Not Enough Great Generals on Marathon?

[ThePope]

I recently played as Stalin on Marathon. To get my first Great General I needed 90 xps which I got after destroying 2 civilizations and almost a third. I won domination and only got 1 Great General the entire game because the next required 225 xps which was impossible as at the end i only had 122 towards it. On Normal it is 30 xp for first Great General. I think that it should be the same amount of xps necesssary for all speeds because even though there are more turns, there still is the same amount of xps to be had.

Any Thoughts?

By the way i attached it to a single unit to make it a level six so i could build west point.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm in agreement with you on that. Maybe slightly more than 30, but certainly not two or three times as much.

 

[bovinespy]

I also agree. Mind you, I haven't tried a 'normal' game yet with Warlords, as I'm still picking my way through the scenarios, but yeah - that does sound kind of crappy. I never play on Normal speed (usually Epic, sometimes Marathon), so that would definitely cheese me off. Hopefully they'll fix it in the first patch. Have you posted that over in the Bug Forum?

 

[Watiggi]

I have always had it in my mind that it should be based on map size - not speed. The bigger the map, the more units to kill (xp to gain), therefore the more Generals to get. Balancing it out on map size would make it so that a typical conquest - regardless of the number of bad guys - would get consistantly the same number of Generals per conquest relative to its size. Makes sense to me. I am perplexed as to why it is the way it currently is. Charismatic certainly gets an even bigger leg up over Imperialistic in Marrathon simply because of how Generals are scaled.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I concur here. I've even XML'd my GameSpeedInfo file to have the costs for most things closer resemble the actual increase in game turns from Normal to Marathon and it is still 70+ xp needed. The problem is, however, that if you drop the generation stat for generals to say 200% of normal speed it would also affect great person generation. Now I'm all for an earlier Great Prophet or Engineer, but I was a little concerned that perhaps that was a bit much...

 

[naterator]

the globaldefines xml file has a great general threshold that you can change. it'd be for all speeds, but for us who always play marathon, this seems to be the thing to do, since 90 xp for 1 GG is no fun.

 

[CarpeDiem]

i've seen 4 in two games so far both marathon games, one a continent standard size and the earth24 civ map, both up to around 1200-1400 so far

 

[DrewBledsoe]

It hasn't been thought through clearly at all..the xp needed is 3x normal speed, but the xp received per battle is not 3x normal. On marathon / huge maps, the great majority of your early combat will be against barbs, which doesn't count.

Even if you have a couple of nearby civs with whom you go to war, most players do not attack unless the odds are at least 50 / 50, meaning that the average combat xp you receive is around 1 xp per won combat.

This means 90 won combats for your 1st general. I did a quick bit of analysis (having played marathon / huge /aggressive AIs for as long as I can remember), and obviously to get 90 xp by my above reasoning, the defender must have at least 90 units, which from my experience doesn't happen until the days of gunpowder at the earliest.

For example, current game, I've 16 cities (= most) and 83 units in late medieval period. Going from the power graph, the next nearest civ has roughly 70-75. Therefore, if I completely destroyed them, and say the 20 extra units they will make during this total obliteration war, I'll get a general, just.

But this isn't likely ( the war would go for FAR too long, and if I send somewhere around 40 units which is the most I 'd dare too at present, then it would take a huge amount of luck to destroy over twice that number.

GP points x3 makes perfect sense, because they can be placed in exactly the same way as normal, but have 3x the turns to generate.

Generals being x3 actually when you thing about how they are acheived, needs an enemy with 3x the troops of normal, or 3x the wars of normal, which just isn't practical.....it needs addressing.

 

[yavoon]

marathon is a bastard speed anyway.

=D

 

[Eternalsteelfan]

They shouldn't have tripled the spawn rate for Marathon. There aren't more units in Marathon, everything just takes longer. In the ancient era there are so few units you'll never get a GG.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They probably should have made the Great General Increase be like the Military unit cost increase (double for Marathon, 1.25 for Epic, etc.)

 

[AriochIV]

marathon is a bastard speed anyway.

Perhaps, but Epic is really fun. And 60 XP is way too much for that speed.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Well... keep in mind that it's not just great general points that are trippled from normal speed, but also great person point requirements. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to separate these two so it's either a faster great general or a ridiculously fast great person sync. Don't know what to say... it's very disconcerting tho.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I'm pretty sure that the following code in globaldefines.xml controls it:-


<Define>
<DefineName>GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD_INCREASE</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>50</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>30</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>



but even though the "threshold number" seems obvious, not sure how the "threshold_increase" affects things, if I divide each by 1.5 will that work ...i.e (30/1.5)*3 (for game speed) = 60xp for 1st grt gen, but then how will increments work?

Advice appreciated

 

[Sibben]

DrewBledsoe:

"Even if you have a couple of nearby civs with whom you go to war, most players do not attack unless the odds are at least 50 / 50, meaning that the average combat xp you receive is around 1 xp per won combat."

Mmmkay...no one has asked a really stupid question in this thread so far, so I'll boldly go first...

Do you gain more XP from difficult battles (i.e. less percentage)? While it makes perfect sense I was under the impression it did not really matter.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

DrewBledsoe:

"Even if you have a couple of nearby civs with whom you go to war, most players do not attack unless the odds are at least 50 / 50, meaning that the average combat xp you receive is around 1 xp per won combat."

Mmmkay...no one has asked a really stupid question in this thread so far, so I'll boldly go first...

Do you gain more XP from difficult battles (i.e. less percentage)? While it makes perfect sense I was under the impression it did not really matter.

Yes you do, in fact you get generally 2 xp for attacking and 1 for defending (more as you thought if the odds are against you), so therefore my op wasn't really correct, as 2 for attacking and 1 for defending = 1.5 average =60 battles for 90 xp...(if half are defending and half attacking, but if you're on the offensive its more likely to be 75% off / 25% def = roughly 52 battles..38 off, 14 def for 90 xp)

Thanks for making me correct myself


I just did a world builder test, and changing the GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD from 30 to 20 (but leaving the GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD_INCREASE at 50 as I don't understand yet how that affects things) gives you the 1st at 60 xp,2nd at 120, 3rd at 180 etc., and DOESN'T affect normal gp pts in any way



EDIT:- You don't need to change the GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD_INCREASE leaving it at 50 will keep the normal "double increment" series, so all you need to change is GREAT_GENERALS_THRESHOLD, 20 gives the 60,120,180,240 *series, and 15, which may be more realistic, gives the series 45,90,135,180*...

* = the no of xp for EACH grt gen, not accumulative....

Pls note this will affect all game speeds, but since you are changing only one number, its easy to reset, and I only play marathon anyway

 

[ThePope]

Thanks Drew Bledsoe, and I only play marathon also.

 

[Watiggi]

Actually a 50% odds of winning will get the attacker 4 xp and the defender 2 xp. That is the base.

I do agree with this though, they really well and truely screwed it up. As I said earlier, I think it should be scaled (if it even needs to be) more on map size that speed. It ultimately is about how much xp you can accumulate, NOT how fast it can be accumulated. The normal GP system is based on the idea that you can increase the rate of GPP accumulation with extra cities, Wonders and specialists. With Great Generals, this cannot be done. They certainly didn't give it much thought. The GG system uses the same scaling as GG but there is no way to realistically increase the xp growth rate. War is conducted linearly. What they are suggesting is warring from an ever increasing number of fronts at once in order to increase the amount of xp gained per turn so as to keep up with the scale. That isn't right. I think it should be along the lines of (regardless of speed): 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, etc, at least... The Great General threshold rise is FAR too steep for a good war game - even on Normal speed - and it also kills the effectiveness of the Imperialistic trait. My idea of Imperialistic is that it should allow the leader to generate GG's consistantly over a long period of time. It doesn't. 100% emergence actually means about 30% more GG's and that's all. Imperialistic should also (I think) give -25 XP cost for GG instead of the current bonus so that it allows for a longer period of Great General generation. Right now, they are out of reach after about 5 GG's (on normal speed - I would hate to think of what it would be like on Marathon).

 

[Ammar]

Hmm, actually I am not sure it should depend on Map Size. More Generals would make sense on a larger map. Anyway, a certain increase it necessary for longer game speeds, since you tend to have slightly more units, because they get cheaper in relation to buildings. However, 3* is over the top. Perhaps they should try 1.5* or so.

 

[AriochIV]

This is one more instance of about a dozen or so times playing Warlords saying to myself, "great game... but did anyone actually playtest this thing?"