Ruin Rewards

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

Sorry, I didn't realize those numbers were the actual ones being used. I thought they were just potential suggestions.

I'm not sure if I've seen the item distribution bug recently. It may well have been before 0.9. But I swear in some recent games I've opened 2-3 early ruins and gotten items. That may be purely due to luck though as I'd have to try and replay the same map from the same start spot to know for sure.

I'll probably just write it up to say it's about a 50% chance of getting some gold with each item. That way in the future if you do change it to be 50% I won't have to update the Wiki

KGB

[SnotlinG]

Also if you play a map with very few ruins then its not so strange to open 2-3 ruins and only pick up items
I guess the percentage could be changed quite easily in the code from 80% to something else in case we get some good arguments for it. Personally I think it seems to work pretty good. It is always fun to find items

[KGB]

It is always fun to find items

It's OK to find items. As I said in the early part of the game gold is much more important/better to find. Plus there are so many duplicate item slots in the L1 and L2 item list. By that I mean there are 7 L1 items, 2 of which are Rings and 2 are Head items. Many times I end up finding Rafeals Crown AND Sir Valor and I can't use both at the same time which is very annoying. By mid game my main ruin searching hero often has 2-3 rings and no footwear or is missing some other item slot. That's why items might be fun to find but are no where near as versatile as allies and gold.

Hence why I wanted the Eye of KGB. Once I know a ruin contains an item it will very likely not get searched.

KGB

[Chazar]

That was the reason why I once suggested to allow vectoring of items between cities above a certain city level.

Another good solution would be to allow scouts to transport items. Maybe the scouts should be marked with the bag, so that the enemy has a better chance at intercepting them. One could even image a capture-the-flag style game map.

[tabanli]

We can also add cash-out option for the items when they are found. Just like a city capture where a popup asks for capture-raze or occupy we can have an item popup that asks "do you want the item or do you want 200 gold instead"?

[tabanli]

I like KGB's idea for reducing number of items (especially useless items) . Map makers can to put them in a very well protected city. Red Dragon-Devil-Great Archon-Medusa-Unicon-8 Ghosts-8 Demons etc.

Nobody will attack that city anytime soon.

Or we can introduce a special unit "The Guardian" with 100 strength and 100 warding and he can sit on items.

[piranha]

And the city he is guarding should be called orion?

[KGB]

Fantastic game reference.

KGB

[KGB]

Coming back to this after a long absence to play some games I definitely think the ruin rewards are too skewed to give out items (60-80% chance!).

In many games I find that I search 4-5 ruins by turn 10-15 and end up with gold in only 1 of them. That ends up being a killer when it's a map that requires gold for production or you have game with a low gold start (under 700 gold) and your opponent gets gold in his. There is just no way finding 2-3 L1 items and a couple of L2 items is equal to finding 2000+ gold in the early turns. It's even worse on the maps where there aren't a lot of ruins to search and you only get items.

The item % should be scaled back to 25% tops or else there must be a way to immediately sell items for a reasonable value (maybe 300 gold for a L1, 600 for a L2 and 900 for a L3) with sold items being immediately available for placement in respawned ruins.

KGB

[Chazar]

I don't like the suggestion to limit items in ruins. I am with SnotlinG here: it is fun to find items!

While I agree with KGB's observations, I believe that there is another choice: scaling back gold from ruins, and making it more probable to have gold + items reawrds. Items are rare enough on large maps with many ruins, don't take out all the fun by having all ruins just giving gold.