this would be better than having to wait 10 turns and wondering if luck is going to give you anything.

[KGB]

Piranha,

What do you think about this.
EARLY
A new hero with starting units instead of allie unit for 90% of your capital during the first 5 turns if you lose your hero. The turns and money lost from losing your hero in the first battle is enough punishment.

I would not give any units with the hero. The early replacement hero offer should simply be a hero only.

If you are giving 3-4 extra units (scouts/elf archer type units) at the start of the game in Beta3 that should help a lot in terms of extra starting units.

MIDGAME
For example from 500 - 1000 you can get lucky an get a hero offer.
From 1000+
Each turn you can roll for a hero and then buy that hero or wait till the next turn and make a new roll.
This way you could always get a hero if you have 1000+ of money but perhaps it will be a lousy hero quite often, but the more money you have the bigger chance of a good hero offer (more good allies).

I do not like the idea of a guaranteed hero every turn if you have 1000 gold. That's *way* too easy to get more heroes. Remember, ruins filled with gold will mean players have lots more money.

What DLR did was to increase the chance for a hero based on the amount of gold a player had. So the more money you saved, the better your chance. So maybe you can start at 20% chance for 500-1000 gold and increase the chance by 1% for every 100 gold beyond 1000. That way at 2000 gold you get a 30% chance and so on until you get a 100% chance of a hero every turn at 9000 gold.

This way there is a direct trade off between buying production / upgrading city walls and getting hero offers.

I know you currently set the number of allies based on the gold the player has. Right now it seems way too easy to get 4-5 allies if you have 1200 gold. If you get lucky and get 4-5 dragons/archons/devils (which I've seen happen quite a lot) you just got 20-25 free turns of production (how long it would take to build them)!

I'd say in Beta3 you should set the number of allies to be based on 1000 gold increments. In other words, <1000 gold = 1 ally, 1000-2000 gold = 2 allies, 2000-3000 gold = 3 allies etc. So again, saving gold = more allies (and I'd suggest more gold should equal better allies too).

KGB

[KGB]

Thinking about this topic some more as I pass the 40 games played mark and get ready for a 2nd set of combat rules.

I definitely think the more gold = better hero chance should be done. The formula I suggested "So maybe you can start at 20% chance for 500-1000 gold and increase the chance by 1% for every 100 gold beyond 100." makes sense. But I'd do two other things. (A) I'd cap the maximum chance at either 40 or 50% because at the time I didn't realize you could get infinite number of heroes. So you don't want players who have large amounts of gold literally getting gobs of heroes/allies every turn. (B) I'd reduce the chance of a hero offer by 2% for every hero you already have. This will slow down the rate of heroes so that as you get 5 heroes your chance to get another is reduced by 10%. Again this is because there is no limit to the number you can get.

The allies should absolutely be based on 500 gold increments. I've seen quite a few games now where someone with 1300 gold snags a hero with 4-5 dragons on turn 4-5 because they pillaged out a city. This will be a bigger problem with ruins full of gold. Those 4-5 dragons are a MASSIVE jackpot lottery win especially if another player gets 3 Elementals for their 1100 gold hero offer. So what I'd suggest is the hero cost be:

<1000 gold = brings 1 3-turn ally (3 turns of ally production)
1000-1500 gold = brings 2 3-turn allies or 1 4-turn ally or 1 5-turn ally (6 turns of ally production)
1500-2000 gold = brings 3 3-turn allies, or 2 4-turn allies or 1 5-turn ally (9 turns of ally production)
2000-2500 gold = brings 4 3-turn allies, or 3 4-turn allies or 2 5-turn allies (12 turns of ally production)
2500-3000 gold = brings 5 3-turn allies, or 3 4-turn allies or 3 5-turn allies (15 turns of ally production)

This way you get roughly the same number of production turns of allies. In other words, 5 3-turn allies = 15 turns of production = 3 5-turn allies. It also means you can now not tell the player what allies they are getting. Instead you can just say the hero brings 5 3-turn allies. And players can decide if they want that hero with the 3 turn allies or wait for another offer with 4 or 5 turn allies (though I'd still prefer to be shown the allies but this is for those who don't want to know what they are getting).

This corrects the problem of someone snagging 5 dragons for 1300 gold. That may not seem like much but if you were to try and produce that it would take 2000 gold to buy Dragon production then 25 turns to make 5 dragons. Now at most you can get 3 dragons and when you do the hero cost will be 2500-3000 gold.

KGB

[piranha]

This is Snotlings department but I think your ideas are good. I like the turn allies idea very much.

One thing that I've been thinking about is ruins that are bit along the same lines as your hero offers idea. We are not there in a while but I know from our old warlord play experience that if you search a ruin on turn 1-2 and get an allie it a huge advantage.

Now in beta3 if you get more start units it wont be as major as in war1 where you only had your hero and the other player had 2 dragons and hero on turn 3.
But ive been thinking about categorizing ruins in levels.
for example.
level 1: items with lesser bonuses
level 2: medium items, 500-1000 gold, 3 turns of allies,
level 3: good items, 500-1500 gold, 8 turns of allies
and so on

And then set turn 1-4: only level1 results from searching
turn 5-10: 70% chance at level1, 30% at level 2
turn 11-20: 30% level1, 30% level2, 40% level3

I just picked the numbers while writing but something like that to limit the jackpot feature from ruins.

In some ways it might make you want to wait before searching a ruin to get something better. But getting a magic sword on turn 1-2 will help you capture cities so its not that bad having just small bonus early.