Alignments - Removed, replaced with Faith system

Each race has a Base Faith

Race 1 - Order
Race 2 - Order
Race 3 - Life
Race 4 - Life
Race 5 - Nature
Race 6 - Nature
Race 7 - Chaos
Race 8 - Chaos
Race 9 - Death
Race 10 - Death
Race 11 - Might
Race 12 - Might

Realm Faiths - Each realm faith can contain the races of the two adjacent faiths

Order - Might, Order, Life

Race 11, Race 12, Race 1, Race 2, Race 3, Race 4
Life - Order, Life, Nature

Race 1, Race 2, Race 3, Race 4, Race 5, Race 6
Nature - Life, Nature, Chaos

Race 3, Race 4, Race 5, Race 6, Race 7, Race 8
Chaos - Nature, Chaos, Death

Race 5, Race 6, Race 7, Race 8, Race 9, Race 10
Death - Chaos, Death, Might

Race 7, Race 8, Race 9, Race 10, Race 11, Race 12
Might - Death, Might, Order

Race 9, Race 10, Race 11, Race 12, Race 1, Race 2

Unique Heroes - Each Realm faith can bid on heroes of two adjacent faiths
Uncommon Race Heroes - vs races opposite of base faith & adjacent faiths of opposite of base faith
Uncommon Faith Heroes - See Faith bonus

Faith Bonuses

6% attack power versus kingdoms of the opposite faith
3% attack power versus kingdoms of faiths adjacent to the opposite faith

Changing Faiths

Option A - Faiths cannot be voted on (can only change by defecting)
Option B - Cannot vote for faiths prohibited because of races in realm
Option C - Can vote for faiths similar to base faith, all races prohibited by new faith will be ejected from realm

Why?

The system we have now is at least easy to understand it is good versus evil and there is three faiths on each side and it is pretty easy to understand which faiths are opposites. Your idea seems like a change made to make a change.

that aside got two questions for you.


What does this do to push the game forward and make it more user friendly?


What does this offer to make the game bring in more players?

Me like.

Circles are awesome.

Seems like the most intuitive circle also. Would be weird of Nature and Might would be the "most" good and evil, or Order and Chaos.

Order feels closer to Might than Life feels closer to Might. Same with Chaos+Nature than Chaos+Life.

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It's very intuitive if you look at a picture.



Faith Bonus

Red Line - 6% OP bonus vs that faith
Yellow Line - 3% OP bonus vs that faith
Green Line - no OP bonus vs that faith

Example: Might would get a 6% bonus vs Nature, and a 3% bonus vs Life & Chaos

Realm Faiths

Can contain races of own faith and races of adjacent faiths (green line).

Example: Might faith realms can contain races from Might, Order and Death.

Unique Heroes

Can bid on uniques heroes of own faith and adjacent faiths (green line). Hero bidding is based on realm faith and not the race base faith.

Example: Might faith realms can bid on unique heroes from Might, Order and Death

The current alignment system has serious balance issues. The unique hero system is a check on alignment issues (but also unbalances things). The most 'balanced' idea would be to completely remove the alignment/faith system and allow everyone to bid on whatever hero they want. . . But this is boring and removes tension from the game. This is a compromise on tension vs balance.

My previous post should clear up part of the confusion. . . It's definitely not a change for the sake of change. This changes the fundamental game mechanics at the core level.

Join Random Realm: Slightly easier. . . The alignment choice box would be gone (and not replaced with a faith choice). The kingdom would select from one of the 12 races. The game would randomly add them to a realm with one of the three appropriate faiths. (this would have a side benefit of a more even distribution of kingdoms (less "Good" bias)

Create New Empty Realm: About the same. . . The alignment choice box would be replaced with a faith choice box. Race selection would be limited to the 6 appropriate races. (This does make is more complex before the round starts. Communication between packmates would have to be more than 'Good or Evil?')

Join a created realm: About the same. The race selection would be limited to the 6 appropriate races.

Restarting: About the same. Kingdoms would be limited to the 6 races allowed by each realm faith.

Restarting as race not allowed by faith: Two ways

Delete & remake: About the same
Defect to different faith realm, & restart as one of new 6 allowed faiths. . . May have to D&R multiple times to get to the race you want (overall this would be harder to do, but the original way of doing things is still available. This only gives another option.)

Faith Bonuses: About the same. I think it's pretty simple... (if for some reason this still confuses someone) they can look at the bonus manager to see exactly which faiths they have a bonus vs.

Unique Hero Selection: The game does it for you, so no change.

Behind the scenes balancing: Initially a PITA. . . unique heroes would have to be moved/nerfed/buffed to balance the faiths.

It's a much cooler way of separating races. Overall, it probably won't bring in many new (random) players. But may add more interest to the game to encourage veterans to stick around longer.

You are right it is a change to the game mechanic at its very core. it looks very much like a control cycle chart from an eastern elementals.

This limits the game a great deal don't you think? Let's look at what you are saying.



Join random realm. It is slightly easier how? You know it may just as easily put a bunch of people in a bundle of realms like it does now. Unless that is coded differently as well not sure it would change. Just saying.


Create new empty realms
yes Communication between packmates would have to be more than good and evil but now you have to deal with a more complex system and it isn't as new player friendly. Just about everyone knows the concept of good vs. evil.

You know all this basically does is rearrange the faiths and ignores good and evil. Ok i get that. Especially since you are talking about reorganizing the heroes to fit the new arrangement. Wouldn't that make the system pretty similar to the old system but a few good races play with few that were evil races under the current system.

So let's get this straight.
1. It will be a pain in the ass to change
2. Makes the faith selection and pack creation more complex
3. May make it more interesting to the veterans (by the way i have been around for a while now just check my lifetime record and i think you are partially right this is a PITA)


Got one last question would you be able to change your realm faith? If you do would it kick out automatically those that aren't in the right grouping?

This just seems like a change that you may like but it doesn't make sense to me. Yeah it is intuitive in the sense that it has a nice flow to it. In my eyes it has as many drawbacks as it does perks. Just doesn't seem necessary since you could pretty do most of what you want to accomplish with the current system and a few tweaks instead of ripping out faith code and recreating the game from the ground up.

i like the way its a giant pentagram

pretty evil to me

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

You're really good at symbols, aren't you?

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I love this suggestion.

good point, its 6 sided not 5
i guess i have evil on the brain

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

So the aim of this suggestion is to basically ensure that unique heroes do not unbalance the game ??

if so then you just have to make the two alignments equally balanced in addition to balancing each race individually (i think that was tried this round, good still lacks a genuine fast race imo) and the unique hero system would be balanced automatically

Nope, this system would remove more limits than it adds. The only real limit is it would make it harder for realms to choose faiths, but I consider this a balancing feature. Faiths would become tied to the race selection of the realm.

When players create a kingdom, they wouldn't have to adjust the good/evil switch. Other than that, creating kingdoms would be exactly the same. It will randomly put people together just as they are now, except there should be more evil noobs for OOP (noobs will still retain the cool race name bias).

I fail to see how determining who you have a bonus vs is that hard. . . I drew a picture, you find out what faith your realm is, you follow the colored lines to the other faiths. Even if you fail to figure this out, the bonus manager screen will tell you exactly which faiths you have a bonus vs. If the players still can't figure bonuses out, just refer them to a game more suitable for them. (btw, I'm using "you" in it's plural form. I'm talking to those that might have trouble, and not necessary directly at quatro.)

It does much more than this. I'm assuming you don't completely understand the suggestion.

• Example 1: If humans are a life based race, the anti-human hero should be a death hero. This would have to be done for each race
• Example 2: Current +defense heroes:
  Lord Sky Dunlin Order +5%
  Kylian Nature +6%
  Shade, the Suicidal Death +5%
  Dina, Dementia Master Might +6%

This would be unbalanced under the proposed system. Might faiths would be able to bid on 3 defense heroes, nature kingdoms would only get to bid on 1 defense hero, and the other faiths would get to bid on 2. Lord Sky Dunlin would have to be moved to the life faith (or shade to chaos), this would allow each faith to bid on only 2 defense heroes. (one would be +5%, the other +6%. Exactly the same as now.)

Other hero balancing may not be as simple.

It depends on how it would be coded. Option A is probably the easiest to code (and probably less likely to have bugs), but it doesn't give the players any choice. Option B is the best option, but probably the hardest to code. Option C is a compromise, with one known bug/feature (players must pay attention to how they vote, otherwise someone will get kicked out).

Most of this is a mute point because realms will not have any choice if they have races from multiple base faiths in the realm, the faith selection will be limited to 1-2 faiths.

I'm curious what you think I want to accomplish. . .

I really don't think this idea has many drawbacks, and the perks seem pretty enticing. I'll have to explain what I view the perks as another time.

When choosing alignments, one alignment will typically get more competitive packs than the other. This happens because of either real or perceived balanced problems between the races. By picking the correct alignment, packs will receive a passive bonus. (Note that this bonus still will occur if the races are perfectly balanced for the faiths (imagine the evil alignment has the same 6 races)).

I will explain the differences in the systems using four competitive packs. Three evil alignment and one good. The evil kingdoms will typically each choose a different faith (to improve OOP selection and avoid possible penalties with enemy elementals). For the current system, it wouldn't matter which faith good chooses. For the proposed system, I'll have to show two examples. One with the good realm as life. The other with the good realm as order (nature would be a mirror image).

I usually consider the faith "bonus" more of a penalty. Kingdoms will naturally look at kingdoms of opposite faith first for targets. Opposite faiths are more likely to get hit, even if hitting the same faith would result in less sent OP.

I think of the bonus as reversed. If I am a life realm, I consider it a 6% defense bonus vs good, 3% defense bonus vs might/chaos and no bonus vs death. In my opinion, it's more important to have a higher defense vs possible threat OP kingdoms, than it is to have higher offense vs target kingdoms.

1. More balanced faith/alignment bonuses (still unbalanced)
   
   1. Current system example
      
      1. Life
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Death
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Might
         vs Chaos
      2. Might
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
      3. Death
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
      4. Chaos
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
      5. Analysis
         
         At first this might seem balanced because every realm trades bonuses vs another realm. This imbalance becomes clearer when only examining 2 realms at a time. In a war of life vs death, death will win. Although they both have the same bonus vs each other, life also has to defend against might/chaos. The same holds true for life vs might/chaos.
      
      
   2. Proposed system example 1
      
      1. Life
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Death
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Might
         vs Chaos
      2. Might
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
         vs chaos
      3. Death
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
      4. Chaos
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs Life
         vs might
      5. Analysis
         
         Nearly the same as before for life vs death. The difference is for life vs might/chaos, might and chaos have to defend against each other. This changes it from 3:1 to 3:2. Life becomes a little safer due to threat op with might vs chaos.
      
      
   3. Proposed system example 2
      
      1. Order
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs chaos
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs death
      2. Might
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs chaos
      3. Death
         
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs order
      4. Chaos
         
         6% Faith Bonus
         
         vs order
         3% Faith Bonus
         
         vs might
      5. Analysis
         
         This is probably the safest for the good realm. Order is 2:2 vs Chaos and 2:1 vs death. Overall, death & might are the best off, and order & chaos are equal.
   
   
2. Unbalanced faith bonuses balanced by unique hero selection
   
   1. Current system Example
      
      Life can bid on:
      
      Order - No competition with other packs
      Life - No competition with other packs
      Nature - No competition with other packs
      
      Might/Death/Chaos can bid on:
      
      Might - Competition with 2 other packs
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      Chaos - Competition with 2 other packs
      
      
   2. Proposed system example 1
      
      Life can bid on:
      
      Order - Competition with 1 other pack
      Life - No competition with other packs
      Nature - Competition with 1 other pack
      
      Might can bid on:
      
      Order - Competition with 1 other pack
      Might - Competition with 1 other packs
      Death - Competition with 2 other pack
      
      Death can bid on:
      
      Might - Competition with 1 other pack
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      Chaos - Competition with 1 other pack
      
      Chaos can bid on:
      
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      Chaos - Competition with 1 other pack
      Nature - Competition with 1 other pack
      
      
   3. Proposed system example 2
      
      Order can bid on:
      
      Might - Competition with 2 other packs
      Order - Competition with 1 other pack
      Life - No competition with other packs
      
      Might can bid on:
      
      Order - Competition with 1 other pack
      Might - Competition with 2 other packs
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      
      Death can bid on:
      
      Might - Competition with 2 other packs
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      Chaos - Competition with 1 other pack
      
      Chaos can bid on:
      
      Death - Competition with 2 other packs
      Chaos - Competition with 1 other pack
      Nature - No competition with other packs
      
      
   4. Analysis
      
      The possibility of 1 good kingdom getting all the heroes is greatly reduced in the proposed system. The kingdoms that receive the most benefit with this system, will be the kingdoms that had the harshest penalties with race bonuses. (life is still the best off, but not completely imbalanced).
   
   
3. More balanced race selection
   
   This is my main goal, and the only reason I came up with the faith system. I want to be able to mix races in more faith combinations. This would provide three times the race mixture as is currently in the game.
   
   This also has a balancing aspect to it. Even if the devteam balances each race completely (never going to happen), the races will not be balanced if the right mixture of playstyles are not included for each alignment. A Human may be stronger than a minotaur, but this doesn't mean much if the human isn't covered by a fast race like vampire/dark dwarf/spec animator.
   
   With this system, it would be more likely that each race could be played with another fast race as race as cover.

So this new system you suggest is that bazaar heroes are indirectly limited a bit as they each get tired directly to 6 races? Then the system might need a recoding on how bazaar heroes are released to balance this as well. So there will always be one(two?) hero(es) for each alignment out. I think that together could work well.

This could also mean that defecting/joining a realm will not make you lose your heroes?

Would this system not make it hard to switch in and out popular versus unpopular races?

Bazaar heroes would be directly linked to 3 realm faiths (and not 6 races). It's a subtle difference but let me explain.

A unique life hero would be limited to Order/Life/Nature realm faiths. An order faith realm can have races of the Life/Order/Might faiths. A might faith race in an order faith realm could bid on a life faith unique hero.

Making it this way, will force all kingdoms in the same realm to bid on the same heroes (even if the base race of the faiths are different).
The system currently limits the number of heroes as 3 per faith (and not 9 per alignment). Under this new system, all realm faiths would be able to bid on 9 heroes.

Depends on how fancy zip would want to code it. . .

Unique Heroes:
Life bace race in order realm: Can bid on Might/Order/Life unique heroes.
Life based race in nature realm: Can bid on Life/Nature/Chaos unique heroes.

Simple Option: Kingdom loses all unique heroes when switching faiths.
Other Option: Kingdom only loses heroes that new faith can not support. (i.e. If switching from order to nature, the kingdom would only be able to keep his Life Unique heroes.)

Uncommon Heroes:
Faith Heroes: Loses all faith heroes when switching faiths.
Race Heroes: Keeps all race heroes when switching faiths.

(the bonuses that race heroes provide vs would be based upon the base faith of the race and not the realm faith. A life based race would get heroes vs Might/Death/Chaos races, even if the life based race is in an order/nature realm.)

The kingdoms will be able to easily restart into 1 of 6 races allowed by the faith. Ideally, the popular and unpopular races would be spread equally among the faiths.