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| Thread: Towns have Building Points |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 01, 2003 08:42 PM |
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Djive:
true, i imagined the upkeep problem in my head but didn't explain almost at all.
i meant that you have some amount of gold (this is global, or in other words, it is associated with the player and can be used anywhere) and you have production points that are associated with towns. those production points can convert into gold (global).
now, if your daily troop upkeep is more than the gold you have, the system automatically calculates that you have to convert some production points into gold this turn.
so it doesn't let you build if
goldInEndOfTurn + goldValueOfUnusedProductionPointsInEndOfTurn < upkeep,
where goldValueOfUnusedProductionPointsInEndOfTurn can be unused production points in any town, because unused production points in any town will be converted into gold that is a globally usable resource.
ok, that was the easy part of the answer.
Quote:
- Since the cost to recruit is zero (assuming the creature is trained and equipped). How will this creature act during an attack by an enemy? If it does nothing will the opponent then be able to recruit it for zero cost?
a very good point. it popped into my head for a second when i wrote, but was forgotten.
i think that the troops in the buildings should be automatically rallied if the castle is under attack. but the attacker should be able to estimate the castle defenses. so, maybe they should be visible to the opponent as if they were normal troops. sort of true, because you could just start using them in your army without recruitment cost (this system is not completely perfect, because there might not be enough available slots in the army. it has been the same with garrison slots in previous homms, though).
which seems to bring us to the system in kings bounty where garrisoned troops don't have upkeep cost... or perhaps not quite. there's the additional problem that the town must be home town for that creature type and there has to be a building for those troops in that town.
the first difference from kings bounty might look reasonable if we said that the creature can only comfortably return to normal life in it's native town type. from the gameplay point of view we might get a transportation problem here.
the second difference, i.e. the creature dwelling needed, might perhaps be solved by changing the interface in some way? or maybe the creatures are trained directly into garrison slots? in that case, will creatures feel comfortable in garrison slots of any town or just their home town?
Quote:
- The second is a query. If you can recruit for zero.... Then I'd ask if it is possible to "unrecruit for zero" also. (Player might want to do this to remove the upkeep, but keep the trained creature for later.)
well, the way i see it, it's very much connected to your previous question. if you keep the troops in garrison, at least in their native town, you should not have to pay upkeep. at least in the case when retired troops fight in castle defense.
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so, with the help of djive, i guess the main topics i don't have a clear opinion about atm are:
1) to whom the trained troops that were not killed in castle defense are loyal to? or will they just disappear like in previous homms?
2) what are the exact conditions when you don't need to pay upkeep for your troops?
3) it looks like you can save money for larger troop maneuvers. what will happen when this money is used up and your troop upkeep is greater than gold value of all production points in all your towns?
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 03, 2003 04:41 AM |
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Gerdash:
You want to slow down the building in HOMM? This game already takes aeons to finish as it is? lol.
I agree with SS. Using your heroes to do things faster is the key to winning the game. Slowing down the building process would take away all the strategy, because it would slow down the people who are good enough to go faster.
Sir_Stiven:
That was one advantage I thought building points had over one build a day. You can build faster if you want to. My problem is that I have found the other buildings like the resource silo to be useless. These are almost always build last after all the creature dwellings and after the capitol. The order of building is boring to me. With building points you can put some strategy as well into what buildings you want to build.
Example:
You may be able to build a dragon cliffs in the same time you can build a marketplace, blacksmith and upgrade you 1st and 2nd creature dwellings. This is exaggerated, but it will force the player to consider whether or not it is more beneficial to get the level 7's now or upgrade several other creature in the same time. Obviously, any moron would choose upgrading level 7's over upgrading level 1's. So even if the player can't go that fast, there is still a more balanced choice on what is the best order of building a town instead of a formula order of building that took place especially during the fixed map era.
My true reasoning in building points is that the choices in which building to build next are more balanced. With building one town a day, I feel that the town you want to build is often too obvious a choice. By variating the building points for each structure in each town, you can balance out some of the choices. You can make players rely less on level 7 creatures to win. In HOMM, it seems like the person who upgrades level 7's first wins. Why not make it harder to build the level 7's using building points? The problem I have with using gold as a limitation is that gold is not based on a time constraint in the way building points are based around time constraints.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 03, 2003 07:35 PM |
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My observation on this is that for building points to be worthwhile, and you allow simulataneous builds, then each build will have to a benefit which is appropriate for it's cost.
It's totally inappropriate to make "creature dwellings" builds better than developing towns, as is the case in heroes 3. (Heroes and early creatures is the ONLY viable strategy in MP according to your own accounts.)
I'd like this to change so that other strategies are equally good, or at least viable for consideration.
How is another question. I'd say the prices and prerequisites for dwelling have to changed for starters (making creature dwellings realtively harder to build), though I don't think this is enough.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Sir_Stiven
Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
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posted November 04, 2003 01:23 AM |
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Quote:
It's totally inappropriate to make "creature dwellings" builds better than developing towns, as is the case in heroes 3.
not sure what thats supposed to mean... building dwells can only get you so far because sooner or later you will have cleared your area and then you will need gold from money generating structures.
Its not like you can build all dwells and then upg. em all without the money from structures. Everything has its balance and one good thing with randoms is that you always have to adopt to this new balance for basically each game.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 04, 2003 02:32 AM |
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Just a reflection based on that trying to build City Hall week one is bound to lose you the game.
The general comment from vet ToH:ers when a SP noob says this is .... Can I pleeeeease play you in MP so I can bash you.
Of course it depends a bit on richness of map and on difficulty played on but on the lower difficulties you get enough starting funds to ignore the economic builds until later and get the resources from the Map instead.
Basically the strategy is: I want to build level up to level 7 and have a castle as soon as possible, and the relevant deadlines are end of week 1 and end of week 2. All other builds can wait (unless required to build the level 7) if I can get what I need from map and starting resources.
I'm not denying that there is some considerable skill in taking banks and mines early with low losses.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Sir_Stiven
Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
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posted November 04, 2003 07:22 PM |
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Quote:
Just a reflection based on that trying to build City Hall week one is bound to lose you the game.
The general comment from vet ToH:ers when a SP noob says this is .... Can I pleeeeease play you in MP so I can bash you.
Of course it depends a bit on richness of map and on difficulty played on but on the lower difficulties you get enough starting funds to ignore the economic builds until later and get the resources from the Map instead.
Basically the strategy is: I want to build level up to level 7 and have a castle as soon as possible, and the relevant deadlines are end of week 1 and end of week 2. All other builds can wait (unless required to build the level 7) if I can get what I need from map and starting resources.
I'm not denying that there is some considerable skill in taking banks and mines early with low losses.
Going for a build of capitol day8 is usually seen as a n00b way of building yes.
And you might get enough resources for any builds if easy diff... i wouldnt know that since i dont play 80-100%.
But biggest reason for that isnt less resources, its that the comp is a toss in battles on those difficulties.
Also i think its wrong of you to say that there "basically the strategy is" since there is no set strategies at all. As pointed out earlier you have to adapt to the balance of the map first, and sometimes like in my game yesterday i couldnt get drags until i had gotten capitol in my main town because map was really poor.
And knowing when to take banks, mines.. basically every fight against comp units isnt just "considerable skill" its a big skill element in heroes3 because the faster you can get these things the faster you can expand. And the faster you expand the more things you will get, for example treasure zones as there is in many h3 maps/temps. So if you wait long enough your opponent will have cleared it all and problably boosted his stats enough for it to be game over for you.
Stats beats army, thats important to remember.
And to boost stats you need fights, preferbly many and big ones with big rewards.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 05, 2003 10:47 AM |
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Quote:
Stats beats army, thats important to remember.
oh, it really is, isn't it?
ok, inpolitely returning to some minor problems in my previous post:
1) to whom the trained troops that were not killed in castle defense are loyal to? or will they just disappear like in previous homms?
imho it's ok if they just commit suicide, that's part of their training.
2) what are the exact conditions when you don't need to pay upkeep for your troops?
first, some inspiration from Celfious:
"black dragons titans, ect can do alot more than peasents"
true, black dragons could work as e.g. overseers.
"dividing ppl/creatures into 3 types I understand and agree with"
this type of division could work perhaps.
men, women, children.
men and women are usually peaceful and can support themselves. could you imagine a reasonable grown-up person going to war?
but they produce children who can be very agressive at some age, and require upkeep.
on the other hand, usually the grown-ups support the upkeep (for their own children) and pay tax anyway. so do we think of the troops as orphanaged children or that all the race is a big family including different towns?
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3) it looks like you can save money for larger troop maneuvers. what will happen when this money is used up and your troop upkeep is greater than gold value of all production points in all your towns?
seems that the production point usage limitation based on upkeep wouldn't work anyway, at least by itself. some warning window at the end of turn would probably be better. the desertion was most uncomfortable in kings bounty imho mainly because of lack of such warning, and lack of ability to choose which troops you wanted to dismiss.
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Celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted November 05, 2003 11:10 AM |
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Wow your post just reminded me of a most beautiful game concept.
Heroes, monsters and humans.
Un fortunately, its not HOMM.
It could be HOMH for 3d0s sake to say "this games comming from somewhere and its from new talented writers" or it could be something else. (Heroes of men and hordes mabey)
But there are different types of heroes with their unique alignments and monsters.
And it is on an EARTH with humans living their lives. Walking there paths. Conforming to their surroundings. Hardly existant as fighters in the war, just with eachother but we maintain the worlds war so their not usualy violent. But full of ideas and mysteries.
Dragons as overseers indeed. Quite formidable.
Titans as an overseer, yes aswell.
There can only 1 type of level 7 overseer in town.
Other monsters have affiliation with them but not by name. They hardly work because an upkeep of training the army is the only way. On this planet.
there are only artistic differences with the humans in different alignments and over time, the blend of alignment occours and sometimes the humans convert to their new master/defenders way. Each side of the humans have a left and right of mind. (soul)
And the town balance should always remain around %50 (enough confrontation for them to focus on other things)
Ect.. just a beggining to an idea involving building points.
The humans are the constructors and, are general workers in the administration of things on earth. But we (gplayer) are obviously strong things.
1 major thing in the art expression of it.. Is when the moniters shows, humans you see them as dreamish tunnels. When the monitor shows the monsters or heroes.. They all see eachother well and like 1 kind. (if you think hard tthere is artistic expression, in showing humans as mysterious in the eyes of the monsters cuz thats who your playing as.)
You play as different alignments, with their own colors. I see the magistrates of art in my mind with thin borders and the whole skin has 3 different colors all relating to the alignment. (there are 3 levels of alignment, and each town has its personal, particular, and balance alignment) I relation, its a pentagle. Each city has its balance alignment matched to 2 others balance.
Each city has a particular with, and against 2 others personal alignment (respectively).
I like the buttons too 
Something else never done in computer gaming art expression.. Is occasionaly making the screen lightly turn into an occasional water, tweak, electricity waves on all the dark lines.. It never dose these things at random times like every action done, or 40 seconds.. And theres different degrees of the effect, at sometimes only particular areas of the screen.
Sorry about posting this here but its related to building points..
Feel free my contact information is above.
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 05, 2003 03:36 PM |
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I am dead against having penalties for spending too many building points on one structure. You may call this strategy, but if I want to play HOMM, there is no way I'm gonna want to go.
"Hmmmm! If I spend 10 points here and 8 points here..."
Come on! This is micromanagement!
Don't you remember the KISS theory. (Keep It Simple Stupid)
There are better ways that are less tedious to give more benefits to developing your town.
1.) You could certainly make more structures that increase hero statistics.
2.) Structures that teach your heroes secondary skills.
3.) You could build a structure called the collesium where you can have heroes that have reached a certain level to gain experience while staying in that town. So if you have a level 7 hero, then it might take 3 turns before the hero becomes level 8, and then another 4 to level 9.
Requiring upkeep, I do like as an idea to restrict your army.
I'd like to use Djive's idea of town production.
Instead of upgrading creature dwellings, why not just upgrade the statistics of your creatures and be able to research creature abilities?
Ex: Gremlins
You can choose to spend production points upgrading the statistics, Attack, Defense, and Speed. After each level of upgrade it should get increasingly expensive for production points and in gold.
Ex: upgrade Gremlin attack to 5.
Cost - 50 gold 2 production points.
Upgrade Gremlin attack to 6.
Cost - 70 gold 2 production points.
Upgrades in this manner would have to change all of you gremlins. Gremlins would not be any more expensive, thereafter to keep things simpler.
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Go Red Sox!
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 05, 2003 10:18 PM |
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RedSoxFan3:
in a note that was written in reply to you on previous page i just explained how, if we don't have a production point penalty for producing some things too fast, we will end up in a system that is too close to the traditional 1 building per day. what i was trying to do was to come up with a more or less a minimum set of rules that i thought were needed to make it work (maybe the upkeep costs were a bit unnecessary).
lol, simply have building points, right?
and now it's me who is making things complicated? forgetting all kiss rules? maybe, but do you have another suggestion? i mean, if it's extremely obvious that the system will end up in homm3 style building, then what's the whole point of discussing it?
maybe just the reasoning how we will get homm3 building system if we let people build as fast as they can without penalty was enough for you to change your mind (unless you can see that my reasoning was flawed)? well, it happens.
Quote:
I am dead against having penalties for spending too many building points on one structure. You may call this strategy, but if I want to play HOMM, there is no way I'm gonna want to go.
"Hmmmm! If I spend 10 points here and 8 points here..."
Come on! This is micromanagement!
Don't you remember the KISS theory. (Keep It Simple Stupid)
exactly what i meant when i said this a few posts back:Quote:
hopefully we will be weighing homm3 or homm4 simpler building systems against the production point system before too long.
so imho there's another reason to get a little in depth with this topic, and it's exploring. where the final line is drawn (even if we were the ones who design the game) doesn't even matter right now imho.
imho there's no real need to panic if something gets a little complicated along the way. i guess some day we will hopefully end up somewhere with this discussion. if it isn't worth it, don't you think that we will just end up in a conclusion that homm3 building system was great and the production point system is crap?
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 06, 2003 03:01 PM |
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Gerdash - I do want a building system that is close to the old system. I just want to balance out the amount of time it takes to build something to make the cheaper, less important buildings more desirable to build.
I am happy with the current system. I just want to use a different method that will do the same things, except better.
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Go Red Sox!
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 06, 2003 06:58 PM |
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RedSoxFan3:
your suggestion is massively unbalanced. and good players will feel harassed because it won't let you explore the map.
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EmperorSly
Known Hero
Destroyer of Liver
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posted November 07, 2003 09:30 AM |
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Cheaper, less important buildings are already more desirable to build -- because they are cheaper. If you have just 2000 gold, you much rather build a marketplace than dragon cliffs. End of story, no building points needed.
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Celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted November 07, 2003 10:00 AM |
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Your leaving out how it takes a day to build a market place, and a day it takes to build something which requires much more work and resource.
Also, why not let the workers do what they can with half the resources available? Like, if you have all the gold and wood the workers use it, and the 17 crystals are enough to get the work started. The other 3 will be available to finish the job later.
This opens the door to applying BPCs to resource used? (Thats how to figure out how many BPs are required to build/utilize the resource)
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What are you up to
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EmperorSly
Known Hero
Destroyer of Liver
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posted November 07, 2003 10:15 AM |
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You provide 5 wood and employ 1 carpenter for 500 a day and let him build a marketplace in one day.
You provide the necessary materials, employ a team of 5 carpenters, 10 stonemasons and 5 jewellers for 500 a day each and rent an excavator for 4000 a day to build dragon cliffs in one day.
Btw, in reality it often even takes longer time to build one small residential house than to build a huge shopping mall, even though the mall is much more expensive and "useful".
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 08, 2003 02:41 PM |
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the cost of the building is, of course, one of the things that will decide if you build something or not.
btw i think i have a few more ideas that might be discussed in order..Quote:
to balance out the amount of time it takes to build something to make the cheaper, less important buildings more desirable to build.
1) as the problem with first week building is that, if you don't build creature dwellings, you don't get creatures (what a surprise!). so, as i am somewhat interested in shifting the focus from building to producing creatures, i'd suggest that you cannot build and train the same day (a simplification of the production point system). training here means that the creatures become available for recruiting.
2) some buildings take more than 1 day to complete. maybe combine it with #1.
discuss the effects if you will, i will rather do some more work and drink some more beer instead of trying to figure out the effects, so that someone can writeQuote:
your suggestion is massively unbalanced. and good players will feel harassed because it won't let you explore the map.
without a word of explanation why they think the above ptroblems exist, and it will later turn out that they didn't think at all before they said it.
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what is the safest way to pass your time? heroes community -- your posts won't affect almost anything
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 08, 2003 08:19 PM |
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Off-topic: bonuses applied
Since I think this is the best discussion thread coming out from the Altar for quite some time, I've decided to award each of the main contrbutors with one +QP each. (Bonus applied to the first post in the topic which is not necessarily the best post of that poster.)
Bonuses awarded to: RedSoxFan3, Celfious, gerdash, and Sir Stiven.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 10, 2003 06:32 AM |
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ya know Gerdash. I think that your penalties, if they don't slow down building too much, could be a great way of making each town even MORE UNIQUE.
You can make the penalties for each building greater for building it too fast. This would allow the player to build a couple creature dwellings early. But it would also vary the way each town develops.
Let's say you have Inferno. You allow quick buildings to get pit lords and mage guilds, but it takes much longer to get creature dwellings and castle.
This will force the player to utilize demon farming and spells at the beginning of the game. Then you could give a town like this cheap upkeeps for the town so that it costs little to manage an army.
I really like the idea of choosing between training troops one day and building another day. You could make it also really easy to train pit lords. The system of building points could make a big change in how unique the various towns are in HOMM.
And I realized that by changing the speed of building, this would make hero development more important. Plus the maps can always be altered to make the game move along faster. Rates are things that can be adjusted.
I changed my mind about penalties for building too fast. This is a great way to make more strategy.
Let's say that your level 7 creature dwelling requires a ton of building points. And gives big penalties for building to fast. It might take two or three weeks to build without taking penalties.
At the beginning of the game you can put more efforts on your other buildings and get those much sooner. But if you don't start building your level 7 at the beginning of the game, then you might not get it until weeks after everything else has been built.
Now you have a choice of whether or not to spend building points early on in the game so you can get level 7's by week 3 or 4 or you can build everything else a lot faster.
This is only one structure. How many big, expensive, game-changing structures do you want to build while you try to get all of your little quick helpful buildings done early on to get resources.
With your system Gerdash, I think there should be so many buildings that it would take a really long time to build all of them. Like two months or three months, if done with optimum efficiency. This will make each player decide how they want to build their town to fit the map they are playing. I change my mind this is not frivolous micromanagement if it is used correctly.
I would like to see some more buildings that enhance heroes statistics. Structures that teach secondary skills and primary skills. Something that could be more worthwhile than saving up for the big level 7.
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Go Red Sox!
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted November 10, 2003 10:34 PM |
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well, yeah, i myself don't have a determined opinion about the micromanagement that the production point system would create with too fast production penalties. it could be good micromanagement or evil micromanagement.
imho evil micromanagement is the tedious no-brainers.
what i think is good micromanagement:
1) in homm you can choose auto-combat instead of doing the combat micromanagement. player usually chooses the combat micromanagement, and i think it's one of the reasons why people play the game.
2) there is a multiplayer game named utopia (not that i advise people to play it, because it will become a first and second job if you want to play it well). it has quite simplistic rules, but e.g. the building effects are very much interdependent. the challenge to optimize building proportions in some stage of the game is one of the reasons people play the game (officially about 80,000 players when i last checked).
if the production point system lets you make significant strategical decisions that depend on the situation on the map, etc, then it might be good micromanagement.
imho it's evil micromanagement if
1) it turns out to be aiming for the same routine production pattern every time, no matter what.
2) it does not become one of the things people play the game for.
maybe you have thought about something i havn't, but i do have some doubts about the production point system. imho the idea is still not completely developed because there are some uncertainties that might cause some conceptual changes.
the building times in the example i gave where market place was built in 3 days while using the full building poiwer of a town was somewhat irrelevant, because i just wanted the bonuses for building one thing at a time (without fast production penalties) to look more significant.
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pre-planning buildings is something that i havn't thought about much. istead, i have thought more about player getting less penalties for not aiming for the high level creature dwellings the first week but recruiting low level creatures instead.
assume player_1 speed-builds some low level dwellings (if they are not already built when the game starts) and trains some creatures as soon as he can, so that he can go exploring the map. then he goes for balanced building and training to use the production points more efficiently.
assume player_2 goes for the high level creature dwellings instead and doesn't bother with the low level troops. this is where the fast production penalties make him use his production points less efficiently and player_1 has a large troop of low level creatures that could be a mach for the high level creatures of player_2.
what i hope is that rewarding reasonably training creatures earlier instead of waiting for the high level creature dwellings to be built will speed up the game, or at least make it more interesting. i wonder if it could work that way.
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the train-or-build (i.e. not train-and-build) system was imho a simplification of the production point system with the assumption that you want to speed-produce everything.
like imho the homm3 building system could be viewed as a simplification of production point system (applied to building) without speed-production penalties. it that assumes that you want to complete one building before you start another, which is reasonable imho. the simplification is that the building time is constant.
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 12, 2003 04:05 PM |
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You see that pre-planning how you will build your town based on the map will bring some really good strategy the game of HOMM. However, this pre-planning cannot work for every situation. Down the road you may find that your opponent decides to rush you. This isn't good. If you haven't prepared for something like this in building your town, then you will lose. Eventually you will have to take an educated risk. Pre-planning I feel could bring a great new aspect to HOMM strategy.
Another reason that I like the building points over the old system is that the old system doesn’t account for a realistic time period. Time is skewed in the old system. Some buildings should take longer to build than others.
Using the penalties for building too quickly, you can create a system where you can plan out how you will build a town. I really think this could be something great for HOMM.
Another great thing about building points is the versatility of the system. You could find more ways to change the game through building points than you can with the old system. There are so many ways to play with how you use the building points that there is definitely a method that can give a great benefit to the game. Unfortunately, I think that it will probably take two versions of HOMM to create a perfect system of building points.
However, there will still be some great benefits in the first version that includes building points.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth, to discuss Heroes 5, go to Temple Of Ashan.
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