Idea for UMCs on gold carryover and Recall lists

Brainstorm ideas of possible additions to the game. Read this before posting!

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Forum rules
Before posting a new idea, you must read the following:
Post Reply
Darth Fool
Retired Developer
Posts: 2633
Joined: March 22nd, 2004, 11:22 pm
Location: An Earl's Roadstead

Idea for UMCs on gold carryover and Recall lists

Post by Darth Fool »

This discussion http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12658 gave me an idea:

There are lots of problems with balancing long campaigns because it is possible to build wildly varying armies that you can recruit from and wildly varying quantities of gold. This is currently dealt with (poorly) by having a fixed gold carryover (80%) or by having no carryover. So what is the new idea?

How about having the gold carryover determined by the size/total-level of your recallable army. Players that had large armies of powerful recruitable units would find their gold restricted, while players that had fewer/less powerful units in reserve would be rewarded. -Obviously there would need to be some balance done, and I am not suggesting this as something to include in the mainline without at the very least first testing in some UMCs first.

I could imagine some system where the carryover = 100% - C * total level.
where C is some integer, possibly 1. Loyal units might be excluded from the sum.

Some thoughts on the implications of such a system for campaigns that used it:
- Players would be effectively encouraged to dismiss units from their recall list that they don't want.

- For a sufficiently high penalty(maybe 1), the player's recallable units would rarely form the majority of units in a scenario, but would rather act as specialists.

-Balancing a later scenario would become easier in that the designer could design the balance around the recruitable units. Having a particular unit in your recall list in order to win would no longer be necessary.

-Players would become more attached to the units that they keep in their recall list.

-It probably would be desirable to have an end of scenario option to allow players to prune their recall list prior to the carryover being calculated.

-Players would be encouraged to win games quickly for any gold bonus as opposed to milking experience for all their units. Milking experience would only benefit the units that they decided to carry-over.

-Their might be a problem of balancing later scenarios for players who don't realize that they should be dismissing useless units and as a result are getting very little gold.

I can think of all sorts of realism arguments for this, but since the important question is whether or not this would improve gameplay, I will not bother typing them out here. Anyways, this is just an idea. Feel free to use it, modify it, or comment on it as you see fit.
Dacyn
Posts: 1855
Joined: May 1st, 2004, 9:34 am
Location: Texas

Re: Idea for UMCs on gold carryover and Recall lists

Post by Dacyn »

Darth Fool wrote:-It probably would be desirable to have an end of scenario option to allow players to prune their recall list prior to the carryover being calculated.
It seems like a menu to determine which units to keep would be more appropriate, since each one has a cost. Or maybe have level 1 units dismissed by default, with an option to change which category any unit is in?
User avatar
Temuchin Khan
Posts: 1790
Joined: September 3rd, 2004, 6:35 pm
Location: Player 6 on the original Agaia map

Re: Idea for UMCs on gold carryover and Recall lists

Post by Temuchin Khan »

Darth Fool wrote:How about having the gold carryover determined by the size/total-level of your recallable army. Players that had large armies of powerful recruitable units would find their gold restricted, while players that had fewer/less powerful units in reserve would be rewarded.
If this was implemented, then should the price for recalling a unit also be adjusted? Or should it remain a flat 20 gold for each recallable unit? I suppose it would be best to keep it the same, but I thought I'd ask.
ranek
Posts: 38
Joined: August 10th, 2006, 7:54 pm

Post by ranek »

It's an interesting Idea, but I'm not sure it's the right one, I'd have to actually see it but you would need to give alot of gold, at least for me. I have trouble beating some of the easy campiagns... I can't come up with a better one but if you do do this can you make it so that the amount of gold you get will be shown on the pruning list so you know how much you are getting?
User avatar
irrevenant
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 3692
Joined: August 15th, 2005, 7:57 am
Location: I'm all around you.

Post by irrevenant »

I'm not unhappy with the current gold carryover system, but if you wanted to change it, Turin's suggestion seemed more elegant: give a much smaller carryover plus (rather than instead of) the base amount of gold.
User avatar
Jetrel
Posts: 7242
Joined: February 23rd, 2004, 3:36 am
Location: Midwest US

Post by Jetrel »

:| Not a bad idea. In fact I'd say it's worth trying out.
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Post by JW »

I agree with irrevenant that turin's idea seems better, but this is an interesting idea.

It seems odd that you'd have less money for having more/higher level recallable units only because higher level units cost more, as do more units, in game. Therefore people with large, well-developed lists would get screwed 2 ways:
1) they get less gold to use
2) their upkeep is higher and puts them further in the hole.

Just potential sticking points.
User avatar
Elvish_Pillager
Posts: 8137
Joined: May 28th, 2004, 10:21 am
Location: Everywhere you think, nowhere you can possibly imagine.
Contact:

Post by Elvish_Pillager »

I really wouldn't like to see it that getting more advanced units would actually *hurt* you.

Currently there's two valuable commodities to get out of each scenario: Gold, and XP. You can get more XP if you deliberately play the scenario slower, letting the enemy recruit more, and milking experience. However this gets you less gold.

That's a nice trade-off but the real sticker comes when you're not doing well enough to win the scenario either quickly OR with lots of XP, usually resulting from the fact that your units aren't powerful enough and are dying.

So, here's an idea. Completely ignore realism for a moment and think about how good it would be for gameplay if you got, at the end of each scenario, a gold bonus equal to half the sum of the costs of all units you lost in that scenario.
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
Lord_Aether
Posts: 127
Joined: November 11th, 2005, 9:06 am
Location: California

Post by Lord_Aether »

Elvish Pillager wrote: So, here's an idea. Completely ignore realism for a moment and think about how good it would be for gameplay if you got, at the end of each scenario, a gold bonus equal to half the sum of the costs of all units you lost in that scenario.
Wouldn't that kinda offset using bad strategy?
Mac OS X 10.5.7
Wesnoth 1.6.2
scott
Posts: 5243
Joined: May 12th, 2004, 12:35 am
Location: San Pedro, CA

Post by scott »

Lord Aether wrote:
Elvish Pillager wrote: So, here's an idea. Completely ignore realism for a moment and think about how good it would be for gameplay if you got, at the end of each scenario, a gold bonus equal to half the sum of the costs of all units you lost in that scenario.
Wouldn't that kinda offset using bad strategy?
Yes. There's no way to do this that doesn't either 1. reward bad playing or 2. remove carryover of one of the two resources.

The proposal is a compromise attempt to damp out the carryover (but still keep it) and reduce the consequences of bad playing (without rewarding it), and the Turin/irrevenant idea is more purely a compromise since there's less damping of the carryover.
Hope springs eternal.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Lord_Aether
Posts: 127
Joined: November 11th, 2005, 9:06 am
Location: California

Post by Lord_Aether »

But I think I would rather stick with the current system than reward bad strategy...
Mac OS X 10.5.7
Wesnoth 1.6.2
User avatar
Zhukov
Art Contributor
Posts: 1685
Joined: November 9th, 2005, 5:48 am
Location: Australia

Post by Zhukov »

The overwhelming impression I get from this idea is that players who manage to build good armies will get punished for it. Others may disagree, but army building is one of Wesnoth's fun features. This messes with that, quite severely.

Perhaps I am overrating the effect this would have. I suppose I would have to see it in action to make a sound judgement.
Post Reply