MastersForum

Zitat

We felt that with players choosing and customizing their home cities, random would be kind of lame. I mean, if you have a level 30 Dutch city and a level 2 Ottoman city would you really want the game to choose randomly between them? What if you didn't have an Ottoman city at all, and "random" chose Ottoman? Would it give you a baseline city? If you won the game would it gain XP? You see all the issues that would arise.

Plus, since you have multiple decks per city, the issue of "randomness" is kind of muted anyway. The Balance team have tried to come up with viable strategies for each civ. So far they've got 8-10 per civ, and that doesn't count minor variations. That's a lot more than the 3 promised by the basic boom/rush/turtle, and we fully expect people online to come up with other strats.

I liked "random" too. I just don't see how it would fit in to Age3 as it's now structured. And I think it's pretty harsh to say that losing this one feature makes it no longer an "Age" game. *sob*

Zitat

The home city works totally differently now from the posts you guys are referring to from months ago, when we COULD "dumb down" a level 25 HC to be level 10. That's no longer the case. Why? Because you don't just have a level 25 HC - you have a level 25 HC with several different decks that you can choose between. How does it dumb you down? Take cards out of your deck? Which ones?

Trust me on this. Ask the guys who've been playing it online with their home cities. The whole "average out" thing wouldn't work without months of effort and balance time, for a feature which is, frankly, pretty minor. Much as I, personally, loved random civs, I must say that all that effort would be much better spent getting ESO polished (for example).

It also goes totally against the thrust of Age3, which is to be loyal to a particular city and try to advance it as much as possible.

There is also an inherent great degree of randomness already functioning in the game in that your opponent doesn't know which deck you are using. In my opinion, one of the reasons for the interest in random maps in AoK was because each civ only had 2-3 strategies available to it. If you always played Celts, you always went for wood, then pumped out siege & woadies. Totally predictable. But if you are, say, British in Age3, your "Boat Boom" deck is going to play quite differently from your "Cav Rush", or "Native Alliance" decks. So the gameplay will be more variable both for you, and your opponent.

At least, that's our theory.

Zitat

Question - If I understood you correctly, does this mean that when a level 30 player go against a level 5, they're no longer "capped" at level 5 shipments?

Answer - this whole question sort of makes no sense anymore, with the new HC deck system. Let me try to explain.

You have a level 30 HC. I have a level 5 HC. Both of us have built a deck of 20 cards. My deck includes the starting 15 "free" cards, plus has the extra 5 cards I've unlocked. You, on the other hand, have built a deck (probably more than one) out of the starting 15 "free" cards, plus 30 others. So you can pick and choose the most useful cards for your 20 card deck from a selection of 45. (Whereas I just used all 20 of my cards with none to spare.) So you may have built a "Boat Boom" deck or an "In The Pocket" deck or a "Sandykiller" deck. Then when the game starts, you pick which of your decks you want.

During the course of a game, we'll both probably get the same number of Home City shipments.

Anyway, how do I tell which of my cards are the "level 5" cards, especially given that I might have chosen a totally different set of 5 cards from another level 5 player? Even though you have 30 cards, you might not have chosen ANY of the same cards I did. Perhaps I got the Pioneers card, and you didn't. You just never got around to it. How do we "cap" your home city? Or maybe you HAVE Pioneers, but not in your "Sandykiller" deck.

You can see why it's such a challenge to go random.