Whether you personally believe that the king should be nerfed or not, it is impossible to browse the forums without finding some new idea to nerf the king.

This is simply going to be a list of all these ideas so that they can all be viewed in one place side-by-side. I'll keep my own personal opinions out of the list.

I will try to keep this list up to date through edits, so feel free to post what needs to be changed or added. Let me know if I got any of this information wrong so that it can be changed right away.

Disclaimer: None of these ideas are mine, but it is hard to determine if the person I found these from came up with them or if they saw them from somewhere else, so I left them uncredited.

Also, there are usually many different variants of the same idea. I only included more than one variant if it made a huge difference, otherwise I only have one version.


Diminishing Returns
At face value, the problem with the king stems from the fact that stacking is so powerful. This idea would have the king's effect gradually decrease with each new king that is hired.
This means your first king would destroy drillers on a 3-1 ratio, you second king on a 4-1 ratio, third king on a 5-1 ratio, so on and so forth.
Numbers:
On a sub with 100 drillers
1 King: 33
2 Kings: 33 + 25 = 58
3 Kings: 33 + 25 + 20 = 78
4 Kings: 33 + 25 + 20 + 17 = 95

On a sub with 50 drillers
1 King: 17
2 Kings: 17 + 13 = 30
3 Kings: 17 + 13 + 10 = 40
4 Kings: 17 +13 + 10 + 8 = 48


Heirs to the Throne
There can only be one Queen, so it only makes sense that there can be only one King.
This idea suggests that there be an alternative promotion for the hypnotist if you already have a king in play. What exactly this specialist would be called or even do is still up in the air. One of the most overarching suggestions for it is the ability to become a King once your King is captured, much like the Princess to the Queen.

Links to ideas for what the heir would be:
Duke - http://forums.subterfuge-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1177&hilit=Duke
Prince - http://forums.subterfuge-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1485&hilit=Prince


Negative Shields
Many people's issue with the king is that his negative ability, draining your shield by 20, doesn't affect you once your bases reach a shield of zero. This means there is close to no negative effect on any King you get after the first one. But what if the shields didn't stop at zero?
This idea states that if your king's effect of dropping shield is higher than the amount of maximum shield at a base, that base goes into a negative shield. When your base is under attack, the amount of negative shield is added to the enemy sub as a sub shield. If the enemy sub wins the battle with some sub shield left over, that shield is moved onto the base.

Example:
Player A has 3 kings meaning their shield should be dropped by 60.
Player A owns a heavy generator, which would normally have 20 shield, but due to the 3 kings is dropped by 60 to a -40. He also has 30 drillers positioned at this base.
Player Q attacks Player A's generator with a sub that has 70 drillers.
Player Q loses 30 drills because of Player A's three kings leaving the sub with 40 drillers.
Player Q's sub gains a sub shield of 40 because the outpost is at negative shield.
Player Q's sub shield blocks Players A's 30 drillers leaving Player Q with a 10 sub shield.
Player Q takes over the generator and has 40 drills positioned there.
Player Q's remaining sub shield is transferred over to the generator putting it at 10 out 20 shield.

Can someone let me know if I have this written right? The whole topic got a little confusing after a while.


Localize the King's Global Effect
It is too easy for people to hide their Kings behind a wall of innumerable drillers, so this idea makes the King take a bit more of the front lines.
Like every King nerf idea, this one has a few variants from one person to another. Here are some I found:
1) The King would work more like an engineer. His global would kill 1 driller for every 5 that he owns, but his local would still kill 1 driller for every 3 drillers he owns.
2) The King keeps his same effects of destroying 1 driller for every 3 he owns but now only the subs and bases in his outpost's range are actually affected by it.


Decreasing Production
Since dropping shields don't negatively stack, this idea proposes that the King's negative effect should be changed to something production based that would be able to stack.
There is still a little debate at whether he should drop your max drill cap by around 50 or if he should take a page out of the Minister of Energy's book and drop all factories drill production by one.


King Works After the Shield
One of the more simpler solutions, this one has the King count up his drillers and destroy the opponents drillers after the Shield Phase instead of after the Specialist Phase.
Here are some quick numbers:

After the Specialist Phase (How it is now)
Player C has 1 King
Player Z has an outpost with 40 drillers and 15 shield.
Player C attacks Player Z with a sub that has 80 drillers.
Player C's King destroys 27 drills leaving Player Z with 13 drills.
Player Z's shield drops Player C's drillers down to 65.
Player C takes the base with 52 drills left.

After the Shield Phase (The Suggested Method)
Player C has 1 King.
Player Z has an outpost with 40 drillers and 15 shield.
Player C attacks Player Z with a sub that has 80 drillers.
Player Z's shields drop Player C's drillers down to 65.
Player C's King destroys 22 drills leaving Player Z with 18 drills.
Player C takes the base with 47 drills left.


Did I miss any ideas? Let me know through a reply or private message and I'll try to add it.

Before I vote on the ones I like best, I state upfront I think its extremely unlikely the devs look here and say "ok, this one has the most votes, we'll do this one." For me Im viewing this purely as entertainment and thought experiment.
________
Firstly, I think it is critical that any change to the King should ideally be able to fit in a description that is the same length/shorter, or possibly a very small bit longer than it is now. The King is already an intimidatingly complex spec for new players, so he doesnt need to be made even more complicated. With that in mind:

+2 King Works After the Shield
--this should be the very minimum done to nerf the king. Of all the nerfs suggested, this is the mildest one, and therefore the hardest to argue against. It also requires the exact same amount of text space and is no harder to understand than as is now. This nerf would pair well with another mild nerf, but would be unnecessary if a different strong nerf is implemented.

+1 Decreasing Production (-50 cap)
If the King still loses shields, -50, if shields are out of the equation, -100. I dont like the reduction to production speed because MoE already has that and therefore lacks diversity. Taking away cap though is brutal in the perfect kind of way. King thrives on hitting with BIG numbers, and needs little forces scattered to compensate for wall loss. Take away cap with each King, and it becomes a very interesting balance the player needs to strike.

+1 Localize King's Global Effect (the diplomat style range one)
--adds a sentence to the description, however the concept being explained is extremely simple and seen elsewhere in the game. I like the engineer style one less because its a more complex mechanic. One concern with this nerf as a whole is that it might be too damaging of a nerf, and just make the king too weak (maybe to go along with this one, his shield drop could be -10 rather than -20).

0 Heirs to the Thone
--this only goes to put even more focus on the King. Yes, on surface level this is a sensible nerf, but a needlessly complex one. Requires an entire extra sentence added to King description. Also asks a new player to figure out what the hell the King does, and ALSO what his heir does. However what I DO like about this one is that its the only one that leaves 1 King completely un-nerfed, while handling the problem with stacking appropriately.

-2 Diminishing Returns
--This concept does not exist in Subterfuge, and should not start now. Ruins the simplistic/direct way in which numbers and mechanics are decided.

-3 Negative Shields
--Explain this to a new player and you've discovered a way to kill someone with words.

I'd also like to add to the list:

Disallow Gifting Specialists (of any kind)

I suspect most will disagree with me, but I'd give it a +3 in my biased opinion. I like it because it reduces the opportunity to stack ANY kind of unlimited buff global specialist, including Admiral, Gen., Security Chief, Tycoon (all of which are a problem we have conveniently forgotten about in the fervor to destroy the King).

Yes, they could all still be stacked still, but in order to do so, you'd have to get extremely lucky based on the deck of cards style randomization. Its easy to get a 7 on a slot machine; its much harder to get 7-7-7. Also would have the bonus benefit of limiting the annoying ability for players to be Kingmakers (not King, King, but Kingmaker-- you know what I mean).

kevlargolem wrote:I'd also like to add to the list:

Disallow Gifting Specialists (of any kind)

I'd just like to say that I'm in a game where I was able to hire 3 hypnotists in the first 4 or 5 hires.

v3xt wrote:I'd just like to say that I'm in a game where I was able to hire 3 hypnotists in the first 4 or 5 hires.

And I think its safe to say that you would agree that would be extremely rare? Also I might be wrong but I thought you couldnt get back to back draws of the same hire. So I think the fastest you could possibly get 3 of the same is in 6 hires.

kevlargolem wrote:

v3xt wrote:I'd just like to say that I'm in a game where I was able to hire 3 hypnotists in the first 4 or 5 hires.

And I think its safe to say that you would agree that would be extremely rare? Also I might be wrong but I thought you couldnt get back to back draws of the same hire. So I think the fastest you could possibly get 3 of the same is in 6 hires.

V3xt: was that the game we are about to finish?

Kevlar: I've had that same thing happen to me once or twice. It's not as rare as you might think


Like someone else was saying, king stacking isn't the problem, it's specialist stacking in general.

I propose a new nerf: limit stacking for each specialists individually.

King: first to kings work normally, third does nothing
Tycoon: only 2-3 can stack
Admiral: 2-3 can stack
Minister of energy: as many as you want (his negative is fair)

Did you guys actually hire each of the 3 times it was available, or was it only available? Because if you actually hire them, it means there is one less in the deck, and therefore much less likely.

Ok I checked the game (yes that one Nojo) and it was the first 6 hires. But 2 of them were right beside each other. And yes I did hire it each time. 3 kings and 2 tycoons. I'm unstoppable. I'm not arguing about it being rare, just maybe not rare enough.

You can't really just Nerf the King without making changes to the other specialists with stacking problems. - Nerf the King and the Tycoon will gain in popularity over night.

I'm going to throw this link here again: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1505 - Completely dead discussion about how to rework all of the specialists, to prevent unbalanced stacking by attributing directly countering negative abilities.

Here's an idea I added to the other thread. Might as well add it here to join the party.


Keep the kings effect as it is, but only apply the effect if the sub is within range of a king. Make the kings range the same as a standard outpost. So if you are in range of a king (or the king is in the attack) then the bonus is applied. If a sub is within range of 2 kings then the sub gets the bonus of 2 kings in the attack. The kings range can be affected by an intel officer for bonus 25% range. Also, combining with a Princess gives bonus range too the same as it would with a sentry.