Promote Alliance

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joelofarabia
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Promote Alliance

Post by joelofarabia »

This is more of a brainstorm than a real cut-and-dried suggestion... bear with me :)

I think a really cool way to deepen game play would be to develop the alliance concept. At present the only real point of the game is to wipe out all other players; in practise an "alliance" amounts to nothing more than a mutual agreement that we both stand a better chance if we bash another player now and bash each other later. What if the game could be tweaked to make genuine alliance a viable strategy?

So far I have six ideas, which would mostly have to be implemented *together* to work.

1) Change the objective of the game (or at least on certain maps), eg. whoever has the highest prestige after x minutes wins (calculated by population + buildings + resources in warehouse)
2) Implement the all-resource integrated warehouse idea.
3) Enable instant trading of resources between warehouses.
4) Enable selling buildings' services to other players.
5) Enable allies to disable fruit conversion.
6) Assume peace; players have to openly declare war before their warriors will start fighting.

This would theoretically enable two players to set up a symbiotic economy. I've got stone, you've got wood. I build schools, you build barracks. Because we don't have to destroy one another to win, we may choose to focus on economic competition instead.

The warehouses would work like this: We stock up our warehouses (which are universally integrated), and we have a menu where we can see the stock levels in the warehouses of our allies. I put 100 wheat up for sale, you make an offer of 70 stone, if I accept, the resources switch automatically. We could also make a running trade deal, ie. whenever I have 3 wheat and you have 1 plum the trade automatically takes place.

The same dialog would enable us to approve which services we are offering, and which resources are acceptable for payment. Let's say you haven't got any barracks. I choose to provide "level 2 warrior training" and approve "fruit" as payment. When your warrior turns up at my barracks the fruit is instantly transferred from your warehouse. (The amount of fruit goes up for each level.) Conversely you would also approve which services you are prepared to come to me for.

Disabling fruit conversion would have to be a mutual decision which may be rarely used. It might come in handy if, say, I've only got fruit trees and no wood. You've got a enormous forest and no fruit. Ideally I would like to trade with you, but you wouldn't because I'd convert all your people with my fruit, unless of course we turn fruit conversion off.

Two players who make this work would stand a better chance of winning. After all, the first thing the best AI's do is build a second swarm. If two players were to ally from the beginning, it would be almost like playing against one player with an instant second swarm. You could also come up with some interesting unbalanced maps.

Anyway, more ideas for the mix. All your fruits are belong to us.
joelofarabia
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Re: Promote Alliance

Post by joelofarabia »

Another idea to promote alliance...

Make it more difficult to completely obliterate an opponent, ie. make it easier to defend than attack. I think this could probably be achieved very simply by making two changes: firstly make gun turrets contain more ammo and fire faster. Secondly, using another idea that flies around the forum a lot, by introducing ranged units. That way if you send a posse of warriors to attack me they would have the wind knocked out of them before they even reach my camp.

Of course you could also use these ranged units in your attack, but the beauty of it is that at least in the beginning the battle is fought at arm's length, away from my camp, which gives me valuable mobilization time. If you had it such that ranged units could only fire upon other globs this would give me the advantage that during the initial firefight my buildings remain undamaged. Also if you made it that these globs were unable to fight hand-to-hand this would make them vulnerable, thus preserving the importance of warriors.

I envisage this ranged unit to be a fourth kind of glob (let's say "slinger") that you create at the swarm. A separate building ("firing range") would function in parallel with the barracks system. The slinger when created would immediately go to find stone and load up with bullets. He wanders around like other warriors, when he sees an enemy he stops in his tracks and fires his bullets until they're all gone. A separate kind of flag would be used to control them.
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Giszmo
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Re: Promote Alliance

Post by Giszmo »

I think a really cool way to deepen game play would be to develop the alliance concept.
/me is curious ...
At present the only real point of the game is to wipe out all other players;
the fruit thingy is strongly opposed by many players (not at all by me). Prestige is considered as somewhat random and artificial. The strategy is somewhat map-based and not a free decission.
  • giant map -> go for prestige
  • bottleneck map -> go for air attack and convert
  • all open map -> go for warriors
in practise an "alliance" amounts to nothing more than a mutual agreement that we both stand a better chance if we bash another player now and bash each other later.
Not with me. Alliances were, although not by code stable throughout all games I played.
What if the game could be tweaked to make genuine alliance a viable strategy?

So far I have six ideas, which would mostly have to be implemented *together* to work.

1) Change the objective of the game (or at least on certain maps), eg. whoever has the highest prestige after x minutes wins (calculated by population + buildings + resources in warehouse)
2) Implement the all-resource integrated warehouse idea.
3) Enable instant trading of resources between warehouses.
4) Enable selling buildings' services to other players.
4) sounds interesting. So even hostile units can eat at my inns if they pay well? Unit turns to gray, eats and walks back to the starting point turning colored again? ;)
5) Enable allies to disable fruit conversion.
conversion takes place based on starvation, too. this kind of conversion should always take place better to a friend than to an enemy. if you don't like fruit conversion, play non-fruit maps.
6) Assume peace; players have to openly declare war before their warriors will start fighting.
this would introduce a third state, neutral. So you can be hostile, allied or neutral as i would not want to have all allied from the start and maybe have distinctive trading fees for allies, neutrals and enemies.
This would theoretically enable two players to set up a symbiotic economy. I've got stone, you've got wood. I build schools, you build barracks. Because we don't have to destroy one another to win, we may choose to focus on economic competition instead.

The warehouses would work like this: We stock up our warehouses (which are universally integrated), and we have a menu where we can see the stock levels in the warehouses of our allies. I put 100 wheat up for sale, you make an offer of 70 stone, if I accept, the resources switch automatically. We could also make a running trade deal, ie. whenever I have 3 wheat and you have 1 plum the trade automatically takes place.
And here i come to the point where i regret having closed the browser without sending my old reply :/

To minimize micromanagement, my markets would work all automatic. They would value all kinds of good and try to maximize the overall stock value by exchanging with others.
witht the present 7 goods and 16 players at max in the worst case a player would have the choice of trading one of 4 goods for one of 3 goods with one of 15 players. that's a list of 4*3*15=180 possible trades.
each player assignes values to the goods with a formula like v=some number (=0 in the example) + ( max stock - stock ) / max stock
example:
Player A has 5/50 stone and 15/25 prunes
v(s)=(50-5)/50=0.9
v(p)=(25-15)/25=0.4
Getting more than 0.9 prunes for 0.4 stone would be a good deal. He wants more than 0.9/0.4=2.25p for one s
Getting more than 0.4 stone for 0.9 prunes would be a good deal. He wants more than 0.4/0.9=.444s for one p

Player B is hostile (fee=60%)
Player C is neutral (fee=20%)
Player D is allied (fee=0%)

they all have 10 stone and 10 prunes:
v(s)=(50-10)/50=0.8
v(p)=(25-10)/25=0.6

B:
Getting more than 0.8 + 60% = 1.28 prunes for 0.6 stone would be a good deal. He offers 0.6/1.28=0.4688p for one s (not acceptable)
Getting more than 0.6 + 60% = 0.96 stone for 0.8 prunes would be a good deal. He offers 0.8/1.96=0.4082s for one p (almost acceptable)

C:
Getting more than 0.8 + 20% = 0.96 prunes for 0.6 stone would be a good deal. ??
Getting more than 0.6 + 20% = 0.72 stone for 0.8 prunes would be a good deal. ??

D:
Getting more than 0.8 prunes for 0.6 stone would be a good deal. ??
Getting more than 0.6 stone for 0.8 prunes would be a good deal. ??

Those numers are normalized like in Case B to exchange one full unit of A and sorted by the resulting score. A chooses the best offer.

The formula can be extended to exchange less often and more units at a time. All in all it would not be a big deal to the cpu to exchange one resource per player per cycle (15 cycles per s) but higher throughputs on big maps should be possible.

Markets should have checkboxes for each resource that should be collected for that market while markets are sources of all resources on stock at all time. Guess now it is still the user who has to decide to either have a resource be incoming, locked or outgoing.
The same dialog would enable us to approve which services we are offering, and which resources are acceptable for payment. Let's say you haven't got any barracks. I choose to provide "level 2 warrior training" and approve "fruit" as payment. When your warrior turns up at my barracks the fruit is instantly transferred from your warehouse. (The amount of fruit goes up for each level.) Conversely you would also approve which services you are prepared to come to me for.
To avoid complexity (and also micromanagement) I would set global fees. Please think of the necessary visibility of offered services. Information is also one aspect of winning a game!
Disabling fruit conversion would have to be a mutual decision which may be rarely used. It might come in handy if, say, I've only got fruit trees and no wood. You've got a enormous forest and no fruit. Ideally I would like to trade with you, but you wouldn't because I'd convert all your people with my fruit, unless of course we turn fruit conversion off.
can't figure that situation as either the fruity player has really no wood and is doomed anyway or he has wood and will be able to work with conversion. the woody guy will not need the fruit to build.
Two players who make this work would stand a better chance of winning. After all, the first thing the best AI's do is build a second swarm. If two players were to ally from the beginning, it would be almost like playing against one player with an instant second swarm. You could also come up with some interesting unbalanced maps.
Although so called unbalanced maps are very nice in theory i really love the torrodial world of glob2 for its chance to have perfectly balanced maps. unbalanced maps are always hard as the designer can never perfectly balance it with "one gets the fruit and the other the algae".
Make it more difficult to completely obliterate an opponent, ie. make it easier to defend than attack. I think this could probably be achieved very simply by making two changes: firstly make gun turrets contain more ammo and fire faster. Secondly, using another idea that flies around the forum a lot, by introducing ranged units.
to me it is no bug in the game that you can destroy turrets. an L3 turret block is very very strong and needs no boost imho. the only problem with turrets is that they are hard to set up and maintain far from stone. so more bullets per stone and cheaper to set up, maybe with an initial charge of 5 shots would be nice.
That way if you send a posse of warriors to attack me they would have the wind knocked out of them before they even reach my camp.
like it should be even now.
Of course you could also use these ranged units in your attack, but the beauty of it is that at least in the beginning the battle is fought at arm's length, away from my camp, which gives me valuable mobilization time. If you had it such that ranged units could only fire upon other globs this would give me the advantage that during the initial firefight my buildings remain undamaged. Also if you made it that these globs were unable to fight hand-to-hand this would make them vulnerable, thus preserving the importance of warriors.
no question one on one a warrior should take down a sling raider.
I envisage this ranged unit to be a fourth kind of glob (let's say "slinger") that you create at the swarm. A separate building ("firing range") would function in parallel with the barracks system. The slinger when created would immediately go to find stone and load up with bullets. He wanders around like other warriors, when he sees an enemy he stops in his tracks and fires his bullets until they're all gone. A separate kind of flag would be used to control them.
If you implement it please don't consider new buildings for it. collecting stone (or papyrous) sounds like a funny idea but one stone should suffice for one average raid. problem comes when deciding when it should recharge. in an enemy base recharging would most likely happen from enemies stone thus pulling the unit into hostile ground. all not as easy as it looks at first glance ;)
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