[glob2-devel] Glob2s lack of recovery strategy

[Bradley Arsenault]

Globulation 2 has an inherrent lack of "recovery strategy". When one
person gains an advantage, their advantage stays, and generally leads
them to win. You can't do anything strategically smart to retake the
lead. Little map biases, ones that are generally too minute to matter,
can gradually pick up over time. And as well, if one player makes a
small, rather stupid mistake, like forgetting to build or upgrade his
hopsitals, and he attacks, hes as good as dead if the person hes
playing against is any good, because they will often retaliate, and he
has a pile of damaged warriors lurking about. And even if he does
defend well, he's still lost for the whole game, because presumably
his opponent has been able to continually build up during the attack,
while hes dwindling, trying to rebuild is so difficult and tedious
micro-management trying to remake all of his buildings, then upgrade
them. And the same time he has to monitor his opponent and his food
levels. Recovering is simply very difficult in this game.

One prime example of a little map bias is the way the water is
positioned on some maps, and how it affects resource growth. Best
resource growth occurs when there is a 15 distance of water in atleast
one direction. So resources grow better with this minimum size met. On
some maps, though, all the water for one player is sort of like the
following:

W W W W W W W G G G G G W W W W W W W
W W W W W W W G G G G W W W W W W W W

This is for some players, and for others its like this:

W W W W W W W W W W W W W G G G G G
W W W W W W W W W W W W W G G G G G
W W W W W W W W W W W W W W G G G G

However, I find resources grow much better with the first example than
with the second. Yet some maps use a bit of both, just to give it a
natural looking feel. So even though for both players the number of
resources they start with is the same, and the amount of water to make
those resources grow is the same, the way the water is positioned has
a big effect. I'm not saying simply change the maps to reduce this
bias, nor am I saying simply modify the resource growth algorithm.
Maps that look quite balanced can often be quite biased against or for
a certain player, and you don't notice it untill late in the game when
resources are running low, if infact, you make it that long.

So glob2 has a big lack of recovery strategy. Its build up, attack
first, you win, essentially. Two well matched players will often be
succombed to map bias. Simple mistakes can turn into critical turning
points, making the game difficult for new people, who make plenty of
mistakes, to become any good at. What we need is recovery strategy,
some new gameplay elements which make it easier for someone to recover
from a mistake, or a hard battle, or a small map bias. I'm not sure
how to do this, however, but if we intend to make the game mainstream,
especially internet play (where this is a problem), we need to solve
the issue.

Making recovery, or very fast build up, less tedious, is a must.
Things such as the ability to make a building straight into level 2 or
3, or the ability to repair a group of buildings all at once rather
than doing them one by one, or my personall favorite, when it tells
you that something is being attacked, but when you try to click the
space button and quickly put a flag their, you appear at some random
spot, and when you look up, it says something like "inn has been
finished" or "explorer under attack", and you have to search for where
your being attacked, while the enemy warriors level your once
brilliant city. Or perhaps someone gains an early advantage with
fruits, they steal a few of your units, you quickly turn on inn view,
but for some reason, your units keep dissapearing. You realize that
you don't have enough workers to keep your inns in full supply, as the
enemy has taken all of them. As you work desperately to make enough
workers to get your inns full of fruit so you can recover some units,
your opponent only continues to steal your units, making the situation
all the worse. You build more swarms (which is now quite a bit
harder), put them with 4 or 5 workers and hope you will get enough
workers just to survive. But whats this? Your opponent has a ton of
workers, and has built a huge, well trained army and defeats you.
Another prime example of how little things become big, or even huge,
in this game, *very fast*, and theres almost nothing you can do about
them.