Improving the Arena Death Match event

[NTJedi]

Yes the trident and experience are nice... but certainly not worth risking the life of a good commander.

Hopefully gems and/or gold and/or one of the other suggestions listed previously will be added to the reward of the arena.

Think of the long term events of attending 5 death match arenas. Even if you win 3 times... it means that you had 2 good commanders die! Having a good commander die is not worth the price of that trident... something more needs to be added to the arena prize.

[mivayan]

I had fun in the arena with living ermor, a 3astral/2 death grand thaumaturg casting raise skeletins, later paralyze and soul slay as well. Won the arena a few times

I have no idea how well the arena works in multiplayer though.

[Norfleet]

Don't think of it as a deathmatch. Think of it as a free assassination attempt, where you can send any unit of your choice to attempt to assassinate a random enemy unit. You don't even need an assassin-capable unit, and your opponent doesn't get the benefit of any bodyguards. Against the AI, I don't see the deathmatch tournament as a place to get an unremovable trident or some experience and fame: I see it as a shot at assassinating some pretenders, prophets, and a few random nobodies.

[Norfleet]

I've been wondering....if both units in a deathmatch die, who wins? Does it end in a draw? Or does the next combatant fight the now-deceased "winner", winning by default when his opponent begins dead?

[mivayan]

I've been wondering....if both units in a deathmatch die, who wins? Does it end in a draw? Or does the next combatant fight the now- deceased "winner", winning by default when his opponent begins dead?

In one of the first fights in the arena both ai combatants died, the second from poison or something similar. They were both dropped from the tournament.

[Saxon]

think one of the earlier people said it best. It depends on each game. I do not play impossible and I rarely play with more than four enemies. For me, it is not as hard to win and the chance that the winner will use it on me is very real. In a huge game at a high level, it is tough to win and is unlikely to bother you afterwards.

The game is played different ways by different people, so each part of it will have a different impact on each person. To judge a part based upon your own style may not give a balanced view of how it is viewed by all players. Your view is still valid, but it may not represent “the truth.”

My idea for a change would go the other way from many of the other suggestions. Instead of a huge prize to make it tempting, place a penalty on those who do not enter! “Gee Bilbo, I guess Gandolf isn’t as tough as we thought, he is afraid to take on the bad guys.” “Yes Sam, you are right. Why are we busting our butts to get the Ring to Mt. Doom when the big guy is slacking off? Let’s go back to the Prancing Pony and have a beer!”

Maybe a big jump in unrest for those who do not enter with smaller penalties for those who fight and lose. After all, everyone is bummed when your team is knocked out of the first round.

[Gateway103]

Here is a spin-off thought,

How about a random or annual event where you can host an tournament for your own people?

Here is how it might work.
- you get a notice about the possibility of hosting such a tournament.

- the catch is that you need to pay gold & gem. You may also get to choose how big a tournament and what kind of tournament to host, which affects how much gold & gem you need to pay, perhaps even the type of participants allowed.

- the participants will mostly be your own leaders, the Pretender can't participate. You can send up to 4 of them (or some other number depending on the size of tournament you decided to pay for)

- in addition to your participants, up to 4 other independent leaders (not to be confused with Bogus and other scripted ones) of types that are recruitable anyway on the map will also participate (again, depend on how much resources you pay to "invite" them.) Their skill level will also depends on the type and size of tournament (can't really expect a powerful mage to come to your little "show" in your backyard)

- the participants don't fight each other, but against generated "target" (one of the reasons you pay gold & gem) that may or may not retaliate and/or rout. In the case of non-retaliating target, they may have such high HPs (and non-routabl) that failure to destroy them in 40 turns will result in participant routing and thus lose.

- Alternate thought, to prevent your units from dying, could make all targets non-routable, non-retaliating constructs, but may force the kind of weapons/attacks allowed (e.g. "Archery" section may allow all leaders to participate, but they are momentarily given a kind of bow and have the "Fire" override command assainged to them)

- winning participants are cycled to next "battle" where they face harder targets. do this for a number of times depending on the event you choose to host.

- Alternate thought 2, instead of losing and be disqualified, perhaps leaders can be assigned winning points on the # of targets they destroyed in battle round. But this would require a bit mroe extra coding work. So you tally all the points to determine the final winner.

- any participants suriving all the rounds are declared winners, and gain extra exps. (different scheme than Alternate thought 2)

- regardless of winning or losing, all participants gain extra exp just for participating.

- the best part, you may get to keep some or all of the participating independent leaders. The chance may depend on how well your leaders performed (a "wow! I sure can learn something from them" inspiration effect perhaps), the type of events you hosted (how big/impressive it is, which also mostly affect the quantity & quality of independent participants), and some other things. Should an independent participant be willing to join, he/she/it will ask for a price depending on their qualities and if they won or not. If you opt to pay, the paid leaders became yours permanently and appear in your capitol the next turn.

Anyway, this is a very rough idea to creates a spin-off event that more players may find interesting/fun/useful (getting a mage not in your national path and not recruitable can be really beneficial).

Hope you guys like the idea.

-Gateway103

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Saxon:
think one of the earlier people said it best. It depends on each game. I do not play impossible and I rarely play with more than four enemies. For me, it is not as hard to win and the chance that the winner will use it on me is very real. In a huge game at a high level, it is tough to win and is unlikely to bother you afterwards.

You're right ! I usually play impossible, but recently tried a huge map with easy opponents - I was testing stuff. The Arena Deathmatch comes up, and the AI didn't send anything better than an unequipped prophet... So the risk is vastly dependant on the difficulty level.
And of course versus 4 opponents you'll have only 2 or 3 match to win, against 17 you'll often have 6 or more...

The game is played different ways by different people, so each part of it will have a different impact on each person. To judge a part based upon your own style may not give a balanced view of how it is viewed by all players. Your view is still valid, but it may not represent “the truth.”

How true... I still say the reward should scale up with the number of competitors. But I must accept, I suppose, that against Impossible AIs it's impossible to win in the Arena...

My idea for a change would go the other way from many of the other suggestions. Instead of a huge prize to make it tempting, place a penalty on those who do not enter! “Gee Bilbo, I guess Gandolf isn’t as tough as we thought, he is afraid to take on the bad guys.” “Yes Sam, you are right. Why are we busting our butts to get the Ring to Mt. Doom when the big guy is slacking off? Let’s go back to the Prancing Pony and have a beer!”

Maybe a big jump in unrest for those who do not enter with smaller penalties for those who fight and lose. After all, everyone is bummed when your team is knocked out of the first round.

There I must disagree. Bad enough that I have no chance of winning, but I really see no reason why there should be a big jump of unrest in my 50 province Empire just because some nobody is hosting a competition somewhere with a prize far inferior to what I forge each turn
Hey, I have 10 unique artifacts gathering dust in my lab, not to mention a few jade knives if somebody is unhappy, who cares about that stupid trident ?
Now that I think of it, I also have (finally) somebody who has a chance of winning. Plus the 16 AIs are now 11, one of which is mising a Pretender. Bring it on !

[Lord_Devi]

Originally posted by rabelais:
is it just me or does an m look like rn if you don't look too carefully at it? Must be my monitor.

Hah, no it's not just your monitor =) I thought I saw the same thing.. hehe.. maybe we're just dirty people tho ~

[ January 27, 2004, 16:14: Message edited by: Lord_Devi ]

[Catquiet]

In addition to improving the prize, you could attack the problem from another direction as well.

1. Each nation can choose a National Champion the same way they choose a Prophet. The Champions get Standard (+10), Recuperation, and Sacred. All National Champions must fight whenever the Arena event comes up.

2. All fighters entering the Arena auto-berserk (+1)

3. Prize is a Cursed misc. object Heart of a Champion that gives 30 morale and 5 reinvigoration.

[ January 28, 2004, 07:46: Message edited by: Catquiet ]