Simple changes that might deepen strategy
Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 7:07 pm
(if anyone doesn't hate the fruit system, or to a lesser extent ground-attacking explorers, debate that in another thread. This thread is for ideas.)
Strategic depth, as I am sure you all agree, is valuable in an RTS game like glob2. However, I have found that two game rules in particular act to flatten the strategy immensely, rather than deepen it.
- Fruits, if anyone starts to use them, force all players immediately into the fruit war, almost to the neglect of other, deeper, aspects of the game. The war is decided by a simple fruit count, almost the ultimate in flat strategy.
- Ground-attacking explorers win the game extremely quickly for the first player to get them. Thus, if any player has a level 2 school, all players have to focus as much workforce as possible to get a level 3 school first, again, to the neglect of all other strategy up to that point.
- Furthermore, all explorer combat is decided by a simple head count: explorers' splash damage means that an explorer will always net the same amount of damage to enemy explorers, no matter whether grouped against a lone explorer or alone against a group. (the exception is if they visit hospitals; however, hospitals are one of the easiest buildings for ground-attacking explorers to destroy.)
How to fix strategy-flattening game elements that force themselves to be necessary? Easy - make them optional extras. Make a level 3 school good to have, rather than making it win the game. Certainly don't let a level 3 school allow you to quickly destroy all enemy level 2 schools. Also, make fruits let you convert a few units on the side, not all the units you can feed.
My ideas are astonishingly simple to code:
- allow Defense Towers to attack Explorers, at any level of tower or explorer. This deepens the ground-attacking-explorer strategy by giving a player another way to fight against explorers than to madly rush to create a huge armada of explorers. This also deepens air strategy in general, by making it harder to simply walk explorers into the enemy base to gain valuable information.
- allow ground-attacking explorers only to attack ground directly under them. Thus, only one building can be damaged at a time, and an explorer cannoy simply hover over a building and also destroy units that come to work at that building or repair it. It is totally impractical to do large-scale repairs in glob2, so it should not be possible to do widespread damage.
- instead of delivering 10 fruit at one grab, as is the current state of affairs, bring 2. Thus, there will be a reasonable limit on how many units can be converted per piece of fruit, and you won't simply be able to fill all your inns to the limit with fruits from one tiny patch, but it will still be feasible to convert some units. Also, it will give the opponent a larger window of opportunity to beat on you with his fruitless (no pun intended) warriors.
Thoughts?
Strategic depth, as I am sure you all agree, is valuable in an RTS game like glob2. However, I have found that two game rules in particular act to flatten the strategy immensely, rather than deepen it.
- Fruits, if anyone starts to use them, force all players immediately into the fruit war, almost to the neglect of other, deeper, aspects of the game. The war is decided by a simple fruit count, almost the ultimate in flat strategy.
- Ground-attacking explorers win the game extremely quickly for the first player to get them. Thus, if any player has a level 2 school, all players have to focus as much workforce as possible to get a level 3 school first, again, to the neglect of all other strategy up to that point.
- Furthermore, all explorer combat is decided by a simple head count: explorers' splash damage means that an explorer will always net the same amount of damage to enemy explorers, no matter whether grouped against a lone explorer or alone against a group. (the exception is if they visit hospitals; however, hospitals are one of the easiest buildings for ground-attacking explorers to destroy.)
How to fix strategy-flattening game elements that force themselves to be necessary? Easy - make them optional extras. Make a level 3 school good to have, rather than making it win the game. Certainly don't let a level 3 school allow you to quickly destroy all enemy level 2 schools. Also, make fruits let you convert a few units on the side, not all the units you can feed.
My ideas are astonishingly simple to code:
- allow Defense Towers to attack Explorers, at any level of tower or explorer. This deepens the ground-attacking-explorer strategy by giving a player another way to fight against explorers than to madly rush to create a huge armada of explorers. This also deepens air strategy in general, by making it harder to simply walk explorers into the enemy base to gain valuable information.
- allow ground-attacking explorers only to attack ground directly under them. Thus, only one building can be damaged at a time, and an explorer cannoy simply hover over a building and also destroy units that come to work at that building or repair it. It is totally impractical to do large-scale repairs in glob2, so it should not be possible to do widespread damage.
- instead of delivering 10 fruit at one grab, as is the current state of affairs, bring 2. Thus, there will be a reasonable limit on how many units can be converted per piece of fruit, and you won't simply be able to fill all your inns to the limit with fruits from one tiny patch, but it will still be feasible to convert some units. Also, it will give the opponent a larger window of opportunity to beat on you with his fruitless (no pun intended) warriors.
Thoughts?