Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Beta patch 1.0.142.9727

But we've seen other games be extermely successful living off the troups you bring into battle. I realize that DC - while having game elements from other games is not identical but I lean towards the idea that most of the forces come from external (what you bring into battle) and reduction in what can be produced in the RTS portion. But maybe I mis-understood the context of your response.

[quote=Stabbey]

I think that's a bit too far out there. RTS battles are just far too dependent on being able to produce units for this to be much fun.

While I understand that it is far too late to change the concept of the RTS battles in DC, I have to agree with meme that RTS battles can also be very interesting without producing any troops at all.

One example I think of is Lords of Magic (quite an old title). In this game, there was also the strategic turn-based part and the battles were fought in real-time. You had only your troops which you brought to the battle field. The main challenge during RTS phase was to position and employ your units strategically, i.e., attack, retreat, use the landscape to your advantage, cast spells at the right time etc. So, a single hero could take down the whole enemy army if you planned your actions wisely.

I also think that no-unit-production during RTS would be in line with Larian's wish to emphasize the leader qualities of the player. Bring only a small army to the battlefield - and you can nevertheless win the battle if you strategically employ your troops and their skills.

First of al, thank you for all your feedback on this - it has quite a big impact on what we do, though you sometimes may be surprised by exactly what it impacts

The one piece of input you don't have is the single player campaign and how that plays, and as a few of you pointed out already, that indeed is an important driver when it comes to balancing certain values. While the game engine allows us to differentiate between balancing values in multiplayer & singleplayer, we're trying to avoid that for the moment because it'd make our lives a lot more complex. Of course, if need be, we will bifurcate and I expect that post-release, we most likely will.

We just had a big meeting discussing all the feedback we've seen over the weekend and the last weeks, and will be making the following changes which I expect you'll get in either a new beta today or tomorrow.

We'll reduce the prices of the units on the strategy map, but increase the multipliers of strategy units to RTS units even further. The change that is happening now is where before a 3 armour cost 14 gold, you'll now pay 7 gold for two armours (and thus 14 for 4 armours). This will lead to a 25% inflation of standing army units when battling in RTS mode which can mean that you'll get very large battles in RTS mode. The increase in AOE range/damage for units with AOE abilities should prevent blobbing from becoming the dominant tactics.

Because of this inflation, we're introducing the concept of reserves for large fights. I.e. there'll be a cap on the amount of units you can bring into RTS mode (probably determined by your support x constant). The other units will be in standby and you'll be able to insta-produce them in the corresponding buildings once support goes below the support cap. The composition of the initial army will be balanced according to the force that you brought with you.

To further emphasise the importance of the strategy map, in single player modes against the AI, we'll remove the current constraints on the AI in RTS battles where statistics say it should win. I.e. if you have a 80%/20% battle that favours the AI, it's currently still possible to win fairly easily because the AI currently plays *nice*. We'll change that so that it'll play a bit less nice. This should increase a player's incentive to take his unit composition on the strategy map into account.

Another rule which that's been in the works will also be released - when the population hits 0, you'll have the option to spawn one last time as a dragon but when it dies then that'll be it. This is to prevent the sometimes very long endgame.

I'm hoping that the advance multiplayer options screen will also soon make it's entry, so that you can fool around with all the values, sliders & win conditions yourselves.

That sounds really neat. The idea of a unit cap to give the underdog a chance, plus reserves because they brought enough forces seems like a nice way to balance things.

One thing that's really good about the current patch is how visible the counters are, and that actually lead me to make Grenadiers on the strategy map to counter Armours on the strategy map, instead of basically ignoring all infantry.

I assume that "when the population hits 0, you'll have the option to spawn one last time as a dragon", you meant "when the population is 0 *and* you have 0 recruits".

By "the AI will no longer play *nice*", so you mean it'll make much smarter counters in terms of unit composition and abilities (Edgar's "I feel a little like god" AI), or "it'll have extra resources/production speeds (i.e. cheating)"?

Those sound like really good changes actually. I really like them. I am curious about what you meant by "not playing nice". I hope that means they will rush with large forces if they have them at the start.

To determine exactly when you are using your last-ditch dragon effort could be tricky.

a) When population hits 0 (although you could have thousands of recruits)

b) When population and units hits 0.
b+) When the sum of population and recruits is not enough for a dragon to spawn.

c) When population and units runs out and you cannot reclaim recruits by disposing of non-essential structures.

... but that would mean you were out of buildings, which normally means you have lost the battle.

The main disadvantage of (b) is perhaps that you would have to wait for the population to dwindle before spawning.

What I think might be easier:

Allow dragon spawning to happen as long as you have at least 0 recruits, and allow the number of recruits to be negative. This is most significant at 2 points:

1 - When dragon is first ready I sometimes have 0 recruits because I'm building structures and producing units. I have to halt new activities and wait, and then morph to dragon.

With this trick, I could instead morph to dragon, and then halt new activities (restore recruit deficiency and then get enough recruits for your production). Slight advantage to dragon, probably not a problem. Maybe even a bit more fun.

2 - When the population is bled dry, I can still morph into dragon, unless I have already morphed without support of sufficient recruits, in which case I first need to reclaim recruits somehow. If I can't get more recruits, and already have morphed my recruit count into negative, I'm stuck/it's the end.

It would effectively be almost, but not quite, the same as what was originally proposed, and I think it does away with the complex determination of actually-out-of-recruits situations quite nicely.

I think what sven meant on the population was the number inside the parenthesis (IE 10000 (0)) during RTS. It could be disadvantageous for the person who is an expansionist on its recruitment center because his maximum allowable recruits could deplete fast and have this handicap in the earliest.

In theory, it could balance out the expansionist/conservative type of play which is good. I don't know the consequence in practice though especially after applying the skills of the dragons.

Like Stabbey, I assumed that when the population hit zero and you were out of recruits, you would get one last dragon spawn without the cost, but if you died in dragon form you would loose the battle.

I'm against the "negative recruit" thing, as it has no meaning (in RP) and is not in the gameplay : you could afford a bigger army AND spawn the dragon, which is slighty different as "I don"t spam the dragon because I have to build a recruitement center".

Thing I think should be improved :

- Double click on one unit should select only the unit of the same type in screen (and a little bit around). Let's add a ctrl+double click to select every units of the same type on the map.
- Bazooka's ammo chase you too far (like : Hey, I spammed something, all the bazooka target me, I fly with jetpack half a map away and ... Die ... ???

Sounds great, keep up the good work. To me this is the key for making the recent changes work against AI. Otherwise it was better before 142.9727.



The way I took it was that it will actually press its advantage when it has it like the 80/20 example. What that means to me is actually going for the throat early instead of wasting time expanding to useless build sites making extra battle forges the AI doesn't need. If the AI could choke the players expansion and attack it's units early that would be wonderful. Hopefully AI cheating will be at a minimum, or even better not at all.

I'm not sure the "negative recruits" thing was fully understood. I can honestly say I didn't fully understand the response (from Grinsevent).

Perceived problem with Larian's suggestion:

I think it will be genuinely difficult or even impossible to correctly determine automatically when the player cannot acquire enough recruits to spawn the dragon, and as a player I wouldn't want to inadvertently trigger this effect if you cannot subsequently use recruits to create the dragon again. (Conquering sites gives you recruits, selling buildings gives you recruits; presently there is no final limit. You're only stuck when you are also defeated/immobilized.)

Proposed solution:

Make sure the dragon can be spawned at least once in a situation like the one Larian described. I would accomplish this with a "buy now, pay later" mechanism that kicks in automatically if you don't have enough recruits at the moment. Until the debt is settled, this mechanism cannot be used again, and all new recruits go towards settling this debt. During most of the battle, that debt would be quickly settled if it occurs at all. It has the same impact on unit production and base construction, but incidentally lets you whip out the dragon instead of waiting. I expect this dragon-advantage to be tolerable. (It would probably be more significant the greater the enemy's advantage was at the beginning of the battle, which makes it a slight equalizer for battles that would otherwise be hopeless.)

Maybe that does also make no sense in RP, but to determine that you'd have to explain exactly what happens to those 20 recruits in the first place. I think the RP element is muted at best in the RTS part anyway. (The various phases give you different abstractions of the world. The RTS battle lets you construct bundles of factories that build highly advanced non-permanent military forces. That's probably not how I'd envision it in RP.)

If its effect on the game balance is good, and Larian's intention can be achieved by this, I don't think the RP aspect will really suffer.

Not sure if this is a bug or not...

After loading a saved MP campaign, on the very first turn there are no cards available to purchase in the card emporium. After you end turn and a new one starts the cards restock.