SUBTERFUGE Forums

Kings are not OP, nearly every specialist is.


I’m in a game right now, as it currently stand, I’m about to get completely destroyed. Not because I suck, I played very good, but because one player wasn’t eliminated in the early days like he was supposed to have been, and another player has been collecting all his specialists.

Thankfully, this has finally lead me to figuring out the issue with specialist balance. It’s not a single, or a select few that need to be changed to fix the erroneous balance. It’s the whole underlying foundation of the specialists, their wide range of usability and relation to game mechanics, along with their king-making potential.

Subterfuge is supposed to be about diplomacy, but due to the issues above, it’s currently about who can acquire the most, best, specialists. Usually, as the result of one player who gets beat bad, and then gives all his specialists to another in the hopes that his protector will eventually have enough specialists to easily manhandle his old opponent, and therefore rank higher than the person who he severely got outplayed by.

You should care about this because I feel like it truly has hurt this game. People don’t play games that are not fun. And the way Subterfuge is currently balanced, it’s not fun. And that’ not a something you can afford to have when the games last ~7 days at a minimum.


P.S. - Anyone who disagrees and thinks that turtling and feeding a player your specialists, “is diplomacy” is wrong. For example, North Korea doesn’t supply China with [specialists].

I’m not exactly sure what changes need to happen to fix this issue. It’s an extremely complex problem. Certain specialists, need to be reworked for sure, but reworking of specialists should be kept to as few as possible. Because you don’t want to change the state of the game too much.

And in order to fix all of the problems, almost every specialist would have to be reworked to made weaker. Instead, an easier idea may be to increase the interval between specialist hire times from 18 hours, to something higher.

What about removing the capability to gift specs?

radioactivity wrote:What about removing the capability to gift specs?

You'd then have to remove the ability to hypnotize captured recruits.

Hypnotism is not altruism. I see your point but it would be much more difficult to perpetrate the crime of specialist symbiosis if the only vector was via a hypnotist being available to the host.

Specialists are the bread and butter of this game. I absolutely LOVE using specialists. Are they imbalanced and extremely luck based, yeah. But doing cool junk with a specialist feels awesome when specs give you a clutch play. I can't say I've ever felt cheated by specialists. I know I'm not into high level play, but I always have fun seeing what my specialists are. They're random and crazy, that's the point, are their some stinkers out there, yeah. But subterfuge is so much fun with specialists being able to do the insane things they do, and if it's fun.........I won't complain.

radioactivity wrote:Hypnotism is not altruism. I see your point but it would be much more difficult to perpetrate the crime of specialist symbiosis if the only vector was via a hypnotist being available to the host.

Nope. Easy. Have the dead player on their base. Then have them send it to yours, where you have a hypno.

It's so easy, it's even 1 less click.

aclonicy wrote:Specialists are the bread and butter of this game.

That's the problem. The bread and butter are supposed to be diplomacy. So I'm told anyway.

I seem to remember TopKilla this is in part what happened in the 2nd game we played which I count as the worst game I've ever played - 1 player got 2 others to feed him specs the entire game. But arguably he had achieved this through some crazy diplomacy/amazing lies.

What if specials expired?

radioactivity wrote:What about removing the capability to gift specs?

I strongly disagree. Gifting specs for deals and trading is a part of diplomacy.