Here is a question for Marindor that has been bugging me since this whole debate about being too far on the world map began, and I'd like an official answer to that one. Actually, what harm is done to the game by having players getting "too far"? I fail to see any. Everybody has the chance to scout at the same speed, so all players are on an even footing on that regard. I cannot run my magic academy at full speed (mine is level 3). If I did, I'd run out of relics fast. Now, with the tournaments, you can score tons of relics of a given type anyway in a single week. So players getting too much relics does'nt seem to be the problem here. Am I having too many neighbourgs, granting me too much money if I visit them all? That does not seem the case too me. It's not like I can do much with that money anyway. Money from my houses and wonder is actually sufficient. Expansions? My grid is FAR from complete. Even with around 350 provinces scouted. I have'nt completed orcs yet, but even if I had, my grid would still be severly lacking, requiring me to buy diamonds expansion to finish it in a reasonable time.
So what is the real issue here? I'd like an official reply. I'll grant you that the former battle system was far from perfect, and I actually like the new one better. But I fail to see what harm is done to the game if players continue to get provinces at the pace that is currently ongoing. What is so unbalanced in the game dev opinion that require to put all players to a grinding halt?
The repeatable quests are a different matter but the frequency of those depends on how fast a person achieves them, the build 1 building to level 4 slows down a person who doesn't know they can skip quests and they repeat. A person who does know this will also know they can skip the encounter/province quests.
I wanted to say this... Most of new players do not know they can skip quests so small cities of new players are completely different than our "new cities".
In my opinion repeatable quests are real aberration not battle imabalances. Not to mention skipping quests over and over just to make sure you are able to run your productions is stupid, boring and irritates me as hell. I try to avoid it as I can but it's difficult.
Coming back to battles: I can't think of a single person who started learning battle system from beginning of their game.
Tutorial shows how to negotiate. Then players try a fight (or not as negotiating is simple and quick / they don't want this in city builder) on their own, and finally they lose because they don't understand bonuses, etc. Leave battle system as "unplayable". When negotiating costs becoming high they MAY come back and take an effort to learn it all. Most of them don't.
I know many people who are in Orc chapter and never fought a thing, don't understand bonuses but upgrade Barracks for ranking points, etc.
I still can't see how "battle redesign" makes all these problems go away.
Ingame information won't even tell you what boosted relics are. I see from time to time people who start playing and they try to decide what they will produce. They are shocked they can't. Oh, well... Problems, problems...
Then you know the first one, when i started 1 year ago i went exactly the way as devs wants to achieve now, i didnt negotiate anything, i fighted all, once i reached too big army i couldnt win i just waited, 1 month, 2 months, what was necessary to win it, and that strategy greatly helped me to get all the runes i needed for all wonders, since i started fighting after each wonder research and stopped fighting after i cleared all i could till next wornder research.
Forget the provinces, even the tournaments. At level 5 in the 7th tournament, half of them can't be won at all.
The game is the developers vs the players.
We lose again.
In some ways I can see a business model at work, but defeating us in the tournament battles does not make any sense. Big paying and non-paying players enjoyed the old battle system.
I just finished the last Squad Size Upgrad of the chapter that I'm on and did some test fights. I screened one of them and thought I show it.
My dates:
End of chapter III going IV
at 47/50 provinces
Squad Size Upgrad 9 (141 Units)
(Barracks at lvl 6)
The fight:
Army setup screen:
I chose 4 Archer II to hopefully get rid of the mages as soon a possible and one Golem for the Wild Archer.
(Note: The enemy squad size bigger than mine. Even though it's 5 on 5, even though I did all the Squad Size Upgrades that I could until now and even though I still need 3 more provinces to unlock chap. IV. Whith scouting I circled around my town as well.)
Some battle steps (+ terrain layout):
End Round 1:
I didn't move forward, thinking I could avade some damage (probably a mistake...). Instead I lost a full squad of Archer II after 1 Wild Archer and both Enchantess attacked him.
End Round 3:
Result:
I won the fight and I probably could have done better if I hade done [insert X] and [insert Y]. But I'm not experienced with the new fighting system yet and I still make mistakes. That's normal and I would not mind learning a new battle system. But I think there is one think keeping me from it: Producing the units. And I don't think this is just my issue.
I calculated a bit:
My unit size is 141. With the Barracks as they are I need 2 min to produce 1 Archer II and 14 supplies. To make a full unit it need 282 min (4,7h !!!) and 1974 supplies.
Right now I have 6 Workshops at lvl 8 (waiting to upgrade them to bigger size with higher prodution. Can't right now because space/supplies issues.) They produce 424 supplies/h. Since I can't always sit on the PC to put in 5/15/60 min production, I am short on supplies rather often. Using the spells is an options but not always (don't want to "waste" it, so only use it, if I have the time to actually utilize it.)
In the fight up there I lost a total of 438 Archer II units. To get them back I need 6132 supplies an 14,6h! And that's only 1/8 fights! I know that each of those numbers will either get smaller (time) or don't seem so big anymore (supplies) with higher levels, but right now it absolutely keeps me from fighting.
With the way I build my town I don't exactely have the space to upgrad the workshops so easily. They also need some supplies to upgrade - which I don't really have right now if I want to keep producing units AND keep the manufacturies running.
What I'm trying to say with all of this:
If you needed to revise the battle system, alright! But for me, at the stage that I am at right now on the Beta, it feels imposible (or to speak with your terms: unbalanced.) Even though I have all Squad Size Upgrades available to me right now the enemy size (at 5 on 5) is still bigger than mine. (From what I heared from earlier chapters it's even wors there.) That alone is really dicouraging.
In the early chaperts the amout of supplies and the time you need to produce even one unit seems out of proportion, as well. Especially the supplies. As I said, if I want to keep my manufacturies running, upgrade my buildings and have enough supplies to unlock research, I don't really see how I would have enough to produce units. And a "normal person" has only so much time to get some extra supplies through short production (because school/job + friend/family + shopping + sleep take up a lot of time already...) Now, I could build more workshops, but then again I don't have the space for that. And I can't get more space because I can't clear provinces. I could negotiate some provinces but those want supplies as well. So I'm kind of stuck.
If you really want people to fight with the current system could you please look into this supply issue?
Right now it feels like the supply increase for unit production (and it is an increase, because since the squad size is bigger now you need more supplies than before to get a full troop) was made without considering the supplies needed for the manufacturies, the building upgrades, and the research. (And I think this applies to every chapter and not just the one I'm in here on the Beta.)
In my opinion repeatable quests are real aberration not battle imabalances. Not to mention skipping quests over and over just to make sure you are able to run your productions is stupid, boring and irritates me as hell. I try to avoid it as I can but it's difficult.
This. I'd love to see another thread talking about this ugliness (exploit?), and I think there's one floating around somewhere. I'm sure it would just get lost under the 9 threads now dedicated to the battle system though.
You know, I have been having a really hard time getting supplies myself. Ever since they added orcs to the armories and those take supplies to make too....plus all the troops now.....I am having the hardest time.
I'll tell you my very inelegant solution Natzish, I have a bunch of level 1 workshops that I can set to 3 hour productions for the advanced tools thing and then I do the collect x number of coins (200k for my level) and gain 2 advanced tools quest. That gives me extra supplies, but it is a real drag to do it that way. I have to do that quest 5 times every 3 hours. ugh.
I am not sure troops are really more expensive. I produce a full squad much faster than I used to, so it seems more expensive since a can produce more in a single day. But now, given the speed of training, I produce what I need when I need it and it solves the issue of lacking supplies. In a nutshell, my barracks are not working full time, as they used to be, but it matters not. Maybe it turns out more difficult for new player, but I don't have a low level town, so I can't really say.
And I have also noticed that Marindor did'nt reply to my question yet. I'd still like to know what aspect of the game get out of balance if we "scout" too far. Because as of now, I do not see what harm is done. I am at around 350 provinces done, and I am VERY far from having a complete expansion grid, main source for getting relics is the tournament now, and the additional income associated to visiting numerous neighbours is really negligible. So negligible, in fact that I don't bother. I only visit my fellowship. So I am wondering why they consider that getting too far ahead unbalance the game.
You know, I have been having a really hard time getting supplies myself. Ever since they added orcs to the armories and those take supplies to make too....plus all the troops now.....I am having the hardest time.
I'll tell you my very inelegant solution Natzish, I have a bunch of level 1 workshops that I can set to 3 hour productions for the advanced tools thing and then I do the collect x number of coins (200k for my level) and gain 2 advanced tools quest. That gives me extra supplies, but it is a real drag to do it that way. I have to do that quest 5 times every 3 hours. ugh.
This sound more like a workaround than a solution.
I now really wonder how many workshops we are supposed to have at which level and at which point in the research to not run in a supply shortage - and which production we are suppose to do and how often. The developers have to have a number. They had to calculate all of this at some point.
Marindor, is there something like this? The number of workshops that the developers worked with when caculating the supply out- and input of an avarage player? It would be nice and helpful to know.
I am not sure troops are really more expensive. I produce a full squad much faster than I used to, so it seems more expensive since a can produce more in a single day. But now, given the speed of training, I produce what I need when I need it and it solves the issue of lacking supplies. In a nutshell, my barracks are not working full time, as they used to be, but it matters not. Maybe it turns out more difficult for new player, but I don't have a low level town, so I can't really say.
And I have also noticed that Marindor did'nt reply to my question yet. I'd still like to know what aspect of the game get out of balance if we "scout" too far. Because as of now, I do not see what harm is done. I am at around 350 provinces done, and I am VERY far from having a complete expansion grid, main source for getting relics is the tournament now, and the additional income associated to visiting numerous neighbours is really negligible. So negligible, in fact that I don't bother. I only visit my fellowship. So I am wondering why they consider that getting too far ahead unbalance the game.
Units are highest level of each.
Swords | Old cost: 10752 | New cost: 15960
Archers | Old cost: 12768 | New cost: 15960
Treants | Old cost: 15120 | New cost: 16530
Golems | Old cost: 18144 | New cost: 16530
Sorceresses | Old cost: 21504 | New cost: 16530
So yes, some units are cheaper now. But considering that at the beginning you only have the swords and archers, your workshops don't produce that many supplies, you do a lot for building upgrades, and you also have to sometimes spend quite a bit for the research... it starts to stretch thin quite easily. Further considering that at the end of chapert II and in chapter III you get all over 3 more troops and 3 squad size upgrades (doubling the size from 69 to 141!), it feels like a heavy load to produce enough for everything.
Granted, in chapter III you could have you workshops at level 15 already, but I kind of doubt that a lot of people have that. You need to upgrade you houses to have enough people and you also need quite a bit of coin to do that. I, for example, have my workshops still at level 8 because I don't have the space to upgrade all, because I don't have enough supplies to upgrade the workshops AND the houses. But I need the houses to upgrade the workshops. So the supply situation right now is very... unnice.
As I said, it does not seem more expensive for an advanced player. Things could be very different for a new player. But I think that is the point of Inno. And I am in no way saying I agree with them. They do not, actually want you to be able to conquer a province on the same day you scouted it. If you scout and conquer the 8 sectors immediately, you'll end up going "too fast" again.
In any case, right now is definitely not a good time to be new to the game. At this point, the best strategy is to focus on goods to negotiate and completely forget about fighting (on the world map, at least). But doing so, you expose yourself to building a city that will be useless when Inno decide to put a stop to the negotiating (it will happen, we just don't know when)
For me, it's easy. I just continue to play as I used to, move as fast on the map as I used to. I'm just spending a little more of my giganormous stockpile. But for a new player, that can be a problem, especially that they don't know how they should build their cities right now, since the rules are bound to change at a moment notice.
And I can't stress this out enough. I totally fail to see in what the game become damaged if we move as fast as our scout can. And as a matter of fact, that would have been the most simple solution. Just change the speed at wich the scout goes.
I would like to hear that answer too. How does it damage the game if we go far out? Balance what?
Spenders can walk in, buy everything, buy the new culture things that give you 10k culture, and just thrash the scores in a moment. What took people years can be done immediately. And a few people getting a new province every 6 weeks or so throws the game out of balance? I am now 300 provinces behind having all the space available. How can that throw anything out of balance?
Mostly though, the average player never sees these forums. They don't care about any of this. They want to play a game. If they can't fight that is less of a thing for them to enjoy doing.
If You Care, Fix The New Battle System. It's not Fair!
This is getting ridiculous. Made another attempt to battle enemy creatures. I found myself up against 1000 Thorn Mages. 1000!! One hit from them and they destroyed all my units. It's almost like the level of the enemies is set for advanced players. Whoever is in charge of the battle system, in my opinion, did a very poor job of balancing defense and offense. A lot of Elvenar players are leaving because of this new Battle System.
After a hard day at work, I used to look forward coming home and ridding Elvenar of wild and dangerous creatures. Not anymore because of this new Battle System. You spend hours training and healing your troops. Then take in over 200 each into battle and just one hit destroys all your military units. Now I have to spend coins, supplies and more time training more troops.
Game developers need to sit down and try to win a battle with this new Battle System, and they must not be advanced. I’m only up to Chapter V and can’t figure out how to win a battle. The squads of troops we’re trying to defeat overpower us because there’s just too many of them.
Since this new Battle System has been implemented, I have not won a single fight. Some of the players in my fellowship are losing interest in playing Elvenar. Unless you can afford to spend diamonds to conquer provinces, it will take you an extremely long time to advance in this game now.
Please, please, fix the Battle System. Enemies are just too powerful so that tells me the battle system is not balanced correctly. It is in favor of the enemies. So get used to negotiating Elvenar players because you will just be mourning your troops if you try to fight.
Not only the Battle System needs to be fixed but the events also. Elvenar’s events are not enjoyable like they are over in FOE. Produce Beverages 111 times or 200 times. Come on, you expect the players to spend hours going back and forth every 5 minutes to collect Beverages? It’s grueling, time consuming and just NOT FUN. You know what I do with a game that is not much fun? I use it as kindling before the day is done.
Not going to destroy my laptop since this is a computer game but I may not log on as much as I used to. Inno will be losing out on additional revenue because I do like diamonds. Again, please make this new Battle System fair, for elves and humans, if you care.
This sound more like a workaround than a solution.
I now really wonder how many workshops we are supposed to have at which level and at which point in the research to not run in a supply shortage - and which production we are suppose to do and how often. The developers have to have a number. They had to calculate all of this at some point.
Marindor, is there something like this? The number of workshops that the developers worked with when caculating the supply out- and input of an avarage player? It would be nice and helpful to know.
Well, you're partly right. I remembered that a few pages back someone compared the costs of old against new:
So yes, some units are cheaper now. But considering that at the beginning you only have the swords and archers, your workshops don't produce that many supplies, you do a lot for building upgrades, and you also have to sometimes spend quite a bit for the research... it starts to stretch thin quite easily. Further considering that at the end of chapert II and in chapter III you get all over 3 more troops and 3 squad size upgrades (doubling the size from 69 to 141!), it feels like a heavy load to produce enough for everything.
Granted, in chapter III you could have you workshops at level 15 already, but I kind of doubt that a lot of people have that. You need to upgrade you houses to have enough people and you also need quite a bit of coin to do that. I, for example, have my workshops still at level 8 because I don't have the space to upgrade all, because I don't have enough supplies to upgrade the workshops AND the houses. But I need the houses to upgrade the workshops. So the supply situation right now is very... unnice.
250k suppplies needed daily for the barracks
400k supplies needed daily for the factories
100k supplies needed daily for the armouries
1 workshop(orc) on averages produces 16.5/19.8k supplies a day
so 38-46 workshops just to run my main town.
And this is without the insane millions of supplies you need one a new race is introduced, there are days where you spend over a million supplies on upgrades/buildings alone.
This. I'd love to see another thread talking about this ugliness (exploit?), and I think there's one floating around somewhere. I'm sure it would just get lost under the 9 threads now dedicated to the battle system though.
You know, I have been having a really hard time getting supplies myself. Ever since they added orcs to the armories and those take supplies to make too....plus all the troops now.....I am having the hardest time.
I'll tell you my very inelegant solution Natzish, I have a bunch of level 1 workshops that I can set to 3 hour productions for the advanced tools thing and then I do the collect x number of coins (200k for my level) and gain 2 advanced tools quest. That gives me extra supplies, but it is a real drag to do it that way. I have to do that quest 5 times every 3 hours. ugh.
See my calculation above, unfortunatly the game requires such an insane amount of supplies that questing is for some of us the only reasonable solution.
@Electra Firestorm : If you're in chapter 5 and fighting armies with 1.000 Thorn Mages, you're way further progressed on the World Map than in your Tech Tree so in that case this is how it should work. Once the rest of your progress matches your World Map exploration again, you will be able to win these fights too.
For your questions about why balance in a game is important: That is of course because of numerous reasons. To keep a game fun and challenging in the long run, a game simply has to be balanced. Prices for techs and buildings should go up, you should be able to unlock better buildings and units, fights should get tougher etcetera. On the subject of fights, this wasn't really the case before. Just using certain overpowered units could let you win fights against armies 5-6 times as big as yours, which of course makes no sense. Fights were not really fun anymore: It was just producing the right unit, (in most cases) click auto-battle and go on to the next province. We want the game to be more dynamic than that.
At this moment when your game is unbalanced, you can notice it in many little things. The fights themselves are one of those, but also think about scouting costs being way higher than they have to be (therefore costing you triple their normal amount of coins), scouting times being around 3-4 days instead of 1 day, like they should be when your tech tree progression matches your world map exploration, armies you face being way too big (though with certain unbalanced units you could win them anyway), but therefore making way more casualties on your side than they should. These are all little things at this moment. Of course you could say: "But if I want to choose to pay more, have more casualties, have longer scouting times etcetera, that should be my own choice". Of course there's truth in that, but as I said: These are just the "little" things you notice right now.
At this moment the game is fully released about 1,5 years and there are many more years to come. If we wouldn't do something about these imbalances right now, the imbalances would only get bigger and bigger in about 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now, causing more and more (and more serious) trouble. Aside from that, we have many ideas for new features/enhancements/guest race specialties still to come and although I can't say too much about those yet, a good balance in the game will be required to make them work properly and smoothly. So although we fully realise that it's a big step to "force" players to have a certain balance between their tech tree progression and world map exploration (and therefore "stopping" their non-tournament fights in situations where this isn't the case), we do this because we know it's necessary to preserve the game's future in the long run. All we can do, is ask you to please give it some time, try to make the sacrifice to temporarily hold off from further world map exploration, knowing that it is for the best, that we wouldn't make you do that if it wasn't absolutely necessary and that this will allow you to play a more fun and interesting game for the next years to come.
hi @Marindor
thanks a lot for this explanation, but
-what is wrong with players moving far away on the world map ?
-what is wrong with players conquering distant provinces ?
-what is wrong with players getting the expansions they need to make their cities better ?
what is wrong with players doing all the above just because devs left them with nothing else to do ?
how does it harm the game ? does it send distubances in the Force ? does it unbalance the Ma'at ?
Here is a question for Marindor that has been bugging me since this whole debate about being too far on the world map began, and I'd like an official answer to that one. Actually, what harm is done to the game by having players getting "too far"? I fail to see any. Everybody has the chance to scout at the same speed, so all players are on an even footing on that regard. I cannot run my magic academy at full speed (mine is level 3). If I did, I'd run out of relics fast. Now, with the tournaments, you can score tons of relics of a given type anyway in a single week. So players getting too much relics does'nt seem to be the problem here. Am I having too many neighbourgs, granting me too much money if I visit them all? That does not seem the case too me. It's not like I can do much with that money anyway. Money from my houses and wonder is actually sufficient. Expansions? My grid is FAR from complete. Even with around 350 provinces scouted. I have'nt completed orcs yet, but even if I had, my grid would still be severly lacking, requiring me to buy diamonds expansion to finish it in a reasonable time.
So what is the real issue here? I'd like an official reply. I'll grant you that the former battle system was far from perfect, and I actually like the new one better. But I fail to see what harm is done to the game if players continue to get provinces at the pace that is currently ongoing. What is so unbalanced in the game dev opinion that require to put all players to a grinding halt?
So although we fully realise that it's a big step to "force" players to have a certain balance between their tech tree progression and world map exploration (and therefore "stopping" their non-tournament fights in situations where this isn't the case), we do this because we know it's necessary to preserve the game's future in the long run. All we can do, is ask you to please give it some time, try to make the sacrifice to temporarily hold off from further world map exploration, knowing that it is for the best, that we wouldn't make you do that if it wasn't absolutely necessary and that this will allow you to play a more fun and interesting game for the next years to come.
In different words (that*s how I understood it):
The gameplay was to easy for the experienced players, your progress is faster than the implementation of new content.
For example the time gap between fairies and orcs. Players have complaint about beeing bored and forced the release of the next guestrace.
Additional there were
- technical issues with the battle system in general (developing flying units)
- discovered disbalances for players with too much expansions (ok, no sense to offer that much premium expansions then^^)
- unwanted cheat possibilities (like treants in crystal provinces)
so it was not enough time for a well through thought battlesystem and the balancing is still imperfect.
Beside that, the new battle system it wasn't helpful to stop the big ones anyway, they still have plenty of goods to negotiate.
Noone of us knows what is planned for the next 6 months, maybe it is simpy necessary to slow down the exploration of the world map?
There is still an issue (player complaint) with inactive players and this could be a preparation for solving this issue.
flying units werent the biggest problem, overpowered units like sorceress which could not be upgraded further in the future because she is already invincible = making all new techs with new units or squad size complitly irrelevant
i would not call this unwanted cheat, because same can be done in new system, you just need to find it out, its more about crystal province was a joke while some others where too hard making big unbalance between provinces, new battle system fixed that perfectly in my opinion
I am unconvinced by your reply Marindor. I just sent my scout on a 3 day and 20 hours trek to get a far away boosted province. I'll have the cash from that payment back in a jiffy, and I don't really mind my scout taking so long, since anyway, it seems I am too far ahead already anyway. From what I understand in your reply this "imbalance" the dev. see will turn out to be important in the future. I'm skeptical. I will continue to explore a a frantic pace before I am definitely blocked by negotiation cost.
I totally agree with you that there was something wrong with the old battle system. And I stated it before, I think this new one is better, for many reason. Where I totally disagree is that being far on the world map is causing an imbalance. I don't see it, and, maybe because I do not know what is coming up, I don't foresee it neither. I am harming no other players. I am certainly not harming myself.
Nah, I am too unconvinced. I'm still going to scout like crazy until the dev see fit to block me. Because you really fail in convincing me that the game will be more fun once I cannot gain a new province every 3-4 days.
it will be more fun because people who will follow new inno's rules will get province every day while you will get it every 4-5 days, making them progress 4 times faster on world map, much cheaper and fights will be easy
