Re: [glob2-devel] Discussion moved from the forum

[Andrew Sayers]

<snip - converting shouldn't be all-or-nothing>

There is an issue that your globs will only convert so long as the enemy
has space in his inns, and it's possible to deliberately flood him with
units he can't use.  On the other hand, I like the idea of a more
gradual process.

An easier way to implement this would be to have each glob look at the
inns which either belong to their team or are advertised as having more
fruit, but belong to an enemy team, then give each inn a score based on
proximity * fruit, and pick one probabilistically based on their score.

In practice, preferring nearby inns like that should make conversion
when inside your town quite unlikely.  It would add some flavour to the
fruit strategy - e.g. you might have just enough fruit to convert
attacking troops, but not enough to woo enemy workers, etc.  It would
also avoid a related problem, where if one of your inns has more fruit
than the others, all your globs want to use it.

<snip - what should Glob2 combat be like?>
> Combat in Globulation 2, as in almost every wargame, is highly centered 
> around localized superiority. Two globs against one, if the fight is 
> continued, will result in two globs against zero, rather than one glob 
> against zero.
> 
> Assuming both sides have defense towers, an attack gives you a measure 
> of inferiority: you have your warriors, but the defender has both 
> warriors and towers. This is further compounded by the enemy's ability 
> to have warriors emerge instantly from the surrounding buildings, while 
> your warriors must first travel.
> 
> If your warriors compound the problem still further, by having some of 
> them retreat and others fight, then you're quite at a disadvantage and 
> may lose the battle even if you have a vastly superior force of 
> warriors.
> 
> Basically what I'm saying is: Have mercy on the attacker!
> 
> One way to accomplish this that doesn't involve messing with hunger and 
> movable buildings, is to make warriors able to upgrade their 
> armor/hitpoints as well as their attacks. This would prevent late-game 
> combat from being such a massacre.

Combat later on in the game can also be very quick because warriors lose
10 points of armour for every piece of fruit they eat, so it's quite
possible to have every blow landed in a battle deal 50 points of damage.
In my opinion, this aspect of the fruit system is a good idea in
principle, but isn't balanced in practice.  I'd like to see what happens
if a piece of fruit only cost you 5 points of armour, or if the loss of
armour was relative to experience level, or something.  It's not a
logically neat solution, but in practice I would expect it to even
things up in the situation you're talking about.

        - Andrew