Game Balance: Diplomatic Units

isnt monday the 29th?

CHANGES TO DIPLOMATIC UNITS, OTHER THINGS

Firstly, I strongly suggest you read the whole thing through at least once before responding to individual points. 

Individual items that might not make sense to you on their own might well be modified by changes to other things further down the list.

1. CHANGES TO UNITS

BASIC SCOUTS

• Upkeep remains the same
  
• Build requirement will increase to 1 Horse
  

ADVANCED SCOUTS

• Advanced Scout upkeep remains the same
  
• Unit Build requirements will now include a saddle and a training manual (ie a book)

BASIC SPIES

• Upkeep remains the same
  
• Build requirement will increase to 1 Horse
  
• Basic Spies will gain the ability to report on the Future Building Queue

ADVANCED SPIES

• Upkeep remains the same
  
• Unit Build requirements will now include a saddle and a training manual (1 Book)
• Advanced Spies will gain the ability to report on Historic Research and the Future Research Queue

BASIC THIEF

• Upkeep increase to 2 Gold Per hour
• Build requirement will increase to 1 Horse and a training manual (1 Book)
  
• Reduction in Carrying Capacity to 20 Units of Basic Resource and 2 Units of Advanced Resource

ADVANCED THIEVES

• Upkeep increase to 4 Gold Per hour
• Unit Build requirements will now include a saddle and 2 training manuals (2 Books)
• Carrying Capacity will remain the same (50 units) for basic resources, and reduce to 5 Units of Advanced Resources

BASIC SABOTEURS

• Upkeep increase to 3 Gold Per hour
• Build requirement will increase to 1 Horse and a training manual (1 Book)
  
• Ability is confirmed as the destruction of the next event in the building queue

ADVANCED SABOTEURS

• Upkeep increase to 6 Gold Per hour
• Unit Build requirements will now include a saddle and 2 training manuals (2 Books)
• Ability is confirmed as:
• the destruction of the next event in the building queue
• a one hour delay per saboteur to the next event in the research queue (up to a maximum length of 4 times the total research time for the item in the queue)
• a chance of applying that delay to the 2nd event in the research queue

BASIC ASSASSINS

• Upkeep increase to 5 Gold Per hour
• Build requirements will now include a saddle and a training manual (1 Book)
  

ADVANCED ASSASSINS

• Upkeep increase to 10 Gold Per hour
• Unit Build requirements will now include a saddle and 2 training manuals (2 Books)
  

2. INSTABUILD TO BE REPLACED BY 50% REDUCTION IN REMAINING TIME
As it says.

We will not be introducing a prestige-based reduction to research time.

3. CHANGES TO MILITARY UNIT CARRYING CAPACITIES

Military units will have their carrying capacities varied by unit type and race.

The ranges will be:

• Basic Spearmen 10-20 Resources
• Advanced Spearmen 15-25 Resources
• Basic Ranged 20-30 Resources
• Advanced Ranged 25-35 Resources
• Basic Infantry 40-55 Resources
• Advanced Infantry 50-70 Resources
• Basic Cavalry 75-100 Resources
• Advanced Cavalry 90-150 Resources

The Commander skill Military Logistics can provide a further 50% uplift to this army capacity, and there will be a combat magic spell that also provides an uplift.

4. CHANGES TO CARAVAN CARRYING CAPACITIES

Caravans will receive technology-based uplifts in carrying capacity as follows:

• Improved Loading - Marketplace L3, increase to 300 capacity
• Reinforced Cartwheels - Marketplace L7, increase to 600 capacity
• Baggage Train - Marketplace L12, increase to 1000 capacity
• Juggernaut - Marketplace L17, increase to 1500 capacity
  

5. CHANGES TO DIPLOMATIC RESOLUTION ALGORITHM

• The base chance of detecting a hostile diplomatic mission is changing to take into account the size of the hostile inbound diplomatic mission vs the town's population.

This change favours small diplomatic missions' chances of succeeding, and increases smaller towns' chances of detecting a hostile mission, which is as it should be.

What defines a small diplomatic mission is relative to the population size of the town being attacked, and this encourages people to consider more factors than simply "I'll send all my thieves against X".

For example:

• 200 thieves arriving at a town of 100 people are going to have a hard time of not being noticed
  
• 100 thieves arriving at a town of 1000 people have a much better chance
• A handful of thieves arriving at a town of 100 people have a good chance of not being noticed, and
  
• A handful of thieves arriving at a town of 1000 people have an exceptionally good base chance of not being noticed.

Diplomatic unit defense (type of defending unit + Counter Intelligence skill) will still be applied on top of this base chance - and the level of the attacker's and the defender's Consulates, representing the total "training value" of their forces, will continue to play a factor in the calculation.

• We are retaining (in case some of you were unaware it was in play) a "critical success/failure" chance that - regardless of the odds of a mission succeeding or failing due to the modifiers in play - there is always a small chance of success or failure.

• If a mission is undiscovered, it will succeed without casualties on either side, as is currently the case.

• If a mission is discovered it might still succeed in the cases of scouting and spying - but not in any other cases and failure will be automatic.

• If a mission is discovered, it will go through a casualty resolution, with both sides taking diplomatic casualties varying according to the ratio of diplomatic attack vs diplomatic defensive strength, this strength taken from the diplomatic units of the attacker's type vs the same type of units from the defender plus modifiers.  There will be a substantial random modifier in this calculation.
  

Whatever the outcome of the casualty resolution the attacker will suffer some casualties, but it is likely to be less than the current (100%) casualty figure.

6. NEW RUNES SUBSCHOOL - TARGETTED RUNES

• We will introduce targetted runes as a subschool. 

This will be a single subschool of runes (of 4 different strengths). 

When the rune is cast it must be assigned to a single category of units from the diplomatic unit types (scouts, spies, thieves, saboteurs and assassins), and will only affect hostile units of that type.

These runes, due to their targetted nature, will have more charges than normal runes.

A rune, once assigned to a type, cannot have the type changed but can be cancelled (with the usual cooldown penalties).

OTHER THINGS

• We are introducting some changes to allow limited sieging at a Barracks level 15. 

Limited siege (based around a new Bombardment technology) will be the ability to build and attach siege units to an army and send them off with the army on an attack or raid mission, with the opportunity to strike and level down opponent city buildings when they arrive.

We believe this will help revitalise armies and military engagements (as Gathering resources has done), and will encourage people to build up defensive armies.

CHANGE DATES

Items 1, 2, 3 & 5 will occur tomorrow, Sunday the 28th of March throughout the day. 

The changes will start going live from Sunday the 28th of March onwards.  Saboteur units have had their upkeep cost zeroed until we put them back live.  Sabotage units will not be switched back on until the changes to the diplomatic unit resolution algorithm have gone through.

The remaining items will happen next week.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU CAN'T OR DON'T WANT THE ADDITIONAL UNIT UPKEEP

We understand that players may not wish (or be able) to support the additional unit upkeep cost of these changes.

We are allowing players with these units the following options:

• Swap Advanced Saboteur units for any other (lower) diplomatic unit, 1 for 1
• Swap Basic Saboteur units for any other (lower) diplomatic unit, 1 for 1
• Swap Advanced Thief units for any other (lower) diplomatic unit, 1 for 1
• Swap Basic Thief units for any other (lower) diplomatic unit, 1 for 1
• Destroy any Thief or Saboteur unit for a refund of the build cost

To take advantage of these options, you must open a support Petition, specifying the number of units to swap from type A to type B, or the number of units to destroy and refund from type A.

The units you wish to swap *must* be at home in the unit pool and not out on a mission.

Swaps/destroys will occur throughout the day tomorrow, and are available up until midnight Monday the 29th, so make sure these units are at home if you wish to take advantage of this.

Best wishes,

GM Stormcrow


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 29 Mar 2010 at 14:21

The real cost of saboteurs was production time, so when refunds for existing saboteurs are given, I hope they are in the form of conversion to other diplomatic units or a commensurate speedup in existing production queues.  Return of resources/gold spent would not be an equitable refund for their loss.

As for defense against saboteurs, I think the Customs office idea could fill that role nicely, especially if selective defense allowed people to optimize their defenses responsively against known enemies.  In terms of implementation, there could be a logarithmic scale applied to the defense bonus by position (i.e. for the n'th specified enemy, player gets log n * % defense bonus against that enemy).  Enemies named by blanket identifier (i.e. alliance) could have that defense % divided by a constant (say, 10), and enemies named more than once (i.e. named by alliance and named later by player) would be only affected by the strongest listing, and not the sum of separate listings.  The percentage of bonus would be determined by the level of the building itself.

LC, no hard feelings, but I couldn't exactly compete with you on thieves, right?  Naturally I'm going to find a more favorable attack vector for retaliating in defense of my alliance.  My success in that venture is now being reversed, so I think you're emerging pretty lucky, all things considered.


Edited by HonoredMule - 26 Mar 2010 at 20:54

The current state of play is:

A player (assuming a wave of cheap throwaway units  to clear out a rune or a rune in cooldown) who is being attacked by saboteurs  - and does not have saboteurs of his or her own already built - has literally no gameplay option ahead of him except to buy and spend prestige on instabuilds.

I don't believe this is acceptable, balanced or good for the game.

I think many of the changes suggested in this thread are very good ones, but now that saboteurs are in play (and because the original description for saboteurs, basic and advanced, was the wrong way round for which I entirely accept responsibility) I think the only sensible way forward at this current moment is to either:

a) Disable Saboteur Units until we can implement some defenses against them for player who do not have Saboteur units, or
b) Swap the Basic and Advanced Units back round (again) so that it's research queues for basic and buildings for advanced.

I've chosen option a) as the lesser of 2 evils, and this is now in effect.

This does rather reprioritise the changes to Diplomatic units suggested in this thread and so I will be making some decisions on this tomorrow am with the changes going into effect the day after, on Sunday the 28th of March. 

I will post the changes in this thread tomorrow.

I will be returning the 3 buildings to the building queues of the 2 players who have lost them so far due to sabotage.  If these 2 players have started rebuilding the buildings lost, I will refund the resources used in their construction.

Any players who have either built saboteurs or have saboteurs currently building are advised to hold onto them until reading about the changes tomorrow.  If you send them out on missions they will achieve nothing, but still might be lost to defences.

We are genuinely sorry for any inconvenience caused by this decision, but we hope you will agree that it is very much for the good of the game.

Thanks,

GM Stormcrow

no, i made preparations for the game description. just stating what happened.

and yes, if the description was wrong i might ask for recompense, is that not understandable?

Bow