Is it intended that Sweep Strikeback can hit enemies on cliffs, otherwise unreachable? I can understand Drones, Ancients and Driders because they´re flying and ranged, but vinesnakes, warlocks and foragers should probably not have that ability. It makes the ability useful, but I fail to see how it makes any practical sense.



I haven´t checked circular strike, but I think the same applies.

You can already do that by giving "make peace not war" to a bunch of custom AIs.

I´m sure an option for "No War" mode would significantly shift the balance of the game, especially multiplayer. All of a sudden Drakken are no longer op and Roving Clans are a more than reasonable choice for competitive experience. The Mercenaries mechanics would have to be greatly improved though, or even many questlines would be simply impossible.

I think it would improve balance if Dust Dredger and Dust Filtration had slightly less Industry cost compared to Empire Mint, so that the opportunity to buy it out through dust shows itself slightly earlier. Depending on the change, it would barely affect the usual amount of turns to produce it.

Yes, I think it the late game army should take damage every single one of those turns.



Besieging a city is not easy, especially when there´s heavy opposition inside a well built structure. If there was interest in the idea, it´s possilbe to make the damage the attackers take be more significant when there´s a lot of ranged units in garrison instead of melees. It´s possible to make only ranged unints deal damage during siege defense, but that would highly unbalance their utility.



I also like the idea of defensive improvements, they can all be tied together. I clearly love Endless Legend, but honestly, I feel it´s a military game with way too simplistic military gameplay.

BPrado wrote:
About Privateers:



When you turn Mercenaries into Privateers, you can´t reinforce battles of that army. You can have 20 privateer armies, and they will all have to fight one at a time. A restriction makes sense, because they cost Dust and not Industry. But a complete restriction renders them close to useless.



What I suggest is that when you engage in battle with a Privateer army, the battle window gives you a Checkbox option on all other Privateers in reinforcement range, which tells you how much it would cost to get that army to reinforce the battle. The cost should be steep, because allowing a reinforcement can be as good as getting an entire new army (because you could have lost an entire army otherwise). Late game Roving Clans and Broken Lords wouldn´t mind probably.

Oh you have right. I did not know that.



The poors Roving Clans is the weakest faction and would really profit from that. I added it to the suggestions list, and added too that any privateers army which have razed a city, should make you gain dust or industry reserve. I mean, if the cultist can do that, this bonus would be ok for the Roving Clans (which need new bonus).

About Sieges:



I suggested that the army performing a siege should take damage, not the one suffering it - this one already loses HP every turn. It´s just ridiculous to think an army would sit outside a city´s walls and find no resistance whatsoever. If there´s no one shooting them , why don´t they just climb the walls?



Fortifications are not a very hard box into which people go and stay there hoping their attacker will just leave. They´re places people climb into to throw stuff down and hurt who´s trying to hurt them. Besieging in endless legend costs absolutely nothing for the besieger. This makes no sense.

- Again I think it is a bad idea. Your interpretation of siege as a combat it possible, but another interpretation is possible : if the city fortification decrease, it's because the troops prevent any person to leave the city, and because a siege equipement is used to get down the walls and the fortificaiton. That may "explain" why the attacked don't loose health.



- Moreover, consider this new argument : imagine a siege in late game. An invading army come and siege an advanced fortificed city of 400 points of forticications, and 8 units in garrison. Do you think it would be decent that each turn, the invading army takes damages ? 400 turns would need some turns to been reduced to zero, and the invading army would be very hurted, without any fight.



- I think it is better to work on the idea to augment the defenser strenght (as more moral for the garrisoned units), and new map improvements (as a "district" fortress buildable outside the city, to fire upon the ennemy and give a zone of control and slowness of ennemy units).

Starting Position Bias:



This means Broken Lords´s capital don´t spawn on grassland or wet forest, Vaulters don´t spawn on every single tile with science plus a bunch of industry and happiness anomalies, Cultist don´t spawn on regions they can´t possibly have a level 3 district, etc.

Ah ok I understand. I agree with you. I proposed to give a game option to prevent anomalies spawn in starting region, with a proximity each others of less than 3 hexagone. Like that it would not be possible to exploit one than hexagone with your first district.

I´ve read your suggestions quickly before, as soon as I have the time to comment on them propperly, I will. Lots of good stuff there.



I´ll try to address mainly the things you´ve disagreed with or might have not understood completely.



About healing:



In my main propositions, I only intend to talk about Turn Healing, not Battle Healing, just to be clear. Basically what I want to do is to make only armies who are inside friendly territory or stopped anywhere outside friendly territory to be able to heal. I can imagine it would be very hard to be done, I can even imagine this would simply not fit the design idea the developers have in mind.



I´m actually pretty sure they´re aware of what I consider "excess of healing" and have chosen to do the game exactly this way. I just don´t like it and don´t think it´s a good choice.



And yeah, Broken Lords healing would be really something under this logic.



About maintenance:



Well, the cost of keeping armies on your lands and on foreign deployments is, objectively, very different, but the suggestion wasn´t as much for the sake of realism, as it was a way to try and propose something to make Dust Upkeep go up the way Dust Production can go. I might have changed my mind lately trying Necrofages, these people never have cash, but everyone else is like - you spend 60 turns broke, happy when you get +10/turn, then suddenly you´re making +390/turn. Yielding scaling in EL is completely crazy.



About Privateers:



When you turn Mercenaries into Privateers, you can´t reinforce battles of that army. You can have 20 privateer armies, and they will all have to fight one at a time. A restriction makes sense, because they cost Dust and not Industry. But a complete restriction renders them close to useless.



What I suggest is that when you engage in battle with a Privateer army, the battle window gives you a Checkbox option on all other Privateers in reinforcement range, which tells you how much it would cost to get that army to reinforce the battle. The cost should be steep, because allowing a reinforcement can be as good as getting an entire new army (because you could have lost an entire army otherwise). Late game Roving Clans and Broken Lords wouldn´t mind probably.



About Sieges:



I suggested that the army performing a siege should take damage, not the one suffering it - this one already loses HP every turn. It´s just ridiculous to think an army would sit outside a city´s walls and find no resistance whatsoever. If there´s no one shooting them , why don´t they just climb the walls?



Fortifications are not a very hard box into which people go and stay there hoping their attacker will just leave. They´re places people climb into to throw stuff down and hurt who´s trying to hurt them. Besieging in endless legend costs absolutely nothing for the besieger. This makes no sense.



Starting Position Bias:



This means Broken Lords´s capital don´t spawn on grassland or wet forest, Vaulters don´t spawn on every single tile with science plus a bunch of industry and happiness anomalies, Cultist don´t spawn on regions they can´t possibly have a level 3 district, etc.



"But you have to play the cards you´re dealt"

Only if the structure of the game allows the competition to be levelled through other means than hard power. You can fold a hand of poker, you can bluff on an insecure person, you have to ask for the card that will kill you on you blackjack. This line of thought doesn´t apply to 4x. There needs to be a minimum of balance of opportunities, or other types of restriction to a lucky player other than the availability of choices.



About initiative:



I was not talking about whether you or the enemy goes first when initiative is tied, but rather when two of your own units are tied. The most annoying really is that sometimes the deployment phase shows one order, and then when the attaks are performed, the order changes and movement is screwed up.





thanks for all the comments, I´ll drop by your thread soon

BPrado wrote:
I´ll use this thread for whatever suggestions come to mind, I don´t think there´s any need for several different threads. It will be a long thread, but I really think I have something to say (don´t we all).

Please feel free to criticize. I haven´t tried a single multiplayer game of Endless Legend - mainly because of the things I say here - but I do have a reasonable experience with 4x - enough for example to suspect from game one this would be a ridiculously aggresive game on MP, as I have confirmed after coming here and reading some about it.

Introdution about the natural anti snowballing effect in multiplayer competitive games :



- I got the same point of view to say that the conquest path should be more harder. But before commenting your analyse, I want to say something.



- As we know, the snowball effect of the conquest are nearly unlimited in Endless Legend (offense > defense, assimilation of ennemy cities is super fast). So yes, the multiplayer game rewards the well done rushs and the aggressiveness.



- But there is something good that maybe you underevaluate in multiplayer : a player wich has early rushed and conquered another player, and start to snowballing fast, will quickly be exposed to a severe punishement, in the form of a two main threats : the multi front, and the war alliance against him.



* Multi front : a human can attack anywhere, from neutral regions, and it is very difficult to defend in two place at the same time especially if it is early game.



* War alliance : and it is evern harder if you are attacked by two persons at the same time !



- So, I know you are a very experimented perso and I am sure you knew that, but I wanted to say it for the other people too. If you play with really good players, you are often exposed to these two events.



- My thesis is : In multiplayer, the intelligence and the reactivity of the others humans players has to be the main counter mechanism to the conquest strategy, before any artificial mechanism. So, that is why if you plan multiplayer with good players, I think your opinion may become more conservatice about the current mechanisms. Let the natural selection take place. ^^



- I wish like you that the devs will reinforce the defense over the defense, or diminush the speed of assimilation of conquered cities, but I will not want the path of aggression and conquest are too nerfed, because it is the essence of the multiplayer game, and one of the main pleasure of playing. Personnaly I would prefer that the devs work on to give really more support to the defensive player and more region control to him, rather than diminush too much the conquest rewarding (as it is in Civ V in my opinion).

I think Endless Legend is great fun, with impressive replayability considering the apparent narrow variety of factions available. I think its strongest points are pretty obvious - it´s a beautiful game, with a rich lore, fun mechanics and refreshing RPG atmosphere.



But I see a couple of major flaws which tend to remove what I think are important aspects of the game from the usual dynamics that make it so engaging.



In general lines, the first of them has to do with the relation between offensive/defensive effort. Military history has taught us that, under similar levels of technology, a defensive military effort has every advantage over an offensive invading one; that is not true in Endless Legend. For several reasons, keeping offensive armies and an offensive diplomatic stance is incomparably more efficient in order to achieve victory than holding a defensive stance - and in my view, the advantages should be comparable.

Ideas to give to the defensive player ways to greatly reinforce his defense ways :



These ideas come from my list of suggestions for Endless Legend. I reproduce it here if it can help the inspiration : Link.



- (Unprecise suggestion) Create chokepoints on your regions : Defence is important but not enough under control of the players :

*Players should be able to build walls at improvements.

*Walls could be used to force the enemy to pass by a certain way, slower, or more easy to defend.

*Wall have a cost of 50 production each. Destroying a wall need at least 3 units and prevent the army from moving for one turn (no battle needed).

*Walls lines cannot be close from less than 4 hexagons (to prevent full walling).

*Walls cannot be built if an enemy unit is near an enemy (faction at war) from 4 hexagons.

*Wall cannot be used as extractors and should be auto-destroyed before.

*Wall could be upgraded with specific technology or race tech, to prevent flying units invasion. Firing tower could be buildable etc.



- (Unprecise suggestions) Create new defensives buildings and improvements : Endless Legend does not really create defensive situation for cities, or give opportunity to enforce the strategic defence of yours cities. An invader can siege a city for free, can move back when he wants when he sees the danger coming. To change this situation could create really interesting defensive situation, where the invader must avoid a city or come with more units. Here are several ideas.



*Hero cannot be affiliated to units when they are not in a friendly territory : It make impossible to approach with flying/fast cavalry units then giving hero to the stack at the last moment. Which it's not logical and fair.



*Cutting roads for strategical reason : You should be able to don't build road which go from your city to a city which is not yours. It is not logical to be forced to see these roads builded. So, you should be able to pick a road to a new city and make it destroyed in 3 turns. And, if you want, to reactivate it (for free), in 3 turns.



*Choosing where to build the watchtowers : You should be able to build your watchtowers where you want. The automatic choice is for the kidds. A player may want a tower to have scout, or may want to renforce the regeneration of his units on a designed point in his region. I think it may be very interesting too if hero could build magical watchtowers in neutral or ennemy land. A magical tower which consume dust each turn and can be destroyed but not by neutral armies. It could be an ardent mage spell exclusivity.



*Create a temporary quagmire : 3 units can transform in one turn two contingents hexagons in quagmire of one your region (one per region max). The quagmire need 3 units which work one turn, but is finished in two turns not one (to avoid the instant trap in one turn). The quagmire long last 5 turns and affect any units even friendly units. Any unit(s) which pass by one of these two hexagons is blocked two turns inside (this turn and the other) and any combat which occurs in quagmire give a malus of displacement and defence in the combat zone where the stuck units begin the combat. Displacement is like in forest, and defence is -50 %.



*Campaign fortress : A single separated district which act as a zone of control which prevent any unit to pass by a 3 hexagons zone without passing by the fortress. The fortress have a garrison which you can use. One fortress max per region.



*City gate & high wall : It prevent any unit to attack and conquer the city until the fortification as down to 100. A logical way which protect a city to any invasion even when the city has only milician defenders.



*City goat suburb : A circle of water of one hexagon dimension protect the city suburbs. Any enemy unit need two turns (the actual turn + the next) to cross the goat and attack the city. Leaving the city circumference need two turns again (unless the city is fall and become a friendly region).



*Defence tower : An auto fire tower who target any enemies each turn.



*Magical winds : Ardents mages new pillar which prevent in a circle zone of a friendly zone, any flying unit to fly. Efficient in situation where you fear an attack of flying units. Flying units can still move as their normal speed, but they cannot fly in combat or in the map.

The second has to do with opportunity costs and pace scaling, which are directly related to how much more advantageous it is to expand militarily than peacefully.

See, when every tile counts for the total yield, and the anomaly´s distribution is completely random, the possible "max/min"s are very wide. Since the game doesn´t seem to lock certain factions away from terrain that lack the minimum amount of vital resources for the initial 20 turns, the snowballing effects from losing a couple of turns trying to find sub-optimal yields in comparison to the snowballing effects of a faction which already got optimal yields from turn 1 make the production battle for turn 20 warfare completely unwinnable for the weaker side. There is not a single defensive mechanic or game dynamic which is able to make up for a poor total amount of Industry in the extremely short term - and at the same time the game not only enables but actually influences the players to make war in the shortest term possible.

I agree with you. There should be a game option to limit the proximity of anomalies in the starting region. 3 hexagons of maximal proximity between them would make them unpossible to both exploit without an expansion.

For some time I thought there was a third one in the many apparently redundant mechanisms to improve yielding. But playing the game made me realize that perhaps they´re not redundant, and do in fact allow for larger replayability by making the same Victory Condition possible through reasonably different paths. The problem perhaps, if there is one, is that by making the game so much focused on Military Campaigns and the Victory Conditions a consequence of flat accumulation of yields, the most natural is that the simple amount of terrain owned by the leading faction is usually enough to provide him with Victory achieving yielding without high tier buildings and techs. That´s a natural consequence of wide-playing, but when there´s a weight on the side of the specialized condensed empire build, the simple "it´s so cool" factor counts heavily towards the players chosing to built things in order to actually use late-game buildings.



So, now follows a list of things I think would improve the game, especially in the things mentioned in the boring text.

-Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve engaged in battle, whether by their own will or engaged by enemy units. They shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve moved while being outside friendly territory. Units in a region shouldn´t be able to heal if the region´s capital is under siege. Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal while performing or being under reinforcement range of a siege.

Heal during the battle :



- I agree with the idea the units should not heal during a battle. I agree because I know it is easy to exploit. As you say, you can attack a small neutral faction force, just to heal your troops, but your healers cannot heal you out of come by themself.



- But I don't want to propose anything about it because I strongly doubt this mechanism can change because it would be complicated and time consuming for the devs to change it. And it is not really problematic as mechanism.



Heal between the game turns :



- I don't agree with you. The heal between the game turns is one important feature of the game and it gives some pleasure to the player to regenreate his hurted troops. Moreover it is crucial to have heal when you fight the neutral factions and it would be boring to have to get back to your territory when you do that.



- But I would be with you if the healing between turns is stopped only into the ennemy major faction lands (unless you got a friendship agreement), to give a small boost to offense. But the question is : would it concearn the broken lords dust healing ? It is their main advantage in war. I would say no, because it is a full magical healing.

- Units on enemy´s territory should pay double maintenance. Units on neutral territory should pay 1.5x maintenance. Mercenaries should pay double every value.

I don't agree because it is complicated and not so logical. The game already make a maintenance distinction between units in garrison (no need logistics)/units outside, units grouped in an army / units ungrouped. It would be complicated to introduce this new distinction. Even if we can think you have right in the realism, others defensive boost feature could do the job.

-Privateers should have an option to reinforce other privateers through Dust.

I don't understand. Do you mean that privateers should have access to equipement ? If yes I agree, especially with Roving Clans.

-Units performing a siege should take small damage every turn proportional to the size of the garrison under siege, but not to the size of fortifications.

- Not agree. Garrisson is not fighting under siege, they are just waiting inside the city. If they are fighting, they should be hurted too. And players would not like to see their troops hurted for no reason.



- I think it would be more simple and elegant to use the moral mechanism to boost the garrisoned units. We could say that each units in garrison including militians have a natural +3 moral bonus, wherever the battle occurs (at the city or outside, in attack or defense). With this bonus, even if the defensor player decide to attack the siege player, it is still interesting because it keeps the bonus (it does not only concearn the situations where the city is attacked but all fight situations into the region).

-Starting position bias.

What does it mean ?

-Colonized regions could provide the player with presets of units, using the factions´ firsts and adding little pieces of available equipment.

I think it is too complicated. Player would have to remember what region has been conquered, what other has been colonised. But maybe I don't fully understand your suggestion, my english is mediocre.

-Allow combat movement to a tile that´s occupied in the beginning of the turn, but which will be unoccupied by the time the units acts.

I agree.

-Introduce an Infantry unit type/Weapon type(halberd) with melee zone of attrition. Introduce a Ranged unit type/Weapon type(Whip) with anti-flying zone of attrition. Zone of attrition would be a chance to deal 50% damage at no cost to any unit moving within engagement range, as long as it happens before the unit´s turn in the round.

Looks interesting but I fear it would be too complicated to manage by the A.I. Solutions whic

natev wrote:
I think that if you want to reduce the impact of military aggression on winning EL, what you need is some way to have non-military conflict. Because without the military side of things, right now, there aren't enough variables, and the same player and faction is going to win every single game, and there won't be anything any other player can do about it.



Real civilizations pollute each others lands/waters/airs, act as tax havens, shame each other, provide and withdraw aid, impose trade sanctions and tariffs, allow insurgents of enemy countries to operate from within their borders, train and equip insurgents, make texts (or other art) available that conflict with other countries' cultures, refuse to extradite criminals, act as headquarters to groups that exploit other countries' people and resources, grant asylum to political criminals. All of those are meaningful things because approval, in real-life, is a really important stat, and a really complicated stat,

That´s very ambitious. Makes me think influence should have more offensive applications - maybe a little like I suggested the espionage system here -, or perhaps there should be a new yield altogether that could represent this.



Your comment obviously makes me think of how Brave New World changed cultural victory in Civ5 to something amazing, at least compared to what it was before. It went from a boring flat accumulation of yields (culture) to a counterbalance between an offensive yield (Tourism) and a defensive/social one (Culture). In the end, the offensive part ends up being all about food, but the new dynamic was a success imo.







It´s hard to define Influence. The way the game works, it leads to me to understand it as Political Influence, which is not "influence" per se, as much as it´s a "coercion power". The word influence can be linked to direct effects on things, which political power cannot exert alone. Everyone can really like you but simply not care about what you say because you can´t really do anything about it.



There could be an actual "Power" yield, something to measure how much of an impact your faction has on the planet and it´s surroundings, and which could clash with other faction´s power and influence for different bonuses, leeches, revolts, embargoes, etc...



As I said, it´s an ambitious thought, it´s hard to come up with anything concrete, but indeed something to think about, thanks.

I think that if you want to reduce the impact of military aggression on winning EL, what you need is some way to have non-military conflict. Because without the military side of things, right now, there aren't enough variables, and the same player and faction is going to win every single game, and there won't be anything any other player can do about it.



Real civilizations pollute each others lands/waters/airs, act as tax havens, shame each other, provide and withdraw aid, impose trade sanctions and tariffs, allow insurgents of enemy countries to operate from within their borders, train and equip insurgents, make texts (or other art) available that conflict with other countries' cultures, refuse to extradite criminals, act as headquarters to groups that exploit other countries' people and resources, grant asylum to political criminals. All of those are meaningful things because approval, in real-life, is a really important stat, and a really complicated stat,

I want to propose something about the battlefield. I think the last line of each player´s own side should be completely available for deployment. It would enable only two extra tiles for defensive deployment, but I suppose it would greatly increase the amount of tactics involved. It enables the players interested on defense at least one unflankable corner, from which they would also not be able to leave most times - not to mention greatly reducing their capabilities of covering early reinforcements.



Further, I think it would be a good idea if the late extra reinforcement positions were put in these spots. They´re more exposed in the sense that you will never be able to fully surround it with morale-boosting units and low initiative means their immediate front is exposed. But at the same time, the enemy would need to funnel if it wished to keep morale high while pressing that spot, which would tend to leave breaches through which you can then reach their reinforcements, even with less initiative.



I think it´s worth toying with it in your head, there are several interesting situations.

I´ll use this thread for whatever suggestions come to mind, I don´t think there´s any need for several different threads. It will be a long thread, but I really think I have something to say (don´t we all).

Please feel free to criticize. I haven´t tried a single multiplayer game of Endless Legend - mainly because of the things I say here - but I do have a reasonable experience with 4x - enough for example to suspect from game one this would be a ridiculously aggresive game on MP, as I have confirmed after coming here and reading some about it.



I think Endless Legend is great fun, with impressive replayability considering the apparent narrow variety of factions available. I think its strongest points are pretty obvious - it´s a beautiful game, with a rich lore, fun mechanics and refreshing RPG atmosphere.



But I see a couple of major flaws which tend to remove what I think are important aspects of the game from the usual dynamics that make it so engaging.



In general lines, the first of them has to do with the relation between offensive/defensive effort. Military history has taught us that, under similar levels of technology, a defensive military effort has every advantage over an offensive invading one; that is not true in Endless Legend. For several reasons, keeping offensive armies and an offensive diplomatic stance is incomparably more efficient in order to achieve victory than holding a defensive stance - and in my view, the advantages should be comparable.



The second has to do with opportunity costs and pace scaling, which are directly related to how much more advantageous it is to expand militarily than peacefully.

See, when every tile counts for the total yield, and the anomaly´s distribution is completely random, the possible "max/min"s are very wide. Since the game doesn´t seem to lock certain factions away from terrain that lack the minimum amount of vital resources for the initial 20 turns, the snowballing effects from losing a couple of turns trying to find sub-optimal yields in comparison to the snowballing effects of a faction which already got optimal yields from turn 1 make the production battle for turn 20 warfare completely unwinnable for the weaker side. There is not a single defensive mechanic or game dynamic which is able to make up for a poor total amount of Industry in the extremely short term - and at the same time the game not only enables but actually influences the players to make war in the shortest term possible.



For some time I thought there was a third one in the many apparently redundant mechanisms to improve yielding. But playing the game made me realize that perhaps they´re not redundant, and do in fact allow for larger replayability by making the same Victory Condition possible through reasonably different paths. The problem perhaps, if there is one, is that by making the game so much focused on Military Campaigns and the Victory Conditions a consequence of flat accumulation of yields, the most natural is that the simple amount of terrain owned by the leading faction is usually enough to provide him with Victory achieving yielding without high tier buildings and techs. That´s a natural consequence of wide-playing, but when there´s a weight on the side of the specialized condensed empire build, the simple "it´s so cool" factor counts heavily towards the players chosing to built things in order to actually use late-game buildings.



So, now follows a list of things I think would improve the game, especially in the things mentioned in the boring text.



-Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve engaged in battle, whether by their own will or engaged by enemy units. They shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve moved while being outside friendly territory. Units in a region shouldn´t be able to heal if the region´s capital is under siege. Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal while performing or being under reinforcement range of a siege.



-Units on enemy´s territory should pay double maintenance. Units on neutral territory should pay 1.5x maintenance. Mercenaries should pay double every value.



-Privateers should have an option to reinforce other privateers through Dust.



-Units performing a siege should take small damage every turn proportional to the size of the garrison under siege, but not to the size of fortifications.



-Starting position bias.



-Colonized regions could provide the player with presets of units, using the factions´ firsts and adding little pieces of available equipment.



-Allow combat movement to a tile that´s occupied in the beginning of the turn, but which will be unoccupied by the time the units acts.



-Introduce an Infantry unit type/Weapon type(halberd) with melee zone of attrition. Introduce a Ranged unit type/Weapon type(Whip) with anti-flying zone of attrition. Zone of attrition would be a chance to deal 50% damage at no cost to any unit moving within engagement range, as long as it happens before the unit´s turn in the round.



-Allow ranged units to automatically deal damage when engaging embarked units.



-Make Force Truce even more expensive. Account to the fact Drakken can get 4x the influence everyone else does from turn 1.



-Make a retreating army take damage proportional to the difference between the total amount of movement points(for each and every unit, added) left in both armies, as well as an extra damage for overwhelming, say, when one side has 3 or 4 times the amount of combined damage, or something else.



-There should be a clear and rigid rule for which unit takes initiative when values are tied (or something could tell the player if there is one); and maybe more importantly, the order listed when you´re deploying commands should remain the same when the commands are executed.



-Minor Faction quests that ask you to destroy a settlement which you later pacify should all be automatically cancelled when you do.



Thanks for all the patience.

-Regarding 6th era techs: I believe that if they unlocked benefits gradually as you research them, they would be better fit for any victory, like a regular tech, and not just for scientific. I think this could also present the game with a balance between "tall and wide" approaches to teching the 6th era tree.



Say:



Endless Alloys - at 20% the total research: +15% industry on cities; at 40%: +30% industry on cities; at 60%: +45% industry on cities +1 industry from Strategic Resources; at 80%: +60% industry on cities; at 100%: +100% industry on cities +1 industry from Strategic Resources.



and so forth...

HiroProtag wrote:
I think these are great fixes for tipping the balance of power from the attacker back to the defender. Your suggestions about healing are a bit complicated. I think it could be simplified to this: Units do not regenerate if they end their turn in enemy territory. ("Enemy" here would probably include "cold war" status, not just "war" status. My source for this is that cities are labeled "enemy city" or something like "friendly city" and cities of empires you're in cold war with have the "enemy city" label.)

You´re right, it´s complicated. To your version, I´d only add something about battle too, since I think limiting it to regions would then unbalance the dynamic in favor of the defender. And maybe "unfriendly" is better clear than "enemy".

So: Units do not regenerate if they end their turn in unfriendly territory or engage in battle. How about that?



This won´t include a type of healing I had expected to be in, though. Foraging off the land should be simple for a military group pretty much anywhere, but it takes effort. I had hoped that a player could choose to stay put in a single spot for an entire turn, even in hostile territory, and then get the healing bonus (as long as they don´t have to fight too).

I also wonder if healing in combat should be nerfed. Say I have an army with some damaged units and some healer units. On the main map, my healers cannot heal the other units. What are my healers doing while they just sit there not fighting?! But once that army gets into a combat, even just a random wandering army of two monsters, my healers can fully restore all the HP of all the units, for six rounds, unless I accidentally kill the last monster before round six, in which case the combat ends early.



My suggestions for healers would be this:

- If a unit enters combat with less than full health, any "Heal" effects in that combat cannot restore that unit's HP above the HP it started that combat with. This removes the "milking combat to heal my wounded army" exploit.

- Units with "Heal" ability slightly increase the health regeneration per turn of all units in the army with them (even in enemy territory, if the above change is implemented). This makes up for the loss of the exploit and just generally makes more sense to me.

Your suggestions are great really. I´d easily add "Units with "Heal" ability slightly increase the health regeneration per turn of all units in the army with them (even in enemy territory)" to the suggestions in my own post, since I think that would fit perfectly.



And the healing cap to your Current Max HP could even be added to the game as it is, ignoring everything else I suggested.



I´m not sure the two would go together though.



And that´s because - now I address the first part of this second quote - I think healing units are already very well balanced in battle yielding. They´re all extremly fragile in some way, except for the healing Heroes, and require either complex armies or favourable meta and terrain situations to be really worthwhile and not a liability.



Even the strongest imo - Dust Bishop - are almost exclusively for scenarios where your defense is the dictating stat of the battle. They have a hard time facing average-stats armies with high damage, because they´ll hardly ever deal full damage in order to heal efficiently while the stalwarts in front of them are taking full high damage every now and then. You only start to get a good proportion between bishops/stalwarts/ryders at 8 units.



Before that, too many healers means stalwarts won´t be able to defend all of them, too many stalwarts means you won´t deal damage, too many ryders means too many wounded units per battle. It´s better to go for defensive infantry/cavalry with high damage and simply use shock tactics - which would leave slow Bishops behind to die.



Considering the changes I propose, if healers couldn´t be used to hang out healing a badly wounded cavalry for example, during an unexpected battle, they would barely be useful at all during most the game.



Thanks for the useful comments!

BPrado wrote:


-Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve engaged in battle, whether by their own will or engaged by enemy units. They shouldn´t be supposed to heal whenever they´ve moved while being outside friendly territory. Units in a region shouldn´t be able to heal if the region´s capital is under siege. Units shouldn´t be supposed to heal while performing or being under reinforcement range of a siege.



-Units on enemy´s territory should pay double maintenance. Units on neutral territory should pay 1.5x maintenance. Mercenaries should pay double every value.



-Units performing a siege should take small damage every turn proportional to the size of the garrison under siege, but not to the size of fortifications.

I think these are great fixes for tipping the balance of power from the attacker back to the defender. Your suggestions about healing are a bit complicated. I think it could be simplified to this: Units do not regenerate if they end their turn in enemy territory. ("Enemy" here would probably include "cold war" status, not just "war" status. My source for this is that cities are labeled "enemy city" or something like "friendly city" and cities of empires you're in cold war with have the "enemy city" label.)



I also wonder if healing in combat should be nerfed. Say I have an army with some damaged units and some healer units. On the main map, my healers cannot heal the other units. What are my healers doing while they just sit there not fighting?! But once that army gets into a combat, even just a random wandering army of two monsters, my healers can fully restore all the HP of all the units, for six rounds, unless I accidentally kill the last monster before round six, in which case the combat ends early.



My suggestions for healers would be this:

- If a unit enters combat with less than full health, any "Heal" effects in that combat cannot restore that unit's HP above the HP it started that combat with. This removes the "milking combat to heal my wounded army" exploit.

- Units with "Heal" ability slightly increase the health regeneration per turn of all units in the army with them (even in enemy territory, if the above change is implemented). This makes up for the loss of the exploit and just generally makes more sense to me.

Level 3 Ministry Sabotage Acts:



-These acts have to target a specific city. The spy will test the determinate yield on the target and on your capital. You capital should have an outstanding advantage in order for the spy to have a high chance of succeeding. The exact proportion is a matter of balance.



-Economy and Population: Incite Corruption - +100% Building maintainance on city for 5 turns. tests dust output.

-Military: Intelligence Disruption - -2 vision on Watchtowers for 10 turns. tests influence.

-Science and Industry: Incite Xenophobia - -1science/pop for every 1 influence/pop on city for 10 turns. tests science.

-Empire and Expansion: Incite Labour Strike - City is unable to build region improvements for 10 turns. tests approval.



-After every action is taken, there should be a cooldown until the result (success/failure) is known. That time can depend on elements that balance out tall and wide. During this time, spies are particularly active and risk being caught and killed. They need to remain in the city until the result happens, unlike Ambassadors.



-After an Ambassador issues an action, the cooldown also happen, but the Ambassador´s presence is not required. That´s to balance the natural Close Embassy that should follow after a Target is warned about an action.



-On the other hand, closing embassies is very close to asking to have spies in your empire instead. The balance between the opportunity cost of keeping counter spies or sending away ambassadors and spies, ideally, should be very fine. A great deal of this balance depends on the Influence cost of these actions, which I haven´t mentioned because I have no idea how to balance that.

More thoughts on Embassies. I think the actions could provide some excitment for late game.



-Everyone has a very cheap Embassy proposal, a slightly more expensive Force Embassy; and once there´s one estabilished, a reasonably expensive Close Embassy one.



-It´s possible to assign more than one Ambassador/Spy to each faction. That doesn´t affect the time it takes or the intensity of actions, but you can take the same action with different Ambassadors/Spies. Actions cannot accumulate, unless coming from different factions.



-Actions can be taken in the overview for ambassadors/spies, sort of like like the city overview. They cost influence, and have a cooldown and a chance to have a result. The chance of Ambassador actions can be based on the relation between the output of a specific yield(dust, research, influence) in your Capital and on the Target´s Capital. Once an Ambassador action is taken, the target is warned so he can choose to increase the respective yielding to try and increase your chances of failure.



-Actions cannot be taken while their previous effects are still active.



-For the Ambassador actions that become available at level 4 Ministry plans, I thought of the following:



-Economy and Population - Unilateral Trades: For 5 turns, -1 food/pop on Target while your Dust output is higher the Target´s. - tests Dust output for success.

-Military - Threat of Destruction: For 10 turns, -5% attack on Target´s units on battles against your Units and Privateers. - tests Military score for success.

-Science and Industry - Incite Inferiority Complex: For 10 turns, -1 Industry/city tiles on Target while your Research output is higher than the Target´s. - tests Science output for success.

-Empire and Expansion - Condemn Imperialism: For 10 turns, -5 Approval on cities producing a Military Unit on Target. - tests Influence output for success



-All of these actions can be taken by Spies at a higher Influence cost and with no warning to the Target.



-Spies can be assigned to your Empire in order to act as counter intelligence. Every turn with a counter-spy on your empire follows: 3 to the n power, where n is the number of spies, with a cap at 65%. 1 Counter-spy=3% chance of killing enemy spies on action(during cooldown of their actions). 2 Counter-spies=9% chance, 3 counter-spies=27% chance, 4-6 counter-spies=65%.





That leaves the matter of the sabotage acts enabled with level 3 Ministries.

and any suggestion, of course

I´d like to suggest that the various Overviews become dependent on some mechanic - I think Ministries would make sense.



-Everyone could start with an ambassador, which once assigned to a known Faction is then able to provide with a continuous report on Score, Research and Population, as well as reducing the cost of diplomatic actions.



-As you increase technology level, you unlock additional Ambassadors. They can be moved around like Civ5´s spies.



-As you put influence in the different Ministries, your ambassadors get the ability to report the other fields. Economy and Population can reveal Population, Food and Dust outputs, Military can reveal Military i.i, Industry and Research can reveal Science and Industry outputs and Empire and Expansion can reveal Influence, Expansion and Approval.



-A single level of the Ministry provides the ability; but once you ask the Ambassador to evaluate, the graph will only be available in a number of turns (that can be dependent on Diplomacy status, number of Target cities and specific modifiers).



-A second level could decrease the time for the reports to arrive by a significant amount, as well as revealing the Target´s Victory Progression.



-A third level could provide different abilities for each Ministry. Economy and Population can enable Food Trade diplomatic option, a slight food bonus on trade routes between your cities and the Target Empire´s. Military could enable a Military Access diplomatic option, that enables your armies to be stationed inside the Target´s territory at no diplomatic penalty. Science and Industry could make Research Agreements cost one third of the price; and Empire and Expansion could provide a small Approval bonus for each allied Target.



-A fourth level could start influencing the Target negatively. I´m having trouble thinking of balanced things, I´d appreciate suggestions. I´ll come up with something anyway.



-Ambassadors are unassigned once war is declared (unless for some factions specific, or tech, or hero skill or wtv)





edit:



The Necrofages imposed me with a problem that can be turned into an opportunity. Since I don´t think bugs know what diplomacy is, they could start with a Spy instead, and have a discount on their actions.



-Embassadors and Spies´ actions are paid in Influence. The Roving Clans could perhaps research an option to pay them in Dust.



-Embassadors can be turned into Spies through a tier 3(?) tech. Spies act the same way for the first two levels of Ministry Influence, only much slower. Their advantage is that they can continue their operations on Targets which are at war with you, at the same rate. If you´re at war when assigning the Spy, it takes longer for them to start operating.



-Level 3 Ministries could enable several sabotage acts. They are terribly hard to balance, so I´m thinking and hoping for suggestions.



-Level 4 I was thinking they could again work the same way as Ambassadors (exerting bad influence), only at a much higher rate or intensity.



I welcome any suggestions and criticism.

abmpicoli wrote:
What every 4X strategy I know so far fails to model is the real cost of war. War cost people, cities cease to grow, your workforce die... Cities are razed and lose infrastructure... Occupied cities have uprisings and sabotage. The problem with the endless legend is that all infrastructure is kept intact, and after some turns, voilá! You have a full strength working force helping you



A good modeling for that is that an army in medieval times have to carry their own supplies... It can scavenge the land. But for that it takes time... A specialized unit that store supplies and that, if destroyed, will cause famine in the army... This would model the Winter Warrior that kicked Napoleon and Hitler's *ss...





And to replenish that supplies costs food.

I think Civ5 BNW does a nearly perfect job in balancing out tall and wide. If you read civfanatics you wouldn´t think so, which is funny because they all think they´re the ultimate deity player; but most actual deity players I know are convinced you not only can win through different means in different situations, as you have to know how to adapt if you want to win more than you lose. Tall and Wide in Civ5 is completely relative to each game.



And I love the suggestion of linking food to health regen. Again, Total War does that ^^. I´ll think of something.

What every 4X strategy I know so far fails to model is the real cost of war. War cost people, cities cease to grow, your workforce die... Cities are razed and lose infrastructure... Occupied cities have uprisings and sabotage. The problem with the endless legend is that all infrastructure is kept intact, and after some turns, voilá! You have a full strength working force helping you



A good modeling for that is that an army in medieval times have to carry their own supplies... It can scavenge the land. But for that it takes time... A specialized unit that store supplies and that, if destroyed, will cause famine in the army... This would model the Winter Warrior that kicked Napoleon and Hitler's *ss... And to replenish that supplies costs food.