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Post by Spiderweb on Jan 13, 2015 15:52:17 GMT
I'll start sort of - I find it hard to critique ideas, can anyone kill this one for me as I think its my best idea.... Killing Enemies causes blight, killing followers doesn't. Help them at risk to your chances of expansion. Beautify would need to either not affect this type of blight or become very expensive. Swamp should fade slowly and not clear with beautify. I've already thought of something myself (its not really realistic), there are posters who will shoot me down just for that  Also I seen cool down suggestions for god powers, which has merits but would be frustrating if you can't use it if you still need it, where as blight you can worry about later. |
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Post by nikink on Jan 13, 2015 20:36:23 GMT
I'd like something along the lines of: after the 3rd time your followers are attacked, they begin building walls around their settlements. That'd be neat. Of course as a God you could stop them, or destroy the wall.
Note though: it's something the *Followers* do, not the God. Everything I want for the game revolves around Followers doing stuff independently, with the God able to punish or encourage those behaviours, and alter the finished product because, duh, God.
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Post by FuriousMoo on Jan 13, 2015 21:05:45 GMT
I'll start sort of - I find it hard to critique ideas, can anyone kill this one for me as I think its my best idea.... Killing Enemies causes blight, killing followers doesn't. Help them at risk to your chances of expansion. Beautify would need to either not affect this type of blight or become very expensive. Swamp should fade slowly and not clear with beautify. I've already thought of something myself (its not really realistic), there are posters who will shoot me down just for that Also I seen cool down suggestions for god powers, which has merits but would be frustrating if you can't use it if you still need it, where as blight you can worry about later. I wouldn't worry too much about what other people think, no idea is ever universal liked. Review criticism dispassionately, anyone who gets personal in their criticism is an a**** beneath your attention. What is your thinking behind using blight more? What effect do you expect it to have (both on actual followers and the flow of a battle)? Is swamp part of this or is this a separate point, you're not very clear here? Also swamp already fades with time. How does this balance meteor or finger of god? |
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Post by FuriousMoo on Jan 13, 2015 21:09:30 GMT
I'd like something along the lines of: after the 3rd time your followers are attacked, they begin building walls around their settlements. That'd be neat. Of course as a God you could stop them, or destroy the wall. Note though: it's something the *Followers* do, not the God. Everything I want for the game revolves around Followers doing stuff independently, with the God able to punish or encourage those behaviours, and alter the finished product because, duh, God. Unfortunately the walls concept is dead end. We've tried them on settlements before and could never get them to work well with the terrain geometry. |
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Post by Spiderweb on Jan 13, 2015 21:34:52 GMT
I'll start sort of - I find it hard to critique ideas, can anyone kill this one for me as I think its my best idea.... Killing Enemies causes blight, killing followers doesn't. Help them at risk to your chances of expansion. Beautify would need to either not affect this type of blight or become very expensive. Swamp should fade slowly and not clear with beautify. I've already thought of something myself (its not really realistic), there are posters who will shoot me down just for that Also I seen cool down suggestions for god powers, which has merits but would be frustrating if you can't use it if you still need it, where as blight you can worry about later. I wouldn't worry too much about what other people think, no idea is ever universal liked. Review criticism dispassionately, anyone who gets personal in their criticism is an a**** beneath your attention. What is your thinking behind using blight more? What effect do you expect it to have (both on actual followers and the flow of a battle)? Is swamp part of this or is this a separate point, you're not very clear here? Also swamp already fades with time. How does this balance meteor or finger of god? Well, I thought swamping on death (under any offensive God power) of an enemy was a little too much as swamp kills to quickly unless you adjust the level so it weakens rather than kills and swamp would need to last quite some time, or even require something more special to reverse it like a purge(heal earth) brush that costs silly levels of belief like thousands per second. Followers/enemy struggle to walk through it, actively avoid it maybe and simply can no longer build on it. Rather than restricting using powers in battle you have to think about repercussions (when using it against enemies), like s**t they need help there but I'm not going to be able to mine there or build anything etc after. you could combine with use count and cool down on powers but I like the idea of you responsible for the land, not just the followers. |
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Post by morsealworth on Jan 13, 2015 21:41:39 GMT
As I said before, logistics. Attrition could do that. If you destroy enemy army, you destroy their supplies as well due to crudeness of your powerful miracles. Now if you people will take the enemy on, they can "liberate" some of the supplies for themselves and thus both decrease the burden on the settlement and get to stay mobile (as in, as an army) longer.
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Post by Aynen on Jan 13, 2015 22:43:26 GMT
Without drifting too much: I don't think it's a good idea to try to make some/all powers have both violent/nonviolent uses. This over complicates or over simplifies their design in detrimental ways, if you ask me. Nevertheless... Going back to the OP: Problems with current god powers in terms of combat (and what could be done to improve them in combat) Frankly, I'd say that there just isn't enough combat to say. If I look at the few instances where there is, though: - Finger of god just seems pointless and weak. You don't want it overpowered, but then it can only affect a few at a time, still requiring two squishes to be effective. Flinging enemies with this as an alternative to outright squashing them also feels inconsistent. --Potential adjustments: should serve as a sort of stun against enemies, as well as possibly directing certain followers as Aynen says. This way it's less of an outright squash'em all ability and more of a guiding pointer. If the direct damage quality of it was still desired, you might make it so that that requires being within vision of followers (going back to the empowerment idea I mentioned earlier). I'm not sure how possible that is, but seeing as followers already show some response to their surroundings, it seems like you could adjust that to affect powers. (It's already offset to shrines in a way, so I think it's sort of possible.) --Additional thoughts would be to improve the consistency of flinging enemies, so you're not just two or so squashes and done with them. - Meteor is great, it feels mostly like it should. However, better visual feedback like something on the ground to know where it's going to be hitting would help readjust aim, as the current perspective can make it difficult to discern this. It should be your primary offensive power early on, the major damage dealer to larger groups of enemies. However, you could also use it for shellshock as a wider area of effect than finger of god to slow down enemies and get your followers up to them. Followers, if it's not becoming clear, would be your cheaper but slower method of tackling enemies. --What I'm thinking of with the stun and shellshock mentioned above is that these wouldn't be new abilities at all, but a repurposing of the champions' knockdown ability, adjusting the affected area as desired. - Swamp is...useless? I'm not sure if it was ever restored to affect your enemies again, so it's kind of just a useless environmental change. I agree with some of the other thoughts to make it less of a directly offensive ability and more of a slowdown than anything else. If used well, you might also have these reduce stamina leading to enemies falling back due to exhaustion (treating walking through them as you would constructing a large building). - Holy Forest, Rain of Purity, and Beautify: none of these, to my knowledge, affect combat at all, but these could be readjusted to sway enemies to your side. However, the only part of the game that even indicates that ability are the festivals, so I don't know if that can be reworked for other parts of the game or not. How would changes affect them outside of combat
-If the changes were made to finger of god as mentioned, this could act as an improved form of leashing, directing groups of followers at once without having to pick each individual one. -If meteor were changed...It would mostly remain the same. It's a meteor, unless the resource system is adjusted, it doesn't make sense for it to do much else other than be aggressive. -If swamp were changed, it could act as a passive defense or a method of keeping followers from wandering too far off (if its effects were applied to all people). -If holy forest, rain of purity, and beautify were changed, it'd be mostly the same as now, except you might be able to more actively modify the loyalty of taunting tribes/raiding parties to join you, instead of it feeding solely into happiness. New god powers?
-As much as I'd like to suggest some, I'd say it's better if combat or general follower interactions can be sorted out first, so then we can see what makes sense from there. If combat isn't all that central to the game, then more aggressive abilities (like meteor) wouldn't (and arguably don't) make much sense. If it is, then more solely aggressive abilities like that can make more sense. (Comet excluded because comet does literally only one thing and is otherwise useless and I don't know how it could be modified to be anything else without applying its same effects to meteor.) Additional thoughts:
-If the powers were modified in such a way as to have a controllable side effect (i.e. stun/shellshock/exhaustion) by careful use, you could make it so that militant followers are implemented earlier/simultaneously with these powers, in such a way that you learn how to manage both together instead of relying too heavily on one or the other. E.g. if Finger of God only stuns and guides military followers to the site (when used on enemies), you learn the value of both. Similarly, if you see that Meteor doesn't flat out crush and burn every follower beneath it, instead shellshocking some near its impact, you learn the value of having military followers nearby ready to clean up the rest instead of spamming Meteor. Alright, since Moo asked to try and ask each other questions about their pitches, I figured I'd start with Gmr's: With your proposed finger of god stun ability, are friendly characters also affected by the stun? Does the stun apply only to the one character hit by the ability, or does it affect multiple characters at once? How long does the stun last, and what is it's primary function? On Meteor: If you want to show where the meteor will hit, but the mechanic for shooting one is to briskly make a line with the mouse button pressed, how much time could there be before the computer can know where the meteor will hit and the meteor actually hitting there? Is that enough time to change your mind, and when you do change your mind, how can you cancel the meteor at this point? If the FoG has a stun, and the Meteor a slowing effect through shell-shock, and swamp a slowing effect through exhaustion, under what circumstance should a player pick one over the others when trying to delay the enemy? If FoG is used as a form of leeshing, what happens to the damaging effects it also has? When should the spell do damage and when should it not, and how does the player control the difference? Feel free to punch holes in my pitch btw, that's kind of the point. |
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Post by FuriousMoo on Jan 13, 2015 22:52:27 GMT
I wouldn't worry too much about what other people think, no idea is ever universal liked. Review criticism dispassionately, anyone who gets personal in their criticism is an a**** beneath your attention. What is your thinking behind using blight more? What effect do you expect it to have (both on actual followers and the flow of a battle)? Is swamp part of this or is this a separate point, you're not very clear here? Also swamp already fades with time. How does this balance meteor or finger of god? Well, I thought swamping on death (under any offensive God power) of an enemy was a little too much as swamp kills to quickly unless you adjust the level so it weakens rather than kills and swamp would need to last quite some time, or even require something more special to reverse it like a purge(heal earth) brush that costs silly levels of belief like thousands per second. Followers/enemy struggle to walk through it, actively avoid it maybe and simply can no longer build on it. Rather than restricting using powers in battle you have to think about repercussions (when using it against enemies), like s**t they need help there but I'm not going to be able to mine there or build anything etc after. you could combine with use count and cool down on powers but I like the idea of you responsible for the land, not just the followers. So if I understand what you are suggesting correctly, is that you are offsetting the over-poweredness (huzzah for made up words!) of god powers by making them ruin land that the player might otherwise been able to use? But would that not be of advantage to the player as you would effectively be creating a barrier to hinder further enemy attacks? It feels to me that the drawback of polluting the land would be highly situational unless it happened very close to a players settlements. I like the concept of the player having to make a tough decision whether to release a destructive power because of the fallout it creates, how would you develop the idea so that it always has a cost that needs to be considered? |
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Jan 13, 2015 23:05:54 GMT
Unfortunately the walls concept is dead end. We've tried them on settlements before and could never get them to work well with the terrain geometry. Have you considered hiring some Chinese? |
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Jan 13, 2015 23:11:26 GMT
I like the concept of the player having to make a tough decision whether to release a destructive power because of the fallout it creates, how would you develop the idea so that it always has a cost that needs to be considered? The meteors could be radioactive. I am wondering, when we are talking about using meteors in battles, will the people we fight against also have someone throwing meteors at us? |
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Post by FuriousMoo on Jan 13, 2015 23:29:34 GMT
I like the concept of the player having to make a tough decision whether to release a destructive power because of the fallout it creates, how would you develop the idea so that it always has a cost that needs to be considered? I am wondering, when we are talking about using meteors in battles, will the people we fight against also have someone throwing meteors at us? Most likely no. |
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Lord Ba'al
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I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Jan 13, 2015 23:51:07 GMT
I am wondering, when we are talking about using meteors in battles, will the people we fight against also have someone throwing meteors at us? Most likely no. So then we are most likely talking about battling against an AI tribe that has no god of their own to help them. In order for the battling to provide a challenge to the player, the enemy tribe should be strong and or massive. If this weren't the case a player could easily walz right over them by using the godly powers to assist the followers. In other words, the players tribe should be weak and feeble and would only be able to resist and conquer the "oppressors" over an extended period of time aided by their god. This would also mean that the god/player shouldn't be a very powerful being to start with but slowly grow and become more powerful along the way. The player's tribe should follow a similar progression. |
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Post by hardly on Jan 14, 2015 0:50:15 GMT
A couple of thoughts on this subject.
First: for me comparing strengths of my people versus their people is preferrable to my ability to weild my god powers. Having said that where I am reliant on my people to fuel my god powers that could still be interesting.
Second: If the AI is going to behave offensively then we are probably going to have something like the old RTS games where the AI built a predefined army and repeatedly attacked with it. At some point the player will overcome the repeated offensives (after being on the defensive for some time) and then will go on the attack. This starts to sound very much like a RTS game which I don't like.
I really think meteor and finger of God take us down the wrong path in terms of combat God powers. More subtle buffing/debuff effects would be much more interesting. Battle related powers that are only used by the player will have to be very carefully considered since if they are overwhelming the game will suck and if they are unwhemleming it will be too hard.
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Lord Ba'al
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Posts: 6,260
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Jan 14, 2015 1:01:18 GMT
Second: If the AI is going to behave offensively then we are probably going to have something like the old RTS games where the AI built a predefined army and repeatedly attacked with it. At some point the player will overcome the repeated offensives (after being on the defensive for some time) and then will go on the attack. This starts to sound very much like a RTS game which I don't like. What if the AI wasn't offensive but in order to progress a player would have to either go through them or around them. Both ways should be possible so it would allow a player to be combative or peaceful. Both ways should also be hard to achieve. In other words, there should be natural barriers that would be hard for a player to overcome if they would choose the peaceful route. Likewise it should not be easy to defeat the AI in combat. |
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Post by hardly on Jan 14, 2015 1:25:26 GMT
Second: If the AI is going to behave offensively then we are probably going to have something like the old RTS games where the AI built a predefined army and repeatedly attacked with it. At some point the player will overcome the repeated offensives (after being on the defensive for some time) and then will go on the attack. This starts to sound very much like a RTS game which I don't like. What if the AI wasn't offensive but in order to progress a player would have to either go through them or around them. Both ways should be possible so it would allow a player to be combative or peaceful. Both ways should also be hard to achieve. In other words, there should be natural barriers that would be hard for a player to overcome if they would choose the peaceful route. Likewise it should not be easy to defeat the AI in combat. In that case you'd probably want AI fortifications and defensive forces of progressively greater strength. That way as the player gains land and their civ expands (and presumably advances) the difficulty would remain semi balanced. If we are doing this I would put the emphasis on economic optimisation which would enhance strength of armed forces and yield "belief" to fuel offensive powers. You'd have to get your civ to a certain point to overcome a AI fortification (not an actual fortification, just an occupied position). If you didn't optimise efficiently enough you wouldn't have the strength to overcome them. Pushing the enemy back would unlock new resources and lands to fuel your next expansion. Again I'm thinking about settlers a bit here. I still think in this model meteor and finger of God aren't the ideal God powers. You really want powers that don't impact buildings so that you can't just obliterate their barracks. If you go down this path an engaged and loyal community of testers would be really helpful since we could help you balance the game to get an interesting difficulty curve. |
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Post by earlparvisjam on Jan 14, 2015 2:00:31 GMT
A couple of thoughts on this subject. First: for me comparing strengths of my people versus their people is preferrable to my ability to weild my god powers. Having said that where I am reliant on my people to fuel my god powers that could still be interesting. Second: If the AI is going to behave offensively then we are probably going to have something like the old RTS games where the AI built a predefined army and repeatedly attacked with it. At some point the player will overcome the repeated offensives (after being on the defensive for some time) and then will go on the attack. This starts to sound very much like a RTS game which I don't like. I really think meteor and finger of God take us down the wrong path in terms of combat God powers. More subtle buffing/debuff effects would be much more interesting. Battle related powers that are only used by the player will have to be very carefully considered since if they are overwhelming the game will suck and if they are unwhemleming it will be too hard. I hate to break it to you but, on many many levels, god games (and Godus, even now) are rts. The game happens in real time. Either we direct our followers to beat up an enemy or else we just watch as they roam around, stumble into the enemy, and then beat them up. Regardless, it's real time and will need strategy to be anything but sitting around. I am at a loss how we could make a god game like Populous, B&W, Godus, etc. NOT be a rts and still have any form of combat. Perhaps, if you could explain what you mean by that, we could figure out where the problem is and come up with an alternative. |
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Post by FuriousMoo on Jan 14, 2015 2:27:41 GMT
Just a quick course correction. Try not to get too hung up on the way enemy AI will work right now, we can re-visit that in another thread. You can however assume there will likely be situations where you will need to deal with a small group of enemies (say 10-20, whether you are attacking or defending makes no difference) or attack a settlement. I'm not ruling out larger battles or having to defend parts of your territory at this stage, but lets start with these two fairly basic scenarios I will want to include in some manner.
And yes by definition if there is to be any meaningful or engaging combat in Godus it's technically an rts. This does not however mean it's a combat focused rts or that it won't be set up so that the player can chose not to engage in most of the combat if they prefer not too. Again a discussion for another thread.
How can we adapt meteor and finger of god (and balance any new powers) so that your own troops aren't completely redundant?
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Post by earlparvisjam on Jan 14, 2015 2:42:23 GMT
Just a quick course correction. Try not to get too hung up on the way enemy AI will work right now, we can re-visit that in another thread. You can however assume there will likely be situations where you will need to deal with a small group of enemies (say 10-20, whether you are attacking or defending makes no difference) or attack a settlement. I'm not ruling out larger battles or having to defend parts of your territory at this stage, but lets start with these two fairly basic scenarios I will want to include in some manner. How can we adapt meteor and finger of god (and balance any new powers) so that your own troops aren't completely redundant? I don't think changing god powers is the best first step. The big thing we need to get past is figuring out just what followers are good for. All the tweaks to powers aren't going to matter for anything if followers don't have a purpose beyond whacking any enemies within range. That just makes them just another power that operates much slower, you have less control over, and gets in the way of anything else you might want to do. The first thing I think of is control. Followers are the only realistic way of taking over enemy structures. If you want to conquer an enemy building/settlement/whatever, only a follower is able to do that. I picture taking over enemy structures similar to construction, where the more followers the faster they take control of the territory. With this setup, it makes using god powers more a choice. Do you flatten their structures, paving the way for your own settlements down the line or do you let your minions fight it out for you and take over what's there once they win? |
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Post by hardly on Jan 14, 2015 2:46:34 GMT
Just a quick course correction. Try not to get too hung up on the way enemy AI will work right now, we can re-visit that in another thread. You can however assume there will likely be situations where you will need to deal with a small group of enemies (say 10-20, whether you are attacking or defending makes no difference) or attack a settlement. I'm not ruling out larger battles or having to defend parts of your territory at this stage, but lets start with these two fairly basic scenarios I will want to include in some manner. And yes by definition if there is to be any meaningful or engaging combat in Godus it's technically an rts. This does not however mean it's a combat focused rts or that it won't be set up so that the player can chose not to engage in most of the combat if they prefer not too. Again a discussion for another thread. How can we adapt meteor and finger of god (and balance any new powers) so that your own troops aren't completely redundant? Could we sub them out for lightening bolt, ice blast and fire blast? The problem is if you have powers plus small combat you get an arcade style clicking/timing games like the current voyages. The scale of the combat needs to be such that powers are a moderate influence rather than a major driver. If lightening bolt (single target powerful nuke) ice blast (AoE freeze) and fire blast (AOE weaker nuke or AOE DOT) are on cool downs, potentially linked, that are influenced by your civ's size then combat is about utilising abilities but also about having the infrastructure to recharge them faster to allow more to be deployed. Perhaps there could be a tension(based on what you can support) between military capability and religious capability so you either have ability to use more powers or more troops. |
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Post by hardly on Jan 14, 2015 2:54:14 GMT
Instancing fights like a mini Total War could be interesting. You'd have 30-40 guys fighting on the field in two opposing sides in a semi melee, semi formation. I'm not suggesting any elaborate like total war, just a few red guys trying to beat up a few blue guys. There'd be no manouvering or tactics.
They could have individual health and a group morale. If the group morale drops people start fleeing, if health drops then they obviously die. Some powers could be about reducing morale. Just a thought.
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