[0.86 Suggestion] Trouble with Tribbles... er ... Champions

from Elemental Forums

We still seem to be having trouble achieving a balance with champions.  In earlier betas we used them almost exclusively in massive stacks of level 20+ death, decked out in every piece of loot we could acquire.  In 0.86, unless you like 1/2 or 1/3 experience penalties, you only use one at a time and you can only equip 4 extra items.  While I think that these are generally good changes, they create a situation where champions are always attainable, just not useful.  Using more than one at a time kills the experience, and experience is king.  I tend to hire whatever champions I come across just to keep them out of the hands of my competitors, but I can't actually use 10 champions.  Not as real champions anyway.  The extras just sit around in my cities as defensive fodder, increasing my faction power rating so my neighbors don't get uppity.  This is no life for a champion.  But what is the answer?

First, I would suggest that the experience penalty, while effective at killing the hero stack of doom, is a bit too steep.  It effectively nerfs using more than one champion at a time.  It should be viable to have two heroes working together.  It is also still possible to power level trained units by putting as many as possible in an army.

The experience distribution should be one that takes into account the level of the participants on both sides.  Perhaps modifying experience by 10% per level difference of the highest level troops of both sides.  Since heroes are immortal, they will likely be the highest level troop, and will limit the experience of the other participants.  This would encourage using equal (or lower) level troops and champions to maximize experience.  Add an extra reduction (or bonus) of 15% per champion on your side, and I think you would have a fairly balanced system.  Lets try some examples:

Enemy:  100 exp base value, highest level: 5

Situation 1:  army with 2 champions, highest level: 4
Exp = 100 exp + 10% (level difference) - 30% (2 champions) = 100 - 20% = 80 exp

Situation 2: army with 1 champion, level 7
Exp = 100 exp - 20% (level difference) - 15% (1 champion) = 100 - 35% = 65 exp

Situation 3:  army without champions,  level 3
Exp = 100 exp + 20% (level difference) = 120 exp

Enemy: 300 exp base, 2 champions, highest level: 7

Situation 1:  army with 2 champions, highest level: 4
Exp = 300 exp + 30% (level difference) = 390 exp

Situation 2: army with 1 champion, level 7
Exp = 300 exp + 15% (+1 enemy champion) = 345 exp

Situation 3:  army without champions,  level 3 (Ok not likely)
Exp = 300 exp + 40% (level difference) + 30% (+2 enemy champions) = 510 exp

With some playing with the numbers, it looks like it could work.  You could get more detailed and accurate, taking into account (level * number of figures, ie. squads), averaging the levels instead of taking the highest, and giving higher level units a larger share of the exp.  Maybe also allow for 1 free champion on your side.

 

Second, I can hire as many champions as I want and they are free forever.  This doesn't seem right.  One of those should change.  If champions are to be free troops, then the number you can hire should be tied to faction prestige or the "greatness" of your kingdom.  This could lead to a situation where early on you can't just hire everyone, and later in the game you encounter a hero with skills that you really want, but you already have the max number of heroes for your prestige level.  Do you ditch one of your heroes in order to free up more "glory" for this new prima donna?  If not that, then the hero limit should come from an upkeep cost like normal troops. 

That brings up another interesting issue.  What if you do want to disband a champion, but keep the stuff you gave him?  Or what if you want to leave some equipment behind for other heroes to use.  I think some kind of additional shop screen where you can drop equipment that is either city-based, or kingdom wide would allow you to dump champions, as well as alleviate the "traveling item shop" that champions cart around with them now.

Lastly, the misc item limit of 4 items currently seems too low, probably because it is only reasonable to actively use a couple champions.  If the experience issue were dealt with to make multiple champions a bit more viable, this would probably seem less of an issue as the equipment would actually be used by more champions.

4,449 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

They could divide XP by the square-root of the number of champs, not by the actual number of champs, which I think is what they do now.  Then with 2 champs each gets about 71%, with 3 each get about 58%, with 4 each gets 50%, etc.  The total experience gained goes up as the number of champs goes up, which I think is realistic.

Agree that 4 items per champ is low.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Why reward stacked heroes with higher total XP?  Why should killing two ogres with one army reward more total experience than killing one ogre with each of two armies?  All that does is force the player into creating a stack of doom again.  If anything, I'd like to see interesting incentives to splitting armies up, and fighting more competitive battles.

I can see a very persuasive argument for not allowing the number of heroes to influence the XP gained by the rank and file.  I can also see an argument for giving a bit of bonus XP for taking on difficult fights (this is rife with the potential for exploit, though).

My prefered XP splitting algorithm would reward two buckets of experience, one for champions and one for regular units.  Each bucket would be divided evenly among the eligible participants.  This way, a 40 XP ogre being fought by 2 heroes and 4 units of spears rewards 20 XP to each hero and 10 XP to each unit of spears.  If you split that army into two (each with one hero and 2 spears) and each killed an ogre, the results, as far as total experience gained, would be identical to the whole army killing both ogres (80 XP per champion and 20 XP per spear).  Maybe there could also be a system of rewarding the split armies some bonus XP for the (more) difficult fights, but nothing readily jumps out at me and the added bonus of an overall faster kill-rate may be sufficient.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting malekith, reply 2
Why reward stacked heroes with higher total XP?  Why should killing two ogres with one army reward more total experience than killing one ogre with each of two armies?  All that does is force the player into creating a stack of doom again.  If anything, I'd like to see interesting incentives to splitting armies up, and fighting more competitive battles.

I can see a very persuasive argument for not allowing the number of heroes to influence the XP gained by the rank and file.  I can also see an argument for giving a bit of bonus XP for taking on difficult fights (this is rife with the potential for exploit, though).

My prefered XP splitting algorithm would reward two buckets of experience, one for champions and one for regular units.  Each bucket would be divided evenly among the eligible participants.  This way, a 40 XP ogre being fought by 2 heroes and 4 units of spears rewards 20 XP to each hero and 10 XP to each unit of spears.  If you split that army into two (each with one hero and 2 spears) and each killed an ogre, the results, as far as total experience gained, would be identical to the whole army killing both ogres (80 XP per champion and 20 XP per spear).  Maybe there could also be a system of rewarding the split armies some bonus XP for the (more) difficult fights, but nothing readily jumps out at me and the added bonus of an overall faster kill-rate may be sufficient.
End of malekith's quote

 

This : I too think XP should be tied to the difficulty of the fight, and not some ressource to be farmed on the map. To address the limited supply of XP, we just need a few locations or events that would constantly spawn monster throughout the game. 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

It will be interesting to see how Stardock adjusts this. The current system is definitely too aggressive to penalizing champions where they don't feel as powerful or special anymore. That was the fun thing in .76- leveling up and creating powerful champions.

I like the idea about using prestige for champion recruiting. Might even substitute diplomatic capital in there, assuming that's still around in Beta 3.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If you have 4 rookie soldiers in a fight, they will all learn something about what its like to be in a fight.  Total experience gained would be more than if only two guys were in the fight.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 5
If you have 4 rookie soldiers in a fight, they will all learn something about what its like to be in a fight.  Total experience gained would be more than if only two guys were in the fight.
End of Lord's quote

Right, and so the optimal thing to do is for your champion to drag around an army full of rookies to every fight.  Any time you haven't filled the available army slots before engaging, you're doing something wrong.  I'd like the optimal solution to be a bit more interesting.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 5
If you have 4 rookie soldiers in a fight, they will all learn something about what its like to be in a fight. Total experience gained would be more than if only two guys were in the fight.
End of Lord's quote

Experience isn't learning what it is like to be near a fight.  It is learning what it is like to be in a fight, to actually participate.  I also disagree with the analogy.  If 4 guys fight, each guy theoretically does 1/4 of the fighting.  If 2 guys fight, then each guy does 1/2 the fighting.  The only truly reliable way I know of to make experience a reward for participation is to grant experience on the spot for every action taken, but that tends to favor the melee attackers.  And eventually when you get fast champions, they can zoom in and take the enemy out before your slower troops get to do anything.  Is that a problem or is it as it should be?  Perhaps there should be some experience for witnessing the fight and the rest granted for participation. 

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree, i do not know what to do with champs anymore ...

Part of the problem is that first: i am never really attacked, so i do not need defense.

Second, maintenance of troops limits the army size, so i never have more than two active armies at the time (this is the case if you do not have special features on you faction/sov cutting costs of troops)  

Hence, only 2 or 4 (i sometimes pair them for fun) champions are active the rest does nothing ... They cannot even hunt monsters b/c once you take their lairs they dont come anymore - no way to get experience = useless champ 

 

 

 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Besides, i still have the stack of doom taking down anyone (through magic), including epic monster, but instead of using 6-7 champs it has now two champions using spells with bonuses and good initiative.  

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top


Maintenance for army troops is being looked into. Personally I don't see how grouping champions together is as harsh as people are complaining about. The experience required for level ups is exponentional in nature. If you group two champions together they are likely to each by level 10 or 9 by the time a single champion is 12. Not splitting xp evenly ecourages stacking champions together.

In any case, the only split xp mechanic that bothers me is units. Preferably regular units should have higher starting hp, better level up bonuses and be capped at level 5. All regular units recieve .25 xp per point, and traits that affect experience affect that number. To be more precise, if you got the +25% experience gain it would in fact increase thier gain to .5 (double), and the army bonus xp from heroes would increase that by .1 to .35

Units should not otherwise participate in any way with the experience mechanic. An alternative would be to have regular units split xp with regular units but not champions.

As a final note, as far as difficulty is concerned you could provide a 15% bonus to experience for killing an enemy with a single unit (champion or otherwise). Given that xp is not linear there is little need to base the reward on the army composition otherwise. 200xp for a level 1 unit is significantly more beneficial than 200xp for a level 10 unit.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the XP should be divided by one less than the number of champions. This allows small groups of one, two or three champions to work together without a steep penalty.  But any more than three and the penalty starts to get pretty steep.

XP = XP For Encounter

C = Nbr Champions

XPC = Awarded XP Per Champion

XPC = Min(XP * C, XP * 2)  / C

For example, after an encounter that yielded 100 XP:

Min(100 * 1, XP * 2) / 1 = 100/Champion

Min(100 * 2, XP * 2) / 2  = 100/champion

Min(100 * 3, XP * 2) / 3  = 67/champion

Min(100 * 4, XP * 2) / 4 = 50/champion

Min(100 * 5, XP * 2) / 5 = 40/champion

Min(100 * 6, XP * 2) / 5 = 33/champion