Game Balance: Diplomatic Units

Diplomatic Units are unbalanced, I agree.  They are cheap, damaging, and very hard to defend against (hmm... could describe some people I know.)

Option #1 helps with the Cheap part.  If I knew I was potentially throwing away a bunch of saddles, I might think twice about sending out a blind theft mission.

#2... for gameplay purposes, doesn't this basically mean that diplos become a defacto military unit?  I like the idea for the purposes of balancing, I guess, but if a thief succeeds, he succeeds, if he fails, he dies, is kind of in-line with the concept of the definition of a thief.

#3 Makes sense, but has the potential to again, just turn diplos into a military unit.  As you say, though the weighting could easily unbalance things, so care would have to be taken to make sure lowly-scouts don't become uber-assassin killers.

#4 50/Thief is probably too high, but bringing them down to the same as military units, sort of makes them... military units.  Not sure the point of a Thief is, if they are always discovered by small numbers of defensive diplos (see option 2) and carry the same as Military.  Other than the option to take advance booty, they might as well be Protectors.
 
...  Haven't thought through Saboteurs enough yet.

#7 - Seems like a revenue opportunity rather than a game balancer.  Same outcome, more money spent. 

#8 - I think this is a great idea.

When do I get my hat?

While I agree that diplomacy is somewhat unbalanced, this game heavily favors defensive play already.  "Unbalanced" also means "volatile," and that can be a good thing.  I would not wish to see new changes that overcompensate.

In particular, I think JUST doing number two (calculating diplomatic losses on both sides) would be adequate change for the central, but being the wordy analytical type I am, I'll elaborate and note where other adjustments present benefits.

1) Their cost is already made meaningful by the number required to defend yourself and the gold upkeep that accrues.  This change is dangerously likely to make into units "too expensive to have" those which were previously "too important not to have."  This will carry into #3.

2) It is indeed very strange that diplomacy is an all-or-nothing proposition, and for the attacker only besides.   I would like to see a "battle outcome" calculation that favors the defender, but causes casualties on both sides IF the attack is discovered (and then success depending on that outcome).  If it fully succeeds, I would not see the defenders already insufficient forces dwindle more, and it wouldn't make sense for conflict to always occur anyway.  After all, the objective is generally intel/subterfuge and with most types of attacks, one expects a chance to be completely undiscovered.  That can't happen if the mission breeds casualties.

3) I very much like the system the way it is.  It promotes diversity and provides more vectors for assault.  Such a heavily defense-favoring game as this really needs those extra options.  Letting diplomatic units defend against everything would just guarantee that everyone is far more capable of defending against everything than they are of attacking against anything.  If anything, I'd like to see military presence contribute to defensive value, but by a smaller order of magnitude than the proper diplomatic unit.

4) I really hope this does not get nerfed.  If anything, military units should be allowed to carry more.  10 base resources per unit is a joke and again makes acts of hostilities that much less worthwhile...military units are today more costly than farming can recover, and even cavalry have no greater capacity.  The commander upgrades to carrying capacity operate by percentages, which applied to a base of 10 gets you nowhere.  Furthermore, the issue is more with advanced resources in general (i.e. as they apply to trading in caravans as well, etc.)  Perhaps it is they that should be altered to take up more than one unit of space.

5) I believe saboteurs are already incredibly weak, especially for the tech level they require.  If anything, advanced saboteurs should have a small chance of bringing down a targeted building level by a level if the building was recently spied successfully.

6) Are you suggesting that paid players *should* be able to escape an attack that non-paid players cannot?  This is already a serious problem with building construction, and others of my alliance were speculating that construction completion would be removed from the prestige options when it became clear how profoundly advantageous and unfair this benefit is.

7) Ah, yes.  This would be much more reasonable.  And a much better answer to #6 would be in this form.  Spend to halve research time.  In both cases we're finding cause for open-ended spending to advantage, so I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere, that I hope for sanity's sake the spending of prestige gets capped.  Almost any cap will do provided it's one that some people would actually reach, though one that sets at least a remotely reasonable limit on true cost would be best (i.e. something like 20 euros per month or something...lower would also be good).

8) It sounds a little overly complicated.  Instead of introducing so many branches, why not instead have one new sub-school that targets a predefined set of the most troublesome units, such as saboteurs, advanced thieves, assassins, and military assaults?

I may have original ideas later, but must run to class at the moment.

Just want to add 1 thing about prestige points.
People who dont use prestige points are offcourse against it and try to nerf it to doom.
People who uses prestige points want to keep what they have offcourse.

Just my 2 cent about number 7.

Have been thinking on this for a little while now especially re thieves and sabateurs.

Edited by Sarky - 25 Mar 2010 at 11:47

Am loving the suggestions so far.

Keep them coming, and I'll try and distill it (over the weekend) into a specific proposal that we can then look at.