[UMC] Is Time necessary...? and a lot of other ideas.

[Reepurr]

I have a solution to the Infinite Turns = Infinite Gold conundrum:

After the time limit expires, you don't gain gold, but can still lose gold.

Unfortunately, that's already been mentioned.

What if, after the target time was exceeded, Gold was no longer generated . . .

[monochromatic]

I have a solution to the Infinite Turns = Infinite Gold conundrum:

After the time limit expires, you don't gain gold, but can still lose gold.

Unfortunately, that's already been mentioned.

What if, after the target time was exceeded, Gold was no longer generated . . .

To reiterate, even if you solved the gold problem that way, the unlimited experience problem is still there.

[Noitakuningas]

Unfortunately, that's already been mentioned.

To reiterate, even if you solved the gold problem that way, the unlimited experience problem is still there.

Solve problem x.

Still have problem y?

Use the solution for problem x to solve y!

[monochromatic]

This is starting to get very un-KISS... I prefer a turn limit and that's it. If you don't make it, then you lose. Nice and simple.

[bvanevery]

You know, I would love to see a campaign where you have to fight back from the consequences of failure rather than the campaign just ending.

So the orcs have taken the North bank? That just means either a mission to win it back, or a sudden horde of orc reinforcements showing up in later levels...

Would you actually love it? Would players in general love it? Would the author love to write it?

The first thing that occurs to me, is it's branching content that the player may not see. Generally the more open ended and the less railroaded the player's path through the content, the more it's likely I'll be writing scenarios that the player never sees. This can easily become extra work to no purpose. I might try branching paths if there was a storytelling reason to do it, but I'm skeptical of gameplay reasons to do it.

The second thing that occurs to me, is the actual replay value compared to going back a few turns, or a few scenarios, or starting the campaign over from scratch. Does "fighting from disadvantage" extend replay value, or does it have pretty much the same psychological effect as playing a few scenarios over again? There's only so much time that a player is going to spend on a given campaign, then they're going to want to move on to something else.

As for infinite gold, I just spent a lot of time trying to balance "To Lands Unknown" on Hard. I didn't quite complete the balancing, but the first 3/4 of the game should be ok now. Many of the scenarios didn't have turn limits, so infinite gold harvesting was definitely a problem. I implemented turn limits for most scenarios, but in a few cases I found it unnecessary. In particular, it's not so necessary to "put the brakes on gold" early in the campaign. There's nothing wrong with letting the player have a bit of an easier time of it at the beginning. After the first 5 or 6 scenarios, there will be plenty of time to wear him out.

I have noted that an excessive amount of gold can be counteracted by 3 fairly difficult scenarios. I think a wealthy player tends to spend more gold, and after 3 scenarios the combo of excess spending, not really focusing so hard on leveling up, suffering some attrition from difficult scenarios, and percentage loss between scenarios, tends to bring the player back down to a "scenario default" level of gold and military power.

I've also noticed that if a scenario is "village poor," and you recall units that are too expensive to maintain, you don't make any money. Forced recalls can be a way to keep the player from making money. If you can get through a "dungeon crawl" scenario with a bare minimum of units, like your leader and maybe an assistant, and the scenario has a high turn limit or no turn limit, it may be a valid choice on the part of the player to farm gold. Such as, you're trying to recover from having been almost completely wiped out in the last scenario. The tradeoff is the scenario is correspondingly more dangerous for him because he's trying to spend so little.

I think players have real world limits as to how much they'll click, click, click to farm gold or experience. Hitting "End Turn" over and over again gets old. I think my gold limit is about 2000, and my XP limit is about 300. If you take any longer than that, you really start asking yourself if the campaign is so boring and pointless that you should be doing something else with your time. I mean, why didn't I just play it on Easy if I wanted a cakewalk experience?

Another trick is just taking all the gold away for narrative reasons. Such as, the player was using someone else's gold to begin with, and that other person demands all their gold back, on pain of imprisonment for theft. The player might go back to hire as many units as possible, so that they spend the gold rather than giving it back. But unless some units cost more than 20 gold, that doesn't actually give any advantage. As long as the scenario only spawns a small number of monsters over time, throwing a horde at them is pointless, as nobody is going to get much XP. Conversely, if Level 3 monsters are spawned every turn, that's bad. It's very easy to put your Level 4/5 leader next to the spawning place and manufacture as much XP as you can stand.

[Jabie]

You know, I would love to see a campaign where you have to fight back from the consequences of failure rather than the campaign just ending.

So the orcs have taken the North bank? That just means either a mission to win it back, or a sudden horde of orc reinforcements showing up in later levels...

Would you actually love it? Would players in general love it? Would the author love to write it?

The first thing that occurs to me, is it's branching content that the player may not see. Generally the more open ended and the less railroaded the player's path through the content, the more it's likely I'll be writing scenarios that the player never sees. This can easily become extra work to no purpose. I might try branching paths if there was a storytelling reason to do it, but I'm skeptical of gameplay reasons to do it.

An easier way to accomplish this trick is to use the service record to award the player / enemy extra supplies (be they free units, gold, owned villages, reinforcements, etc.) but keep the map and scenario the same. No need for extra maps and, from a balancing perspective, you need playtest the minimal and maximal options. Whilst this certainly does entail extra work, it's significantly less work than designing a whole string of extra scenarios.

Take the example above re: ceding the North Bank. Let's say the player takes longer than the three days prescribed. In the next scenario, where the player joins up with the General, a bunch of loyal orcs can turn up on the East side of the map on Turn 2 along with some expositionary dialogue ("Damn it, Jack. I thought I told you to exterminate all the orcs in Wychaven!") A particularly cruel trick might be to attack from the rear on about turn 4 after the player has maneuvred their line into position, or have units with Ambush set up position - but that's probably a nifty idea for a scenario in and of itself.