Dave Lawson
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2008
- Messages
- 57
I've recently taken to exploring those flower loving pacifists we know as the Bannor.
I really must say that I love the notion of the chain of command, despite the cumbersome interface issues. I'm not gonna complain said interface because it's so far outside what the original interface was designed for, and it's awesome.
I will describe some of my game play experience with it however.
The first time I played as Bannor, it was an inland sea map, and I was stuck between a good (aligned) player (who I didn't really want to declare war on for personal reasons) and that bloody dragon perched in a barbar city. OMG that dragon growl. Why is it so loud and drawn out! Why does it play every time I bring the camera near it! GAH I hate dragons! I think my brother who was in the next room hates dragons now, too.
So, having decided on my first and most important military objective (killing Puff), I set about doing so. I had been fighting barbarians for a goodly time, and even had a brief war with another player. In this I had managed to get myself a military containing a captain at the top, a pair of master sergeants, along with bunches of sergeants and corporals. Between 2 rounds of artillery bombardment, and an assault against the 6 defending units, my captain received in excess of 200 experience. The kill shot on a crippled dragon alone accounted for 130something experience. Now, I like unit promotions as much as the next guy -- maybe more, seeing as I like bannor -- but I gotta say this was a bit too much. And he wasn't even a general at that point. Just imagine if I had twice as many units beneath him, or god forbid as many as 10x the units beneath him. I must admit that I fail to completely understand the exp trickle up, as I believe I had (only) 9* the corporal upgrade on my captain, and yet he received roughly 4 times the experience of the unit that scored the kill.
The second game I played, I made a point of going to war almost immediately -- I wanted to put the Bannor military machine to the test. By the time I had researched military strategy, I already had a unit set up to be a general. At that point I decided the game was over (although I kept playing), as my stack was demolishing entire civs without losing a single unit. My officer already had bought every single available upgrade. I should mention that a brand new recruited champion (built with 3 or 4 upgrades), with iron weapons, once inserted into the stack had a 28.6% chance of killing the dragon.
The third game I played as Bannor was the shortest of all. Orthus made the mistake of attacking me. I drowned him in a sea of bronze wielding warriors. The warrior who killed him immediately became a master sergeant. I set up 4 units beneath him, and promptly wiped out my bothersome clan of embers neighbor in record time. I had 3 master sergeants by the end of that conflict, and the snowball was already an avalanche. I had to consider that game over at that point.
It's too much. And in some ways it seems to not work as you would expect. First of all the returns on the pyramid scheme seem to get out of whack once you get even 5 of the corporal upgrades being passed along. It seems to provide far far more than 50% I was expecting. With 9 such upgrades, I was receiving about a 300% bonus. Perhaps it's just the tool-tip that's wrong? Perhaps the fighting unit only receives less than 100% so by adding 90% you are comparatively getting far more than expected... I don't know. But something smells fishy.
Second, the cool bonuses (the ones captains can get like artillery and volley and arcane and blahblah) only get passed down one level. This often means that you need to truncate the chain of command in order to make use of your captain's specialties. Instead you get the generic passed down bonuses, and with the exception of specialist captains (arcane or artillerist) there is little point in buying the command upgrades, as your corporals will be doing most of the fighting. When I originally saw the chain of command. I envisioned having a captain with one master sergeant handling the archers, one the infantry, and one the artillery. Beneath them would be the fighting units. Turns out you actually need 3 captains to pull this off. And if you plan to fill up the command trees for 3 captains, you'll have an immense horde of units (50ish units for 3 off-the-shelf captains). Could be I just had the wrong ideas when I first saw the notion though.
It could be I just got extremely lucky in those three games, but I have a hard time seeing it that way.
I'm tempted to say the tree needs trimming. What is the justification for having THAT many levels of command (recruit, corporal, sergeant, master sergeant, captain, and general)? There's no feasible way to ever fill a general's tree. You would literally need 100's of units in the same chain of command. Just imagine how much experience you general would be getting every time your lowest recruit clubs a poor gretchin!
Anybody else have issues with this?
EDIT: I'm gonna try and create a fully fleshed out command tree, and see whether the general's head can actually achieve escape velocity upon the destruction of some lowly barbarian warrior.
I really must say that I love the notion of the chain of command, despite the cumbersome interface issues. I'm not gonna complain said interface because it's so far outside what the original interface was designed for, and it's awesome.
I will describe some of my game play experience with it however.
The first time I played as Bannor, it was an inland sea map, and I was stuck between a good (aligned) player (who I didn't really want to declare war on for personal reasons) and that bloody dragon perched in a barbar city. OMG that dragon growl. Why is it so loud and drawn out! Why does it play every time I bring the camera near it! GAH I hate dragons! I think my brother who was in the next room hates dragons now, too.
So, having decided on my first and most important military objective (killing Puff), I set about doing so. I had been fighting barbarians for a goodly time, and even had a brief war with another player. In this I had managed to get myself a military containing a captain at the top, a pair of master sergeants, along with bunches of sergeants and corporals. Between 2 rounds of artillery bombardment, and an assault against the 6 defending units, my captain received in excess of 200 experience. The kill shot on a crippled dragon alone accounted for 130something experience. Now, I like unit promotions as much as the next guy -- maybe more, seeing as I like bannor -- but I gotta say this was a bit too much. And he wasn't even a general at that point. Just imagine if I had twice as many units beneath him, or god forbid as many as 10x the units beneath him. I must admit that I fail to completely understand the exp trickle up, as I believe I had (only) 9* the corporal upgrade on my captain, and yet he received roughly 4 times the experience of the unit that scored the kill.
The second game I played, I made a point of going to war almost immediately -- I wanted to put the Bannor military machine to the test. By the time I had researched military strategy, I already had a unit set up to be a general. At that point I decided the game was over (although I kept playing), as my stack was demolishing entire civs without losing a single unit. My officer already had bought every single available upgrade. I should mention that a brand new recruited champion (built with 3 or 4 upgrades), with iron weapons, once inserted into the stack had a 28.6% chance of killing the dragon.
The third game I played as Bannor was the shortest of all. Orthus made the mistake of attacking me. I drowned him in a sea of bronze wielding warriors. The warrior who killed him immediately became a master sergeant. I set up 4 units beneath him, and promptly wiped out my bothersome clan of embers neighbor in record time. I had 3 master sergeants by the end of that conflict, and the snowball was already an avalanche. I had to consider that game over at that point.
It's too much. And in some ways it seems to not work as you would expect. First of all the returns on the pyramid scheme seem to get out of whack once you get even 5 of the corporal upgrades being passed along. It seems to provide far far more than 50% I was expecting. With 9 such upgrades, I was receiving about a 300% bonus. Perhaps it's just the tool-tip that's wrong? Perhaps the fighting unit only receives less than 100% so by adding 90% you are comparatively getting far more than expected... I don't know. But something smells fishy.
Second, the cool bonuses (the ones captains can get like artillery and volley and arcane and blahblah) only get passed down one level. This often means that you need to truncate the chain of command in order to make use of your captain's specialties. Instead you get the generic passed down bonuses, and with the exception of specialist captains (arcane or artillerist) there is little point in buying the command upgrades, as your corporals will be doing most of the fighting. When I originally saw the chain of command. I envisioned having a captain with one master sergeant handling the archers, one the infantry, and one the artillery. Beneath them would be the fighting units. Turns out you actually need 3 captains to pull this off. And if you plan to fill up the command trees for 3 captains, you'll have an immense horde of units (50ish units for 3 off-the-shelf captains). Could be I just had the wrong ideas when I first saw the notion though.
It could be I just got extremely lucky in those three games, but I have a hard time seeing it that way.
I'm tempted to say the tree needs trimming. What is the justification for having THAT many levels of command (recruit, corporal, sergeant, master sergeant, captain, and general)? There's no feasible way to ever fill a general's tree. You would literally need 100's of units in the same chain of command. Just imagine how much experience you general would be getting every time your lowest recruit clubs a poor gretchin!
Anybody else have issues with this?
EDIT: I'm gonna try and create a fully fleshed out command tree, and see whether the general's head can actually achieve escape velocity upon the destruction of some lowly barbarian warrior.
