ΠΡΟΤΑΣΗ ΓΙΑ ΝΕΕΣ ΜΥΘΙΚΕΣ ΜΟΝΑΔΕΣ
Έχετε καταλάβει ότι σχεδόν οι μισές μονάδες είναι άχρηστες;! Σχεδόν όλα τα ειδικά κτήρια σε κάθε πόλη είναι ανούσια;
Οι μυθικές μονάδες και τα ειδικά κτήρια, όπως θα μπορούσε να ήταν...
Σημείωση:
Το κείμενο που ακολουθεί είναι γραμμένο σε αγγλική, γιατί Θεού θέλοντος, θα χρησιμεύσει ως αναφορά στην προσπάθειά μου να επικοινωνήσω με innogames μήπως και δεήσουν και κάνουν καμμιά αλλαγή στο μισοτελειωμένο παιχνίδι τους.
Οι μυθικές μονάδες και τα ειδικά κτήρια, όπως θα μπορούσε να ήταν...
Σημείωση:
Το κείμενο που ακολουθεί είναι γραμμένο σε αγγλική, γιατί Θεού θέλοντος, θα χρησιμεύσει ως αναφορά στην προσπάθειά μου να επικοινωνήσω με innogames μήπως και δεήσουν και κάνουν καμμιά αλλαγή στο μισοτελειωμένο παιχνίδι τους.
ANALYSIS ON PROBLEMATIC MYTHICAL UNITS
A) Stating the problem
Note: I am referring to worlds with the so called "new" system of conquering a city, the rebellion. Despite the deference in the two ways of conquest that exist, I believe little-to-nothing changes in what is written below, both in facts and proposals I make.
STATEMENT. Several myth units are never used, because experienced players realize they are useless, or too expensive to use.
The proof of the above statement lies within the worlds of Grepolis. I play around 3 years on the greek servers of the game, and I doubt there is any difference in the unit stats in the other countries' servers. My experience points at a sad fact. That only a very small number of mythic units (now on also referred to as MU) are being used. Many are left in nonexistence, never to be produced in barracks or docks. I guess you have the tools to check it by yourselves. You can see that no one who knows the game, uses for example a zyklop, ever.
Before I go into individual unit analysis and proposal for changes, I would like to put some numbers on the table..
Let's study the stats of the units, to try to understand what makes them worthy or worthless. Arguably the only way to compare directly the units with each other, is to transform them to the same "farm space" they take. It is very handy, to bring all the numbers down, as if each unit would take 1 population space in the farm. I guess there is a pretty sweet possibility the development team already define/balance the stats of units this way.
For example, the manticore is being treated as if it'd take 1 farm space, which means its attack is counted as 945/45 = 21.
That way, we have the following table that I have created (it's in three pieces), which is somewhat old-fashioned (derives partially from the old grepolis 1.0), but still pretty much does the job:
STATEMENT. Several myth units are never used, because experienced players realize they are useless, or too expensive to use.
The proof of the above statement lies within the worlds of Grepolis. I play around 3 years on the greek servers of the game, and I doubt there is any difference in the unit stats in the other countries' servers. My experience points at a sad fact. That only a very small number of mythic units (now on also referred to as MU) are being used. Many are left in nonexistence, never to be produced in barracks or docks. I guess you have the tools to check it by yourselves. You can see that no one who knows the game, uses for example a zyklop, ever.
Before I go into individual unit analysis and proposal for changes, I would like to put some numbers on the table..
Let's study the stats of the units, to try to understand what makes them worthy or worthless. Arguably the only way to compare directly the units with each other, is to transform them to the same "farm space" they take. It is very handy, to bring all the numbers down, as if each unit would take 1 population space in the farm. I guess there is a pretty sweet possibility the development team already define/balance the stats of units this way.
For example, the manticore is being treated as if it'd take 1 farm space, which means its attack is counted as 945/45 = 21.
That way, we have the following table that I have created (it's in three pieces), which is somewhat old-fashioned (derives partially from the old grepolis 1.0), but still pretty much does the job:
According to this table, which basically sets every single unit at farm space 1, we can arrange each unit on a scale, and directly compare their attack and defense. The following graph I have created, clearly shows every unit's score. The three kinds of attack are displayed in a separate column, same goes for the three kinds of defense. Concerning the defense values, for each unit was used the kind of defense with the highest value (where the unit is most useful).
Now that we have the stats put on the table, it is clear how much unbalanced some of the mythical units are. We can easily see how bad some myth units fare, compared to other "regular" human units. But before we come to conclusions, other important parameters should be considered. Three important aspects that affect how good a unit is, besides the stats, are:
- Ability to fly
- Offensive, defensive, or omni-role
- "Elite" and "mid-end" class of MU
Lets check a helpful table on these:
- Ability to fly
- Offensive, defensive, or omni-role
- "Elite" and "mid-end" class of MU
Lets check a helpful table on these:
B) The gameplay aspect of Myth Units
It is very useful to state the main aspects of the Myth Unit concept, gameplay-wise. These are the main goals that MU try to achieve:
1. MU are harder to produce, but reward with greater battle stats.
Favor makes MU expensive, and you need A LOT of cities that worship the same god, in order to be able to produce enough favor. This means that MU are supposed to reward your hard efforts to produce them with some serious advantage in battle. Also, they have to be cost-effective, to make you want to sacrifice those extra days it takes to train them instead of regular army.
2. Some MU can fly.
This means two things simultaneously. a) Your attack will always "hit", it cannot be sink, and b) You can save a huge amount of farm space, due to the lack of need of ships.
3. MU come to add some flavor in battle tactics, and refer to the late-period of a world.
While in the early era of a world, you learn and balance your army compositions, based on the regular, human armies. MU come to change some balances between attack and defense values, and spice things up. So in late era, when players are supposed to start produce more and more MU, you have to think of more possibilities and more complex battles and army compositions. You also have more choices when building an army, and this alone makes the game so much more interesting.
These basic concepts, lead us to the following 3 characteristics, that are most important for a Myth Unit, in order to be effective. Each MU HAS to conclude some or all of these characteristics, else like there is no meaning to be produced, and a player will simply ignore its existence.
A. Ability to fly
B. Increased or Greatly increased attack or defense values, compared to regular human soldiers
C. Favor cost that is high, but remains realistic and reasonable
1. MU are harder to produce, but reward with greater battle stats.
Favor makes MU expensive, and you need A LOT of cities that worship the same god, in order to be able to produce enough favor. This means that MU are supposed to reward your hard efforts to produce them with some serious advantage in battle. Also, they have to be cost-effective, to make you want to sacrifice those extra days it takes to train them instead of regular army.
2. Some MU can fly.
This means two things simultaneously. a) Your attack will always "hit", it cannot be sink, and b) You can save a huge amount of farm space, due to the lack of need of ships.
3. MU come to add some flavor in battle tactics, and refer to the late-period of a world.
While in the early era of a world, you learn and balance your army compositions, based on the regular, human armies. MU come to change some balances between attack and defense values, and spice things up. So in late era, when players are supposed to start produce more and more MU, you have to think of more possibilities and more complex battles and army compositions. You also have more choices when building an army, and this alone makes the game so much more interesting.
These basic concepts, lead us to the following 3 characteristics, that are most important for a Myth Unit, in order to be effective. Each MU HAS to conclude some or all of these characteristics, else like there is no meaning to be produced, and a player will simply ignore its existence.
A. Ability to fly
B. Increased or Greatly increased attack or defense values, compared to regular human soldiers
C. Favor cost that is high, but remains realistic and reasonable
Having all these under mind, we can start focusing on the problems of each unit individually.
C) Focusing on each unit individually
Notes:
-> For offensive units, the ability to fly is super important, to ensure that they will actually won't be destroyed at sea. That is a clear advantage over the omni-role units. Additionally, inability to fly means more farm space for transport and light ships. Which means less MUs to produce, which lowers total cost, but also greatly lowers the total bonus in attack value, over regular human soldiers. That is why, e.g. Medusas cannot compete Manticores, even though they seem to have similar attack values. In fact, a city full of manticores can produce a much greater attack value in total.
-> The inability to defend a city with MU of different Gods, greatly reduces their role in defense. When you have to help a friend, along with other 10 or 20 people, this can be tricky. Again, this makes mediocre-in-stats MU a useless choice.
-> I calculate the favor cost, assuming a player is trying to full a city with that MU. If that MU cannot fly, then I assume the player is also producing transport and light ships. So, Medusas maybe cost only 210 favor each, but when you try to make a city full of them, you will need around 83 of them, which is 17.500 favor in total, which is a lot. If the player manages to get 500 favor in Hera per day, then he will need 35 days to finish a city full of Medusas. The amount of time, is simply ridiculous.
OFFENSIVE MYTH UNITS
Manticore.
Can fly
Very high favor cost
Very good sharp attack
Elite class
Harpy.
Can fly
Very high favor cost
Good blunt attack
Medium class
Griffon.
Can fly
High, yet reasonable favor cost
Excellent blunt attack
Elite class
DEFENSIVE MYTH UNITS
Pegasus.
Can fly
High favor cost
Excellent defense against blunt weapons
Medium other defense
Elite class
The only defensive MU that can fly
Centaur.
Cannot fly
Reasonable favor cost
Excellent defense against sharp weapons
Medium other defense
Medium class
A cheap MU, if it could combine better with pegasus, maybe it had some meaning… now it does not. It is easily supplanted by regular units. Pegasus with regular units gives the same results. The only good advantage is in sharp defense, but is that enough to justify its training costs? Transport ship traveling speed does not make things better.
Cerberus.
Cannot fly
Reasonable favor cost
Excellent defense against distance weapons
Medium other defense
Elite class
Calydonian Boar.
Cannot fly
Very reasonable favor cost
Excellent defense against sharp weapons
Medium other defense
Elite class
OMNI-ROLE MYTH UNITS
Medusa.
Cannot fly
Very high favor cost
Medium sharp attack
Decent all-around defense
Elite class
All in all, a mediocre MU. Almost there… If it could fly or something!
Erinys.
Cannot fly
Very high favor cost
Bad attack
Bad defense
Elite class?
What can one say about this unit… one of the worst there is. Cannot fly. Attack value? Worse than that of slingers'! Cost favor? Ultra high! It is simply ridiculous. I will keep my slingers, thanks! Regular human soldiers provide a much better defense. What is the point of this unit, honestly?
Zyklop.
Cannot fly
Very high favor cost
Very bad attack
Medium defense
Elite class?
Another pathetic design. Mediocre attack value, much worse than that of Slingers. Favor cost remains very high. The defense values are good, but cannot be considered cost-effective either. Another pointless MU that no one produces…
Minotaur.
Cannot fly
Quite reasonable favor cost
Bad attack
Medium defense
Medium class
Well, you guess it. This is another pathetic MU, unfortunately. Cannot fly, much worse attack than horses (and almost any regular human soldier), bad defense values. Only good is blunt defense. But this unit cannot be combined with other MU, so it really does not make any difference. Minotaur, in the same 1 farm space, gives 22.5 blunt defense, while chariots give 19. Really does not worth it. Yes, it is another pointless one, and no one ever plays with these…
Hydras, are of the same problem as most of these units. Since they fight the same as light ships, and worse than bireme ships. They are very slow, and ultra expensive in favor. So, what is the point of this MU? I really cannot understand.
Below is a graph, that shows roughly the problem. Each bar represents a city attack. The city is supposed to have 2356 farm space. The red and green bars refer to attacks that need ships. So in that case, I have also calculated that 40 light ships and the appropriate amount of transport ships take their farm space. This is to create somewhat realistic conditions. The blue bars represent attacks from the air.
The horizontal axle represents the cost in favor, total.
The vertical, represents the amount of attack the city can "produce".
What this graph shows, is that if MU were balanced, then, as we go from left to right, we should see much higher attack values, with much lower favor costs. Even omni-role MU, should have EXCLUSIVELY higher numbers in attack than the regular human units on the left. The fact that they are omni-role, doesn't mean they can have a lower attack value. It makes them useless. Noone will risk sending 27 Erinys that costed 26 days of production (@500f/day), just to hit with -2000 less power than the dirty cheap slingers.
Note how good the Griffon, a relatively late addition to the game, stands on the graph: He is near the middle horizontally (favor cost), while has by far the highest value vertically (attack). It is one of the few MU that can be somehow used. What a shame though! It is only on the heroic worlds… isn't that pure irony?
Note how good the Griffon, a relatively late addition to the game, stands on the graph: He is near the middle horizontally (favor cost), while has by far the highest value vertically (attack). It is one of the few MU that can be somehow used. What a shame though! It is only on the heroic worlds… isn't that pure irony?
D) Conclusion and an example
I will give you a final example, to reach the conclusion.
You have to thing of an important factor. Myth Units are all about the "late-era" of the world. Most players probably have already 50, 80, or even more cities. This makes the bonus MU give in attack or defense even more meaningless. Let's see an example.
A player has 50 cities. He is a balanced player, so he has 25 defensive and 25 offensive cities. He wants to attack another player, so he sends all 25 cities to battle. If we suppose the cities, consisting only of regular human soldiers, produce roughly 26.000 attack each, then we have 26.000x25= 650.000 attack total. Now, let's assume that this guy, among the 25 offensive cities, has dedicated a city fully to Manticores. Let's say this manticore-city produces 50.000 attack alone. That means that he will instead manage to produce 26.000x24+50.000 = 674.000 attack total.
The player managed to get +24.000 attack, which is like if he had almost another offensive city to join the attack. But it costed to him much more than a month, to make the manticore city ready. That is unacceptable, gameplay-wise.
Do you understand, what a tiny impact has a city full of manticores, on a realistic battle, in the late-era? And to be honest, there are worlds where players have more than 100 cities. The impact of a fully MU-dedicated city, is even smaller there.
All in all,
1. Make favor costs affordable! MUCH MUCH LOWER!
2. Make the increase in battle values that Myth Units offer, much more meaningful!
You have to thing of an important factor. Myth Units are all about the "late-era" of the world. Most players probably have already 50, 80, or even more cities. This makes the bonus MU give in attack or defense even more meaningless. Let's see an example.
A player has 50 cities. He is a balanced player, so he has 25 defensive and 25 offensive cities. He wants to attack another player, so he sends all 25 cities to battle. If we suppose the cities, consisting only of regular human soldiers, produce roughly 26.000 attack each, then we have 26.000x25= 650.000 attack total. Now, let's assume that this guy, among the 25 offensive cities, has dedicated a city fully to Manticores. Let's say this manticore-city produces 50.000 attack alone. That means that he will instead manage to produce 26.000x24+50.000 = 674.000 attack total.
The player managed to get +24.000 attack, which is like if he had almost another offensive city to join the attack. But it costed to him much more than a month, to make the manticore city ready. That is unacceptable, gameplay-wise.
Do you understand, what a tiny impact has a city full of manticores, on a realistic battle, in the late-era? And to be honest, there are worlds where players have more than 100 cities. The impact of a fully MU-dedicated city, is even smaller there.
All in all,
1. Make favor costs affordable! MUCH MUCH LOWER!
2. Make the increase in battle values that Myth Units offer, much more meaningful!