Hero Offers

[KGB]

Piranha,

Your ruins suggestion is a good idea. Even with more initial starting units, early ruin allies still matter a lot especially if they are the ones that provide some kind of stack bonus and especially if you get a lot of those allies. Even in DLR where players got more units, early allies were a big deal. So when DLR was patched players wanted defined benefits as much as possible instead of random ones to reduce luck where ever possible. My suggestion about heroes+allies comes from what was done on DLR.

I think you can still afford to give a player a small amount of gold (250-500) or 3 turns worth of allies (basically 1 ally) in level 1 ruins. That's not over powering. Then your level 3 gold/allies could be level 2 and you'd come up with a bit more gold/allies for level 3.

One thing I would like to add is that in Warlord IV, ruins have the ability to regenerate during the game. There is a 1% chance per turn for each searched ruin (so if there are 10 ruins that are searched there are 10 rolls made at 1%) to regenerate itself (basically a new monster takes up residence and there is a new reward). The regeneration takes place at the start of the next turn. I think this would be nice to have because it means you in theory never run out of ruins no matter how long the game goes.

KGB

[Itangast]

In some games I played some players get hero offers all the time while some get none, even though the gold required is there... Heroes have great influence atm, and that will impove further with ruins. I think luck should have lesser influence here.

I think a small adjustment is needed to the "hero offer chance" - read below...

atm:
- Static chance 15-20% if you have like >500 gold
- Increased percentage based on amount of gold available (intevals as all ready suggested)

- *new* Decreased chance to get new hero based on amount of current own heroes.
Just some example numbers....

1 hero = -2%
2 heroes = -4%
3 heroes = -6%
4 heroes = -10%

This would add at least something to the balance of heroes.

[KGB]

Itangast,

I agree completely about lowering the chance the more heroes you have. In fact I posted the same thing with the exact same percentages.

Warlords IV had unlimited heroes and it used the -2% per hero to balance out the offers and prevent a player who ended up with lots of gold from getting too many heroes.

Of course no matter how many heroes you have as long as you have the base 500 gold required for a hero offer you should at least get a 5% or 10% chance.

KGB

[Zajoman]

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.

Or maybe design the maps so that tougher ruins are further away from player starting locations while easier ruins lie nearer. I mean to have the levels (I guess from 1 to 3) of ruins pre set in the maps. For instance, a couple of level 1 ruins accessible in 1 turn of walking from a starting city, level 2 ruins accessible in 2 turns, level 3 ruins in 3, etc. I have played way too few turns of a single game to be quite confident about what I'm saying, but it's an idea you veterans might consider. In many games, there are often potentially broken mechanics, but clever level/map design prevents that.

[KGB]

I was thinking about one more thing regarding hero offers. Something that was in Warlords IV but should have been in DLR as well.

Over time the heroes that offer their services should come at levels higher than 1. The reason being that mid to late game a level 1 hero is almost unless unless it is coming to pick up some item lying on the ground or brings a ton of allies. The reason is that all the other heroes that are already in the game are such high levels/loaded with items that the new hero is nothing more than fresh meat to be killed.

So I'd suggest the following

Turns 1-15: Level 1 hero
Turns 16-30: Level 2 hero
Turns 31-45: Level 3 hero
Turns 46+: Level 4 hero

Since heroes in Beta3 will now be able to distribute skills when they level up, these new heroes should come with the skill points ready to be distributed by the player so they can customize the hero as needed.

KGB