Portals

[KGB]

Until today I didn't even realize that the portals were doing timed vectoring (a good thing).

Now that I know they are I was looking around a several cities trying to figure out how to determine the portal level for a city. I thought it might be related to the walls but it's not since my Capitol is L0 and another city I own is L4.

Since the value of the portal determines the distance, is there an easy way to see this value without creating a vector? More importantly, is there a way to upgrade the portal for a city to speed up the vectoring?

KGB

[piranha]

It was possible to upgrade portals and townhall, but we took that away. It just gave you stuff to manage in cities. In B4 games started the first week or so the portal level was random but in all new games its locked at 25 tiles / turn.

[KGB]

I want to come back to this topic after reading something SnotlinG posted in another thread. In that thread he indicated that you could have a portal as short as 1 turn (25 squares).

I got thinking about this and looking more closely at the Portals in the turns I have taken in the last couple of days. I want to see if understand correctly what SnotlinG wrote.

Turn 5) I own City A making Hv Infantry. I capture City B. City B is 20 squares away from City A. I set a portal from City A to City B.
Turn 6) I produce a Hv Infantry in City A which portals towards City B.
Turn 7) Hv Infantry from City A in in City B ready to move/fight.

Is this correct? There is no longer a 2 turn minimum on portal travel?

If that's correct then I think portals are WAY over powered. for the following reasons:

1) With a 1 turn travel distance you are essentially saying all armies that can reach another city (25 squares) essentially get a move rate of 50 (25 squares, 2 moves per square) on the turn they are produced and further more are not subject to any terrain penalties!

Because what it means is there is no good reason to EVER produce an army in the city it gets made in unless that city is literally on the front line. Think about it. Lets say City A and City B are only 10 squares apart on an open plain. That's 20 moves. If you walk/fly that with anything by a Crow/Dragon/Wizard/Lt Cavalry it will take you 2 turns to get there (you arrive on the 2nd turn using some of your move in that turn AND have to spend a turn outside a city). But if you portal you arrive at the start of turn 2 with FULL MOVE (with +2 moves too since you didn't use any during portal?) thus saving any movement needed on the 2nd turn to reach a city a mere 10 squares away on a plain. On maps with actual harder terrain it's even worse. It basically invalidates all local terrain between cities because you essentially only use 1 turn to arrive there which most units could only move a few squares.

2) In terms of game play this makes it vastly harder to recapture a city you lose. With the old 2 turn minimum it takes 3 turns to get armies to your new city (turn you capture the city and start the portals, 2 travel turns, then armies start arriving). Now it only takes 2 turns (turn you capture the city on, 1 travel turn then armies start arriving). This is going to make it VERY hard to recapture lost cities on smaller maps when the opponent literally will have 5 men a turn arriving in his city in a mere 2 turns. That's a very very short time to manage to counter attack and recapture a city.

I really think you should set the portal minimum time back to 2 turns. You can leave the distance moved at 25 a turn but it should take at least 2 turns to travel so 1-50 takes 2 turns, 51-75 takes 3 turns, 76-100 takes 4 turns etc.


Two other things:

1) I assume you are using the standard Pythagorean formula for distance between 2 points to calculate the distance between 2 cities using say the NE corner of the each city?

2) On the Portal screen there is no easy indication to see the travel time. At least not that I have noticed. Can you say color all the other cities in your empire on the portal screen based on travel time so that I don't have to click on each one and then go and look at the time to arrive? What I mean is when you click on a city on the portal screen all the others (I am taking about the squares that indicate the cities) should instantly change color (yellow for 2 turns, orange for 3, red for 4 etc) to show the time from that city to any other. If you then click a different city the colors would all change to indicate the distance from that city etc.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

Yes you have several good points

We are discussing this, and nothing will change for beta4, but for beta5 we probably will make changes something like:
<10 tiles = 1 turn
< 50 tiles = 2 turns
< 85 tiles = 3 turns
85+ = 4 turns

As for your other questions:

1. Yes, Im using top left corner and the pythagorean formula to calculate distance.

2. Yes, good idea. Will do something like that for beta5. Not sure if you have noticed, but already now you will see the teleport-time needed when you setup the vector, you dont need to change city (but you need to set the vector still, so your idea is still good )

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

We are discussing this, and nothing will change for beta4, but for beta5 we probably will make changes something like:
<10 tiles = 1 turn
< 50 tiles = 2 turns
< 85 tiles = 3 turns
85+ = 4 turns

<10 tiles for free (1 turn) seems reasonable as that won't invalidate too much terrain or make it too easy to vector armies into newly captured cities before the loser has a chance to counter attack.

I think 50 and 75 make better cut off points. 85 really only has meaning on 150x maps since 85 squares is virtually the entire 100x map distance unless cities are right at the edges.

So until Beta5, I will be abusing the 25 free moves in all my games.

Not sure if you have noticed, but already now you will see the teleport-time needed when you setup the vector, you dont need to change city (but you need to set the vector still, so your idea is still good )

I noticed. But since I want to abuse the 25 free moves I need to measure every vector length to get the maximum number of free moves possible which requires some annoying micro-managment

KGB

[magian]

It doesn't make much sense to use pythagorean theorem in warbarons. In the warbarons world, a diagonal movement covers the same distance as an orthagonal one. So (accepting that space observes different rules in this fantasy land) you should really just take the larger of the spacial differences between two cities (the larger of x-x and y-y). That way your world obeys its own wierd (but consistent) laws.

[KGB]

Magican,

True.

But at the same time Portalling is magic since armies aren't actually walking that distance. So perhaps magic obeys the laws of the real world when determining the distance it can send an army

Plus given how powerful Portalling is, it makes sense to use the Pythagorean formula to limit it's travel distance.

KGB