Industry vs. Hawk

[Zephyrus]

Anyone who plays on the RWL turbo server notices something somewhat amusing. Of the active players, about 90 to 95% play as Martens. Meaning, the martens have a clear advantage.

Having the marten here would not be a good idea.

The whole thing is sort of a war between those who use magic, and those using standard industry. It's obvious at RWL the unbalance which exists.

Here, it's not that bad, but not too good either.

Remember when everyone was a badger? Old WarbandsII. Badger back then was overpowered because it was both magic and indy, and that defeats the purpose of every other race.

The new badger is better, but, I know that there are plenty using a hybrid strategy with the badger. There's a reason why. A magic -8 on a badger is nothing. Especially since it gets Off/Def +24 total. Those likely being the two most important bonuses. Well, badger is in FaF what barbarian is in most RPGs. Go figure. Something tells me Magic -8 is barely any damage, and mana +6 is just silly.

Squirrel, on the other hand, being the true magic, gets a nice bonus, but not really much more than badger, and that penalty to Atk/Def is a whopping -16 total.

If more people are to be made to mage, squirrel needs some other nice significant bonus, perhaps a +16 to runes as well, and badger needs much more severe magic penalties.

Hybrid strategies rock, but they can't rock so much that people abandon everything else.

And leadering should come with a few more spells, not yet seen in other games.

[Ruddertail]

I think those are good ideas. Especily more some new hawk missions. Havn't thought of any, though. Maybe somthing that makes you impossible to espionage for a certain. Or somthing that increases guards defense strenths. Like by 50% percent, giving tower 750 defense points. That would help hawk massers hold on to land in a aggressive game... I'll have to try to think of some more.

[Zephyrus]

Currently, hawks beat troops, but only by a little bit. Your suggestions might make hawking overpowerful by that much more. The entire point of a hawk strat is that you get much power off less land, but that you will always be weak to any attacks. A good deal of thought was made so that you couldn't have both huts and guards and still function (which is why badger needs a bit of a leveling down.)

We don't want a repeat here of RWL's "Nohc the Fabulous", food massing in the hundred billions, and towers on several mil land. We don't have enough players to balance against someone on that strat.

I'd rather suggest such powers be base off troop amounts, compared to land, net, something.

[Ruddertail]

Hmm. Good point. I know. Make it so that there's a spell that requires a certain % of troops to land, or troops to hawks, or somthing. Or base it on the number of barracks. But it's efect is it makes it easier to withstand hawk attacks.
That would help balance hawks and troops.
But I still think the my first suggestion was a good idea. Give it a low ratio required, and it can help both hawk massers and people who go with troops.

[Zephyrus]

Your first suggestion was definitely original. But, think what it might do. If I had LP's land and decided to pure (and rather impossible here, but bear with me) indy, well, go figure. Whenever not running turns, I'd have at least 150k towers. 150k towers = 75 million DP. Not at all shabby. Your idea would give him an extra 1/2 of this, i.e. 37.5 mil more. 37.5 mil DP is what you'd get from 18 mil ish mice (and those only really work against standards, lest you also buy the appropriate hares). And you say give it a low ratio requirement? Every badger's dream, but likely not good for the sake of those food-massing. If you want to make it fair, you need something else limiting it besides defensive leader ratio, because we can all deconstruct huts. You only need 100 huts, and something tells me 37.5 mil DP for the price of 100 land is nowhere near fair. Besides, hawk massers like being attacked, just not as ruthlessly as you all apparently do.

[Ruddertail]

I meant the mission making you impossible to espionage.

[Zephyrus]

I meant the mission making you impossible to espionage.

I replied to your other suggestion.

I have nothing against falsifying information. I would even go further and suggest something which distorts one's percieved networth.

But, something so it's for pure leader massers only.

[Ruddertail]

You've kind of lost me. Are we trying to come up with ideas for hawk massers, or people who go with troops, or both, or what?

[Zephyrus]

Both, and at the same time, making neither better than the other, and making underused races more desirable.

[Ruddertail]

One thing we could do to make underused races more desirerable would be to go with race specific abilities, like at RWL. What we could do would be to give the races that are underused better race speciffic abilities then the more used ones. That way some races would have better race bonuses, and some would have better speciffic abilities.

Another thought I had was to make a mission that for a certain amount of time would make the warbands defense on one or two troop type attacks that troop type plus a certain % of their squirrels. Call it "Squirrel resistance fighters", or somthing. It would be like Amber's squirrels in Mossflower. I would require a good ratio, and have it so it would help hawk massers and people who go with more of a hybred strat, having a fairly good number of hawks, and still good numbers of troops.

I've also thought of a mission more for troop massers. It would give you a chance to make a hawk mission fail outright, and would be based on the number of squirrels you have, since squirrels would be archers, who would have a decent chance defeating hawks.

So, what do you think?

[Zephyrus]

Your idea of race-specific abilities is definitely something we can use to distinguish FaF from other places, namely RWL. There, most abilities are useless, and all are based on hawks. So, if you indy, they go down the drain, and if you're a rat/ermine/etc., then your ability does nothing, and if you're not a marten, you're already at a disadvantage.

I must say that your troop based special ability idea is great. We could advertise that our special abilities are balanced, that our game has a nice distribution of races, as opposed to 10:1 in the ratio of martens:everyone else.

I can't really get any into my mind right now except this.

Badger: Bloodwrath
I think we all know what this does. We see it in the books often enough, certainly. A nice +25 to your attack and a powerful -50 to defence (your defence, not the opponent's), seeing as the badger lords don't seem to live well through bloodwrath when facing an enemy horde. Activate it at any time. It lasts for 48 hours, though, so be prepared.

Squirrel: Subterfuge
Squirrels hide in trees. That gives them a nice edge in indirect attacking. I think we could expand on the concept. Squirrel players with a nice enough ratio, 100-ish, get an additional boost to certain things. That could be a. poison b. murder and c. various theft spells. Of course, this exposes the squirrel further to attacks. Also a def -50. But then again, don't most squirrels get that anyways? So, it needs an insane loyalty cost.

One thing. I must warn, Marten: Goldmone must not be repeated.

[Ruddertail]

Those sound good. Badgers do tend to have problems caused by bloodwrath, however, when backed by their hares, the negitive effects are lessoned. My idea would be to make hares have a 10% bonus to both offense and defense under bloodwrath.
For squirrels, you mean make it so that a murder mission would kill 4 or 5% instead of 3% when the special ability was activated?

Edit. Or, instead of such a large defense negitive for badgers, instead make it only - 25% defense, and make losses 150% of normal. Or somthing like that.


Btw, you spelled "goldmine" wrong. Just letting you know. You can edit this last part out of my post, if you want.

[Zephyrus]

For squirrels, you mean make it so that a murder mission would kill 4 or 5% instead of 3% when the special ability was activated?

+1% is a lot more than you think.
Even that is likely too much.
More of a ratio boost against those with good leader defences, but nothing more.
But, then, if squirrel is to be the offensive leader race, we need one suited to loot/forage.

[Zephyrus]

Those sound good. Badgers do tend to have problems caused by bloodwrath, however, when backed by their hares, the negitive effects are lessoned. My idea would be to make hares have a 10% bonus to both offense and defense under bloodwrath.

Well, if there is no severe penalty, activation of the skill would suddenly require a cost.
Sure, but I always thought of bloodwrath as far too reckless for anything defensive.

Having penalties lessened by hares is fine, but only if you make it more steep to begin with, i.e. a badger without hares under bloodwrath has no defences. But, the giant flaw there is that it forces massing of troop type three. And remember the old WBII? So, I would be against that.

My typing isn't too great, and I'd rather be on the speed than the accuracy end of the spectrum when typing for such purposes.

[Zephyrus]

Rallying Cry

Available to: all

- Up front, pay a certain amount of grains and cash. Not much, though, or it's too hawk-like.
- 3/4 your current structures are immediately deconstructed. That is, rallying your people causes them to abandon these structures.
- Your army upkeep lowers temporarily.
- +25% to attacks for the next hour.
- Limit, one use per 20 hours.