Change UUU/DA to help catering

[Yogi Dave]

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.

Being able to select a building's purpose when being placed introduces a new mechanism to the game. Any thoughts on how to do this? Would it be like a workshop with a checkbox for selection? Does the building only provide culture until selected? Does the timer start when placed or when the choice is made? A description of what you think the mechanism should be is needed and the consequences in usability and complexity of development.

I think a different building would be better if this is to be implemented for several reasons.

• If it's a mod to a current building, people will place it not knowing they have more to do before it is usable, unless maybe you are envisioning a different mechanism.
• It doesn't require a new mechanism.
• Fighters would be encouraged to cater more often unless they prefer to complain they have a worthless building. Currently I cater the lower 8 or 9 provs almost completely to save time and I cater select upper encounters where fighting, auto or manual, just won't win. If it were cheaper, I'd cater more of the upper prov's encounters.
• It would require less effort on the developers.

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

Nothing is mentioned about advantages catering has over fighting in your post. They should be included.

• Time: Compared to fighting, catering takes no time. Even auto-fighting takes a good bit more time. Obviously there are more clicks, but you also have to look at the mix of troops they bring and think about which troops you are going to use, especially when they are bringing all 3 types of troops. Even if you then decide to cater, you have spent that time looking at the problem.
• You can't lose when you cater.

The spire changed that. It removes both those advantages by replacing catering with convincing. I do both and like the spire more than tourneys now. It's more engaging, both the fighting and convincing. Convincing is not just a guessing game as many say. It's a puzzle which often can be solved logically without having to guess. Choose you goods wisely and learn. Plus, you can lose.

If you are going to reduce the cost of catering, should you also reduce the advantages the caterer has or at least consider it? I understand to be a successful caterer requires a city with a massive amount of goods production which require population, culture, and supply production. There are a few AWs that help with this, but it eventually becomes unsustainable. The game simply requires a more balanced approach to city design and play. Many members of my FS have realized that and are or have reworked their cities to accommodate that reality. I think it also makes a more engaging game in city development. And it changes chapter to chapter.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

I don't think there should be a choice between fighting boost and catering boost when the bulding is placed. It should provide both boosts. Else it would encourage players to use either fighting only or catering only, while a good strategy should be a mix between fighting and catering in my opinion.

 

[KarlD]

Being able to select a building's purpose when being placed introduces a new mechanism to the game. Any thoughts on how to do this? Would it be like a workshop with a checkbox for selection? Does the building only provide culture until selected? Does the timer start when placed or when the choice is made? A description of what you think the mechanism should be is needed and the consequences in usability and complexity of development.

I think a different building would be better if this is to be implemented for several reasons.

• If it's a mod to a current building, people will place it not knowing they have more to do before it is usable, unless maybe you are envisioning a different mechanism.
• It doesn't require a new mechanism.
• Fighters would be encouraged to cater more often unless they prefer to complain they have a worthless building. Currently I cater the lower 8 or 9 provs almost completely to save time and I cater select upper encounters where fighting, auto or manual, just won't win. If it were cheaper, I'd cater more of the upper prov's encounters.
• It would require less effort on the developers.

Nothing is mentioned about advantages catering has over fighting in your post. They should be included.

• Time: Compared to fighting, catering takes no time. Even auto-fighting takes a good bit more time. Obviously there are more clicks, but you also have to look at the mix of troops they bring and think about which troops you are going to use, especially when they are bringing all 3 types of troops. Even if you then decide to cater, you have spent that time looking at the problem.
• You can't lose when you cater.

The spire changed that. It removes both those advantages by replacing catering with convincing. I do both and like the spire more than tourneys now. It's more engaging, both the fighting and convincing. Convincing is not just a guessing game as many say. It's a puzzle which often can be solved logically without having to guess. Choose you goods wisely and learn. Plus, you can lose.

If you are going to reduce the cost of catering, should you also reduce the advantages the caterer has or at least consider it? I understand to be a successful caterer requires a city with a massive amount of goods production which require population, culture, and supply production. There are a few AWs that help with this, but it eventually becomes unsustainable. The game simply requires a more balanced approach to city design and play. Many members of my FS have realized that and are or have reworked their cities to accommodate that reality. I think it also makes a more engaging game in city development. And it changes chapter to chapter.

I had envisioned the buildings keeping the same name and adding the catering reduction functionality. The reason for this is that people may very well already have DAs and UUUs in their inventory so a caterer that acquired them could now make use of them with the new functionality. They could default to current function of increasing health. There'd be a one time opportunity to switch to catering discount. Doing this eliminates problems where somebody places the building expecting the original health increase and unknowingly gets catering discount instead. The only "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that people might not immediately realize that the new functionality exists but, of course, if they never placed the building and activated the new feature they'd simply be in the same position as before and nothing is gained or lost.

I would prefer that the selection of the catering discount occur soon after placing the building; maybe even a very few minutes before it would stay as a health booster. My reason for this is that I primarily want to add a benefit for catering but not for fighting. I don't want to switch back and forth. If someone wants the catering discount then they should select catering right away. There's no reason to delay.

I really don't want to have a new building that just gives catering discount. The whole point is to keep fighters where they are and offer a way for caterers to make use of the otherwise useless DAs that they win in the Spire. It just seemed to make sense to expand to UUUs as well to give caterers something to look forward to in the MA. I'm not proposing any changes to ELR or MM buildings.

There absolutely are advantages to catering. The added catering discount functionality is still available to fighters. If any fighter wished to use their DA or UUU to have cheaper catering and enjoy the speed and convenience of catering then that's up to them. Nothing precludes a fighter from catering as well. This has always been the case and will remain the case. As a fighter I don't see myself using a DA or UUU to get a 20% or 10% discount in catering. If my results from the battle simulator hold in general I would still prefer the greater troop savings over the catering discount. But, like I said, the option would still exist.

And, yes, you can't lose when you cater, but you also can't go through with zero losses as you can with fighting. In Steel province in particular I have had tournament encounters that could cost 250K T3 plus orcs and other goods to cater that I could fight with zero or close to zero losses. There are definitely trade-offs.

I don't think something like a 10% per UUU or 20% per DA catering discount would appreciably change the game. I'm really not sure what the best balance of discount is.. I think a 50% maximum discount would be appropriate. As I mentioned in an earlier post it eliminates situations like clearing a gazillion world map provinces for free if you over scouted. Also if you could get a 100% discount you could complete the Spire at no cost, including diamonds, since you could simply keep attempting to negotiate until you got it right.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter and I'm totally open to the idea that my proposal is a solution to a non-existent problem.