Version 0.8 mapeditor

[Moonknight]

I second the "Pool of Time" idea for S/G members. If it's set up correctly, it shouldn't be that noticeable or abused.

I love 1-day games during the week, but get busy on the weekend and find it hard to remember to play my turn.

[Draxus]

So it is saying I only have 4 slots and need to upgrade my account. 4 is the limit for a free account right? When I click on the link it tells me "Account level: Gold membership, infinite days left." So what am I supposed to do? Need to make more killing fields...

[kenc80]

hey draxus by the way, i really like chokehold and slipstream...i had some fun 1v1s there...nice mapmaking!

[KGB]

Draxus,

I think SnotlinG said that if your map reaches 'official' status that it no longer counts against your limit of 4. So try and get one of your maps 'official' so you can make another one.

Here's another request for Gold/Silver users:

7) Ruin Menu: Clicking on this menu would show a mini-map with all the ruins marked by color as explored/unexplored based on your last knowledge of them (so ruins in FOW show whatever you saw them as last, ruins you've never seen show as unexplored). Under that I'd like to see a scrolling list of all the ruin regeneration messages that have taken place since turn 1. Ideally such that I can click on the message and it highlights the ruin on the map saving me a TON of time trying to locate where a ruin is).

KGB

[Draxus]

hey draxus by the way, i really like chokehold and slipstream...i had some fun 1v1s there...nice mapmaking!

Thanks ken! I am working on chokehold now. Even though it is a ladder game I feel it isn't really balanced as well as it could be. Most of that can be fixed with some minor land mass changes. Gonna involve some counting and testing with AI to get it close to perfect as possible. Easier if the copy and paste had a rotate function...(hint hint, nudge nudge, know what I mean?, Say no more)

Also, in the games I have played on chokehold no one seems to go for the center castle surrounded by guard towers with a heavy infantry in them. I am thinking of removing the guard towers and making it a powerful city with production of red dragon and kraken. Make you have to choose which one you want to produce, or always plunder for some nice cash. Also want to make the 3 nearest cities to the center start with serpent production. All cities are random production as of right now, except the center. It is amazing how many games I have played on chokehold and see no kraken and sea serpents! Love to hear your comments on chokehold.

Only things on slipstream I want to tweak is to move the entrances to the center to the opposite ends of the starting locations so that the player has to go the whole length before getting to the center and make the fire elemental a more viable option for an early game jump. (make it less moves to cross the center) don't know if I want to change slip stream or do a save as, now that we can, to make an alternate version since I am kind of fond of how it is now.

KGB -
Most of em are official, but had a few in mothballs I had started and never got around to finishing/submitting. Plus wanted to do a save as version of slipstream to make an alternate map without destroying the original. Attention deficit disorder I suppose.

[kenc80]

Draxus, I dont think you should need to force it. I played it and both times it came down to vicious serpent ruled fights. We both realized right away that serpents would determine the winner. I do like the idea of the Dragon and Kraken in the middle. We never took that castle either time, just fighting around it. I liked the towers becuase you can hide in them. Its a good map! Well done.

As for Slipstream. I actually like that you had to go all the way through because it becomes a real race to the center L3 ruins and i enjoyed that. We both liked sending Fire Elemental raids across the center of the map. It was a neat twist. Well done on both. It definitely takes a long time to start the fighting though!

[piranha]

Draxus: The gold infinite was a bug. I fixed it so it should be alright now.

About the ver 0.8 release its slightly delayed due to missing art. We are supposed to get some updates this week end. Last version we got wasn't of the same standard as the current heroes so we had to wait a while longer.

[SnotlinG]

Its nice to see all opinions regarding the battlecalculator.
As I think we can all agree, its clear that silver/gold members need some kind of reason for getting these accounts, while we also dont want to give in-game advantages (like buying extra strength etc, which I think is common in many other online games, but which we do not like ). So its a fine line to walk

Back to the calculator, our intention was not for this to be an in-game advantage, but rather a nice "good-to-have" feature. However reading all your arguments we might reconsider.
One idea would be to turn the battle calculator into a battle advisor instead, which would then answer you with a few pre-set replies, like:
winchance > 90% "You will certainly win this fight my lord."
winchance 65-89% "You will most likely win this fight my lord."
etc...
The point beeing that you dont have much use of re-ording your stack as it wont give you any exact answer.
What do you think about this?

[KGB]

The point beeing that you dont have much use of re-ording your stack as it wont give you any exact answer.
What do you think about this?

It's definitely much better than having an exact calculator. Especially if you combine it with hiding all the strength/hit/bonus numbers in combat so players don't write their own and just ignore yours. The numbers were originally asked for by me way back in Beta2 to help with debugging the combat routines and now that Piranha has everything working they aren't needed any more (they can be left in solo games vs the AI for debugging checks).

Still I don't see why multiplayer games need a calculator as you described. Here are the abuses I see:

Offense:
I would fly my hero stack next to the enemy, do a free check to see what my chances are then fly back to the mountains/ridge/water if it's not what I expect/want. Or I would add another unit to my stack and do another free check and so on. Right now what I have to do is attack with a single unit to see what the enemy has and then estimate my odds from experience. This costs me at least 1 unit and forces me to learn the basic combat mechanics/bonus system. Or I just attack blindly and hope for the best.

Defense:
I often bluff my opponents by putting 1 Hv Infantry on top of 3-4 Lt Infantry/crows making them think my city is full of Hv Infantry so they don't attack because many players won't invest 1 unit to see my defense. Or alternatively I put 1 Lt Infantry on top of 3 spiders hoping he will suicide into my walls. Now these tactics can no longer work because the calculator will tell them I am bluffing.

Towers:
Now picture what happens to towers. Right now you can't see in them. But with the free calculator check I will always know if the tower is empty vs has enemy units in it...


I know you want to provide something for gold/silver members so I'd say why not provide the exact calculator but just in solo games vs the AI? That will be an excellent learning tool for players to learn combat mechanics and the odds of common battles.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

I realize that i was a bit unclear.
Of course you should never get any advise (or calculator) on stacks that you dont know anything about - this would be cheating . So you would still need to attack with one unit to get to know the enemystack.

Maybe having it enabled in non-ladder games only would be a good idea also.

The advantage would be that you when you know your enemy stack could get a quick rough estimate. Which you could probably calculate yourself investing a few minutes and checking unit stats. So just a kind of nice to have feature...