Ruin Searching Level Restrictions

[smursh]

I think perhaps the exta cost for leveling up your hero could be slightly higher, or the turn at which you an buy a stronger hero pushed back, but consider that your hero would still come in lv-1, and get the extra experience over the next 1-2 turns. That means:

If on turn 6 you lose your starting barbarian(probably lv-3 or close to it), and you now buy a lv-2 barbarian on turn 7. Now you don't get to lv-2 till turn 8. My barbarian survives and is lv-3 or 4 by this time, and I get to buy a lv-2 hero to supplement him(perhaps an assassin). I still am better off by virtue of keeping my hero alive.

As for trading levels for allies, I think if the cost of added levels were around 550-600 gp it becomes a more difficult decision. And if you get an ally that fills a need it can be more valuable than extra levels. For example if I don't have any fear units a medusa is a great bonus, much more valuable than 1-2 extra hero levels. It just depends on the game situation.

[KGB]

Experix,

And wouldn't it be much better if the player could choose the location where he wants to get the hero? For some money as well, maybe?
I mentioned the game on the Battlefield. I got at least 6 hero offers in the capital. At that time, there was nothing to do for the hero in the distance where he could get in less than 10 turns. Whether the hero would upgrade to level 3 was irrelevant, I needed any hero who could search ruins and support my units in the front lines.

Letting the player chose the location would have to cost a tremendous amount of gold. This would be game breaking as in:

- Imagine you have a hero offer. You cancel out. Then capture a city in your turn as far away as possible. Now you can accept that hero in the city. Potentially moving that hero and allies even further capturing another city or two or at worst fortifying a city with a hero + allies that you just captured. The game would obviously have to prevent this entirely.
- Imagine the 50x maps. Most of the cities are within reach of each other. You scout ahead and see the opponent city is only lightly defended so you move your Valkrie stack to a nearby city ready to attack next turn. Your opponent then gets a hero offer and accepts it in the city right next to you. That offer might include a Dragon or Medusa etc allowing them to crush your Valkrie while she has no bonus. Yes, this can happen now by luck if the hero offer is the right city but being able to place the hero would mean it would always happen. 50x maps would become a game of watching the opponent gold to see if you can get screwed by a hero+ally offer appearing right next to you. The only way the game can prevent this is by charging HUGE amounts of gold to chose location (further away the city, the more the extra gold) and/or set the hero/ally to 0 moves when it arrives in a city other than the default one.

I too play a lot of the larger 100x and 150x maps and yes many times hero offers are no where near where I want them. So I've learned you buy 2-3 heroes really early (first 5-6 turns) regardless of cost (both gold and not buying good production) and live with those heroes and reject all others until they appear where you want them regardless of how long it takes to happen. That way they are at front of your expansion and can level up and aren't left behind.

Incidentally I almost never search ruins on Battlefield other than the ones that give allies. Just not worth the effort other than 1-2 by your capitol in the early turns for fast gold because as you have noted by mid game your income is 1000+ gold so you don't need more from ruins so it's a waste of time sending heroes to search. In fact I have won on Battlefield only having 2 heroes that I got really early and never taking any more just using production and speed of expansion to win. This and West Illuria are the only 2 maps I know that can probably be won with no heroes because there is so much money in the game.

When I started to play this game, I understood more gold = better chance for a hero.
Now I see it is totally different.
If I got it right, it should behave actually this way: you have 10% chance for offer, unless your money exceeds certain point, depending on the number of heroes you already have. At that point the probability starts to raise, and if you reach 650 more gold above that point, it is at 75% and you can't increase it more.
On the other hand, more money also means that average price of the offered hero increases as well.

Example:
4 heroes, 2000 gold: chance for hero 10%, average price 1000 gold
4 heroes, 400 gold: chance for hero 10%, price is always 400 gold

Your example numbers are correct. The advantage of having 2000 gold is only for getting allies.

The more gold = more heroes chance is true, but up to a point. The offer chance is capped at 75% chance of an offer. And as you have noted, the more heroes you have, the more gold you need to get another one (the law of diminishing returns). This was added because in the prior version players were ending up with 10 or 12 heroes which everyone felt was cheapening what a hero meant because there were too many of them and you were getting one every turn on some maps with lots of money. So now if you take too many hero offers you have problems getting more. As your example notes, once you have 4 heroes it gets hard to get a 5th and beyond.

I personally buy 3 quickly then get picky on the 4th and 5th waiting for specific allies or a hero arriving in a really good location. I also don't mind killing off / disbanding a L1 hero if I have 4 of them because it then increases my chances of getting another one if I have <2000 gold.

In a team game on 8 kingdoms, I found a lot of money in a ruin. I had only one hero and hoped for the other with some ally. I had 2000 gold. I got three hero offers. First one slightly below 1200, the next two for 1200. So I gave up, bought some production and got another offer - for 700. Since the income is cca 100 gold/turn, this is a very big difference. But I lost several turns, both for the second hero and the production. Were these decisions wrong?

Did you win? Then the decision was right

I can't tell if the decisions were right/wrong because I don't know what was happening in the game. I will say that I too often do what you did, reject heroes waiting for allies. It's a favorite game of mine. Before you reject that first hero with no allies you have to decide how long you will wait (how many turns) for allies. That depends on the game situation at that moment (are you ahead/behind/equal. If I am ahead/equal I always wait and if I am behind I never play this waiting for allies game) and where that hero arrived (near a ruin to search which might offset most of his cost, near some neutrals to capture etc). Each turn you re-evaluate as you did and eventually make a decision.

I had never such problem yet. I prefer 1:1 games on larger maps, maybe I would find it different in other games.

I think there's no need for all heroes reaching their maximum at their main skill. I find 4-5 heroes, L7 on average absolutely sufficient.

You would find it different on smaller maps and on maps with lots of players and high competition for ruins/cities. On those maps you might only get to capture 5-7 neutral cities total and maybe only 1-2 ruins. So that you might get 1 hero to L3 and the rest get stuck at L1 because there is nothing to do besides attack enemy players which is risky for L1 heroes to try and get experience.

4-5 heroes at L7 just is not possible on 50x or 75x maps or on large maps with 6-8 players. So this request is for those types of games. It shouldn't make any difference to 1-1 games on giant maps because there will be lots of high level heroes for both players.

In 80 games I played so far, I once got an offer of one red dragon, once of one devil and once of two medusas. Other offers with allies were much weaker, say one ghost/elemental. I have no idea what to do to get some interesting allies. Got the dragon when I had some 1600 gold. I had the same or much greater sum of money in hundreds of other turns. I see it as a pure luck it did happen in that case and in no other...

That's just astounding! 80 games, 1 Red Dragon. I think it's bad if I don't get 1 Red Dragon offer per game (assuming the game goes 20 turns or so)!

If you look in the hero offer calcs's you can see a Red Dragon costs between 800-2050 gold. So you must have *at least* 800 more gold than the hero cost to get a Red Dragon. So 2000 gold minimum (assuming 1200 hero cost) and even then the Dragon probably costs more than 800. The average amount needed for a Dragon is about 2600 gold (1200 for the hero and 1425 for the Dragon). I very rarely get Dragon offers when I have <2000 but once I get over 2400 gold I usually get an offer. As a player I try to keep large cash reserves for Dragon/Devil allies when I am looking for my 4th or 5th hero.

I suggested the following:
Turn 1-5: L1 hero only
Turn 6-10: L1 or L2 hero.
Turn 10+ L1, L2 or L3 hero

So this will be independent on the map? On some maps players don't even meet before turn 10.
I'll try to use and modify your example of using barbarian for expansion. You go forward with your starting barbarian. Then, at certain point, he dies. But not much harm is done, if you are lucky you can buy another barb where the previous one died, wait one turn and continue with his job. I think it should be more important to keep your heroes alive... That means for me, that if you risk your leveled hero and don't succeed, you should have to level your new hero and not just skip one turn.
I would like if the new hero could, for example gain experience more quickly. But not if he gains it by staying on one spot, doing nothing.

As Smursh noted you are better off not losing that hero. But sometimes it happens on smaller maps when players meet much earlier. Without a chance to get a decent replacement the game can be over because they can no longer search L2/L3 ruins or defend themselves because there is literally no more neutral cities/L1 ruins. On big maps losing a hero early isn't near as big a deal because you end up with lots of cities/gold etc so you have time to level new heroes or buy and build Archons or Ghosts or other strong units to counter heroes. But on small maps it's game over.

I don't mind if it's a game option that can be turned on/off (buy leveled heroes). I suspect most players will play with it on but there is no harm in it being a game option for those that don't want it.

KGB

[smursh]

The talk about choosing the city a hero arrives in got me thinking. Why not allow a newly bought hero to vector to another city just like a normally produced unit. If you want your new hero to appear in a front line city he will take multiple turns, depending on the distance to arrive. And if the city is lost in the meantime he will have to travel back to the producing city. This might be a good compromise to the current setup of arriving in a random city.

[KGB]

Smursh,

That idea works for me.

KGB

[hatchfactory]

And if the city is lost in the meantime he will have to travel back to the producing city.

...and if the producing city is lost, so is the hero opportunity ...