These two combine to make a pretty great argument. If soldiers aren’t practical to replace, or recruits die without meaningfully influencing a battle it probably encourages save scumming.
For similar reasons I’m imsure whether its better to have the lowest or highest level hearthlings take the best equipment.
As a side note, I like that your post is focused on diagnostics over prescriptions. It seems like that would better effect changes.
Expertice: Once a citizen has reached max level in his job (also counts for combat classes), all future classes gain 100% more experience in that job. It’s like your culture has learned everything about the job and therefore it’s easier for future hearthlings to learn the job themselves. So even if you lose 1-2 soldiers in mid game, you can replace them quite fast since they level up very fast. I think that would also be realistic, because the same thing happens in real life. Once our science has learned something new over many years, future generations learn that stuff in the school or in their studies, which obviously consumes much less time.
What about something as in, when a hearthlings is near a level 6 hearthling they get X% more exp for what they do. That way it literally is like they are being taught by someone that is a master.
Hey @yshan, AaronD gave me an idea. Now that events can trigger recipes, how about make it so that a max level footman/knight/archer can craft “spark” the carpenter to create training dummies/targets for their respective class. Lower level soldiers could use these training dummies to help raise themselves up the first few levels.
This would allow for the challenge of keeping your troops alive to max level, but would still allow for easier recovery if you loose high level troops. Plus I’m all for sharing expertise.
I’m not sure about the level restrictions overall, I tend to lean more towards removing it but honestly my jury is still out.
However, I do think that any specialty weapons you get for some sort of ‘special event’ should not have a level restriction. What I mean is - if you kill a giant Zombie or a Necromancer (or whatever else) and they give you a giant bone axe or two handed sword, I think it should not have restrictions. The reason why is that it feels like a back-handed reward: ‘Congratulations, you killed a massive enemy and succeeded at something challenging - but you can’t use your reward for several more levels’. It could have no restrictions only for the soldier who succeeded at killing the enemy, but that seems a little odd. Yes I am suggesting that there be a break in the logic of weapons (if restrictions are here to stay), but due to gameplay, I think it makes sense to do so.
On the other hand, rewards could also be limited to not be given out unless one of the hearthlings is capable of using the item - but that seems like a little weak sauce. shrug eh, just some thoughts.
that would be an idea but I would like to add on that. could add ‘targets’ and other ‘training’ items so you could make a building that would look like a barracks ?
Now this would be great I guess. What it means is, that a footman for example can equip all armor/weapons (if they are for his class) right from the start. That means, there is NO level restriction! But what happens now: The longer this unit uses the weapon, the better he gets. So if you have a lvl 0 footman, he can equip a two-handed sword but since he has no experience with that weapon, he has no proficiency skills. There would proficiency skills for spears, sword, two handed swords, axes etc. These skills will provide more damage, more attack speed and so on.
I think this would also be much more realistic. I mean, a lvl 0 footman would realistically be able to pick up a two handed sword and swing it around, at least like an amateur. But the longer he uses a specific weapon type, the better he gets (more agile movement, stronger swings etc.).
But I do have a thought for consideration. Would this not be another form of Level Restriction?
As stated the Lv0 Footman could pickup the two-handed sword but since they are not proficient with it yet, it would be equivalent to a lesser weapon in damage. One could deduce that they would be better off with the lesser weapon and a shield.
Damage and Armor rating would still be based on the Hearlings level not the actually weapon or Armor. So after a combat wipe on Hard Mode, will the new Hearling survive to become more proficient? If this is the case than wouldn’t they survive to level up to use better weapons.
This would not overcome the initial issue/concern of being able to come back from a combat wipe during Hard Mode. But dose present an interesting mechanic to specialize your units.
You are not entirely wrong with your question. The proficiency skills shouldn’t have to much impact. So lets say you can get 6 levels with each weapon type. Now lets say you have a footman with lvl 6 two handed sword. In these 6 levels, you gain:
lvl 1 = +10% damage
lvl 2 = +10% attack speed
lvl 3 = +20% damage with powerful spike
lvl 4 = +20% damage with cleave
lvl 5 = +10% damage and attack speed
lvl 6 = can teach other footman to handle two handed swords better (+50% experience with two handed swords for other footman when close to this footman)
These are just some examples. What makes this interesting is, that the increasement in damage is not to high. You get +20% damage and +20% attack speed at lvl 5 which is not extemely overpowered (but still a nice boost) and then some skill specific boosts, which new footman don’t need anyway until they have learned the skills by themselves. If you manage to have a unit with lvl 6 two-handed swords, he makes it easier for you to teach other footman how to handle the two handed sword. So as long as you have at least 1 or 2 units with lvl 6 weapon proficiency, you can make a comeback, because you can learn the weapon skills much faster AND they are not as meaningful as the raw damage of the weapon itself.
The thing is: In early game, you only have access to low damage weapons and low defense armor. This is needed to give the game a balance against low level enemies. But later, you need more raw damage from the weapons. So even if you lose your high level soldiers, you at least have soldiers who deal good raw damage right from the start. Not as good as a soldier with lvl 6 weapon proficiency, but still better then a lvl 0 footman equipping a hammer with 11 damage.
This all just seems like it’s getting complicated to me.
I like the idea of removing level restrictions for Giant Bone gear.
edit: unlockable training dummies and archery targets also sounds like a good idea, that’s something that people have been asking for for a while now just for aesthetic reasons.
like in vanilla wow? sounds good to me and it would make sense to have training dummies in the city, where our soldiers train before they just run out. Maybe if we would also add specific dmg and armor types, like in warcraft. Pierce, cutting, elemental, siege dmg. Beating a stone golem with a sword or a pike would be kinda unrealistic, but smashing it into pieces with maces makes more sense. It would create a wide spectrum of possible weapon choices instead of pure dmg.
Additionaly we could have a “loadout setup” for soldiers, so we don’t have to equip each soldier individually, just create our own sets of armor and weapon combinations. So i can have 2 different loadouts for footman, one with smashing weapons and the other with something else.
Also dragon age had some nice mechanics regarding armor and weapon combinations, the type of armor effected the efficiency of your atks, your stamina and mana drain.
Alternative suggestion
How about we don’t do ANY of the things you guys are suggesting, keep the level restrictions. BUT whenever a units die, the next days equal to number of units that died will only spawn lower level monsters. This gives you some breathing space and allows you to level up your footmen again.
So the day difficulty would be something like this:
1-1-1-2-2-2-3-3-3-4-X-2-2-3-3-4-4-5-5-6-6-6
Where X is where 2 units died.
I think this kind of thing needs to happen regardless of the other suggestions. Can’t tell you how many times I have lost half my village (or the whole thing) just because I lost my combat team.
Ok, one more thought: The main point is: with level requirements on weapons it is impossible to recover from loosing your soldiers.
I agree, when you loose all your soldiers late game in hard mode, you die. But is that so bad? I believe this is exactly the way it should be and today’s desktop tuesday reassured me in that view. In hard mode, you die for your mistakes. As simple as that. I like it. (And you could always re-load if you want, no-one can stop you)
The problem is, that soldiers can die way to fast in endgame. If you are unlucky and your lvl 6 footman gets targeted by 3 enemies with bows + an ogre, he has no chance to survive at all, even with 2 clerics (1 arrow does 1/8 - 1/4 damage). Ifd 6 arrows hit you, your footman is crippled and moves slow as hell, so he will die for 100%. And since a loss of one high level soldier can mean game over, we need something that enables us to make up for such a loss. I think that a complete wipe of your soldiers should lead to game over, but losing 1-2 good soldiers shouldn’t mean you have to start over or reload a game.
I think most people right now directly reload after losing a unit and I dont think hard mode should be played like that. If you lose a hearthling, the player should accept that and try to recover from that loss.
when you say in the endgame, how many gongs do you have placed? I never place any gongs because my PC can’t handle anymore than about 25 hearthlings on min graphics settings and so why scale the raids up to what a 50 hearthling city would be taking on.
Also the way team radiant have developed combat means that it is micro intensive as your hearthlings are too dumb to realise that if each of them attack a different archer and 1 knight distracts all the melee units then they will fair much better in the combat.
This means that you the player have to tell each hearthling who to attack, which at the minute takes way to many clicks, click the hearthling click the flag click the enemy for each enemy. And you have to do this unless you want to lose everything in late game.
So one of 2 things need to happen in my eyes; either make hearthlings understand what they need to do in combat to minimise casualties, basically make the AI play just how a person would.
Or make micro a lot easier, I would be happy to micro each hearthling for each fight I like that sort of feel that I’m in the fight giving them all specific orders, but at the minute it feels laborious and time consuming.
I’m talking no flags,
left click a hearthling to select them, left click and drag a box out to select multiple hearthlings in the box
double left click a hearthling to select all hearthlings of that combat class.
Once a hearthling is selected, right click the ground to set a move command to that piece of ground
right click an enemy to set an attack this enemy flag
alt- right click the ground to set an attack move flag
holding shift queues the orders up to be executed one after another
and then have another short cut key for the defence command, spacebar or something
I know this sounds like turning it into a full rts but it is already one, just with a really bad combat UI.
I do agree that people shouldn’t reload after losing the first hearthling though.
I like the equipment levels in the game simply because it creates a reason to keep a few leather armor items laying around after you have a blacksmith. It also helps to identify how good a combat unit is at a glance.
The way I see it, the better the equipment, the more expensive it is, so in a way, the soldiers must prove themselves to be seen fit to wield those equipment.
Think in medieval times, when only the highborn got to wield expensive equipment in battle without having to prove anything, the rest of the people had to prove themselves through combat to be given recognition.