Lost hits

[KGB]

I offer that every player will get some quantity of food at start of a game, may be enough for using during 5-6 turns, then player himself will create places where his food will grow. What terrains it will be? Grass of course, may be sand or forest or even hills and swamp (but lesser harvest), probably not mountains.
Only Peasants will be able to organize such places. Harvest can be taken one time in 2-3-5 turns (the same as new units are being born), number of turns is connected with size of harvest.

So I get some peasant units at the start the game. How do I get more? Do I build them in cities instead of armies or do I just get X number of peasants more per city per turn (based on city income/size?).
Do I have to move them on the map? If so, how far do they move and what move rules do they use on terrain, on boats etc?
Do peasants transform the land (turn forests into open) on their own or does it take time/cost gold like Civilization. Otherwise you are going to have a LOT of unhappy people if their section of the map has just slightly worse growing squares leading to a LOT of whining about maps and we already have more than enough of that now.
Do I have to defend the land they are growing food on or do they do that on their own? Surely a lone Crow / Scout can't wreck all my harvests. But do I need to defend my peasants against armies and can armies target peasants and how much does it take for them to destroy a harvest (it's got to cost something like movement or else its too easy to do too much harvest damage)

Mostly this seems like a lot of micro management work on my part. I have to move around a bunch of non-combat units to farm land for food. I'd rather just have a 'auto farm' button and let the AI manage all of it and I'd only ever bother with it if I was really short of food. Which is basically what I did in games like Master of Orion II and other games that added all this micro management when all I wanted to do was conquer the universe.

Speaking about healing with gold, I would again show example with Red Dragon.
Probably it's possible to count definite cost of every unit if let him (in a test game) to be offered with hero (for units with 2+ hits). Then to count average value of cost for every unit, using this way.
This will be cost of one available unit with all his hits. Cost of healing (for one hit) of a unit is cost of this unit, splitted on number of his hits. (As it shown in example with Red Dragon, if cost of one available Red Dragon is 1000 gold then cost of healing of Red Dragon is 500 gold).

This is absolutely the wrong model to use for cost.

The cost should be entirely based on combat value since that's all you are healing. You are not healing the units power (in other words a Red Dragon with 1 hit does not give +5 Morale, it still gives +10). So all you are getting for your money is 1 40 strength hit. That's all the cost should be based on. Otherwise you get strange things like a 40 strength Green Dragon hit being worth 333 gold (1000/3) vs a 40 strength Red Dragon hit being worth 500 gold (500/2).

The cost should be something like 1 gold per strength point.

5 strength: - 5 gold
10 strength: - 10 gold
15 strength: - 15 gold
...
40 strength: - 40 gold

KGB

[Igor]

So I get some peasant units at the start the game. How do I get more? Do I build them in cities instead of armies or do I just get X number of peasants more per city per turn (based on city income/size?).
Do I have to move them on the map? If so, how far do they move and what move rules do they use on terrain, on boats etc?

You will have some quantity of harvest at start of a new game, that let you to supply your start armies for some number of turns. Let it be that you will also have some number of Peasants at start. This peasants will be able to grow your first harvest for your little expansion in armies. Then, if you wish to expand your empire, you will need to have more Peasants.
Peasants will be produced in cities as regular armies. As a variant (may be even better than cities) they can be born in special places - Villages, where only Peasants is being born. If so, we will need a row of such Villages on each map, like we have neutral cities. These Villages should to be conquered from neutral defenders (usually Peasants) and be then defended from opponent's armies as usual cities are.
Peasants will have some strength to fight. Not too big though, may be 5.

Peasants will move as usual units. Probably they should have two kinds of speed on the map, depending on do they carry harvest at the moment or they are going empty.
Empty Peasants may move like Light Infantry, Peasants with harvest - like Heavy Infantry. They will need a Scout to lead them through difficult terrain. As a variant, they will have bonus of movement through any terrain like Scout has.
Peasants will use boats like other armies do.

Do peasants transform the land (turn forests into open) on their own or does it take time/cost gold like Civilization. Otherwise you are going to have a LOT of unhappy people if their section of the map has just slightly worse growing squares leading to a LOT of whining about maps and we already have more than enough of that now.

Peasants will not be able to transform a terrain from one kind to another. Only Engineers can do some changes on terrain, or other units which have ability of engineering. And even Engineers can't change ice to grass or hills to sand.
Peasants can only change a terrain to new kind of terrain specially for growing harvest (except mountains, ice and buildings), then take harvest and carry it to regular armies.
Number of turns for growing harvest should depend on kind of terrain. For example: grass - 2 turns, sand - 3 turns, forest - 4 turns, swamp (for rice) and hills - 5 turns. As a variant - number of turns for growing harvest will be the same as number of movement points which is necessary for units without terrain bonus to spend for 1 step on this terrain.

Do I have to defend the land they are growing food on or do they do that on their own? Surely a lone Crow / Scout can't wreck all my harvests. But do I need to defend my peasants against armies and can armies target peasants and how much does it take for them to destroy a harvest (it's got to cost something like movement or else its too easy to do too much harvest damage)

New terrain with growing harvest is some number of single squares of grid. One square is enough to grow a little harvest. More squares - more harvest. This terrain can be conquered by opponent's armies as usual site or city can be.
Usual opponent's armies can't take your harvest, only Peasants can do this. But when opponent's armies conquer your terrain with harvest, this reset the counter of growing harvest and then counter starts to count again from 0 and already for your opponent. You need to defend your terrain with growing harvest.
Let Peasants have a terrain fight bonus +10 in terrain with growing harvest for they be able themselves to defend harvest. Other units can also defend terrain with harvest.
Let set terrain with growing harvest as very difficult to pass through for units who destroys harvest (let's count that it takes time to destroy harvest), may be costs 5-6 movement points for all units, even for flying ones (they also spend time to destroy harvest). As a variant, will be special ability - Destroying of harvest, for some kind of units only, like Building ability is.

Peasants can attack opponent's armies on any terrain and can be attacked by them anywhere, don't depend on do they carry harvest or not.
Peasants are usual units with special abilities (to start to grow harvest, to take it and carry to armies) and some special terrain bonus and fight bonus (+10 strength in harvest terrain).

[Igor]

The cost should be entirely based on combat value since that's all you are healing. You are not healing the units power (in other words a Red Dragon with 1 hit does not give +5 Morale, it still gives +10). So all you are getting for your money is 1 40 strength hit. That's all the cost should be based on. Otherwise you get strange things like a 40 strength Green Dragon hit being worth 333 gold (1000/3) vs a 40 strength Red Dragon hit being worth 500 gold (500/2).

The cost should be something like 1 gold per strength point.

5 strength: - 5 gold
10 strength: - 10 gold
15 strength: - 15 gold
...
40 strength: - 40 gold

Some reasons are in this. But we may use second way.
Let's split all units with 2+ hits on two kinds:
- those which have some group bonus (morale, movement etc),
- those which don't have group bonuses.
Then let's take only units which don't have group bonuses and count how much they cost being offered with new hero. After this will be possible to count how much one hit costs for units with different strength.
For example, if a new hero with one Elemental is offered for 1100 gold, and if this single hero (without Elemental as ally) will take 500 gold, it means that one offered Elemental costs 600 gold per 3 his hits (this is price for 1 available Elemental in a place which you unfortunately even can't choose), so healing of 1 hit of Elemental costs 200 gold.
Elemental don't give some power to all stack but only personal strength. Elemental gives pure strength. This means this example can be applicable to count cost of healing. Strength of Elemental +40 in attack and +25 in defense. Let it be +30 as average strength. 200 gold per 30 strength is like 60 gold per 10 strength or 6 gold per 1 strength.

The scale is ready, now we can apply it to all units for healing them. Number of spent gold will be depend only on strength of units.
This scale is based on Elemental. And this is possible to count the same scales based on other units with 2+ hits and only with pure strength. Then (as a variant) to count final average scale and apply it for healing of lost hits.

For Red Dragon this will be in current scale: 40 strength x 6 gold = 240 gold.

[KGB]

Some reasons are in this. But we may use second way.
Let's split all units with 2+ hits on two kinds:
- those which have some group bonus (morale, movement etc),
- those which don't have group bonuses.
Then let's take only units which don't have group bonuses and count how much they cost being offered with new hero. After this will be possible to count how much one hit costs for units with different strength.
For example, if a new hero with one Elemental is offered for 1100 gold, and if this single hero (without Elemental as ally) will take 500 gold, it means that one offered Elemental costs 600 gold per 3 his hits (this is price for 1 available Elemental in a place which you unfortunately even can't choose), so healing of 1 hit of Elemental costs 200 gold.
Elemental don't give some power to all stack but only personal strength. Elemental gives pure strength. This means this example can be applicable to count cost of healing. Strength of Elemental +40 in attack and +25 in defense. Let it be +30 as average strength. 200 gold per 30 strength is like 60 gold per 10 strength or 6 gold per 1 strength.

The scale is ready, now we can apply it to all units for healing them. Number of spent gold will be depend only on strength of units.
This scale is based on Elemental. And this is possible to count the same scales based on other units with 2+ hits and only with pure strength. Then (as a variant) to count final average scale and apply it for healing of lost hits.

For Red Dragon this will be in current scale: 40 strength x 6 gold = 240 gold.

The problem with this idea is everything ends up being WAY WAY WAY too expensive.

Right now the upkeep cost for a Red Dragon is only 17 gold. 17! So healing 1 hit can't cost 15x the regular upkeep cost for that unit.

Also in a game I am playing right now it's turn 40. I own 25 cities and my total income from 25 cities is only 640 gold. I have 275 armies with a total upkeep of 1025 gold (I have income from gold sites for another 500 gold so I am slightly positive on income). So my entire massive empire makes and uses about 1000 gold a turn from 25 cities/gold sites to support 250 units. So 1 hit on 1 unit can't cost 25% of an entire empire on turn 40.

That's why the numbers I showed are the only ones that make sense relative to everything else in the game. It makes healing expensive but still reasonable enough that players can afford it.

KGB

[Igor]

The problem with this idea is everything ends up being WAY WAY WAY too expensive.

Right now the upkeep cost for a Red Dragon is only 17 gold. 17! So healing 1 hit can't cost 15x the regular upkeep cost for that unit.

KGB, you try to compare two different things. Upkeep is other than cost of unit.
If you have a car and you should pay transport tax 17 gold and then when your car got big damage, the price to fix this damage will be 240 gold. Serviceman doesn't worry that this is to expensive for you, he will offer you two ways: pay or use car with damage.

More real thing is to compare cost of healing of unit with cost for his new offer.

Also in a game I am playing right now it's turn 40. I own 25 cities and my total income from 25 cities is only 640 gold. I have 275 armies with a total upkeep of 1025 gold (I have income from gold sites for another 500 gold so I am slightly positive on income). So my entire massive empire makes and uses about 1000 gold a turn from 25 cities/gold sites to support 250 units. So 1 hit on 1 unit can't cost 25% of an entire empire on turn 40.

That's why the numbers I showed are the only ones that make sense relative to everything else in the game. It makes healing expensive but still reasonable enough that players can afford it.

KGB, did you try use your armies more actively? Just a thought based on this example...

It's possible to not pay and use your Elemental (let's take this unit for this example) with 1-2 hits instead of 3 hits. Or you may use special ability of your units or heroes to heal the Elemental without gold. All this is for player's choice.
But if you decide to pay, this should be the real price based on price for new such unit - using scale discribed in previous message.

[KGB]

KGB, you try to compare two different things. Upkeep is other than cost of unit.
If you have a car and you should pay transport tax 17 gold and then when your car got big damage, the price to fix this damage will be 240 gold. Serviceman doesn't worry that this is to expensive for you, he will offer you two ways: pay or use car with damage.

More real thing is to compare cost of healing unit with cost for his new offer.

I understand the serviceman example. But a capitol city only generates 80 gold a turn. So a 240 gold expense is 3x your capitol city income. That would be the equivalent of the cost of repairing your car in Russia to be 3x the value of everything produced in Moscow in 1 year. That would be something like $50,000,000,000 which is ridiculous. So there is an obvious problem.

Also the cost of new units with heroes is going to have to go WAY down. The reason now an Elemental costs 600 gold is because that Elemental auto-heals. So if it takes 2 damage in battle it is instantly healed back to 3 hits and can be used again and again as long as it doesn't take 3 hits of damage. But under the new system, damage won't heal. So the value of all units must drop because they don't auto-heal. So a 600 cost Elemental is probably going to have to drop to about 200 or less gold since it's now WAY less valuable.

Plus if healing costs 240 gold for a Dragon then NO unit is going to have heal power. Or else that unit is going to have to cost like 5000 gold to buy as production. The reason is that healing a unit for free from a heal skill is potentially saving 240 gold (dragon). If that happens multiple times a turn (say your dragon gets into 3 battles and gets healed 3 times, once after 3 battles) then the value of that healing is 720 gold. A unit that can give 720 gold of value in 1 turn is INSANELY powerful and thus must cost VERY VERY VERY much gold to buy because the whole game will revolve around saving healing costs. I doubt anyone wants healing units to cost 5000 gold or to generate so much free value (healing is essentially free value).

The only way to fix this is to realize the cost of healing under your scheme is WAY WAY WAY over priced and thus unbalances the game. Under the cost I presented the value of healing is much more reasonable and a healing unit isn't over powering in the amount of value it generates and the game won't revolve around healing units.

KGB

[Igor]

Looks good if units with 2+ hits will be cost cheaper.
When units will keep their damage after battles they will be already not so attractive for players who will probably build mostly 1-hitters. To get back the balance between 1-hitters and 2-5-hitters, 2-5-hitters should be cheaper than now.
But isn't it too much to downgrade cost of Elemental from 600 to 200? I would think about 300. (This is an offer with hero). Then his price for building in city should be also downgraded. May be to 700-800.

If 300 for Elemental, healing is: 300 gold / 3 hits / 30 average strength = 3 gold per 1 strength per hit.
Cost of healing 1 hit of Elemental is 90 gold.
Then Red Dragon's healing will cost 40 x 3 = 120 gold.
If you wish to see it cheaper you should base this on price of units.


Btw, there is bilateral relation between cost of healing and cost of unit.
1. Cost of unit is how it is now, then cost of healing is too big. This causes that such unit will not be in use and his cost should be downgraded.
2. Much downgraded cost of unit causes that cost of healing also will be much cheaper. But cheap cost of healing together with low cost of unit will cause that this unit will again be often in use. This means that his cost should be upgraded.
Such swing will be untill getting the balance between cost of unit and cost of his healing.
Looks balanced 90 per hit for healing of Elemental if his price (to build) will be 700-800.

[KGB]

Actually you have to price healing based on the economics in the rest of the game. It will have VERY little to do with cost of units in a hero offer since the rest of the game economics dominates how gold is valued.

In other words the cost of healing has to be in line with income from cities/sites, costs of upgrading cities/towers, costs of buying production, upkeep costs of units, gold found in ruins etc. Those are the economics of of the game that are in use every turn. Right now that's quite well balanced out. Whatever gets added to the game from healing can't break that model.

For example. It's turn 1 and the starting units include an Elemental. You attack a city defended by a scout with the Elemental. Its bad luck and your Elemental takes 2 hits but you take the city (this is a 100% legit outcome since you won the battle and I see it happen all the time). You are immediately penalized 180 gold (based on 90 gold in your last post). Meanwhile your opponent does the same but he takes his city and his Elemental takes no hits. That 180 gold is a BIG swing of money on turn 1 in a limited gold start (where you start with say 700 gold total and need to spend 500 of it for a hero). The entire game may be decided already just by that bit of bad luck because it's going to take a long time to save 180 gold.

So to me that's still too much cost. It's too hard for players to overcome that kind of swing of money from random combat hits that are going to happen ALL THE TIME. Under my cost scheme it would only be 60 gold. Not too excessive but still something the player could afford to pay without ruining the game.

My entire model of damage/healing would be as follows:
1) Units retain the damage they take in combat.
2) At the start of your turn, any units in a city are auto-healed to full health (since they have access to city resources). Thus only units that remain outside cities retain their damage from turn to turn.
3) Any unit visiting any temple is immediately auto-healed.
4) Players can can pay 1 gold per strength point to heal any unit after combat. So to heal 1 hit on a 30 strength unit costs 30 gold.

That seems quite straight forward and reasonably easy to implement and understand. Doesn't break the current game in any way and adds a little something extra to the game.

KGB

[Igor]

My entire model of damage/healing would be as follows:
1) Units retain the damage they take in combat.
2) At the start of your turn, any units in a city are auto-healed to full health (since they have access to city resources). Thus only units that remain outside cities retain their damage from turn to turn.
3) Any unit visiting any temple is immediately auto-healed.
4) Players can can pay 1 gold per strength point to heal any unit after combat. So to heal 1 hit on a 30 strength unit costs 30 gold.

That seems quite straight forward and reasonably easy to implement and understand. Doesn't break the current game in any way and adds a little something extra to the game.

It means that worth of changes goes to zero.
You speak like real american politician

Actually you have to price healing based on the economics in the rest of the game. It will have VERY little to do with cost of units in a hero offer since the rest of the game economics dominates how gold is valued.

In other words the cost of healing has to be in line with income from cities/sites, costs of upgrading cities/towers, costs of buying production, upkeep costs of units, gold found in ruins etc. Those are the economics of of the game that are in use every turn. Right now that's quite well balanced out. Whatever gets added to the game from healing can't break that model.

For example. It's turn 1 and the starting units include an Elemental. You attack a city defended by a scout with the Elemental. Its bad luck and your Elemental takes 2 hits but you take the city (this is a 100% legit outcome since you won the battle and I see it happen all the time). You are immediately penalized 180 gold (based on 90 gold in your last post). Meanwhile your opponent does the same but he takes his city and his Elemental takes no hits. That 180 gold is a BIG swing of money on turn 1 in a limited gold start (where you start with say 700 gold total and need to spend 500 of it for a hero). The entire game may be decided already just by that bit of bad luck because it's going to take a long time to save 180 gold.

So to me that's still too much cost. It's too hard for players to overcome that kind of swing of money from random combat hits that are going to happen ALL THE TIME. Under my cost scheme it would only be 60 gold. Not too excessive but still something the player could afford to pay without ruining the game.

If you think that 180 gold at turn 1 is big advantage you should think what name to give to kind of advantage when a player lose his leader at turn 1 . But it's looks as off-top for this thread

Healing 2 hits of Heavy Cavalry units means appearing a new unit of Heavy Cavalry, or healing 3 hits of Elemental units means appearing a new unit of Elemental.
So price of healing is connected with cost of new available unit as 100% of it for full number of hits, or 33% for 1 of 3 hits and 50% for 1 of 2 hits.
All that is possible to do (if keep logic) is to vary the price of new available unit.
I agree that when units will keep damage and their worth will be lower, their price should be downgraded.

But whatever the price, it's possible to take an ally with hero or don't take it. The same is possible to heal units or don't heal them.
Healing of units is some kind of bonus for players who will wish to use it.
The main thing which I offer here is that multi-hits units should keep their damage. It's a big change for the game. But it less than downgrading of Demons or appearing of Barbarian, which is changed all game strategy radically.
I would say that exists no reason to be affraid of changes in the game if it will make it more difficult and more interesting.

I think we showed the gist of this theme (not only estimates and opinions), many materials are here.
Much gist of theme about food are shown here as well.
I think that discussion for pair Igor-KGB within this thread has exhausted itself.