First of all, if you are a person who doesn't like reading new ideas (which 99.9% won't come into the game) , I kindly ask you to leave. I do not want anyone coming to write hate comments saying how I wasted your time, because this thread might be a long read. If you want to give your opinion, that's fine, I appreciate all the good and negative feedback, but also kindly ask that the negative feedback to be informative, which means giving reasons to why it is bad, instead of just saying "This idea sucks". Thank you.
First I want to explain how I came to this idea a little bit. Not too long ago I made a list about balancing individual specialists and shared it here. It received both positive and negative feedback, and I appreciate all of them. But it also opened my mind to a new idea: If I can't make everyone happy with individual changes, I can take a different approach. This was the first blossom.
Now, most of the community seems to agree that the problems lie in some of the core concepts, which are:
- Stacking of the specialists, especially ones whose negative parts can't stack with themselves (Kings come to mind, also there are complaints about Admirals and Tycoons)
-> To solve this problem, the most common solution which was proposed was the diminishing returns of more of the same specialist, for example second King would destroy 1/4, third would destroy 1/5 and so on.
Why I don't agree with this solution is: It would make calculations very very harder, especially if also added to Admiral and Tycoons.
- The hires are random, which leads to people frustrating about "I did not get a single Navigator whole game, gg."
-> Nothing was proposed to solve this, but I am also not sure how big of a problem this is.
- Kingmaking, which is a player staying in one base and gifting specialists to one player, which makes that player unstoppable at one point.
-> Topkilla has offered to reduce the hires of the person who has less bases (which is also parallel to what I am going to suggest below) , but was heavily argued against with the point of actual turtles having no chance to survive, I will also address my solution to that with the new system below.
So what does my system do?
Instead of getting hires every 18 hours with random 3 specialists, it will be a market of specialists from which everyone can hire what they want (yes, whichever specialist they need) at a cost. This cost will be a currency system, but I will just refer to it as "Points" here for clarity. Each non-promotion specialist will cost the same, and you can't buy a promoted specialist without having the older one first, and you should give the gold+the old specialist itself to get the promoted part. However, since this will never be implemented into the game and we don't have the opportunity to test the exact numbers, I will simplify the algorithms into simple concepts. The main concepts will be:
-Points won't affect the winning conditions in any way. They are only and only for hiring specialists, excess of it won't grant anything.
-Hiring the same specialist after the first will cost more. This means that stacking will still be an option, but it will cost you more to buy one more of it, reducing your total number of specialists in general. (Solves the stacking issue by giving it a downside without nerfing individual specs themselves, while also allowing players to continue stacking (Since there were lots of people OK keeping the stacking of specialists.)
- Point generation will be proportional to the number of outposts. Such a proportion that if you have lots of outposts, you will have a slight edge, but the less you have than average, you will get more significant losses to the points.
-> Now, before the negative comments come, I can already picture three of them coming to mind. Let me address them all.
1) What about the players sitting in one base turtling? Wouldn't this change cripple them?
2) What is the point of making a strong player even stronger by giving him more specialists?
3) Starting layouts are mostly the thing what determines the game itself. Why is the A player with 9 outposts at more of a disadvantage than his neighbor B with 11 outposts? He is already weakened enough!
1) The core change with this system is that people are able to hire specialists they need. Yes, the turtling person will have less hires in total. But, a turtling person needs only a few specialists to survive: A Martyr, an Inspector, a King, a Pirate and a Navigator is all you need. In some specific cases, also a Revered Elder.
The option to hire anything they need should negate the downside of having less specialists. Quality over Quantity. What is the point of having 4 useless hires (for turtles) when you can only hire 2 but you can hire the ones you need? This change will also cripple Kingmakers since they can send very little specialists to their protectors, even less if they want that second King because it will be more expensive to buy because of the core concept.
2) As I mentioned above, I don't intend to snowball the game even more. The algorithm will be written in such a way that if you have 16 outposts, you will receive only 3 points more from the guy who has 10. Let's say each specialist costs 10, and this means your big empire gives only 1 specialist more each 72 hours, which is very very insignificant. (I made the numbers just this moment up, I will determine some base numbers soon) Also, a strong player has a lot of territory he needs to defend as opposed to smaller players, so unless he invests heavily into global specs (which will result him in having less specialists anyway), he still is at a disadvantage. Plus, there is always diplomacy in the game to influence all of this.
3) Again, as I said above, difference between 9 and 11 will be very very minor. The exact numbers aren't here, but you guys get the idea and my intention.
What do you guys think?