Balancing: Inns!

[Snezak]

So, I've been thinking about some balancing issues that IMHO the game suffers, I found some, but, one of the most cruical ones is perhaps the Inn.

By this time, most pro players probably start their game by hunting down an Inn, because it gives something that simply breakes the natural flow of the early game: A full fledged tier 3 unit.
Having a tier 3 unit in early game, basically gives the player an adventage of clearing out resource sites almost without loss, and most importantly, it gives the player an XP farming tool.

The chances are the tier 3 unit wont die on the small resource sites, and common or strong dungeons. Then he gets the gold medal, and you can just faceroll on the harder dungeons. Lets not forget that you can always buy another tier 3 unit, at any time that pleases you, and the gold you get from the resource sites and smaller dungeons easily compensate the cost of the T3 unit.

So basically in theory you can have T3 unit at turns 1-5 that can potentially farm you up to lvls 6-7 without the risk of losing your heroes or even your initial units. That is if you get an Inn near you, if you don't, well a bloody shame on you, you'll just have to play the game as it was intended! Horrible, isn't? It might cost 310-340 gold, but we all know we have that and more at early game, since all the gold and treasure chests lying around are easy to get.

And I can think up quite a few solutions to the Inn problem:
1. You can only buy units from the Inn when the Inn is in your domain (of course that means you can just build a fort near it and buy your precious T3 units, but at least you'll have to devout your money to that cause, and that will hamper and delay your game).
2. Remove the T3 units from the Inn (the Inn would still be usefull since it still allows you to instantly get units you most likely still cant produce in your towns, to refill you stack).
3. Make the cost and the UPKEEP of the units in the Inn higher (that way you'll need to think twice before you decide to buy a unit at the Inn, since it could potentially ruin your economy.)

Also, I remember I had a game where quite a neat tactic ws used with the Inn: A Crow scout landed on an Inn and baught every single unit out of there, so not a lonely Crow scout suddenly became an almost full stack made of T2-T3 units. I can just imagine the hilarity of the situation: The crows negotiate the price with the mercs "Caw caw caw", "No I said 330g you dam crow!", "Caaaaw caw" and then he pulls the money out of his.... wing?

In conclusion: The Inn is the breaking point of the natural flow of the early game, it gives you something that by no natural way you should have in the early stages of the game, and all for a very small price, that is if you get lucky to have an Inn near you...

-Snezak

[Ueffe]

The crow-problem could be cleared, if only heroes would be able to hire troops in an inn...

[avl8]

Thank you for the tip!

[Bioshyn]

just posting because of my avatar, used to have jace, but he became too common :)

also in game of thrones crows are carrier pigeons, lore fixed

[BBB]

OP has a point. I feel I need to aggressively creep and inn raid just to stay in the game. I think a simple solution would be a timer for the units, by which I mean the following:

Turns 0-10, only t1 and irregular units available.
Turns 11-20 T2 units make an appearance.
Turns 20 + T3 units show up.

Imho, the extra Cavalry at that stage would be very nice to have, but not game changing.

And you can have your own T3 out by turn 20, if you plan it well, but T3 from Inns would still be useful at this point.

[WhiteKnighted]

I'm considering turning off visit structures (i.e. inns) in game settings just for this reason. Solves the problem quite neatly, though it's a shame to have to do it. I like BBB's suggestion, or Snezak's idea of increasing the price.

[Snezak]

BBB
That's actually an awesome idea, good thinking! I think that would be the perfect solution.

[sikbok]

Hi, just added this to my feature request list.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by Bioshyn:

just posting because of my avatar, used to have jace, but he became too common :)

You could be painting your own avatar.

<----

That makes it unique.

Or, if lacking in art skills, you could hire someone who can paint their own avatar.

<----

[Demiurge]

Originally posted by avl8:

Thank you for the tip!

lol

[Sunicle]

I don't have so much of a problem with the current inn. Only the units I'd like to be less predictable. It's always 4 units, one of which will be a t3 unit, so you know in advance what you'll get if you enter an inn.

There doesn't always need to be a t3 unit in there, although occasionally to find a hero in there would be nice.

I don't find it disbalancing to find an inn early. It changes the game, but more things change the game, like Convert for Theocrats, which can also give you t3 units only after a couple of turns - level 5 is all they need.
Or haste berries at a few favourable places; allowing you to meet and snap up many towns early game.
Also to start with the ability to summon wisps, cherubs or spy drones makes quite a difference to the early game.
Or on the negative side; you can start underground with just swamp around you and have to spend several turns just to get somewhere.

If there would be an extra defensive unit on an inn, I wouldn't mind that at all, but extra rules like certain units only appearing after a certain turn would not be fun, it would just lead to boring time management. Changing upkeep rules would lead to things like you needing to check which unit originated from where, to keep our inn-born units with you hero that supports them at half salary. That's not interesting gameplay but boring micro-management.

[Mdaddy924]

i think it would be cool if they added a completely unique cast of merc units inside the inn. like some sort of souped up version of regular squads with randomly generated names(to help keep track of them) and unique abilitys. ie. a storm sister called Eijja "Thunderhand" with the horned gods call thunder ability.

[Demiurge]

Originally posted by Mdaddy924:

i think it would be cool if they added a completely unique cast of merc units inside the inn. like some sort of souped up version of regular squads with randomly generated names(to help keep track of them) and unique abilitys. ie. a storm sister called Eijja "Thunderhand" with the horned gods call thunder ability.

I like this idea, unique merc units would make much more sense, and it would be a lot cooler too.

[Snezak]

Originally posted by Mdaddy924:

i think it would be cool if they added a completely unique cast of merc units inside the inn. like some sort of souped up version of regular squads with randomly generated names(to help keep track of them) and unique abilitys. ie. a storm sister called Eijja "Thunderhand" with the horned gods call thunder ability.

The point is to balance out the Inn, not make it even more OP.

Though, I'll admit it, the idea is nice.

[Snezak]

Originally posted by KillingMoon:

I don't have so much of a problem with the current inn. Only the units I'd like to be less predictable. It's always 4 units, one of which will be a t3 unit, so you know in advance what you'll get if you enter an inn.

There doesn't always need to be a t3 unit in there, although occasionally to find a hero in there would be nice.

I don't find it disbalancing to find an inn early. It changes the game, but more things change the game, like Convert for Theocrats, which can also give you t3 units only after a couple of turns - level 5 is all they need.
Or haste berries at a few favourable places; allowing you to meet and snap up many towns early game.
Also to start with the ability to summon wisps, cherubs or spy drones makes quite a difference to the early game.
Or on the negative side; you can start underground with just swamp around you and have to spend several turns just to get somewhere.

If there would be an extra defensive unit on an inn, I wouldn't mind that at all, but extra rules like certain units only appearing after a certain turn would not be fun, it would just lead to boring time management. Changing upkeep rules would lead to things like you needing to check which unit originated from where, to keep our inn-born units with you hero that supports them at half salary. That's not interesting gameplay but boring micro-management.

Well at the current moment, the boring part is hunting down an Inn, buy T3 unit, make sure one of your heroes has heal, or 6 per turn regeneration, and just roll over all of the nearest dungeons, collecting easy loot.

Some of your other points do make sense, but those are small favours, haste barries at a good position? Nice, but can be abused by the enemy, and at the larger scheme of things, irrelevant.
Starting with reaserched scout spell? Nice, then again Warlords don't have scouts, they use cavalry, which is worst than flying scout, but still does his work, and you also might get a more beneficial and higher tier spell than scout.
Convert is a highly unreliable ability, first of all most T3 units have resistance of 11+, secondly I take it to the account that we're talking about MP games, where all combat vs neutrals goes on auto, I have only witnessed 1 time a T3 unit was converted, and that was on turn 50, where most players are close to finishing their T4 units.

On the other hand, the Inn is the most reliable and 'cheap' way to aqcuire a T3 unit, which with all regards has brings ALOT more profit to the player. It also allows for a very easy tactic of rushing players less lucky to have an Inn near them.

[Sunicle]

Okay, you've convinced me, an inn is too good. I'm just not so keen on all those added rules.

Convert I find quite reliable, by the way, ogres and trolls from farms and ruins give a 60% convert chance, you'll snap a few up in single-player with that. Multi-player is only played by some 10% of players, although that's going by an old poll for AoW before there was AoW III.

The best way to play AoW is to play fan-made maps, I only played them for the previous AoW games. Regretfully there aren't yet any for AoW III, but then it's up to a map maker which units in put in recruit sites. The inn problem is only with random generated maps. We're stuck with those maps now, but I hope the developers won't start to hard-code additional rules for inns that'll restrict map makers in what they can do with them.

There is indeed a balance problem at the moment. I like to start a game with just an outpost, but I'm barely making units from those, as it takes too much resources. I'm almost fully dependent on what I'm snapping up from adventuring around the map, and then an inn - on a random map - is a too reliable and cheap way to boost my army, so I do agree with your observation.
I hadn't even realised the units in inns are replenishing or even growing after an inn is first found, but that is certainly too much.

Adding unique units, what some came up with as an idea, is the stuff of expansion packs. I think this thread is about balancing.