Beta4 Bonus System Question

[piranha]

I won't write as long posts as you, takes me too much time to write in english .

Many suggestions here involves caping or making bonuses only count in some cases depending on the opponents bonus.
This will make it really hard to understand the true value of a bonus. It will be harder to calculate the effect of a bonus. I don't think its the right way to go.

I don't think its a problem that there are ways to become very powerful as long as there are counters for it. Its the paper rock scissor model. Something is strong, but there is a counter for it.

Ambush was introduced as a way to deal with super stacks, but perhaps orcs and wolfriders need a ambush boost. One future idea is to introduce a assassin hero that would be skilled in ambush.

Do you think the DKs chaos bonus should be more expensive? Would you still buy him?

[LichKing]

KGB,

I thought we agreed on the fact that -10 negative bonus should be avoided because too strong (you convinced me of that), and a cap of -5 mantained no matter what. As I see it right now, if the cap of -5 is in place, fear should never go over 5, fear and chaos should not be stackable, chaos could go over 5, but the only effect of a higher Chaos would be to negate a leadership/morale bonus, not even affecting walls/terrain bonus/anti-air, to keep the usefulness of having siege units/unicorns etc. You say a higher Chaos should negate only leadership and not morale, and DK would be still powerful enough. This makes sense, but I'd rather make Chaos more expensive and difficult to upgrade, and have it acting also on morale. The only good reason to keep Chaos and Fear distinguished, is the same why you keep leadership and morale distinguished, that is that they can be selectively negated by different kinds of units (archons and devils), there aren't other big reasons (except the fact that Leadership and Morale could stack up to a max of +25, Fear and Chaos shouldn't).

If you really want to make 10 Fear units, with a cap of -5 in place this would (in my logic) act as a 10 Chaos, that is capped at -5 unless it can negate a further +5 morale/leadership bonus. You'll say: why having Negate if you can block it this way? Yes, this would be a way to negate a bonus and nothing else, and Negate would be less useful in certain situations. But again, Negate acts in both directions (positive and negative bonus) at the same time, and could negate in average a bigger bonus than Chaos/Fear (assuming also that Negate bonus will be cheaper than a 10 Chaos DK or a 10 Fear unit). Not only that, but Negate could 'negate' the neutralizing power of Chaos or Fear, while it couldn't be negated by anything, being a neutralizer with no active value.

This is in synthesis how I see it, and it's very similar to the current system, with these exceptions:

1. Chaos and Fear wouldn't stack
2. Cap to -5 for Chaos/Fear relative to the units' base Strength value (all values over 5 for Ch/F would be useful to negate Lead./Morale positive bonus, obviously they couldn't negate negative bonus in the opponent's stack, hence the usefulness of Negate if you want to block all kinds of bonus in a go)
3. Wall bonus added to the base STR value, so that the cap of -5 for Ch/F would be still in place, and it would be canceled only by siege units.
4. Same for terrain bonus and anti-air: Ch/F would still be capped at -5. Ch/F higher than 5 would 'neutralize' leadership/morale bonus and nothing else. Unicorns would be useful against terrain bonus just as siege units are against walls (right now unicorns are rather useless, because stacking Ch+F can easily negate that bonus, and a cancel terrain brings little further benefit, above all against elves or orcs).
5. Chaos would be more expensive to build.
6. Some units' bonus could be changed (no fear for Devil, round numbers like 10 morale for Dragon, 5 for Pegasus, 10 Negate Hero for Archon, 20 for Grand Archon and so on)

In my opinion, a cap of -10 would be still ok, even if very powerful, if units with 10 Fear were very expensive (3000 or so) and Chaos were harder to build (progression like 3->6->8->10->12->14->15), always given that Ch/F would not be stackable.

I'm not saying it is better than what you propose, it's just the effect of my Warlords 2 way of thinking, rather than DLR.

The other thing to look at is how *easy* is it to produce -10 vs +20 or +25...

Right.

Also a -10 forces the game to make another decision on bonus stacking. This time in case of terrain and anti-air...

Right, I added it in point 4.

Or an Elf vs a flying unit. That Elf is 12 with a +10 flying bonus. If that Elf faces a -10 bonus from Chaos/Fear would you expect:

1) 12-10+10=12
2) 12-10=(5 min cap) + 10 = 15

I would expect the answer to be 2 in both cases...

So do I. Anyway in 2) shouldn't be final strength 12-10(but Ch/F capped at 5, so)=7, +10(anti-air)=17? That's what I'd expect. Same for an orc on swamp, with final STR 15 against a DK with Chaos 10.

You can substitute Chaos for Fear (to reduce Morale) but not for Siege (to reduce walls)? That would drive players crazier than ever trying to understand the bonus system.

I hope not, it should be clear that Ch/F would always be capped at -5 against anything except units with leadership/morale bonus.

P.S. Incidentally, the Negate bonus still isn't needed. If for example...

See 2nd paragraph.

I don't think its a problem that there are ways to become very powerful as long as there are counters for it. Its the paper rock scissor model. Something is strong, but there is a counter for it.

That's my point too, but right now negative bonus is probably too strong. Many times it makes siege units/unicorns really superfluous.

Do you think the DKs chaos bonus should be more expensive? Would you still buy him?

I think I would, surely I would if the bonus were base 3, +3 every 20 points up to 15. Right now I'd buy a Valkyrie early on to expand fast, then a Paladin for ruin hunting, then I could go mostly with DK. But if the cap on negative bonus were on -5 in most cases, DK would be probably better as they are now (or maybe base 3, +3 every 15 points, up to 15).

[piranha]

If we make a change along these lines?

Decrese archon negate power from 8 to 5
Lower archon cost from 1600 to 1100
Lower archon battle value from 35 to 25
Reduce archon buildtime to 3 turns

DK starts with chaos 3, max is 15, he starts with 80% intelligence.

By the time someone have a medusa and a level 2 - level 4 DK it should be very possible to have a archon or 2 to keep his negative power at bay.

Ghost could be lowered to 800 gold and upkeep lowered to 3 from 6. Then there should be a way to deal with DK+medusas. The grand archon could be lowered and decreased a bit in power too to make the step smaller.

[LichKing]

If we make a change along these lines?

I'd agree about DK and Ghost, not sure about the Archon, because other heroes are balanced. Maybe with buildtime 4 and cost 1200, or there would be too many Archons around.

[KGB]

Piranha,

I won't write as long posts as you, takes me too much time to write in english .

Your English is infinitely better than my command of your language either written or spoken. Just happy you can write English

Many suggestions here involves caping or making bonuses only count in some cases depending on the opponents bonus.
This will make it really hard to understand the true value of a bonus. It will be harder to calculate the effect of a bonus. I don't think its the right way to go.

I don't think its a problem that there are ways to become very powerful as long as there are counters for it. Its the paper rock scissor model. Something is strong, but there is a counter for it.

So then let me write my understanding of the bonus system and then ask you a few question.

War2/DLR used the following model.

1) Calculate individual unit strength. This includes bless, individual hero strength items/spells and banding bonus etc. This value then gets capped (normally 5-45 (1-9) but on boats it would be based on the max boat value).

2) Calculate stack bonus. Stack bonus is City walls/Siege, Morale/Fear, Leadership/Chaos. This value then gets capped (for War2 it was -1,5 for DLR it was -3,5). In DLR's case each of those 3 bonus's was capped in a -1,5 range to prevent carry over into another category. The stack bonus is then applied to every unit in the stack. After applying the bonus the strength value for each unit then gets capped again in the range 5-70 (1-14).

3) Calculate situational bonus. These are individual bonus's on a per unit basis such as terrain bonus, anti air. This value then gets applied to the individual unit. After applying the bonus strength value the unit gets capped again in the range 5-75 (1-15. for some reason War2/DLR allow units to each 15 strength with a terrain bonus/situational bonus. Not sure why but may simply be that there is no cap applied here but the combat mechanics simply enforce a sanity check of 15 max on a unit to prevent something accidentally reaching 20)

The reason for doing it this way is to prevent stack bonus's from affecting terrain/situational bonus's.

So then let me ask you a few questions.

1) If you are simply putting all the values into 1 large pot and adding and subtracting then you will have a carry over of stack bonus into the individual category. The simplest example right now is the Scout with his +5 anti-air. My question (since I can't easily test it) is this. If a Scout fights a crow + Medusa (5 fear) will he be 5 strength or 10 when he faces the crow? If he is 10, everything is good. If he is only 5 then Fear is affecting anti-air even though technically it's not supposed to affect Anti-air. The same thing applies with the Orc example in the swamp facing a 10 chaos bonus. Is he going to be 10 or 15 strength? 10 strength means Chaos is affecting terrain bonus's even though that's the Unicorns domain.

2) If you don't allow some kind of capping then your whole system is *very* limited in scope. As I mentioned, if I wanted to create a big Fear unit of 10, the game can't do that because the -10 would be uncapped and affect way too many other skills. So the only way right now to counter a 10 Morale dragon is by a Devil. But sometimes I don't necessarily think the game needs to cancel both Fear AND Morale at the same time. But there is no other possibility now. So basically, the Medusa is the Gold standard of Fear and nothing will be more than that because it will be too powerful. This means all future units have to be crammed into the 1-5 range for Fear. Is this the idea that there will never be units beyond 5 Fear so a unit like the Kraken can't get a 10 Fear bonus on the Water?

3) What do you plan to do in future Beta's. Say with things like more Items and especially Spells? DLR's system worked great because the capping meant that items and spells could be additive (a hero with a Magic Ring with Fear would add to a unit that had Fear to give a larger Fear value or a spell that gave Fear would add to a Ring with Fear or a unit with Fear). As it is, it will be almost impossible to add meaningful items/spells with any kind of bonus's because an uncapped system would mean something like a Medusa + Ring of Fear +2 + Fear Spell +32 would end up with an uncapped 10 Fear bonus that would be really powerful. So I am not sure how the game will be able to progress much beyond Beta4 without a full re-work of the entire bonus system.

4) How does Negate work with items. Does an Archon for example negate a magic ring with Leadership or Chaos? To me, magic is outside the domain of the Archon and it should not be negating bonus's from items (or spells in the future). I suspect however that it is in fact negating items.

Incidentally, the whole City Wall/Siege concept is a perfect example of capping working well. The Catapult/Battering Ram basically provide 5 siege with a cap of 0. So that if there are no walls to reduce, the negative value of this bonus is capped at 0.

Ambush was introduced as a way to deal with super stacks, but perhaps orcs and wolfriders need a ambush boost. One future idea is to introduce a assassin hero that would be skilled in ambush.

Yes please.
Orc - 10 (esp this one so that in a 1v1Dragon the Orc has a chance to win since now its < 90% success rate)
WolfRider - 20
Those were the DLR numbers and weren't overwhelming by any means but makes them good enough to kill units in super stacks.

If we make a change along these lines?

Decrese archon negate power from 8 to 5
Lower archon cost from 1600 to 1100
Lower archon battle value from 35 to 25
Reduce archon buildtime to 3 turns

Reducing the Negate to 5 makes him useless. You are better off with a Medusa since it also gives -5. Maybe not Hero Negate 5 but that -5 works out to the same thing in battle terms. Leave the Negate at 8 and all the rest is fine for the entry level Archon.

DK starts with chaos 3, max is 15, he starts with 80% intelligence.
By the time someone have a medusa and a level 2 - level 4 DK it should be very possible to have a archon or 2 to keep his negative power at bay.

An entry level DK + Medusa gives -8 right now. That's really powerful given it isn't capped and is allowed to reduce walls, terrain bonus, morale, leadership etc. Never mind by the time he is L4 and has +3 chaos for a total of -11 making that stack about equal to +25 positive bonus.

Ghost could be lowered to 800 gold and upkeep lowered to 3 from 6. Then there should be a way to deal with DK+medusas. The grand archon could be lowered and decreased a bit in power too to make the step smaller.

800 and 3 upkeep for a Ghost is good to.

Really, many many units in the game are incorrectly priced. For example a Dragon that gives +12 Morale only costs 1800. That's an incredible deal when you think of all the 700-1100 priced units that have no bonus at all other than terrain. If you tried to value everything in relation to that 1800 gold dragon you'd end up reducing most units by several hundred gold (I mean a Pegasi which is vastly inferior costs 2/3 the price). So the Dragon at least probably needs to cost more than 1800, more like 2400 given what it does.

KGB

[KGB]

LichKing,

I thought we agreed on the fact that -10 negative bonus should be avoided because too strong (you convinced me of that), and a cap of -5 mantained no matter what.

We did agree and I support that 1000%. What you were reading there was directed at Magican when he asked why I didn't support a -10 cap. So I was giving examples of why -10 isn't a good idea. Sorry for the confusion.

As I see it right now, if the cap of -5 is in place, fear should never go over 5, fear and chaos should not be stackable, chaos could go over 5, but the only effect of a higher Chaos would be to negate a leadership/morale bonus, not even affecting walls/terrain bonus/anti-air, to keep the usefulness of having siege units/unicorns etc. You say a higher Chaos should negate only leadership and not morale, and DK would be still powerful enough. This makes sense, but I'd rather make Chaos more expensive and difficult to upgrade, and have it acting also on morale. The only good reason to keep Chaos and Fear distinguished, is the same why you keep leadership and morale distinguished, that is that they can be selectively negated by different kinds of units (archons and devils), there aren't other big reasons (except the fact that Leadership and Morale could stack up to a max of +25, Fear and Chaos shouldn't).

My only disagreement here is that the -5 should be able to affect the city wall bonus. Because that bonus is part of the -5,25 stack bonus the game has (+10 walls, +10 morale, +10 Leadership caps at 25). Since it's part of that stack bonus I think its only fair that it can affect 5 points worth (-5).

Definition of Stack Bonus (for anyone who cares). A bonus that applies to all units in the stack. Currently that is City Walls, Siege, Morale, Fear, Leadership, Siege. Not to be confused with the War2 Stack bonus bonus which is now called Morale/Fear!

If you really want to make 10 Fear units, with a cap of -5 in place this would (in my logic) act as a 10 Chaos, that is capped at -5 unless it can negate a further +5 morale/leadership bonus. You'll say: why having Negate if you can block it this way? Yes, this would be a way to negate a bonus and nothing else, and Negate would be less useful in certain situations. But again, Negate acts in both directions (positive and negative bonus) at the same time, and could negate in average a bigger bonus than Chaos/Fear (assuming also that Negate bonus will be cheaper than a 10 Chaos DK or a 10 Fear unit). Not only that, but Negate could 'negate' the neutralizing power of Chaos or Fear, while it couldn't be negated by anything, being a neutralizer with no active value.

That's a mouthful and made me re-read it several times

What I really want though is the ability to have a high Fear bonus that only affects Morale. Or put another way, a Negate power that only affects Morale but not Fear. Mostly because I'd like to be able to do things like give the Kraken a +10 Fear on the water (sailors would wet their pants when they saw one) without worrying that it's going to overwhelm every other skill (which it currently would do). So then what's needed is a 10 Negate Morale bonus which is kind of silly as that's adding yet another bonus into the game. That's why I asked for 10 Fear to cap out at -5 after it removes any Morale (so a Kraken vs Crusader would be -10+3=-7 reduced to -5, Kraken vs Pegasi would be -10+6=-4, Kraken vs Lt Infantry would be -10-0=-10 reduced to -5). I definitely do NOT want Kraken vs Hero with 10 Leadership to be -10+10=0, I want it to be -10 (reduced to -5)+10=+5.

If this kind of feature were available then items (and spells in future editions) could have powers like +4 Fear without worrying about someone who ends up with 10 Fear because of spells+items is god like.

This is in synthesis how I see it, and it's very similar to the current system, with these exceptions:

1. Chaos and Fear wouldn't stack
2. Cap to -5 for Chaos/Fear relative to the units' base Strength value (all values over 5 for Ch/F would be useful to negate Lead./Morale positive bonus, obviously they couldn't negate negative bonus in the opponent's stack, hence the usefulness of Negate if you want to block all kinds of bonus in a go)
3. Wall bonus added to the base STR value, so that the cap of -5 for Ch/F would be still in place, and it would be canceled only by siege units.
4. Same for terrain bonus and anti-air: Ch/F would still be capped at -5. Ch/F higher than 5 would 'neutralize' leadership/morale bonus and nothing else. Unicorns would be useful against terrain bonus just as siege units are against walls (right now unicorns are rather useless, because stacking Ch+F can easily negate that bonus, and a cancel terrain brings little further benefit, above all against elves or orcs).
5. Chaos would be more expensive to build.
6. Some units' bonus could be changed (no fear for Devil, round numbers like 10 morale for Dragon, 5 for Pegasus, 10 Negate Hero for Archon, 20 for Grand Archon and so on)

The biggest thing about point 1 is that the DK is pointless to include with a Yeti/Medusa since there is no stacking. Which seems silly since Morale+Leadership stacks. There isn't a good reason why those 2 don't stack when the positive bonus's stack. I think they *have* to stack but simply cap out at -5 after all bonus's are calculated (not before). So a DK with 4 Chaos and a Yeti 2 fear vs Lt Infantry would be -4-2=-6 (reduce to -5).

The main sticking point seems to be on how much carry over you allow between categories. I want only 5 points carry over so units like a Kraken with +10 Fear on water can exist while you want Chaos to carry over as much as possible into Morale but not have Fear carry the other way (which again doesn't make much sense).

Right, I added it in point 4.

Point 4 basically gets taken care of if the bonus's are calculated like War2/DLR did in several steps as I outlined to Piranha in the post above. If that's done then even with a -5, it will be impossible to carry that into terrain/anti-air because the 5-5=0(capped at 5 strength) comes into play before those bonus's are even calculated.

So do I. Anyway in 2) shouldn't be final strength 12-10(but Ch/F capped at 5, so)=7, +10(anti-air)=17? That's what I'd expect. Same for an orc on swamp, with final STR 15 against a DK with Chaos 10.

Correct. This was part of my argument to Magican against -10. This example simply showed how good -10 really is and what else it does to the game. So with the 5 cap in place the Elf is indeed 17 and the Orc 15.

That's my point too, but right now negative bonus is probably too strong. Many times it makes siege units/unicorns really superfluous.

Exactly. Right now with the way the bonus system works, the answer to any problem is 'Bring Chaos+Fear' since those can I supposed reach -20 on a maxed out hero.

KGB

[LichKing]

My only disagreement here is that the -5 should be able to affect the city wall bonus. Because that bonus is part of the -5,25 stack bonus the game has (+10 walls, +10 morale, +10 Leadership caps at 25). Since it's part of that stack bonus I think its only fair that it can affect 5 points worth (-5).

It would affect it in the sense that it would be a normal -5, but a Chaos of 10, against walls, would be still capped at -5, while not so against Morale/Leadership. So:

DK vs. wall 5 = -5 + 5 = 0
DK + B.Ram vs. wall 10 = -5 -5 +10 = 0
DK + Catapult vs. wall 15 = -5 -10 +15 = 0

What I really want though is the ability to have a high Fear bonus that only affects Morale. Or put another way, a Negate power that only affects Morale but not Fear. Mostly because I'd like to be able to do things like give the Kraken a +10 Fear on the water (sailors would wet their pants when they saw one) without worrying that it's going to overwhelm every other skill (which it currently would do). So then what's needed is a 10 Negate Morale bonus which is kind of silly as that's adding yet another bonus into the game. That's why I asked for 10 Fear to cap out at -5 after it removes any Morale (so a Kraken vs Crusader would be -10+3=-7 reduced to -5, Kraken vs Pegasi would be -10+6=-4, Kraken vs Lt Infantry would be -10-0=-10 reduced to -5). I definitely do NOT want Kraken vs Hero with 10 Leadership to be -10+10=0, I want it to be -10 (reduced to -5)+10=+5.

If you don't want Fear to negate also Leadership things would get a bit more complicated (but I like the idea). So a high Fear (6+) should be capped at -5 and the surplus negate only possible morale and not leadership, while a high Chaos (6+) should be in the same way capped at -5 and the surplus should be able to negate both Leadership AND morale (I'd give Chaos a certain edge over Fear, since DK aren't produced every x turns).

The biggest thing about point 1 is that the DK is pointless to include with a Yeti/Medusa since there is no stacking. Which seems silly since Morale+Leadership stacks. There isn't a good reason why those 2 don't stack when the positive bonus's stack. I think they *have* to stack but simply cap out at -5 after all bonus's are calculated (not before). So a DK with 4 Chaos and a Yeti 2 fear vs Lt Infantry would be -4-2=-6 (reduce to -5).

If Fear is capped at -5, and so Chaos, the effect of not making them stackable would be mostly minimal, but a good one: at the beginning of the game would be impossible to reach the cap (DK + Yeti = still -3; if they stack, the cap is already reached).

The main sticking point seems to be on how much carry over you allow between categories. I want only 5 points carry over so units like a Kraken with +10 Fear on water can exist while you want Chaos to carry over as much as possible into Morale but not have Fear carry the other way (which again doesn't make much sense).

I'm not sure I understood. I didn't say I don't want Fear to carry over, I didn't consider because I thought 5 Fear was the maximum (I didn't think about Kraken). In my mind I thought surplus Fear to act like surplus Chaos (negating both morale and Leadership), but you'd want it to negate only morale, that would be actually better, just a bit more complicated for players to understand all relations between bonuses.

Point 4 basically gets taken care of if the bonus's are calculated like War2/DLR did in several steps as I outlined to Piranha in the post above. If that's done then even with a -5, it will be impossible to carry that into terrain/anti-air because the 5-5=0(capped at 5 strength) comes into play before those bonus's are even calculated.

And that's how it should be. If a unit STR 5 with a terrain bonus existed, Ch/F shouldn't have any effect on them, terrain bonus should be applied after other bonuses (morale/leadership/fear/chaos) are calculated, and any possible cancel terrain thereafter still. Same for walls. Anyway such unit doesn't exist (except scouts for anti-air). All anti-air/terrain bonus units have STR 10 or more, so they would be affected by Ch/F up to -5. So:

DK + Crow vs Scout -> Scout would still fight vs Crow at strength 10 -> 5 -5 = 5, + 5 (anti-air) = 10
DK + Crow vs Elf (in forest)-> Elf would fight at 12 -5 = 7, + 10 (anti-air) + 10 (forest bonus) = 27

The practical difference is non-existent anyway (except for scouts). Conceptually it's important in the sense that ideally, for me, there should be a hierarchy among bonuses, from low to high:

Fear/Morale: they can negate each other, but high fear couldn't negate high leadership (capped at -5)
Chaos/Leadership: they negate each other, with high Chaos which could negate both Leadership and Morale, but still capped at -5 against walls, terrain bonus and anti-air.
Walls/Terrain/Anti-air: calculated last, fully negated only by the appropriate counters (siege units, unicorns, none for anti-air), Fear and Chaos would always be capped at -5 against them (but still effective in this sense).

[piranha]

I see your point now. Thanks for the good explanation.

With B4 I changed the caps from B3. The swarm bonus made it difficult to cap at 45 so in B4 the cap is low 5 and high 75.
Positive bonus cap is 30, negative is 25. There is no cap at 45.

Your orc and scout example is correct that the terrain bonus is applied first, then stack bonuses. The orc will have 10 when facing a negative -10 enemy.

I understand what you mean with the unicorn and siege units lose value when you can go for negative power instead to get the same effect in every battle.

Difficult question, I think adding terrain bonuses after is good. It will help the weakest units but units like spiders will still be the same.
I realize that we might have to make caps but are there any other ways to deal with it that you can think of?

About items, when you put an item on the unit it will increase their base value. But items will stack even when a hero bonus is maxed so if you have max leadership 20 and find a +2 leadership ring you will have 22.

[LichKing]

With B4 I changed the caps from B3. The swarm bonus made it difficult to cap at 45 so in B4 the cap is low 5 and high 75.

The individual bonuses aren't a problem and should not be capped, terrain bonus included.
So an elf in forest should receive a +25 bonus form morale/leadership, and on top of that +10 for forest, +35. What should be capped are stack bonuses (range -5 to +25 as suggested by KGB is probably ideal).
Swarm bonus is like terrain in my own view (with no cap).

Difficult question, I think adding terrain bonuses after is good. It will help the weakest units but units like spiders will still be the same.
I realize that we might have to make caps but are there any other ways to deal with it that you can think of?

Right now, the only way I can think of, to achieve a similar result, is to make Chaos and Fear not stackable. Anyway these are all theoretic considerations that you can take in consideration as you like, for the future maybe. I'm having fun with the game anyway , the correction on devils was already strong enough to balance out many problems (good idea to have fear 2, so that it cancels the dragon and has a some value also against other units). I'd like more having xp for ruin hunting rather than having all this right now .

About items, when you put an item on the unit it will increase their base value. But items will stack even when a hero bonus is maxed so if you have max leadership 20 and find a +2 leadership ring you will have 22.

I see no problem with that. It's a bit hard to level heroes, above all leadership for paladin, and I never reached 10 leadership with him. In comparison, now a DK with 7 Chaos is much stronger than a paladin with 7 leadership, so I use paladins only for ruin hunting. If you weaken a bit the DK as you proposed (Chaos 3 up to 15) it would be better, in my opinion.

[KGB]

Lichking,

I think we are almost there on a new bonus system. Now to get Piranha to spend hours coding it

It would affect it in the sense that it would be a normal -5, but a Chaos of 10, against walls, would be still capped at -5, while not so against Morale/Leadership. So:

DK vs. wall 5 = -5 + 5 = 0
DK + B.Ram vs. wall 10 = -5 -5 +10 = 0
DK + Catapult vs. wall 15 = -5 -10 +15 = 0

Yes. That is exactly how I see the 5 point carryover working.

If you don't want Fear to negate also Leadership things would get a bit more complicated (but I like the idea). So a high Fear (6+) should be capped at -5 and the surplus negate only possible morale and not leadership, while a high Chaos (6+) should be in the same way capped at -5 and the surplus should be able to negate both Leadership AND morale (I'd give Chaos a certain edge over Fear, since DK aren't produced every x turns).

I'm totally fine with the idea that Chaos could carry over but Fear couldn't. My only concern is how hard that makes it for someone to understand the 3 bonus's:

City Walls/Siege - Range from 0 to 15. No negative carry possible to Morale/Leadership.
Morale/Fear - Range from from -15 to +15 (I realize no unit hits the max now). Only a negative 5 carry over to City Walls/Leadership.
Leadership/Chaos - Range from -15 to +20. Can carry over any negative amount to Morale, but only 5 to City walls.
Max negative value of -5 from all 3 above bonus's but no combining negative carry over (Fear+Chaos).

See, this is very complex to understand and write even with examples.

If Fear is capped at -5, and so Chaos, the effect of not making them stackable would be mostly minimal, but a good one: at the beginning of the game would be impossible to reach the cap (DK + Yeti = still -3; if they stack, the cap is already reached).

Then how do you see the following work out.

DK + Yeti vs Crusader
1) -3 -2 +3 = -2
2) -3 (-2 dropped no stacking) +3 = 0

If they aren't stacking at all, then the answer is 2.
If they are stacking in the positives (ie Fear can cancel any existing Morale) but not negatives the answer is 1.

My preference is the answer be 1 which is the final statement I made in the prior paragraph about no stacking in the negative direction. Which is complex from an understanding point of view. That's why I said let them stack in the negative direction since the max cap is -5 anyway so if a DK + Yeti reaches the cap so be it, since a Medusa does that all on her own. It's just 1 less rule to have to enforce/think about.

In my mind I thought surplus Fear to act like surplus Chaos (negating both morale and Leadership), but you'd want it to negate only morale, that would be actually better, just a bit more complicated for players to understand all relations between bonuses.

Correct, I only want Fear to negate Morale up to a -5 carry over. That way it's possible to have a Kraken with a -10 bonus without overpowering the game. This makes it feared on the water in the same way an Elephant is feared in the Open/Desert etc. And it is more complex but anyone from a DLR background will understand the -5 carry over limit.

DK + Crow vs Scout -> Scout would still fight vs Crow at strength 10 -> 5 -5 = 5, + 5 (anti-air) = 10
DK + Crow vs Elf (in forest)-> Elf would fight at 12 -5 = 7, + 10 (anti-air) + 10 (forest bonus) = 27

The practical difference is non-existent anyway (except for scouts). Conceptually it's important in the sense that ideally, for me, there should be a hierarchy among bonuses, from low to high:

Fear/Morale: they can negate each other, but high fear couldn't negate high leadership (capped at -5)
Chaos/Leadership: they negate each other, with high Chaos which could negate both Leadership and Morale, but still capped at -5 against walls, terrain bonus and anti-air.
Walls/Terrain/Anti-air: calculated last, fully negated only by the appropriate counters (siege units, unicorns, none for anti-air), Fear and Chaos would always be capped at -5 against them (but still effective in this sense).

It's definitely important to understand the ordering so that it does make the numbers work correctly at the extremes. That's why I listed it in 3 categories:

Base Strength
Stack Bonus
Situational Bonus

So Walls belongs with the Stack bonus section since its part of the overall stack bonus which caps out at +30. You can calculate it last among those 3 bonus's but for explaining it to players it's important to put it in the right place. The Terrain/Anti-Air belongs in the last category.

KGB