I'd like to jump in and make a few points with an overarching theme. 1. Upkeep is a major consideration when recruiting an army, it's not just recall cost. Overall (that is, total gold spent over the course of the scenario) you might get several level one units for the price of one level 3, depending on the number of villages available (something that the scenario designers can control).
2. The density of high level opposition can be controlled, at least to some extent, by the scenario. 3. The gold and options available to the player can also be adjusted at the start or even during the scenario (for example: If player losses ever exceed some number times the enemy units killed then offer some bonus) 4. The current system does have some oddities - such as recalling some units for less than it cost to recruit them in the first place and a "stream" effect where lots of units get recruited turn after turn causing a random mob to rush at the player that the player counters with his own mob of sorts. It seems to me that the problem as I understand it could be fixed by more focus on scenario balance. Messing with the recall costs seems to to me to not really address the core issue, which is that over the course of many campaigns there are frustrating pitfalls that might lead to "unwinable" situations. I'm skeptical that any of the proposed solutions really improve things without introducing some other issues. Simply increasing the recall costs of higher level units (and then presumably adding some amount of gold to the player's treasury) could very well just cause the best strategy for many campaigns to be recruiting almost entirely level 1 units. For *many* scenarios it already is. Level one units when paired with leadership, healers and the right conditions can level to heal and improve at critical moments (higher level units need much more xp to pull that off) and their value should not be discounted. I do think that the recruit and recall system could be improved, but I think if anything is to be done about it I would push that a more comprehensive overhaul be considered. Personally, I think the *best* thing to do for balance purposes would be to transition scenarios into having more fixed-placement starts (something more like Fantasy General for example). Allow some recruiting on both sides for variety, but make the player work with a more predictable (and balanced) starting situation. I really think that the quality of many Wesnoth scenarios would greatly improve, though a non-trivial amount of work would be involved. Another advantage of this approach is that it would be much easier for a player to look at such a situation and realize that changing the difficulty NOW is probably a good thing. Then again, one big advantage of the current system, as mentioned by several people, is that it is simple. My thinking is that any change made should really offset any added complexity by tangibly improving gameplay. But to be clear, I'm glad it's an issue being talked about, so kudos to fendrin for bringing it up! George aka Wintermute/happygrue On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Gabriel Morin <[email protected]>wrote: > Ok, after reading the walls of texts and actually starting to answer one > of them point by point, I think I understand better where Fendrin is coming > from. > > The issue he's complaining about is that once a campaign reaches a certain > difficulty, i.e. you're facing exclusively lvl 3 units, it's extremely hard > to bring fresh recruits into the mix to diversify your army or replace > losses. That's because: > > - Lvl 1 units are damn hard to protect in such an environment > - With the pitiful amount of damage they do, you'll likely end up > putting your high-level units at risk when trying to give the greenhorn a > kill > - Units tend to take several scenarios to level. This means that > you'll need to recall that lvl 1 *almost leveled* Spearman instead of > the badass Elven Avenger, *for the same price*. If you're leveling 2-4 > units at a time, as you should to take into account losses, this cripples > your army quite a bit. > > Fendrin's proposal would make recalling weaker units to level them up a > more interesting proposal. > > This said I'm not fully convinced, since it seems to me that the > campaign/scenario should be designed so that if you play moderately well, > you should have leftover gold to recall outlier units without crippling > your main strike force. That, plus lower-level units are *already *less > expensive to field because of the support costs. Those can weigh in much > more than the initial recall costs, especially if the scenario is long or > there are few villages. > > Contrary to what Fendrin is saying, I think the ability to change > difficulty level mid-campaign is relevent: if you really get stuck without > a good gold margin, just lower the difficulty one or two notches, use that > to get more gold, and up the challenge once you're ready for it. > > ----- > > On another note, I definitely stand more with David than Boucman on the > issue of campaign gameplay. Yes, it's fun to have your success in one > scenario affect the following ones. You can lose the campaign by a chain of > pyrrhic victories, and that's what makes it a campaign and not a string of > unconnected missions. > > Gabriel aka gabba > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev > >
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