Excess design points

guybrush threepwood · #1 August 27th, 2004, 06:20 PM

Heres a small suggestion.

Often one ends up with a few extra design points (1-20) after having designed ones nation.

This always irks me - after having design juuuust the pretender I want I look at those lost 14 points and think "uhuh, I am being suboptimal here... I've lost already!!".

What about a simple rule saying - each unused design point is converted into 10 extra starting gold (or 100 extra starting population). The one wouldnt feel that those extra points were just lost.

This would also allow funny tactics such as a nation with 0 scales, 0 point pretender but 5000 gold in the bank.

Cheers,
Thomas

Sheap · #2 August 27th, 2004, 06:32 PM

That's an excellent idea.

Arryn · #3 August 27th, 2004, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Sheap said:
That's an excellent idea.

Agreed!

Huzurdaddi · #4 August 27th, 2004, 07:42 PM

I call ermor in my next multiplayer game if this goes though!

archaeolept · #5 August 27th, 2004, 07:46 PM

i don't see the dreadful imbalance for ermor, frankly.

its especially irksome when, due to the numbers involved, sometimes an attempted design will end up w/ 37 unusable points left, or somesuch. It would be nice if there were some minor reward for leftover points.

daesthai · #6 August 27th, 2004, 08:09 PM

agreed!

Thufir · #7 August 27th, 2004, 07:45 PM

Sounds good to me!

Cainehill · #8 August 27th, 2004, 09:12 PM

I've posted the same idea previously - even 1 gold per design point would be _something_. Especially since many times when starting, you're just 15 short of being able to recruit the commander and units you want, or of being able to hire a particular mercenary.

I think 10 gold per point is too much though. You normally start with 400, and by dropping 20 pretender points you'd get an extra 200 gold?

Having an extra 5000 gold (even capped at 1000 as suggested) would be obscene - recruiting all the mercs, maxing production, building extra castles. It'd be bringing the, mmm, 'berserker rush' to Dominions. Nations with strong troops (like Ulm) or very good non-capital mages (Caelum) could easily take a stab at steamrolling over everyone before anyone else could get started.

I'd suggest more like 1 or 2 gold per point, for a maximum of 39 points. (The most you would ever be _forced_ to throw away, as you can always add a scale for 40.)

Anything much greater than that would have the potential to be rather imbalancing, imo.

Sheap · #9 August 27th, 2004, 09:22 PM

I would be happy with something like 5:1, cap at 39 points. 1:1 or 2:1 is so insignificant as to be almost a mockery - even at the very start of the game, it would be hard even to notice an extra 20 gold or so. But an extra 100 gold would mean an extra cheap mage or half a temple, much less of an effect than spending the points on better dominion or scale, but enough that the player could say, "at least it wasn't wasted."

Taqwus · #10 August 27th, 2004, 10:11 PM

It might be perversely amusing to run an Ashen Empire game with a cheap and low-magic pretender, horrible scales, vast amounts of gold, and no national units to spend it on. (AE... with mercenary fever? Hm.)

But a cap would seem reasonable to me... and if configurable on a per-game basis, a zero cap (on unused dp points turning into anything) would suit the traditionalists while an insanely high cap might lead to Ermorian Mercenary Madness and other strange strategies, which might once in a while suit those looking for more "experimental" games.