Topic: Tempo Training Tournament

32:27 with barbarian. always amazon 6762.

theoretical best time with barbarians is 31 minutes. that's the time it takes to build a metal workshop, work it long enough to gain a master blacksmith, upgrade it to war mill, and build the 5 axes needed. i made the metal workshop as my first building, it always worked, and still i got the last axe at 30:30. add in the time for road transport and promotions.

I could have done one minute better if the arena hadn't kicked out my soldier. barbarian training sites kick out very easily. i had to cycle all my soldiers to get the soldier back, and that made me lose time to promote it. I'm not going to try and improve it. it would not be entertaining enough. paradozically, barbarians are actually the easiest tribe to optimize: the blacksmith is your bottleneck. you cannot speed it up. everything else is faster. so as long as you keep your blacksmith working, other details are less important.

I don't think this time difference with atlanteans is a balancing problem. if you are fighting on a small map, then the fastest hero is not important, because you have to train soldiers very fast for early contact and you can't afford to train a hero first. and on a larger, slower map, you won't be making contact with the opponent so early, so you will have time to train your heroes anyway.

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I'm happy that you are enjoying my tournament

king_of_nowhere wrote:

and the colosseum alone required 21 pieces of marble!!!

Yes, that's pretty crazy. I suggested once to make imperial buildings cheaper, as they are really expensive, especially the colosseum (most expensive building in the game for sure). I did a calculation once which showed me that a piece of marble is almost as expensive as a plank.

Maybe increasing the marble-efficiency of shallow marble mines by 50% wouldn't be bad? Could be easily done by giving the mine the same "right" as the atlantean crystal mine.

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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I think the marble mines are simply buggy and are sometimes producing less marble than they should. I'm going to investigate this more closely. Perhaps fixing the bug is all that needs to be done.

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kaputtnik wrote:

I like empire (who didn'tt noted this ).

I think we shouldn't make empire buildings cheaper or the marble mine work faster (except if there is really a bug), but make creating heroes more expensive for the other tribes. This should give more focus on economy... Otherwise now we make empire cheaper until we notice that barbarians are more expensive than empire and make barbarians cheaper until we notice that atlanteans are more expensive than barbarians and empire and make atlanteans cheaper until we notice that frisians are more expensive than the others and make frisians cheaper until...

We shouldnt destroy the Idea of the Empire, not making everything faster and easier to achieve.

The feeling of Settelers comes then when something takes some time and is not so easy to achieve. If we think we need Balance, we can do two things, fairest Thing is a "Tournament-Mode" where everything is balanced (who can do that, that needs a lot of time), especially Hero building. The other possibility, alternative would be to give the Atlanteans (far fastest hero and easiest to handle) i also play Atlanteans all the time cause they are so strong on any map, any case, more "Settler-Feeling"

In the end we'll have cheap training buildings and the game get's really boring.

Exactly this is what I think - if we do balance than the other way round.

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kaputtnik wrote:

I like empire (who didn'tt noted this ).

I think we shouldn't make empire buildings cheaper or the marble mine work faster (except if there is really a bug), but make creating heroes more expensive for the other tribes. This should give more focus on economy... Otherwise now we make empire cheaper until we notice that barbarians are more expensive than empire and make barbarians cheaper until we notice that atlanteans are more expensive than barbarians and empire and make atlanteans cheaper until we notice that frisians are more expensive than the others and make frisians cheaper until...

In the end we'll have cheap training buildings and the game get's really boring.

we should try to balance the three tribes, though, and I am of the opinion that empire is somewhat weaker than the others. atlanteans, on the other hand, may need a slight nerf.

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

and i believe faster heroes for all are desirable, as it removes the push to get the first one. if it takes two hours to make a hero, and you are 10% slower than your opponent, your opponent has 12 minutes to attack you unopposed. if, on the other hand, everyone can make a hero in 50 minutes, then being 10% late will only leave you open for five minutes. you will get away with dismantling your immediate front. also, if your hero fight the enemy's and loses, and it takes you 10 more minutes to make a new one, you basically lose the game. if you can replace it faster, the game is less dependent on luck in a single fight.

because some of you may not like it, but this game is centered around making heroes. they are the keystone of the economy. all buildings are focused on making them. if we make them harder to get, it will not enforce balance. it will just make them all the more important. having the first hero will just be an even greater advantage.

and if we make heroes inconvenient, then we remove the reason of being from half of the economy. the need to make heroes put focus on the economy, because you need to gather all the needed resources. if you make heroes too expensive/slow to use, then you are encouraging players to make a fast barracks and iron and coal mines and churn out cheap soldiers. how is that good for putting focus on the economy? if you can make heroes early on, then you have less reasons for an early rush. and then you have to outproduce your opponent. that's what put focus on the economy.

the-x wrote:

The feeling of Settelers comes then when something takes some time and is not so easy to achieve.

actually, i have to remind people here that in settlers all you needed was a fishery, a coal mine, a gold mine, a mint, and with just those 4 buildings you could already train soldiers to the highest level.

I also have to point out that, barring fast contact, fighting with anything but fully promoted soldiers was foolish.

so, people making heroes fast is exactly what settlers was about. unless you count killing everything with a catapult.

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