Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:40 pm Post subject: Illuria V2 feedback
If you are reading this then you're probably one of the players who was involved in the Illuria version 2 games. One game ran with fog of war while the other did not. Otherwise both games were played with more or less identical settings.
The first game ended as a draw between the Storm Giants and Grey Dwarves/Selentines/Horse Lords with Elvallie finishing in a neutral position. The second game looks like finishing with a win for Lord Bane (the Dwarves and Orcs are the only other sides remaining).
I would really appreciate your input on how to make the scenario better so that I can release an updated version in the future. I have already received feedback from several players and this is summarised below.
Overall I'm happy with how the scenario played. Some new things have been tried such as weakening siege units and lessons have been learned. I think the main aim for the next version of Illuria is to create sides with character but which aren't compromised too heavily with poor bonus units.
Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:53 pm Post subject: Illuria V2 feedback
Below are the suggestions that have already been made in a nutshell.
1. The general opinion seems to be that the sides are too weak in terms of bonuses. It is believed each side should have easy access to at least +2 of each negative bonus (with siege being the most important).
2. High positive bonuses should be harder to achieve than negative ones because each ability has the range -1 to +5. Therefore high morale units such as unicorns and gold dragons should be avoided. All heroes should also have to spend at least 2 AP for a point of morale/leadership/fortify.
3. All sides should start at war with one another to enhance diplomacy. For example, if you offer peace to a player and it is not accepted you would be suspicious. With everyone starting at peace it is hard to know who to trust.
4. The assassin ability should be available for each side to combat enemy hero stacks. Without assassin a side is helpless once its strongest hero stack is slain.
5. Another possible point is to reduce movement across the board in an attempt to make the scenario more like Warlords I.
I think I've included everything that's been mentioned so far. However if I've missed anything out please feel free to post it.
Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 9:04 pm Post subject: Illuria V2 feedback
I'd also like to post a few of my personal opinions.
In the two games I played the Horse Lords and Lord Bane so have a good idea how this corner of the map plays. With the Horse Lords I found that the starting position made questing very difficult early on. This is a huge disadvantage because it limits their access to allies etc. Lord Bane on the other hand is spoilt for choice when it comes to questing. I think this scenario applies to other side combinations as well such as Sirians/Orcs, Grey Dwarves/Selentines etc. To help the central powers I suggest that the nearby ruins are biased towards allies. For example, the two ruins near the Horse Lords could contain either allies or gold.
Secondly is the problem of hidden ruins. Sides such as the Sirians rely heavily on their local ruins. If one of these is hidden it can result in a slow start for that side. I don't really know how to fix this but I just thought I'd point it out.
For version 2 I recreated the Horse Lord pass which was present in Warlords I. The idea was to make it easier for the Horse Lords to expand. It turned out that the opposite was true and the Horse Lords are more vulnerable to attack. Perhaps the pass could be closed off and a port be included north of the mountains instead?
That's about all I can think of at the moment but I'm sure more will pop into my head.
There isn't anything you can do about close by ruins being hidden for the Sirians and Horselords.
One thing that could help the Horselords (I have not checked their starting stats) is to ensure they start with 1 flying unit so they can complete quests that take them over the river or south of the mountains. The Sirians already have Pegasi so they are able to fly to the East. Other options are to give those 2 sides an extra man or two at start time.
Other things you might want to consider:
1) In War1, the bless site that is now south of Lord Banes mountains was in fact on the West Side of the river just north of the Horselords Capitol. You might want to consider relocating it there to help the Horselords. I am not sure how it ever ended up where it is now. Similarly, there was a bless site at the bottom of the central river in War1 that is completely missing from this map (adding there and attaching it to Marthos would help the Sirians). It was and should still be hard to reach as it was the hardest bless site in the game to get to.
2) Another possibile option is to change the default.rul file for the scenario to limit the overall stack bonus to a range of +3/-1 instead of +5/-1 in an effort to limit uber hero stacks in a limited sets game.
In the Warlords directory there is a file called default.rul. It's just a plain text file. You can edit it and make the change there. Everything is very obvious so you won't have any problems figuring out how to make the change I suggested. Just make sure to save it with a new name like Illuria.rul
The harder part is using it during game play in PBEM. What each player has to do is create a 2nd shortcut for DLR. This 2nd shortcut then has to add '-rules=Illuria.rul' after the Darklord.exe. When you want to play the Illuria turn you need to start the game with this shortcut in order to use the rules.
One more thing you might want to do when your editing the map is touch up the terrain under some of the cities.
By that I mean none of the cities on your map lies on anything but plains. This means that units with terrain bonus's (hills/forest etc) are not getting bonus's when they are in the cities. Believe it or not, the game allows for this (I found this out when I created my own scenario called Fantasy World which is available for download) but only in scenarios (the random map maker never does it which is a shame).
So for example the Elvallie cites are all on plains in the middle of the forest. If you go in and add forest to the city squares, then the cities become slightly covered and a harder to see into. But Elves in the cities will get the forest terrain bonus in addition to the city walls. You might want to only cover in 1 or 2 squares in a city so that maybe only 1 or 2 stacks would get the bonus (those in the square covered by the forest) instead of all the squares.
The sides I can see this helping are:
Elvallie in their 4 forest cities
Storm Giants in Stormheim and the L3 city in the deep southwest Khorfe
Gray Dwarves in Khamar, Cragmorton, DharKhosis
Orcs of Kor in Kor, Gluk, Gork (the 2 deep south east cities)
I wouldn't go crazy trying to put hills/forest under a lot of cities, just a select few here and there.
That's a good idea about the terrain and one I will definitely implement. I've also had a look at the rules file and can see that it is easy to change. Isn't the overall bonus range -3 to +5 and not -1 to +5 though? If so are you still suggesting clipping both ends of the scale to -1 to +3?
I've been thinking about significantly reducing the movement of all units as in Warlords I but am still not sure about this. If movement was reduced to 12 points or so across the board it would have implications with quests and such like. I think what I will do for the next version is remove speed from hero stacks and tone down movement related spells.
When you change the terrain under the cities, be sure and check the unit terrain bonus's. Some of those Elven units get like a +3 in the woods and that would make them VERY powerful in their cities so you might want to make sure no one gets more than a +2 terrain bonus.
Sorry, I meant -3 to +3. It was a typo on my part. You can change it to -1 to +3 but that means there is a really small spread so hero stacks would be greatly reduced in value as opposed to being only slightly reduced in value.
I think reducing movement is a good idea. It will bring back more of the War1 feel to the game in that the map will be larger/take more time for players to meet. My original suggestion was a very drastic reduction to War1 standards. You might not need to do that much. Maybe just reduce everything by a base 4 movement points (so 16 becomes 12, 20 becomes 16 etc) but heroes (heroes should remain the same since they moved quite far in War1). The Elves move HUGE rates and they might need to be toned down more than just 4 moves, maybe 6 or 8 for the units that are moving 30+.
Also, don't remove the speed from the heroes. Otherwise you'll end up with almost all identical heroes in the game. If your aiming for a complete War1 feel that exactly what you should do, but if you want variety between the sides, leave speed in. Afterall, if movement is reduced to 12, then speed only ups it to 18 (as opposed to a 20 base going up to 30).
Right now each of your sides more or less has some unique features about them. For example:
Storm Giants - No flight (minus the Green in Ally 4)
Gray Dwarves - No speed heroes, slowest moving side
Elvallie - Fastest moving but very low hit pt units (almost all 1 hp)
Selentines - Best ships (I still think Elvallie should lose their Warship to a Greatship)
Sirians - Can get leadership from a non-hero unit.
I can't remember what Bane, Orcs and Horselords get. But they also should have or get something fairly unique (Bane might have gotten poison/disease/curse units which is unique) to their side or starting position.
The starting Diplomacy options are a game by game thing and therefore don't need to be worried about by the scenario designer. I would be happy to play an 'all war' game alternatively it might be fun to give people a requirement to be at war with at least 2 (3? Or even variable? Bane 4, Elves 2, Sirians 2, Orcs 3. etc.) other sides at the start and these could be decided by the players before the scenario was started. Obviously some furious diplomacy emails would result before the game even starts!!
I'll leave you to decide on the 'Horse Lord Pass' as you know the effects of it. I think adding a port would be disaster for HL.
As I have said before (I think) the early quest problem for HL and Sirians is just one of those things. As KGB says more flyers would help. I think HL have only 1 or 2 Pegasi and that makes it tricky to hold a city south of the mountains.
I am keen to customise the ruins to help the weaker sides, e.g. no sage!!
I like the idea of moving the Bless site from Bane marshes to Horse Lord lands. I would put it close to the river to make it easier to raze by Bane flyers.
Also I like the Sirian Bless site. It might be tricky to get it to allocate to Marthos as it seems impossible to pick the beneficiary city in the editor.
OK on to more tricky matters ...
I am not keen to have very much terrain in cities. Elves certainly don't need any help in defending theirs!! Maybe one square in each of the cities north and south of the capital would be OK. Hills is slightly different as they can't be seen!! You would have to make it public which squares are hills (e.g. always the top right) I would be OK with having a few of these, esp. for Dwarves.
I am not keen on reducing movement across the board. First this is a lot of work, second it completely changes the game and I think we need fine tuning here not wholesale changes. Thirdly I don't think we can ever replicate W1 game play so we should not bother ourselves too much trying. I am keen to make some of the 'mechanical siege' units slower though. E.g. Catapults and Siege Engines, maybe even Battering Rams but I see these as 'grab the nearest tree and chop it down' type weapons!!! So restore the Cat and SE default Siege ratings and make them slower, by maybe 2mp each.
I am with KGB in that Speed should still be available. What might be good is to make sure that only one hero type per side has Speed so that you cannot get ultra-speedy Hero stacks formed of complimentary heroes. You may want to nab some heroes from Mythology or Divine Right (after asking first!!) if you need more hero variety.
Not sure about the Assassin ability. Without having it in regulars it is very difficult to make a hero trap, by putting it in regulars it might limit the sides character a little. Maybe the way round is to modify some cheap units to gain +1 Assassin and make them level 1 Mercs or Regulars.
I am not sure about the RUL file change from -3 to +3, maybe -3 to +4 would be a compromise? After all Hero stacks allow the players to actually achieve victories, it might be too turgid to reduce them too much.
On other points:
Maybe Renown +5 is slightly too powerful/easily available? Certainly Storm Giants used it to devastating effect.
On to my last side: The Selentines.
As KGB said in an email, it would be good to swap the Warlocks and Dark Pegasi so that DP can be built. Also the Lt Inf should be either improved in their stats (+1 Assassin candidates??) or made significantly cheaper than Archers, e.g. 20gp. At the moment no one would pick them over Archers.
Another thing. I am not sure if Neutrals were strong and active. I think they should always be both.
Another option you have is placing some items in some Neutral (or Capital?) cities to even up the sides.
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