Chronic Logic

A while back, I remember one of the developers saying that they crunched the numbers to determine exactly what the value was in buying a new unit, which means that they had a number to use to compare against the value you'd pay for each guaranteed buy.  I'd bet that the prices involved in buying a unit directly reflect the probability of getting that unit randomly.  The specific buys are NOT intended to be more cost-effective, but rather more time-effective and as such, less likely to irritate people.

If you still have big gaps in your full army and you don't NEED one specific unit to complete your list of doom, then you're probably going to gain more by buying units randomly than by purchasing specific ones.

Masons are awesome, especially when they fly, because of the quirky way you can manipulate how they move (and don't forget they can brick up your gate for the win).

Geomancer moving any building might be interesting, but I think they're one of the best-balanced units in the game at the moment.  To give them something else would destabilize that.

Strength potions stack.  This is a problem.

Quote from: Lunaraia on May 01, 2009, 01:55:34 PM
Seeing a te Lancer dosn't stop to attack unless he hit em head on...

Or if he reaches the end of his 4 movement...

I think I'd prefer if they could only attack on diagonals and not laterally.  Then a couple of them together could still hold off from any direction, but cannot combine attacks with one another.

 

The non-boulder strength potions killed my army based on flying a mason over and bricking up the enemy gate.  Now I can't deal with gate guards...

Of course, you're probably killing a 150-point assassin in doing so.  We already have the changeling and mimic at 150 points to indicate that using a unit of that value to capture an enemy unit is acceptable.

The high frequency of clockworks is the AI responding to specific units being present on the board: the priest or the dracolich.

In order to try to lessen the ease with which these units tackled the AI player, the computer now actively responds to them.  Unfortunately, it does so with EXTREME prejudice, producing frequently nothing BUT clockwork units.

Masons were changed to 3 actions, but continue to have a maximum of two when they climb a wall.

Well, from what I heard, units are going to lose summoned units when the summoner dies.  In order to ease this relationship with the lich transformation, it would certainly make a lich more interesting (and more of a sale of power) if all the undead lost to no longer having the necromancer made the lich more powerful instead.  Each pair of zombies lost increases the lich's starting hp by 2.  Each pair of skeletons lost increases the lich's actions by 1.  This would be exceptionally strong currently, but it could be balanced when all summoning units also have a cap on the number of things they can summon, so limiting the total benefit gained through the process and forcing the player to choose between hp or actions.

Another possible idea is to make the lich really strong, like 10 hp or something, and make it so that every attack costs 3 hp, but it still drains health from the target.  So, doing things like attacking mages and inorganic units is a net loss of health for the lich.  Perhaps this form should have an extra action.

I noticed this with barbarian, but it might be a problem with simply what's considered the end of a player's turn: in cooperative play, the game seems to treat the end of an ally's turn as the end your turn for abilities.  In the case of the barbarian, its life and power goes down to the default at the end of an ally's turn because it didn't attack during that turn.  This makes it somewhat less attractive for cooperative play.

Also, is there any word on the bug that causes army changes to not "stick" after hitting the 'Save and Exit' button on the army edit screen?  It seems even more common since the last patch.

Well, what about this idea?  I'm not sure what the summoner should give up to get this, but what if the summoner let you deploy anything you have that's still in the castle on top of a friendly unit, like the way an assassin deploys (except without stunning) once per turn?  They'd still have the usual deployment unusability, but there would be interesting synergies between them and footmen, shamen, and anything that can (or wants to) take a beating.

One possible drawback to add to the summoner in exchange for a more powerful or extra ability could be that units summoned (and damned) by the summoner are tied to that summoner.  When the summoner is killed/entombed/frogged/etc. all the units summoned by her are removed from play.

I don't know if anyone else thinks so, but to me, the Summoner is kind of the black sheep of the black mages category.  Its summons are very weak, but it can "upgrade" someone into a passable demon.  It summons fewer allies than does the necromancer.  It can convert an enemy if they've wandered within 2 of it.  So, it has less range, gives less of a numerical advantage, and can create less raw power than the other mages.

I think it needs to be spiced up some.  My idea is to remove the ability to damn a nearby unit to get a demon.  Instead, it should have a passive ability.  Whenever any unit dies within 2 of the summoner, it becomes a demon allied with the summoner.  If there are both an allied and an enemy summoner within range, the demon is on the same side as the unit was originally.  So, with a summoner around, you kill an enemy imp and you fight a demon afterwards.

The player who is actually using the summoner has to make the choice to get the summoner up to the front where things are dying, or to just have her stay back summoning and catching the odd tactician or newly spawned imp that dies.

Since we now seem to be adding things that modify units and abilities in the middle of the game, I thought I'd propose a new unit or two:

Group: White Mage
Alchemist
Hitpoints: 2
Actions: 1
Cost: 350

Abilities:
Move (range 1)

Grant strength potion (range 1):
  Gives the selected unit an additional ability that can be used once.  Using the ability drinks the potion, which takes an action and a command.  The effect lasts until the start of your next turn.  The unit is healed and gets +2 to power.  If used on a unit that already has a potion, that potion is replaced by a strength potion (a unit may have only one potion ability).

Grant speed potion (range 1):
  Gives the selected unit an additional ability that can be used once.  Using the ability drinks the potion, which takes an action and a command.  The effect lasts until the start of your next turn.  The unit is healed and has their movement range increased by 1.  If used on a unit that already has a potion, that potion is replaced by a strength potion (a unit may have only one potion ability).

Grant fading potion (range 1):
  Gives the selected unit an additional ability that can be used once.  Using the ability drinks the potion, which takes an action and a command.  The effect is to return the unit to the castle for redeployment.  If used on a unit that already has a potion, that potion is replaced by a strength potion (a unit may have only one potion ability).

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Group: Cultist
Madman
Hitpoints: 3
Actions: 3
Armor: 1
Power: 1
Cost: 100

Abilities
Move (range 1)

Attack (range 1)

Increase life and power (self, costs 2 actions)
  Using this ability increases the max hp and power of this unit by 1.

Sacrifice Ally(range 1)
  This ability kills an adjacent ally.  It offers no benefit, but has some subtle tactical uses.

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Finally, going off of an idea that had been mentioned on the Zatikon chat.  I can't remember who had the idea to begin with, but I thought I'd try to run with it.

Group: Scout
Spy
Hitpoints: 3
Actions: 2
Power: 3
Cost: 100

Abilities

Dodge: 1

Move (range 1)

Attack (range 1)

Swap positions (range 2)
  Select this ability, then select two organic units.  They exchange places.  This ability works on enemies as well as allies.  The spy cannot itself be selected.

Eh, I think it's fine.  The doppelganger clearly says that it will disappear if control of it is lost.  Requiring one to destroy one twin in order to claim the other is an interesting and somewhat deep tactical process.