The enhancement of Strategic Elements in Globulation
Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 8:16 pm
It is perhaps unfortunate that globulation, as of now, lacks deep and compelling strategic elements. However, this is not only easily addressable, this can be addressed without adding much, or anything, to basic game play.
But first, before we even discuss measures of increasing the depth of strategy present in globulation it is necessary to understand what strategy is... not in the sense of definition, but rather in the sense of derivation.
What is Strategy?
It is natural to presume that strategy is complexity... however, this is far from the truth. The greatest and most difficult strategy game currently played by humans is anything but complex. “Go” or “Igo” if you rather, involves only one type of piece and a rather simple rule set. However, the difficulty and depth of strategy available in the game is such that computers, which can already beat the greatest chess masters, cannot even face off against high ranking amateurs in the world of “go”.
So, if strategy isn't complexity then what is it?
Well, strategy derives from one thing, and one thing only: Choice. Strategy results from the player having multiple choices, but even this is a simplification. Real strategy is more than memorizing choices, but rather in the making of reactive choices. There is no one “perfect” opening in chess or go, though there are “better” openings. More importantly, all moves very quickly begin to be relational. One player moves in response to another. From this I can derive the following conditions for choices to enhance strategy:
* There must be no one definitively right choice, though there may be better choices
* Choices must be relational to the choices made previously by all players
Unfortunately, globulation does poorly in meeting these two standards. Globulation has choices yes: Which buildings to construct, what units to build... However, for the most part there is only one “right” choice. The building of a second, third, and fourth level training facility is not a “choice”, but an absolute necessity. A swimming pool is required, the race track has such a profound impact on logistical reach and economic production that it cannot be ignored.
Not to say that there isn't choice in here. The order of building, upgrading, and even placement is also choice. However, these represent only small periods of game play. Worse, the order of upgrading buildings, the position of building placement and even construction is, for the most part, a memorized strategy...
... or in other words, no strategy at all.
Equally, globulation tends to have poor relational choices. Like most RTS games the player has no idea what the other player is doing. Now, I'm fine with that, but the real problem is, and especially when on smaller maps, that player to player contact is generally short lived. When a group of warriors comes bursting into the other's base the fighting is usually fast and definitive. Victory by one side or the other is generally decided shortly after the initial attack or two. This leaves little time for construction and relational choices to take effect. This limits real strategy.
Unfortunately, all relational choices start when, and only when, the players start attacking each other. Given the quickness of victory (especially with lv4 Warriors, see the wiki warrior rebalancing on my wishlist), and more importantly the utter crippling effect resulting from the loss of certain buildings there is little that can be done in relation to the actions of the other player. Instead, all actions are taken based on “guesses” of what the other player will do and when. Strategy is reduced to little more than “canned” methods.
Now, globulation is far from being the only RTS that is like this. However, there is no reason that some thoughtful rebalancing and some consideration cannot drastically improve both of these elements.
Adding Choice
In order to improve the strategy of globulation the first thing to do is to maximize the two elements mentioned earlier. That is, to not only add choices, but to help ensure that these choices have the chance to become relational. In this I can state some basic goals:
*Every basic strategy should have at least two “good” choices or solutions
*Game play should be adjusted so that it takes multiple waves of assaults to achieve real victory, and in such, taking enough time so as to allow the player being attacked to develop an effective relational counter strategy.
As a greater idea, I think it would be an excellent idea for players to have a wider ability to choose and develop from the beginning of the game more uniquely. In this, the goal is that the number of “right” or “good” choices in the beginning of the game is not only sufficient that each players start differently, but also so that these differences continue to develop throughout the game and effect end game play. Hence, the actions early in the game cause late game strategy to differ... preferably in a significant manner.
Choice Enhancement Suggestions
Here are some suggestion to improve basic choice:
*Upgrades offered to units by the Barracks, Racetrack, Swimming pool should be sufficiently small as to never be required... or at least, never be completely required (lv2 Warriors should be able to “fight” lv4 warriors).
*The upgrading of buildings should not be the “obvious” correct task. The order of upgrades should not be obvious either. A player should be able to be successful using all level 1 buildings, via using his resources on other important tasks.
*Many critical buildings: Swimming pool, Racetrack, Barracks, and School, should be deemphasized or made redundant. It may be worth considering reducing the size, and/or resources consumed to build these buildings... and halving the number of units that can be trained in them at one time (especially for the higher level ones!). The point being to cause bases to have many more of these buildings, and thus render the loss of these buildings less crippling, and less decisive. (A percentile loss, rather than a complete loss)
All of these suggestion achieve both ends of the choice spectrum. They add both a greater number of “right” choices, and a greater ability for relational choice. A quick run down is as follows:
If building upgrades are less important, then a player's choice to not upgrade is less definitively “wrong”. Same with unit upgrades, and even with the ability to better control the number of training facilities. Equally because the destruction of specific buildings is less decisive, due to being less important or more redundant, the player is less likely to be crippled in an opening strike (or the first couple). The greater survivability increases the ability of the attacked player to create relational strategies, that address how they are being attacked.
Buffing it more with: Advantage
While adding choice does help, shoring up the relational aspect of the game is going to take a little more than just that. For this we need to talk about advantage. But first, I'll clarify what I mean when I use this word.
Advantage is the statistical benefit a player gains from various things. For instance, having level 4 warriors instead of level 1 warriors gives a huge advantage. This is because one level 4 warrior can destroy many level 1 warriors. Another example is if one player has a hospital close to the battle field, and the other has one very far away. In this a player gains a statistical benefit because his warriors spend less time walking to and from the hospital, and thus, proportionally, spend more time in battle.
Now, and this is important, we can even be more specific. The level 1 warrior vs the level 4 warrior situation can be called a “global” advantage. This is because it is true no matter where in the map it occurs.
Equally, the hospital scenario is a “local” advantage. This advantage peters out and decreases the further from the hospital the unit is. Further, it can even reverse, as the battle moves closer or further from a certain player's base.
In the most basic sense in globulation the following buildings already serve to garner certain advantages: Barracks, Racetracks, Schools, and Swimming Pools give global advantages, and Hospitals, Inns, and Towers give local advantages.
If you think about it, it is obvious which of the two advantages is more important to improving strategy: the local advantage. This is because it gives areas, or zones of strength. Further, it inherently allows theses zones to be strengthened more as needed... while not, at the same time, necessarily putting the player closer to victory. It also allows players to control the power of these zones either through the strengthening of their own, or the weakening the local advantage of their enemies. Finally, and most importantly, the collapse of a local zone of advantage has no effect on zones of advantage elsewhere... whereas the destruction of a source of global advantage negatively impacts the player everywhere.
The importance of the difference between the two cannot be understated. When one player destroys another players “global advantage” they set themselves on a road toward inevitable victory. The destruction of “global advantage” creates a snowball effect, where one player keeps getting stronger, and stronger, and stronger in relation to the other. Once one player has started destroying the “global” advantage of another player, it become increasingly impossible or difficult to stop them. This is more true, the more important and decisive that “global” advantage is.
However, when one player destroys another player's “Local advantage”, the story is different. The destruction of a local advantage does not, inherently lead to improved chances of victory elsewhere. There is no “snow ball” effect, because the defeated player is no weaker... except in that specific region. However, it does give the opposing player a chance to achieve his own local advantage in that area... this can lead to a “creeping line of force” style of play.
Advantage and Strategy
As I mentioned earlier, the correct manipulation of advantage, especially local advantage, can be used to enhance the strategic elements of globulation. The core idea here is to change the notion of the requirements of victory. In this, the equalization of advantage can be considered a strategic necessity to achieve victory. The idea being that the time dedicated, and the motions involved in, gaining, maintaining, or destroying advantage will be inherently more visible to the opposing player (Because they must either occur near the opposing base, or involve attacks on the/a opposing base). Hence, because of the presence of awareness and time, be relational.
To put it simply, enhancing the importance of local advantage forces the construction of “Forward Bases” so as to solidify local strength... and visa versa the attempt to destroy these bases so as to reduce the other party's local strength.
Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to address local strength factor of these buildings beyond adjusting rate and throughput. As it is, local strength can be measured, as applying to hospitals, as:
Hospital Strength Multiplier = (Time_Fighting ) / (2*Time_Walk + Time_Heal + Time_Fighting)
Hence, if it takes 20 seconds of battle before a unit requires healing, and 5 seconds to walk to the hospital, and 10 seconds to get healed the strength would be: (20 / (5*2+10+20) = 50% (or 50% of warriors engaged in battle would be fighting, 50% would be recovering). If another player had a 15 second walk time his local strength would be: (20 / 60) = 33% (or 33% of warriors engaged in battle would be fighting, 67% would be recovering): The local strength advantage would be: 0.5 / 0.33 = 150%, to the player with the closer hospitals.
There is, of course, a local strength advantage for inns as well and it follows roughly the same formula. However, it should be clear that a 150% advantage isn't much... the advantage between a Level 3 and Level 4 Warriors is greater than that (220%). But again, this only represents inns.
So the question is: what can be done? Well, several things. The first would be to reduce the time of healing and/or fighting, and thus increase the importance of walking distance. The second would be to increase walking time, by either slowing down walking, or using larger maps. Clearly, the prior is probably more favorable (halving heal time could easily be accompanied by simply halving the number of units that may be in a hospital at one time, halving fight time can be achieved by many modifications).
Doing this would create: 10 / 25 = 40% vs 10 / 45 = 22% = 180% advantage, for the player with the closer hospitals.
The other option would be to reduce the importance of the global advantage, by reducing the bonus from training warriors to higher levels. This, in result, increases the comparable potency of the local advantage, by eliminating ways of circumventing this advantage.
It is also worth noting that the race track currently creates a very large impact on the effective reach and drop off rate of local advantage. It is probably well worth considering reducing the growth resulting from the use of the racetrack, so that the effect is more standardized.
The strength of local advantage is, again, a very important consideration. The less of an impact it has on the game, the less players are going to pay attention to it. The less players pay attention to it, the less likely they are going to involve themselves in strategic assaults on the enemies sources of local advantage, and thus, the less likely the players will gain a meaningful amount of time to engage in relational choices.
Towers and Local Advantage
Towers also give a local advantage, however they are different than inns in hospitals in two very important ways. The first is that they are an end in of themselves, hence, towers are effective with very little unit back up. The second is that they represent a “hard” limit of reach. You are either within their reach, and thus the effect of the tower, or you are not. Because of this, working with towers is simpler.
On the opposite side, towers currently give very little meaningful effect on advantage. The reason is that their “range” is so terribly short. In fact, currently towers are useful mostly to control “choke points”... which do not exist very well in globulation in the first place. In fact, in order to use towers as a form of “local” advantage many, many towers need to be stacked or chained so that they may influence a sufficiently large area. An effect that is not only too expensive, but waters down the strength of the towers until they are meaningless.
Perhaps more importantly though, unless guard areas are placed with great care, it is likely that an enemy force can practically ignore anything less than a thick bramble of towers.
Now, towers are already in a situation of precarious balance. In order for them to be meaningful to “advantage” the reach of their presence needs to be large enough to create an “area of control”. Yet, they cannot be made so powerful as to overly tilt the battlefield, especially when concentrated. As such, an intelligent consideration of power and reach is desirable so as to allow towers (or multiple of them) to create zones of control that are more than mere pinpoints in the map.
I'd consider increasing range of the base towers up to as much as 9 or 10, and decreasing their damage proportionately as a penalty. A reach of 7 would also be quite workable. When doing this I'd suggest not allowing upgrades to increase reach further, but to rather concentrating the emphasis on how effectively, and how permanently the area is given an advantage.
General Summation of Ideas on Advantage
The general idea of advantage, is again, to force a war of local advantage before the achievement of victory. The reason for this is that this war, does not inherently weaken the ability of the “attacked” player to respond, while inherently making the “attacked” player aware of the attack, and thus capable of making a counter strategy... thus filling, or enhancing, the “relational” aspect.
The ideas covered here are:
*Reduce the importance of global advantage (unit upgrades) – this is also mentioned as good for increasing the number of “good” choices.
*Consider tweaking Inns and Hospitals in ways so as to maximize or increase local advantages.
*Consider reducing racetrack boost so that it doesn't so severely effect Inn and Hospital advantage.
*Consider increasing tower ranges so that they are more fit for governing area “control” and advantage.
And in general, attempt to think about how all new units and modifications effect of local advantage, and always attempt to maximize it's importance..
Related Idea: Explorers and Advantage
There has been a lot of discussion over what to do with explorers. The current decision is to remove the ability to attack buildings, and only allow the attacking of units. Personally, I would prefer a more strategic use of explorers than as a unit killer. As it is, using the concept of advantage, it seems to me a role is already open for them.
The role I suggest is not one as a unit killer, but rather as a vehicle for the destruction of sources of local advantage, most notably: Inns, and Hospitals. I'd also add in Level 1 towers (but not 2 and 3, thus playing up the “permancy” aspect of higher level towers). I'd also add workers, but in this case mostly to reduce the annoyance of hunting down every last enemy worker.
The idea of this is as follows:
Explorers make an excellent “hook” strike, because nothing can block the direction of their progress except their death. This allows them to effectively strike enemy forward bases, without being stalled by existing troops. Further, it renders the use of explorers very strategic because they are only useful for indirectly damaging the enemy. What is more, no amount of destroyed hospitals or inns will every instantly spell the doom of the opposing player, though the action may be quite annoying.
I add in the destruction of Level 1 towers to prevent explorers from being too casually guarded against (especially if ranges are enhanced!). Where as I am perfectly fine with Level 2+ towers being impervious to explorers, as this represents a solidification of defenses. Heck, it'd make for a great point of upgrading in the first place. (Again, upgrading as a choice, or to address a specific necessity).
Now, achieving this is actually pretty easy. All that needs to be done is to set explorer damage low, remove the splash, they don't need to be able to slaughter construction sites. I'd also suggest increasing explorer range because as of now, their AI makes them incapable of hitting crap without the splash damage. An increase attack speed to may also be worth considering, so that they still do enough damage. The final step is to merely allow their attacks to be zeroed by unit/building armor.
After this, setting the armor of inns, hospitals, and even level 1 towers at 0 will achieve this end. If necessary a further tweak can be made to workers, so that explorers are not especially effective against them.
But first, before we even discuss measures of increasing the depth of strategy present in globulation it is necessary to understand what strategy is... not in the sense of definition, but rather in the sense of derivation.
What is Strategy?
It is natural to presume that strategy is complexity... however, this is far from the truth. The greatest and most difficult strategy game currently played by humans is anything but complex. “Go” or “Igo” if you rather, involves only one type of piece and a rather simple rule set. However, the difficulty and depth of strategy available in the game is such that computers, which can already beat the greatest chess masters, cannot even face off against high ranking amateurs in the world of “go”.
So, if strategy isn't complexity then what is it?
Well, strategy derives from one thing, and one thing only: Choice. Strategy results from the player having multiple choices, but even this is a simplification. Real strategy is more than memorizing choices, but rather in the making of reactive choices. There is no one “perfect” opening in chess or go, though there are “better” openings. More importantly, all moves very quickly begin to be relational. One player moves in response to another. From this I can derive the following conditions for choices to enhance strategy:
* There must be no one definitively right choice, though there may be better choices
* Choices must be relational to the choices made previously by all players
Unfortunately, globulation does poorly in meeting these two standards. Globulation has choices yes: Which buildings to construct, what units to build... However, for the most part there is only one “right” choice. The building of a second, third, and fourth level training facility is not a “choice”, but an absolute necessity. A swimming pool is required, the race track has such a profound impact on logistical reach and economic production that it cannot be ignored.
Not to say that there isn't choice in here. The order of building, upgrading, and even placement is also choice. However, these represent only small periods of game play. Worse, the order of upgrading buildings, the position of building placement and even construction is, for the most part, a memorized strategy...
... or in other words, no strategy at all.
Equally, globulation tends to have poor relational choices. Like most RTS games the player has no idea what the other player is doing. Now, I'm fine with that, but the real problem is, and especially when on smaller maps, that player to player contact is generally short lived. When a group of warriors comes bursting into the other's base the fighting is usually fast and definitive. Victory by one side or the other is generally decided shortly after the initial attack or two. This leaves little time for construction and relational choices to take effect. This limits real strategy.
Unfortunately, all relational choices start when, and only when, the players start attacking each other. Given the quickness of victory (especially with lv4 Warriors, see the wiki warrior rebalancing on my wishlist), and more importantly the utter crippling effect resulting from the loss of certain buildings there is little that can be done in relation to the actions of the other player. Instead, all actions are taken based on “guesses” of what the other player will do and when. Strategy is reduced to little more than “canned” methods.
Now, globulation is far from being the only RTS that is like this. However, there is no reason that some thoughtful rebalancing and some consideration cannot drastically improve both of these elements.
Adding Choice
In order to improve the strategy of globulation the first thing to do is to maximize the two elements mentioned earlier. That is, to not only add choices, but to help ensure that these choices have the chance to become relational. In this I can state some basic goals:
*Every basic strategy should have at least two “good” choices or solutions
*Game play should be adjusted so that it takes multiple waves of assaults to achieve real victory, and in such, taking enough time so as to allow the player being attacked to develop an effective relational counter strategy.
As a greater idea, I think it would be an excellent idea for players to have a wider ability to choose and develop from the beginning of the game more uniquely. In this, the goal is that the number of “right” or “good” choices in the beginning of the game is not only sufficient that each players start differently, but also so that these differences continue to develop throughout the game and effect end game play. Hence, the actions early in the game cause late game strategy to differ... preferably in a significant manner.
Choice Enhancement Suggestions
Here are some suggestion to improve basic choice:
*Upgrades offered to units by the Barracks, Racetrack, Swimming pool should be sufficiently small as to never be required... or at least, never be completely required (lv2 Warriors should be able to “fight” lv4 warriors).
*The upgrading of buildings should not be the “obvious” correct task. The order of upgrades should not be obvious either. A player should be able to be successful using all level 1 buildings, via using his resources on other important tasks.
*Many critical buildings: Swimming pool, Racetrack, Barracks, and School, should be deemphasized or made redundant. It may be worth considering reducing the size, and/or resources consumed to build these buildings... and halving the number of units that can be trained in them at one time (especially for the higher level ones!). The point being to cause bases to have many more of these buildings, and thus render the loss of these buildings less crippling, and less decisive. (A percentile loss, rather than a complete loss)
All of these suggestion achieve both ends of the choice spectrum. They add both a greater number of “right” choices, and a greater ability for relational choice. A quick run down is as follows:
If building upgrades are less important, then a player's choice to not upgrade is less definitively “wrong”. Same with unit upgrades, and even with the ability to better control the number of training facilities. Equally because the destruction of specific buildings is less decisive, due to being less important or more redundant, the player is less likely to be crippled in an opening strike (or the first couple). The greater survivability increases the ability of the attacked player to create relational strategies, that address how they are being attacked.
Buffing it more with: Advantage
While adding choice does help, shoring up the relational aspect of the game is going to take a little more than just that. For this we need to talk about advantage. But first, I'll clarify what I mean when I use this word.
Advantage is the statistical benefit a player gains from various things. For instance, having level 4 warriors instead of level 1 warriors gives a huge advantage. This is because one level 4 warrior can destroy many level 1 warriors. Another example is if one player has a hospital close to the battle field, and the other has one very far away. In this a player gains a statistical benefit because his warriors spend less time walking to and from the hospital, and thus, proportionally, spend more time in battle.
Now, and this is important, we can even be more specific. The level 1 warrior vs the level 4 warrior situation can be called a “global” advantage. This is because it is true no matter where in the map it occurs.
Equally, the hospital scenario is a “local” advantage. This advantage peters out and decreases the further from the hospital the unit is. Further, it can even reverse, as the battle moves closer or further from a certain player's base.
In the most basic sense in globulation the following buildings already serve to garner certain advantages: Barracks, Racetracks, Schools, and Swimming Pools give global advantages, and Hospitals, Inns, and Towers give local advantages.
If you think about it, it is obvious which of the two advantages is more important to improving strategy: the local advantage. This is because it gives areas, or zones of strength. Further, it inherently allows theses zones to be strengthened more as needed... while not, at the same time, necessarily putting the player closer to victory. It also allows players to control the power of these zones either through the strengthening of their own, or the weakening the local advantage of their enemies. Finally, and most importantly, the collapse of a local zone of advantage has no effect on zones of advantage elsewhere... whereas the destruction of a source of global advantage negatively impacts the player everywhere.
The importance of the difference between the two cannot be understated. When one player destroys another players “global advantage” they set themselves on a road toward inevitable victory. The destruction of “global advantage” creates a snowball effect, where one player keeps getting stronger, and stronger, and stronger in relation to the other. Once one player has started destroying the “global” advantage of another player, it become increasingly impossible or difficult to stop them. This is more true, the more important and decisive that “global” advantage is.
However, when one player destroys another player's “Local advantage”, the story is different. The destruction of a local advantage does not, inherently lead to improved chances of victory elsewhere. There is no “snow ball” effect, because the defeated player is no weaker... except in that specific region. However, it does give the opposing player a chance to achieve his own local advantage in that area... this can lead to a “creeping line of force” style of play.
Advantage and Strategy
As I mentioned earlier, the correct manipulation of advantage, especially local advantage, can be used to enhance the strategic elements of globulation. The core idea here is to change the notion of the requirements of victory. In this, the equalization of advantage can be considered a strategic necessity to achieve victory. The idea being that the time dedicated, and the motions involved in, gaining, maintaining, or destroying advantage will be inherently more visible to the opposing player (Because they must either occur near the opposing base, or involve attacks on the/a opposing base). Hence, because of the presence of awareness and time, be relational.
To put it simply, enhancing the importance of local advantage forces the construction of “Forward Bases” so as to solidify local strength... and visa versa the attempt to destroy these bases so as to reduce the other party's local strength.
Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to address local strength factor of these buildings beyond adjusting rate and throughput. As it is, local strength can be measured, as applying to hospitals, as:
Hospital Strength Multiplier = (Time_Fighting ) / (2*Time_Walk + Time_Heal + Time_Fighting)
Hence, if it takes 20 seconds of battle before a unit requires healing, and 5 seconds to walk to the hospital, and 10 seconds to get healed the strength would be: (20 / (5*2+10+20) = 50% (or 50% of warriors engaged in battle would be fighting, 50% would be recovering). If another player had a 15 second walk time his local strength would be: (20 / 60) = 33% (or 33% of warriors engaged in battle would be fighting, 67% would be recovering): The local strength advantage would be: 0.5 / 0.33 = 150%, to the player with the closer hospitals.
There is, of course, a local strength advantage for inns as well and it follows roughly the same formula. However, it should be clear that a 150% advantage isn't much... the advantage between a Level 3 and Level 4 Warriors is greater than that (220%). But again, this only represents inns.
So the question is: what can be done? Well, several things. The first would be to reduce the time of healing and/or fighting, and thus increase the importance of walking distance. The second would be to increase walking time, by either slowing down walking, or using larger maps. Clearly, the prior is probably more favorable (halving heal time could easily be accompanied by simply halving the number of units that may be in a hospital at one time, halving fight time can be achieved by many modifications).
Doing this would create: 10 / 25 = 40% vs 10 / 45 = 22% = 180% advantage, for the player with the closer hospitals.
The other option would be to reduce the importance of the global advantage, by reducing the bonus from training warriors to higher levels. This, in result, increases the comparable potency of the local advantage, by eliminating ways of circumventing this advantage.
It is also worth noting that the race track currently creates a very large impact on the effective reach and drop off rate of local advantage. It is probably well worth considering reducing the growth resulting from the use of the racetrack, so that the effect is more standardized.
The strength of local advantage is, again, a very important consideration. The less of an impact it has on the game, the less players are going to pay attention to it. The less players pay attention to it, the less likely they are going to involve themselves in strategic assaults on the enemies sources of local advantage, and thus, the less likely the players will gain a meaningful amount of time to engage in relational choices.
Towers and Local Advantage
Towers also give a local advantage, however they are different than inns in hospitals in two very important ways. The first is that they are an end in of themselves, hence, towers are effective with very little unit back up. The second is that they represent a “hard” limit of reach. You are either within their reach, and thus the effect of the tower, or you are not. Because of this, working with towers is simpler.
On the opposite side, towers currently give very little meaningful effect on advantage. The reason is that their “range” is so terribly short. In fact, currently towers are useful mostly to control “choke points”... which do not exist very well in globulation in the first place. In fact, in order to use towers as a form of “local” advantage many, many towers need to be stacked or chained so that they may influence a sufficiently large area. An effect that is not only too expensive, but waters down the strength of the towers until they are meaningless.
Perhaps more importantly though, unless guard areas are placed with great care, it is likely that an enemy force can practically ignore anything less than a thick bramble of towers.
Now, towers are already in a situation of precarious balance. In order for them to be meaningful to “advantage” the reach of their presence needs to be large enough to create an “area of control”. Yet, they cannot be made so powerful as to overly tilt the battlefield, especially when concentrated. As such, an intelligent consideration of power and reach is desirable so as to allow towers (or multiple of them) to create zones of control that are more than mere pinpoints in the map.
I'd consider increasing range of the base towers up to as much as 9 or 10, and decreasing their damage proportionately as a penalty. A reach of 7 would also be quite workable. When doing this I'd suggest not allowing upgrades to increase reach further, but to rather concentrating the emphasis on how effectively, and how permanently the area is given an advantage.
General Summation of Ideas on Advantage
The general idea of advantage, is again, to force a war of local advantage before the achievement of victory. The reason for this is that this war, does not inherently weaken the ability of the “attacked” player to respond, while inherently making the “attacked” player aware of the attack, and thus capable of making a counter strategy... thus filling, or enhancing, the “relational” aspect.
The ideas covered here are:
*Reduce the importance of global advantage (unit upgrades) – this is also mentioned as good for increasing the number of “good” choices.
*Consider tweaking Inns and Hospitals in ways so as to maximize or increase local advantages.
*Consider reducing racetrack boost so that it doesn't so severely effect Inn and Hospital advantage.
*Consider increasing tower ranges so that they are more fit for governing area “control” and advantage.
And in general, attempt to think about how all new units and modifications effect of local advantage, and always attempt to maximize it's importance..
Related Idea: Explorers and Advantage
There has been a lot of discussion over what to do with explorers. The current decision is to remove the ability to attack buildings, and only allow the attacking of units. Personally, I would prefer a more strategic use of explorers than as a unit killer. As it is, using the concept of advantage, it seems to me a role is already open for them.
The role I suggest is not one as a unit killer, but rather as a vehicle for the destruction of sources of local advantage, most notably: Inns, and Hospitals. I'd also add in Level 1 towers (but not 2 and 3, thus playing up the “permancy” aspect of higher level towers). I'd also add workers, but in this case mostly to reduce the annoyance of hunting down every last enemy worker.
The idea of this is as follows:
Explorers make an excellent “hook” strike, because nothing can block the direction of their progress except their death. This allows them to effectively strike enemy forward bases, without being stalled by existing troops. Further, it renders the use of explorers very strategic because they are only useful for indirectly damaging the enemy. What is more, no amount of destroyed hospitals or inns will every instantly spell the doom of the opposing player, though the action may be quite annoying.
I add in the destruction of Level 1 towers to prevent explorers from being too casually guarded against (especially if ranges are enhanced!). Where as I am perfectly fine with Level 2+ towers being impervious to explorers, as this represents a solidification of defenses. Heck, it'd make for a great point of upgrading in the first place. (Again, upgrading as a choice, or to address a specific necessity).
Now, achieving this is actually pretty easy. All that needs to be done is to set explorer damage low, remove the splash, they don't need to be able to slaughter construction sites. I'd also suggest increasing explorer range because as of now, their AI makes them incapable of hitting crap without the splash damage. An increase attack speed to may also be worth considering, so that they still do enough damage. The final step is to merely allow their attacks to be zeroed by unit/building armor.
After this, setting the armor of inns, hospitals, and even level 1 towers at 0 will achieve this end. If necessary a further tweak can be made to workers, so that explorers are not especially effective against them.