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This sounds great, like oh you have to have a certain level of defense to be able to win, but the reality is you only know if you have the right level of defense by seeing an economic building go down. At that exact moment you then know that you cannot recover since you will have less economy to work with. The houses may as well cause the loss slash screen like the castle does. You might survive that day, but the economic impact causes a slow-snowball where you will lose in a few waves due to not having the upgrades.
Its a fun game. I really like it, but I wish the economy was like in the castle itself rather than external buildings. Watching the big ogre smash a house is just instant concede which is a bummer.
And there are perks to do things similar to what you are asking, just take those if it's that big of a deal. That the game is fairly winnable while sometimes being challenging, and letting a lot of different playstyles work for replayability and such, is already quite commendable for a tower defense game. But again, the game does have some weaknesses.
This kind of economy balancing is a design feature common to many games in the tower defense genre.
This is where the restart from previous level feature that they have now built in will be very useful. (Keep trying various strategies to optimize economy as much as possible).
I had that idea a long time ago. That's why enemies drop gold at night that you get no matter what. So in theory we could definitely have enemies drop more gold at night, but that would come at the cost of your own economy feeling less powerful and your own economy choices mattering less (and having to re-balance all levels of course). E.g. imagine building five houses just to have fifteen gold dropped on you at night. At that point the economic stuff you build would feel less impactful and I'm not sure if that would help to make it "more interesting" as it is essentially making certain decisions by the player less important.
I personally feel like the current balancing is already a somewhat decent compromise between the two extremes. That is not to say I don't see the problem. I do. Just not sure what would really be a good solution to it. Anything I can think of is a compromise that compromises a different part of the game. A bit tricky.
The problem is that this is partially required for balancing. For example if the mills would still give money no matter if they are destroyed or not, there would be no point in even building houses at all. We need that risk reward of "do I want to get income from a riskier source that might not give any income at all if I lose it or do I build some safer houses in the base"?
However now that I spelled it out, maybe houses always giving income no matter if destroyed or not would be a good idea to move things in the right direction a bit more. Thinking... thinking... yeah, I think I don't see any big downsides to that. We might give that a go.
If you have any more ideas to reduce the snowballsyness while ensuring the risk reward system and the importance of player decisions stay in tact, don't hesitate to let me know. I'm definitely on the lookout for those kinds of ideas.
Well i think it's a little hyperbolic to claim that losing houses = loss
I've had plenty of games where i lose 20~60% of my houses/economy building a couple nights and still managed to win with a large margin, though adding modifiers gives you less and less leeway, but it's not like you are intended to win with every modifier on at once, i imagine.
Personally i'm not convinced houses should give even if they are destroyed. I think it should either be a castle upgrade (the one that upgrades a house/night), a perk, or an advantage of upgrading them to level 2 (giving you 50%? 100%? of the gold you'd gain). That or there could be some special economy buildings that produce money even if destroyed, which could maybe replace some of the current houses. Perhaps houses could even have upgrade paths between different types like:
Gives +1 gold and still provides a single gold when destroyed
Gives +1 gold and gains +50~100% HP, maybe drawing enemy attention when nearby.
Gives +1 gold and heals and speed boosts units and buildings nearby for a tiny ammount when destroyed
Gives +1 gold, then gives an additional +1 gold if you lend it 2 golds before a night and it doesn't get destroyed in which case you might recoup only part or none of the investment.
Castle perk for upgrading houses would perhaps only upgrade as the first path.
Not the most interesting ideas but a rough example.
The way other TD's discourage going full economy is by implementing some sort benchmark along the way. This could be either a very strong opponent which just mostly absorbs damage and gives a reward depending on damage dealt or something like multiple small and fast creeps which drop gold coins when killed and can't be efficiently killed by the hero alone.
Adding such "bonus" waves would make the non-economy build more viable. To compensate the overall increase in gold, the difficulty would have to be increased as well.
Right now I just build houses and farms the first rounds and kill the creeps with my overpowered hero. After some time the economy makes the player too strong.
Sure but let's not forget that that is how you're supposed to play the game. And if you are playing properly and well, it's normal to win. You *are* supposed to invest in economy as much as possible. The entire point of the gameplay is for the player to find a balance between economy and defense. And then to try to optimize your defenses as much as possible so that you can push your economy as far as possible. Though i'll admit i wish there were more buildings like the castle and the blacksmith where you can spend money to build up toward good upgrades.
But if it feels too easy, the way to solve that is to increase the difficulty, not changing core mechanics that are working just fine and are in a good spot balance wise.
Which is why the game has plenty of modifiers, including some that impact economy. Several modifiers very much act like the "benchmark" you speak of. Those things are already in the game. Just use the modifiers. Then your economy won't "make the player too strong".
And if that's not good enough, then suggest new modifiers. Some that affect your income, or houses, or hero, etc...
You already get punished hard for losing economy buildings with the modifer that doesn't heal you up fully after each night. Just one example.
Most economic buildings and upgrades encourage you to take them as early as possible.
For example the free level 2 house per round. You should take it as early as possible and have at least 1 lvl 1 house around every round.
If you want to change the balance, consider buffs that should be delayed. Like every house generates 1 extra gold next round. You want a buff like that once you have many houses and can save it for later.
Alternatively if you want to really alter the balance, you could scale the difficulty (via costs or enemies) based on the total gold gathered. It could be explained as inflation for costs. Scaling with enemies could be explained as rich lands attracting more raiders (assuming that's what the enemies are).
PS: Loving the game so far. Keep up the good work!
@puschit: consider 2 houses are harder to take down than 1
& 2 houses could be build on different roads (early on you might have to give ground on 1 road)
& if you lose 1 house, you still have the other
& if you increase the price, you also buff the HQ upgrade that upgrades houses for you
So the equal cost seem okay to me.
Edit: Another idea is to reverse the HQ income instead of 1 gold per level you get 3 gold at level 1, 2 at level 2 and 1 at level 3. That way advancing would lower income slightly. Not a huge deal but it does slow down snowballing a tiny bit.
So, while 2 houses may have more HP than a single unupgraded one, that doesn't matter much because it would be crazy to use my resource generating buildings as meat-shields. That's what all other buildings and units are for. And if I feel adventurous and want to play a high risk high reward strategy with resources close to the enemy, then I build mills/farms instead of houses.
It just doesn't add up.