Home › Forums › General Discussion › Game is too easy.
KeepermanThere was a system where minions just lay about in bed all day if you couldn't pay them. Most people seem to agree that the statues and throne work better than that did.
GalladeThere was a system where minions just lay about in bed all day if you couldn't pay them. Most people seem to agree that the statues and throne work better than that did.
That's because gold is non-renewable. If it was or you had other ways of rising minion's morale (say, entertaining them by capturing and publicly torturing enemies, furnishing the dungeon with treasure and other items stolen from the villages) that could stick.
KeepermanHaving your creatures lie about in bed all day was actually a lot worse than monsters killing each other or just getting up and leaving. The problem was that it was almost impossible to avoid. It was a big problem in the earlier versions.
So, I think the population limit should stay, it could just be made a little more fuzzy. Perhaps you could earn up to 4 extra population for high average morale in your dungeon. The flip side would be that if your morale goes down again, and your dungeon is left over populated, you get rebellions and desertions. This would self-regulate the population. If you don't take action, they start fights or make other monsters get angry and walk out on you.
Spending money on salary instead of statues to raise morale could also be a player decision.
GalladeYep. And in general, the game could use a lot more depth. I could think of a thousand ways to both add more “stuff to do” and more challenge to the game. Such as…
-Capturing prisoners with a command (say, a settings in the squad menu saying “Capture as many as possible/Accept surrender/Leave no survivors)
-More uses for prisoners (Use them as slaves or turn them into undead)
-More control over production (Place orders for certain items, or enable/disable them, for instance order to not produce alarm traps or for the next 5 forging products to be swords)
-Random events to watch out even at the point in the game when you'd normally have nothing to fear. Small armies retaking the castle and strengthening the guard around it, parties of powerful dungeon raiders attempting to take you down, tribe leaders building siege engines to break down your doors/walls, members of a broken village searching for shelter in another, different tribes making alliances, civilizations readying themselves for battle once they know you're on the move (building walls, stationing guards, making barricades)
-Enemy raids having a purpose: rather than making a beeline for your Keeper, they could have a mission, such as stealing equipment and treasure, destroying certain rooms, or freeing prisoners. In the latter case, you could even negotiate for a ransom, especially if you have captured an important person such as a leader.
-More kinds of Keepers instead of the somewhat-squishy Warlock type. Keepers could start without any magic or special skills besides being able to command imps, and then pick “skill trees” and spend mana to raise their stats (Another use for Mana is another thing the game needs badly). You could specialize as…
A warlord, becoming a melee-centric fighter who gives a bigger morale boost to minions they bring into battle,
A warlock who stays back and concocts new spells to enhance his troops and rain death upon enemies,
A scientist who plays god by mutating minions into spliced horrors,
A lich who is an undead and master-of-none in combat but has a phylactery in the dungeon they will respawn at after a while if they're killed,
A manipulative, charismatic evil genius who can command troops more efficiently and improve productivity and negotiation with other entities.
-Enemies doing more than just sending small groups straight to the dungeon. For instance, they could destroy bridges, squash eyeballs, arm paesants, try to negotiate for protection money, team up with lesser entities (say, survivors from the bandit camp you just wrecked informing the lizardmen of your activities and joining their village) or start rituals to hinder you which you must interrupt or suffer the effects (say, a loss of Mana, a cave-in, or a powerful spirit coming to bang on your door), dwarves could tunnel into the mountain and make a breach, elves could regrow parts of the forest and populate it with tree spirits and animals, and so on and so forth.
-The ability to assign different commands to the minions you send out, so that you don't have to micro-manage them with control. Also, making them able to send them to a settlement instead of a specific point, so they can actually move around the larger ones.
Takeover = once they get to a village, they kill soldiers, capture paesants and kill the leader.
Sack = They only kill armed forces and raid chests and treasury.
Raze = They destroy everything and don't come back until the last villager is killed
Ambush = They stay put and attack anyone who comes near the general area
KeepermanThere is already a task list for minions “Training”, “Studying”, “Sleeping”, “Eating”….
Many animals have “Explore” and wind up starting fights. Actually, it can be quite annoying because they provoke war. It sounds like you want team leaders to get a “Raze” task to lead their parties into battle?
KeepermanThe keeper is currently a human/sorcerer. Future options could be your troll/warrior, dark elf/healer, lich/necromancer, minotaur/politician etc.
The idea would be to change the keeper sprite and provide different stats, spells, bonuses and penalties to flavour the game in different ways.
These playing styles are a well trodden path for rogue-like games. You could also try the military and economy bonuses that you get in different civilization games depending on your keeper.
KeepermanAttackers already have a few different types of triggers:
1) Revenge – Basically, keeper assassination
2) Stealing gold – You see this with bandits
So you suggested adding:
3) Stealing equipment – perhaps another trigger for bandits
4) Strategic advantage – Some tribes may want to destroy rooms, damage bridges, attack eyeballs just to keep the upper hand
5) Prisoner rescue – When a tribe member is taken prisoner, you might expect the tribe to try and get him back
These all make sense. Perhaps also:
6) Glory and experience – Killing a particular minion or as much of my population as possible
7) Exploration – Some tribes could be motivated to explore the map and then take a disliking to me, after a large number of turns.
More possible triggers could add variety without making the attacks more frequent. For example, existing bandit attacks could be split into two types. Gold looting and equipment looting. They can still only happen as often as they currently do.
Back to the current design, dragons have burnt down my library before, but only by accident I think. Some tribes eventually kill enough population to satisfy them and later go home. These things don't really happen very often. I agree that some more types of triggers would be more fun.
GalladeA more varied combat system would also be welcome. Right now, someone can take a pretty much endless number of enemies as long as their attack and defense are low enough: a knight can trounce a horde of untrained orcs, but a legendary humanoid with good training and a weapon can take over the human castle by itself.
The only strategic variation right now is having magic users like vampires and orc shamans (and the Keeper too) with the raiding party, so that they can stun/wound enemies with magic and let the melee grunts finish them off. That's the only part where numbers matter, everything else is only a matter of having the strongest champion unit or getting in the first stun.
KeepermanThe reason you need 1 big super hero rather than a large army, is that a level 20 creature can usually kill 10 level 10 creatures.
Some RPGs give an attack bonus for attacking from all sides at once. You can surround a larger enemy and bring them down with a party. Tribes would be tougher unless you were doing the same thing back to them. You would really need a party not one superhero, which is what I think you are after?
GalladeThe reason you need 1 big super hero rather than a large army, is that a level 20 creature can usually kill 10 level 10 creatures.
Some RPGs give an attack bonus for attacking from all sides at once. You can surround a larger enemy and bring them down with a party. Tribes would be tougher unless you were doing the same thing back to them. You would really need a party not one superhero, which is what I think you are after?
Yeah. As the game is now, you just need a trained keeper, about 3-4 supermonsters (Souped up doppels for instance) and everything else is useless as a fighter and is better employed making traps or as doppel fodder.
