UBERhelp1
Well-Known Member
Once again, this isn't really a proposal but more of just a collection of ideas that I think could be used to improve the game. I'm hoping some of these will prompt a bit of a discussion, so please give your thoughts. I know for a fact some of these might be more controversial.
We all know that there's two ways to play the game: fighting and negotiating. But we also know that there's only one true way to play the game competitively: fighting. Negotiating is far too slow, far too expensive, and not nearly as useful as fighting. This imbalance has several consequences that I think we're all familiar with:
Also, I just want to say my ideas don't completely deal with the above problems, but address the overwhelming problem of fighting dominating high level play. So what is my solution? Make negotiations better and more effective.
We have manual fighting and manual negotiation. If those were the only options that would exist, it feels like they would be more balanced. However, autobattling accelerates the speed with which you can finish battles to the point where negotiations fall behind. So why don't we have an auto-negotiation feature? I'd think of it something like the "negotiations" on the campaign map. (See more in-depth description in the spoiler below).
Auto-negotiation would still be expensive, since goods don't heal over time like damaged troops, so I'd say it should still be worth twice a battle in GBG. But in order to be a competitive strategy, negotiations have to get much faster and more reliable to complete. In a race, you wouldn't do a negotiation because there's a chance that you won't be able to complete it successfully, let alone the time sink to attempt a negotiation in the first place.
Additionally, I think that somewhere in the game, negotiations should be made more worthwhile: something that you can only do with negotiation, not fighting. One idea that comes to mind is being able to slightly boost your AD rewards by doing some number of negotiations (since you're 'negotiating' for a price for your trades), something like the PvP Arena for negotiations, etc.
Also, if you look at the list of GB boosts, count the ones with a negotiation bonus. Not counting goods production, since past ME no GB produces goods used in negotiations except the SG, the SC is the only negotiation-boosting GB, and that's pretty limited. It gives rewards for negotiations, not doing anything towards the negotiation itself (and why does it give rogues for negotiations?!?). I think we could benefit from a GB that boosts negotiations. For example (I've seen it suggested before, but idk by who) a GB that functions similarly to the Kraken where one of the 'slots' is already completed, or where a completely wrong choice is eliminated at the start for you. I'd also like to see a GB giving an extra attempt for negotiations, as a limited number per day that refreshes on collection.
Finally, we come to a little bit more of the *why* for such massive changes. As much as I like fighting in this game, I feel like there's way too much of a focus on that specific aspect of the game. It means that in events, the only buildings we get are buildings focused on attack, or they are ignored. So many high level cities are just filled with Colossus-es and Hippodromes and little else. I'd like to see more variation in what those high level cities look like, and further, more variation in the best strategies for the game. As the game is running right now, it looks like the only thing in the future is more attack buildings, then buffs to GE/GBG to make it artificially "harder" for those with high attack boosts, and then more powerful attack buildings introduced, and so on. We need something to break that style or to slow down the power creep of event buildings and GB. We need variation in the game's meta.
So... what do you think? Is the game fine how it is now? Should negotiations be improved? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
We all know that there's two ways to play the game: fighting and negotiating. But we also know that there's only one true way to play the game competitively: fighting. Negotiating is far too slow, far too expensive, and not nearly as useful as fighting. This imbalance has several consequences that I think we're all familiar with:
- Many event buildings are 'useless' unless they have an attack boost
- Rather than optimizing for FP, goods production, etc, attack is the only thing that matters
- All endgame strategies are the same (attack attack attack)
- We end up with cities of the most optimal attack/tile buildings with not much different between highest level cities (ie, hippodrome dominated)
Also, I just want to say my ideas don't completely deal with the above problems, but address the overwhelming problem of fighting dominating high level play. So what is my solution? Make negotiations better and more effective.
We have manual fighting and manual negotiation. If those were the only options that would exist, it feels like they would be more balanced. However, autobattling accelerates the speed with which you can finish battles to the point where negotiations fall behind. So why don't we have an auto-negotiation feature? I'd think of it something like the "negotiations" on the campaign map. (See more in-depth description in the spoiler below).
To balance with the manual negotiations, the cost could be 15 goods (5 goods per attempt * 3 attempts) * 2 (to make it twice as expensive as a normal negotiation) and then multiplied by the difficulty (ie, how many goods/slot does it cost). So a base negotiation would be 30 goods, split between however many choices would make sense (probably 3-4 goods/resources, with maybe 7-8 of each resource needed for a "base" negotiation). Similar to autobattling, you could just click it and keep going.
Auto-negotiation would still be expensive, since goods don't heal over time like damaged troops, so I'd say it should still be worth twice a battle in GBG. But in order to be a competitive strategy, negotiations have to get much faster and more reliable to complete. In a race, you wouldn't do a negotiation because there's a chance that you won't be able to complete it successfully, let alone the time sink to attempt a negotiation in the first place.
Additionally, I think that somewhere in the game, negotiations should be made more worthwhile: something that you can only do with negotiation, not fighting. One idea that comes to mind is being able to slightly boost your AD rewards by doing some number of negotiations (since you're 'negotiating' for a price for your trades), something like the PvP Arena for negotiations, etc.
Also, if you look at the list of GB boosts, count the ones with a negotiation bonus. Not counting goods production, since past ME no GB produces goods used in negotiations except the SG, the SC is the only negotiation-boosting GB, and that's pretty limited. It gives rewards for negotiations, not doing anything towards the negotiation itself (and why does it give rogues for negotiations?!?). I think we could benefit from a GB that boosts negotiations. For example (I've seen it suggested before, but idk by who) a GB that functions similarly to the Kraken where one of the 'slots' is already completed, or where a completely wrong choice is eliminated at the start for you. I'd also like to see a GB giving an extra attempt for negotiations, as a limited number per day that refreshes on collection.
Finally, we come to a little bit more of the *why* for such massive changes. As much as I like fighting in this game, I feel like there's way too much of a focus on that specific aspect of the game. It means that in events, the only buildings we get are buildings focused on attack, or they are ignored. So many high level cities are just filled with Colossus-es and Hippodromes and little else. I'd like to see more variation in what those high level cities look like, and further, more variation in the best strategies for the game. As the game is running right now, it looks like the only thing in the future is more attack buildings, then buffs to GE/GBG to make it artificially "harder" for those with high attack boosts, and then more powerful attack buildings introduced, and so on. We need something to break that style or to slow down the power creep of event buildings and GB. We need variation in the game's meta.
So... what do you think? Is the game fine how it is now? Should negotiations be improved? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
