question for the math guys

[kenc80]

you know, this is a tough discussion because we are dealing with magic which makes things harder to conceptualize.

I actually think the concept of the unicorn's presence negating terrain is fine and makes "sense".

The tougher question is the other one you posed: one pegasus giving +5 morale and 4 Pegasi giving a total of +5 morale.

Likewise should multiple archons not "stack" their abilities as well? Medusa etc. If one medusa is scary enough to be -5 should 5 medusa give -25?!! I see the can of worms. Maybe if you see one medusa the second doesnt faze you as much (or any more?)

[KGB]

Maybe if you see one medusa the second doesnt faze you as much (or any more?)

If you *see* one Medusa you don't have to worry about seeing any more


Multiple units of the same type providing a bonus that stacks is called swarming. It can't really be done with other skills unless the stack system changes to allow more than 8 units. Otherwise city defenders with 32 units would make a mockery of that kind of system.

KGB

[smursh]

Units with moral bonus inspire troops to fight better. So if a RD is seen flying over the battlefield it inspires confidence in your forces and they fight more fiercely. Adding a second RD doesn't help since the troops are already inspired as much as they can be.

For fear units like the medusa, troops are averting their eyes for fear of turning to stone. Hard to fight if you aren't looking around, so troops fight worse. You can't double avert your eyes, so a second medusa doesn't do any good.

Similarly for siege engines, 1 battering ram to knock down the gates, once they are down they are down.

The system forces you to organize your forces. Use moral/fear/siege units along with heroes as leaders for other units rather than in stacks of pegasus. Besides, if pegasus could stack moral there would be no point to RD.

[Chazar]

Swarming stacks linearly, this is not what I propose!

I think it would be good for all Negate Skills to work similarly:
NegateAura, NegateHeroism, NegateTerrain & Warding

They should stack in a non-linear way, like I depicted above. So two blue archons will still be weaker than a red one: Say a single Archon has HegateHeroism 0.75 and two have then NegateHeroism 0.75*0.75=0.56 and three 0.75*0.75*0.75=0.42.

This would give us the following values:

Code: Select all

Hero      +4 | +7 | +10 | +13 | +16 | +19 Leadership
Current   +0 | +1 | + 4 | + 7 | +10 | +13
0.75      +3 | +5 | + 7 | + 9 | +12 | +14
0.75^2    +2 | +3 | + 5 | + 7 | + 9 | +10
0.75^3    +1 | +2 | + 4 | + 5 | + 6 | + 8


Now I am not saying that 0.75 is the right value, but I think the progression is nicer: a weak hero still provides some kind of bonus, whereas a strong hero is more severely affected. You also have a new choice between using another negate unit in your stack or a strong fighting unit. Both could be viable choices.

In current games, a lot of battles are all-or-nothing: if you have a high-level hero, you win with little losses, unless the enemy has the corresponding counter, and then you loose with doing little damage to the enemy. Having the negates relative to the enemy's strength makes each bonus provider much weaker, but still worthwhile to have.

[KGB]

Chazar,

Personally I hope that when the bonus system is re-worked that the whole Negate concept is dropped as part of the simplification of the bonus system.

I understand what you propose. But the immediate question is why should stronger heroes be affected more than weaker ones? A Blue Archon would have almost no use against a hero with +4 bonus while heavily penalizing one with a really high (16+) bonus. One would think stronger heroes are more immune to the negate affect than weaker ones. At the very least the system should automatically reduce the value by at least 2 per Archon so that 1 Archon reduced a +4 bonus to +2 and 2 Archons removed it entirely.

There is also the problem of defending in cities. Cities can hold 32 defenders and can therefore easily use multiple negate units while regular stacks are limited to 8. So this makes the problem of conquering cities even harder than it is now because it rewards the city defender.

KGB

[smursh]

I also dislike how the archons can take multiple bonuses away from a single hero. If my DN has the granfather he loses the 8 pnts of leadership from the item, plus up to 8 pnts of chaos. If my paladin has the grandfather the archon takes that away, but he retains his personal leadership with no extra penalty. The two heroes should be penalized equally.

[kenc80]

KGB's City issue: valid - but couldnt you easily "math" your way around it. I dunno, maybe divide the net effect between the total # of units in the battle if that number is greater than 8?

Smursh's point about the DK being double penalized is also valid. This I think demands being looked into. However, a Pally with the -5 flail/mace suffers the same penalty. Yes I know there are way more + items than - items.

Good comments and ideas here guys.


Ken

[Chazar]

But the immediate question is why should stronger heroes be affected more than weaker ones?

Because they should not make Level1 Heroes completely obsolete, like they do now!

With my suggestions, it is still better to have a high-level hero, even if you face an archon. Likewise, it is still better to have an archon against heroes of any levels. However, the effect is lessened: a low-level hero still provides a small bonus, so it is useful to carry the hero around and allow him to level up. On the other hand, the archon's power lies in countering high-level heroes.

So everything has it's place and it is less of an all-or-nothing approach. The archon's purpose is to counter high-level heroes, which cannot be handled otherwise. Low-level heroes are not much of a problem, so the archon must not necessarily counter them completely.

A Blue Archon would have almost no use against a hero with +4 bonus while heavily penalizing one with a really high (16+) bonus. One would think stronger heroes are more immune to the negate affect than weaker ones. At the very least the system should automatically reduce the value by at least 2 per Archon so that 1 Archon reduced a +4 bonus to +2 and 2 Archons removed it entirely.

That is also a good suggestion actually, and would work with 0.50 negate maybe, but whether the countering works by multiplying some numbers (and which numbers these are actually in the end) or whether a progression table is used, is not important for now. The point is to make the game more interesting, by allowing different viable strategies, and by trying to avoid to make certain units/strategies completely obsolete.

It makes sense that the unicorn heavily counters spiders, but less so that it obliterates the already weak light cavalry in the open or the poor orc in the swamp. If the unicorn would just halve terrain bonus of all enemies, all of these units would keep their place in the game, both the unicorn and the poor poor orc.

There is also the problem of defending in cities. Cities can hold 32 defenders and can therefore easily use multiple negate units while regular stacks are limited to 8. So this makes the problem of conquering cities even harder than it is now because it rewards the city defender.

Well, there are several ways around that:
How about that: if there are n negate units, then they cut the enemies power by 1/(n+1). So one unicorn halves all terrain bonuses, two cut it down to a third, three to a fourth and so on. Not much worse than it is now, where the bonus is completely removed for many units already!

Furthermore, once could have a cap like for swarms: max(1/(n+1),1/4) so more than 3 negating units are never necessary - maybe four. Maybe this simple formula would work for all negate types, thus making the game rules simple to understand. One negater=50% bounus, two=33%, three=25%, four or more=20%. Simple and clean.

The better way around it would be to allow two-pronged attacks (much like in the strategy game "Full Metal Planete"). So the stack limit remains at 8, but one may attack one location with two stacks simultaneously so it is 16vs8 out in the field, and 16vs32 in cities. Much better ratios. This would be quite a drastic change in the game, make it more aggressive and possibly a lot of fun for team games (with mixed team attacks), but I think this is another discussion entirely (we should open another thread if anyone wants to discuss this further).

I also dislike how the archons can take multiple bonuses away from a single hero. If my DN has the granfather he loses the 8 pnts of leadership from the item, plus up to 8 pnts of chaos. If my paladin has the grandfather the archon takes that away, but he retains his personal leadership with no extra penalty. The two heroes should be penalized equally.

This is an important point, but note that my suggestion would already take care of that: if the bonus is halved, then the DN with grandfather would have +4/-4 against the 50%-negate archon, and the paladin with grandfather would have +8/-0. Sounds pretty fair, doesn't it?!