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Misty Mountains Speculations and Questions

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Garlodur:
It seems Smaug has stirred up the interest of many who would see him and his gameplay improved, with the amount of proposals that are made, most with structured reasoning, but I feel that the ET has not yet been convinced. Yet it is difficult to know how they will create the Misty Mountains faction and how big of a role Dragons play so far. It makes building strong proposals difficult as we can only guess what line of reasoning they follow.

I see you have put some thought in this proposal, which is always appreciated, but I think you failed to consider the implications of your proposal if it were implemented. Let me explain below.


--- Zitat von: NoldorSithLordsShipwright am 29. Jun 2017, 08:05 ---
III. The Dragon Hoard and the Dragon Tribute System

As reported, the old tribute system, designed merely to keep the great dragon in play, proved prohibitively expensive and Smaug ended up underused.

The Tribute System I propose is meant to enhance Smaug and all the dragons you will recruit from your lair, but will not carry the risk of the dragons walking away from you if you fail to pay up, and will allow for weaker base values.

The Dragon Lair, in addition to being the place for recruiting your lovely and devastating fire breathers, can be upgraded to a Dragon Hoard and will then be equipped with tribute abilities of varying strengths, but for the sake of balance will also have a corresponding drain on your economy. The Hoard upgrade must be necessary to recruit Smaug (as it was Erebor’s obscene treasury that brought down the Calamity upon them.)

Gather Hoard: Cost: 3000. Upgrades the Dragon Lair to a Dragon Hoard, creating piles of gold around the structure. Allows use of Tribute Abilities. Leaves 2000 gold when destroyed.

Tribute Abilities

•Minor Tribute: A small portion of our income is given over to the dragon hoard. Amused with our offering, the dragons offer slightly more of their power to our cause. Allied dragons and Smaug have their combat experience gain boosted by 25% for 15 seconds. Allied resource buildings lose -15% production for 15 seconds.
o   Activation Cost: 375
o   Cooldown: 30 seconds
•   Moderate Tribute: A moderate portion of our income is given over to the dragon hoard. Pleased with our offering, the dragons offer moderately more of their power to our cause. Allied dragons and Smaug have their combat experience gain boosted by 50% and have their costs reduced by 10% for 30 seconds. Allied resource buildings lose -30% production for 30 seconds. Scavenger effects yield -10% less income.
o   Activation Cost: 750
o   Cooldown: 2 minutes
•   Major Tribute: A substantial portion of our income is given over to the dragon hoard. Well-pleased with our offering, the dragons offer much more of their power to our cause. Allied dragons and Smaug have their combat experience gain and attack damage boosted by 100% and have their recruitment costs and recruitment time reduced by -25% for 60 seconds. Allied resource buildings lose -50% production and Scavenger effects yield -30% less income for 60 seconds.
o   Activation Cost: 1,500
o   Cooldown: 8 minutes
•   Magnificent Tribute: All of our income is given over to the dragon hoard. Driven by our offering, the dragons offer all of their power to our cause. Allied dragons and Smaug have their combat experience gain, attack damage, and ability recharge speed boosted by 200% and their recruitment costs and recruitment time reduced by -50% for 2 minutes. Allied resource buildings lose -100% production and Scavenger effects yield -90% less income for 2 minutes.
o   Activation Cost: 3,000
o   Cooldown: 32 minutes

I hope this reflects both their indolence and the lengths they will go to for gold. Without much incentive (i.e. a share of your income) they have little reason to care for your cause, but once their greed (or their wrath) is invoked, they are more terrifying than hurricanes.

--- Ende Zitat ---

The main fault I see concerns the cost of it all. You dislike the old system for how expensive it is, which made Smaug barely used. Now I must admit I do not have the exact data of how the Tribute System was in 3.8.1.. Regardless, I must say your proposal proves very costly indeed in many ways: the pure construction and recruitment costs, the negative impacts on resource production inside the tributes, and the fact how much the Dragons' power is tied to money.

The outpost itself costs either 800, 1200 or 2000, following ET's logic in existing examples. I believe the Dragon Lair will end costing 2000, bringing it on the same level as the Border Stronghold and the Ered Mithrin Bastion. Then the upgrade to a Dragon Hoard costs 3000, and the Dragons you recruit before that are not even at their full potential (even though they are likely classified as Elite Monsters, costing 1200 without probable implementations of cost reduction). But then to recruit Smaug at 3000 on top of that requires the Misty Mountain player to gather 8000 resources that he cannot spend on units, upgrades or other heroes.

I am in favour of reducing resource production as you suggest it, but with many adjustments. I like how you implemented the idea that money flows away to the Dragon Hear rather than your own pile of resources. Nonetheless, the impact of such resource production is that your economy will receive a big hit, and it disadvantages you if you don't manage to use the full extent of the increased Dragons' power. This makes for an interesting strategy, yet only feasible in the hands of extremely good players who know how to time this. If and only if it was chosen to implement this system for casual players too, it needs a more practical buff at the cost of less resources.


--- Zitat von: NoldorSithLordsShipwright am 29. Jun 2017, 08:05 ---You’ll notice that not insignificant parts of your income are taken away by choosing to pay tribute, forcing the player to choose between increasing the strength of the dragons and filling out your army with more orcs. The activation costs are meant to represent the first tribute over the tribute time; you could think of it as the down payment. The cooldowns are to prevent spamming of the tributes, and represent your economy recovering from the strain of appealing to dragon greed.

--- Ende Zitat ---

Now I see that your proposal is actually aiming in this direction of making your economy suffer, but you should make these thoughts explicit, and provide arguments why this makes for an interesting mechanic in YOUR point of view. Only then we can see the whole picture and debate the topic. ;)

Good job so far! I hope this was constructive enough, else I will work on that.

NoldorSithLordsShipwright:
It was very constructive, Garlodur. Thank you for your input.

dkbluewizard:
This may be a dumb question, but outside of Smaug and the Moria Goblin Chieftain--will there be any other heroes able to be recruited from the Moria citadel? I thought I heard the Defiler and Bolg were going to be from Gundabad, Bill, Bert, and Tom from a converted troll cave, and the Great Goblin from the Goblin Town outpost. So will we get only two characters plus the scout hero for Moria?

Walküre:
Yes, I think that Moria won't have many heroes at disposal, because of its preponderant role in warfare and as the prime base of the faction. Perhaps, a Beta Tester who had the privilege to play with the Goblins, back at that time, could provide some insights. You should nonetheless consider that those official articles are now almost three years old. Many things may have changed and many other might in the future.

Isildurs Fluch:
I like the idea to get access to Smaug for something like 3.000 in the Dragon-Outpost, but than have to pay to keep him, this shows Smaugs independence from everybody. He just fights with you if he get´s something in return.
It also is a good factor of balance. To integrate Smaug authentically he has to be very powerfull. Normally this would mean he is very expensive aswell and thus limiting his appearance on the battlefield.

For me the system seems to be a bit complicated, I have another idea to get a similar effect:
The tribute-system is explained in a passive slot in the Dragon-Lair. The building has a negative ressource-production and is costing you over time. When it is destroyed it spawns a certain amount of ressources as treasure which increases over time, therfore making it more and more attracttive for the enemy to destroy it.
So if the player wants to go for dragons he has to defend this outpost very good, otherwise he is risking to donate his enemy his own ressources making this a risky strategy, but the power of the dragons should be worth it.
To avoid the situation, that the player is just building the Dragon-Lair to build Smaug and than destroy it to avoid the ressource-penalty, he loses controll other Smaug, when the building is destroyed.
Smaug becomes a neutral creep atacking everybody including the own units and buildings and dissappears after a short while.

Concerning Mountain-Giants:
I never liked the unit, because I think it´s a misinterpretation of the lore. Giants are in contrast to Trolls a very mythical unit, which isn´t really connected to Sauron or Morgoth. There is even a myth, that the whole Misty Mountains are one dead Giant if I remember it right.
It is also said, that Trolls are Morgoths depraved interpretation of the Ents, that means there should´t be a even bigger evil unit than Trolls. If anything they should be part of the spellbook.
I´d like the idea much more to have access to other Troll-races than cavetrolls through the other outpost, like Snow-, Hill- and Stone-Trolls. The -Stone-Trolls actually could use a modell based on the old Mountain Giants and fulfill a similar role.
With this the Misty Mountains would be the second factions with a focus on trolls even revieving the old Angmar-Trolls, but with a totally different system. Instead of using a centralised upgrade-system unlocked by the main-hero, they have access to another three troll-units with different functions regulated by controling an outpost and abdication of dragons.
It also matches well with another concept of mine about different troll-armours for the Mordor-trolls (link is under my banner).
I´ll post a concept to this topic very soon  ;)

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