Change UUU/DA to help catering

[KarlD]

I was posting in another forum about the disparity between fighting and catering and had a thought about making catering more comparable to fighting. I don't expect that it will every be close to equal, but fighting even with autofight is way way cheaper than catering. I don't really have a feel for how many troops a DA or UUU actually saves, but I'm sure Inno does, There's no reason why they can't have a catering discount building that saved a similar amount on catering. Or better yet modify the existing UUU and DA to do double duty. You place them and then select whether you want troop boost or catering discount. Then the caterers can gain something while the fighters stay the same. A double duty UUU/DA would help to bring parity since a fighter would have to give up fighting benefits to get the catering benefits and more likely than not would stick with fighting. Caterers already win DA buildings in the Spire and can craft UUU buildings, but they are kinda useless for them. I really see no downside to double duty UUU/DA and it would help the long neglected caterers; wouldn't hurt fighters; and wouldn't really contribute to power creep since way more power has already creeped into fighting with numerous AWs and expiring buildings and the non-fighters would just gain a bit of something from a couple of buildings.

 

[Crow Last Elf]

I can't justify catering the 3rd floor of the SOE, so I really like this idea.

I don't find the cost to open provinces to be unreasonable (I only in chpt. 6). So would those costs be adjusted upwards? Or would opening provinces be excluded?

The effect of the UUU/DA is stackable, isn't it?. I think there would have to be a maximum discount on catering. This may be a reason to have a separate building.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

I see an issue. Imagine giving as second effect of UUU, for example -10% catering cost. This means, with 10 UUUs or 5 DAs one can get the catering costs down to 0. And if one adds 1 more boost, things start going wrong. However, this is maybe not an actual issue since I think 10 UUUs also allow zero losses in all fights.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I see an issue. Imagine giving as second effect of UUU, for example -10% catering cost. This means, with 10 UUUs or 5 DAs one can get the catering costs down to 0. And if one adds 1 more boost, things start going wrong. However, this is maybe not an actual issue since I think 10 UUUs also allow zero losses in all fights.

Unless they secretly changed it, you can only stack five of the same building, so only 5 UUUs will benefit you. Now, what I don't know is if you can have 5 UUU and 5 DA out at the same time and benefit from all 10, or if the limit is 5 of any combination of those two buildings.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

Unless they secretly changed it, you can only stack five of the same building, so only 5 UUUs will benefit you. Now, what I don't know is if you can have 5 UUU and 5 DA out at the same time and benefit from all 10, or if the limit is 5 of any combination of those two buildings.

I didn't know this. This is metioned nowhere in game.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I didn't know this. This is metioned nowhere in game.

When the three temp boost buildings were added to crafting, they said on them you can stack up to five, but now it just says they can stack, which I why I mentioned a possible secret change. It may only be three now, or still five, or more than five. I don't know if anyone recently has tested this. Maybe this can be tested on the elvenarchitect site?

Edit: There is one correction I have to make, since I did not have a DA in my inventory to read the description and it does not mention anywhere that it can be stacked, so we may only benefit from one DA at a time.

 

[Alpha Lyrae]

DA can be stacked.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

DA can be stacked.

View attachment 7460

Then the official WIKI needs to be updated to show that.

And I am still not sure where I thought I saw the stacking limit was 5, as I can't find it again.

But on the topic, depending on how many of each building can be stacked, adding another ability to one could be either ok or way overpowered. I somehow have the feeling this number is something the devs will not tell us, in case they want to change it without us knowing.

@MinMax Gamer or @CrazyWizard do either of you have this information?

 

[michmarc]

One solution to the 100% off is that yes, the discounts stack, but envision that the implementation is that each one reduces catering costs to 90% of what they were before. So having two means your costs are 90% of 90% = 81%. Having 10 would be 90%^10 or about 35%. Still a massive discount (65% off!), but it is never free.

[This is exactly how the Advanced Scouting discount stacks.]

 

[qaccy]

Fighting may have the potential to be 'cheaper', but fighting also requires a significant investment in military buildings in order to train units effectively and have effective units in the first place. With catering, the costs may be 'higher' but these resources also have value in other research and building upgrades, areas where military has no impact whatsoever. What I'm getting at here is that military is essentially optional while goods are not. Many players choose to skip investing in military entirely which frees up a lot of space in their city to support additional goods production. You can't really do the opposite because no matter how much you fight, you're going to need goods anyway.

Basically...if you want cheaper catering costs, you already have an option. Invest in the existing military buildings and use units to save yourself on costs. It's what I do, and I'm happy to say that by now, after working up my military strength for years, I'm able to go up to 6 rounds in most tournaments with little to no catering at all.

 

[KarlD]

One solution to the 100% off is that yes, the discounts stack, but envision that the implementation is that each one reduces catering costs to 90% of what they were before. So having two means your costs are 90% of 90% = 81%. Having 10 would be 90%^10 or about 35%. Still a massive discount (65% off!), but it is never free.

[This is exactly how the Advanced Scouting discount stacks.]

I don't see the 100% off thing as something needing a solution. A fighter might be able to do 6 rounds of all their provinces in a tournament using 2 or 3 DA buildings whereas a caterer might need 4 or 5. (I've actually done it with no UUU or DA and just 2 or 3 Marge multipliers in Steel Province.) A fighter might well choose to use 5 DA buildings exactly as they use them now as opposed to combining them to cater one tournament for free. If fighters generally chose to continue fighting rather than get a free tournament that would say to me that fighters still had the advantage and that adding the catering discount was just moving non-fighters closer to fighters, but they would still be behind -- way behind in fact. I think it's just basic fairness that if we're all doing the same Spire that fighters shouldn't be able to win DA buildings that give them a big discount in fighting costs, while non-fighters can't win anything that helps them in a remotely comparable way. Then when an non-fighter does win a DA it's pretty much a total waste.

 

[Crow Last Elf]

I think it's just basic fairness that if we're all doing the same Spire that fighters shouldn't be able to win DA buildings that give them a big discount in fighting costs, while non-fighters can't win anything that helps them in a remotely comparable way. Then when an non-fighter does win a DA it's pretty much a total waste.

@KarlD , I agree with your analysis. I think the suggestion needs to address what the dev's might see as an unwelcome change to the balance of the game -- would the discount also apply to opening provinces ? If the catering price to open provinces is already fair, the discount should not apply.

 

[KarlD]

@KarlD , I agree with your analysis. I think the suggestion needs to address what the dev's might see as an unwelcome change to the balance of the game -- would the discount also apply to opening provinces ? If the catering price to open provinces is already fair, the discount should not apply.

You make a good point. My feeling is that applying the discount to world map encounters might have unintended consequences if you could get a 100% discount. It would probably have to apply only to tournament and Spire OR perhaps place a limit of 50% discount or something like that. If each UUU gave a 10% discount and one could use 5 to get a 50% discount even on world map fights a caterer would still be behind the discount a fighter would get using 5 UUU and you would avoid such situations such as someone who didn't produce orcs clearing out a bunch of provinces that they over scouted. But keep in mind if a fighter had 5 UUU they would be enjoying a discount of at least 50% in terms of troop losses and even someone who overscouted might be able to clear a bunch of provinces that needed orcs to negotiate. So overall I think the fighter still comes out ahead and the balance of the game doesn't change significantly, but the non-fighter would still gain something.

In another forum someone posted their costs of catering and in endgame their costs seemed to show a practical limit of catering about 20 provinces to 6 rounds. I don't really know the math, but my gut feeling is that the cost of catering provinces 21-30 could easily equal or exceed the cost of doing provinces 1-20. So a 50% discount might get a caterer up to 30 provinces, whereas with 5 UUU a lot of fighters might clear all their available provinces. So ultimately I think a limit of less than 100% discount probably be workable and a 50% limit would probably work well.

 

[KarlD]

Fighting may have the potential to be 'cheaper', but fighting also requires a significant investment in military buildings in order to train units effectively and have effective units in the first place. With catering, the costs may be 'higher' but these resources also have value in other research and building upgrades, areas where military has no impact whatsoever. What I'm getting at here is that military is essentially optional while goods are not. Many players choose to skip investing in military entirely which frees up a lot of space in their city to support additional goods production. You can't really do the opposite because no matter how much you fight, you're going to need goods anyway.

Basically...if you want cheaper catering costs, you already have an option. Invest in the existing military buildings and use units to save yourself on costs. It's what I do, and I'm happy to say that by now, after working up my military strength for years, I'm able to go up to 6 rounds in most tournaments with little to no catering at all.

Not only does fighting require a significant investment in military buildings, but it requires a significant investment in time compared to catering. Even using autofight requires a lot more time to click through and analyze enough to choose reasonable troops and then enter those troops before hitting the autofight button. But I don't imagine I would ever use 5 UUU buildings to more conveniently cater my way through 30 provinces when I can pretty easily fight 30 provinces with 2 UU or less. It's not like UUU and DA buildings are all that easy to come by and accumulate so that caterers can enjoy that 50% discount every week. So I still think giving them the discount wouldn't hurt the game and would be something Inno could give to that group of people with relatively little cost.

 

[Mykan]

I was posting in another forum about the disparity between fighting and catering and had a thought about making catering more comparable to fighting.

I think you are really going to struggle with this suggestion and a big part is this. People assume you either cater or you fight and those are the only 2 options. But the reality is it isn't, those are extreme builds (in fact pure military isn't possible) and a balance of both is the mainstream build. It is also obvious that the devs have based the game around players having both aspects in their towns. I just can't see them doing something that is targeted at a niche build and will likely off balance or favour even more the other approaches as they are not excluded from catering.

I think you need to adjust your approach to the suggestion to have a chance of getting this through. I would suggest:

• Consider reasons for such a change or addition and ensure it caters to a wide player base and is in line with the game/devs direction
• Would this be a change to an existing building or a new building by itself and the implications of this
• How this will impact players of differing play styles

I think it's just basic fairness that if we're all doing the same Spire that fighters shouldn't be able to win DA buildings that give them a big discount in fighting costs, while non-fighters can't win anything that helps them in a remotely comparable way. Then when an non-fighter does win a DA it's pretty much a total waste.

Again you have to look from the devs perspective and a balanced town build. This building can never be useless for towns that do both approaches.
Your suggestion is actually quite complex as you need to factor in many different aspects of the game. I will be interested to see if you can flesh it out to something that has a solid chance.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

People assume you either cater or you fight and those are the only 2 options. But the reality is it isn't, those are extreme builds (in fact pure military isn't possible) and a balance of both is the mainstream build.

That's why buildings should help both catering and fighting.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

I've often thought of this. As someone who fights almost exclusively, I'm well aware of how much the troop buffs benefit me. They are fantastic and with just 1 or 2, I can go deep into a tournament with relative ease. The only cost is my own boredom and tired fingers after doing 30-40 provinces for 6 rounds in 3 cities.

I've often thought there should be a building or wonder that does the equivalent for caterers. Sure, they have less clicks and can devote more space to factories by ditching all military wonders. But they also can't sustain a 6-8k tourney average every week like I can without bankrupting themselves.

As it is now, caterers have 3 crafting recipes that are essentially useless to them and are probably annoyed every time they win a Dwarven Armorer (both things I'd *love* to get more of but they elude me). Whether it's a new building, or a new function of an existing building, I'm cool with a reduced catering version of this. Maybe once placed, the building might have 2 options and players choose which one to enable: One to buff troops or one to reduce catering costs.

I think 10 UUUs also allow zero losses in all fights.

Just for clarity, UUU doesn't reduce damage. It increases health. We still take damage, but troops live longer. Many fights will still incur losses (particularly when going up against enemies that act first), and especially with some nasty fight combos in the Spire. But yeah, using 5 troop buffs would yield significant results. It also takes time to accumulate 5 of those since they're rare. I'd never use 5 at once since that would be overkill and wasteful.

Still, though. As it is now, I do think fighters have an edge. That's partly why I fight in the first place. But something for the caterers would be nice.


Edit: Consider the diamond incentive for Inno. As a fighter, I spend no diamonds in the Spire except on the rare occasion I use diplomacy and need another guess. A catering buff might incentivize more players to use diplomacy, and thus creating more chances for players to spend 25 diamonds to complete a difficult encounter.

 

[KarlD]

I think you are really going to struggle with this suggestion and a big part is this. People assume you either cater or you fight and those are the only 2 options. But the reality is it isn't, those are extreme builds (in fact pure military isn't possible) and a balance of both is the mainstream build. It is also obvious that the devs have based the game around players having both aspects in their towns. I just can't see them doing something that is targeted at a niche build and will likely off balance or favour even more the other approaches as they are not excluded from catering.

I think you need to adjust your approach to the suggestion to have a chance of getting this through. I would suggest:

• Consider reasons for such a change or addition and ensure it caters to a wide player base and is in line with the game/devs direction
• Would this be a change to an existing building or a new building by itself and the implications of this
• How this will impact players of differing play styles

Again you have to look from the devs perspective and a balanced town build. This building can never be useless for towns that do both approaches.
Your suggestion is actually quite complex as you need to factor in many different aspects of the game. I will be interested to see if you can flesh it out to something that has a solid chance.

As a fighter I don't see any upside for myself or any fighters, but I have encountered enough non-fighters to appreciate the difficulties of that path. There are quite a few non-fighters out there and it really just seems like something Inno could do to make a lot of customers happy without significantly changing the game overall. It's been quite a quite a while, but I feel like at one point the fighting vs. catering paths were billed as comparable paths. They are not very comparable at all. Even things like using the time instants from the Spire is not comparable. Most people can easily make full use of the 5-hour time instants to make troops, but to make most efficient us of time instants to make goods you need 3 hour boosts. My feeling is that if you can make people happy with relatively little cost I figure why not do it.

I think the best approach is to modify the UUU and DA buildings. They are buildings that lend themselves to translating into a percentage of goods savings. A 10% reduction in catering costs for a UUU sounds reasonable to me while I think it still favors fighters. I just used the battle simulator to get a feel for how much a UUU helps and it showed a 15% reduction in losses with 1 UUU, a 34% reduction with 2 UUU, a 41% reduction with 3 UUU, and a 54% reduction with 5 UUU. So saving 10% in catering with a UUU would not be unreasonable. I think most people only use one DA or two UUU at a time so they enjoy a 34% reduction while caterers would only get 20%.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'd modify the buildings so one could select either a catering discount or a boost in health when the building was first placed. The selection would be made when placed and could not be changed.

I really don't think this change would effect fighters. In the vast majority of cases I would imagine they would use the buildings as they currently do. I'm sure there would be situations where a fighter might choose to cater and use the UUU/DA for the discount, but I doubt I would use mine in that way. People who cater would simply enjoy a bit of a boost. Any DA that they might win in the Spire would now have a benefit for them and they could have a reason to craft UUU buildings. It's not likely to be a game changer for anybody. It's just a nice feature to give in order to pretend that military and non-military paths were somehow comparable.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Yes, I like that. Fighters should still retain an edge over caterers since fighting takes a lot of work and dedication to do properly, but lessening that massive gap wouldn't be bad.

Another thing to address (only because I'm picky that way) might be the names of the buildings. If I were a new player, I wouldn't expect "Unleashed Unit Upgrade" or "Dwarven Armorer" to help with diplomacy costs. Assuming the suggestion is accepted, would it still be appropriate? And if not, would that be an additional hindrance to adding the new functionality? There's at least some precedence for buildings being renamed but it's rare.

 

[sam767]

I wonder if the impact justifies the complexity of the change. The cost to cater the higher numbered provinces is still astronomical in later chapters even if reduced by 20%. Caterers and fighters are choosing different paths in almost every respect. If a player wants to go deeper in the tournaments, then fighting is the way to go. IMHO, the whole thinking process differs:
Fighter: I want to go deep in tournaments, therefore I fight.
Caterer: I don't have the time or inclination to fight, therefore I cater. As a corollary, I understand that I will not do as well in tournaments.
How important are another couple of provinces each round in the tournament to the caterer?

So while the idea has merit, I see it as a difficult upgrade with minimal impact. (As a former software company owner I was constantly balancing these types of cost/benefit decisions).