Looking for game designer (making the game fun). Programming and graphics are already handled

Update

Here is a video showing the current gameplay:

Do you have a discord name?

My Discord name is “Logende#6369”

The game is a Tower Defense which is derived from RTS games.

I've seen TD games with enemies attacking constantly until defeated, and then there is a new level with increased difficulty.

Or enemies attack in waves, every wave increasing numbers and enemy difficulty.

Your game is for 2 players and every kill increases money to buy units and buildings.

Ideas:

• Instead of money from kills, every player has a fixed amount of "money" per game tick. Say there is a building "farm" which produces the basic resource "food". With food you buy different units and buildings. If every resource producing building is destroyed then it's game over.
• The players can choose to build obstacles, defensive buildings, defensive engines, storage buildings, better farms, hospitals....
• Infantry: slow, resistant to archers but vulnerable to ballistas,fights in melee, can garrison and capture buildings
• Archers: less slow, can shoot from buildings
• Worker: less slow, can build and destroy
• Scout/spy: fast, can hide, useful to find out enemy plans
• Ballista: very slow or immovable, kill units
• Catapult: very slow or immovable, destroy buildings
• Units with low health retreat automatically to hospital

Problem: The game is 1D, there is no room to maneuver. Some units should bypass most units while being caught in melee with others.

As you can see it can be as complex as you want.

merkutsam said:
Instead of money from kills, every player has a fixed amount of "money" per game tick. Say there is a building "farm" which produces the basic resource "food". With food you buy different units and buildings. If every resource producing building is destroyed then it's game over.

Good idea! Actually, we already do it kind of like this: The castle of the player produces a fix amount of money per x seconds (low amount of money, fast cooldown) and the player has a gold mine which produces an increasing amount of money over time (high amount of money, slow cooldown).

merkutsam said:
The players can choose to build obstacles, defensive buildings, defensive engines, storage buildings, better farms, hospitals....

Farms as building type is something we could add. We already have:

• Obstacles
• Defensive buildings (e.g. flame thrower or cannon)
• Healing fountain

and we consider a building that allows “fast travel”: If you have, for instance, two mine shafts, units could enter the first one and would be quickly transported to the second one

merkutsam said:
Infantry: slow, resistant to archers but vulnerable to ballistas,fights in melee, can garrison and capture buildings

Right now, we have the unit types Hero, Tank, Melee, Ranger, Mage. The tank, for example, has a lot of health, but only a short range attack. Additionally, units can wear armor, which makes them immune to attacks of rangers/mages (long range attacks). Units with armor are very slow.

merkutsam said:
Archers: less slow, can shoot from buildings

That one is something we could consider: The ability to place units in buildings. There is just one potential issue we want to avoid: in the games “Legendary Wars” and “Monster Wars”, the player can make units wait and stop moving to the enemy. That way, the player can build as many units as he wants and then quickly overwhelm any enemy with his army. That way, I easily won every fight in those games, because I just waited until I had a huge army and then attacked. To avoid this, in this game, units automatically walk towards the enemy and attack the enemy. They can not be stopped or controlled manually. Having a building, which allows just one unit to be stationary, should probably be okay, although if, for example, a Hero with tons of damage and a long range, would be placed there, it might be overpowered already.

merkutsam said:
Worker: less slow, can build and destroy

Interesting idea. Right now, we do have “builders”, which can be easily killed, but can build powerful buildings.

merkutsam said:
Scout/spy: fast, can hide, useful to find out enemy plans

This is something we can think about. Invisible units, in general, could add a new element of strategy.

merkutsam said:
Ballista: very slow or immovable, kill units

Right now, we have ballistas as immovable buildings that the builder can create (for money and only in fix building slots).

merkutsam said:
Catapult: very slow or immovable, destroy buildings

Actually, some kind of unit or building, which is very good at destroying other buildings, is a great idea!

merkutsam said:
Units with low health retreat automatically to hospital

We will think about that one.

merkutsam said:
Problem: The game is 1D, there is no room to maneuver. Some units should bypass most units while being caught in melee with others.

I would say this is an disadvantage and advantage of the game at the same time. This is what makes the gameplay special/interesting.

Right now, it works like the following:

• Units of the same team automatically form a formation: low range units (melee) automatically goes to the front of the formation and long range units to the back
• Both players have one active formation at a time (except a player has zero units alive)
• Once the units are close enough to attack each other, they stop moving forward and attack
• The formation updates in real time: if a new unit is added during an ongoing fight, it will seek a proper slot in the formation and the other units will move to make space

In the future, possibly flying units will be added, which will be able to bypass most of the enemies.

One more notable detail: attacks of the units can destroy each other (e.g. fireball destroys flying axe or arrow destroys boomerang), based on the strength of the corresponding attacks. Because of that, the players, basically, try to increase their total attack strength, in order to outmatch the enemy. This feels somewhat like the following scene:

Both sides loose and add units to their formation over the time of a fight, trying to outmatch the enemy.

To pile on to the suggestions;

1. Make the hitpoints of the castle relatively small. Since the game does lend itself to one player getting dominance relatively quickly, you don't want to drag out the battle when it's clear who's going to win.
2. A game like this is all about having a good rock-paper-scissors system. For example mounted beats archers, who beat infantry, who beat mounted. For this to work, you need to force players to chose between three or more options, instead of sending out all unit types at once. One way to do may be to have a high unit cost, so players simply can't afford to send all unit types.
3. Along the lines of point 2, provide buffs to having a lot of the same unit type. This fights the natural advantage a balanced army has. This can be in the form of another unit that helps all units of the same class. For example a general that leads your infantry, or an apprentice that powers up your mages.
4. Make sure every unit has a weakness. If someone gets an brief advantage by spamming one unit type, it should be easy to counter that the next round (but of course a better player will anticipate the counter, and spam units to counter the counter).
5. Make each faction feel unique by giving each an advantage for a particular player strategy.
6. In a game like this you have two metrics of how well you're doing: the number and streangth of units in play, and the position of the line of scrimmage. Try to make it possible for these not to match. For example, have units who knock back the enemy without dealing a lot of damage, and have slow moving powerful units.
7. Make sure the play area is wide enough so that as a player is loosing the line of scrimmage, they gain the benefit of reacting better because they can see which enemy's units are on the way.
8. Area attacks are a counter for large numbers of units. Percent of max hp attacks are a counter to singular strong units. Include both.
9. Make sure you have a test mechanism that tests the balance of each strategy and faction. Game-play telemetry is useful too, if possible.

Is the game intended for 2 human players or single player vs AI? AI will always be at a disadvantage against humans so either you make a very good AI or you give aids-cheats.

You say you want to avoid one player holding attacks until he can overwhelm the other. So the gameplay would be about sequence, the player tries to produce units in the right sequence, countering enemy units and sending their heavy hitters at the right moment to destroy enemy castle. King Mir had very good suggestions to implement for this gameplay.

Don't give armor to shooters and mages or they will steamroll everything. Also King Mir mentioned Area attacks to counter numbers, then you need a unit resistant to area attacks to counter the former.

attacks of the units can destroy each other (e.g. fireball destroys flying axe or arrow destroys boomerang), based on the strength of the corresponding attacks

The problem of 1 Dimension and missiles collidig whith each other is that once a formation is able to overcome the enemy firepower it will destroy everything behind, and it's unlikely the enemy will be able to amass enough firepower to tip the balance again. I suggest to rethink that mechanic implementing King Mir ideas about rock, paper, scissors.

I like the idea of a wide space between castles so the batlle moves back and forth. Maybe add a mechanic to send a builder to a specific point and build a specific building there.

merkutsam said:

Is the game intended for 2 human players or single player vs AI? AI will always be at a disadvantage against humans so either you make a very good AI or you give aids-cheats.

You should probably do both. Have a difficulty scale for AI buffs, and do your best to make a smart AI.

merkutsam said:

Don't give armor to shooters and mages or they will steamroll everything. Also King Mir mentioned Area attacks to counter numbers, then you need a unit resistant to area attacks to counter the former.

A unit resistant to area attacks is simply a unit with high hp or armor. The trade off is lots of weak units, or one strong unit.

Right now, we have the unit types Hero, Tank, Melee, Ranger, Mage. The tank, for example, has a lot of health, but only a short range attack. Additionally, units can wear armor, which makes them immune to attacks of rangers/mages (long range attacks). Units with armor are very slow.

Ok, So melee is cheep and has large numbers, and is strong against rangers. A mage can have an area attack to be good against that. A tank has armor, so counters a mage, and also the low attack of melee. Then maybe your hero deals damage proportional to max health, so counters both mages and tanks. And a ranger is also cheap, but has a bonus against tanks. There you go, 5 way RPS system.

For example.

Then give each faction a special unit or ability that boosts one or 2 of those 5 unit types.

Another thing, you mentioned that you have a healing fountain. I actually think you should avoid having abilities that heal units, because they keep units on the field. You might still be able to make it work if you favor certain unit types. For example, heal hp at a fixed number per second, so that it favors cheep units, and make this a faction special ability, for, say, snowmen.

King Mir said:

To pile on to the suggestions;

1. Make the hitpoints of the castle relatively small. Since the game does lend itself to one player getting dominance relatively quickly, you don't want to drag out the battle when it's clear who's going to win.
2. A game like this is all about having a good rock-paper-scissors system. For example mounted beats archers, who beat infantry, who beat mounted. For this to work, you need to force players to chose between three or more options, instead of sending out all unit types at once. One way to do may be to have a high unit cost, so players simply can't afford to send all unit types.
3. Along the lines of point 2, provide buffs to having a lot of the same unit type. This fights the natural advantage a balanced army has. This can be in the form of another unit that helps all units of the same class. For example a general that leads your infantry, or an apprentice that powers up your mages.
4. Make sure every unit has a weakness. If someone gets an brief advantage by spamming one unit type, it should be easy to counter that the next round (but of course a better player will anticipate the counter, and spam units to counter the counter).
5. Make each faction feel unique by giving each an advantage for a particular player strategy.
6. In a game like this you have two metrics of how well you're doing: the number and streangth of units in play, and the position of the line of scrimmage. Try to make it possible for these not to match. For example, have units who knock back the enemy without dealing a lot of damage, and have slow moving powerful units.
7. Make sure the play area is wide enough so that as a player is loosing the line of scrimmage, they gain the benefit of reacting better because they can see which enemy's units are on the way.
8. Area attacks are a counter for large numbers of units. Percent of max hp attacks are a counter to singular strong units. Include both.
9. Make sure you have a test mechanism that tests the balance of each strategy and faction. Game-play telemetry is useful too, if possible.

1. That would be one possibility, yet I think it would be better to find a way for the player to successfully defend the castle against even a big army and to launch a counter attack. It is true, that during one match (/game) in one battle, there, usually, is one clear winner (the stronger army destroys all enemies), however, the goal is, that there are multiple battles during one game. The player should still have the possibility to destroy the army of the enemy after some time. Possibly, because of tactical elements, such as 'rock, paper, scissor'-like unit types or, for example, area attacks
2. I agree and have one more comment, which I will add to point 3
3. this is a great point. The player should have an advantage by having many units of the same type, otherwise he will simply build a very balanced army. Maybe the following: The main attribute of the unit (e.g. health for tanks, damage for mages, range for rangers) is boosted, based on the amount of units of that type. For example, more tanks results in even more health and more mages results in even more damage. This is a really good idea.
4. Similar to point 2 and 3. If we use the rock, paper, scissor system and boost groups of the same unit type, this would apply
5. Would be ideal and we should definitely invest time into this topic. Probably not very easy, because there are over 20 tribes, yet, I guess, it would be okay, if there are some overlaps
6. Already the case, to a certain degree: Units can have armor (makes immune to mage/ranger attacks), which makes those units very slow
7. Yeah, although there needs to be a good balance. Otherwise, it might be frustrating: If you build a good army, which finally arrives at the enemy, but the enemy builds an effective counter (he has a lot of time to react, because he knows exactly who is coming to him) and you do not have any ways of helping your army, because support would take too much time to arrive, this would be frustrating
8. Good idea. Especially the area attacks. I am not sure about the ‘Percent of max hp attacks’, because they might be too op against Heros and, otherwise, useless against everyone else. Possibly a viable special attack with a big cooldown
9. Yes, I agree. We already set up Python tooling, which can automatically simulate matches and print out statistics of the resulting matches. The game simulation depends on the AI, though. If we succeed, we will use reinforcement learning to train a good AI

merkutsam said:

Is the game intended for 2 human players or single player vs AI? AI will always be at a disadvantage against humans so either you make a very good AI or you give aids-cheats.

You say you want to avoid one player holding attacks until he can overwhelm the other. So the gameplay would be about sequence, the player tries to produce units in the right sequence, countering enemy units and sending their heavy hitters at the right moment to destroy enemy castle. King Mir had very good suggestions to implement for this gameplay.

Don't give armor to shooters and mages or they will steamroll everything. Also King Mir mentioned Area attacks to counter numbers, then you need a unit resistant to area attacks to counter the former.

attacks of the units can destroy each other (e.g. fireball destroys flying axe or arrow destroys boomerang), based on the strength of the corresponding attacks

The problem of 1 Dimension and missiles collidig whith each other is that once a formation is able to overcome the enemy firepower it will destroy everything behind, and it's unlikely the enemy will be able to amass enough firepower to tip the balance again. I suggest to rethink that mechanic implementing King Mir ideas about rock, paper, scissors.

I like the idea of a wide space between castles so the batlle moves back and forth. Maybe add a mechanic to send a builder to a specific point and build a specific building there.

The game is intended for both. In the beginning, human vs AI. Later, we want to support human vs human too. The game, already, is deterministic (if the same hardware is used) and human vs human should be possible, but probably is still a lot of work to implement.

Yeah, the AI should be really good, which is why we are trying to train it with reinforcement learning. Additionally, we already wrote some balancing helpers: the money, which the AI gets, is multiplied with a balancing factor. This balancing factor depends on the worth of assets (money/units/building) the AI has in comparison to the enemy. The AI can get up to 1.5 times as much money, as usual, if it is very poor, compared to the enemy.

Yep, the game is about sequences of units and battles.

Regarding the 1 Dimension issue: this is, in general, correct, yet via mechanisms, such as a rock, paper, scissors system and the other ideas discussed above (e.g. area attacks or special attacks of the heros, with a big cooldown) it should be possible for a player to turn the game around to their advantage.

The possibility of building buildings at any position is something we have to test out. Maybe it is really good, maybe it is overpowered.

King Mir said:

merkutsam said:

Is the game intended for 2 human players or single player vs AI? AI will always be at a disadvantage against humans so either you make a very good AI or you give aids-cheats.

You should probably do both. Have a difficulty scale for AI buffs, and do your best to make a smart AI.

merkutsam said:

Don't give armor to shooters and mages or they will steamroll everything. Also King Mir mentioned Area attacks to counter numbers, then you need a unit resistant to area attacks to counter the former.

A unit resistant to area attacks is simply a unit with high hp or armor. The trade off is lots of weak units, or one strong unit.

Right now, we have the unit types Hero, Tank, Melee, Ranger, Mage. The tank, for example, has a lot of health, but only a short range attack. Additionally, units can wear armor, which makes them immune to attacks of rangers/mages (long range attacks). Units with armor are very slow.

Ok, So melee is cheep and has large numbers, and is strong against rangers. A mage can have an area attack to be good against that. A tank has armor, so counters a mage, and also the low attack of melee. Then maybe your hero deals damage proportional to max health, so counters both mages and tanks. And a ranger is also cheap, but has a bonus against tanks. There you go, 5 way RPS system.

For example.

Then give each faction a special unit or ability that boosts one or 2 of those 5 unit types.

Another thing, you mentioned that you have a healing fountain. I actually think you should avoid having abilities that heal units, because they keep units on the field. You might still be able to make it work if you favor certain unit types. For example, heal hp at a fixed number per second, so that it favors cheep units, and make this a faction special ability, for, say, snowmen.

Yeah, the healing fountain should have a very limited amount of heal hp per second.

Regarding the rock, paper scissor topic: right now, I consider the following system:

• Tank simply has high health but has no other big advantage. Also it has a low range
• Melee is rather cheap, deals a decent amount of damage, has a low range, has medium health and is very effective against buildings (which have a lot of health and are, otherwise, hard to destroy). The more melee units are close together, the more damage they deal
• Ranger has a high range, low health, medium damage and is effective against tanks. The more ranger units are close together, the more range they have (yet not too much, otherwise it would be very op)
• Mage has a high range, very low health and high damage. The more mages are close together, the more damage they deal

Re: ‘Percent of max hp attacks’, because they might be too op against Heros and, otherwise, useless against everyone else. This is kind of the point; they're a counter to high hp units, just like weak area attacks are only really effective against many units.

So those bonuses for having many of the same unit in play are great.

But I'm not seeing much of a rps system between those 4 unit types. If the enemy spams tanks, it's clear I should spam rangers. What if the enemy spams melee? Are mages area attacks? if so that would help. What if they spam rangers?

I suggest mages beat melee, give melee a buff against rangers, rangers beat tanks, and tanks would be good against mages because of the mages low individual attack. Melee vs tanks would be equal (per dollar), and so would mages vs rangers. But a problem with this is where do heros fit it? they're basically tanks if they have high hp. You could make hero mages and hero rangers to some extent, but not hero melee, since those have the most strength in numbers.

I think an odd number of base unit types may be better, so there's no balanced fights.

One thing to keep in mind is there are side effects speed beyond the fact that it counters ranged units; a fast unit can get to the front quicker. this would make them worse for staring out, and better as support later. That automatic “play later” attribute is probably not very desirable, because it makes the start of play more predictable.

Since you have buildings, you should definitely add slow moving siege. Specifically battering rams and seige towers. That doesn't add to the RPS, but it does add an importance to timing; you want to send in siege precisely timed with when your other units reach the enemy walls.

Since you have ranged siege, be sure to provide at least three variants of that too: splash attacks, frequent single unit attacks, and high damage slow attacks. For this you probably want your stronger units to be completely immune to splash attacks, so that it doesn't automatically become the best counter for multiple units of any type. Unlike units, ranged siege isn't going to be destroyed easily so the balance around it is a bit different.

I think your idea to have a reinforcement learning AI has a problem: at the same time as you work on the AI, you want to work on balancing the game. So if your AI discovers a preferred strategy, instead of making the AI use that strategy, it may be better to change the game so the strategy is less effective.

merkutsam said:

Area attacks to counter numbers, then you need a unit resistant to area attacks to counter the former.

King Mir said:

A unit resistant to area attacks is simply a unit with high hp or armor. The trade off is lots of weak units, or one strong unit.

Or a building like a fortification to shelter units inside. Nevermind, probably buildings aren't a good idea.

Personally I don't like the concept of tanks with many hitpoints. I prefer different types of damage and defense.

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King Mir said:
But I'm not seeing much of a rps system between those 4 unit types. If the enemy spams tanks, it's clear I should spam rangers. What if the enemy spams melee? Are mages area attacks? if so that would help. What if they spam rangers? I suggest mages beat melee, give melee a buff against rangers, rangers beat tanks, and tanks would be good against mages because of the mages low individual attack. Melee vs tanks would be equal (per dollar), and so would mages vs rangers.

To make the whole rps topic a little easier to understand and talk about, I have created diagrams (I am sorry for the low resolution; the arrows point from the effective unit type towards the weaker unit type).

I like this idea, in general, yet, there is one point, which I have difficulties with: How can we, logically, explain to the player, that Rangers are effective against Tanks but weak against Melee? Tanks should be known for wearing the heaviest and strongest armor. Arrows and other rather “light" attacks should not be effective against Tanks if they are weak against Melee, I think.

What about the following alternative? It is similar to your idea and based on your idea.

Instead of Tanks being completely immune to Ranger attacks, it could also be, that they take just very little damage.

King Mir said:
But a problem with this is where do heros fit it? they're basically tanks if they have high hp. You could make hero mages and hero rangers to some extent, but not hero melee, since those have the most strength in numbers.

Putting each Hero into one of the different unit classes is a good idea. Could you elaborate on why you think, Melee Heroes would be a bad idea? They could be simply either a Mage/Ranger(/Melee) but with extreme stats.

King Mir said:
I think an odd number of base unit types may be better, so there's no balanced fights.

Sounds reasonable, but I do not really want to remove one of my classes and adding one would not be suitable either.

What about the following rps-system?:

King Mir said:
One thing to keep in mind is there are side effects speed beyond the fact that it counters ranged units; a fast unit can get to the front quicker. this would make them worse for staring out, and better as support later. That automatic “play later” attribute is probably not very desirable, because it makes the start of play more predictable.

Right now, speed of units is handled the following way: Units of the same team form a formation anyways (e.g. take a slot in an invisible formation entity and try to stay on their proper position within the formation). This formation moves with the speed of the slowest unit. Therefore, if you would start with some slow and a few fast units, the formation would move slowly and the fast units would adapt. Only when the fast units are not in a slow formation they move fast. The disadvantage of fast units is that they take up more space, since they use a mount (e.g. horse, wolf, lion) which has a bigger width than usual units.

King Mir said:
Since you have buildings, you should definitely add slow moving siege. Specifically battering rams and seige towers. That doesn't add to the RPS, but it does add an importance to timing; you want to send in siege precisely timed with when your other units reach the enemy walls. Since you have ranged siege, be sure to provide at least three variants of that too: splash attacks, frequent single unit attacks, and high damage slow attacks. For this you probably want your stronger units to be completely immune to splash attacks, so that it doesn't automatically become the best counter for multiple units of any type. Unlike units, ranged siege isn't going to be destroyed easily so the balance around it is a bit different.

This is a good idea and could be great against enemy buildings. We will definitely play around with the concept of movable siege machines.

King Mir said:
I think your idea to have a reinforcement learning AI has a problem: at the same time as you work on the AI, you want to work on balancing the game. So if your AI discovers a preferred strategy, instead of making the AI use that strategy, it may be better to change the game so the strategy is less effective.

Yep, the AI can be used to discover weak spots and to balance the game. Fortunately, within one minute over 30 complete matches can be simulted, currently. This way, it should be rather easy to re-train the AI many times.

merkutsam said:
Personally I don't like the concept of tanks with many hitpoints. I prefer different types of damage and defense.

I guess, both have advantages and disadvantages. It can be frustrating if you have no way of protecting your precious unit (e.g. mages with low hit points). Of course, if one decides to go with tanks, those should have weak spots too (e.g. they move slowly and have a low range or are weak against magic attacks). We have made experiments with different attack types and defenses too. We tried the attack classes “Normal” (Melee, Tank), “Light” (Ranger) and “Magic” (Mage) and implemented two types of armor: “Anti Magic” and “Anti Light”. If units of any class can have that armor, this quickly makes everything more complex and, for example, weak spots of a unit class could be negated with the corresponding armor, quickly making a unit overpowered.

sbn1986 said:

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We are already in contact with a music composer, however, if we should not agree on working together, I will come back to you ?

Thank you

I prefer different types of damage and defense.

I mean instead of tanks based on hit points, I prefer them based on good defense against the normal attack but vulnerable to another attack. Ex: infantry with armor and shields is a good tank against arrows, but less effective in melee than pikes. While pikes are better in melee but vulnerable to arrows. Here you have two different melee units, each one with different strengths and weaknesses. I like to base design on reality as much as possible. If you base tanks on hitpoints it needs a counter based on percentage of health which is another unrealistic design. It can be a good game but I prefer the other way.

1. Your second RPS diagram looks fine. Make it so a tank can kill a melee unit in an integer number of hits exactly, to balance them.
2. The problem with a melee hero, is that the strength of melee is numbers. If you have a more expensive melee unit that's harder to kill, that starts to look like a tank. You might be able to have units that buff melee, but they'd need to have low hp. I guess you could still have a tank that buffs melee, balanced by a melee unit that buffs tanks, like a week support unit.
3. Speaking of support units, they can encourage specialization in one unit type is to have support units that boost only that unit type. That's probably a better mechanic over all than just “I have lots of mages so my mages are stronger”.
4. One advantage that cheap weak troops generally have is that you can ramp them up slower. So you might start with a tank, expect the enemy to counter with mages, then instead of sending a tanks cost of melee units together, you can start sending units as soon as you can afford a single one. Because of this, I do like the idea of not making melee part of the main rps loop. However, just making rangers be the only thing that's good against them encourages a strategy of using a lot of melee. What you can instead do everyone equally good against melee. That means no area attacks by your main three.
5. Making melee week against everyone, and having heroes is also nice because then you have three tiers of units, with three tiers of cost. You could even make this another RPS layer, if you make melee good against heroes.
6. Making melee good against buildings seems a bit strange to me from a realism perspective, unless you give them a special anti-building ability, like sapping underground or explosives. Plus there are more realistic anti-siege weapons.
7. The formation system sounds good, but that only makes sense for the front, not for units trying to reach the front. So fast units still have an advantage reaching the front. So you'd want to make them a tad weaker to compensate.
8. Yeah damage types are great, but you'd need to increase the total number of unit types to make it work. So if you're keeping the unit numbers small, then I agree you should keep it out.
9. I don't agree that percentage of hit points are a particularly unrealistic mechanic. It's basically a way to represent a unit that overcomes armor. To such a unit, an unarmored foot soldier or a fully clad knight look like they take the same amount of hits. It's suitable for a unit that deals blunt damage.
10. If you don't have area attacks to counter melee, you can still have attacks that target a fixed multiple of units: double attacks, and triple attacks.

merkutsam said:

I prefer different types of damage and defense.

I mean instead of tanks based on hit points, I prefer them based on good defense against the normal attack but vulnerable to another attack. Ex: infantry with armor and shields is a good tank against arrows, but less effective in melee than pikes. While pikes are better in melee but vulnerable to arrows. Here you have two different melee units, each one with different strengths and weaknesses. I like to base design on reality as much as possible. If you base tanks on hitpoints it needs a counter based on percentage of health which is another unrealistic design. It can be a good game but I prefer the other way.

I get your point and this is, for sure, something worth to consider. If we would, for example, go with Tanks that take only very little damage from attacks of Rangers, that would be an example of this design paradigm.

King Mir said:

1. Your second RPS diagram looks fine. Make it so a tank can kill a melee unit in an integer number of hits exactly, to balance them.
2. The problem with a melee hero, is that the strength of melee is numbers. If you have a more expensive melee unit that's harder to kill, that starts to look like a tank. You might be able to have units that buff melee, but they'd need to have low hp. I guess you could still have a tank that buffs melee, balanced by a melee unit that buffs tanks, like a week support unit.
3. Speaking of support units, they can encourage specialization in one unit type is to have support units that boost only that unit type. That's probably a better mechanic over all than just “I have lots of mages so my mages are stronger”.
4. One advantage that cheap weak troops generally have is that you can ramp them up slower. So you might start with a tank, expect the enemy to counter with mages, then instead of sending a tanks cost of melee units together, you can start sending units as soon as you can afford a single one. Because of this, I do like the idea of not making melee part of the main rps loop. However, just making rangers be the only thing that's good against them encourages a strategy of using a lot of melee. What you can instead do everyone equally good against melee. That means no area attacks by your main three.
5. Making melee week against everyone, and having heroes is also nice because then you have three tiers of units, with three tiers of cost. You could even make this another RPS layer, if you make melee good against heroes.
6. Making melee good against buildings seems a bit strange to me from a realism perspective, unless you give them a special anti-building ability, like sapping underground or explosives. Plus there are more realistic anti-siege weapons.
7. The formation system sounds good, but that only makes sense for the front, not for units trying to reach the front. So fast units still have an advantage reaching the front. So you'd want to make them a tad weaker to compensate.
8. Yeah damage types are great, but you'd need to increase the total number of unit types to make it work. So if you're keeping the unit numbers small, then I agree you should keep it out.
9. I don't agree that percentage of hit points are a particularly unrealistic mechanic. It's basically a way to represent a unit that overcomes armor. To such a unit, an unarmored foot soldier or a fully clad knight look like they take the same amount of hits. It's suitable for a unit that deals blunt damage.
10. If you don't have area attacks to counter melee, you can still have attacks that target a fixed multiple of units: double attacks, and triple attacks.

1. Thanks for the hint regarding balancing melee und tank units
2. I'll write a separate section about our thoughts regarding heroes in the bottom
3. We consider the following solution regarding “advantage when you have many units of the same type”: When the player has 3 units of a kind in his formation, a support unit (similar look, but carrying a banner which displays the unit class, e.g. ranger, mage or melee) is automatically spawned and will join the units. It will stay alive, even if the 3 units are killed, until enemies kill this support unit. If the player should have 6 units of a kind, a second support unit is automatically spawned. The support units boost all units of the same class of the player
4. Yeah, all unit classes would be equally good against melee, except ranger who would be naturally effective against melee due to their long range (and their cooldown is not as high as the mage cooldown)
5. Making melee strong against heroes is a good idea
6. I agree and siege machines are cool anyways (and add this additional timing aspect)
7. Already the case: only the units on the front form a formation (which adapts to the speed of the slowest unit) and other units walk on their own
8. I'll comment on this one down below.
9. That would be one way to explain it. Additionally, through an armor system (e.g. no/medium/strong armor against regular attacks or against magic attacks; the damage dealt to a unit would be attack damage minus armor value) this could be realized too: an attack that ignores armor would have a similar effect
10. This is what we are probably going to do

Now, there a few more open topics:

Heroes

Because of the formation system, units choose a position in the 1d army formation, which is suitable for their unit class. A tank will be in the front, next will be melee, ranger, mage. Most enemy attacks target the front unit of the formation. Assuming we keep it this way (an alternative would be just keeping the order in which units are built), it might be overpowered, if a Hero would choose a position in the back.

Why do I mention this?

We could put heroes into one of the unit classes (mage, ranger, possibly melee). If we do this, it would be reasonable if a mage hero would choose a slot in the back, have a huge amount of damage and rather low health (for a hero). Due to the hero having a slot in the back, if it would be protected with tanks in the front, it could deal huge amounts of damage, without taking any damage itself (position in back). Of course, this needs to be playtested, but I feel like this could be overpowered.

An alternative would be putting all heroes in the front of the formation, however that does not feel right, if we decide to go with mage or ranger Heroes, instead of just one tank-like hero class.

Unit speed and buildings

Currently, we have the “attacks destroy each other" option activated (e.g. an axe could destroy an arrow or a fireball a spear), I have talked about this in a previous post. Because of that, the player wants to have an army with as much firepower as possible. Due to that, it is actually positive for the player to have an army, which moves slowly. Walls, that block the army, are welcome, because they slow the army down, giving it more time to grow bigger and stronger. This defeats the purpose of the wall. If the health of buildings would be increased and only a few special siege machines can take buildings down quickly, it would increase this effect even more.

I have not played any game of this kind yet, which used buildings, such as walls. Maybe, because they are really difficult from a game design perspective (chances are that there are such games, which I just do not know). If the “attacks destroy each other" option is deactivated, the effect is not as big (but still exists). I like that option though, because, at least without a proper RPS unit class design, the game felt boring without this option and feels fun with the option (but is harder to balance).

Many different unit types

We have talked a lot about unit classes already (e.g. hero, tank, melee, ranger, mage). Every unit is in one of those classes. However, this does not mean, that there are only 5 unit types: Every single faction/tribe has a unique set of 5 unit types. Examples: the goblin tribe has a goblin boss, a goblin tank, etc. The dwarf tribe has a dwarf boss, a dwarf tank, etc. All those individual unit types are based on the 5 main unit classes, yet they have a few minor differences, such as

• their attack (e.g. golden spear vs mad boomerang vs god axe)
• mount / no mount
• rarity (common, rare, epic, legendary). The rare a unit type is, the higher the stats are but the more expensive it is
• optionally vampire effect (regain some health via damaging enemies)
• a few more differences (for example higher attack rate but lower damage)

My main goal is, to balance the 5 unit classes. The individual unit types should feel a little bit different too, but I am fine with them having just minor differences. I understand, that it is, basically, not managable, to create over 50 unique, well-balanced unit types.

After having put some more time into playtesting and balancing the 5 unit classes, I will think about the possibility to introduce different armor levels (as mentioned in my response to point 9).

Btw.: I really appreciate your time and your help ? Thank you!

King Mir said:
I don't agree that percentage of hit points are a particularly unrealistic mechanic. It's basically a way to represent a unit that overcomes armor. To such a unit, an unarmored foot soldier or a fully clad knight look like they take the same amount of hits. It's suitable for a unit that deals blunt damage.

Only if all units have the same amount of hit points. If a mage has less points, or a cavalry has more points, then that counter-armor unit will do it worse or better than a normal attack against those units.

@logende

I've been thinking in your game development. I'm guessing so I may be wrong.

First the game was about sequence, unit X beat unit Y, then unit Z beats unit X, then unit Y beats unit Z, and the full circle X beats Y.

This was a waste if an expensive unit beats another one only to be defeated by a cheap one. So you added a formation mechanic. Now units in the front protect weak and expensive units in the back.

But this was a constant meat grinder. Front line units wiped out, and new replacements sent non stop. So you added the missiles cancel each other mechanic.

Now both formations fight as a whole, every unit adding its attack to the struggle until one formation's firepower overcomes the other's. Once this happens, the other formation is wiped out and this is pretty much game over.

In the end what you have been saying is that you prefer a more complex gameplay, one army defeating the other combined army as a whole, not piece meal. Probably not what you want but here you have a few ideas.

• Formations may fight in an abstract way calculating the different combined attacks and defenses, and taking a percentage of their units health, and they may recover health when not in combat.
• Formations don't need to be destroyed everytime they are defeated. They may fall back to their defensive positions if they are losing.
• Formations may advance and retreat, may entrench and fortify, may besiege and assault.
• Formations may fight better in their own lands, and worse in enemy lands
• Formations may change their composition, retiring some units and adding others.
• Formations may apply different tactics for different situations.
• Support units may add different capabilities to formations. Workers, engines, cavalry, spies and counter spies
• Ranged units may have different attacks. Bowmen bombard formation with weak area attack. Crossbowmen like snipers against expensive units. Musketeers piercing attacks anti armor
• Heroes don't need to be combat units, they may be characters leading a formation with different capabilities derived from their traits.
• Mages don't need to be damage dealers, they may be support. They may add buffs and debuffs to attacks and defenses, they may increase healing rate or movement
• Economy may be based on maintenance instead of a fixed # gold per time. One player can maintain a given amount of units. If he uses more expensive units he will have less gold for other units.

1. Spawning support units automatically is an interesting variation. However, you're taking away an opportunity for the player to make a choice: the player has 3 rangers on the field, the enemy has a lot of units week to rangers. Does the player build a support unit to boost their rangers, or do they build a third ranger? In general, more player choices like this are good. Even if the choice is obvious.
2. Long range is like armor, it means you can take more strikes against the enemy before they can hit you. It's particularly effective if you can kill the unit before it reaches you. So at the very least to prevent rangers from dominating melee, you should make sure that they do little enough damage so that a single melee unit will land at least one attack vs a single ranger.
3. I want to enumerate what the choice that melee does not participate in the main RPS loop should mean. It should mean specifically, in a battle where one side is pumping out melee units as fast as it can, and the other side is pumping out one of the 3 main types as fast as they can, two things should be true: 1) the side pumping out the 3 main types should win. 2) all three main types should win by approximately the same advantage. This is a very testable design objective.
4. If you make tank armor effective against melee as it is effective against rangers, then tanks will be strong against melee too. This is good if you want to keep melee out of your RPS main loop.
5. A more traditional RPS system, without mages is archers v melee v cavalry. Archers beat melee because they can mow them down before they are reached, melee beat cavalry with long pikes, and cavalry mows down undefended archers. You're trying to have a RPS system of horse archers vs melee (tanks) vs archers (mages). Not only is this going to be more difficult to balance, but I gotta ask: where's the cavalry? Not horse archers, knights. You're missing a staple combat unit.
6. I agree that it's a good idea to have heroes fight with their matching unit type; tanks in the front, ranged power attackers in the back.
7. I don't think that having attacks cancel each other is a good mechanic. It makes units stay on the field longer. It's the same problem as healing. I think you want your units to die quickly, so the game is closer to RPS than an effort to build an army.
8. Why those 5 units? Would like to understand what led to these 5 specific unit types.
9. Totally agree that a fixed gold per minute is better than getting gold for kills. Gold for kills just ends the battle too quickly.
10. Formations falling back might work if it's automatic. If you make it a player choice, you're back the problem that it's an advantage to stay back and build up troops.
11. Fighting better in your own lands might have the consequence that your strategy would need to change depending on how deep you are into enemy lands. Not sure how desirable that is.
12. We've been giving minor suggestions here an there, but perhaps a better approach is to establish more clear design objectives. Ideally testable objectives. What this amounts in this game is, different ai strategies and how they perform against each other. Done right, some strategies will be balanced, while others will dominate. You want to balance the player experience going to be like when he himself used one of these strategies. To start off with, specifically, you have one strategy focusing on each of the units. One strategy that cycles the main rps loop evenly. Now you gotta decide, who will win: balanced or one-sided? Is it a close? What about all in on one unit type, plus the associated hero or support type?
13. If you're going to be tweaking 50 individual units eventually, then you're going to want to set up good automation to test that they are properly balanced.
14. Another design objective should be managing how much luck matters. In other words, with any given strategy combo, what are the odds that the underdog wins? Make this too high, and the game stops being strategic. Make it too low, and the game becomes too predictable.
15. I think one specific design objective should be that an ai that reacts to the units the enemy sends out should dominate one which doesn't.
16. In general, you want battles to be long enough for a player to change strategies if one is not working. But for testing design you want the opposite: you want the test to be exactly long enough to show a strategy is inferior.
17. With regards to buildings, right now I'm not sure what they add specifically. Why do you want buildings, instead of an open battle field? What feel are you trying to achieve? It would help to identify the design goal here.
18. You mentioned 50 unit types for 10 factions. What's odd about this choice is that the player can only play as one faction at a time. So there's a lot of gameplay that a player won't see in a single playthrough. I suggest keeping the variation between factions small, or have much fewer factions.
19. Will there be a campaign mode? That effects the design quite a bit because then it's important to provide a way to ramp up the difficulty, whereas otherwise you want to make all the player choices obvious and apparent from the start.