[Abandoned] Research & Conquer

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Ok, you guys are starting to convince me, but I'm not there yet . If the neutral count is 200, and the TSF's get a +10 auto (plus +3 from the Labs), then even if I'm a really weak player, I just need to get my TSF and then wait 15-20 rounds. Then, I just need to stack on my homeland so I dont get eliminated and I win. I think this map will make for some epic battles so 20 rounds is not that long. I think for someone to win this way they should have to devote considerable resources to the tech (i.e. they should have to deploy enough troops to sacrifice their strength on the main map). What do you think about lowering the TSF auto to say +3, and raise the neutral count to maybe 300?

I guess my main worry is that this will end games that are still getting started. I think ideally only a small fraction of games should end this way (something to keep in the back of your mind, but not something that people would base their entire strategy around).

It's hard to say just how quickly someone would be able to take the TSFs, but I do see the potential problem. I would think, however, that either increasing the Doomsday to 300 or reducing the TSFs autodeploy (though I think only +3 is too little) would work well, but not both. Based on the neutral values that are there, I think maybe lowernig the TSF to 7-8 would work well enough.

Really when it gets down to it though, these are the kind of minor balancing issues that can be dealt with in Beta phase, once the map is in play and we can tell for certain how the game will play out. I could see +10 TSF and 200 on Doomsday working out, just because of the extra 160-170 troop difference that someone could have by not researching it. I don't think it would be a huge stretch to thing of Open Conscription being worth an extra 25-30 deployable troops per turn for 60, instead of say 75 troops for 200 neutrals that aren't able to conquer spots on the map to gain bonuses.

I think all in all if we just set the deployable on Doomsday to 50 or 75 and wait for beta, it would work out well. If there are indeed issues, they'll show up in the Beta phase and can easily be addressed then, as it's only a matter of modifiying a line or two of XML code at that point.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

even if I'm a really weak player, I just need to get my TSF and then wait 15-20 rounds. Then, I just need to stack on my homeland so I dont get eliminated and I win.

One last thought that I just had in regards to this one comment: If you are a weak player and do this, the stronger players will get an increasing lead over you by going out and taking more bonuses, hence they would still have more than enough troops 15-20 rounds later to come and kill you off.

By the nature of the bonuses and how many different ways there are of getting them, I could see the bonuses start to increase expotentially by round 15-20. Not to mention, with a return of 4-5 rounds on the research bonuses, by round 15-20 of just stacking, I could easily have seen you being eliminated before you even got a chance to finish researching Doomsday.

[carlpgoodrich]

even if I'm a really weak player, I just need to get my TSF and then wait 15-20 rounds. Then, I just need to stack on my homeland so I dont get eliminated and I win.

One last thought that I just had in regards to this one comment: If you are a weak player and do this, the stronger players will get an increasing lead over you by going out and taking more bonuses, hence they would still have more than enough troops 15-20 rounds later to come and kill you off.

By the nature of the bonuses and how many different ways there are of getting them, I could see the bonuses start to increase expotentially by round 15-20. Not to mention, with a return of 4-5 rounds on the research bonuses, by round 15-20 of just stacking, I could easily have seen you being eliminated before you even got a chance to finish researching Doomsday.

I think you've missed the point of this comment. Once you take the TSF, you won't need to devote any of your "deployable" troops to researching the doomsday device because of the huge auto-deploy. So you make a small sacrifice to get the TSF, and then proceed as you normally would. If you can survive for 20 rounds you win. That doesn't sound like much fun to me. The autodeploys on the Labs and TSF's are supposed to help with researching, but they are not supposed to do the researching for you. Theres supposed to be a choice, attack via land or invest in research.

Come to think about it, what is the point of having autodeploys on the labs or TSF in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, why not just make the techs a little easier to take. From a theme perspective, an unfunded lab or research center will not produce anything, you have to constantly put money into them. The autodeploys defeat the concept of having to make a choice between research and conquest.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

I think you've missed the point of this comment. Once you take the TSF, you won't need to devote any of your "deployable" troops to researching the doomsday device because of the huge auto-deploy. So you make a small sacrifice to get the TSF, and then proceed as you normally would. If you can survive for 20 rounds you win. That doesn't sound like much fun to me. The autodeploys on the Labs and TSF's are supposed to help with researching, but they are not supposed to do the researching for you. Theres supposed to be a choice, attack via land or invest in research.

I didn't miss the point at all. My point is that if you are just stacking on your capital and not taking anything at all, you will only ever be getting 5 troops per turn on the geographic map. I just checked the map and most researches are set to give payback within 3 rounds for the research and say another 2 rounds average for the geographic map territories. By 15-20 rounds, that means any opponent who has been taking bonuses and researching will have at least doubled, maybe tripled, the number of troops that they invested in taking those bonuses. This is why I suggested that by round 15-20, you may well be dead already since they may have come to kill you.

If they did not and you successfully research Doomsday, then they would still have an opportunity to come and kill you, even during fog games where they would get one set of autodeploys to weaken. I say weaken, because I can easily see deployables on this map getting pretty high. If each person just owns their own 6th of the board, which by round 20-25, I don't think is an unreasonable thought, then with Secret Conscription, Standing Army, Mining, and National Pride, they would dropping a large number of troops per turn -- take red for example at roughly 35 per turn. When you compare this to the 8 per turn (assuming he researches Standing Army with the freebies as well) the Doomsday guy is stacking, I think you could easily see how someone dropping 35 a round could possibly deal with the threat still, especially when there would arguably be others dropping the same amount. Even with the one surprise round in fog, with everybody dropping so many guys per turn, there's only so much damage that an autodeploy of 50-75 could do on the Doomsday Device.

I think that it would be nice to have the Doomsday Device be a valid way of winning of the game a noticable amount of the time. There are so many maps out there that have objectives that are rarely obtainable and pointless, it's nice to see maps, like Arms Race and Lunar War, where the objectives are a useful way of somebody being able to win the game.

Come to think about it, what is the point of having autodeploys on the labs or TSF in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, why not just make the techs a little easier to take. From a theme perspective, an unfunded lab or research center will not produce anything, you have to constantly put money into them. The autodeploys defeat the concept of having to make a choice between research and conquest.

I think the idea is that since you've spent the units setting up the facilities, that the basic funding is already in place and any additional deployable put on is simply extra spending. Using this theory, the idea would be that you've already put the resources into setting up the lab.

From a gameplay perspective I think the deployable on the TSF's work nicely, as it forces a player to play on the research tree, at least a little bit. There may be some balancing required of the TSF's once the map gets to Beta, since it will be hard to tell if the +10 autodeploy is too much or if the neutral value on them is too low. This is the same case as many of the techs in the game, as well as the map since it's asychronous in design. I think that a lot of the balancing issues can be left until the Beta phase, since it's a lot easier to determine the issues when the map is playable, and concentrate on finalizing how all of the techs will work and other main gameplay issues.

[OliverFA]

I've been working this weekend and it has been productive! Secret Conscription done. The XML for the techs is finished (except for Zepelins, as it is implemented through adjacencies, and also because this tech is in discussion).

The each-6-territories file is easy to be done. Will do it next step.

This file is not definitive. Probably it will need to be adjusted. But adjustments are easy to be done now that there is a file to be adjusted.

http://www.arrakis.es/~oliverfa/ResearchAndConquer%20v%200.14.XML

Click image to enlarge.

[OliverFA]

Hi all. Today I can enter the debate, as the XML file first version is also done. I'll comment on some things from the previous days.

Adjacent Attacks

For Zeppelins, I don't know that there's a lot of difference between Z1 and Z2, though there would be a slightly bigger one during Adjacent Attack games (for those few here who are familiar, possibly just Oliver), where it would give one extra turn of being able to nail someone before they reach your capital. I don't think that the tech cost should be significantly affected if Z2 is chosen. I think that I would prefer either one of them.

We are aiming at the map being playable in any setting. But I do believe that Adjacent Attacks really fit this map. In this setting, Z2 would be a very powerful technology, as Tanarri pointed. Even the idea about attacking other zeppelins would be good, as one territory per turn makes things a lot more strategic. As the suggestion is accepted, I hope we will be able to play this map in AA sometime not too long from now

[OliverFA]

Different possible rules
We are discussing slightly different possibilities about some few rules, such as Zeppelins or winning/losing conditions. I am starting to think that we can discuss about it for eternity, and not reach a conclusion. I wonder if there would be the option to prepare different XML files with the different choices and then playtest them. Not for every single choice, but for a few key points. Don't know if that's a possibility.

[OliverFA]

Doomsday Device
As I already said, the point about making Doomsday Device a "bombard everything" tech is for spicing up the game. But I agree about the fact that if the autodeploy is too big, then instead of spicing things up becomes a pointless and boring thing.

The key is to balance the tech so it gives a very big advantadge, that gives the player the victory in 90% of the cases, but that still allows a last stand against it. I think this will be achieved by careful balance in both the tech cost and the tech autodeploy. More about tech balance later.

The person researching Doomsday Device will probably have all the other techs, but have this in mind. Researching is not deploying armies in the battlefield, and risking to lose land against someone that researches less. We just need to achieve this careful balance with a smart choice of both tech cost and tech bonus.

Balancing Tech Cost and Bonus
I think the best way to balance this will be with well thougt numbers. Now that XML is pretty advanced, I want to create some Excel files to calculate this. I would have this in mind when pricing a technology and its bonus:

--> The tech research cost (Neutral armies)
--> The average benefit (Armies per turn) This is difficult to get for some techs, but as I said, I'll try to get some feasible average territories and use them to calculate the average benefit.
--> The turns needed to pay the cost research. How many turns would be needed to strike even? 5? 10? Will it be the same for all techs?

Those three factors will help deciding well thougt numbers and not just random ones.

[carlpgoodrich]

Researching is not deploying armies in the battlefield, and risking to lose land against someone that researches less. We just need to achieve this careful balance with a smart choice of both tech cost and tech bonus.

This is true except for the autodeploy on the Labs and TSF's. The more I think about it, the less I see the point to these autodeploys.

The only argument I can think of is to get the game going faster. But, this can be achieved by having the labs start with a large number of troops (maybe 10 or 15). That way everyone can get started on their research on the tech of their choice, but people who want to be aggressive on the map don't get techs for free.

Come to think about it, what is the point of having autodeploys on the labs or TSF in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, why not just make the techs a little easier to take. From a theme perspective, an unfunded lab or research center will not produce anything, you have to constantly put money into them. The autodeploys defeat the concept of having to make a choice between research and conquest.

I think the idea is that since you've spent the units setting up the facilities, that the basic funding is already in place and any additional deployable put on is simply extra spending. Using this theory, the idea would be that you've already put the resources into setting up the lab.

I'm confused. How does having a facility help contribute research in the long run. I see how you might get an initial boost, but they should definitely not be self-sustaining (which they are with the auto-deploy) If the idea is that the resources you put into the TSF's in some way contribute to developing the techs, then why not just get rid of the TSF's (or make them very cheap)? From a gameplay perspective, I thought the idea was to make the more advanced techs harder to get, but with the huge autodeploy they make them easier.

[OliverFA]

Top Secret Facilities Auto-Deploy
I agree that having an autodeply in TSF goes a bit against the game concept. We want the player to face the dilema between using his resources to research or to fund his armies. The TSF autodeploy goes against it, and serves as a game ender. Because players cannot do anything else with those armies other than research, is like saying that the game will effectively end after X turns. My opinion is that TSF should not have any autodeploy. Players should be forced to either research or fund their army.

Game Length and
How long will the game last? I think that without TSF autodeploy and with well thougt tech bonuses and cost, games length can be very variable, and will depend on player acts a lot more than on some predefined map mechanics. The key to achieve it is not giving very big bonuses (except for the Doomsday Device) so a player can end with huge armies, but not get an instant lead against all the others just because he researched some tech before the others. At the begining, armies will be small, but as the game progresses the leading players will more or less raise their income in similar quantities. If some player falls behind, he can try to get the Open Conscription Tech, or even go for the Doomsday Device, but it will be a race against time, just like nazis did at the end of the WW2.

Propaganda
I think that Propaganda should not be changed to every territory. It would become too similar to Open Conscription and Secret Conscription. But we can raise it to the same bonus as National Pride. This should be enough.

Wining / Losing objectives
This is a big map, and forcing players to conquer every single territory would be boring. For this reason I think we need a wining/losing condition (or both). Wining condition could be 2/3 of the land, but it is too difficult to track. Having capitals as the wining condition makes it easier to be watched by all players. I think that's why it's the ideal conquest winning condiiton.

Having capital as losing objective is too "Sudden death" for me. For me the question is between any capital to stay alive and any territory to stay alive. The problem is that any territory to stay alive does not fit well with Doomsday Device. It could lead to the surrealistic situation in which a player with just one territory and the Doomsday Device could still win the game. Moving the Doomsday Device to another capital, even if it's not your national one, seems ok to me. That's why I favor the Any capital to stay alive losing conditiion.

Zeppelins
The tech that I am really undecided about. I can find reasons for every version of it. I really like the idea about air superiority, specially for Adjacent Attack and FoW games, but I dislike the fact that it opens the way for "researching other players techs".

On the other hand, the "bombard homeland" and "bombard homeland plus adjacent areas" options seem to weak for Unlimited Attack games.

The question I am trying to answer (but I have not reached a conclusion yet) is "Attacking the other zeppelins, would lead to players stacking defensive forces in the "air", or would open a line that would break any strategy?

I am inclined to think that if Air superiority is used, it needs air territories. But it's very difficult to fit them in the already crowded map.

My thougts about zeppelins is "let's continue with everything else as we discuss it". At the end we will either come with a good conclussion or with a good replacement.

One thing I am sure about is that zeppelins should not bombard capital, because they are losing conditions and because they are needed in order to get tech benefits.

I don't care about the can-be-used-to-get-a-card issue, because as I said, I see it as a CC problem, and not as a R&C problem.

Mines
This is something that I introduce into the debate. I wonder if it would be interesting to make mines a cumulative bonus. Instead of +x per mine, make it so the first mine provides +1, the second +2, the third +3, etc. Just thinking about a possibility. Or even if we have to substitute zeppelings, make this raising bonus as advanced mining.

[OliverFA]

Researching is not deploying armies in the battlefield, and risking to lose land against someone that researches less. We just need to achieve this careful balance with a smart choice of both tech cost and tech bonus.

This is true except for the autodeploy on the Labs and TSF's. The more I think about it, the less I see the point to these autodeploys.

The only argument I can think of is to get the game going faster. But, this can be achieved by having the labs start with a large number of troops (maybe 10 or 15). That way everyone can get started on their research on the tech of their choice, but people who want to be aggressive on the map don't get techs for free.

I just wrote in the same direction. I agree with you that this bonus doesn't make sense. It was something that we thougt at the begining of the development, when things were not so clear. But now that we have discussed more about it and the concept is more advanced, it's pretty clear that this autodeploy only speeds up the game artificially.

[OliverFA]

Here you have the proposed costs and bonuses, together with the average income for each tech

Click image to enlarge.

You can play with the values yourselves with this file

http://www.arrakis.es/~oliverfa/RCDashboard.xlsx

[TaCktiX]

One thing I'd like to point out in defense of TSF autodeploy is the fact that the Laboratories CANNOT attack the Advanced Techs themselves. So for any player to use his lab's autodeploy to help out his TSF-based research, he would have a one-turn delay minimum as he has to fortify things to the TSF first. So I would posit that we keep the autodeploy but we reduce it significantly (to 3 or 5). That way the "research incentive" still exists, but it's not on the level to become a "only just so much longer now" that's the main concern.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Different possible rules
We are discussing slightly different possibilities about some few rules, such as Zeppelins or winning/losing conditions. I am starting to think that we can discuss about it for eternity, and not reach a conclusion. I wonder if there would be the option to prepare different XML files with the different choices and then playtest them. Not for every single choice, but for a few key points. Don't know if that's a possibility.

While I think that this would be a nice option to do, I don't believe that there's anyway to playtest a map before it's released to the public. If anyone knows different, then please correct me, because these things could always be done behind closed doors never mentioned within the development threads, but I never have seen any mention of pre-beta testing of maps.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

This is true except for the autodeploy on the Labs and TSF's. The more I think about it, the less I see the point to these autodeploys.

The only argument I can think of is to get the game going faster. But, this can be achieved by having the labs start with a large number of troops (maybe 10 or 15). That way everyone can get started on their research on the tech of their choice, but people who want to be aggressive on the map don't get techs for free.

I'm confused. How does having a facility help contribute research in the long run. I see how you might get an initial boost, but they should definitely not be self-sustaining (which they are with the auto-deploy) If the idea is that the resources you put into the TSF's in some way contribute to developing the techs, then why not just get rid of the TSF's (or make them very cheap)? From a gameplay perspective, I thought the idea was to make the more advanced techs harder to get, but with the huge autodeploy they make them easier.

I think that the auto-deploy on the labs is still a good idea. I understand where you're coming from when it comes to realism, but from a gameplay perspective, I think it forces players to play the research side of things to at least some small degree; something that I think is essential to the gameplay of the map.

As I will note later in response to Oliver, the more I think about it, I do agree that the autodeploy on the TSF's needs to go, or as per TaCktiX's suggestion, at the very least get seriously gimped.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Top Secret Facilities Auto-Deploy
I agree that having an autodeply in TSF goes a bit against the game concept. We want the player to face the dilema between using his resources to research or to fund his armies. The TSF autodeploy goes against it, and serves as a game ender. Because players cannot do anything else with those armies other than research, is like saying that the game will effectively end after X turns. My opinion is that TSF should not have any autodeploy. Players should be forced to either research or fund their army.

With the recent discussions, I do agree that TSFs should lose their auto deploy. I understand why they may have been there originally, but I think given the gameplay changes, that it would be better to force players to allocate the resources to the advanced research instead of making it easier for the advanced research techs to be researched.

Game Length and
How long will the game last? I think that without TSF autodeploy and with well thougt tech bonuses and cost, games length can be very variable, and will depend on player acts a lot more than on some predefined map mechanics. The key to achieve it is not giving very big bonuses (except for the Doomsday Device) so a player can end with huge armies, but not get an instant lead against all the others just because he researched some tech before the others. At the begining, armies will be small, but as the game progresses the leading players will more or less raise their income in similar quantities. If some player falls behind, he can try to get the Open Conscription Tech, or even go for the Doomsday Device, but it will be a race against time, just like nazis did at the end of the WW2.

I also think that the game length would be too hard to control by any mechanics. I suspect that this map will produce longer than average games, simply due to the sheer size of the geographic map. I think that capitals as losing conditions will help reduce the game length, which makes just one more reason it's a great idea. I look forward to playing this as a 6 player game though, as I can see it being a lot of fun on a full map.

Propaganda
I think that Propaganda should not be changed to every territory. It would become too similar to Open Conscription and Secret Conscription. But we can raise it to the same bonus as National Pride. This should be enough.

I think raising it to a +4 bonus would work, since it would be making owning a foreign territory worth more than your homeland, which would to at least a small degree encourage attacking foreign homelands.

That being said, I would consider Secret/Open Conscription and Propaganda with neutral countries counting to be two different things. With the Conscription techs you could be scattered all over the board and still get the bonuses. With Propaganda you have to hold onto groups of territories, just like you would for the classic continent/region bonuses on CC. One could easily break a number of +2 bonuses from a player with Propaganda just by taking one per bonus if they were positioned right, whereas with the Conscription techs you would need to take out at least 2 per +2.

Sure, the Conscription and Propaganda techs would complement each other, since by owning a couple neutral territories you would by default own an extra 6-10 territories, which would also be collecting bonuses from Propaganda as well, but the same could be argued for Mining. I see Propaganda with neutral countries as being kind of half way between Conscription and Mining. Mining is very rigid, in that you must own one of a very few select spots for the bonus. Propaganda would be the in between, since you would have to own specific groups of territories for the bonuses. Conscription would be the least rigid, since it's based on sheer numbers of geographic territories. If Propaganda were set up like this, then I would think that the tech bonuses would be the smallest for Propaganda (since it's the same as mining but harder to defend the bonuses), Mining (less of a potential bonus), and then the Conscription techs.

If you feel strongly about just bumping it up to +4 instead, then I think that's enough of a change to make it usable and would support it. I just really believe that having the neutral countries be counted would add a different dynamic to the available bonuses and how they work to the geographic map. It would also make Propaganda a more worthwhile tech to consider as well. It takes a lot of troops to get to and take over a foreign homeland and I fear that Propaganda would be heavily under used because of it if it were only bumped up to +4.

On a brief sidenote, one thing to keep an eye on with Propaganda would be that depending on how the code is set up, during a 2-3 player game, one could potentially research it on one of their tech trees and gain the benefit from it for owning their other homeland. It may also complicate things slightly when it comes to not allowing the collection of a tech twice. If someone in this situation researched both Propaganda, how would you determine which of the player's "nation's" Propaganda would count as a bonus and which would not. Or, for that matter, would/could you code it so that the Propaganda bonus works once for all homelands not owned by the player and once per side for the ones that are owned by the player himself. I hope I'm making sense here

Wining / Losing objectives
This is a big map, and forcing players to conquer every single territory would be boring. For this reason I think we need a wining/losing condition (or both). Wining condition could be 2/3 of the land, but it is too difficult to track. Having capitals as the wining condition makes it easier to be watched by all players. I think that's why it's the ideal conquest winning condiiton.

Having capital as losing objective is too "Sudden death" for me. For me the question is between any capital to stay alive and any territory to stay alive. The problem is that any territory to stay alive does not fit well with Doomsday Device. It could lead to the surrealistic situation in which a player with just one territory and the Doomsday Device could still win the game. Moving the Doomsday Device to another capital, even if it's not your national one, seems ok to me. That's why I favor the Any capital to stay alive losing conditiion.

I really agree that winning/losing conditions would greatly benefit this map. I think that having capitals as a winning and losing condition would be redundant, since if a player owns all 6 capitals, then he's already eliminated the other players. Unless, of course, you mean hold 4 of 6 capitals, in which case that could potentially work as a winning condition. I don't know how the code is set up for Conscription techs (or how you code 'Any of' bonus groups, for that matter), but I would think it should be possible to set up a winning condition in the code to simply look for 'Any *insert 2/3 terr. count* Map Territories'. If it was, then I think that could work nicely. Otherwise 4/6 capitals I think woudl work as well.

For the losing condition, I still think that having own any capital to stay in the game would work. There's a small part of me that thinks that it would cause people to hold back a lot of their troops and possibly drag games out a bit needlessly, but there's a much larger part of me that thinks that just adds to the strategy of the map... how many troops do you want to put forward to conquer new lands vs. defend your capital vs. research to increase your deployable. All in all I still like the 'own at least one capital, not necessarily your own' is a good losing condition.

Zeppelins
The tech that I am really undecided about. I can find reasons for every version of it. I really like the idea about air superiority, specially for Adjacent Attack and FoW games, but I dislike the fact that it opens the way for "researching other players techs".

On the other hand, the "bombard homeland" and "bombard homeland plus adjacent areas" options seem to weak for Unlimited Attack games.

The question I am trying to answer (but I have not reached a conclusion yet) is "Attacking the other zeppelins, would lead to players stacking defensive forces in the "air", or would open a line that would break any strategy?

I am inclined to think that if Air superiority is used, it needs air territories. But it's very difficult to fit them in the already crowded map.

My thougts about zeppelins is "let's continue with everything else as we discuss it". At the end we will either come with a good conclussion or with a good replacement.

One thing I am sure about is that zeppelins should not bombard capital, because they are losing conditions and because they are needed in order to get tech benefits.

I don't care about the can-be-used-to-get-a-card issue, because as I said, I see it as a CC problem, and not as a R&C problem.

I likewise am undecided about it, as I have been for the last year or more. I can see reasons for many of the versions of it as well, though I also have always had mixed feelings of having a tech be allowed to attack the geographic board, so also could support your Mining suggestion below. The one thing that I do feel strongly about is that Zeppelins, if they are kept, should not be allowed to attack or bombard other player's Zeppelins directly, which allows a player to research another player's Zeppelins. This is something I feel strongly about, as it just messes with the whole theme of the map too much.

Given that this map will likely spend the vast majority of its first 2-10 years of existance being played as an Unlimited Attacks map, I agree that just allowing them to bombard homeland and adjacent territories is fairly weak, aside from a straight card generator which in Escalating would be invaluable both to the player and to dragging the game out endlessly.

If you guys could find a spot on the map for 1 'air superiority' territory, then I could support that option for bombarding foreign homelands as well (not capitals). This would be nice for FoW games as it offers a way to spy on where players are and offers an offensive use for Zeppelins. Likewise, I could support Zeppelins bombarding foreign homelands directly as well for the same reasons. Just no interactions between the research trees. I understand where the other side of the debate is coming from, as fighting other player's zeppelins would be a neat gameplay function, but I really feel that it messes with the core concept of the map too much.

In regards to the question that you had asked, I'm not sure I understand what you were trying to ask. Could you reword it perhaps and I'll give my thoughts on it?

I do agree overall that if zeppelins are sticking around that it's a discussion that's best to be continued while the rest of the map gets developed, since it will be a pretty long discussion.

Mines
This is something that I introduce into the debate. I wonder if it would be interesting to make mines a cumulative bonus. Instead of +x per mine, make it so the first mine provides +1, the second +2, the third +3, etc. Just thinking about a possibility. Or even if we have to substitute zeppelings, make this raising bonus as advanced mining.

For the basic tech, I think I prefer just the straight +2 per mine, though I could support the cumulative bonus idea as well.

I do, however, think I like the idea of replacing zeppelins with an advanced mining tech that allows a player to upgrade his mining bonus to the cumulative bonus strategy, though I'd give it +2 for the first mine as well, just so advanced isn't weaker than basic. My only concern with this would be finding a place for the extra advanced tech. The only thing I can think of would be to move TSF up into the basic tech tree area and then maybe split the four advanced techs into two columns. This would mean Oliver's and TaCktiX credits would need to be moved somewhere else onto the map, possibly to the right of the advanced techs. Perhaps the advanced mining tech could be called 'Deep Mining' or something like that.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Here you have the proposed costs and bonuses, together with the average income for each tech

Click image to enlarge.

You can play with the values yourselves with this file

http://www.arrakis.es/~oliverfa/RCDashboard.xlsx

Some thoughts on the numbers and equations used for the bonuses....

Activated Reserves I thought was changed to +8 from +6? Or was it the other way around? In any case, I think considering the TSF's won't have an autodeploy and the TSF neutral required to go through to get this tech, that +5 (+8 total) for a 30 netural would be a better bonus for this one. It also makes it more worthwhile, since it would help a player have some extra guys to get through the Open Conscription (or Doomsday) neutral. I think having this be a +7 (+10 total) for 30 neutrals may even work as well. Let's face it, anyone who has a TSF is going to do so only by the mid-game mark anyway, so +10 would put it more inline with the mid game Open Conscription (as well as Secret Conscription, Mining, and Propaganda) "turns" values.

I like National Pride being +1 per +2 homeland territories instead of just a straight +4. It helps speed up the taking over of homeland areas early in the game, making the tech more worthwile I think. The one thing that I'm not clear on is whether National Pride was suppose to count towards foreign homelands as well. I recall a long time ago that someone told me that it did. If this is the case, then the formula needs some readjusting.

Should Open Conscription not be +2 per 3 territories? +3 territories per 6 territories would only give you 5 troops per 6 territories, not the 6 it should be. For the reason of the extra troops, I would suggest raising the neutral value to 100.

I think that the Doomsday Device should be lower than 500. At 500 I can't see anyone ever researching it, as it would put them at far too great a loss of troops on the board. Also, if someone has 500 extra troops to research Doomsday, then I would think that they should have enough troops to end the game by killing everyone off on the geographical map without Doomsday. I don't know what number to suggest, though I think it should be somewhere around 200-300, depending on what the autodeploy on it is. I would think that somewhere around 1/3 of its neutral for an autodeploy would work well. Open Conscription, for example, would be a +30 bonus mid game or +44 late game for a 100 neutral. I think having an equivalent ratio on Doomsday would be good. While Doomsday can stack on one spot and bombard any spot, it doesn't offer any direct protection against someone taking your capital like Open Conscription does. I think the benefit of having deployable troops vs. the benefit of stacking one spot to bombard anywhere are equal in value. I think something like 200 for a +75 autodeploy or 300 for a +100 autodeploy would work nicely for this.

[OliverFA]

Given that this map will likely spend the vast majority of its first 2-10 years of existance being played as an Unlimited Attacks map,

Only 10 years? You are being too optimistic here!

[OliverFA]

One thing I'd like to point out in defense of TSF autodeploy is the fact that the Laboratories CANNOT attack the Advanced Techs themselves. So for any player to use his lab's autodeploy to help out his TSF-based research, he would have a one-turn delay minimum as he has to fortify things to the TSF first. So I would posit that we keep the autodeploy but we reduce it significantly (to 3 or 5). That way the "research incentive" still exists, but it's not on the level to become a "only just so much longer now" that's the main concern.

At the begining, TSF was not a requisite for advanced techs. It was another tech that provided some bonus for researching.

I think that if we make it an independent tech again, we could keep the autodeploy in this tech. In fact, with this change we add another slightly different tech to spice things a little bit, and yet another choice for the player to do.

The full change would be:

• Making TSF and independent tech
• Change the tech tree. Now each advanced tech would spawn from the basic tech.
• Raise techs cost from "benefit per 5 turns" to "benefit per 6 turns".
• Remove any autodeploy from the lab.

[OliverFA]

Different possible rules
While I think that this would be a nice option to do, I don't believe that there's anyway to playtest a map before it's released to the public. If anyone knows different, then please correct me, because these things could always be done behind closed doors never mentioned within the development threads, but I never have seen any mention of pre-beta testing of maps.

What a pitty. The XML is almost done, and I would like to start testing the map. We have the third draft, which is a very good picture for beta testing (of course, not for definitive picture, but more than good enough for testing). On the other hand, even if the map has to be available publically, the word "Beta" is supposed to mean something. Guess I'll ask CC staff.

[OliverFA]

This is true except for the autodeploy on the Labs and TSF's. The more I think about it, the less I see the point to these autodeploys.

I think that the auto-deploy on the labs is still a good idea. I understand where you're coming from when it comes to realism, but from a gameplay perspective, I think it forces players to play the research side of things to at least some small degree; something that I think is essential to the gameplay of the map.

As I will note later in response to Oliver, the more I think about it, I do agree that the autodeploy on the TSF's needs to go, or as per TaCktiX's suggestion, at the very least get seriously gimped.

As I have said in my answer to TaCktiX, I think that the best move here is to come back to the original idea.

• Labs exist as an starting position. Each player starts on a lab and a capital. No autodeploy.
• TSF becomes a basic tech instead of a requisite for advanced techs. It gets an autodeploy and becomes yet another choice avaialble to the player.
• Basic techs become requisites for advanced techs.

[natty dread]

There's no pre-beta testing on-site. The only way to get the map in beta-testing is going through the foundry. I guess you could ask CC to make an exception but I highly doubt they'll allow it.

[OliverFA]

There's no pre-beta testing on-site. The only way to get the map in beta-testing is going through the foundry. I guess you could ask CC to make an exception but I highly doubt they'll allow it.

Thanks for the info natty dread. But it's too late I already asked. Well, we'll do the best we can with what we have. We'll make our choices basing on our intuition and hope we are right.

[carlpgoodrich]

Wow, lots of comments. I will try to keep mine short.

One thing I'd like to point out in defense of TSF autodeploy is the fact that the Laboratories CANNOT attack the Advanced Techs themselves. So for any player to use his lab's autodeploy to help out his TSF-based research, he would have a one-turn delay minimum as he has to fortify things to the TSF first. So I would posit that we keep the autodeploy but we reduce it significantly (to 3 or 5). That way the "research incentive" still exists, but it's not on the level to become a "only just so much longer now" that's the main concern.

The delay would only be for a maximum of 3 troops. I don't see the problem with that, considering that the neutral count on the advanced techs are much larger.

I think that the auto-deploy on the labs is still a good idea. I understand where you're coming from when it comes to realism, but from a gameplay perspective, I think it forces players to play the research side of things to at least some small degree; something that I think is essential to the gameplay of the map.

My one comment is: what happens when someone chooses to deploy all his troops on the map? If the labs start with 3 and get +3 per tern, then on the second turn he would get standing armies, and then national pride or zeppelins would be only about 4 turns away. This is way too much for someone who chooses to devote 0 troops to research.

At the begining, TSF was not a requisite for advanced techs. It was another tech that provided some bonus for researching.

I think that if we make it an independent tech again, we could keep the autodeploy in this tech. In fact, with this change we add another slightly different tech to spice things a little bit, and yet another choice for the player to do.

The full change would be:

* Making TSF and independent tech
* Change the tech tree. Now each advanced tech would spawn from the basic tech.
* Raise techs cost from "benefit per 5 turns" to "benefit per 6 turns".
* Remove any autodeploy from the lab.

I like this idea a lot. Would the TSF's be able to attack all of the techs or only the advanced ones? Also, can I propose that that labs start with 10 or so troops instead of three? This will give people a head start in the research of their choice, which will speed up the first few rounds (which might otherwise be a bit boring) but will not benefit the "deploy only on map" strategy.

Finally, in terms of the zeppelins: I am getting a bit confused by all the options, seems like there isn't a great solution. I would support replacing it with a "double effectiveness of mines" tech, or an escalating mine tech, either one (although an escalating mine tech would take a lot of room to explain).

[TaCktiX]

I'm going to firmly stand on NOT removing the autodeploy from the labs. Removing the autodeploy even while giving a buff in starting troops will remove the incentive to research as well as conquer. And I consider it ridiculous you're using the first tech (which is cost 15) as a reason for it. A +3 autodeploy IF YOU ONLY USE THAT will at best garner you a tech in 4 rounds (if you get better than average dice against a +3 reinforcements tech). And the other techs have higher levels than that. Sure, someone could always deploy on the map and neglect deploying to research, but they will get EVERYTHING slower than someone leveraging their research and their conquering. So it's not anywhere near the supposition that "you're getting techs for doing nothing." Technically you are, at a rate at LEAST half of someone who's doing something, which in the average CC game is tantamount to losing.

And I'm going to disagree on turning TSF into "the one that autodeploys" (or doesn't). Since the amount of autodeploy is a concern, let's drop it to a basic +3, the same bonus you get for the lab. If you're not investing, you won't get anything advanced fast at all (minimum 13 rounds to be equal to the first one, which still assumes that your dice are being slightly better than average).

I'm also going to disagree on making basic researches mandatory for advanced ones. For one, to enforce that you'd have to attack through the basic research, which makes zero sense, and for two it is a disincentive in the mid to late game. If in the early game you didn't want to work for Secret Conscription but you find that through your large Mining gains going for Open Conscription would be a great idea, you realizing you have to take Secret Conscription to get Open will increase your cost by 50%. Advanced techs are a higher neutral cost to make them universally usable by anyone, but slowly. Someone who picked up Secret Conscription and used it intelligently would be in a far better position to pick up Open than someone who didn't, but as it is right now there are no limits on any player's strategy when it comes to research acquisition.

Zeppelins, I'm highly in favor of the option that doesn't require me to revamp the entire map's appearance just to accommodate the description: "Able to bombard own homeland and adjacent regions"

Propaganda, I'm favoring Tanarri's defense of making it neutral regions. Foreign homelands turn into your own homeland the second you take the capital, which all things considered would be a natural consequence of taking a guy's homeland to begin with. So the research in that form is only relevant for a select few rounds in any average game. Every other research is relevant period.