v2.5 tweak ideas - discussion thread

[Darnivan]

It is simple, the 72 turns your restored with are intended to be used only to fort defense, that is why I said you could be attacked but not attack during those 72 turns. This is to prevent someone from doing something like restoring to get their larger land cap back, forting scum and burning temples immediately. Since you can use them the instance you restore you should only be unable to attack for a few minutes, but then are at 0 turns. There is no defensive protection, you just are limited in how you can use then turns you have the moment after the restore.

[Darnivan]

Taking away elan sounds like an interesting change, it does reduce the significant advantage restored kingdoms have. They could still do a few attacks but couldn't destroy a kingdom until they used a few turns first.

[Igneous]

I like being able to send a caravan before I restore. It makes me feel like I can waste as few turns as possible by using turns to inspire for cash, then send to an ally before hitting the button. I believe there are already enough protections in place against it being too big of a problem:
can't send to someone in protection... etc

Maybe a tax based reduction in elan is needed as well, and those who use elan a lot would be building it like warriors build land for armies. taking it would be like taking a warriors land.

[Kaz]

Not really sure what benefit an Elan tax would do. Generally the kingdoms with the most Elan are warriors because they don't use it very much. Essentially the sorcs would be unable to cast offensive spells, but the warriors would keep the ability to summon. I think Elan would work best as a flat number between 500 and 2500, that way it limits everyone equally. Sorcerers have more temples so generate it quicker, so they'd get back up to war levels pretty quickly anyway.

[Igneous]

I see, thanks for explaining that.

[Kaz]

I've been thinking more on the Elan idea, and I don't like the idea of a sorcerer being totally rendered useless by being forced to restore.

I'm thinking that perhaps there should be enough elan for one reasonably decent retaliation, but after that they run out of elan. Restoring would only 'cap' the elan, if they had less than the cap e.g. had recently restored, it would not charge back up to the cap.

I am now thinking 1500 or 2000 elan per racial level of sorcery.

e.g.

Droben, Goblin, Centaur, Dwarven (2/5) = 3000 or 4000 Elan
Human (3/5) = 4500 or 6000 Elan
Elven, Vampire, Elemental, Fae (4/5) = 6000 or 8000 Elan
Sidhe (5/5) = 7500 or 10,000 Elan

---------

I'm pretty sure this Elan change might be just what restore needs in order to make it seem like sorc/scum actions are not in vain. The question is really finding the right level to set the cap.

Warriors and Scummers are dependant on the Land in order to hold more troops/scum.
Sorcerers are dependant on a building - which gets restored - and elan.

[Kaz]

I know I keep changing the Elan idea, but I've just coded the land/building tax into v2.5 and for simplicity am going with the following for Elan reduction.

Elan will be reduced to 50% of the previous values, but will be capped at 5000 elan on the restore. I realised that my kingdoms generate 16 to 18 elan per turn, so 5000 seemed like a perfectly reasonable maximum.

[Igneous]

I really like your race based option for elan, that sounds really cool. :0) You might even think about making some changes to the land restore values based on race. :-O heh.

[Leif]

I was just digging through NPA, and saw a thread which reminded me of a tweak suggestion. Over there a thread was started regarding whether or not it could be displayed on the account manager screen if a kingdom had news/messages. I'm not sure there was an outcome to the thread, but I know I would like to see that feature return. I have no concept of what type of work is required to put it into place, and if it qualifies as a 'tweak' or if its more like 'week-long-migraine'...