[Historical] Changes to the gold carryover system

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Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Perhaps you get taxed a bit? Perhaps you receive 90% of their worth or w.e? The idea's not just being dismissed but they're being sold to someone else.

What would be really crazy would be if somehow your troops were sold around to your opponent and you ended up facing them again. ...Ye gods I'm starting to sound like markm.
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zookeeper
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by zookeeper »

Update: I've now converted DiD, SoF and HttT to support both carryover systems concurrently. In the difficulty selection menu there are the usual three difficulties, and then three new ones on which the new carryover system will be active. HttT and DiD are now at 40% carryover, SoF still at 20%. I'm going to play HttT myself shortly to see how it works out.

The rationale is that this allows me to convert any campaign to support the new system without fear of breaking the balance for anyone but those who want to test the new system. My hope and intention is to drop the old system eventually (before 1.6), but this way not everyone needs to become a guinea pig.
Daxam
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Daxam »

Jozrael wrote: I can't understand the sense of it though. Who are you selling it to @_@?
If you can recruit them as gold, why can't you sell them. Think of them as mercenaries. Good point that they can only be sold in your castle.

This is a nice alternative if I am short of gold.
Earworthm
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Earworthm »

Sorry, i'm coming lately to this thread, but could you make a system where the gold you earn between to scenarios is a function of the experience your units got? Perhaps it would push the player to boost their units and get gold as well.
But, i have only tried the former system for now, i will see what does the new one brings.
And, once again, sorry for my english..
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

to consider your units experience would complicate the calculation in a quite incomprehensible way...
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Besides making no sense whatsoever.

/mean

Welcome to the forums/topic!
Earworthm
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Earworthm »

I didn't take this into account, actually.
Maybe each time you kill a unit, it carries some gold (like in survival extreme scenarios).
I'm new so I do not know all the implications of your proposals... :hmm:
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DeathDealer
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by DeathDealer »

If you could only sell your troops on a castle tile you wouldn't have to tax them. They'd cost you 20 gold to bring out and that would be the reduction. However that seems like a lot of work if the unit costs had to be retooled to fit that system.

A little math might make things nicer.

What if the amount of carry over gold you could keep scaled based on a difficulty rating for a scenario. Then harder missions could give you more starting gold while easier missions gave you less?

What if you set the carryover to 75% but subtracted 1, 2, or 3% times the number of levels above 1 each unit had? So with 3 level 3's and the rest level 1's you'd lose (Lvl 3 - 1st lvl = 2, 2 x (say -2% on medium difficulty) = -4% each, -4% x 3 units = -12%, 75% - 12% = 63% carryover)? The % subtracted could vary with campaign difficulty (of which there are conveniently 3 levels...)
Note: You could just set the loss % at 2 and change the base carryover amount by difficulty, i.e. 80% easy, 70% medium, 60% hard...(probably better balanced)
Also Note: Extremely high level units (Archmages, Sylphs) would be too cost prohibitive to have in your army, let alone use so maybe the % loss per unit should cap at level 3. Otherwise they could cost you a fortune between AND during missions.
Further Note: You could lower each of those percentages by 20 or so and add starting gold amounts to the carryover.

Consider:
+A player could balance his troops vs. gold in the long run, and in the very next scenario through careful leveling control (something most players practice rigorously anyway). Just dismiss excess lvl 2's and 3's at start. And a little sacrifice of a tough unit can make a scenario much easier so just go for it every now and then.
+You are being taxed for units and hoarding (balancing your major resources), which is the real goal of a strategy game. And you allow the player him/herself strike the balance.
+Would encourage the leveling of new units over the repetitive use of old faithfuls. And it's always been good strategy to take almost leveled units into the next stage which would be an even better idea now.
+If a player saw a recognized a farming level when he saw one (usually a large map) he could throw out all his experienced units and lose a couple to maximize his gain both through speed and carryover.
=Trying to run scenarios or even campaigns on strictly level one units might be a popular option. Interesting...
-You might need a new way to dispose of troops before carryover each mission (or at the end of a mission). Selling them is a good idea too*
-Hoarding powerful units would make it more difficult to field them... that's a loss of a big investment by the player.
-You might be tempted to never stockpile more than a couple powerful units due to their expense (maybe, depends on how much gold you really need). If you weren't into leveling new units you might just sit there with the same 4 level 3's for a whole campaign pissing and moaning about this post and how it would have been better if the forums crashed.

*If you sell a unit you should get say 5 for a lvl 1, 15 for a lvl 2, and 40 for a lvl 3.
Lvl 1: I wouldn't even allow selling lvl 1's except that some lvl 0's might deserve some value for leveling (still I'd go with no).
Lvl 2: If a unit lvls about once a scenario then a lvl 2 costs between 10-20 gold or so + the wasted xp. So with 15 gp for a lvl 2 you'd probably get about even gp value carried to the next level and whatever use it made you during that scenario. If it were more people could farm level 2's for cash which would probably discourage leveling new units for any other purpose than to field a large army of old faithfuls.
Lvl 3: If a unit lvls once a scenarion then a lvl 3 has been paid for 10-20 (avg 15 for calculations) gp or so and rehired 20 gp and cost you about 15 turns upkeep as a lvl 1 and another 15 as a lvl 2 and costing you a 2% carryover penalty (call it 20 gold) as well as absorbing a large amount of your limited xp. Costing perhaps 100 gp or more over 2 scenarios minus whatever use you made of it (which would probably be significant if it got that much xp). So a much bigger sacrifice than a lvl 2 and probably worth the ability to hire 2 experienced units in the next battle (as well as avoid higher taxation).
Lvl 4+: Consequently much more expensive to maintain and lvl but very useful. With no additional taxation past lvl 3 I'd say just add 20 gp per lvl above 3 and let people store them up for cash in the hardest scenarios.
Biggest question is could you sell them between scenarios or during scenarios? During would be less confusing and probably nicer alround.

Alright. Monster post I know. Hopefully some good will come of it and little frustration will occur. Uhm. I think there are a bunch of useful ideas here but I'm not trying to convert anyone so lay off any hate please. The game obviously runs very well without my input and I got that. Otherwise have at it fellow gamers, I'm interested to see what you think.

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Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

I don't like the idea of taxing unused units, despite how realistic it is.
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DeathDealer
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by DeathDealer »

Could be it's just not how anyone would want to play Wesnoth. It's not the kind of mechanic that would make me jump up and play the first time I saw it, but the new system :annoyed:, I don't like at all. And it also isn't the kind of thing that I think would piss me off as long as it was balanced. . .
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

DeathDealer wrote:...but the new system :annoyed:, I don't like at all
the new system doesn't replace the old one, it just adds a new option (which i think might have been possible even before using wml tricks). i'm aware that it looks like all mainline campaigns are going to be converted to the new system.

the main advantage imo is that balancing is going to be much easier. imagine you have to create a scenario that shall be playable and have a certain level of difficulty. in the old system you had to balance it for players that come there with a range of gold between 100 and 1000 (or more). in the new one it's rather something like 200-400.

and long campaigns usually had one or more scenarios that were especially designed to get rid of excessive amounts of gold that a player might have...
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DeathDealer
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by DeathDealer »

That's true but isn't it a little sad that scenarios had to cater specifically to gold-coasting through a campaign? That scenario could've been geared toward something more exciting or challenging than preempting a lvl 1 rush in the next mission.

P.S. I posted a refined version of the suggested Carryover mechanic in the "Ideas" section of the forum. It seemed more appropriate there. So far it seems quite unpopular. . . Who would have thought that people hate new, higher taxes? :roll:
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markm
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by markm »

Couldn't scenarios be balacned against gold-hoarding by setting opponents money as a ratio to the player's money?

Most scenarios already seem to have different enemy money for the different difficulty levels, if they also changed the enemy funds based on the player's funds those players who are good at getting big bonus monies could maybe actually enjoy all that excess money more by facing much larger enemy armies, instead of ending up just having a cakewalk. Go ahead and enter with oodles of cash, no problem, turns out the enemy also did some godl-raising too. have a nice huge battle?

-MarkM-
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uzytkownik
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by uzytkownik »

Mine 3 points
1. To be honset - slave trading do not fit all the fractions. Northeners may practice (I haven't studied their culture) some and undead (mana trade or anythong. Even in our world zombie armies are on sale).
2. The more fixed level of gold will halp designers to balance scenarios.
3. At least for some players gold management is fun.
roadkill
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by roadkill »

Markm thats what relic did for homeworld 2, the problem with it is, it punishes noobs for doing well (making future scenarios harder when they do well), and adds a horrible outside influence to the strategy for vets, they deliberately play *just good enough* to make later missions easier.
Heck even if they still give it their all they still feel wronged that things get harder the better they do... Its not really fun for noobs or Vets, unless they don't know about it! But everytime someone consults a guide they will see this... (noobs cos they need help, vets for interest sake!).

I'm glad to see the campaigns are being worked on, I played a campaign once, it was really fun until I got to the impossible mission.

I was playing HttT, easy, conserving money & everything, but the mission before TotC I had a large upkeep and went into TotC with minimum money. I tried it many times, nearly doing it a few times, but its impossible with minimum money (well unless your a god, I had no griffins), I only had a small force of lv2's as well...

I don't think I'm completely [censored] at this game, and I don't do stupid things with my units (I think, I don't play multi-player against any1 'cept the wife so I can't gauge my skill), anyway, I don't cheat, and won't go back to replay other scenarios. I just feel the minimum gold is too low. I think I'm ranting a bit, but I can't really help that I feel it spoilt campaigns for me and I haven't tried one since.

So all I can say is I hope the minimum gold has gone up with the revisions, just so easy can be completed by a relatively competent player with minimum gold & no recalls.

heck if others think thats too easy, then they can play normal eh?

I'm ready to try again and I'll test these for you Zoo, just one question, how stable is 1.5.x for campaigns? I played multiplayer on 1.5.x against the wife. I went OOS lots. So we now play 1.4.x
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