Arena money is too easy

[cactusthorns]

Most my games boil down to betting on arena fights and making millions to become a superpower. I would suggest more negative events be associated with the arena and/or the betting awards be toned down.

The champion in particular could be in more danger in the way of assassination attempts, or the arrival of legendary warriors who stop by just to test their mettle...

[jeeves88888]

Yeah the arenas really help accelerate the early game.

Pair this with the unpredictability of your income wrt farming, and the extremely low income from trading there isn't another viable option for your gold.

I did my first playthrough without gambling and it was very slow.

What have you found with the champion? They just sort of exist, they don't help in warfare, or seem to improve income or visitors for the arena itself

[cactusthorns]

Originally posted by jeeves88888:

Yeah the arenas really help accelerate the early game.

Pair this with the unpredictability of your income wrt farming, and the extremely low income from trading there isn't another viable option for your gold.

I did my first playthrough without gambling and it was very slow.

What have you found with the champion? They just sort of exist, they don't help in warfare, or seem to improve income or visitors for the arena itself

Sometimes you'll get lucky and find a character with an absurdly high battle rating, appoint them champion and max bet on their fights for free money every turn.

The returns for betting on someone very likely to win should be lower, like in real life.

[Troy - Warsim!]

I agree with the sentiment here, it's been a tough one over the years I've tried a number of different changes with. I think probably the better solution would be an odds system but I feared it would give away who the winner would likely be. Definitely need to review this though. For anyone who struggles with this opt for the 'Son of a village elder' game start to have the arena destroyed from game start.

[NotFox]

Originally posted by Troy - Warsim!:

I agree with the sentiment here, it's been a tough one over the years I've tried a number of different changes with. I think probably the better solution would be an odds system but I feared it would give away who the winner would likely be. Definitely need to review this though. For anyone who struggles with this opt for the 'Son of a village elder' game start to have the arena destroyed from game start.

Please don't make the GC die even easier! They already drop like flies constantly in my games!

[Troy - Warsim!]

Unless they're weak any changes shouldn't affect that

[Dire Wombat]

The best way to make it actually interesting would be to mimic real-life betting on boxing or MMA - a combo of much lower returns on heavily favored fighters, and much more variability in outcomes.

Also (and I think a lot of this game's design could benefit from this) - give us far fewer numerical opportunities to gamble, but make those fewer opportunities have more impact and/or depth.

[Wyr]

Originally posted by Troy - Warsim!:

I agree with the sentiment here, it's been a tough one over the years I've tried a number of different changes with. I think probably the better solution would be an odds system but I feared it would give away who the winner would likely be. Definitely need to review this though. For anyone who struggles with this opt for the 'Son of a village elder' game start to have the arena destroyed from game start.

Unfortunately, the current system allows you to just bet max on the mutated giant behemoth to earn 8500 gold in one match with no chance of losing.
Without an odds system to balance out incredibly strong monsters participating in the arena, then if your world generates with one, then the arena just turns into a free money machine whenever you notice one competing.

[Troy - Warsim!]

Yeah I see the wisdom in the discussion here. I did consider an odds system years ago but didn't want it to give away who was more likely to win as sometimes that wasn't clear to players.

My thinking might have been flawed there but there we go!

Will definitely note these thoughts down :)

[Runner]

Quite frankly, I like being able to lean on this.
I've never quite understood how with like 500 men, 5 lands and 2000 Gold and every year only making maybe 800-1200 Gold, while losing 1-200 Peasants and Soldiers from Rebels and Bandit raids lets you do anything but get ground into an inevitable game loss without the arena helping to first even afford re-recruiting the yearly killed soldiers, then gradually building up more caravan income, then hopefully recruiting, some millenia down the line, more people than get slaughtered by the 6 super bandit hordes and gigantic rebel army...and then starting to take lands and so forth.

[suejak]

This aspect of the game made me wonder a bit what all the fuss is about. Like you have this silly in-depth randomized kingdom simulator but by far the best strategy is to bet on obviously lopsided arena fights...? I dunno, I don't really get it.

[suejak]

Originally posted by Runner:

Quite frankly, I like being able to lean on this.
I've never quite understood how with like 500 men, 5 lands and 2000 Gold and every year only making maybe 800-1200 Gold, while losing 1-200 Peasants and Soldiers from Rebels and Bandit raids lets you do anything but get ground into an inevitable game loss without the arena helping to first even afford re-recruiting the yearly killed soldiers, then gradually building up more caravan income, then hopefully recruiting, some millenia down the line, more people than get slaughtered by the 6 super bandit hordes and gigantic rebel army...and then starting to take lands and so forth.

Yeah, but that just means the balance is crap, doesn't it? The arena is kinda funny but ultimately it's a pretty tedious minigame. The idea that this is the only way to reliably get a bunch of money to run your kingdom every run is pretty bad.

[Troy - Warsim!]

It's such a shame, it was never intended as that and it is possible to play through without leaning on the arena it's just more challenging, I've had a few cracks at making the arena less gameable but obviously we're not there yet.

My fear has always been that the odds system would predict a winner with almost 99% accuracy and still become a money printer but idk, always appreciate the talk and feedback here

[Runner]

...me, I like money printers. :-P
I don't think there is a huge exciting swath of turns until you hit around 40+ lands, when money finally becomes fitting enough to spend it on some meaningful stuff every turn. Almost anything I can think of is priced so high (50-250k) that until you hit a certain game progress threshold, you are just basically doing chores.
So having a "booster rocket" isn't the worst thing. I'd just be curious if there is a way to "hockeystick" initial progress without the arena.

[CommanderLaserstrahl]

+1 for the prior posts.

That's the reason why I don't play the game anymore and can't write a positive review. Too many opportunities for gambling. A gameturn usually just consists of farming all the gambling areas, and that is very tedious. I would like to make more real decisions in the game, a lot of it seems like a placeholder. More politics, more interactions with adventurers, whatever. But please.. no more gambling.
It's clear to me that the game is mainly made by one developer and there have been good developments in some areas over the years. I like the ASCII art, I like the RNG with the races. But I absolutely hate gambling. Every turn. It's exhausting and not fun.

EDIT: Maybe I miss something crucial in the game.. roundabout 108 h (I have EXACTLY the same gametime like the dev right now :D) . I think, the longest game I've played was around year 25 and I didn't came out of the neverending gambling spiral.
Maybe a farming system like in the old "Kaiser"-game would be a benefit here, instead of 5 possibilities to gamble in the same (uninteresting) way. With a grain storage and a grain market. Or some more commodities with a stock market, supply and demand with the rest of the ingame world. But in the current approach, the game is for me a "ChoreSim-The gambling for Aslowna"

[Troy - Warsim!]

Thanks for the feedback guys!