Official FAQ - multiplayer news

Question asked in the .COM forum and answered today @ the official site:

The STW and MI/WE upgrades and honour system has been heavily debated here and in the Sword Dojo. While in Single Player these make sense, as in the campaign they are the result of unit and/or building development, online they ruin things as they allow for cheap 'super units'. The H9 Ashi is a pain in the neck. Will MTW rely on a similar system, and if so, will you please consider limiting the number of upgrades available to a single unit for online play?

Yes. We are looking at changing the costs of Honour upgrades and capping them to make this more balanced for multiplayer. We are also looking at other changes such as increasing the cost of additional units if you buy large numbers of a single type of unit.

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Well, so far, so good. Still way to go in my opinion.

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Proud member of Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka).
evil is within us... http://www.totalwar.org/site/emomalta.gif

[RageMonsta]

I can almost taste the death of the 'system' players now.....why Tera do you tease poor old Monsta this way.... plz tell me again... plzzzzzzzzzz....

we are coming for you gun monkeys.

[MagyarKhans Cham]

i am sure they have looke into the campaigntool which uses additional costs if u buy more than 1 unit

[MagyarKhans Cham]

btw first seeing than believing

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

...changes such as increasing the cost of additional units if you buy large numbers of a single type of unit.

So teamgames where one buys the infantry and the other buys the cavalry can't be used anymore. Besides, while a balanced army should rule in balanced terrain, more shockinf is needed when you've to assault a forrested hill.

Solutions like these are no solutions.

The upgradesystem, the way it's made, spoils online gameplay. This has two reasons: downgrade and upgrade.

A H2 kensai costs 600 koku, sell back honor to H0 and you save 297 koku. The H0 kensai is about as good as an H2 (because it's a single man hero). Charge it into an enemy, it'll make 2 kills, and it's H1. Kill another two and it's H2.

Use the saved 297 koku to upgrade a weak H2 YA to H6.

What you do is making a strong unit marginally weaker and save lots of koku, and upgrade the weak to exceptional power. H6 YA isn't enough, but buy a musket, downgrade it to H0 and save another 122 koku. A H0 musket doesn't shoot 'any' worse than a H2 (it's weaker in morale and combat though, but that's not what you buy a gun for).

So you've another 131 koku to spend on your YA. You can buy a weapon and an armor for 100 koku together. Buy another H0 gun and you have another 131 koku. Upgrade the H6W1A1 YA to H7W1A1 for 154 koku.

Army: 2 H0 musket 244 koku, h0 kensai 307 koku, H7W1A1 YA 638 koku, total 1189 koku.

Try to beat it with 2 H2 WM (1100 koku) or 1 H2 WM and 1 H2 JHC (1150 koku).

A simple solution for this and other problems, not discussed here but all are about honorsellback and upgrading beyond intended powers, is the following:

Allow only Honor 2, Honor 3 and Honor 4 and allow only 1 weaponupgrade and 1 armorupgrade per unit.

Optional, but a very good thing to do:
Morale and Fatigue slider which allows the host to set those independly on 'any' value between or on the current Morale on/off and Fatigue on/off.



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Vanya]

Bull-caca.

Make marginal upgrades exponential in nature, not just a 40% increase over the previous level.

Then, adding beyond honor 4 will become TRULY abhorrent.

Each unit should have its own price exponential scale, so that it does not increase at the same rate as other units.

Monks and YA, for example, would not experience the same "line"... the YA should face a steeper increase per level than the monk. But both should still be exponential.

Make honor effects logarithmic instead of additive. That is, each additional honor increase has a lesser benefit than the previous. The benefit of an H9 unit will then be negligible compared to say, an H7 unit because of the logarithmic scale, which plateaus... These too would be tailored per unit.

THIS is the way to fix the ailments you all complain about.

Honor capping and all that are merely band-aids that stop the hemorhaging, but fail to heal the wound.




[This message has been edited by Vanya (edited 04-30-2002).]

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa Vanya san,

The com forum mentions band aids here. Not solutions to make the upgradesystem better. Your medicine is just a band-aid too. Some band-aids are just causing bigger/other problems like a tigh band-aid causes thrombosis.

The thrombosis of the second CA band aid is discussed in the former post. The thrombosis of your solution is that you overlook the fact that the YA simply needs to accumulate power, just not in the way in does now. A pikeunit is a cheap way to protect against cavalry, in other words: protect your very expensive shockinfantry against (cheaper) enemy cavalry in open terrain. Recall that yariinfantry has an exclusive bonus against cavalry of 8 points. 1 upgrade gives only 2 points, so the pikeunit should upgrade faster and cheaper than the cavalry to maintain the RPS system. A nasty sideeffect is that the pike becomes strong against his natural enemies too. In short: the upgrade should be applied to the special bonus against cavalry. All solutions mentioned here (exponential costs, honor caps, increasing costs of additional units) are all band-aids. A medicine would be to redesign how a unit will be upgraded.

I admit that my system has thrombosis too. People that want to play a 99999 koku comp game in a castle can't spend their money, as 16 H4W1A1 JHC only costs 28416 koku.

I'ld suggest to allow the host to set the lower and upper caps for his games. It's still just a band-aid, but one that will not hurt the wound till we wait for a medicine.

Do you want to outsmart your enemy in the armyselection menu? Toggle morale and fatigue off and set the caps to Min Honor0 and Max Honor 9, Max 3 Weapon and Max 3 Armor.

Do you want to outsmart your enemy on the field? Set morale to 100% and fatigue to 50%, and caps to Min Honor 2 and Max Honor 3, Max 0 Weapon and Max 0 Armor.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Vanya]

Interesting. I had not thought of that. Thanks, TosaInu-san.

You are right.

I was thinking along the lines of a more idealized system. Where each unit has a cost line and a benefit line that dictate cost/bonuses per marginal upgrade. Doing this WOULD be a redesign of the system, as such a thing does not exist in place.

I would think that with this system, you could find a set of curves that result in a balanced game without turning spears into super units.

But, I could be wrong. This is mere conjecture on my behalf. And I admit I had not thought of the balancing of the spears as anticavs before.

Will it still work? I think so. But it would be vastly cost-prohibitive for EA/CA to do anything about it.

I have an idea! I say we vote a panel of Org members into the CA design team as "consumer consultants". They don't have to be "paid"... their reward is a "good game".

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/eek.gif

[Sir Kuma of The Org]

NO honour, no weapon and no armour upgrades=no problems (well it's more like less problems).

With 100 units available any type of upgrading system in MP will just bring insatisfaction.

Some bright patron will find the weaknesses of any type of upgrade system and use them. then others will use them etc..., etc..., etc..

Sometimes simple is better.



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Ils sont grands seulement parce que nous sommes à genoux. Alors levons-nous debout!!!

[MagyarKhans Cham]

the "hidden" upgrades are ok tho, cuz u will never know what to face when units are in combat.

for me 4 levels h2-h5 is enuf and skipping the number of banners so u never know what u r facin in strength

[Whitey]

that would really add to the game, skip the idea of the 'small banners' for honour level - it would deliver much more the kind of gamewe want...

PS

Isn't another 'band aid' solution to limit the honour of certain units to certain levels, allow H0-H2 YA, allow H3-H5 JHC, allow only H2-H4 ND, or H1 to H3 YS, etc - this makes the play structure more ridgid, but more realistic, more easy to balance, and (for me) more fun to play. This way, you don't get units doing impossible things - I seem to remember a system like this in Dark Omen, certain units could be only bought as green soldiers, whereas some units could be bought at various skill levels up to elite troops (hmm...Wood Elf Glade Guards http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif )

[Erado San]

Well, I asked the question and see at least the will to make changes here, so that's a good thing. What they say seems to be this:

Honour upgrades : We are looking at changing the costs of Honour upgrades and capping them

If they cap them to say H5 max, AND do something sensible to the pricing, then that's certainly an improvement. I a with Tosa all the way when he says the system needs a bigger makeover, but I'll take a good capping and pricing system as an alternative.

And: We are also looking at other changes such as increasing the cost of additional units if you buy large numbers of a single type of unit.

So they're still reluctant to set hard limits like 'No more than 4 units of one type'. That's a shame. But if they start increasing the price after say the third unit of one type, it helps.

With these two changes the Gun/spears combi would probably lose a lot of its strength, so if they make the right changes then this is a good step, but not the optimal in my opinion.

Good thing is, if after a few weeks/months of playing these changes don't appear to be enough, it will be easy to come up with better values for the changes in the system, which wouldbe easy enough to implement in a patch. If they would adopt a new system alltogether, this would probably be harder again.

Ok, I'll give them thumbs up for addressing this, and the benefit of the doubt for the way in which they are trying to improve it.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

To summarise what I (tried) to say:

Honor and upgrade capping is the best band-aid. If the host is allowed to set the lower and upper caps, it's definately the most flexible solution. So I'm all for the first option mentioned by CA (if making over the system isn't an option).

The sliderbars for morale and fatigue wll allow players to customise the way they want to play games even further (think of the fast fatigue of units on large maps in STW). This has been suggested by Puzz3D.

I'm 100% against hardcoded limits on how many units you can take. But I've no objection when the host can set this: max 1, max 3, max 4, max 5... max 16. Reason:
-teamgames where the one takes 8 spears and 8 guns, the second 8 Nods and 8 cavalry.

-Heavily forested maps make cavalry (and thus pikes), guns and archers worthless/impotent. Only Hand to Hand infantry makes sense on such maps.

Fixed unitlimits spoil the game for the not system exploiters.

These flexible options allow us to 'make' our own 'patches' ten times a night, or stick to just one.

Edit: Agree Erado San, thumbs up to CA for addressing this.
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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi
http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 05-02-2002).]

The suggestion of increasing upgrades cost per honour is a good, first step.

Personally, I don't like the way patches are issued...1 patch per game isn't enough. 1.02 was a great advance, but there is need for 1.03, 1.04 - anyway until we get the game near perfect. This won't happen for STW, but for M:TW it will be necessary.

Tera.

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Proud member of Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka).
evil is within us... http://www.totalwar.org/site/emomalta.gif

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa Terazawa sama,

The suggestion of increasing upgrades cost per honour is a good, first step.

It's definately not.



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Uhh, I understood incorrectly, sorry.

So you mean increasing honour and upgrades cost flat...not increasing upgrades when honour increases?

Tera.

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Proud member of Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka).
evil is within us... http://www.totalwar.org/site/emomalta.gif

[Puzz3D]

As long as the rock, paper, scissors system is not undermined by the upgrades, that alone should be sufficient to prevent armies comprised entirely of one or two unit types from being viable. If the units cannot be balanced very well then unit limits would be desireable, and host selectable limits would be great. Host selectable morale levels and fatigue rates would also be great to have.

MizuYuuki ~~~