[Discussion] Behind the Scenes: Battle Redesign

[SoggyShorts]

So what's with the remaining 22 expansions?

Two things I'd say:
1. To allow players a choice of which way to expand (Wide vs Tall)
2. For premium expansions.

As for #2 being unfair to free players, I don't really see an issue with that. It's not like you can really compare your rank vs. paying players rank anyways. There are already premium buildings in the game that are efficient enough that a free player can't beat a payer, so I ignore them.

 

[DeletedUser736]

Actually, I have "that much" workshop and production building because I have space for them. I have the luck to be able to log on about every 3 hours except for the night, so I do 3 hours cycles, and I produce way more than I need. Even being so far ahead, negotiating does'nt even make a dent on my stockpile. The only thing that can is negotiating the tournament.

so yes, I overproduce, but simply because I have room to do so. I have 3 armories since tie immemorial even if they were of no use to me. Why? Because I can. If I'd remove all "useless" building from my city right now, I'd have so much free space. But I'd have nothing to build to replace them. I'm certainly not aiming for the 1st place. I am just playing.

 

[DeletedUser]

clearly because you will need more buildings to keep your town up and running while still exploring far ends of the map, while others who dont they can use that space however they like resulting in more space available for them, even non fighters will have free expansions because they wont need any resources for negotiation, no orcs (they dont need 5 armories for making orcs nonstop=supplies saved), no future's resource added later to block you, fights will be even winable with autocombat (you wont need millions of army to keep up with losses in provinces in that regard), and resources required for tech tree and upgrades are easily manageable with this, just because you have more free space you can have 170% culture bonus all the time without any premium culture building, resulting with much more supplies which are even multiplicative with spells, resulting in even more supplies, yes they wont be rank 1 but honestly do you believe that newcomers who enter this game today thinks about being first for longer then 2s? they just want to enjoy this game, they already know they have zero chances for overall competition.
im pretty sure devs already noticed that early chapters will need some tweaks for fighters (for others its same as it was), and that can be done easily in next patches

ask yourself why you need so much productions/workshops/residences/culture?
a) you want to be rank 1 and that is a valid reason, but thats less then 1% of elvenar population (lets be honest here everybody knows that big spenders will be top no matter what)
b) you need all of that to keep up with negotiations and upgrades of buildings solely for that reason, while others can neglect that

just 1 example since people dont even bother using brain and do some counts
at the end of the orc chapter max squad size is 1140
now with your scouting too far you can meet armies who are 4000+ squad size
with this new system in place, researching new advanced scout reduce that number by 50% resulting to 2000+ squad size of that same army as above if we do scout after that research
lets say we wont scout whole next chapter and wait for another advanced scout, that will reduce that same army to 1000, while yours will be already 1494, things get balanced pretty fast, and beating this army can be done by autocombat
now image how much resources you will safe without the need to negotiate

You can also simply not play the game, that way you don't need that much space at all!
Just think, you log once a day, do some productions, spend those 10 kps, and log off until the next day. then the next day you rinse and repeat. and on weekends you go wild and you actually complete a province! playing like that you really won't need much space! Most ppl won't have any fun either, but hey, who needs to have fun while playing a game, right?

 

[Dony]

You can also simply not play the game, that way you don't need that much space at all!
Just think, you log once a day, do some productions, spend those 10 kps, and log off until the next day. then the next day you rinse and repeat. and on weekends you go wild and you actually complete a province! playing like that you really won't need much space! Most ppl won't have any fun either, but hey, who needs to have fun while playing a game, right?

apart from that this is a majority of players in elvenar and in fact they have lots of fun while you are still frustrated so who actually wins here?

 

[DeletedUser]

apart from that this is a majority of players in elvenar and in fact they have lots of fun while you are still frustrated so who actually wins here?

I am fine, because I am way past the orcs already, so i don't have that space restrictions... If i say anything at all is because, like other players, i wish for a better game for all of us... a game in which so many players don't quit playing after 1 day, so much so that inno has to move players to solve issues with dead neighbourhoods...a game that we can ALL enjoy, at whichever pace we like. If i didn't like the game i would have left already, and i wouldn't bother giving feedback here. If they manage to block my advanced worlds then i will probably quit, like so many others have done... I know i won't be missed, I will just be one more who got fed up, and easily replaced by the next player that will only last a few months at the most.
But that only makes for a poorer community and game experience for everyone, if the players keep quitting and getting replaced by new players that in turn won't last long.

 

[DeletedUser651]

Perfectly said Madzix!

 

[DeletedUser736]

I am really not satisfied by Marindor's answer. They won't admit it, but the actual balance issue they have is that they feel we have too much expansion. It's really about wanting us to pay for diamond expansion. Because that is really the only thing I am getting out of scouting.

 

[DeletedUser1711]

clearly because you will need more buildings to keep your town up and running while still exploring far ends of the map, while others who dont they can use that space however they like resulting in more space available for them, even non fighters will have free expansions because they wont need any resources for negotiation, no orcs (they dont need 5 armories for making orcs nonstop=supplies saved), no future's resource added later to block you, fights will be even winable with autocombat (you wont need millions of army to keep up with losses in provinces in that regard), and resources required for tech tree and upgrades are easily manageable with this, just because you have more free space you can have 170% culture bonus all the time without any premium culture building, resulting with much more supplies which are even multiplicative with spells, resulting in even more supplies, yes they wont be rank 1 but honestly do you believe that newcomers who enter this game today thinks about being first for longer then 2s? they just want to enjoy this game, they already know they have zero chances for overall competition.
im pretty sure devs already noticed that early chapters will need some tweaks for fighters (for others its same as it was), and that can be done easily in next patches

ask yourself why you need so much productions/workshops/residences/culture?
a) you want to be rank 1 and that is a valid reason, but thats less then 1% of elvenar population (lets be honest here everybody knows that big spenders will be top no matter what)
b) you need all of that to keep up with negotiations and upgrades of buildings solely for that reason, while others can neglect that

just 1 example since people dont even bother using brain and do some counts
at the end of the orc chapter max squad size is 1140
now with your scouting too far you can meet armies who are 4000+ squad size
with this new system in place, researching new advanced scout reduce that number by 50% resulting to 2000+ squad size of that same army as above if we do scout after that research
lets say we wont scout whole next chapter and wait for another advanced scout, that will reduce that same army to 1000, while yours will be already 1494, things get balanced pretty fast, and beating this army can be done by autocombat
now image how much resources you will safe without the need to negotiate

I don't know what game you are playing but I'm playing a city builder game. It's sole purpose is to BUILD things.

And no, I don't necessarily need as many manufacturies as I have now in my main city, I just like to build pretty stuff. I could do without some of them, even if I keep negotiating all provinces. I produce more than enough. I also, as of right now, still have the 170% culture bonus without any help. I could gain a lot more space if I cut down on culture alone. I never wanted to be #1 either. I just like to build pretty stuff. And I like to see my city GROW. If I didn't want to build "too many building" I would not play a city builder.

 

[CrazyWizard]

@Marindor

Will we see a training ground research in each chapter in package 3?
right now the training grounds(maxed at level 4) is a mere 15 times!!!! slower than my barracks on my main account.

This makes it complely worthless, even if we get as elves the sinister cerberus.

 

[Marindor]

Hi everyone! Please let me reply to a few subjects

The problem is, you have stopped most of the tournament fights as well. Level 6 fights are now so hard or impossible that it is not worth to do anything beyond level 4. I might not agree with your position regarding the map, but I can accept your reasoning, but that doesn't explain why you had to mess with tournaments as well. So, I would like an explanation on why the tournaments were made much harder as well, and how are you going to solve the problem of players now being unable to attain enough relics and runes to keep the MA running and build/upgrade wonders.

In fact the tournament fights should be perfectly doable. The last 2 levels should give you quite some challenge indeed and you will need the right skills, expertise and sometimes a bit of luck to win them but when you take the time to learn and practice with the new battle system, you should be able to win them. We are currently looking into some specific situations the players on Beta have given us when we asked for it, to see if there is anything we can improve here and with the next game version we will introduce some tweaks to existing units but overall the new battle system works fine in tournaments.

yes, i think the provinces count toward the negotiation costs, but i don't think they influence the difficulty of the fights

Please let me clear this up a bit: The strenght of enemies you face, depend on the scouting costs you paid for that province. This means that when you pay less for scouting (because of "Advanced Scouts" technologies), you will also face less fierce resistance and the balance between your army and the province armies will be better.

Actually, I have "that much" workshop and production building because I have space for them. I have the luck to be able to log on about every 3 hours except for the night, so I do 3 hours cycles, and I produce way more than I need. Even being so far ahead, negotiating does'nt even make a dent on my stockpile. The only thing that can is negotiating the tournament.

so yes, I overproduce, but simply because I have room to do so. I have 3 armories since tie immemorial even if they were of no use to me. Why? Because I can. If I'd remove all "useless" building from my city right now, I'd have so much free space.

Exactly, and that is one of the points we're rebalancing. Instead of have to utilize the strategic aspect of a city building game, you can just build whatever you want and overproduce. This is not where we want to go with the game. We want one of the biggest challenges in the game, to be "how to design my city as efficiently as possible?" Just giving enough room to build anything you like and overproduce, takes away that whole aspect. Granted: premium players are indeed able to have more city space than non-premium players but to be honest, in my personal opinion, that takes away a part of the fun as well.

I am really not satisfied by Marindor's answer.

I know you're not and I know some people never will be But just to be blunt about it: These are our reasons, for which you asked me to explain them a bit. Whether they satisfy you or not, I prefer to give you an honest answer about it when you ask for it, even though it might not be the answer you'd like to hear.

They won't admit it, but the actual balance issue they have is that they feel we have too much expansion. It's really about wanting us to pay for diamond expansion. Because that is really the only thing I am getting out of scouting.

Please read my previous posts here in this thread for that would prevent me from having to keep repeating myself on certain subjects. As I explained before: You're not turning non-premium players into premium players by introducing unpopular changes. InnoGames has years of experience in these areas, we have a whole department devoted to player behaviour in different situations or after changes and we know that this is simply not how it works. We also knew there is a risk we would lose some advanced players due to these changes, because they won't like it. Nontheless, we are convinced these changes were necessary to protect the future of the game and therefore are willing to take these consequences in order to preserve the game's longevity.

Edit:

Will we see a training ground research in each chapter in package 3?
right now the training grounds(maxed at level 4) is a mere 15 times!!!! slower than my barracks on my main account.

This makes it complely worthless, even if we get as elves the sinister cerberus.

At this moment we have planned only 1 upgrade tech in the near future, which will be in Chapter 5 and is currently planned for 1.17. This will give you the possibility to upgrade this building to level 8, which will give you a huge benefit on your training times Please let me also give you a head's up that when introducing this upgrade, the first tech of the training grounds will become a mandatory technology.

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

Please let me clear this up a bit: The strenght of enemies you face, depend on the scouting costs you paid for that province. This means that when you pay less for scouting (because of "Advanced Scouts" technologies), you will also face less fierce resistance and the balance between your army and the province armies will be better.

To avoid any confusion:
In Tournaments the cost of Catering for each encounter depends both on distance from out town and on how many provinces we have scouted (or maybe completed), but the strength of enemies depends ONLY on distance from our town. At least that's how it was. Has this changed after the introduction of the new battle system?

 

[DeletedUser118]

In my opinion, if you want the tournaments to be fair again, pls don't make us fight against more squads than we have.

 

[DeletedUser736]

I am actually not quitting the game Marindor I till enjoy it. In fact, as I stated before, I prefer the new battle system to the old one.

So, the issue at hand, with players being too far, is that the dev. feel we have too much space to build. In some sense, I think this issue has been adressed a bit with the orcs (wich I have not completed yet, but close to). The reason I have not completed the orcs yet is that I did'nt want to destroy building to make place for enough mushroom farms and rally point. My reasoning was that it did'nt matter how fast I reach the end of the orc quest line, since I could not lose any KP since I can invest them in ancient wonders. So strangely enough, I had "fun" trying to make it trough the orc chapter with the limited space I had due to the fact I'm semtiental about my 3 armories. As I said, I have alot of useless building I could get rid of. So I don't know. I am not so confident that you are solving a "real" problem. Nor do I write this to "force" yourself to repeat what you already stated. But 2 things are pretty obvious to me.

1- Assuming some sort of roadblock appear in negotiation in the future, that would put new player at a severe disadvantage over older player, because older players actually enjoy the added space.

2- Given less space to build upon, I would not consider the game to be more fun. I manage the space I have, and get fun out of it. It matters not the size of the grid. I simply do not think that givin player less space makes the game more fun.

InnoGames has years of experience in these areas,

Now I feel the need to reply to that one specifically. It's out of topic, but anyway. Years of experience does'nt mean you never make mistakes. I have 41 years of experience at life, and I still make tons of stupid mistakes I was a premium player of FOE and Inno managed to lose me. And my friend who introduced me to the game in the first place and was a premium player too. And actually, Inno lazyness in correcting obvious problem, being so adamant sure there was not an urgent problem at all is what made me quit FOE. When I left, players could ravage their whole neighbourg with no casuality in a matter of minutes thanks to the rogue unit (I think that is what the unit was called in english). The more I was advancing in the tech tree, the more of an assle it was to produce the goods needed to advance, and battles were totally out of control with too many wonders boosting attack power.

Inno innefectiveness in dealing with that kind of issue is also the reason I never paid for premium content in Elvenar. I had been burned before, and I tought I'd see how this game turns out before paying for it.

Now, I am NOT saying Inno does everything wrong. FAR from it. I really enjoy Elvenar. I enjoy it's simplicity, compared to FOE, and as of today, I still enjoy it alot. And I think I will still enjoy it even if I get blocked on the map. But no. Inno great experience is no guarantee that they are doing the right thing, and in fact, FOE AND Elvenar goes a LONG way into showing that they actually severely lack skills in balancing things out in SPITE of thoses years of experience.

 

[Marindor]

@shadowblack : We will check this for you and will come back with an answer next week

@galoyal : That is true and of course we can still make mistakes, but we did know that this was not a change that would cause non-premium players to suddenly want to buy diamonds

 

[DeletedUser651]

@galoyal : That is true and of course we can still make mistakes, but we did know that this was not a change that would cause non-premium players to suddenly want to buy diamonds

If not that, then why? It doesn't give us any balance not to be able to build cities. We have such long scouting times because the devs took such a long time to release content...so put a maximum on scouting times. That fixes that issue. Oh, but then we would get more expansions wouldn't we? And of course you don't want that because you want people buying expansions.

Maybe you aren't trying to get non premium players to buy diamonds but you sure as heck are trying to get the premium players to buy a lot more!! It sure looks like the devs made this change so the premium players would buy more expansions. Otherwise, there are so many player friendly fixes you could have employed. But if THEY find out they can get expansions by just scouting then THEY might stop shelling out so much cash.

Or is that wrong too?

Regarding the part where you keep saying that players had such an easy time fighting before. Not true. Not true at all. It was impossible to win a fight before that far out. It is still impossible. No difference. We were supposed to get a new system to make the fighting EASIER because the majority of players didn't do any fighting. They didn't do any before because they couldn't win before. And even if all that wasn't true, WHO CARES?

What is so wrong with having fights you can win?

Why is that bad?

No...you can't just keep rushing and getting more provinces because there is a limitation with the scouts. We already have that limit. It is there. It hasn't changed.

 

[DeletedUser736]

Regarding the part where you keep saying that players had such an easy time fighting before. Not true. Not true at all. It was impossible to win a fight before that far out. It is still impossible. No difference. We were supposed to get a new system to make the fighting EASIER because the majority of players didn't do any fighting. They didn't do any before because they couldn't win before. And even if all that wasn't true, WHO CARES?

I usually agree with you but not on that topic. With the exception of provinces containing golems, that I was negotiating, I was destroying pretty much anything on the map. And I agree with Inno that the battle system was really unbalanced. Some units were so overpowered that orther units were useless. the new system is far from perfect, but I beleive it a step in the right direction and when they finish introducing all the new stuff, I think it should work well.

That being said, I still think you are right on the rest. Inno is making a mistake, but we only see the true consequence of it in the far future, because as of now, not much has changed. In fact, Inno made me determined to "abuse" the current system while I still can. I'll see after that what happens.

 

[DeletedUser651]

Then there is a great range for how difficult those fights were. For me, and many players I know, those fights were impossible. Impossible for us. What I mean is there is a spectrum of experience. I didn't play FoE. I have no experience with this type of system. My entire fellowship is members over 50 and almost all retired. Most of them didn't play FoE either. I know we weren't alone, because I have seen many complaints on the forums with lots of other players who said the battles were too hard for them too. There are no battle tutorials. No explanations of how to even move.

So, fair enough. For some people the battles were too easy. For others too hard. I have no objection to rebalancing the system to make all the units useful, but they sure don't have to be set at such a high degree of difficulty. If anything, they could have released them with the degree of difficulty set super low, so people could at least try to learn. But they told everyone to get rid of all their troops, then dumped this on them with zero ability to learn or practice. And many fights unwinnable.

 

[DeletedUser736]

Battles in FoE and Elvenar cannot really be compared, they are 2 completely different beast. FoE might have change tough. It has been rougly two years I abandoned. Basically, in FoE, your troops were limited in size by the building producing the said troop. For example, a stable had 4 slot, so you could produce and keep 4 horsemen in them. Each unit had 10 hp. Depending on the tech you were at, basically, a unit was regaining 1 hp every x time, usually 4 hours for a "full heal" So you had to produce new unit only if they were killed. There was some kind of rock paper scissor game to the units strenght, pretty much like they just introduced in Elvenar, except that wonders got eventually so powerful, and that in modern time every unit could fire pretty much anywhere on the map, it ended up irrelevant.

As for scouting, basically, you could not really get much further ahead than the developper planned to. The reason was that you needed for negotiation good that you could not produce yet. Basically, wich each new chapter you were getting into, the material from the previous chapter were getting pretty irrelevent, and you started to produce new goods. You could get by advancing "too much" military. Mostly because of poor AI and wonder that were boosting your troops too much, but there was a natural barrier too. You simply could not hope to win against modern day tanks with greek phalanx

I am pretty sure Inno will take your gripe about the new system seriously. Somehow, I got the feeling they really want to do this right, and while I still see flaws in what we currently have, I think it's a step in the right direction. In the previous system, I would have shown you how to beat the CPU But that would be pretty irrelevant now.

My only real gripe with this redesign is that they are also fixing things that are not broken. They want me to have less space to build, and they think I will find that more fun. Heck, (and I don't expect a reply on this Marindor, I don't want an argument ) Marindor practically told me not to buy diamonds.

ranted: premium players are indeed able to have more city space than non-premium players but to be honest, in my personal opinion, that takes away a part of the fun as well.

I mean, he is really telling me that having less space is more fun and that I should not buy diamonds expansion!!!! We won't win this battle bobby. Grab as much as you can before they cut us off from negotiating if, like me, you intend on keeping to play. And try your hand at battles in the tournament. Start with 1 star, and work your time slowly, learning the ropes. You will see then if battling is your cup of tea. Battles are fair in the tournament up to 3 stars. After that, the enemy get more powerful, but is still defeatable if you are careful. And early stage of the tournament, squad size is really small, so you don't lose much if you screw up.

 

[DeletedUser651]

If they released some tutorials or something to explain how all this works that would help a lot. Many people don't know what a light melee troop is. They don't understand initiative. They have no clue what a defense bonus is, an attack bonus or what any of those numbers mean. They don't know what the little lights on the hexagon mean or how to move a troop. They don't understand why some troops can shoot farther than others. Heck, they don't know how to shoot! You have all that experience from FoE even if the troops act differently. At least you know how to figure out how far each unit can go on a turn.

Not much of this information is in this game. You don't really get taught in the beginning. You don't have any videos later. It is complicated. And now we have to try to figure out what each unit can do, and then memorize all that? And there is a pentagram with some pictures on it but not all the units are on the picture, so you have to try to figure out which other unit belongs in which group? And then try to figure out what the bonuses are? And then you need to figure out the terrain too? One player even said he had to set up index cards with all the information on each troop before he could begin a fight! That is hard work!!

This isn't like other video games though. You can't practice over and over until you get the hang of it. You get to fight once and then wait a day or more for your troops to build back up. I just saw that dogs take 10 hours for one squad. It might be a week before you get to have them all slaughtered in two minutes. It is difficult to remember after all that time what you might have learned before. Some of us are old farts with old brains.

I don't think anyone realizes how overwhelming this all is to many people unsophisticated in these types of things. We have many grandparents playing this game. I have done my best to try to give you an insight into the millions of questions running around in someone's head about all this. Things that are second nature by now to many, aren't understood by others.

A basic video explaining the mechanics of the fighting system is needed.....how do you move? How do you know when the other guys will move? How do you shoot?

Then another basic video of an example of a fight.

And finally, something that shows which unit is good against which. Show us a bunch of examples. Go through each kind of province and show what should beat what in those types of scenarios.

Help people understand this new system. Please.

Some people say they can easily win any fights in these tournaments. Marindor says it should be perfectly doable to win fights on level 6. Others, like me, give up around level 3. I got to level 3, province 3 and my troops got demolished. I tried a couple of other combinations. Lost everything. I start a new fight and get crushed before I have moved. I don't have tons of troops. I can't keep practicing. I am overwhelmed by all of this and I have WON many a tournament on my server. Won, as in came in number 1. For me the fights are demoralizing.

 

[DeletedUser736]

Well, I really don't try to nitpick you. I just want to begin by making it clear. Playing FoE would'nt help you in this game at all. It's just different. But I'll admit to have alot of experience in turn based strategy games, and that certainly help me alot.

I understand that for someone unfamiliar to turn based strategy games, this can be daunting, and to the bunch of idea (wich are good ones) I'd like to add up one that would certainly help you avoid the frustration of losing too many troops on hopeless fight. There should be an indicator, before you start a battle, about how "fair" the fight is. Some kind of warning before you get into it. "Are you sure milord? our strategist expect our troop to be slaugthered" "This will be a tough fight mylord" "Our streght equal that of our enemy, plan careful" "We outnumber them, time to attack"

Also, what I beleive would be helpful to new player on that type of game, but also of great help to veteran player, an indicator of how much damage you can expect to do when you place your cursor over an enemy. Alot of strategy game do this. It would be helpful for new player to learn the ropes, and helpful to veteran because right now, when a fight is tight and I want to check out my attack carefully, I have to whip out a calculator, and that kind of suck.