A few Beta6 things I'd like

[LPhillips]

First off, welcome back LP...long time no see my friend.

Thanks man! Looking forward to some games.

KGB,
I disagree with swapping items for different battles generally speaking, not just in the specific examples given. I think if you consider the possibility of items with self-balancing negative and positive attributes, the concept of choosing your equipment for a turn and living with your choice becomes a very potent and important game mechanic. It's also important not to let any hero juggle items in a single turn to utilize all of the attributes of his collection without any of the inherent downsides (say for example choosing a weapon with special abilities like anti-air and missing out on using his leadership item). I think those choices need to have real consequences, and if they do then it will open the floor for truly powerful items to enter play. It may or may not be the direction the creators want to go, but it really ups the ante on hero combat both turn-by-turn and in the long run. Scouting before moving out your best heroes is already vital, and that's really what we're talking about.
Now, it's a different way of looking at things to be sure. But I think it's a very positive evolution for a turn-based strategy game, if you look at it in terms of opening up the item system's horizons.

While I still consider the Negate concept superfluous with Morale/Fear and Leadership/Chaos counter skills already I understand why old time War2 players cling to it

...All I am asking for is the Morale/Fear and Leadership/Chaos to get applied first then the Negate...
KGB

Superfluous... I think it's actually a solid ability for a high-level unit. It's important to have strong abilities that are not polarized, so that high-level units do not become purely situationally valuable. Having to acquire specific high-level units to counter specific hero types and abilities is too heavy-handed. I think you'd find battles drifting further into the realm of luck and tactics with no room for general strategy. The ability to Negate rather than supplying a counter that may or may not weigh in against particular units and heroes is what makes Archons a truly high-level unit. Overarching abilities must exist to validate the existence of upper-level units.
Basically it would be like reducing Dragons to a terrain-based group bonus so that you need specific types of dragons in specific situations.

I finally understand your proposition now. Hero abilities should always be applied first. That should be a common principle across the board.

[KGB]

LPhillips,

I disagree with swapping items for different battles generally speaking, not just in the specific examples given. I think if you consider the possibility of items with self-balancing negative and positive attributes, the concept of choosing your equipment for a turn and living with your choice becomes a very potent and important game mechanic. It's also important not to let any hero juggle items in a single turn to utilize all of the attributes of his collection without any of the inherent downsides (say for example choosing a weapon with special abilities like anti-air and missing out on using his leadership item). I think those choices need to have real consequences, and if they do then it will open the floor for truly powerful items to enter play. It may or may not be the direction the creators want to go, but it really ups the ante on hero combat both turn-by-turn and in the long run. Scouting before moving out your best heroes is already vital, and that's really what we're talking about.
Now, it's a different way of looking at things to be sure. But I think it's a very positive evolution for a turn-based strategy game, if you look at it in terms of opening up the item system's horizons.

I agree 100% with your reasoning. Right now with the huge backpack a hero is like a golfer. He simply sizes up his shot (battle) and then then selects his clubs (items). Rinse and repeat. Since the defender can't do that it's obviously unfair.

However to fix items, it has to be done in a very easy way without overly burdening down the game forcing players to run through their many heroes checking items every turn. The simplest way would be to 'fix' the items at the time of the first battle the hero enters. Up till then you could swap items as you please but once you enter battle the items would be fixed for the rest of the turn for that hero. Then you'd only need a warning pop-up before battle to confirm the heroes item choices for the turn. The only caveat is that if your hero searched a ruin and found a new item (or got one from a quest reward) you'd have to allow them to equip that specific item if they wanted (see, already an exception to the rule. LOL).

Superfluous... I think it's actually a solid ability for a high-level unit. It's important to have strong abilities that are not polarized, so that high-level units do not become purely situationally valuable. Having to acquire specific high-level units to counter specific hero types and abilities is too heavy-handed. I think you'd find battles drifting further into the realm of luck and tactics with no room for general strategy.

Actually DLR managed to do this with a lot more abilities than Warbarons has and it has no Negate skill. Negate worked well in a simple system like War2 with limited bonus's and units. But the more Warbarons evolves the less use it has as there are simply other ways to counter a skill without the specific counter due to more bonus's/skills etc.

The ability to Negate rather than supplying a counter that may or may not weigh in against particular units and heroes is what makes Archons a truly high-level unit. Overarching abilities must exist to validate the existence of upper-level units. Basically it would be like reducing Dragons to a terrain-based group bonus so that you need specific types of dragons in specific situations.

Except that the current system doesn't require the specific counter. For example if you have a DK with +10 Chaos giving your opponent -10, all he needs to counter it is a Dragon with +12 morale. Since those numbers are applied directly (12-10=+2 for you) you are better off with a Dragon than an Archon which is just Negate 12 = 0. The same with using Fear and Chaos to overcome city walls. No need for siege when a Medusa (Fear +5) and DK (Chaos +3, going as high as 16 eventually) gives -8 to the enemy basically negating all the +10 wall advantage and more than a +5 wall advantage. Right now all the bonus's freely substitute for one another except for Siege (something LichKing and I discussed in a REALLY long thread a couple months ago in an effort to design a better bonus system) making Negate superfluous.

For example lets say your opponent has a stack with a Medusa (-5 fear) in it and you want to counter it. How can you do so? Well here are some of the ways.

1) Make a Medusa of your own. Both sides get a -5 bonus which is effectively 0 for both sides.
2) Make a Pegasi of your own. You get +6 Morale to counter to the -5 Fear giving you +1 overall.
3) Bring in a L1 Paladin. You get +4 Leadership to counter the -5 Fear giving you -1 overall.
4) Bring in a L1 DK. You give a -3 Chaos bonus to the opponent for an overall effectively -2 to you .
5) Make a Crusader and Yeti of your own. You get a +3 Morale and give -2 Fear for an overall effective 0 to both sides.
6) Bring in a L1 Paladin and make a Crusader. You get a +4 Leadership and +2 Morale for an overall +1 for you.
7) Bring in a L1 DK and make a Yeti. You give the opponent an overall -3 Chaos and -2 Fear for an effective 0 to both sides.

In other words any combination of bonus's that add to 5 works to effectively counter the Medusa -5 Fear.

Lastly you can of course make a Devil with Negate +10, Fear +2. You give a -2 to the opponent from the Fear.

I imagine for new players all these bonus's are bewildering especially when they freely substitute and Leadership/Morale stack (but not 2 Morale unit or not 2 Leadership units) as do Fear/Chaos stack. Then on top of it you have Negate for both. I would guess they find the system overly complicated and might wonder why it is that Siege is the red headed stepchild that can't substitute like the others can.

I finally understand your proposition now. Hero abilities should always be applied first. That should be a common principle across the board.

Correct. Along with Fear/Morale before the Devils power comes into play.

KGB

[LPhillips]

While writing this text wall, I had an epiphany: We're not discussing the same thing. I want to prevent heroes from changing equipment after they move individually in a given turn, not before the player makes any movement at all. Maybe that makes a bit more sense?

I considered the option of making final adjustments before battle instead, and also the necessary exception of acquiring new equipment (whether by conquest, exploration, questing (if ever implemented), or simply picking it up). I don't see players cycling through equipment on each hero at the very beginning of the turn. There is no need to review equipment on a hero who is not expected to be in battle. The end result is the same: you adjust the equipment only when expecting to go into battle (and if you don't remember the equipment on your hero, you'll be doing this with either system). But I think it's vital to restrict the addition/removal of travel items before movement. So rather than splitting the restrictions for a more confusing system, I think all items should be restricted to pre-movement adjustments. Attempting to make adjustments later would simply render a tooltip "Equipment may only be changed before a hero moves each turn." Of course an exception must be made for newly acquired equipment.

Siege is city-specific. Cities are a special category all their own, and the site of the majority of important battles --on maps that aren't exceptionally spread out. I assume a defensive tower follows the same rules, which I would think is a good thing all around. So siege seems intuitive enough.

Now if you throw in DLR's poison bonus and things like that, you're going to have some confusion! But then all of DLR's options were really fun. And you could still play the game and enjoy yourself without understanding it all immediately. DLR did lend itself to elitism, but you can really take the edge off that by having beginner/advanced games or even just really good tutorials.

I follow your reasoning except in one regard: we both know that -5 to both sides is not an equal bonus for the purpose of this illustration. The base strengths of the units involved play a huge part to the relative strength of bonuses. Give -5 to a stack of Light Inf and you'll see them become severely ineffectual even against a single 2-turn unit. I still think Negates serve a good purpose. You've corrected my analytical point of view and effectually dismissed my first argument, but what about negate abilities' specializing factor? Until we have a clearer view of what the final balance will look like, isn't it important to retain functional abilities like terrain negate and hero negate? A negating ability isn't as powerful as a sheer bonus/malus to be sure, but isn't that the whole point? That is why it can be so high, and it also creates a whole genre of units and applications for those units where simply another bonus/malus unit would not add anything of interest. Removing negates takes a dimension out of the tactical gameplay; given what you've clearly illustrated it would do the opposite of what I said earlier. Under the current rules, we'd be reduced to flat number crunchers at the higher gameplay level.

Balance in this area is important. Without tactical options there is no variation of strategy, and with overpowered tactical options strategy takes a backseat. Finally, I think newbies can move along just fine without initially grasping late-game mechanics; we don't need to oversimplify things for them. (So you could say I reject the "make it simpler" argument in all applications. A game can be very complex at higher levels as long as the basic rules can be easily communicated and understood.)

[KGB]

LPhillips,

Actually I understood perfectly that you mean each individual hero could change his/her items up until the moment they started moving. I never thought you mean the moment you moved any unit. I probably didn't state it clearly enough on my end.

I don't see players cycling through equipment on each hero at the very beginning of the turn. There is no need to review equipment on a hero who is not expected to be in battle. The end result is the same: you adjust the equipment only when expecting to go into battle (and if you don't remember the equipment on your hero, you'll be doing this with either system). But I think it's vital to restrict the addition/removal of travel items before movement. So rather than splitting the restrictions for a more confusing system, I think all items should be restricted to pre-movement adjustments. Attempting to make adjustments later would simply render a tooltip "Equipment may only be changed before a hero moves each turn." Of course an exception must be made for newly acquired equipment.

In principal I agree with your logic 100%. There does however need to be an exception that you touched on.

Equipment that you find mid turn (ruins, ground, reward) etc must *auto equip* if there is an empty slot available. For example if your hero has no Helmet and you find a Helmet even if it's one another of your heroes just dropping on the ground, the game should auto-equip it for you. So it will technically be possible to drop and swap between heroes because it would be WAY too hard for the game to figure out whether you were dropping and swapping vs finding stuff on the ground that was already there/there after a battle/ruin search etc.

With that exception I can see not allowing item swapping once you start moving an individual hero. There would need to be a game option a player could turn on to remind them to swap items before the hero started moving.

As far as Negate goes, I didn't say it had to be removed. I merely suggested that it's currently superfluous with the way all the rest of the skills work. So that instead of 6 basic skills (Fortify/Siege, Morale/Fear, Leadership/Chaos) you end up with 2 extra's from Negate that just make things that much more complicated. I'm perfectly fine with it remaining as long as the order it's applied is changed so that it comes after instead of before the bonus it negates is worked out between the 2 stacks.

And your right that -5 to both stacks isn't 100% the same unless the 2 stacks are the same strength wise to begin with. But it works well for illustration purpose.

As far as Siege goes, Battering Rams might not be useful outside attacking cities, but Catapults hurling rocks or Ballistae shooting large bolts certainly would be.

KGB

[piranha]

I will take a look at stack bonuses for B6. I see 3 possible ways to deal with it.
1 is your current suggestion.
Another one was discussed with lichking which was that negate 10 for example could only remove 10 total points and not 20 (both negative and positive), but then you have to figure out how it should be distributed, for example remove one positive, remove one negative and so on until all the 10 negate points are used up.

Third one is to make the unit negate 8/8 for example or 4/8 so it can be controlled bit more.

[kenc80]

You guys are getting over my head on the negate math so i'm bowing out of this conversation

Item swapping: I dont think its so bad the way it is. Part of attacking in battle is that you initiate the action. if the Hero has a couple rings that do different things, well thats the advantage of attacking, you can put on the right one. I have a hero with a ring for intelligence and UL & a ring for +2 leadership I swap during turns depending whether I am fighting or ruin hunting. At the end of the turn, i put on my +3 Leadership defense helmet. Is that so bad?

Negate: Yeah its definitely getting complicated, there is no question about that.

[KGB]

Kenc80,

With item swapping the issues are:

1) Overall items need to be weaker than they otherwise would be. That's because swapping can allow potentially you to get +10 when attacking and +10 when defending if you have a +10 attack and +10 defend item that went in the same spot. That 20 bonus swing is a lot. So overall items with attack/defend bonus's tend to be weaker than they could be because of the swapping.
2) The large backpack means heroes can carry a LOT of item to swap which leads to a lot of swapping which means again keeping items at lower power for balance.
3) There is the obvious advantage of being the attacker and having unlimited swaps while the defender gets none.

Also swapping is tactical (like re-ordering your fight order is tactical). Some tactical options in a strategy game are good. Too many mean that tactical can over come strategy (long term planning) which is not good for a strategy game. It's a fine line to walk between being OK and being too much.

For example I think swapping items to one with use undead lore when attacking ruins is quite reasonable since it happens against neutral side rather than another player. I think a flight item being able to be dropped to assault anti-air units isn't. Its sort of like Porn. I don't know a perfect definition but I know it when I see it.

The attack/defend items are *right* on the boundary line between OK and not-OK. If I knew for sure that all items in a particular slot (Helmet) were either Attack or Defend then I'd be a lot happier allowing swapping items because you could not put on the Helmet of Attack and get +3 attack and later put on the Helmet of Defense and get +3 defense when your turn ends.

Also it would help if the backpack was reduced in size to say 2 extra items. That would force players into much some tough decisions if they acquire a lot of items.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Piranha, I think you should consider capping the total negate as proposed and applying it to Morale/bonus first, then applying the remainder to Fear/malus. So against a Grand Archon, a +10morale, -10fear hero becomes +0morale, -4fear hero.

KGB, I'm in full agreement with you about the negate. Regarding siege weapons, however, I think we should re-think their attributes. What you say is right: projectile siege weapons, particularly those that are mobile, are useful outside of siege battles. However, that is represented effectively by their combat power. Their bonus during siege attempts represents their increased effectiveness in specific situations. What is not clear is why something like a battering ram or siege tower has combat power outside of siege battles. Or even any combat power at all. We must assume siege machines have some armed crew, given their ability to assault targets alone. Otherwise, rams should provide a heavy bonus to siege armies and have no combat power of their own. They should also be considered dismantled when not involved in siege, and travel relatively quickly.

You really think a mandatory equip is necessary? What about a yes/no prompt?

Ken, part of the reason behind the proposed restriction is that it allows you to have more items, and more powerful items, in the game. It would be an absolute rule that enables balancing. In game mechanic terms, it becomes a standard tool for balancing like the 8-unit stack max. You balance the units according to that limitation, and it allows you to have specialized units and powerful units without unbalancing the game. Items right now are too unrestricted in their use, and so they can't become common nor very powerful because the initiative for abuse is too wide open. If you enforced a limiting rule like the one proposed, you could then balance powerful items, unusual item abilities, and even large numbers of items without much difficulty.

This for the benefit of anyone considering the proposition:
Imagine, if you will, being able to buy/acquire all kinds of items for your heroes with the current system. The ability to switch your hero's attributes around any way you please for each battle would be unbalancing. The effects of items would therefor have to be very limited or even very insignificant.

Now imagine instead acquiring very powerful items under the current system. The two balancing options are to either give the items a downside (such as group-flight items rendering your units vulnerable to anti-flier attacks), or to make them rare or difficult to acquire. The second option relies on luck of the draw or makes the items never come into play, so you're either unbalanced again (and unwilling to play a game where someone else has a +12 morale sword) or bored for lack of powerful items. The first option is easily circumvented by the current rules where you can use and remove items at will. No good options there.

Now imagine, on the other hand, a system in which items of many levels and attributes are available to players, but where players cannot swap items between battles nor at the end of a turn after moving their hero. So now you can have group-flight items, because you can't hop over your enemies' mountain range and remove the Ring of Flight immediately, suffering no vulnerability or downside. You can have +15 attack items because they can also be -15 defense, and so you can have powerful items that are well balanced. You can have +20 personal defense shields that give -3 movement because the player won't be able to simply skip the penalty and reequip them at the end of a turn.

I don't know if I have illustrated the case well enough, but with this one restriction you'd be able to open up the horizon of items completely and still keep them easily balanced. Items could then be purchased from merchants or as holy articles from temples, etc. No threat of unbalancing play.

[LPhillips]

There's an exploit which I think you were hinting at, KGB. The exploit will be that items can be dropped and then picked up to change equipment. Even if you flagged items with the turn they were last picked up, you'd still be able to get two free equipment changes per backpack item for a hero each turn.

If you mean a mandatory equip and no option to replace items already equipped, then I see where you're going. But the important part is excluding the possibility that items picked up from the ground can replace others mid-turn, right? So the iron rule that items can never be removed after initial movement would have to be enforced in all situations for my proposed system to work. Unless someone wants to do some serious item-flagging programming for newly generated items.

One major objection to restricting item types' functions as an alternate system is that it doesn't allow counterbalances on items. So you can't enforce positive and negative attributes, and I think you're back to the point where items have to be of very limited significance to the game. No high group bonus, group flight, etc. unless you impose item-specific restrictions, which becomes a pain by way of complexity.

[kenc80]

I think you guys are making this way more complicated than it should be and the code involved in making rules and stuff for monitoring swapping would be tough and likely ineffective I bet.

The main unbalancing item is the flying item that allows ground units to be flown. In Warlords 2 flying devils and elephants over mountain ranges in erytheria was the ultimate weapon and almost completely unstoppable.

So lets just take out the fly item, keep the +12 swords and helmets and maybe make the backpack smaller. Look the whole idea of questing and taking a chance in a ruin is the opportunity to pick up a fun & RARE item. Its not like there are a TON of +/- double digit items out there. I've rarely encountered them and I am whoring ruins with the best of them in the new beta. This is not an endemic problem IMO. I mean honestly how often have you seen a hero with +- items beyond 3 or 6. Cmon admit it. This is a rare occasion.

Ken