Olympia g2 comments From: khearn@pyramid.com (Keith Hearn) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000 Sorry I've taken so long to get this out. Things have been busy. Here are my comments on the proposed changes for OLYII g2: > Trade Looks interesting. At least there should be reasonable profits to be made. It should be an improvement over g1's trade. > Beastmastery > > The time necessary for the BREED command to function is > dependent on the type of animal produced: > <table snipped> This looks good. This, combined with the 1% die-off each month should prevent the unlimited size of beast forces. I had been thinking that there should be a maintenance cost for beasts, but I actually prefer this solution. This way, people who have lot's of cash can have big human armies, and people wioth less cash can have beast forces. Troops are limited by their cost, and beasts are limited by the beastmaster's ability to breed stock fast enough to replace the die-off. Let's see, a little math (available if anyone is interested) determines that the maximum sustainable number of beasts per beastmaster (assuming the beastmaster does nothing but breed beasts all month) looks like 2400/n, where n is the number of days it takes to breed a new beast. So one beastmaster can maintain around 53 dragon, 86 giant birds, 114 giant spiders or chimeras, 171 nazgul, lions, or harpies, or 343 other beasts. Actually, the numbers would be somewhat higher, since presumably the length of time to breed would be reduced with experience. Hmmm, should they? After all, can a more experienced beastmaster really shorten the gestation period of a beast? Either way, we should no longer see thousands of dragons in an army, but beasts should still be a significant factor. > Capture Beasts in Battle will yield 0-2 of the > conquered beasts, down from 50-100%. This will make obtaining breeding stock a bit more difficult, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It'll incourage trading. > There is a new skill Breed hound [661]: I assume from the description that you don't have to start out with a hound to breed a new one, is this correct? > Combat > > > > New combat round algorithm is as follows: > > A random man is chosen from the attacking side to hit a random > target from the defender. > A random defender is similarly chosen to hit a random target > from the attacking side. > Repeat, alternating sides until the smaller side has had > as many chances to hit as it has attackers. > The larger side gets N hits in a row, where N is the difference > between the number of attackers in the larger side and the > smaller side. How are deaths during combat accounted for? If the attacker has 100 troops, and the defender has 25, is the defender guaranteed 25 attacks, even if every attacker's attack kills a man? It would seem that after 25 kills, on the defender's 25th turn, he'd have no one to attack with. > Peasants, workers and sailors only assist with defense in > combat, not attacks. I like this. This prevents a stack of 100's of peasants from being a dangerous offensive force, but you can still use them as defensive screens. > The interface to Fight to the death [612] only allows 50% > and fight-to-the-death settings. The old interface was > troublesome and sometimes lead to players setting harmful > break points ("surrender immediately") they didn't intend. Hmmm, I liked being able to set my forces up so that they'd fight down to just a few men, and then flee. How about just putting a few, very specific examples in the lore, to eliminate the confusion. Default setting: USE 9505 50 Fight to the death: USE 9505 0 Fight almost to the death: USE 9505 10 Break after taking light losses: USE 9505 80 If people can't understand that, they deserve to learn the hard way. > Archery, swordplay and defense now grant an increase of > 3-5 point each use when the noble's rating is less than > 100, and 1-3 points thereafter. 5% of the time the noble > will have an exceptionally good study period and will gain > 10 points. This is better, although I still don't know if it'll make these skills very useful. One noble doesn't have a major effect in most fights, because the odds are that he won't be picked very often, at least not if the forces are more than a couple dozen men/beasts. Still, this is better than the skill was. > Every non-safe-haven city in the regular world (except safe > havens) has an initial default garrison with 25-150 pikemen. > Each garrison is set to ADMIT ALL and DEFEND ALL. Each > noble stacked with the garrison will earn 1gp/day for aiding > the city's defenses. This is good, another way to make some cash. If the noble has troops with him, shouldn't he get paid more? Then again, maybe not. Wouldn't want this to be a loophole that can be used to stockpile massive armies at no cost. > The Map > > > > Hidden locations and cities are no longer sequentially numbered. Yeah! > There are six starting cities on the main continent > of Provinia. All of the starting cities are ports and safe > havens. This should make the start interesting... > Half of all cities have a system of underground tunnels beneath > them. The entrance to the tunnels (generally via the city sewers) > may be found by exploring in the city. Oooh, also interesting. > Magic & Religion > > Research by mages of 6th black circle level and above > (maximum aura of 31 or higher) must be done in provinces > with a civilization level of 1 or less. How about requiring any Necromancy research to be done out in the sticks? After all, Necromancy is supposed to be evil, and the townsfolk would probably object. I think there ought to be something to make Necromancy different from the other forms of magic. One should have to consider whether they really want to dirty their hands with it. Maybe make Necromancy and religion mutually exclusive? > There is a new researchable Religion skill Immunity from Vision [756]: > > Skill: Immunity from Vision [756] > > Usage: USE 756 > Time: ten days How about making it so you can cast this on other characters/structures/provinces? It'd be nice if my priest could cast it on my castle to keep others from receiving a vision of it. Or have my priest be able to cast it on my wizard. Anything that can be visioned should be able to be protected, IMHO. > Death, NP conservation > > When a noble is killed in battle, the body is moved into the > province as an item which may be found with EXPLORE. An executed > noble's body is given to the character who performed the > execution. The EXHUME command has been removed. How does this work when a character is lost at sea? > Monsters > > Sublocations are no longer seeded with non-replenishable > monsters at the start of the game. Instead, monsters > are found in sublocation by using the QUEST command: Replenishing lairs is a Good Thing. > QUEST may not be used in safe havens, or initiated by a character > who is not a stack leader. Tunnels under a Safe Haven are not treated as Safe Havens, right? > Skills and Experience > The experience level table has been changed: > > use level > ----- ----- > 0-4 apprentice > 5-11 journeyman > 12-20 adept > 21-34 master > 35+ grand master Good, previously one gained experience far too quickly. > Learn times for the top-level skills have each been increased > by two weeks, and the learn time of every subskill has been > increased by a week. A noble point is now required to learn > Beastmastery. I like this. It should encourage people to specialize more at the start. Not everyone will want to spend the time required to learn shipbuilding or weaponsmithing, so hopefully this will result in more inter-player trading. > Relics > > Relics are unique item artifacts which are introduced into the game > via quests with monsters. All relics except the Throne return to > the netherworld after use or some delay to be given out to a new > adventurer via QUEST. Relics sound good. I hope there will be more than just the three listed. :) > Stacks with large numbers of figures relative to the number of nobles > travel slower. A movement penalty of: > > delay = number of figures / (number of nobles * 10) > > is imposed for stack movement. For example, a stack with > one noble and 9 peasants will move in the rated time. A > stack with 10 peasants and one noble will take an extra > day to move. A stack with 40 peasants and 2 nobles will > take two extra days, etc. A figure is either a man or > something that fights, but does not include beasts without > combat attack or defense values. > > The addition delay is capped at a maximum of twice the > original route distance. Some have objected to this, but it sounds good to me, at least in general. Larger forces move more slowly. A half dozen men can cover much more ground than an army, unless that army is very well disciplined. Maybe higher quality troops should count less in the count of figures in a stack? > No 25 gold is paid for PRESS or RUMOR submissions. > However, all players receive 25 CLAIM gold per turn > automatically. Oh golly. No more worthless rumors just for the gold. But will people still bother writing meaningful stuff? I know I quite often wrote stuff because I wanted the gold, but I went ahead and generally made my stuff worthwhile (at least IMO). If there'd been no reward, would I have written as often? dunno. > The instant first tower bonus has been removed. > Towers may be built in safe havens. After a while, there may be a stock of towers in the Safe Havens that newbies can move into, as more established players move out. Hopefully this will negate the adverse effect this will have on late starters. > Item combat values > dragon [286] yes no yes (500,500,250) I see that dragons now have a breath weapon. :) > Item weights > 286 dragon 2,500 -1 -1 -1 And they now weigh a lot more and can fly. Now we're talking. Overall, I like the changes. There are just three things I'm not too sure of: 1) Vision Immunity - I'd like to see the vision protection available to more than just the priest who casts it. 2) Fight to the Death - I think clearer documentation should be enough to prevent people from getting burned. I, for one, like being able to set values other than 50 or 0. Maybe only allow values between 0 and 50, so no one can accidently set themself up to surrender too early? 3) Necromancy needs to be made more problematic. It's an evil art, and one should have to think twice before taking it. It shouldn't just be the same as the other branches of magic. Here are a few ideas (I'm not suggesting that all of them be used, but they are a few possibilities): - All necromancy research has to be done in low-civilisation areas. - Any necromantic casting (and maybe research?) has a chance of causing a crowd of angry peasants to show up and attack you. The chance might depend on the spell involved, Using Runes of Evil is less likely to piss off the locals than summoning an army of ghost warriors. - If you know Religion, you can't learn Necromancy, and vice-versa. Or maybe you can learn the second, but you lose all ability to use the first. - Priests cannot join a stack with a character that knows Necromancy. No self-respecting priest would associate with a Necromancer. - A faction can have Priests or Necromancers, but not both. (this one may be a bit too extreme). Also, it'd be nice if there was a way to have magic effect battles. Maybe another branch of magic that has spells that would be used automaticaly in battle (assuming the mage has sufficient aura, and has the spell "turned on"). A spell to increase troops' offense or defense, or maybe a spell that directly attacks opposing troops would be a few ideas. Well, that enough for now, I hope this isn't too late. Keith Hearn House Greyfletch khearn@pyramid.com Referenced By Up