Corruption Spawn Rules in Conquest?

[Tessora]

Does the rate at which Corruptions spawn in Conquest mode increase over time regardless of how many crystals they own?

I captured slightly over half the crystals on a conquest map and then started fortifying my postion, thinking that I could economically starve the corruptions by building archers and knights faster than they made new corruptions. The corruptions only captured two crystals other than their home crystal, but after about half an hour of gameplay, they were sending several of the largest type of enemy at my defenses every few minutes (with accompanying hordes of smaller enmies, of course).

I'm fine if the corruptions have some sort of strategy to thier spawning and attacking (e.g. if they see your defenses killed a group of minitrons easily, they save up and send a handful of biftrons at you later to try and smash through), but the behavior I was seeing looked like their spawn rates were just ramping up with the time elapsed in the game, which kind of rendered the crystal capturing pointless for the corruptions, since they could just wait until they were spawning fast enought to demolish my defenses.

It'd be great to have an answer to this so that I can adjust my tactics to work with the game logic, thanks!

[Shatojon]

Hey William, thanks for joining us :)

In truth, we're still trying to figure out the best approach for corruptrons - you'll see some changes in the next update.

In 0.8, the attacks are not affected by the amount of crystals they own. At specific moments in the game, a new corruptron "team" is spawned and they will roam the map (from one crystal to the other) to protect it. This isn't ideal for the reasons you've mentioned in your posts.

For 0.9 however, the idea is that each corrupted crystal will spawn a specific quantity of bad guys every few seconds. The strength of the corruptrons spawned is relative to the duration of the game. However, crystals will have a "threshold" of corruptrons which they don't want to cross, so when a crystal has generated enough corruptrons, they will leave the crystal and attack non-corrupted crystals (yours or otherwise), in equal forces. By equal forces I mean, if there are 10 corruptrons going on an attack and 5 crystals to attack (3 neutral and 2 captured by the player), they will send 2 corruptrons on each crystal. So you, as a player, will have 2 waves of attacks made of 2 enemies each. This creates an interesting mechanic where, if you own very few crystals, you have less to defend, but mid-game, where you own, lets say, 4-5 crystals, you will have a lot of points to defend and since there are almost no neutral crystals left, the waves will be more concentrated.

[Tessora]

Thanks for the reply! (And thanks for making a cool game!)

The 0.9 spawn rules plan seems good to me (at least enough so that there are probably more pressing improvements to make elsewhere). Having corruptions spawn proportional to the crystals they own and having attack complexity scale with the crystals the player owns feels it hits the nail on the head for what's needed to create interesting conquest gameplay.

The only thing that I'm hesitant about is the idea of corruption spawn rates still scaling with elapsed game time. I feel like it encourages rushing the corruption crystals and takes away from the idea of prolonged fortress-building or strategic expansion. I'd rather see some sort of overseeing "corruption AI" that tried to probe your defenses and intelligently save up forces for large attacks to break through, because that feels like it creates a mode that encourages the player to work with clever fortress building more. Such a system would by no means be a priority right now, but I'll throw the idea out as my two cents anyways.

Thanks again!

[Shatojon]

Hey, thanks :) I'll forward your suggestion our AI dev.

[Coldsnap]

This was some helpful info that the game doesn't tell you. (I've been banging my head against Conquest mode for a few hours now.)
I started by turtling up, but I was quickly overrun. I also tried rushing to capture as many crystals as possible, but I couldn't defend all of them and subsequently lost them again. My current idea is to rush the nearest shards with 2 archers + 2 halberdiers and then move around keeping a few shards neutral while I build up my economy enough to be able to capture more shards. Am I on the right track, or will using 4 bricktrons for the patrol destroy my economy?

[WolfOwlShield]

I was wondering if there was a cap on the corrupton spawn per crystal, and if there is, what it is.

[Shatojon]

Hey Wolf,

There's currently a maximum of 50 corruptrons on the map at all times.

It's important to know however that their spawning isn't constant until the cap is reached. There's a maximum dictated by the gameplay which gradually climbs for each crystal, and a maximum for the entire map dictated by the game's performance.