just wanted to point this out to frogboy because i thought it was a good point

i agree with most of what you're saying. perhaps we could get a chainmail armour tech between leather and light plate?

personally though, i don't really like the new recruitment limitting system. i know there had to be something to stop us producing our best units in outposts, but requiring them for unit sizes is a bad idea. not only does it not make sense, it will inevitably result in more individual units being built trhoughout the game, which we need less of not more. all those individuals just slow down the battles and simply look bad. would have been better to have required a level 3 "blacksmith" building for units with metal equipment. or simply increase training times exponentially and make the time reduction buildings more extensive and necesarry. i'm sure that would be a lot easier to write AI for if nothing else.

hell, if it was up to me, i'd make the default unit size 3, and then go up to 6, 9 and 12. at least then that first group tech would be less necesarry. but that's a whole other discussion i mean to make a post about soon.

generally, the problem i seem to have with recruitment is the same that i have with a lot of the game; i feel like it takes me forever just to get to a stage where i can do stuff that's fun (cast decent spells, recruit decent units, use summons and imbues), but by the time i do i'm at the end of a lot of my tech trees and able to pretty much walk over the opposition. the game feels like a very long early game with a short and rather anticlimactic mid game. by the time i have metal armour i almost always have the ventri mines tech, so i'm never in a situation when i'm unable to build metal units. i don't know if the solution is to just require less techs for things (ie, some armour available in the early game, a few automatic spells, a free starting weapon), increase research speeds (i know that, like a lot of people, almost all my citizens go on studies/libraries) or simply add more techs for after i reach this fun point. probably a combination of all three, depending on what your taste for pacing is.

gnashing teeth.

Will

not

refer

to

other

games.

sigh.

i see the faction editor has more options in it, thats really nice. Character creation is getting better. Perhaps each job class should have a series of skills they can pick from on a level up - it would be interesting to use that as a starting point to see if your sovereign will be someone who slugs it out in a fight or stands from afar watching from a large city.

(Edit - also, is there any particular reason why you can't trade or sell items you have started with when you have access to better tech ?)

Yes! We need a class system for the champions. There should be only a small number of them who have the potential to become "imbued" with magic-casting ability: Perhaps the champions who add tech/arcane points can be a scholar class.

The classes should tend to have their stats reflect their professions.

• There should be two basic categories of champions: Heroes and leaders (combat and administrative).
• The administrative champions should gain exp doing their jobs slowly over time.
• Each archetype of hero within the two branches should have skill tracks that increase as they level up. For example, a farmer should level up as he works in town, and gain skills that increase farming even more or give him the ability to seed a new farm elsewhere; a thief (combat hero) should gain stealth skills, looting bonus skills, etc.
• A small number of true "champions," who are entirely unique with a unique set of skills and more powerful than the rest. They could be only attainable by reaching a high prestige and/or researching the highest tech in that adventure branch.

I just posted about this in another thread.  Without cutting and pasting my analysis there, let's just say that:

Full Leather is your baseline.  Average weapons should be about equal in attack to said leather.

Legendary items should provide around 3 times whatever Full Leather applies.  The 3 to 1 advantage, after square/squareroot is factored in, is actually 9 times better.

Nothing should be more than 3 times as powerful as your baseline.  Otherwise, it's just cheese.  Heck, 3 to 1 (9 to 1 after square/squareroot) is pretty much cheese as it is!

'nuff said!

Also, I like the idea of chain being it's own tech, versus the plates.  Perhaps Armor tech should break down to: Padded (1's), Leather (2's), Chains (3's), Plates (4) and Light Plates (3, with less penalty than chain but more expensive), and Legendary stuff at 5 or 6's.  Breastplates at 2/3/4/5, with the best breastplate in the game being about 8 (or 12 including armlets).  With Plate greaves, that 8/12 becomes a 16, add the Soldier's cloak, and you have an 18 defense.

At one point, I think the Armor of Azor counted as both breastplate and armlets.  It should.

So current defenses look about right to me.  Just make sure the best attack ingame isn't much more than an 18 (say 24 with bonuses).  That 24 versus the 8 def (4 pt. Leather Cuirass with Greaves and armlets) will mean damage 8 out of 9 times.

This applies to Monsters as well.  A monster with say a 30 attack will literally eat you for lunch, unless you have godly dodge skills!

As for shields, I'd suggest a more complex mechanic.  Bonus to dodge skill, then a roll to reduce damage before it is applied to the total defense strength minus the shield. 

Example.  a 9 attack versus a 6 defense (armor), with a 2 point shield.  First damage roll is 9 versus 2 (so maybe a point of damage is blocked).  The remaining attack strength (9, although perhaps only 8 or 7) versus the 6 defense.  Remember that the shield is also adding to your dodge skill (say +2 to dodge), so you will get hit a little less often in the first place.  A 4 defense shield will be pretty useful, using this convention. 

A wall shield (6 defense, no bonus to dodge) would be interesting, as 9 attack will usually get about 5 damage past it, which armor then has to deal with.

If shield defense values were doubled/increased, they'd have the opportunity to divert more damage.  Under no circumstance, though, should they be higher than the 'average' armor suit they go along with.  a 2 def shield by itself is pretty pointless. a 4 def shield will probably drop a point of damage from that 9 attack, perhaps 2.  an 8 def shield will probably only let about 3 damage past it, so I'd suggest a 6 cap (or 8 with a wall shield, which should also reduces your speed by 1 or 2, and also a penalty to dodge 'cuz it's so heavy).

Also, as far as 'magical bonuses' (rings, amulets), these should be equally available.  If there's a +3 attack amulet, there should be a +3 defense amulet or ring.  As long as Attack items pooled together equal the defensive items, balance will be maintained.   Keep in mind that Strength will skew the numbers in favor of the attacker as the game progresses.

Same for tomes.  Do keep in mind though, that run of the mill units don't benefit from those tomes, so heroes and sovereigns will start outclassing them by quite a bit in the late game, with some generous reading...

Quick edit:  As for cranking out damage, raising attack and defense appropriately to allow for more damage to 'seep through' the armor is also fine.  Personally, in the early game I like the levels where they are now.  Needing to beat an opponent up over 3-6 attacks should be the norm, with 'average' equipment.  I think that spear is a little TOO powerful for the early game in most cases.  And I'm glad to see the warstaff bumped down a little bit in availabiltiy.  A 15 attack should be a mid/lategame value, not an early one.

I also support the more subtle advances in the scaling of attack and defence values across equipment. In the game a difference of 1 or 2 numbers can mean a lot of difference in damage.

Plus as more interestng abilities and magic weapons/armor get added is would make sense to have a more stable and subtle base from which to build from. If all the standard gear is already getting cheesey then where are does all the uber rare stuff have to go?

weapons could also be more gradually improved through tech.

Say we break them down into various metals: Brass, Iron, Steel, Elementalium (and so on).

Then we could take some of the weapons in the game right now and simply tier them up.

We could have the short sword have and brass, iron, steel and elementailum variant.

This would allow elemental to have more choices for weapons. Right now each tier only unlocks 1 or 2 so your choices are very limited.

If later the game had different damage types, this would allow for more variety in weapons. Currently the short sword comes very early and will not be effective at all in late game. However, with this change, we could have steel short swords mid-late game which would inflict slashing damage and still give us the combat speed bonus (the reason why to take a short over longsword).

Anyway just some thoughts,

Jec

I don't know what you mean by "average weapons", but you want to avoid "blocked" results. Total damage avoidance should be the realm of two things: dodge, and armor that's vastly superior to the weapon you're using. Otherwise, armor should reduce damage, sometimes by quite a lot, but not absorb it completely.

Otherwise, I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that the current values have absolutely no internal logic. I've exposed what I believe is a good, consistent system in a previous post: the values should be compared to the base HP. And going from there:

-Good weapons from endgame should deal twice, maybe a bit more than twice (legendary stuff: three times) the basic unit HP. You could actually have them deal less than twice basic unit HP.

-The best, non-legendary armor could be above basic HP, but not by much (actually making experienced/veteran units worth it). If it becomes much higher, then you need to raise weapon damage as well, and then HP becomes insignificant because all the other values are much bigger.

-The issue is that there are many different armor levels for now. Padded, leather, light plate, heavy plate, light master, heavy master (not counting legendary which is almost unique). that's 6 ranks, with 4 pieces each. If you want to make them feel different, you're pretty much bound to reach the 30s. So, if major parts (chest...) from heavy master armor are around 7 armor and minor parts (arms) 6 armor, you end up with 26+shields and items. Overall, 25-35 for the best armor range.

This means HP needs to be at least in the 20s, or it will be too far removed from the other figures in the game. This also means that regular weapons need to go from 10-15 to 30-40. My experience is that it works fine that way, except that it will maybe require a spell damage boost (or maybe not, because casters can already cast 3 times a round pretty easily :/). Someone was worried that strength wouldn't count as much, but it actually does, especially late game, since high-end weapon values have actually been lowered slightly in this picture.

[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="8" id="2837507"]
Full Leather is your baseline.  Average weapons should be about equal in attack to said leather.
I don't know what you mean by "average weapons", but you want to avoid "blocked" results. Total damage avoidance should be the realm of two things: dodge, and armor that's vastly superior to the weapon you're using. Otherwise, armor should reduce damage, sometimes by quite a lot, but not absorb it completely. (snip)
/quote]

This is where your strength stat comes into play.  And that's why I said about equal, not totally equal. I'm thinking the 'average baseline weapon' has about 1 higher attack than the baseline armor.  If that is 7 versus 6, for example, then you'll probably see 2 points going through pretty consistently (assuming both roll about 50%).  Seeing that both are 'evenly matched', then I'd expect the battle to take a bit...

I didn't know about the 50% rule being in force as well, but that would explain the statistical results that are now showing up in combat (I was wondering about the minimum damage values).  Personally, I don't agree with it, but it's in place so I'll move on.

And if you have a higher strength, you add more to the attack value, hence increasing your damage.

I'll stand by my statement about a legendary armor suit being only 3 times as tough as a full suit of your average armor though.  Same for weapons.  Anything more is cheese.

Boosting everything (perhaps in the background) by a baseline value I'd support as well (example: add 4 to ALL attack and defense factors, then square, roll, and squareroot), to help mitigate any huge discrepancies. 

As for dodge, this looks like more of a 'linear' roll ingame, not a weighted roll, based on the results I'm seeing.  I'm fine with how it works as of now.