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| Thread: Skills : Diplomacy | |
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted May 06, 2015 12:10 PM |
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Edited by malax83 at 12:29, 06 May 2015.
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Skills : Diplomacy
Hey all,
First i apologize for my English,
I open a thread to discuss about balance abilities. I m starting with a new topic but i would like to have a place into this forum where skills and abilities are put into a same folder.
DIPLOMACY (cf. golden-tongued ability)
1) ADAPTABILITY : when visiting or being in a garrison, town level layers can be dismantled instead of destroyed to regain ressources.
Interesting ability which seems to fit well to an "exploration-economy" Hero. I m not convinced about the entire ability cause it s not the full description (no ratio) but i would prefer a delay to dismantle the high level building - How many gold regain for the cheapest building ?
My scale : I m thinking for core building maybe 350 gold per building, 750 gold for elite building and 1500 for legendary building.
AMNESTY : The cost of surrending in a combats is halved.
Really satisfied. When H3 suffers of too expensive cost of surrending, H7 offer the ability to hire Hero without fear of being killed.
NECESSARY ALLIANCE : There s no morale penalty for foreigns creatures into Hero army.
I would switch the skill with Silver-tongued. It doesn t fit to the novice rank.
SILVER TONGUED : Cost for recruiting neutral are decreased by 25%.
Switch with "necessary alliance" then the ability will be more effective until you reach "golden-tongued". (cf. golden-tongued changes)
VOLUNTEERS : Governor : the growth rate of core dwelling in this town is increased by X per week.
It looks good to me.
My scale : 3 or 4
GOLDEN TONGUED : Creatures always offer you to join for free after succesfull negociation.
It s not balanced.
The main problem : this ability is coming too late so it offset the fact you re hiring for free. I think it s too complicated, in other hand it could be game breaker.
I m not convinced about free negociation and DIPLOMACY SKILL. I think it adds a lot of random unlike to H4 system with recruiting on a percent of the amount of units (instead of decrease the cost of negociation, you increase the number of units joining your army).
SUZERAIN : All towns of the player benefit from the hero 's governor abilities. Effect cannot be applied multiple times to the same town.
It s soon for say something about.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted May 06, 2015 09:45 PM |
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Ok. I think you have a lot things right. I personaly think Diplomacy is good skill, as it has some skills that are good on main hero. It could be easyly brushed aside as a secondary hero skill, but imo, it's more than that which is positive.
ADAPTABILITY: I agree with you on this one. But it's too early to talk numbers realy. I assume you base your numbers on H3 gold generation and unit/building prices, in which case it seems fair. But we don't know yet how much things will cost in H7 and how much gold will be generated each day ... so that 350gold can be more or less valuable.
AMNESTY: I'm not sure about this one. It's a good skill on paper, but surendering mechanics aren't realy that important...
Necessary Alliance: Yes It's obvious, at first I taught the same. But if morale penatly in game won't be that big anyway, then this skill is a bit too weak for expert level. It's also a situational ability. If you get Diplomacy early on in game, then you don't know if you will use this skill later on or not. If you won't be mixing armies much, then there's no use in it, so taking this one at novince level is risky somewhat.
SILVER TONGUED: I wouldn't use this one. Be it in novince or expert tier, I think it's one of few skills that is bad in this situation. There's no prerequisites, so it's sensible to go for GOLDEN TONGUED dirrectly. And Golden tongued isn't that powerfull at all, as it comes so late. I would remove this skill altogether, and move GOLDEN TONGUED in it's place, then make new Master skill.
VOLUNTEERS: Yes. A decent skill. Not much to say realy. I would always choose it over silver tongued, or pick ADAPTABILITY + NECESSARY ALLIANCE, and go directly to Master tier. It would specialy make diference with Diplomacy's Grandmaster.
GOLDEN TONGUED: yep, move it to expert tier instead of silver tongued and remove that one
SUZERAIN: This confuses me a bit, and as you say. It's too soon to say how it will go.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted May 06, 2015 11:30 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 23:31, 06 May 2015.
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
SILVER TONGUED: I wouldn't use this one. Be it in novince or expert tier, I think it's one of few skills that is bad in this situation. There's no prerequisites, so it's sensible to go for GOLDEN TONGUED dirrectly. And Golden tongued isn't that powerfull at all, as it comes so late. I would remove this skill altogether, and move GOLDEN TONGUED in it's place, then make new Master skill.
You seem to think that Golden Tongue fully replaces Silver Tongue? They actually do something different. Silver Tongue reduces the cost of recruiting neutrals (which implies obtaining them from external, neutral dwellings), whereas Golden Tongue removes all Gold costs when a neutral stack that's somewhere on the map wishes to join the Hero.
Still, I think Golden Tongue is a pretty weak skill. By the time you can get it, money usually shouldn't be a problem anymore. I doubt you will come across many stacks by that stage of the game anymore, too.
Edit: Also, let's not forget that not all Classes that get access to Diplomacy, can develop it to Master level. Some are stuck at Expert.
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Tiptoe_McGuffy
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 07, 2015 04:24 AM |
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Maurice said:
Still, I think Golden Tongue is a pretty weak skill. By the time you can get it, money usually shouldn't be a problem anymore. I doubt you will come across many stacks by that stage of the game anymore, too.
Money won't be a problem by level 7?
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted May 07, 2015 08:18 AM |
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Maurice said:
Silver Tongue reduces the cost of recruiting neutrals (which implies obtaining them from external, neutral dwellings), whereas Golden Tongue removes all Gold costs when a neutral stack that's somewhere on the map wishes to join the Hero.
Ah yea ... thnx - I misunderstood then. I taught Silver tongue reduces joining price by 25%, and golden tongue by 100% ... but now that I think about it ... yea. Silver tongue will be probably more usefull than golden tongue.
We don't know how economy dynamics will work in H7 yet, so idk if money will be a problem or not. However, creatures than randomly join your army, are mostly, from my experience usefull in early creeping, so if it's in Master tier, then yea ...
We also don't know what chances are going to be, that creaures join you. If there will be 90% chance of them joining your army, with master Diplomacy, then Golden Tongue will be hell of a skill ... get that 10 black dragons to join ... What I'm implying - perhaps, the chances to join you will be high, but price for accepting them will be ridiculous, so Golden Tongue might be usefull yet, even tho it'll come late
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted May 07, 2015 09:11 AM |
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Tiptoe_McGuffy said:
Maurice said:
Still, I think Golden Tongue is a pretty weak skill. By the time you can get it, money usually shouldn't be a problem anymore. I doubt you will come across many stacks by that stage of the game anymore, too.
Money won't be a problem by level 7?
Unless you fully invest your skillups into the Diplomacy skill, I doubt you will have Golden Tongue by level 7  .
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted May 07, 2015 09:40 AM |
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Edited by malax83 at 09:52, 07 May 2015.
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Yeah recruiting a level 7 for free seems ... idiot. No matter if you re level 7 or 10+, the investissement in a level 7 building is made for cost-effectiveness : in other terms, instead of buying all your army, you build a level 7 dwelling for hire creature in the future.
In economy, this is called a break-even point. But if the level 7 creatures are joining you for free, the break-even point isn t fixed yet, like out-ranged, in my own french terms.
Recruiting for free looks a bad idea in everything linked to strategy.
For example, the golden-tongued can be replaced by a new roll of diplomacy per week in case of failure.
My scale : 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%
Quote:
Wiki Heroes 3 : Taking into account that expert diplomacy and strong army allws for joining any neutral stack and makes the player's army stronger and capable of joining next stacks, the skill is regarded extremely overpowered.
The scale of 25%, 50%, 100% is too strong. Heroes 4 decide to decrease to 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% - which looks too strong for me.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted May 07, 2015 09:52 AM |
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Ah ofc. I just give extreme example, to point out, that Golden Tongue can be more or less powerfull, depending on various factors. And if you DO get to master diplomacy, you prety much did go full in, and have all 3 tiers purchased. Maybe ther's gonna be artifacts to further improve it but that's it.
Getting tier 7 / Champion creatures to join you SOME of the time, is also not equal to recruiting them. And also, only if you have substantialy powerfull army in comparison will they offer to join you in first place - this has always been the case, and idk, why this time it would be deferent.
Also ... think Diplomacy of H3. Now THAT was powerfull suff. you could win games just with this skill, if you got it early - don't even need to recruit stuff.
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted May 07, 2015 10:04 AM |
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Edited by malax83 at 10:26, 07 May 2015.
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
Getting tier 7 / Champion creatures to join you SOME of the time, is also not equal to recruiting them. And also, only if you have substantialy powerfull army in comparison will they offer to join you in first place - this has always been the case, and idk, why this time it would be deferent.
The chance to snowball ?
Creatures on map are settling depending on their force, and gradually. The skill is annoying to me because it sway your decision about attacking a stack or not. If you have 50% chance to get an offer, you suddenly have less fear to attack a group of level 7 monster (whose you even don t know how many there are).
The diplomacy skill could be applied on core creatures. To encourage explorers players, discovering lands. Regarding to the other abilities (which are swiss-army-knife), it looks normal to limit the range of this skill.
Thus, every rolling players game know how natural selection is... When you re high on the scale, you will not join ennemy..
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted May 07, 2015 10:40 AM |
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But restricting it to only core creatures is limiting imo. In all past games you were able to get higher tier creatures aswell. I remember in H3 there was fair share of games when I got tier 6 and even tier 7 sometime. Imo getting a few dragons, when your army consists of 50 Archangels isn't that great. Early game they will attack ofc, as your army is too weak. Ofc you can intentionaly wait and let those dragons grow in strenght, and with 50% chance for eg, I would say is not worth it, as you miss out on treasure that dragons are protecting, not to mention risking that enemy will surely kill them ...
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted May 07, 2015 11:23 AM |
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Edited by malax83 at 11:25, 07 May 2015.
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yes, i convinced it s limiting.
As for many example, i ll compare to starcraft 2. There are different units type like biological, armoured, heavy armoured, psionic etc...
The only thing H6 brings is the tier system, a system easier to balance. There s a real difficulty to balance this skill in all his shapes. If the rule is too complex, i mean with parameters, with scale, with "IF" or "NOT", the game is going less flexible and i admit limiting to core units could break the skill itself.
but what the hell, it gives sense to explore and expand your territory. Who care about diplomacy if the territory is infiny ? This skill could be useless in end game but diplomacy could be used as a tricky / swiss-army-knife skill eg, as a will to expand (and recruiting) faster than your opponent.
I m not convinced at all by golden-tongued ability. In other terms, the ability say : I don t care, the game is ending soon.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted May 07, 2015 12:57 PM |
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yes. It is a weak ability, compared to other Master tier abilities. Diplomacy from my experience, can't be used to boost recruitment much, as there's only 7 slots in your army, and getting few core or even elite creatures, it does not change much. Usualy, it only matter at the beginning of the game, in first 2 weeks, maybe first 3 weeks. You are realy struggling with money in this time, and getting army together, that can effectivley creep + develop your town at same time, can pose a problem. You want that Capitol + Castle + Champion dwelling up in first 3 weeks, possibly before your oponent. This is also a window to rush. So this means, if you get nice creatures to join early on, you get advantage. On small maps, it can be that you can attack enemy in first week, and that 20 extra spearmen realy make an impact. Or you can use them as "meat shield" so your own army avoids losses.
Later in game, I find myself only dissmissing/sacraficing/selling these creatures, as they have no place in my army, or perhaps give to secondary hero, so he can kill those "1 creature" enemies.
Imo it would be much better, if Golden tongued, would give only 50% disscount, and be moved to Basic tier. This way it would actualy help and be used, when it's most usefull.
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esparado87
Hired Hero
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posted May 25, 2015 12:54 AM |
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Suzerain might be the best perk for a support hero/governor hero
in late game if you get all governor perks on 1 hero:
-Native Terrain: more movement speed on map
-Patriot: more leadership
-Tower Defense: arrow towers shoots twize
-Enlightened Leader: more experience
-Town Planner: build 2 buildings on 1 day
-Foreman: more wood/ore
-Architect: cheaper buildings
-Recruiter: cheaper units
-Homeland: better might
-Town Protector: better defense
-Volunteers: train more core recruits
-Blessed Ground: more destiny
If you have all these perk + Suzerain, then ALL towns you own will have these buffs, and only 1 hero is needed to provide it. 
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markmasters
Famous Hero
Dragon of justice
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posted May 25, 2015 07:50 AM |
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On Large maps diplomacy can be very important imo. If you can eecruit some free units for free you have quite an advantage. Even if your mai army has no room you can use a second hero to clear another area of it's treasures. Later on you can use the neutrals that joined to guard garrisons and mines, forcing weak enemy heroes to skip them while exploring/annoying you. Either that or your enemy has to waste time with his main hero (he wont split his main army likely)
As for reduce cost of surrendering....bad skill imo, only useful in 4 player FFA where you want to keep your units and somebody else will hopefully weaken himself agai st that army. Remember that an opponent always has the option to decline your surrender
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PROJ
Known Hero
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posted June 16, 2015 06:42 PM |
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diplomacy, like necromancy, is just sort of a fundamentally broken skill. There basically is no way to balance it without changing the skill. The problem lies with the fact that creature retention is the most important commodity in the game, because you are hard-capped at how many creatures you can create. Because creature creation is hard-capped, any way that you can use to increase your creature count is basically the most valuable thing you can do. Diplomacy is a straight-forward way to vastly increase the size of your army (your most important resource) past its normal limits. Of course this is going to cause massive problems. Necromancy has similar issues, where growth of the army is realistically uncapped.
This is why necromancy has always been problematic: how many risen units do you account for when you balance necromancy? What is a 'normal' amount of risen units? You can balance through map design, but it severely limits the kinds of maps you can create with that one mechanic.
Likewise, if creature creation were un-capped, and you could just spend extra money indefinitely on more creatures, you would suffer the same problem with economic skills, where getting more gold means a bigger army, which again is your most valuable resource.
The only way I could see to fundamentally fix diplomacy would be to make it so that it caused creatures or a percentage of creatures (probably better to do a percentage because it allows you to scale the skill rather than making it binary) to flee or surrender without joining your army. Maybe the grandmaster skill could allow a small percentage to join or something, but it would have to be tightly controlled.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted June 17, 2015 07:22 PM |
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PROJ said:
diplomacy, like necromancy, is just sort of a fundamentally broken skill. There basically is no way to balance it without changing the skill. The problem lies with the fact that creature retention is the most important commodity in the game, because you are hard-capped at how many creatures you can create. Because creature creation is hard-capped, any way that you can use to increase your creature count is basically the most valuable thing you can do. Diplomacy is a straight-forward way to vastly increase the size of your army (your most important resource) past its normal limits. Of course this is going to cause massive problems. Necromancy has similar issues, where growth of the army is realistically uncapped.
(...)
The only way I could see to fundamentally fix diplomacy would be to make it so that it caused creatures or a percentage of creatures (probably better to do a percentage because it allows you to scale the skill rather than making it binary) to flee or surrender without joining your army. Maybe the grandmaster skill could allow a small percentage to join or something, but it would have to be tightly controlled.
I partially agree with this statement. It is true that a skill like Diplomacy needs a very delicate balance because it directly influences such a fundamental part of the game (namely army size) and hence can directly be the difference between win and loss. Furthermore, since this skill has an inherent snowball effect - once your army grows, other creatures will be more likely to join you, and so forth - there's potential for disaster. And disaster we have with the current implementation, as I'll elaborate below.
Firstly, though: I do think it can be balanced, but it's very hard to do when the skill comes as a 3-level skill - H5 really had a brilliant solution by making it a perk, because then it's only one level (got it, or haven't), which means you can make the effect significant without being devastating. When you have a skill that comes in three levels, you are faced with a dilemma however: Either you make each level of the skill significant, but then the accumulated effect of all levels is likely to break balance, or otherwise you make it so the accumulated effect is balanced, but then each skill level becomes insignificant. Either solution is bad for game.
I did get the beta to work a whooping two times, and both times I went for a diplomacy build (first time by chance, second time to confirm). Both times I snow-balled BIG TIME. Some points to consider are:
- Join chance seems rather high once you get the skill to advanced and expert level. Being Haven helped, because I could build the special building that increased chances.
- It was quite easy to get elite creatures, even powerful ones like Cavaliers and Rakshasa, to join an army only of cores. And we are talking 20 Rakshasa joining an army of 100 Marksmen + 100 Legionaires - i.e. a significant addition to army strength.
- The ability that lets creatures join for free can save you A LOT of money. Elites joining typically wanted ~5000 gold or more to join, so this adds up a lot. Ironically the ability seemed broken, in the game where I got it, I had to pay gold, in the game where I didn't (random skills), they joined for free.
- The fact that you can walk up to any neutral army and then just cancel engagement without consequences makes diplomacy completely broken. You can walk up to any neutral stack, no matter how powerful, check whether they join you, and then disengage if they don't. You can then come back later when you army is larger and check again, often they will then join you. Only problem is you never earn experience except from chests because you never fight any battles, but who cares.
- In my game on the small (2-player) map, the creatures I got into my army was something like: 40 Rakshasa, 40 Cavalier, 150 Legionaires, 50 Marksmen, 150 Justicars, 40 Abbots, 10 Celestials, 25 Earth Elementals + some Djinns and Kabirs. That is A LOT of creatures on a small map!
____________
What will happen now?
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted July 08, 2015 10:41 AM |
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Edited by malax83 at 19:14, 05 Sep 2015.
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alcibiades said:
Firstly, though: I do think it can be balanced, but it's very hard to do when the skill comes as a 3-level skill - H5 really had a brilliant solution by making it a perk, because then it's only one level (got it, or haven't), which means you can make the effect significant without being devastating. When you have a skill that comes in three levels, you are faced with a dilemma however: Either you make each level of the skill significant, but then the accumulated effect of all levels is likely to break balance, or otherwise you make it so the accumulated effect is balanced, but then each skill level becomes insignificant. Either solution is bad for game.
The name disaster fit well to what is happening to H7. I agree with your point of view of Diplomacy in all series, H5 resume the skill transforming in an ability. Even if we don t know which chances are implemented in this skill, we can also send a message (like specialization) warning Limbic after Beta 2 Closed (if it s still the case)
I have selected all abilities in Diplomacy which are the most appropriate to move into new skills. then i removed what i called the most uneffective ablities : Amnesty (damned i loved it, ..), silver-tongued and golden-tongued.
Then, Town planner and Eagle eye are removed from Economy and Paragorn cause nobody is real happy about these two abilities (from what i know...). Then i remove by default, what i suppose to be the less interesting.
I draw the two new skills Pragorn and Economy, and remove Diplomacy into an ability.
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Scream
Adventuring Hero
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posted September 05, 2015 05:51 PM |
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How can you POSSIBLY think that Golden tongue is under-powered or ineffective?
To me this is the most broken skill there is...
Play elves. Make the building that makes them join 20% easier. Upgrade diplomacy.
Go around recruiting units FOR FREE.
On the 2 player map, I was able to get TWENTY Dungeon Champions to join me FOR. FREE.
Do you know how much each of those costs? I believe it's 5k.
All I play is multiplayer, and there is a reason that this is the number one used faction.
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TD
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted September 05, 2015 09:07 PM |
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Actually there is fairly simple way to balance diplomacy and that is through economy. Even if it's likely to get creatures to join, you can't pick most if it's expensive enough. This is why there should never be skill like free-recruitment as it simply removes all the limits. Even without it I seemed to get most recruitments for free(I only played 2 games trying the skill though). Frankly I personally wish they lowered the towns income so player would be forced to fight for mines and increase their importance(and at same time make buildings cost more materials). I think 500/1000/1500/2000 would be good numbers for income from town-hall with the upgrades. It would make player think which creatures to recruit inside the town and also what to recruit via diplomacy. Golden tongue should simply give some 25% discount to recruiting, not make it free. That's my take on how to solve the problems with too cheap/easy town-builder and currently totally OP diplomacy anyway.
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted September 05, 2015 10:56 PM |
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TD said:
Actually there is fairly simple way to balance diplomacy and that is through economy. Even if it's likely to get creatures to join, you can't pick most if it's expensive enough. This is why there should never be skill like free-recruitment as it simply removes all the limits. Even without it I seemed to get most recruitments for free(I only played 2 games trying the skill though). Frankly I personally wish they lowered the towns income so player would be forced to fight for mines and increase their importance(and at same time make buildings cost more materials). I think 500/1000/1500/2000 would be good numbers for income from town-hall with the upgrades. It would make player think which creatures to recruit inside the town and also what to recruit via diplomacy. Golden tongue should simply give some 25% discount to recruiting, not make it free. That's my take on how to solve the problems with too cheap/easy town-builder and currently totally OP diplomacy anyway.
....
Snowball can t be prevent by only balance diplomacy with economy. I mean, exploring map is free into heroes series but in reality it costs reinforcements cause you re always threaten by your opponent.
I have no idea of how improve it better (to avoid the snow ball effect depending on how large the map is), anyway, free diplomacy is an heresy.
Good sense could justify a gap, cause all your ennemies stack on the map wouldn t join the same week - doing this only confirm your supremacy.
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