New Server Updates - Need Feedback

[Brekk]

Greetings everyone!

With the help of TalonSix, I now have a much easier way to view and work with the Alamaze code. Let me be upfront: I’m not a programmer, but with over 35 years in IT, I can read and understand the code quite well. This means I can now start making some modifications. All of these changes will be tested first on the new server so they don’t affect the main game or anyone else.
A couple of important notes. I currently cannot add new code, only modify existing values and logic. I’m still learning exactly what’s easy to change right now, but simple modifier tweaks are very doable. For example, increasing an Air Elemental’s Windstorm chance from 10% to 30%, boosting Lycan regeneration, adjusting kingdom bonuses, and similar adjustments.

I’ve asked before, but let’s make this official. Please reply to this post with a list of things you’d like to see changed or improved. Problematic mechanics, unbalanced abilities, quality-of-life issues, or anything that frustrates you during play. Drop it here. The more specific you can be, the better.

On another note, the new server is now up and running and so far everything is looking solid. Over the next couple of weeks, Olorin and I will be finalizing some kingdom spells, traits, companions and much more. Once that’s done, I’ll be rolling out changes across all kingdoms on the new server. I’ll be actively asking for your feedback on those changes before they go live.

Looking forward to your suggestions. Let’s make Alamaze even better together!

Brek\John

[Xerro]

Ok here is my polluted thoughts on the various kingdoms.
Overall military kingdoms cant afford as large of armys as wizards and semi wizards. They need a modify to maintenance somehow. IMO on average military kingdoms should be able to recruit and afford larger militaries. wizard and semi wizard kingdoms make up for this with better wizards.
1. Alchemist has lots of abilitys that require good agents and they start with standard agents. This could use a buff. Many of their alchemy abilitys need buffed to their effect to make it worth using. Big investment in orders and resources for small effect.
2.Amazons. Needs some tweaking to troop types like most military kingdoms. Overall pretty solid, yet not performing well, I think that is common in most military kingdoms currently and already being addressed.
3. Ancient ones. Very good one of the most winning kingdoms. Military a little weak but not a problem for them.
4. Atlanteans. The only kingdom with NO wins. They have poor magic poor military and below average agents. They need an identity other then a famous kingdom from myth. As I wrote about before making them an early economic power with early hidden ore and fertile fields may be a way to go. They probabbly need either much better military or magic depending on which way you want to go with the myth. And something to make them stand out more.
5.Black Dragons a LOT of great sugestions have been written about them. Dont think I could improve on those so I wont try.
6. Cimmerians A bit of an enigma. They have got some decent win numbers. However since they are overpowered in ice age games their numbers are decieving. Like most military kingdoms they need something to boost their military.
7. Dark elf a very strong kingdom. I am surprised they dont have a better win rate. They do many things well and often have to choose what to do on a turn since they can only issue so many orders. This is both good and bad.
8.Demon princes another powerhouse kingdom. No buffs needed. Although most things that can kill them dont work which gives them an extra advantage.
9. Death Knights everyones favorite nerf bat target. Nuff said about them juast hoping that the nerf zeal dont go to far and change them into the next bottom feeder.
10 Druid a perfect example of a wizard kingdom very fragile early on and mighty late game. Getting hidden ore at level 4 may be a bit rough.
11. Dwarf they need a 5th group badly. They have slow movement and very little magic movement. All which is thematically accurate and shouldnt be changed. That does make it hard for them to respond to threats once they have grown past 2 regions.
12. Elven they need better companions desperately. when you compare them head to head with the darkelf their weakness is glaring.
13.Elementalist needs better companions. I believe their lack of companions was to balance them having elementals. But the elementals were just not that strong to justify this. Overall very close to balanced.
14.Fairy folk. On paper they look good. I believe too many people try to play them as a slightly weaker dragon. And their defense makes them a vastly weaker dragon.They could use better movement as a flyer. As slow as their movement is I picture overweight fae wobblying around on wings that barely can lift them. They are very fragile and their higher then normal loses will continue to frustrate many players. But that is part of being fairy.
15.Forgotten. Another enigma They are quite strong in group to group combat and quite weak versus PC. They need something to boost them versus PC and yet not overpower them more in group to group combat. I think maybe having crack the sky as one of their few high level spells may do the trick. Maybe have it replace charm region as level 7 spell. The forgotten are unliked what are they doing with a charm anyway???
16. Free traders. Actually a quite strong kingdom. I have seen the peaceful kingdom be a military brute many a time. In keeping with their theme it would be nice if they could do with less military and depend on diplomacy more. I think that lowering their military and giving them access to the ultimate peace spell ancient interdiction could be a way to go.
17. Giants. There upkeep is oppressive. It is hard to recruit when you have to pay HUGE upkeep. Upgrading my defenses at my capital, improving my economy
raising wizards all MUCH harder then with other kingdoms. Also not getting dispel dome spell until 5th Makes them too easy to stop after turn 20 or so.
18.Gnome they are another enigma. Towards the end of the game they quite often have the strongest military partly because they have strongest economy. This takes them awhile to get going and when they do most of the time they dont have enough time to win the game. Is this something to be fixed?
19. Halfling playing them for first time currently and only played a few turns.so I dont have much of an opinion on them They do have an unintended defect. Their starting villages are hidden. One usually starts in a neighbors region. That neighbor cant achieve total control of their region and gets angry. Poor little peaceful halfing goes to war due to no fault or control of his own .He starts with a random predetermined enemy.
20 illusionist. Overall a good kingdom a little weak versus legendary capitals. New values on summons will probably fix that.
21.Lizard men. I think they are good. they were weakish but when nomad got revamp saurus revemp helped to shore up their military.
22.Lycans lycans are overall in good shape with military and abilities. However much of their success has a high amount of luck. How often do you get that lucky proc to get more units after a victory? How often do you change captured foes to allies? The randomness of this is staggering> On one turn I captured 6 enemies and 5 turned. At another point for 5 turns in a row I captured 1-2 enemies every turn and zero turned. The values on brigades is even worse. I am not sure what can be done but something to help the randomness of luck would go a long way for the lycans.
23.Necromancer a solid wizard kingdom
24.Nomad Wonderfull kingdom. Great Revamp. If this is an example of how thing will be after the revamp we will all be quite happy.
25. Pirates A little on the slow side to develop." A few extra starting resources help them a ton". Quote from ozzymandius from the handicap game where he got extra resources for playing them. A little hard to go pirating after the first few turns. Not sure how to fix that.
26 Ranger the cost on their falconry ability is way too high. Military needs some buffing also. Great job with spells that give scouting on early list.
27.Red dragon a LOT has been written on them also. They need ability to get bigger groups to deal with legendary. Never getting fertile field is also harsh for them.
28. Sacred Order. It has been suggested that they are too similar to the amazon. They have a great ability to only pay 50% upkeep on paladin troops. A great and yet limiting ability since you never know where war will take you. Maybe the solution is to make the order the champion of the humans. Extend the paladin bonus to include all troops recruited from PC.It may not be possible and would probably require lots of reworking. But it would make them more unique and add a different playstyle and strategy to this kingdom.I know that zealots make sense for them but having fear resistant troops in a stalwart kingdoms seems wrong.
29.Sorceror very strong has more troop types then most military kingdoms. Along with stronger then average abilities for a pure wizard kingdom. I think some of their companion types should be removed. Esp saurus.
30.Tyrant. strong 1 trick pony. Maybe too strong in the early game. Can easily crush a player out of existence early on. A new player may not return from such a brutal introduction. The lack of fertile fields is harsh. They are low magic and will develop economy slow any ways.
31.Underworld a little bit harder to quantify since they play so differently then most. overall not in need of much tweaking.
32. Warlock a solid wizard kingdom. They can have trouble advancing their troops. Since they need to get to elite for several of their troops it can be a problem..

Well my brain is guacamole now. Hope my insights and ideas are helpful.

[Tacticus]

Conceal Emissary Spell:
This spell is overpowered and unbalanced.
Multiple pop centers rebel or captured in a single turn. Keeping emissaries at all pop centers except capital and legendaries, consuming standing orders for maintaining status quo, for guard emissary orders, for level 10 agents recons, black owl totems, true seeing spells. Watch towers not effective. Keeping brigades groups at multiple pop centers also not sufficient.

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Teleport Army Group:
Precautions against those instant arrivals are keeping armies stationary at pop centers or repeatedly issue 732 encounter (which diminishes morale). No matter how strong, military kingdoms become weak against wizard kingdoms. Would be more stable game mechanism if this spell be reviewed, like taking two turns, giving an indication to destination region a gate is opening or teleported group needs formation has to stay idle a turn.

[Tacticus]

At middle stages of game, it is becoming too easy to raise high level emissaries, agents, wizards due to surplus amounts of food and gold. Economy loses importance.

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A feature suggestion; would be exciting if game duration is unknown to players ie +/- 1/2 turns instead of 40 fixed.

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Would be interesting if there could be an option to upload custom avatars for kings/queens or banners for kingdoms.

[Clueless]

Some suggestions:

1) Fix the intercept group order. Right now, an intercepting group may cross water and other terrain without calculating the cost for the kingdom. I remember seeing something about the previous programmer mentioning A-pathing. Looked it up and there's something here about it:

https://medium.com/@chitranshnishad27/us...cc4b766d30

2) Get rid of the Magic Immune: Death kingdom trait. Making a kingdom completely immune to certain spells/effects without a counteraction is against proper game mechanics. Having Magic Resistance for something is ok because it's something like only a 30% chance of avoiding the effect, but being completely immune and not being affected by something breaks game design.

3) Fix the order entry calculation for kingdom customization of 20 pts. Low importance but it's annoying.

4) Reduce the food/gold production throughout the map. Too much in resources nullifies value in developing wizards (for create gold/hidden ore) spells, and nullifies proper troop management (since seems there's plenty of food/gold to go around) that produces massive groups beyond control for others to deal with. Seems that too much in resource generation is causing kingdom imbalances. So, rather than modifying kingdoms to fit an overabundance of resources, just reduce the food/gold that is generated. Or, make it an option in the game queue to not create as many towns/villages in a region and/or reduce their food/gold production ranges to not be as high as they are currently.

more to come...

[Strongwill]

These are some good suggestions:

If you don’t want power shifts late in games eliminate teleport army group, army 10 max brigades. A limit to teleport will stop late game pop arounds.

I think we all like how the Nomads have been revamped, but if every kingdom is revamped the same then it will be boring.

Military kingdoms need dispel dome at P3-4. More attainable even with poor magic.

I (imo) think the immortal thing should be nixed, all kings and AN/DE should be in danger from agents and assassins. Just like every non immortal kingdom has to deal with.

DK has been beaten to death in here, but either slight nerf magic or military without nerfing the other. P9 for pit fiend not P6; 10 hell hounds max not 15 should slow these guys down enough. IMO

Military recruited troops need to be able to recruit more than 2 a turn without losing the pop control. Imo

I have more but most have been listed.

[mwigdahl]

I am too new to have strong opinions on game balance.  What I _can_ speak to is the new player experience:

Figuring out how to get started is not straightforward.  Between multiple websites and numerous forum pages, it's hard to get a comprehensive picture of the main things a new player has to do:

1. Get an account
   
2. Get signed in to the game picker
   
3. Find and read the rules
   
4. Play a tutorial game (which uses different rules than the rulebook you've been pointed to)
   
5. Sign up for a full game
   
6. Find and navigate the order interface
   
7. Find and read the starting info of your opponents
   

It would be ideal if all the resources (documentation, starting info, etc.) were in one accessible place, and if the game picker, account management, and the order system were a bit more integrated.  Currently you can get to the game queue from the order entry system, but not vice versa, for example.


The documentation (the rulebook and starting positions on the website) need to be updated:

• When selecting kingdom customization, some of the codes don't match between order entry and the rulebook, and the cost values are misaligned for some of them either in the validator or the back end. This slaps you in the face pretty reliably right up front in a game and it immediately makes you wonder what other bugs and documentation gaps there are.
  
• Some rules appear to be enforced on the back end but are not documented or flagged in the validator.  For example, apparently there are some regions where you can't recruit Damned.  Neither the validator nor the rulebook mentions this at all but I've had recruitment orders wasted and the turn results tell me I can't recruit in X region even though the turn validated clean.
  
• Similarly, some things are at least flagged in the validator but aren't in the rulebook -- Nothing in the rulebook I can find talks about not allowing Test for the Gift before Turn 3 (since the LI gets a starting Temple I wanted to get a jump on improving pop centers even though I couldn't divine until Turn 4), but the validator flags it.
  

The #1 quality of life issue for me is movement entry.  A couple small modifications would improve this immensely:

1. Constrain the first dropdown's contents to the legal squares from the group's starting area.  This is already displayed in the order entry interface so it should be doable.  Unless I'm missing something, the only thing that can change a group's location other than moving is intercepting or teleporting, and both of those are described as exclusive with movement and happen later in the turn order anyway, so this should not be a problem from a rules perspective.
   
2. When entering, leave all dropdowns editable until STOP is selected.  If the user changes a dropdown in the sequence, check and reset any succeeding dropdowns that would now contain an illegal location.  This would ensure minimum pain when correcting a move.
   

A general "nice to have" quality of life issue would be the ability to edit a "completed" order.  A small "Edit" button that reactivated the control for that order, populated with the last values you entered, would allow you to make changes easily without switching the command to something else and then back to the one you want, when you only want to change a destination or something.

One other weird thing I've run into at least 3 times in the short time I've been playing is a leader will die, and immediately be replaced by a new leader with the exact same name. It's funny, but probably shouldn't happen.

Hope those are helpful!

[mwigdahl]

Another area where the rules are confusing item is the "own two artifacts" ESO condition.  It apparently doesn't count kingdom customization artifacts, which would be nice to know before committing to that condition and having it rejected later.

[Xerro]

there has been a lot of chatter about teleport group spell. It is a controversial topic. If we are listing possible future fixes may I suggest one for the teleport problem. Have the spell be unable to teleport you on top of a PC. This would fix most of what people are concerned about.

[davekuyk]

I'll comment on the bottom three kingdoms in reverse order according to my ratings:

Atlanteans

IMHO, this kingdom should be retired until it can be properly reimagined or repurposed for a more-water focused map. Barring that, I believe this kingdom could be reworked to be somewhat more viable and also unique.

Water-based devout and political kingdom is the angle that could be explored.

To do this:

• Add the Dynasty trait (prince + influence)
  
• Add Devout trait
  
• Remove Healing trait (minor but out of place)
  
• Add Order trait
  

This puts them among the top political kingdoms.

They would remain at tier 4 magic.

When I look at the AT setup on the webpage and compare it to when I played the AT lat year, I see the spell lists do not match up. I am going to go with the spell list from my game.

AT wizards do not get the Fear spell; this alone potentially impacts them in every combat, PC and group, as Fear is one of the foundational spells. Without that, they don't get a Fear effect until Crack the Sky at p-9. 

I would give them Fear at p-2.

The other magic change is to allow them to Summon Water Elementals, perhaps at p-4, which is early, but fits the kingdom.

The companions are interesting in that the ones they have: Rohirrim, Hill Giant, and Centaurs, don't really make much sense. Unfortunately, the game doesn't offer many good options. There are no "Drowned" companions or "Deep Spawn", for example.

My suggestions:

• Remove all current companions
  
• Add Zealots (as they are now a Devout kingdom)
  
• Add War Machines (fitting for a kingdom based around order and feudalism)
  
• Add Trolls (yep, Trolls)
  

Why Trolls? They are a stand-in for "Sea Giants" or some such, which we don't have. I believe breaking the rule and allowing a non-evil kingdom to have access to Trolls is interesting and somewhat thematic. 

At the end of the day, we end up with a military that is below average in group-to-group battles but above average in PC battles.


Black Dragons

I have commented on them before: https://alamaze.net/forum/thread-16874-page-2.html; with some small changes, I'll paste what I have there here:

First, re-imagine them:

Once the arcane elite and noble ruling caste of dragonkind, the Black Dragons wielded immense magical power and governed through wisdom, mysticism, and ancient law. Their dominion ended millennia ago when the Red Dragons—warriors and enforcers—rose in rebellion, casting down their former masters in a brutal coup.

Forced into exile, the Black Dragons vanished into hidden realms, nursing their wounds and preserving their arcane traditions in secret. Now, cloaked in shadow and fire, they return from the long dark with one purpose: to reclaim their ancestral supremacy and reforge the world in their image.

Given this, look at re-schooling their traits:

• Dynasty (fits the "nobles in exile" theme)
  
• Secretive (exiled away, biding their time)
  
• Forethoughts (being in exile gives one time to think and plan)
  
• Foreknowledge (the dragons have their secrets - give them three artifact names)
  
• Spy Network (operating in the shadows)
  

Keeping:

• Evil (they are still evil)
  
• Magic Resistance Death
  
• Magic Resistance Sleep
  
• Rich
  
  
• Acuity
  

Removing:

• Ruthless (they are evil but lawful)
  
• Trackers (largely redundant with flying) 
  

Magic

• Change the kingdom to be a tier 2 magic kingdom (was 4)
  
• Early spells: Cold Darkness, Infuriate Populace, Summon Death, and Summon Specters (was only Cold Darkness)
  

Military

• Add Rocs to diversify the recruitment pool
  
• Allow them (and the Red) to recruit up to ten Wyvern
  
• Allow them to Summon Specters (flying undead)
  
• Retool the reinforcement schedule to be more in line with other balanced kingdoms: 2,2,1,2,2,1 (same as DA)
  
• Lower kingdom troop defense from "Good" to "Above Average" to reflect that they are not the warriors the Red are
  

Faerie Folk

I have some thoughts here: https://alamaze.net/forum/thread-16883-page-2.html

I'll summarize the changes that fit into what Brek describes as feasible.

Add the Acuity trait. This is thematic, as flying creatures should be less likely to be captured and troops are unlikely to be surprised.

Increase movement rate to a base of four in the plains and forest.

Focus the kingdom on flying creatures.

Remove the following summons:

• Minotaurs
  
• Iron Golems
  
• Ents
  
• Centaurs
  
• All other non-flying summoned creatures
  

Keep:

• Manticores
  
• Gargoyles
  

Add:

• Cockatrices
  

The Chimera troop in my game seemed underpowered, to the point that I didn't feel it was worth ordering its replacement once it was killed. This shouldn't be the case. I have some thoughts in the thread I linked, but for starters, I'd like the troop's offense and defense to be improved.

As a Flying kingdom, Faerie Folk characters should have a range of nine, just as the dragons.

I didn't mention this in the thread, but it fits the theme to allow the kingdom to get the Invisible spells earlier.


I may do the next three kingdoms (AM, PI, and EL), if I can find the time.