Brad Wardell's site for talking about the customization of Windows.

Greetings!

v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7.  I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater).  But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well.  I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it in action.

These are what I’m spending those hours on:

 

Est Hours Feature Description Status
1 Stamp fix Fix stamp creation for modders, add some new stamps. Done (1)
1 BattleRank overhaul Redo battlerank so that the AI can more intelligently make decisions. Done (1)
1 Leader Update Updated text and specific conversations per player  Done (1)
1 New Spells Add new tactical battle spells/abilities  Done (2)
2 AI tactical Update AI tactical perf  Done (1)
1 Squad size Increase squad size and test  Done (1)
1 Unrest penalties Unrest causes bandits to spawn  Done and then undone (was not fun)
1 Eco balance Update mana/maintcosts/research balance/hero generation  Done (0.5)
1 Wild land menace Wild lands spawn monsters who go after players, get much worse over time.  Done (0.5)
1 AI updates Have AI upgrade outposts, Better army management, Pariden use Arcane monoliths.  Done (1)
1 Gameplay Master Quest harder, Heroes spawn at capital, Nerf consulate, bigger maps  Done (2)
1 Monsters vs. AI Look again to see why AI and monsters aren’t attacking each other (likely a threading issue)  Looked at, hoping new combat rating system might help. (0.5)
1 Pathing Fix the river pathing issue  Done (0.5)
1 Update stamps World less flat, more interesting  Done (1)
 1  Misc.  (bug fixing, fix lockups, lost device, other annoying things I encounter etc.)  Ongoing

 

Watch this thread for updates. I’m going through this thread here for ideas.

As I finish these, I’ll update the chart to let people know. I don’t really get started on this until next week between meetings, accounting, legal, design, software work, etc. Smile

 

Update 1: Friday, May 30

Finished the first half day working on this. Some of this isn't taking as long as I expected (marked at 0.5 hours in the status).

Update 2: End of day

Okay, I've got 9.5 hours into this.  The AI is definitely nastier now with the outpost upgrades. The pathfinding is less annoying for me.  I had a hard lock today that I want to put some time into.  I don't want this to just be new goodies, I'd like to fix some bugs that people have reported.


Comments (Page 13)
15 PagesFirst 11 12 13 14 15 
on Jun 13, 2014

Lord Reliant
This is assuming you're playing as a Fallen empire, correct? For those without these options, unrest becomes much more of a battle to juggle.

Those are city-upgrades (Fortress level 4 and 5 respectively). Everybody has access to them.

on Jun 13, 2014

 

Lord Reliant
Going back to my suggestion regarding a cap on cities you can manage, there's nothing to say it needs to be controlled exclusively via technology. I could easily see quests increasing the cap you can manage. I could also see where each champion you field increases that cap by one, etc. I think the goal with unrest is to prevent city spam. It isn't a perfect system, as ParrottMath points out the implications. I do like how Warlock allows you to convert it to be an independent city, though independent cities aren't currently a part of LH.

In its current form, you spend time managing a system that scales unrest by building things or stationing champions to reduce the unrest. I'd rather balance my resources between growth, money, production and research without the overhead of unrest, too. Perhaps it's a necessary evil to have it, but if there's a way to change it to be less indirect and more understandable, great!

The goal of global unrest is to balance tall versus wide empires and help prevent steamrolling.

on Jun 13, 2014

I would like the idea of city limits being sov or faction traits. could be positive or negative.

 

A Feudal lord trait could boost your treasury every turn and get you a levy of random troops every 10 turns in return for your protection.

on Jun 14, 2014

jirkaesch

Bandits not fun?

How did that happen? Was looking forward to this...

Edit: Issue of original post has been somewhat addressed, so I've changed topic of my post.

I don't think unrest is a huge problem, it gives you a reason to build fortresses with high food. The problem I see is one of pacing. I often get to a place where the area around me has been cleared of quests and monsters, but I don't want to fight a war because I don't want any more cities. I end up not really having anything to do while I wait for my fortresses to level up so I can expand more. Then, by the time I am ready to expand again, it's much easier to go for a quest or spell of making victory. This is especially problematic on the larger map sizes. 

Here are a few ideas that might address the issue:

1) More options for reducing unrest. If playing empire or men, I can create "mayors" (sion or henchman commanders) to address the issue, and that helps quite a bit. More options, whether through buildings, tech, or units can give multiple options to allow you to continue expanding.

2) Quest maps for everyone, though more expensive. This might devalue the wanderlust trait too much, but I really like the quest maps because they give you something to do after monster lairs have been cleared, but when going to war isn't a good option. Perhaps instead of quest maps, an item that spawns monster lairs. Not quite as fun, but would serve much the same purpose.

 

Also, I don't like the idea of a hard cap on number of cities, I think penalizing in much better that outright forbidding. I do really like the idea of a feudal system though, where cities are assigned to a champion, and unrest is based on number of cities assigned to a single champion rather than in the kingdom. This not only adds a bit of story-telling depth, it also allow you control over localization of unrest (if you have a particularly valuable city you could make sure its lord is only assigned to it.) Also, it gives a good reason to want more champions even if you don't have an army available for them to lead.

on Jun 14, 2014

Ignore,  I screwed up.

on Jun 16, 2014

parrottmath

So, it boils down to mass genocide, if I cannot support the number of cities. I guess I'd have to be an evil evil man when conquering the world.

I suppose there could be a mechanic to say that the populations could transfer back to your cities... of course the slave trait would have to be adjusted to give a larger production bonus for larger cities, indicating slave labor.

 

This is off topic but I just wanted to say that you made me remember of one particular map where I played in my early days..

 

That map where I somehow managed to acquire eight storm dragons through luck of geography and events.

 

Then I was like, eh, send all the storm dragons in every direction, just one per city was enough. Razed everything in a hurry for lols until I all converged onto procipinee's capital.. which was also the last city. Since its the last city and had most powerful army i've ever seen to date so I merged all eight storm dragons with my sovereign to make an full army.

 

Have u ever seen eight fears in a row? Yeahhh. Every single enemy unit was feared Then I let loose multiple fire breaths as my sovereign cackled like a madmen and it's over. Whole world became a wasteland with exception of people who was lucky/smart enough to be loyal to me.

on Jun 16, 2014

Why not make it so that only your Hero's (Recruited ones not Henchmen) can found one city per.  Then make conquered cities not count towards that amount.  

on Jun 16, 2014

Ericridge


Quoting parrottmath, reply 176
So, it boils down to mass genocide, if I cannot support the number of cities. I guess I'd have to be an evil evil man when conquering the world.

I suppose there could be a mechanic to say that the populations could transfer back to your cities... of course the slave trait would have to be adjusted to give a larger production bonus for larger cities, indicating slave labor.

 

This is off topic but I just wanted to say that you made me remember of one particular map where I played in my early days..

 

That map where I somehow managed to acquire eight storm dragons through luck of geography and events.

 

Then I was like, eh, send all the storm dragons in every direction, just one per city was enough. Razed everything in a hurry for lols until I all converged onto procipinee's capital.. which was also the last city. Since its the last city and had most powerful army i've ever seen to date so I merged all eight storm dragons with my sovereign to make an full army.

 

Have u ever seen eight fears in a row? Yeahhh. Every single enemy unit was feared Then I let loose multiple fire breaths as my sovereign cackled like a madmen and it's over. Whole world became a wasteland with exception of people who was lucky/smart enough to be loyal to me.

 

That actually sounds pretty damn awesome! 

on Jun 16, 2014

This may be a bit of a tangent, but I'm frustrated with how Cities work in 4x in general. Specifically that they each have their own unrelated growth, food, and production. I would love to see Food, people and production are resources that as shared/transferable between cities and a rate of population growth that is governed by something else. 4x games favor city spam because every time you build a city you get free resources rather than spreading your resources out over a larger area. Unrest makes more sense to me as an overcrowding issue that to hinder building too tall rather than because you have a large number of cities and Uncle Joe lives far away.

on Jun 17, 2014

Still no release date stated for 1.7?

on Jun 17, 2014

Slashimus
Still no release date stated for 1.7?

Probably not until August...

 

on Jun 17, 2014

GFireflyE
Probably not until August...

Where is this coming from?

on Jun 17, 2014

DsRaider



Quoting GFireflyE,
reply 191
Probably not until August...


Where is this coming from?

From me. See the 'quoting GFireflyE' line?

I'm using my judgement based on previous releases...

 

on Jun 17, 2014

Lord Reliant


Quoting Frogboy, reply 158
I'd love to find a better unrest system for 4x games.

Two related ideas:

1. Make expansion technology dependent. You can only maintain X cities until you research something to increase the number by X.

2. Reading about Endless Legend. If you raze a city, it causes the roads to it to disappear after a few turns due to decay. Cool mechanism for penalizing Razing.

 

The first one, I don't like it- it sounds unfun to have hard caps

 

The second one, I'd like as part of a more comprehensive improvement system to placing roads period- I don't like how LH does it currently.

Roads should develop over time and not instantly, and be dependent on city sizes and trade.  (with bonus for certain factions like Krax)

 

on Jun 17, 2014

Alstein


Roads should develop over time and not instantly, and be dependent on city sizes and trade.  (with bonus for certain factions like Krax)

 

My view on roads: #10 @ https://forums.elementalgame.com/452034/page/1/

15 PagesFirst 11 12 13 14 15