Wishlist for September

[Kel]

Arryn said:

In your opinion.

My opinion that bad books are written ? I doubt it, can't call a book good unless there is a bad book to judge it by

- Kel

[Endoperez]

If we are going to make an "official" wishlist, then we should have it be only one message that contains the list of all items in the thread. This is too crowded as a list. So I think you are free to post your ideas in there. But we need to organize this pretty fast if we want all these things for Christmas... Ho Ho Ho

[Vicious Love]

Y'know what we need? A wishful thinking thread.
Kinda like a wishlisht, but intended for all those frivolous suggestions which are nowhere near urgent. While the proper wishlist would have, oh, say, "extend the casting queue", "fix the Alchemist's Stone", etc, the wishful thinking list would have entires such as "Cannibalism: Because it makes no sense for Pangaea and BF Ulm's armies to starve just because they've run out of rations".


...



Honestly, cannibalism. BF Ulm would be able to do it preemptively, to prevent supplies from eventually running out when under siege, and Pangaea would be forced to do it. Pangaea would eat the wounded and the small first, the sacred(Including prophets) next, and the large Last, BF Ulm would eat the peasants first, the conscripts next, and never eat commanders or knights, R'lyeh would only eat Atlanteans and mercenaries and, as in ages gone by, rule #1 of cannibalism is universally applicable: Thou shalt not eat thine god.



...



But I digress. My suggestion stands: One list/subCategory for urgent stuff which just about everybody agrees on, another for more questionable wishes, and maybe even a third for utterly irrelevant and unfeasible stuff.

Like cannibalism.

[Stossel]

Just to weigh in on the madcastling bit.

I am/was the Vanheim player that attemped to raid Cainehills territories and the most frustrating thing about it was...I accomplished absolutely nothing.

To me, there's no strategy in that. He didn't adeptly shepherd my raiders into a corner and kill them by out-guessing where I was going to go, or strategically place his forces so that when I got my intelligence reports he'd have forced me into a certain province, he just stuck some buildings up and never had to worry about it. Madcastling to me is not good gameplay, it is the death of it. It is too easy to get this sort of thing going, especially combined with the fact that hardly anyone spends money on troops, so all that cash is available for building temples and castles.

I'm not knocking on you Cainehill, nor your skills as a player, I just have a problem with that sort of non-strategy.

It seemed to me from the feel of the game that buildings like temples, libraries and castles shouldn't be *every province* buildings. There's a reason Pan and Man's temples are half the price, because the developers wanted to encourage mass temples for those two nations. At this point in time, it doesn't look like the money is an issue anymore.

[Cohen]

Building a lot of Castles is common in middle ages, every "province" had his castle, big or small ...

Building a lot of the requires a lot of turns, gold and efforts, not to count that a successfull raid burn out an half built castle.

However probably Castles could be reviewed.
Effectively Watchtower and Mausoleum aren't real castle, and didn't provided any real defence to the province.
A wizard tower too don't provide a good defence.
My proposal could get some code work ... but if we count Watchtower as a patrol bonus unit instead of a castle (probably none will choose it anymore however) for defence issue (so in you conquer the province you take immediately the watchtower and you don't need to siege and storm), but you can recruit as a castle.
Mausoleum should work the same for defence and build, but should give a bonus when casting Death spells ... a small bonus like a 10% gem discount.
Wizard Tower should give a small bonus when casting a remote or summoning spell ... perhaps a 10% discount on gems, rounded down, because the tower is suited to support magic channeling (ie a Seeking Arrow will still cost 3 gems, a Fire from Afar will drop from 10 to 9 gems, a Summon Lamia Queen from 15 to 14 because it's rounded down the discount). Wizard Tower doesn't count as castle for defence meaning.

I'd add some Administration to all other castles.

[Stossel]

Well, instead of just responding to what others have written I though I might post a wishlist of my own, since even not-even-mediocre players have hopes and dreams.

* Items that apply bonuses to units lead by the item-holder (someone already suggested this but I'm lending my support to it) and more spells that buff troops. Seems odd to me that given the choice to help 1 unit or many units, especially in dealing with warfare, the emphasis is on 1 unit.

* Attach a small or at least a possibility for a small gain in morale from buffing units. If my troops aren't feeling too good about a battle and then all of a sudden they're all granted ironskin, they're going to feel better about their chances.
* This one is big and barring some miracle won't happen but it is a wish: Attacking a province from different directions should reflect itself on the battlefield. So this way the attacker can attempt to flank, use pincer movement, etc. Doesn't make sense to me that I can attack from both the east and the west and still have all my units on the same side. Of course there would be checks on this, perhaps the defending units leadership ability is compared with that of the attackers and through some calculation if the defender wins, he gets to face his opponents normally (would provide an interesting side effect for crown of command and similar items)

*Receive a message month before merc contract is up giving a prompt asking if you want to keep them on. Accepting would bring you to the bid screen, declining would set the bid to 0.

* The option to disallow Gods on the Hall of Fame.

[Thufir]

FM_Surrigon said:
* The option to disallow Gods on the Hall of Fame.

I like this one!!!

In the same vein (though perhaps a nit), I'd like it if Orion never showed up on the Hall of Fame, would it be reasonable just to greatly reduce his xp in the next patch?

Edit
I don't actually mean that Orion literally never shows up, just that he works like any other merc, and didn't have that insane amount of xp that leaves him permanently pegged at the top of the HoF

[Cainehill]

FM_Surrigon said:
Just to weigh in on the madcastling bit.

I am/was the Vanheim player that attemped to raid Cainehills territories and the most frustrating thing about it was...I accomplished absolutely nothing.

To me, there's no strategy in that. He didn't adeptly shepherd my raiders into a corner and kill them by out-guessing where I was going to go, or strategically place his forces so that when I got my intelligence reports he'd have forced me into a certain province, he just stuck some buildings up and never had to worry about it. Madcastling to me is not good gameplay, it is the death of it. It is too easy to get this sort of thing going, especially combined with the fact that hardly anyone spends money on troops, so all that cash is available for building temples and castles.

Ahem. First - my castles were up before you started raiding. Currently something like 9 castles out of 21 provinces, on turn 41. Not exactly mad castling, but the castles did what they were supposed to - protect labs and temples.

Then - it's difficult to herd raiders on a map with an average of something like 6 neighbors per province, not counting the sailing neighbors which you, as Vanheim, made use of.

I attempted to predict where you would go - frankly, I never expected you to go driving inland away from the sea, as that gave up one of your big advantages.

And several times, I would have balked your progress, except for two things. #1, Caelum's PD is more of a hindrance than a help, since they fly right up and then rout, meaning that I had to get troops with each response force.

#2, on one or two occasions, I did predict your movement, and believe I would have broken your army, except that the fortifications worked against me: My forces moved to where you moved, and sat on their arses inside the walls. If there had not been a fort, or if there was a "Move and Patrol" / "Move and Attack" order, you'd've have been hurting.

It seemed to me from the feel of the game that buildings like temples, libraries and castles shouldn't be *every province* buildings. There's a reason Pan and Man's temples are half the price, because the developers wanted to encourage mass temples for those two nations. At this point in time, it doesn't look like the money is an issue anymore.

As stated - 9 out of 21 provinces is hardly an "every province" situation. If raiders didn't have the huge advantages they currently do, I wouldn't _need_ to build a fortification on every temple. As it was, if I had left a couple of temples unguarded, I would have lost them.

If I had built the cheap forts (mausoleum / watch tower) I might have lost a couple of them, as you would have been able to storm the turn after arriving. As it was, the wizard towers were perfect - and frankly, paying 120 design points seems a strategic investment in those forts.

Money not being an issue? Obviously you don't have an inkling of what my upkeep is like. If I build so much as a temple, that's recruiting I can't afford to do, much less a temple and tower.

And finally, you say you accomplished nothing? Wrong. You didn't accomplish as much as you wanted to, obviously, but you cost me a number of mages, and a fair amount of gold spent on PD (which was between 5 and 11 in every province, I believe).

More significantly, you totally disrupted my research and forging, as something like 2/3 or 3/4 of my mages were either patroling, or flying around trying to intercept you for half a dozen or more turns.

It didn't seem like nothing to me. And for this, I will crush Vanheim.

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:
It didn't seem like nothing to me. And for this, I will crush Vanheim.

Go get 'im! Spite is such a wonderful thing.

Oh, and be sure you build a tower in each of his provinces, just to demonstrate what "madcastling" actually looks like.

[Stossel]

Well Cainehill if that's not even close what what "madcastling" is, then I'm REALLY against it.

Though to be honest I'm really just bitter and at a loss at how to counter the type of units I went up against.