There are some great ideas in the posts which I'll comment on when I have time tonight. But for now I've been obsessively thinking about how vassal cities would help the game...

Homeland Cities and Captured Vassals

Been thinking alot about this now and as far as having the concept of homeland cities and vassal cities this would solve a hell of a lot of issues.

In many games like this where resources and strength are tied to the number of resource centres you control (cities in this case) there needs to be a mechanism in place to try and keep players on relatively equal footing with each other. If the conquered cities aren't seriously nerfed in these sort of games you end up with the game very quickly becoming unbalanced. Fallen Enchantress has tried to achieve this by resetting the population counter on conquered cities which did help a little bit but not enough.

For the sake of the exercise, let's play out a bit of a scenario. In this example we'll have a homeland city allowance of say four cities. Lets also say that we have no restriction on the number of outposts we can construct. Already we have an interesting decision to make. Do we keep our homeland cities tight together for protection or do we stread our cities out to get the widest area? Do we keep our cities around important resources or do we rely on outposts. Interesting strategic choices that would be different from game to game based on the world itself.

During the course of the game we build our four cities and start to level them them up. These are our main source of income and training. While we are doing this, the other players are doing the same - building up their four cities. Access to resources suppliments rather than overpowers the opportunities and so, to an extent, parity is fairly close across the different players.

Now let's look at what happens if you are at war and winning or losing cities...

First, we capture an enemy city. That player loses the production from that city so it becomes a long-term problem if they can't win it back. The city becomes a vassal on the turn we captured it and it establishes an immediate caravan to our capitol as per economic treaties. Let's say that there were two outposts attached to the city when it was captured. These also transfer across and are part of the vassal city. Let's also say that there was a couple of resources and a shard as part of this city. These resources and the income from the caravan are the only boost we get. We can't use the city to produce units or to build new buildings. An AI governor builds its own buildings within vassal cities now.

Taking a step back, what has happened in game-play terms? We have a slight increase in income and resources but not enough to drastically shift the balance of power. The game is still on a pretty even keel except for the player who lost the city. The game is still interesting and we have clean access to the conquered vassal city thanks to the road that was constructed - so if we want we can move more troops out there. While we can't affect the build queue of the city, we can station troops to help protect it along with the vassal city's own garrison. The benefit to us is slight but the penalty to the player losing the city is potentially quite substansial. So the loss of a homeland city is big, but the gain of a vassal city is slight. Balance is maintained and we still have an enjoyable game.

Now let's say that that the AI player recaptures that city back. Because it was one of his homeland cities to begin with he picks up again where he left off. The population is still there, as are the resources, production and income. He is back on equal footing but has just lost time and has lost anything he has in the production queue when the city was lost.

So what does this mean in game-play terms? It means that if you lose a city through oversight and can win it back quickly then you haven't lost a great deal - this mirrors history nicely as well. It forces the attacking player to think a little ahead to make sure they can protect the city while they press on with the war.

Now let's move forward quite a way and take our imaginary game into the 'late game' phase. We've been aggressive and have wiped out 3 other players with all their cities becoming vassals. So in total we have our four homeland cities as well as 12 vassal cities. There are two other players left and they haven't been aggressive and only hold their four homeland cities. We have a slight income benefit over them and have extra resources - but importantly our production capacity is exactly the same. We can produce units through our four cities at the same rate as they can through their four cities. Even in the late game we only have a bit of an advantage because of a little extra income and resources - but we are not miles ahead. We still have a game on our hands!

On top of all this, the vassal cities are looking after themselves so the only city management we need to worry about are our homeland cities.

I can't see any negatives to this approach because:

• It keeps realtive parity between the players.
• It reduces micromanagement enormously.
• It makes city placement strategic rather than a frantic land-grab.
• It keeps the map clean.
• It keeps the focus of the strategy on what you do with your armies rather than what cities you can build.
• It can be forgiving to players who win their cities back.
• It punishes losing cities more than rewards winning cities which keeps the game balanced.
• It solves the caravan micromanagement problem as well.

What if Champions charged for their services, and the fee was multiplied by their level? Would that help to limit their OPness (hehe I said pness!)? As far as I have been able to tell champs have charged be initially to hire them but no ongoing fee after that (or am I totally incorrect there?). Whereas my troops cost me no coin to make but are a drain on my already tight coffers until I scrap them or they die.

Seems wrong that pathetic troops are more of a drain on my resources than those hired godlings that make the troops essentially redundant anyway.

Stack of doom:

Do it like in fantasy literature: A party of heroes is good at quests and make a difference in battles but cannot overpower an army on their own. So armies of regular troops have to be stronger than a party of heroes.

City spam 'micromanagement hell' :

Let settling become 'better' with game progress: In mid-game new cities start with the bacis buildings...

Implement good CPU-Governors who could be turned on/off.

Hahaha fancy meeting you here!!

Very good post OP, was thinking about this myself last night when I realized I was going to win a game but still had 3-4 hours left to play. The game needs to remain interesting even at the late stages, but I'm not sure how to accomplish this. Most 4X games have this problem so solving it is non trivial.

I have a few ideas though.

* Being at war should give an exponential increase to unrest in your cities, so eventually you would have to make peace even if you could wipe out your enemies. Maybe make it really expensive in upkeep to have a large army running around on the map. You would then have to raise taxes which also ties in to the unrest bit. Scouts and single units should be low on upkeep. 

* Stack of doom is ok I think, but the AI should be aware of it. If the SoD is far away from an AI player you are at peace with, he might start a war just for the hell of it and grab a few of your cities. Which will cause more unrest and again force you to make peace.

* I'm not a big fan of the uber-champ that can wipe out armies, but I guess it is needed for the RP aspect of the game where champs should be able to do quests etc. Perhaps champs could be made physically weaker, but with a special ability that give them attack bonuses against "monsters and ruffians".

Okay let me clarify a bit on my Forward Base idea.

1. Will replace Outposts.

2. Not built by Pioneers, but instead built by your Sov or Champions at the cost of an Army unit.

3. Forward Bases can be built anywhere regardless of terrain type.

4. Forward Bases specialize in production of Army Units, replacing cities for this task.

5. Forward Bases can have additions built onto them, but always remain very small. They are place to shop, purchase more equipment for army units, champs, and sov..  Make adjustments to current army units and their size, and retiring old units you don't want to increase the Forward Bases production output of future Army units.

6. Building small, low Micro-Managements mini-cities may be a good way to prevent the over burden of too many cities. Often I've build cities close to enemies to have to launching point for war. This would make things a bit easier, and allow me to protect my main city with several well placed Forward Bases (Forts) protecting my borders.

7. Forward Bases have well armed turret defenses (and upgradable), so if they are attacked they can defend themselves reasonably well.

8. Forward Bases shouldn't be engaged by weak and minor monsters, seriously this is just annoying. If anything they should repel monsters from your borders.

Regarding Champions - simply split the XP, but NOT equally -> the unit (or champion) that actually kills a unit should get most XP, and others much less.

That way you either focus on smaller number of stronger champions, even if you put them all together in a group, or you try to share the kills (and therefore XP) evenly in which case you will have slower leveling-up of your chapms.

Well, the way Wesnoth does it is that the unit that reduces a unit or champion to 0 hitpoints or less is the one that gets the greatest experience.  Since it is hard (read impossible) to ensure that every unit is killed by the unit of yours you want most to get experience, unit levelling is controlled.  But it also adds a lot of micromanagement.  And if a similar system was used in FE, what about those heroes covered by the Death Ward spell (that resurrect once with 50% hitpoints)?

In my opinion, you don't really need a Stack of Doom. I tried playing the game as a RPG with just my sovereign (no settling, heroes etc.). It was very fun early on and you really had to be careful around those deadly stacks. But after a while he just steamrolls everything and the challenge in the game is gone.

So to summarize, I think it's fun walking around being an adventure and doing quest, but as it is a strategy game, something in the sovereign/champion handling and role in the game should properly be revised. Just my opinion.

The problem with this is it goes against the entire design of the game. Elemental isnt suppose to be some cheap Heroes of Might and Magic clone, its suppose to be a Strategy game combined with a Role Playing game not unlike Skyrim, it was designed from the beginning to have Adventuring heroes not Silent Generals whom only can only offer bonuses and support to armies.

I'm not sure if the goal is to shift the game more into the RPG sphere at the expense of the strategy component. One thing Frogboy mentioned a while back is that the team was very focussed on 'choice' and I guess this struck a chord with me. I felt that having 'choice' as a primary goal was ideal for this sort of game. Frogboy had also mentioned that many of the design decisions in War of Magic where about balancing at the expense of choice. I hope I'm not misinterpreting the gist of what was said or meant.

That was why I felt any suggestions we put forward should help enhance 'choice' and not just be limits to force a solution at the expense of 'choice'.

I agree with you (although I started off wanting to limit the number in stacks). I really like the idea of giving heroes incentives to take 'army' traits rather than punish 'hero' traits.

Indeed I misunderstood you. This would certainly make steamrolling the other factions more difficult. The faction you just killed is at a 25% loss of research and production though. Hmm.. What would happen if that kingdom made another city? Would that even be allowed? What if I razed the city? (which I would probably do to prevent guarding a city that doesn't produce the gold to defend itself). There are some merits to the idea but it comes with several issues that need tackling as well.

Admitedly I'm not entirely on board with limiting cities by a static ammount, so forgive me if I'm trying to poke holes in it. A corruption mechanic, making it cumulatively less profitable to expand would probably be better. In all likelyhood the conquering nation will be ahead more so than than the defending nation, but at least the defending nation recieves a small boost to their economy (from lowering the corruption), they are still capable of expanding and eventually making a comeback (maybe).

Additionally you could impose an 'unrest' period for the conquered city where it cannot produce income or troops for a while, and gives the defender a chance to take it back. Other mechanics like 'for the empire' that give temporary combat boosts to the defending faction when losing a city would help limit the steamrolling the attacking empire is allowed.

Perhaps most importantly there is nothing stopping the other nations from expanding (or conquering) while you are doing this, so they aren't necessarily out for the count just because you killed one empire.