Some particular objectives on the map to conquer and/or destroy and/or protect.



The problem I see is that territories all things considered are very equal in terms of appeal, they all have like 2 anomalies, one or two villages, some differences in the resources but I mean that's it.



What I would love is to have some territories really stronger than others (so a game maybe less balanced because players close to this territory would have an advantage, but much more fun).



This would actually create interactions and movements around those precious territories, and thus would create an interesting environment for all the players. What is my strategy in those scenarios ? Do I let my two neighbours fight for this territory and try to focus on something else ? Do I propose to let my neighbour take the territory in exchange of resources ? And so on.



This would intensify the fun of the game in a good sense I think, strategy comes from well balanced things but the fun comes from random factors like that and thus each game is different from the others. Despite all the procedural effort put into the game, without strategic objectives to conquer or discover each game feels the same !



It would also increase the interest of the exploration, because you know if you are lucky you may find a very interesting territory for your empire. Right now I know that all territories are the same and it is quite deceptive from a player perspective.



So how to make a territory more interesting ? Well there are several solutions :



Easiest ones:

- Some non-starters territories on the map would have very good values of production and/or lots of anomalies.

- They could have several villages on top of that (more than 2).



Hardest ones:

- Developing new neutrals types of buildings on the map that would have a particular strategical impact if the territory is occupied. Those special and rare buildings would provide to the player some advantages which could be economic and/or military, and could be easily integrated into the lore of the game.



Basic example:



"Ancient Magical Forge": as long as you control this territory, this building allows you to create tiers 3 weapons/armours even if the technology is locked.

"Garrison": Decrease Industry cost of Military Units by 50% if units are created on this territory.

"Old Laboratory": Increase by 10 the science production for each population on this territory



.... and so much more ! At this point it is up to the designers, there are a tone of things to explore with that, the idea is just to create some "points of focus" on the map in order to make the game interesting and fun to play. Otherwise it quickly gets a bit.... boring after one month of play I would say.



When I came into this game I was expecting a more complex and more strategical version of Heroes of Might and Magic, and in many regards I was not disappointed. But this lack of randomness is a real shame in the end - no feeling of excitation when exploring territories, and no clear instinctive feeling about how should I optimize my choices of development according to a situation - because there are no particular points of focus on the map. So in the end it is just cook book / raw maths and it lacks fun.



In HOMM, you always have some areas which contains more precious things than other areas, whereas it is items or mines or cities. And it creates interesting choices along the excitation of the randomness ("Will I discover a super item here??").



Thank you very much for reading,



Kind regards

Totally like the bigger variety of the regions.



Maybe a simple way: Making the regions bigger and smaller? I was very confused the first time I saw this very geometrical "nearly-same-size" regions. I mean the regions have great names, but they give them no character. It feels like some child drawed the frontiers and not like a over the time developed region.



Hey, why not make the region sizes changeable during a game? Like: Each city has an own "influence" counter; over time regions with higher influence get hex-tiles from regions with lower influence. This influence counters are determined as an additional ressource or per "minigame" for each city.

Or something like that?

--------------------------

A little bit randomness would make it more quirky; I like that! Maybe not too much, because I think it`s also great fun to have the "power of control" :-P

Ayalin wrote:
Some particular objectives on the map to conquer and/or destroy and/or protect.



The problem I see is that territories all things considered are very equal in terms of appeal, they all have like 2 anomalies, one or two villages, some differences in the resources but I mean that's it.

I'm not sure about that, Ayalin: in my map, I have very different regions, both in size and resource appeal. Take a look at my cities screen:



HERE IS the settings I use in the world generation:

WORLD SIZE: HUGE;

WORLD SHAPE: CUSTOM;

CONTINENT SHAPE : CHAOTIC;

LAND PERCENTAGE: 70%;

NUMBER OF CONTINENTS: 1-3;

ISLAND ODDS : few;

CONTINENT SPREAD: CHAOTIC;

REGION SIZE: NORMAL;



Some suggestions to make your game more randomized and to have more interesting regions:

1) Choose the option for FREQUENT, BIG LAKES: a lake can ruin (or increase the value) of a terrain absurdly;

2) Choose the option for rare RESOURCES and LUXURIES: this will make more likely that you will have *THAT* region that have rich resources over ones with no resources...

3) Make ANOMALIES rare: once again, you will have a region that have THE anomalies agains regions that have none...

4) Make the map have BOTH hemispheres: this means that the poles will be weaker territories, against the rich tropical ones.

5) RIVERS: make them have SOME RIVERS;

6) Use the DEFAULT generation preset: the other options, NEW WORLD





There is only one city with DYES, and there is a single territory that has 1 quicksilver and 2 TITAN BONES, for example: with an empire that is starved in resources, that implies a significant variation... I'm not even bothering, anymore, about wine, for example, every single territory has one. But I'm aware that this is a quirk relative to *this* map... During other game emeralds were the commonplace.



I see terrains with much more strong suits towards gold / research / food, and all of these make for interesting approaches. And there are regions that are a complete poo: remember that is not enough to have a region that have lots of anomalies, they must be an early catch...

Not to mention that some anomalies are *absurdly* more valuable than others: for example, the life tree with it's huge food bonus, will mean that your city will grow very quickly... ON the other hand, regions with little food will give you a hard time for the city growth, generating very weak cities that contributes with almost nothing...

Even the disposition of the anomalies can make the difference between a crappy region and a strong one... Specially in the beginning of the game.

Also, some minor factions are much more suited for some specific strategies, making the colonization of those paramount: for example, to have a region with endless-ones (+5 happiness per minor village) is much more interesting than a region with, say, hurnas (+5% attack per village). Not to mention that drider and caecators are precious. Have one of those in your army and you will have an army with almost full health at all times... And don't come with the argument that you can always buy those at the market, because the ability to actually specify the equipment for these units can make the difference between "useless" and "useful"... For example I *always* have the necklace at my units, because of the mobility bonus. If I mix market-bought units with my common army, I will lose completely the mobility bonuses...



In my opinion, factors that make a strong terrain are:

1) THe first city tile must have lots of food and production for a quick headstart.

2) Science and gold are good, but sort of secondary, bonus.

3) A region with 3 villages is much stronger than a region with only one. If the village is from eyeless-ones, it is a *very strong* region, due to the possibility of eyeless-one assimilation...

4) A region with lots of glassteel and wine are much stronger, and should be colonized first.

5) Neighbor count and access to the sea can make a big difference in the mid game.

6) Rivers can make a big difference in city growth and tile count.

7) A region that got the villages pacified by quests instead of by attacks is absurdly more valuable, because of the headstart workers...

But the size of the regions seem to be circa the same? In spite of all the TERRAIN variation, which I like a lot. I mean, at first glance they seem all the same. I mean, by now the regions are more like "sectors" than "countries"...



Why not moveable regions? Brings a kind of "more history" in the game, I think.

shreddar wrote:
But the size of the regions seem to be circa the same? In spite of all the TERRAIN variation, which I like a lot. I mean, at first glance they seem all the same. I mean, by now the regions are more like "sectors" than "countries"...



Why not moveable regions? Brings a kind of "more history" in the game, I think.

I'm playing with the option "RANDOM" region size... And this appears to be giving a lot of variations in region size. Take a look at this map: compare Acareyn's size with Zhagorak's...





I agree that movable regions may be interesting... However this poses many questions... What if your region border expands enough to capture a minor faction village? You will have 2 minor faction types within the same territory... This will pose a lot of changes both in the interface and game rules..... And what if your expansion actually cuts other region in half? Will we have discontinuous regions? Or maybe two of them? But what if the territory that have been cut have no minor village?



I think this will mean a very complex change in the game mechanics as of today.

I think that discontinous regions would be a little bit more fancy, if that`s something that`s needed.



A problem could be the minor villages. Solution: The village stays, region gets additional minor faction. Does it really change a lot of interface? I mean, the villages don`t move, so only a BIG region gets MANY villages.



And yes, I think changes causes changes. But really a lot? I think it adds more than it changes. Besides, there must be a mechanic behind the moving of the regions; so this mechanic adds interface/rules, and the old things don`t get changed.



I think of an "inner-political" diplomacy system to manage the moving as a mechanic.



Reasonably this would be only manageable as an expansion(?)

shreddar wrote:
I think that discontinous regions would be a little bit more fancy, if that`s something that`s needed.



A problem could be the minor villages. Solution: The village stays, region gets additional minor faction. Does it really change a lot of interface? I mean, the villages don`t move, so only a BIG region gets MANY villages.



And yes, I think changes causes changes. But really a lot? I think it adds more than it changes. Besides, there must be a mechanic behind the moving of the regions; so this mechanic adds interface/rules, and the old things don`t get changed.



I think of an "inner-political" diplomacy system to manage the moving as a mechanic.



Reasonably this would be only manageable as an expansion(?)

Yeah, I agree with that... It's getting really to the point where an Amplitude dev's feedback on this idea would be welcome...

- Ayalin I agree with your observation that the regions are globally nearly the same : same bonus, same growth capacity etc. but changing that would need a profond transformation. For example, population growth should not be possible in ice or desert region, but it is, and all buildings (including farms...) can be built in all regions climate.



- New special item on the map could be very interesting, but it would not fix the global problem of regions and game similarity. In multiplayer there are already small rush to colonise regions when there are few grouped anomalies you know.

Re, thank you for your answers ! glad to see some reactions on that



First of all, I need to apologize for one thing : I did not see the option of 'random' region size (kind of missed it, thank you so much @abmpicoli) and I will definitely try a game with those other options activated and see how it goes.

Thank you also abmpicoli for your explanations about strength of territories, a few things look more clear to me now.



From other comments I can see that despite those available settings my initial statement still has some sort of truth in it.



The idea of 'moving regions' sounds interesting to me, although I think this would be a very complex thing to code and would be quite exhausting for developers. I am not an expert and a developer answer, as stated, would be the best.



I guess it is a matter of visual- all the explanations that were provided to me thanks to abm should be translated somehow in the game visuals and on the territory visual, thus a rich territory would not look so similar to others.



I stick to my idea of special buildings on certain territories that would give a very simple, big and unique bonus to the player- any thoughts on this idea ?

abmpicoli wrote:
I'm not sure about that, Ayalin: in my map, I have very different regions, both in size and resource appeal.

I agree that if you tweak the settings as suggested by abmpilicoli, you can get a lot of variety.



It may seem counter-intuitive but the best way to get the greatest variety is to choose HUGE REGION SIZE (or the largest option allowed based on world size). Because each map size always has the same preset number of regions, the generator will counterbalance those huge regions with quite small regions.



These are the settings I use on world size huge (8):





Your other suggestions like the magical forge are awesome and I'm all for more unique buildings that only appear once in the world.

I agree that while region size, region layout, and base yields vary widely, these differences become less important as the game progresses and city improvements push tile yield bonuses to ridiculous amounts.



Buildings that are more efficient in certain climates or can only be constructed in certain climates would be a good idea in my opinion. The Petra and Moai statues of Civilization V come to mind as examples.

The "neutral buildings" with powerful bonuses could be easily implemented as anomalies, though not all effects are easy to implement (e.g. temporary technology unlocks might not work).



I am not sure if buildings could be restricted to certain climates with our current modding capacities, but they could certainly be made to provide additional yields. Teaching the AI to use them properly may be more troublesome, though, as I am not quite sure how the AI evaluates which buildings to construct.

Powerful bonuses based on map locations, as mentioned, are reasonably easy, and I'd gladly try creating a small mod for that if I receive some suggestions for effects. However, since we can not implement new 3D models, sticking to existing anomalies would be better, especially the ones with approval bonuses, as those are much rarer than those without (especially the Golden Tree. It is labeled "unique" in the xml files, and I do believe I have never seen more than one in a single game.) The other anomalies that could provide powerful bonuses are: Life Tree, Steppe Soil, Earth Tower, Botanical Garden, Steel Stalks, Weaver Worms, Stasis Pillar, Earthspine, Spiral Rock Peel, Mychordia, Wizard Stone, Dragon Tree, and Oasis. Feel free to check the unofficial wiki for description, artwork, and screenshots for inspiration.