New WOK5 V3.30.5 released !!

[gm_al]

It was about time to come up with a few more balancing issues, so here are the changes:
* fixed spycode displays (4 digits) in Turn reports
* Tribe#5 (Selfter) has a new bonus. Instead of allowing to produce/use up to 3 spells even with less magicians it now will reduce Troops maintenance costs by 60% (2 gold instead of 5 gold per army/spy you have).
* Tribe#20 (Mystic Ak) will now summon 36 POP back when you do a POP>MAG transformation (up from 30)
* encouraged Tribe-hopping by reducing its cost to 1% per Province you have with a maximum cut of 12% (down from 1.5% and 15%)
* The spells 10-fingers, 20-fingers and Protect will no longer be distributed to players as a valid starting spell

I hope you enjoy the changes. GMs please note to update the game engine before you start your NEXT game - email me for a download link if needed.

Cheers !

PS: the history and manual pages have been updated accordingly.

[korexus]

It was about time to come up with a few more balancing issues, so here are the changes:
* fixed spycode displays (4 digits) in Turn reports

Thanks

* Tribe#5 (Selfter) has a new bonus. Instead of allowing to produce/use up to 3 spells even with less magicians it now will reduce Troops maintenance costs by 60% (2 gold instead of 5 gold per army/spy you have).

Hmm, could be interesting.

* Tribe#20 (Mystic Ak) will now summon 36 POP back when you do a POP>MAG transformation (up from 30)

Hardly seems worth it really but never mind.

* encouraged Tribe-hopping by reducing its cost to 1% per Province you have with a maximum cut of 12% (down from 1.5% and 15%)

This I like. If nothing else, it gives another turn before having to switch to HobGob...

* The spells 10-fingers, 20-fingers and Protect will no longer be distributed to players as a valid starting spell

What's the point of this? - I assume it's to cut down on the "luck" factor of some players getting a better starting spell than others. But if you take these out, you'll just make a new spell the "best" one to get. - Anyone who complains about opponents getting 20 fingers now, will complain about opponents getting pusher under this system. I think we should have all the spells as options. Or, if you want to remove a luck factor from the equation, make it so that every player gets the same spell...

[TK]

* Tribe#20 (Mystic Ak) will now summon 36 POP back when you do a POP>MAG transformation (up from 30)

Absolutely pointless. You just gave people 6 more POP. 6?

It would be a far better tribe if the MAG cost was reduced to 30, so that 2 MAG could be made in a single order. Refunding POP is good, but orders are more useful than POP in the early turns.

* The spells 10-fingers, 20-fingers and Protect will no longer be distributed to players as a valid starting spell

What's the point of this? - I assume it's to cut down on the "luck" factor of some players getting a better starting spell than others. But if you take these out, you'll just make a new spell the "best" one to get.

I agree - this change is silly. We have removed some "lucky" spells, but left others in. I guess Nick had some bad experiences against people who started with fingers or protect?

The idea which korexus proposed about everyone getting the same spell is a good one. It cuts down on luck, but makes each game different, and will allow skilful players to use their spell in a better way than the others. Its such a good idea that I wish I had thought of it myself. Oops - I did. Shame he can type faster.


The other changes look good, and it will be interesting to see how they work in practice. However there were other more pressing changes which really NEED to be made. Maybe the more experienced WOK5 players should be consulted next time changes are planned??

[gm_al]

Bah, you old whiners

Refunding you 90% of your POP costs isnt good enough for a Tribe ? Think again. Thats 36 x 3 = 108 POP saved when you go for 3 MAGs. Especially useful early on now. And MAG costs are balanced with other things, so thats not an option to change.

I eliminated the 3 most powerful spells from being distributed early on, simply to balance the very first turn that is run. I WAS considering offering a "same spell for all" option but all it takes to really do this is 30 secs of the GMs time to edit a value. And no, having the PUSHER spell as start spell will not make me the most envied player...

Other changes needed - I desperately looked through my old mailboxed to find your mails TK, but couldnt come up with them. Just keep posting (easy) suggestions and balance issues here folx, and Ill see what I can do.

[korexus]

Ok, look at it this way. If protect is unbalancing then so are Quippee and Shak-Akash as starting tribes and those are hardly the best tribes to start with. Should we ban those, MBakku and anything else good from the tribes too?

[gm_al]

*thinks about a full rollback on updates*

[Yarosund]

Hey stop picking on Al
Change is a good thing

[Raw]

Then change your underwear!

[Dameon]

I am happy to see most of these changes. although I do agree that the Mystic Ak one is still pretty pointless. Let's face it, you don't really use magicians all that much until later in the game. Even with raising Tech levels, it's hardly worth being Mystic Ak compared to other tribal bonuses. I do wish that you would have gone with all the suggested tribal changes that I sent you a while back AL, but if there's one thing I've learned it's that when it comes to tribes you generally seek your own path, padawan. At least you implemented one of my four tribe-changing suggestions, better than nothing.

[Raw]

I think there should be a tribe that allows you to teleport no matter of your tech level.

[gm_al]

@Nick: Quipee already add +50 MRES per round and the Gang Lufo Tribe increases common spell power by 50% - that covers two of your suggestions already so I didnt need to change anything.

A Tribe that allows teleporting... hmmm, quite powerful.

And I personally like the Mystic Ak. Guess its a matter of timing and with the decreased penalty of tribe-hopping it will be more useful. Ill check again when I do the next updates (still waiting on TKs views)

[korexus]

Throw in a penalty too then. Teleports are activated, but corn consumption goes up by 10%. Although that one is a flippant suggestion, this could be a way of balancing out the tribes. Instead of reducing Hobgob's bonus, lower the spell power a bit. Instead of working through the Mbakku upgrade nightmare, double the EFF loss from provinces. Tribes are meant to be specialist at something. It makes sense that if they get really good at one thing, they'll suck at something else.

Also, if you went with this idea, I'd suggest introducing a blank tribe with no bonuses or penalties. Everyone would start as that to reduce luck and swapping to or from that tribe would have no penalty (although you could only use one change tribe order per turn).


Any thoughts?

[TK]

And I personally like the Mystic Ak....(still waiting on TKs views)

OK.

I have used Mystic Ak in the past. Its a great tribe to start with, if you get the choice (which happens every now and then). In the long run it is useless (how many MAG will you make? 3??).

However, making magicians in the early turns is hard due to the small number of orders in the AIM/transform phase. It is *not* difficult to have the required amount of POP (and remember, you still need 40 POP even if you are Mystic Ak).

So, a tribe that made a MAG cost 30 would allow you to make 2 in one order - very useful!! Getting 30 POP refunded is not such a big deal when other tribes offer 10% EFF, 100 MRES, etc...

The ability to make 2 MAG in one order would be more useful than 30 POP.

[gm_al]

Please dont start trying to introduce penalties that could balance the bonuses... that will be a discussion nightmare and, in the end, lead to nothing.

I prefer the Tribes giving just a bonus, preferrably a situative one. I really would like to see people do more hopping with them just to reap in the rewards for a few turns.

Any other change requests ?

@TK: Ill look it up again.

[gm_al]

Ok... in my never-ending quest to give you a more balanced and challenging game, and due to "popular demand" (read TK's line of argumentation) I have changed the Mystic Ak so that they now reduce the POP>MAG costs to 30 POP instead of summoning you some POP back.

This will enable you to produce up to 2 MAGs with one single order. Take care to use full 60 POP in the order or only one MAG will be transformed.All checks (ie. max of MAGs in Province or POP available) have been implemented and tested. Fair warning: because transformations are of "magic" nature always watch out about the current number of target units you already have... the engine will NOT stop you to transform more POP then needed, but over-limit transformations (ie. producing a 10th Magician) will be lost.

Yeah, sometimes Im still cool.

PS: get in your suggestions so I can release a final V3.30.6 asap please.

[TK]

Please dont start trying to introduce penalties that could balance the bonuses... that will be a discussion nightmare and, in the end, lead to nothing.

I prefer the Tribes giving just a bonus, preferrably a situative one. I really would like to see people do more hopping with them just to reap in the rewards for a few turns.

I agree with both these points.

Something which needs to be fixed in my view is the strength of upgrades coupled with the Mbakku tribe.

It is not the most simple problem to fix though.

We could say that Mbakku reduces wood costs by 25% rather than 50%, or perhaps that Mbakku make upgrades 25% stronger (but no wood discount), or perhaps that Mbakku simply awards 40 extra wood each turn. I am not sure which is the better option.


TK

[TK]

Another post - another suggested change.

Currently, it is possible to calculate someone's starting spell by using the turn zero scores. In my view, this is cheating (or at least, immoral), and I do not do it, but I would prefer if it were not possible. An easy fix for this would be that spells simply count for 100 points each, and not a different amount depending on the spell.

Easy change.

[TK]

More....

I think DEF is too easy to destroy with GCAs. A home province usually has 1.6 DEF at the end of turn one. Just 10 GCAs can knock this down to 0.6 - the same as a neutral. To knock a home province down to the defence level of a neutral should take perhaps 40 GCAs, so lets change the hit rate to EFF-70.

Easy.

[TK]

Finally...

In the late part of the game, good players do not pay their troops. This is for two reasons;

a) It is too expensive. 200 troops costs 1000 gold per turn.
b) The penalty is not scary enough. 10% EFF is easily recovered with workers.

How to fix this?

a) Make the troops cost 4 gold each instead of 5.
b) Unpaid troops will take all money in the stock. This could monkey around with your spell/tech plans.


OK.... finished.

[korexus]

I like the unpaid troops idea, I think you'd have to use both though, otherwise b would be too harsh. - That could force people to actually play an endgame again.

As for M'bakku, my preferred solution is that M'bakku upgrades are 50% more powerful. - This forces people to stay with the tribe to get the bonus. (50% is obviously a negotiable figure).

I wouldn't make DEF quite *that* hard to hit. Maybe a little bit though...

Spells shouldn't be calculable, I'd say give a set amount of points for spells of each colour personally.



One other thing which came up. Maybe MRES should be a worker option. Instead of MAG * TEC MRES being added, how about TEC/10 per worker? - That means that players can avoid the nasty spells people throw at them later in the game, if they're willing to sacrifice enough workers. The downside would be if you don't feed, you'd get nothing. Maybe a mixture of both systems? Also, get rid of that 999 cap again. It's too low!

I think that'll do for now.


korexus.