Forthcoming changes that will affect adventures

On the test server last week a new version was deployed with a number of changes that will affect many of the adventure guides.

This is what BB have changed:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...glogtester.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...eenchanges.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...tofchanges.jpg

I have played The Nords on the test server and no matter where you place your generals you cannot skip some of the camps as you can at present.

I think this is a retrograde step and should not be implemented. It is quite unfair to change the pathing at this stage.

I agree that this new pathing is step backwards at this point.

I've wanted to quit TSo a long time ago, but old pathing which results in nice tactics kept me here!

I've already written in another post on the forum: they should consider stick with the old pathing for the old adventures and introduce 10,20... new adventures which can have new pathing! -> I'd like to see some sequent adventures...when you finish level 1, you enter another island and so on.

The new path finding will probably not significantly affect such adventures where all camps appear after each other and that cannot be skipped, even if some pretty advanced blocking methods have been made for them, e.g:

• The Island of the Pirates
• Witch of the Swamp
• Traitors
• The Dark Priests
• Wild Mary

However, the new path finding will affect existing guides for adventures where you today can skip camps, e.g:

• Horseback
• Stealing from the Rich
• Outlaws
• Victor the Vicious
• Sons of the Veldt
• The Nords

So 95% of maps will have to be made again....

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Originally Posted by Hasmir

So 95% of maps will have to be made again....

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Probably...but let's hope not ;).

I'm gradually working my way through the adventures on the test server to see what changes will need to be made.
As Tage said many of the limited route adventures won't be affected. The Nords certainly is as you cannot avoid camps in the first sector. I am playing through Surprise Attack at the moment and have found just one camp that can't be avoided.

Seriously i have to say this is what the Game needs the Adventures are far too easy currently
And many Higher level players are becoming bored...:(
I personally hate repetition and would much prefer if the enemy camps were randomised

This could include:
Camp location changes and can be anywhere within say a 16square area
Troops defending a camp 10 variations
Time limit which could include tiers 1st 2nd 3rd so a fast completion you receive the best loot slower and loot diminishes accordingly

Currently once you have done an adventure once, the fun is lost I am at the moment doing all the adventures others refuse as (Too Hard/Not worth it)

It is sad when you realise there is no point making anything apart from Bread Bronze Swords and Brew as the loot from adventures far out weighs the cost to a player to complete.
All the expert buildings with the exception of the Exotic wood mills are redundant once players realise a few adventures and they have all the X-bows they will ever need then follow a guide and never lose any high value troops unless of course the Lag monster strikes when attempting a block or retreat

The Loot & simplicity of the current adventure system will kill what could be a very good game
I would like it if an 8day adventure took me more than a few hours to complete
I would like adventures where you have no choice but to lose high value units and I mean more than 1 swordsman here and there

I know the game is in BETA and still being developed I just hope the view is towards the end game and making it a bit tougher and less repetitive

There are major discrepancies in what is ‘difficult’ and what just need high value troop loss.

Difficult is when you have to climb a rock face and have no idea where any good ledges and groves are.

What is not difficult is knowing that rock face, 1, 4, 7 and 10 have foot placements that are easy to navigate and 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9 have terrible placement and will make you fall and bash your head, arms and legs countless times and are not worth it.

These ‘optimisations’ are designed to make it take longer to reach 50 so we keep playing the game for longer now we have spent time and effort going over the maps and discovered how to ignore a significant part of it. We have in fact done there quality control checks for them.

I could accept these changes if they also changed, sons of the veld, outlaws, victor, witch, traitors, secluded experiments etc to be more competitive with making us want to do them and be worth it like The Nords or Black Knights are. I could have no gc, and 1 explorer and for weeks only get sons and I still wouldn’t do it!

The suggestion above to randomise maps a bit with camp placements I think would make things more interesting and achieve the same result in making things take longer for us to play the game up to lvl 50.

What I think should happen is all adv are the same in terms of troop loss values and XP gain but what would make them hard is not knowing what the losses and rewards will be before we start the adv.

For example if we kill 100 housecarl or 50 cav with a big bertha then we get added to our loot rewards 20 granite. If we kill 40 militia then we get 5 granite. Then all maps when we activate the adv have there units randomised. We could do traitors that randomly gets generated to need 2000r troop loss but it wouldn’t matter because the reward would be equal to the loss compared to all other adv maps. The XP could also work the same way. It is not the map that dictates the XP but the units generated on the map that gets killed. This way all adv’s would be worth it and there difficulty would be random meaning they would all be equally difficult or easy depending on the random number generator. We would need to work out the best way to go about killing our randomly unique camps each adv we do making things a lot more interesting and providing difficulty each time.

The benefit of this is when we need to send in 100 cav to die or lose 50 soldiers its ok because the reward for doing so is a set standard across all adv maps and there is no way to discover if the maps will generate enemy units that will need 100 cav’s to be sacrificed or not. It will make all adv’s appealing because they could all be generated so we would need to make that sacrifice and we wouldn’t know it till we start it.

Instead of losing 2000r 200cav on sons and getting 33k XP and losing 50r and 150m on Nords and getting 27k XP we could lose 1500r and 50cav on Nords and get 25k XP and lose 500r and 30m on sons and get 6k XP. It would all depend on what the map generates when we activate it. Not that these numbers are suggested to be equal, just demonstration numbers.

The way adv are found should also be reorganised. When our explorers get sent out to find an adv it should only return with adv appropriate to the LVL we send it out for. I don’t want to send out an explorer on a medium search only to have it return a horseback or witch. What can be found should be based on the LVL at which the search can first be used and end when it gets superseded by the next search up. Basing the searches on time is wrong. I’m not saying an adv shouldn’t take longer the higher up the searches go. What mean is that short should become LVL 1, medium should become LVL 2 and so on. This way we could classify a Witch, Horseback, Pirates etc as LVL 1. At LVL 2 would be Sons, Outlaws and The Nords etc and then at LVL 3 would be Black Knights, Dark Brotherhood etc. If we want to only find LVL 2 then we do a LVL 2 search. If we want LVL 3 we do a LVL 3 search. This way loot and XP rewards could be kept equal amongst each adv groups LVL so horseback and the other LVL 1 adv for example couldn’t give crossbows and the enemy unit loot values would reflect that and not be compared to LVL 2 or 3 loot values.

The problem at the moment is the guides are a requirement to do the adventures, you can't just start one and then start making the troops in reaction to the camps which are up. Making them random would mean any adventures with short times that need large amounts of cav would not be possible for example as the cav take too long to produce.

You can get around this if you stockpile troops beforehand, but that means you need a lot more settlers which would also rule out people who don't buy gems, since they wouldn't be able to get enough residences on the limited amount of licenses they get.

Rather than messing with the pathing, they need to rebalance the adventures so they are all desirable, even if this means making the rewards slightly worse for some of them.

Dont give them time limits then or generate time limits based on enemy units generated.

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You can get around this if you stockpile troops beforehand, but that means you need a lot more settlers which would also rule out people who don't buy gems, since they wouldn't be able to get enough residences on the limited amount of licenses they get.

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Wrong. I can support over 2000 troops and I don't buy gems

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

Wrong. I can support over 2000 troops and I don't buy gems

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Cam You build anything else, besides noble residences?
Only for 2000 troops You need 29 Noble Residence lvl 5. That needs: 27405 Hardwood 45965 Marble 29000 Coins 29000 Exotic Wood and 17400 Granite.
Or more realistic 2000 troops -> 40 Noble Residence lvl 3. That needs: 37800 Hardwood 63400 Marble. Left: 105 licenses for all other buildings.
Tip: After lvl 32 You got rewarded with gems witch can be used to buy more licenses. But then You need armies, to get experience and so on.

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Originally Posted by Gromobran

Cam You build anything else, besides noble residences?
Only for 2000 troops You need 29 Noble Residence lvl 5. That needs: 27405 Hardwood 45965 Marble 29000 Coins 29000 Exotic Wood and 17400 Granite.
Or more realistic 2000 troops -> 40 Noble Residence lvl 3. That needs: 37800 Hardwood 63400 Marble. Left: 105 licenses for all other buildings.
Tip: After lvl 32 You got rewarded with gems witch can be used to buy more licenses. But then You need armies, to get experience and so on.

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Correct. If you save the weekly gems and level up gems, you can afford to buy more licences.
As with everything else in this game, it takes time but it is possible.

He probably bought gem-based nobles from players, some are selling them.

Anyway the new pathing will be comming whatever we say, and tbh I expect that to be linked with the problems we have seen on our own island. There are severall resources which our settlers can't reach if you place them at the wrong place. Just think about the spot in sector 2 where you can't place an woodcutter/forrester close to an whole bunch of trees. :(

Anyway, some of the adventures (Sons of the Veld f.i.) are bad adventures, and with the new pathing I expect some more adventures will become less fun. To be honest I don't see the fun off an adventure where you need to send 6000 recruits. Its just too much work :( Yeah, you can share the expenses with two people but even then, if one of them has an problem you are really in big troubles.

seems the pathing change solves some bugs, so might be the needed side effect to fix the issues. So either have bugs and old pathing or bug fixed and new pathing with side consequence of affecting some strats

i would go for fix in the long run, even if it can be annoying in the short run

What I do really really hope is that they fix it once and for all. Nothing is more annyoing then having the guides made obselete every couple of months because of some changes. I do expect that the roundblock-thing will also be closed sooner or later. I don't mind the blocking thing, its a strategy, but that roundblockthing is stupid. Come on, because of the booskamp being destroyed the already dead troops come back to live??? Yeah right.
Also, i think they need to check the cost of some of the adventures, SofV and Traitors are way too expensive, while some other adventures are way too cheap to play. Okay, some of the adventures might be different after the pathing-bug solved, but i do expect that its going to cost troops in most of the adventures anyway. Another issue is that the game hasn't been properly designed. Everything goes okay, until you reach the expert buildings. Beside the Exotic Sawmill almost NOBODY is building those factories. First the absurd high cost and then the fact that its much easier to get the xbows/sword and cannons via adventures. Some rebalancing (in favour on making building of those plants ofcourse) is in order. And ofcourse we need something to remove the huge surpluss of raw materials which we have in the game. I already suggested that temple.

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Originally Posted by TIERARZT

Wrong. I can support over 2000 troops and I don't buy gems

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by TIERARZT

Correct. If you save the weekly gems and level up gems, you can afford to buy more licences.
As with everything else in this game, it takes time but it is possible.

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Wrong. You can't produce anything if you spend all your licenses on residences. It takes over 3 months to save enough gems to buy 10 licenses, Are players expected to wait half a year to get enough capacity to be able to do adventures?

players are (from a company pointof view) expected to spend money on the game

To return to the original topic for this thread, I started The Nords on both the test and the main servers today. I put my vet general in the usual place to work up the right hand side of the second peninsula. I took images of the route for both the original and the new pathing. As you can see in the new pathing there is no way to avoid camp 9 when trying to attack camp 8 - Sid's numbering.

Original route avoids camp 9:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...urrentpath.jpg

New pathing goes right through the centre of the area of influence of camp 9 and thus has to defeated.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...rdsnewpath.jpg

There is a new version being deployed today so I urge all interested players to sign up for the tester to see what is being suggested now. The server will be off line from 13:00 CET for approximately 2 hours. The test server is found here: http://www.tsotesting.com/en/homepage

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Originally Posted by TheBadger

Seriously i have to say this is what the Game needs the Adventures are far too easy currently
And many Higher level players are becoming bored...:(
I personally hate repetition and would much prefer if the enemy camps were randomised

This could include:
Camp location changes and can be anywhere within say a 16square area
Troops defending a camp 10 variations
Time limit which could include tiers 1st 2nd 3rd so a fast completion you receive the best loot slower and loot diminishes accordingly

Currently once you have done an adventure once, the fun is lost I am at the moment doing all the adventures others refuse as (Too Hard/Not worth it)

It is sad when you realise there is no point making anything apart from Bread Bronze Swords and Brew as the loot from adventures far out weighs the cost to a player to complete.
All the expert buildings with the exception of the Exotic wood mills are redundant once players realise a few adventures and they have all the X-bows they will ever need then follow a guide and never lose any high value troops unless of course the Lag monster strikes when attempting a block or retreat

The Loot & simplicity of the current adventure system will kill what could be a very good game
I would like it if an 8day adventure took me more than a few hours to complete
I would like adventures where you have no choice but to lose high value units and I mean more than 1 swordsman here and there

I know the game is in BETA and still being developed I just hope the view is towards the end game and making it a bit tougher and less repetitive

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I have to agree with this 100% ok the guides would be redundant but that just means people would have to work out their own tactics which is a good thing

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Originally Posted by Kotugo

Wrong. You can't produce anything if you spend all your licenses on residences. It takes over 3 months to save enough gems to buy 10 licenses, Are players expected to wait half a year to get enough capacity to be able to do adventures?

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That all depends on how you spend your licences and free gems
It is possible to have a large army and keep a balanced production of resources without buying more gems.

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

That all depends on how you spend your licences and free gems
It is possible to have a large army and keep a balanced production of resources without buying more gems.

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totally agreed
i have come to a point now that hardly need to buff anything to kep things going smoothly. Only the ocasional buff to increase prodution on a given area, depending on my needs at that moment.
this is a economy/strategy type of game that well balanced can run by itself prety much very easy.
also i have come to a point when doing adventures is getting a bit boring, unless i can do a new one never done before.

i just dont belive that ppl here complains about changing paths, wich to be honest, are badly disigned to begging with, i often see my general dancing some crazy dance on their way to battle....also cant understan some ppl that play adventures over and over using exactly the same settings, where is the fun in that? and why is it that having to rework your strategy is "hard work"?

i say keep changes comming, this is a very long game and to keep it interesting we need these changes, these and other of course.

i for one would like to see gadering xp more for the troops you loose rather than for the troops you kill, or a mixture of bouth. that will make it really interesting

I am playing Victor on my own. An 3 player adventure but I am not killing the last camp (the 2 loot spotters doing this). Anyway I can only have 1000 Army and I manage to do it in less than 4 days with a lot of good planning. With 3 regular generals. But it should be a 3 player adventure and not a solo run there one kills almost everything and sell the loot spots. So why not make restriction to some of it or something. Like player Z, X and Y need to kill atleast x camps or a special route in for all the 3 players but only a part in the adventure or that a camp needs to be attacked be 3 different players.

I'm generally bored with these on-line games... they just don't do it in relation to the hey-day of settlers/warcraft/panzer general/civ/ et al etc... I am not prepared to pay and pay and pay for an inferior product...I used to pay a one off €30/40 for a great game that gave great satisfaction and excitement, then you left it and moved on for a while then you revisited and played again and again over the years.... what can you do to restore some gameplay not endless build management?

This game need adventures with random camp locations and enemies, this way u cant be sure what you will face when you start the adventure.

Sometimes ur lucky, sometimes not :P

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Originally Posted by TheBadger

Seriously i have to say this is what the Game needs the Adventures are far too easy currently
And many Higher level players are becoming bored...:(
I personally hate repetition and would much prefer if the enemy camps were randomised

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Path-finding is an attempt of Bluebyte to balance the game?
Or is it an attempt to destroy all those efforts players have made to play effectively?

Randomising camps would destroy the work of the guide-makers too, so that isn't the best solution.
Not all players have the time to work out a map and consult the battle-simulator, so they play shortly
by using scripts of others, who had the time providing them.

The easiest way to balance this game:
1. Remove the hardest and easiest adventure from the current adventure-list, or
2. change the loots to these adventures accordingly to the current estimated losses.

So Nords with all it's slow-fighting-units, which are just a push-over for the veteran: + 100 granite or 150 e-logs for a loss of 200 units.
Sons of the Veld with all it's hard and multi-leadercamps per region: +1500 granite or 2000 e-logs for a loss of 2000 units.

Most simple and fair change to balance the game quickly.

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Originally Posted by Tibster

This game need adventures with random camp locations and enemies, this way u cant be sure what you will face when you start the adventure.

Sometimes ur lucky, sometimes not :P

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Totally agree. I never look at any guides anyway as I'd rather work it all out for myself than just go in knowing I'll win. But random camps would also make it more interesting when you repeat the same adventures too. Either that or we need a lot more single player adventures.

And picking up on what others have said about gems - I have 1800 population, kept within my licences, have not bought nobles for gold on trade
and have never lost an adventure so far. It's called 'planning' and it takes time.

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Not all players have the time to work out a map and consult the battle-simulator

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Then what is the point in playing a game if you don't have time to play? They're only playing half the game.
They only want the easy part of the game and ignore anything that requires effort.

I'm sorry, but if you don't have time to spare, then find something else to occupy your spare time... what little of it you seem to have.

I know, maybe they should release a game that levels you to maximum when you first log in and send a certificate in the post to say how clever you were. That seems to be what people want these days.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...tofchanges.jpg

I loved my speedy buggers running from one storehouse to another with lightningspeed.
Just like humans, who change their mind and suddenly want to do something quickly.

When I first posted this information I said I would play the adventures again and report back. I had forgotten to do so but since the reset on the test server this week I have been playing different adventures to gain the XP for levelling up again ( I hate it when I am downgraded from L42 to L27 again) I have been playing Horseback without my lovely crossbowmen or elite soldiers and have found out that the pathing changes have resulted in a couple of major problems with both SidV's and Bob's guides.
First: Block 1 is no longer possible without clearing camp 10. The garrison position in the sector cleared by defeating camp 17 is not longer suitable to attack camp 11 without clearing camp 10 first.
Second: Previously camps 3 and 4 could be attacked without interception by camp 5. This is no longer possible and camp 5 must be cleared before attacking 3 or 4.

Another adventure which has many changes with the new pathing is The Nords. It is no longer possible to avoid many of the camps as shown in the assorted guides. I cannot play this again yet and have not noted the various changes apart from the need to defeat all camps in a line to the first bandit leader and to send the general to camp 6 - using Sid's numbering - to attack camp 7 as the trap will intercept. Most of the posted guides will be obsolete once the new pathing is introduced and will need to be marked as such or removed so that new players do not try to use them.

I wish more people would use the test server and report back here or post in the test forums. There were very few complaints about the costs for the gem mine or endless copper mine and there have not been many about the cost of upgrading for gems which is outrageous. More feedback may actually register with BB.

I put up a post with exactly the same requests for this somnolent community, after seeing the disaster when playing outlaws on tso due to the new pathfinding and have one (unrelated) question for you:
Dear Brittany Lady, how did you manage to actually get (some) reactions as I managed 0 after 100 views/10 days?

The new pathfinding throws out a clear message that blocking and skipping content was not the intended way of playing the adventures. BlueByte didn't like you skipping content and have fixed it. No use crying over spilt milk. Now play the game as originally intended.

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Originally Posted by aklbr

Dear Brittany Lady, how did you manage to actually get (some) reactions as I managed 0 after 100 views/10 days?

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Nice Ladies always seem to attract attention... :)

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

The new pathfinding throws out a clear message that blocking and skipping content was not the intended way of playing the adventures.

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I beg to differ. They may have managed to stop us from skipping certain camps, most notably in the Nords, but the new pathing certainly won't reduce the number of possible blockings. In Sons of the Veldt my current way of playing includes 18 blocks, and they can all be done both with the old and with the new pathing (only different garrison locations required in some cases), and the average losses are 1432R 220C with the old pathing, 1410R 220C with the new pathing.

Those camps in Horseback that previously could be skipped, can most probably be blocked instead with the new pathing.

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

No use crying over spilt milk.

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Your comments are always so encouraging, aren't they? :p
If you're a veterinarian, go fix that cow rather than letting her spill the milk... :D

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

Now play the game as originally intended.

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Oh, but I'm sure BlueByte loves all our guides where blocks are used. ;)
Because blocks require fast generals (battle hardened and/or veteran),
and thanks to our guides they most certainly manage to sell more of those for gems than they otherwise would...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tierarzt

The new pathfinding throws out a clear message that blocking and skipping content was not the intended way of playing the adventures. BlueByte didn't like you skipping content and have fixed it. No use crying over spilt milk. Now play the game as originally intended.

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Do you have inside information from BlueByte? I wasn't aware that anyone had actually said that blocking and skipping content was not the way we had to play. I thought that there were many ways to play including using blocks and skipping camps. To take The Nords, for example, you still do not have to defeat ALL camps and surely if BB's intention was to stop skipping camps then they would have changed the pathfinding so that you couldn't avoid any, not just some.

No one is crying over spilt milk. My sole intention in posting here is to alert players to the forthcoming changes and to point out that the guides will need a lot of revision so that new players will have the correct information.

For Tierarzt:
This post, as well as mine, are addressing people with the request to test and complain if they find it unpalatable.
Since you are not contributing by testing and you find the changes to your liking, can you please ignore me/my comments?

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The consequences of the pathfinding scheme (which I venture the guess that is an artefact of the new building interface) are:
new intercept areas, most old blocks would not work and existing posts and guides will become misleading.

Furthermore, and more worrisome to me, the _spirit_ of the change as well as the claims are in line with "intercepts" are now notified on the spot.
_THEY_ _ARE_ _NOT_. Good or bad, the current retiming cycle has an interaction with the screen (general going out of an intended camp to go into a blocked one). This is not happening any more, you find it 3-5 minutes later in the wrong camp. New blocks, new posts, retire old ones can be made, for this situation there is no plan B and qualifies as a bug.

For all these things, the litany of complaints will be veeery long.