Tutko wrote:Hello,
I'm a big fan of your map, and have been playing it for a couple of months now.
I've been wondering, why are there so much units to build when u end up focusing on building 1-2 at most. Example: swordsmans & shieldsman. Key on this map is to survive, so wouldn't it be logical to build shieldmans only for melee wall, and have range units take care of the enemy, rather than going swordsmans for tanks ? The damage difference isn't that big, but the extra armor the shieldsmans have is always helpful + if will be easier to mico (its annoying when i see a footman-type unit, and wanna double click them to select all, but they are not the same type :/ )
So i propose you merge those 2 units into one, or just remove swordsmans.
Seconds think I'd like to propose is a little bit more diversity. For example, yellow units should be focused even more on stealth/siege and not so much on melee or archers.In fact i'd completly remove all melee units from yellow, coz he will never be on front lines anyway, he's mostly supporing with assassins or afking in his base if they breached orange. Green mostly around ranged units. Red on heavy melee with some archers. Blue shouldn't have archers at all . Remove swordsmans/shieldsmans from orange & only keep pikemen/legionares as melee units (keep priests and ranged ofc) etc... Don't have all the exact units for each colors figured out yet 100% but something like this
I'd also like to propose removing excessive units at the start of the game. Players start with ton of units, that just get in the way at the beggining and u always send them to some corner to afk till u will need them for reinforcements. Wouldn't it be better if you just removed those extra units and give players more starting gold so they can chose what to build and when ? It would also help in reducing the map lag for some players due to having less units on the map.
Keep up the good work, hope u will take some of my ideas into consideration
/salute
Hey Tutko and thank you for the suggestions!
First off about the Shieldsmen/Swordsmen. If you look at their damage from a perspective of percentage, the swordsmen deals about 63% more damage. But I get your point and agree actually. Personally I focus on Shieldsmen/Heavy Footman for the melee wall unless I have access to special units like Royal Captains or Halberdiers. But the Swordsmen is a unit that I started the map with and haven't had any real reason to remove. But they do about 63% more damage than a Shieldsman though and could be useful to get rid of zombies that for any reason got behind the front line and are wrecking havoc amongst your archers. They, amongst other high damage melee units, are the counter against enemies that take reduced/no damage from piercing attacks like Crypt Lord or an undead hero with Obsidian Armor. But as long as I don't get any concrete reason to remove them from the maps I won't since it would only serve to limit the possibilities, tactics and diversity in the map. There isn't really any reason to remove them except to clear up some space on the file size (which isn't much at all, close to non). Cause I could actually remove every single unit but Shieldsman/Heavy Footman, Priest and archers since these are the core units of the game. But I want a map with as much diversity and adaptability as possible, I don't want to restrict people to ONLY use one set of tactics. Every now and then people come up with new tactics than no one ever thought of before and I don't want to limit this creativity. For example the Abomination rush from start using the wood together with the Cursed Shades. It was nothing I had anticipated at all when I implemented the Shades but with creativity a new tactical use was made with the Abominations.
And to the diversity. I totally agree with you that every player should be unique in their own way so that every game you play differs to the other when you change color. That was why I implemented so that every single player has their own unique units, in my earlier maps only a few people had them. But every single player still has to have a kit of basic units to be able to manage a choke. Teal is a digression since he got a kit of heroes instead and doesn't have a base. That is why every single player has access to melees, healers and ranged. Cause if I'd only give Yellow Stealth units he would not be able to hold his base at all and the same goes for Green if I'd give him only ranged units. Cause what if Orange wall for some reason falls early? That Yellow would have literary nothing to put up against the zombies since he wouldn't be able to hold a single choke. If the humans didn't have these basic units then every single base would be impossible to hold without constant reinforcements from other bases, which isn't possible during a siege. But I really do want to make every single player as unique as possible and that is the hardest part of all in making of maps like these. That is why we got the discord chat and these forums as well so that you may introduce new ideas of units and spells, cause this is the part I'm struggling with the most. And with that I don't mean suggestions like "make a stealthy unit!", because then I will just have to ask you to define "stealthy unit". What stats should it have? Health, armor, damage, hp-regen (if not standard 0.25)? What model? What would make this unit unique, why would anyone want to train it? What spells should it have? What stats should the spell have? Effect, range, damage etc.. (I think you get the picture). And most importantly when adding new things: is it balanced for the gameplay? Is it unfair or over powered in any way?
Can it be abused?But please come with suggestions that I can take in consideration for existing maps or future maps! Cause I am currently working on M.Z.I Winterscape as you might know.
Finally to excessive units. Thing is that, most units are not excessive in my oppinion. It all comes down to how much the undead are attacking you front and how efficient they are. Which units would you count as excessive in your opinion? Cause you have to take in consideration that the undead has no gold cost for their basic units and a training time of 3 seconds which will outnumber the humans to infinity against 1.
Yeah you might only need 20 units as Orange to hold the wall (not counting archers). But what happens if Purple for any reason loses his bridge south of East Wing? Then Orange would need at least about 50 more units for that scenario alone, if not more, to be able to hold from there as well. And what happens when, at the wall, a priest gets mana burned but you do not have enough melees to take care of it since they are all needed to hold the chokes? Because you have no melees left the zombies will kill all the priests and archers without resistance and corner your melees in the choke and kill them: you are now 20 melees down. This is just an example of why many units are needed for this type of map since there are so many scenarios with enourmas impact on the game. Like if Orange wall for any reason falls within 5-10 min. Then all of a sudden Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Pink will have to defend their main bases which wastly increases the need of units and especially melees. But I agree that it is an issue with unit lagg sometimes, but it very often depends on the undead player. If he is attacking 6 fronts on full scale then of course there will be unit lagg (many undead players even spam units from their Scourge Centers or Corpse Piles far away from the front. This causes the zombies to walk wast distances for nothing and increases the number of zombies that is on the map on the same time).
And I don't think I can replace the units with strating gold or higher income just like that due to the upgrades. If I, lets say, removed 30-40% of humans starting units and gave them more gold instead. Then every single human could have heavy forces together with armor upgrades and trained units within just 10 min. It would give the humans a really big gold advantage since they can freely chose what to spend the gold on instead of having them locked as a militia or shieldsman. So unfortunately I do not think that is possible, at least not replace the units with gold even if we are just talking about 1000 extra at start or even 500.
I want you to remember that I take all of your criticism as a mean to make the map better and I really appreciate it!
Hope I have clarified my thoughts so that you understand and please respond if there is anything you're wondering about or disagree with, I'd like to hear your opinion
And if you have any clear ideas of units with the answer of every single question with health, armor, damage, spells.... then please email me the suggestion or send a personal message here on ENT! Ideas you present might even be implemented to Winterscape!
/
So it's much harder than you think but please give me suggestions of possible spells and answers all of the staten questions