The new crazed

I think two abilities focused solely on working with crazed units is a bit much. At least, the team seems to be trying to streamline the game these days. Not to mention having to add a new unit. Again, not bad ideas, just seem a tad complex.

Let's take a step back an analyze goals. That seems to be helpful in other situations, right?

I'll list mine to begin with, in order of my personal preference.

1. Keep things simple and workable for new/experience players and AI.

2. Fix AC 90.

3. Make Lunatics worth their cost.

4. Make getting blooded werewolves less difficult.

5. Make Asylums worth the cost.

Those are my main goals with any suggestion I try to brew up. The simplest solution, from my standpoint, would be switch it back to the old version. Unfortunately, that seems to clash with a 6th goal that many people have which is:

6. Keep the functionality of new enraged.

So, let's look some of the solutions provided thus far.

Solution 1 (mine): Turn things back the way they were.
Meets all of my goals, but it violates the 6th. Might be workable if it was reduced to:

Solution 2: Turn some things back the way they were.
Let's say that lunatics, Asylums, and AC 90 operate under the old rules while all other instances operate under the new. That meets goals 1-4 and 6, but I'm not sure how well it works with 5. Plus it may not be in line with what the team was trying to achieve. We'll call that mystery goal number 7. Be great to get some info from that end.

Solution 3: Add spells/units/abilities

Depending on the exact combination of ideas, this could easily accomplish all the goals save for 6.

I'll throw out a solution3 idea just for kicks. Loyalty now allows you to control enraged units and prevent them from switching sides. What loyalty does not do is last indefinitely. Instead it lasts a set amount of time. Say about 5 turns or so. Casting loyalty on the unit resets the timer.

Advantages: Players are able to keep guaranteed control (mostly) of their units. It requires time and effort but not an undo amount. The reasoning behind making it last a set number of turns is to prevent it from wearing off at random, causing your potentially valuable unit to go scurrying off in a random direction before you have a chance to cast loyalty again. Dispel magic would also gain some additional use as it using it to dispel loyalty can thwart a player making heavy use of crazed/enraged units.

Disadvantages: The coding may be harder then I think. I know units can gain expiration timers, but promotions? I don't think I've seen it used anywhere and there might be a reason for that.
It also might be in violation of goal 6, depending on how you define the new enraged. Perhaps what people mostly enjoy about the new enraged is that there is no counter to it. They might accept a partial counter, but a rock solid one? I don't have the answer to that.

Anyways, feel free to add your own goals, solutions, et cetera. I like where this discussion is going and hope that a real solution might be worked out from it.

Ive read and read. But Im not understanding why having a unit on your side that you can't control is worse then having a unit that turns barbarian? If the unit attacks and wins then you get a unit, if he attacks and ides then you lost him, if he turns against you and kills one of your units then thats the worst of all three options.

Granted allowing your units to go barb allows some xp farming, but I think we offer enough opportunities for that. Consider the following questions (and remember that enraged is supposed to be a negative trait, its not supposed to be a bonus to have).

1. Lycanthropes- Werewolf growth is a problem that we addressed by significantly cutting the chance to create werewolves. I like this option much better, and would rather balance the function by increasing the werewolf create chances (maybe double or triple the werewolf create chances with the understanding that many of the werewolves wont survive).

2. Lunatics- Well they are lunatics, why should they remain orderly? I like that they run off on their own from time to time. I still think this is better than having them go barbarian form time to time. Maybe lunatics shouldnt have an upkeep cost?

3. Wrath- Im thinking we should slap hiffen nationality ont he units as well and really let them go to town (if we can keep this from causing crashes).

What do you guys think?

My only concern with the new Enraged is that there is no possible counter to it.

Kael's ideas are good too, except that Lunatics themselves shouldn't be maintenance free, any enraged unit should be maintenance free as he is now off being crazy rather than eating your food and such.

Keeper_GFA said:

My only concern with the new Enraged is that there is no possible counter to it.

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Why does every mechanic need a counter?

Kael's ideas are good too, except that Lunatics themselves shouldn't be maintenance free, any enraged unit should be maintenance free as he is now off being crazy rather than eating your food and such.

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Yeah, that would be kinda cool. But we dont currently have a way to have a promotion add/subtract a unit form maintenance (and updating the maintenance levels whenever a unit changes promotion states is a pain and probably not worth it just for this).

Kael said:

Ive read and read. But Im not understanding why having a unit on your side that you can't control is worse then having a unit that turns barbarian?

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The distinction, in my opinion, is that under the current iteration of enraged, the player *never* has control over his unit. In the previous one, you could at least do something with your enraged unit before losing it to barbarian status.

Seriously, I would be fine with enraged being incurable if you could at least control the enraged unit for a few turns.

Edit: I agree, there doesn't *need* to be a counter to enraged. If you don't want to lose a unit, you can chose not to get it enraged. The mechanic is only irksome because it cripples Duin Halfmorn and makes the AoW emergence a massive hassle.

1. I think that having the rate of werewolves spawning may well be a better solution. I'm also open to having them start with Burning Blood instead of Enraged.

I think that Gilden's civilopedia entry seems to say that Duin himself is pretty good at keeping young werewolves in line, so maybe he should have a spell that removes the enraged promotion and maybe can also convert werewolves captured by other civs back to his control.


2. I don't really mind Lunatics that much.

3. If you just mean the normal HN promotion I don't like it, as it can easily be removed by casting Declare Nationality or Revelation. I personally really like the idea of making Enraged units AlwaysHostile, so they will go off and fight your friends when not under your orders.

I also tend to think that having the promotion always removed by combat is a bit too easy. I'm thinking it might be good for Wrath to give everyone Crazed as well as Enraged.




I don't like that there is nothing you can do to get control back if there don't happen to be enemies nearby. I really think that a spell to calm enraged units down is the perfect representation of the Spirit sphere, and so should be added for flavor alone even if it weren't so useful. I also tend to think that having a very small chance for the promotion to wear off on its own may be needed, and that also having a very small chance of turning barbarian still could make things interesting.



I really don't like Loyalty now. It is the least useful spell in the game. I would really like to see if cut and replaced with something more useful. Since I find Valor quite weak by the time you get Archmages, I like making Valor the Law I spell but making the promotion have a chance to wear off. Law III needs a better spell. Since The Order already gives access to very effective ways of reducing unhealthiness and maintenance, Unyielding Order would be much more useful as a Law III spell instead of the spell cast by Priors. While I might prefer adding a powerful anti-demon spell (Banish), I think it might fit the lore better to give Priors the ability to Cast Pillar of Fire, like they could before the Sorcery/Summoning merge. Chalid doesn't really need this spell, imho.

That's a very good suggestion Fafnir13. My goals:

1. Fix new Enraged. If it can't be fixed to both affect the AI and for the units to "attack more intelligently" then it isn't worth it.

2. Fix AC 90 while still alowing it to be a bit chaotic.

3. Fix Crazed units.

4. Fix Ravenous Werewolves.

I think these are the only three goals I find necessary.

Fixing the new Enraged just means the AI controlled civ's units run around just like the player controlled units do. It also means making Enraged units "attack more intelligently." Either they should attack the first enemy unit they get near or they should only attack when they have odds of at least 50% (maybe raise that to 60%).

For the rest, here's a simplified version of my solution from the last page:


Crazed and Enraged

Crazed and Enraged are replaced or altered as follows:

Insane

Replaces current Crazed for Lunatics, Asylums and Chaos Mana. Units can also get Insane from random events, lairs and Mutation.

• [*]Inflicts Crazed on the Unit (100% chance each turn to apply Crazed)​

Enraged

Ravenous Werewolves start with Enraged. Units can also get Enraged from random events, lairs and Mutation.

• [*]+20% Strength​
  [*]Removed after combat​
  [*]Randomly inflicts Crazed on the Unit (25% chance each turn to apply Crazed)​

Crazed

Units can get Crazed from Insane, Enraged, random events, lairs and Mutation.

• [*]+1 Movement​
  [*]+20% Strength​
  [*]Removed after combat​
  [*]Unit is controlled by the AI and acts with extreme aggression, attacking with reckless abandon any units which come within about 4 tiles​

Madness

Replaces current Enraged for the AC 90 event.

• [*]+1 Movement​
  [*]+20% Strength​
  [*]50% chance to be removed after combat​
  [*]5% chance each turn for unit to become Barbarian​

Additional promotions, spells, etc to be added or altered

Calm (Spell)

Units with Medic II or Spirit II get this spell.

• [*]Removes Crazed promotion from any unit in same and adjacent tiles as caster.​

Loyalty

Loyalty keeps all of it's existing effects and adds the following:

• [*]-50% chance unit will turn Barbarian.​

Basically the same but way more simple. Three changed promotions and three new promotions won't add any complexity to a system with something like 200 prmotions, spells, abilities and effects. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to program, but I don't know enough about that to be sure.


EDIT: I should really double check for new posts before actually submitting mine. Either that or don't respond at work where it can take an hour or two to finish a post.

I definately like Kael's suggestions. The main problem I see with Lunatics keeping the same promotion is they start with Enraged. Maybe if they just started with Crazed it would be a bit more managable. That way they don't run off immediately but actually give you a chance to do something with them.

The real big problems breaking the new enraged and especially crazed (imo of course):

First and by far most importantly it can effect noncombatants.
Workers, Settlers and Great People (+ other similar units i possibly forgot) should neither be possible to enrage nor to get lunatic.
There is nothing positive to be gained here from the mechanics (which usually does have some positives as a payoff for both the promotions even in the new version.)
This is especially visible in the Momus scenario (chaos mana has become a real huge drawback with a small possibility to lose any noncombatant you build. Some of which may take a hundred turns to get... The Momus is an extreme showcase of that and thus can be a good way to judge it imo.).
This should be undone (easiest to fix that would be to make them and all other noncombatants nonliving (might kill part of the niceness of Blood of the Phoenix + Greath People. Which indeed seems ok. Oh my... I'm sure there are more elegant ways. Nothing i could come up with though from a code perspective.).
Might be non-thematic but its a quick and efficient fix with few coding-intensity / time wasted i presume. And no real serious problem i can think of raises from it from a design perspective. Might be dead wrong here though.)


Either Lunacy as a possible promotion from Mutation and Lairs (any result really) or! the possibility to have it effect heroes / world units (better fix imo since really there shouldn't be any way for a hero to craze out... It sucks... No matter from where you view it. At the impact of that aspect on balance is minimal at worst. Non-issue at best.) + (to a much lesser extent in gravity) national units. (Not normal units of course. Those are mostly fine and that is what rage should be about imo.)
That's a funkiller no matter how thematic and logical it seems. Because Players usually develop a liking to those units. (remember the design choice between golden ages and dark ages and why golden ages have been chosen.)
And in my experience that makes those one-time buildable units basically as good as dead and beyond players control.
(Note that this point is not so much about enraged as it is about crazed unlike the first one..)


And having noncontrol + full maintenance is far! and miles worse then having full control + possibly getting controlled XP with a small chance for uncontrolled XP + possible recapture
(especially because the AI is incompetent at actually getting those units to fight soon. They go all over the place instead of charging the nearest enemy in my experience. Rage + calculated agression seems a bit off doesn't it?).
But i can understand you liking the mechanics since it much better represents what you intended the thing to be (that is just a guess of course. ) and it being far harder to exploit. (since only Lunacy is about basically permanent non-control this point again is about lunacy and not so much a comment on why its broken but an expression of my opinion on the question you asked of what is worse.)

So the problem actually lies much more with how lunacy works + there not being a single counter for it (what actually would be all horrible at giving back that functionality to loyalty?
Its safe, its easy and its very low on micromanagement.
And its a spark for the kind of emergent quests you like so much (oh damn, my hero / treasured unit just got enraged / crazed... Now i need Law Mana for Remedy. And fast. That can fix it. Not easy but at least a possible way out. I'm happy.
Instead of: Oh, my hero / treasured unit does weird things beyond my control. What can i do against it? Nothing! you say? that sucks .)
This sounds perfectly balanced to me. And doesn't seem impossible codewise.
Law Sphere is rather weak and needn't be even weaker than it was before changing crazed / enraged.
With the "exploit" of recapture out of the way crazed + enraged overall has already been weakened. I think you went over the top here with a dual-nerf.)
+ possibly the AI being completely unaffected by it according to some voices (which would be an actual non-issue if the player had an actual remedy like Loyalty.).

Its not fun (the way it is now. That's not to say it can't be fixed while still thematically accurate. But above concerns should be taken into consideration for addressing. Because they are serious in terms of fun. I can hardly view problems with balance for most of them. But serious ones in terms of flavor. But I'm sure you would be able to find a solution to code it and still maintain the flavor.)

On a final note this feature at least needs serious documentation its a big hit for new players trying to find out whats going on (only to find out their hero / GP just went bust...). No matter what way it turns out in the end (see even the old Loyalty I confusion...).

Honestly Kael that seems so much like a feature for flavors sake and design for designs sake (again the way its implemented now. With it working like you seem to have originally intended it. But it killing the fun.). The wide ranging effects of the Avatar and drawback of mutation can mostly be equally accomplished while still addressing all/most above concerns. (see this as suggestion for way to make the implementation better. Not so much as a denial of the merits of such a system... No matter how much i liked the old lunacy + enraged and the various ways to use it lets say... creatively .)

The real difference between your units going barb before with enraged & going insane now, is that if you're not fighting a war, they're just wandering aimlessly & costing you unit upkeep. Why would a player want to keep an insane unit if it costs $ & you have no control over it. It's a huge waste of hammers, it's simply not worthy. & what happens when the risk or cost far outweights the possible benefit, you're not likely to use it.

Could we please get the old enraged back? Or could someone direct me to the changes I would need to do, so i can patch it back everytime there's a new patch?

All above said by me, i would surely like the old enraged back.

But one has to say very honestly I'm seriously very biased on the matter.
And might be one of the players who made that change necessary for exposing one of the possible exploits... (recapture seems so fun but broken in some ways if easily doable. Its possible still. But very, very hard now...)


And to address another question you stated but i missed. With another question:

Kael said:

Why does every mechanic need a counter?


...

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Why is it bad that this particular (very close to pure negative in terms of lunacy) mechanics has a counter in terms of gameplay? (aka: what does the game actually gain if it doesn't?)
(I did point out some reasons for why it might actually be good actually in my previous post. Though sure one might disagree with those...)

On Lunatics: I'm actually perfectly fine with those going nuts. But collateral damage or higher strength might be ok to make up for up / make it worthwhile actually building those (but that's a very mild-powered suggestion...).

Kael said:

Ive read and read. But Im not understanding why having a unit on your side that you can't control is worse then having a unit that turns barbarian? <...>

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Hi Kael, Thanks for reading through everyone's concerns here.

Well... In my opinion your comparison above is a bit apples to oranges: the chance to enrage and lose control of the unit is 50% per turn, whereas the old mechanic was much smaller chance to go Barbarian (3%?). So now you control your lunatic for *maybe* one or two turns, and half the time you control him for zero turns. Once he makes an attack, you control him for zero, one, two if you're lucky turns and he's off again. Also, the AI doesn't always take him on a rampage. If he's not near the border already he often just walks back and forth, or gets on a boat.

I think many of us like the basic new mechanic okay (for lunatics and werewolves at least) would just like to be able to take him near the war before he goes nuts. Whether this is by tweaking the odds or adding a "Straightjacket".

On the other hand I probably won't even be building loonies anymore, because the chance to craze (i.e., immediately ruin) settlers, great people, Heroes, etc. makes me much, much more hesitant to build Asylums now. If this effect is intended to be part of the building's balance then the percent chance to craze should be prominently listed on the building's tooltip.

just my 2c. Thanks!

Yeah, it certainly hurts Asylums, but my biggest complaint is that it makes the AC90 event 100% bad for human players and have no effect on AI players. Instead of sending the world into chaos it just becomes something that humans avoid (a relatively simple task). I can say I've never seen the AC get over 50 without a human expressly driving it there and since no human will let the counter get to 90 it makes the final events pretty much pointless.

Kael said:

Yeah, that would be kinda cool. But we dont currently have a way to have a promotion add/subtract a unit form maintenance (and updating the maintenance levels whenever a unit changes promotion states is a pain and probably not worth it just for this).

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By having Enranged to also give +1 gold may be a shortcut to the problem.

It would be interesting to post a poll and see how many favor the new system (as it is) vs. going back to the old one. I would give a 3rd poll choice of tweaking the new system but 10+ pages in this thread tell me that although there are plenty of good ideas, there could never be any agreement on exactly WHAT that tweaked system would look like.

I don't think we have a democracy here, so I'll not post the poll.

Any civil discontents out there feel free to do so if you think it would matter.

Again, to summarize the three main things the new system affects:

1. AC 90

2. Lunatics

3. Werewolves

It also affects the odd other crazed units you get from lairs, mutation spells, etc., but I think most of the discussion has been on these three.

Honestly, the only way I see it could be fixed would be to go back to the way it was. I really don't remember much of an uproar, complaining or balance issues with that old system, so I'm thinking an attempt to fix something that wasn't broken was made, it created more problems than expected and it should just be rolled back to the way it was.

Kael said:

Im not understanding why having a unit on your side that you can't control is worse then having a unit that turns barbarian?

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I completely agree. I also agree that Enraged does not need a permenant prevention.

Maybe lunatics shouldnt have an upkeep cost?

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I flipping love that. The idea of having a bunch of units wandering around your lands (and your enemies) free of your control, fighting and what not all for free sounds fun, unique, and easy to handle. It is also helpful to the OOs in a way that does not involve the ocean. My only concern is that flooding your lands with Lunatics would be too powerful.

Wrath- Im thinking we should slap hiffen nationality ont he units as well and really let them go to town.

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Sounds good, but that does not solve the upkeep problems (unless that is not considered a problem.). Also, I could have sworn I had a mage that was Enraged upgrade and use up one of my Archmage slots. If that could be stopped, that would be great.

Wow. Thanks for slew of responses. Erm...I think I'll start with Kael.

Kael said:

Ive read and read. But Im not understanding why having a unit on your side that you can't control is worse then having a unit that turns barbarian?

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Turning barbarian was bad, certainly. Very bad if it was a valued unit. But that's a good thing. It created danger in the world and offered dynamic goals to counter it. The new one, offers nothing except watching a random number generator doing its thing.
For me, it equates to watching a prolonged fall-down animation in any third person action game. Not only am I punished for my fail at dodging via damage and the like, but I have to watch a lengthy scene of my character bouncing around until, at long last, he starts to play his equally lengthy get-up animation. I find situations like these in games more frustrating then actual death. With death, at least it's over and you can try again.

Kael said:

(maybe double or triple the werewolf create chances with the understanding that many of the werewolves wont survive).

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Excellent way to fix it. The baron spawning a random horde laying waste at random in his wake sounds fun. Sound like fun... It might get a tad frustrating after the fifth blooded werewolf is killed due to wandering off to some One forsaken area in which to score a victory. Might want to edit their targeting so that they go for nearby targets with more consistency. At least then your nearby units can reach and assist in their continued survival should they prove victorious.

Kael said:

Maybe lunatics shouldnt have an upkeep cost?

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That would be a good start. There is also the issue of the hammer cost. A champion's worth of hammers for a unit prone to wandering off? They're a good unit, but not that good. To be a viable unit, the player needs to build enough of them to be a threat even when they attack purely at random.
Also, the Asylum's crazed chance needs to go. It was okay when a counter existed, not when there's nothing you can do about it.

Kael said:

3. Wrath- Im thinking we should slap hiffen nationality ont he units as well and really let them go to town (if we can keep this from causing crashes).

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Hidden nationality would be removed by combat as well, yes? Having to declare nationality on all effected units would be something of a pain.
Heroes also need to not be effected by it. It's just no fun to lose them because a random number generator declared they should die.
Well...apart from the odds calculations which already are a random number generator, but at leas the player has some control over when that one come sup. Er...did that make sense?

Kael said:

Why does every mechanic need a counter?

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Counters are an inclusive solution to a problem. The current solution to crazed is to not build or have anything to do with anything that can cause it. That excludes good chunks of the game from play.
A counter not only encourages the player to use crazed unit but whatever is associated with the counter as well. Inclusive versus exclusive.

@Blackmantle

I would just like to give a big "Amen" to your entire post(s).

@Ranos

Ah, thank you. Much easier to understand. For the most part, I like your ideas. Spirit II does have the problem that Kahzad can't reach it, but I'm fairly certain they can still get medic II going easily enough.
I would still dispute the 50% on loyalty. Seem a tad...incremental of a bonus. If the chance is 5% that it will turn barb is it just reducing that to 2.5% Is that even noticeable in most games?

Kael said:

2. Lunatics- Well they are lunatics, why should they remain orderly? I like that they run off on their own from time to time. I still think this is better than having them go barbarian form time to time. Maybe lunatics shouldnt have an upkeep cost?

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Even if they had no maintenance cost, I doubt I'd ever bother to build them (this is true even under the previous version of Crazed/Enraged). A unit that you can't rely on to be where you need it just doesn't seem worth making, especially since it could just end up getting itself killed before you ever got to use it again. Now if asylums periodically spawned Lunatics for free like someone had suggested earlier (sort of like how planar gates work), sure, I'd take 'em.

I don't mind how it affects werewolves, though. I often found myself building the Baron and ending up with a whole army full of werewolves, and it somehow all felt a bit overpowered and in need of a nerf. The Baron's a good enough unit that even without managing to get a single blooded werewolf I wouldn't feel cheated making him. The extra werewolves are kind of like gravy.

thanx for taking your time to read through this whole gigantic thread Kael. I'm happy to see that you seem to have hit the nail right on the head with the tweaks you suggest. a couple things still need to be stated though imho:

1) settlers, workers, great people and possibly heroes should NEVER EVER begin their existance with crazed/enraged. it's just not fun. I'm not playing the Momus scenario until the starting settlers in that scenario lose enraged, for example.

2) Loyalty is 99% useless right now. please make it cure crazed and enraged ( remove the promotion so that you can't get the additional combat and movement from enraged while keeping control of the unit - that was kinda cheap in the "old" implementation, I agree ) . it's not like every mechanic needs a counter. it's just that a mechanic that some people are just bound to HATE, needs a counter. even if it's just for the sake of keeping it fun for everybody. like Blackmantle said: "oh noes, my uber hero got crazed! what can I do about it? absolutely nothing? screw this game, I'm going back to Unreal Tournament "

Thanks for the attention, Kael.

To sum it up:

Your solution for werewolves looks almost perfect to me. Still, making the Enraged AI prone to attack closer targets rather than take off for a trip would make the experience less frustrating.

Non-fighting units need to be immune, and/or the enraged promo should have a small chance to wear off per turn.
Possibly make world units immune to crazed (not necessarily enraged), as those are too precious for the mechanic to be any fun on them.

As for Lunatics, making them zero maintenance would encourage the production of massive crowds of them to roam around your empire. I would rather have them be extremely low cost in hammers.

The %chance of units produced in a city with an asylum being crazed is an enormous disadvantage, which this building's power doesn't warrant. It should probably be lost.

Every mechanic needs a counter because otherwise the counter is to avoid the mechanic, which makes people miss out on big chunks of the game.
Giving medic2/medic3 a soothe spell which removes enraged doesn't sound that overpowered. Maybe give it range 0 for normal priests and range 1 for high priests? That would make for fun mini-games of running after the loose nutter.

My 2 cents:

-Rising the chance of creating werewolves sounds good.
-Lunatics doesn't need the reduced upkeep. To make them worthwhile they should start only with crazed (So one chould have a chance to get them into fight) or reduce their cost.
-AC 90 could make some units enraged and some could be turned barbarian. The micromanagement hell will wear off as your own units will slaughter/be slaughter by their own comrades.

But the most important thing is: noncombat units should have not be able to be enraged. Period.