Re: OLY: breaking Beastmastery (LONG)

From: wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu (William Bruvold)

Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000

In article <445e72$db4@st-james.comp.vuw.ac.nz>,  <bill@rses.vuw.ac.nz> wrote:
>In article <43v38u$45k@stromboli.usc.edu>, whalen@stromboli.usc.edu (Tim Whalen) writes:
>
>|> on ways to balance Beastmastery.  Clearly there is a problem and dragons
>|> are simply the poster children, not the cause of the problem.  The first
>|> time I saw a dragon I told Rich that there was a typo regarding its weight
>|> but I understand that he felt that it was too late to make major changes
>|> to beast stats and breeding odds in g1.  I agree but of course it should
>|> be addressed in g2.
>|>
>|> TWTW
>|>
>
>	I agree that dragons should weigh more, but then again I think they
>	should fly too :-)
>
>	My preferred way of toning down beastmastery would be for certain
>	powerful beasts to only be able to breed in particular months.  I
>	can't remember who came up with this idea originally, but I think
>	it has a certain neatness to it.  It also means that for a beastmaster
>	to be able to breeds throughout a year they are going to have to have
>	a better variety of creatures (which is in itself harder to accomplish,
>	and should slow things down).  Finding out the month(s) that particular
>	beasts can breed (and crossbreed) would add another challenge to
>	the game.  Adding a maintenance cost seems a kind of clunky way of doing
>	it and means that the 'travelling beastmaster' type character is not
>	really an option.
>
>B. (who also thinks roads should be added)

Let me add my 2cents about fixing beastmastery.  IMHO, special
months to breed does not solve the game imbalance.
 As a faction with a
fairly large breeding program I would simply adjust to make sure
that my beastmasters had a variety of animals.  Depending upon the
month, I would adjust breeding orders. Dragon breeding now can not
be a monthly occupation but so what?  I still "maximize" my beast
stack and have units that are much more powerful than "human" units.
Again, it takes at least 4 days to create either
 swordman/archer/pikeman
(and more for advanced units such as knight/elite a./elite g.).
These units require maintanence and, because they require
 multiple kinds of inputs (peasants, raw wood/iron,
processed material, soldiers), it is
often difficult to insure 100% efficiency and coordination

In contrast, to breed beasts takes between 4 and 6 days, requires
little/no coordination, and no maint.  Also no known defesenses
(i.e. wind) to reduce the combat effectiveness of beast armies.
Simply put, except for the ego gratification regarding "men" I see
no reason why mid and old age factions spend _any_ time creating
human armies when they can spend time breeding beasts.  While the
"fodder" argument might hold, I have yet to see a "fodder" dedicated
group of nobles to significantly
ooutpace giant bird/giant spider production over the
long haul.

Hiding the days in which breeding works for particular beasts
hurts newbies and smaller
alliances much more than large ones.  Assuming equal intellengence
leaks", big/old alliances are able to have all their beastmasters
"cover" all beasts each month.  At the end of the cycle they should
know which months allow breeding which beast and which do not.
All this means is that such information becomes valuable and is
unlikely to be shared (it also means that I would kill all
unidentified nobles in beastbreeding area without asking questions
as they can interprete their reports and gain such info).  In
contrast, the smaller alliance has a difficult time "covering" the
possible combinations and so losses breeding opportunites.

IMHO, the best and least intrusive
 "fix" to the beastmastery problem in G2 is to make
beastmastery cost a noble point.  It is a skill that is as valuable
as most of the 1 point magic areas (though I think weather should be
2 but that is a different subject).  It would be difficult except
during the very late game to create 200+ dragon armies _EXCEPT_ if
you specialized in the skill early on.  IMHO, specialization breeds
cooperation/diplomacy which is a very good thing.

In contrast, the fix Rich mentioned early on, requiring support by
way of "workers to handle the beasts" I have decided is a poor fix.
It means that beastmastery _has_ to be associated with castle
ownership (thus reducing the incentives to specialize).  My guess is
that this change will result is fewer "early game" vacuum cleaning
beastmasters (as they will not have the $ to support the peasants)
but that late comers now _have_ to gain castle income to support
beastmastery (thus making it even more difficult to for newbies in a
world in which all land is claimed (and ownership rights enforced by
armies able to move large distances).

Erik

References

OLY: breaking Beastmastery
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: OLY: breaking Beastmastery
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: OLY: breaking Beastmastery
whalen@stromboli.usc.edu (Tim Whalen)
Fri, 22 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: OLY: breaking Beastmastery
bill@rses.vuw.ac.nz
Mon, 25 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000