[Miscellanous / Other] Alchemy Tower

[Lord Aiden]

An idea that I've had but that was never realized was having a boat unit and calling it "treasure hunter" or something like that, the idea was if this boat was in a certain deep sea area it would generate gold over time, with the limitation being that each boat cost 5 food and this would prevent abuse

This is an excellent idea, why was it never used ?

 

[Lord Alyx]

@Lord Aiden

The concept was meant for a water map, so far I haven't created a single one that would allow for this concept to be put into practice. I've had a similar idea where you have an airship called a wind-surfer which would generate gold if placed in a windy area, maybe you can use this in your map; all it requires is that you take a model from hive, create a specialized trigger that checks the amount of such airships in various windy zones across the map and then gives the player gold depending on this.

Make sure to give the airship a food cost of at least 5 or alternatively set a built limit via a trigger or the player will abuse it.

 

[cleavinghammer]

I dunno, if it already costs the same as 5 peasants the abuse can be mitigated by giving it the same gold generating rate as a fully staffed gold mine.

 

[DingoT]

Gold mines run out after about a 30 minutes unless they contain over 50k of gold. I believe someone made a calculation and 5 peasants/peons/any other workers drain something like 620 gold/minute.... having a unit that generates unlimited gold over time and being able to train such units on a whim is like having access to several infinite mines at a time... that's where the abuse comes from. Player could produce 4 or 5 of those airships if they are 5 food, let them hang out for ten minutes or so then have enough gold to train and retrain a formidable army after that as long as the player turtles during the time hes collecting gold...ideally you want to set a built limit on these units, but a high enough food cost could prevent abuse also

 

[Lord Aiden]

@cleavinghammer
@DingoT

Both of you guys are right in a way, I personally believe that the abuse can be mitigated by properly adjusting the amount of gold the unit produces every minute.

 

[cleavinghammer]

So limit it to two, equivalent to having two mines at once.

 

[Lord Alyx]

@DingoT @Lord Aiden @cleavinghammer

I see you guys are n00bs at creating campaigns, the abuse would come because unlike gold mines these extra sources of gold are not susceptible to upkeep taxes; they essentially generate x gold regardless of the size of your army, but if they cost enough food the player wont be able to use this as an advantage

 

[Lord Aiden]

@-Phoenix- : I understand that having a high food cost means the player will be able to build less of them, but how will it eliminate the advantage of not being effected by upkeep?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Let's say unit A produces half the gold 5 workers would get from a mine per minute and unit A costs 5 food

You would need 2 unit As to replace the income from 1 gold mine, and it would take 10 food

Normally unless you are playing as ud you would use 10 food for workers (5 food for 5 workers mining and 5 food for 5 lumber gathering)

If you have the tradition 100 food limit this allows 90 food for your armies

Lets say your mine is out, you have to get 2 unit As to replace the income, so now you have to waste 15 food for the same amount of resources that you previously wasted 10 food on, although now you don't get taxed you have 5 less food to spend on your armies, that's minus 2 basic infantry soldiers, 1 tier 3 tank, or a flying unit.

Now let's say that unit A cost 7 or 8 food, with 7 food now you have 81 food to spend on your armies, with 8 food you now have 79 food to spend on your armies; although the income is no longer taxed (although you could set up triggers to tax it if you like) you now have less units to work with at any given time. This provides a balance if you do it right.

The player can build more unit As if he likes, but that food is taken from his other forces, this is the key to the balance.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Alright, good point, but how is the thing with the blacksmith re-occuring bonus or capturing structure which generate gold w/o taxation balanced out?

 

[Lord Alyx]

I assume you're referring to the research structure thing I previously mentioned, it was designed to give the player 20 gold every 10 seconds. It could be upgraded to give the player 40, 60, etc. gold if he finds a special item, but to rival a gold mine it has to be at least 100 gold per 10 seconds resulting in 600 gold per minute.

Similarly capturable structures gave a much smaller amount of gold per interval per structure when compared to a mine, I think you'd have to get at least 5 or 6 to match what a gold mine gives you, and that didn't happen in most maps which I worked on.

Both of these give a decent bonus to the player's income, they don't need to be balanced out because having a 2nd gold mine would generally give you more gold than each one of them.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Upkeep: Aren't they producing gold via triggers? Shouldn't be hard to change the amount generated depending on foodcount.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Upkeep: Aren't they producing gold via triggers? Shouldn't be hard to change the amount generated depending on foodcount.

yes...

but like I said I never had to use upkeep in a trigger because other things balanced it out

also I never used the treasure hunter or wind surfer concepts in a map, I've used other things but they were more or less balanced

 

[cleavinghammer]

From what I understand the idea is a unit equivalent to five peasants and an infinite gold mine. Accounting for upkeep would maintain them at the same level of efficiency.

Maybe make it cost the same as a town hall and five peasants in addition to the food costs.

 

[Lord Alyx]

The idea is to give player flexibility and something other than a pure gold mine equivalent.

Thats why I suggested that it would take 2 units to match a mine, but the player can build more for additional gold in exchange for having a smaller army.

I assumed thats what Lord Aiden had in mind because he didn't want a mine with 500,000 gold as I had previously suggested

 

[ArchDuke]

The idea is to give player flexibility and something other than a pure gold mine equivalent.

Thats why I suggested that it would take 2 units to match a mine, but the player can build more for additional gold in exchange for having a smaller army.

I assumed thats what Lord Aiden had in mind because he didn't want a mine with 500,000 gold as I had previously suggested

thats a good point, otherwise you can get any object. say like a halve sunken ship give it the goldmine ability and have it act as a replacement

 

[Lord Alyx]

@ArchDuke, I've seen something similar done before, it didn't look right, but yes, you can give the gold mine ability to any structure, its not very creative though...

 

[cleavinghammer]

Merchant ships regularly spawn and can be killed for gold.
When sunk, creates a sunken wreck with the goldmine ability and a random amount of gold.
Wrecks can be mined by murlocs or other specialized units (by entangling/haunting the wreck by building a floating platform or treasure ship above it).
Limit the number of mined wrecks available at any time.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Merchant ships regularly spawn and can be killed for gold.
When sunk, creates a sunken wreck with the goldmine ability and a random amount of gold.
Wrecks can be mined by murlocs or other specialized units (by entangling/haunting the wreck by building a floating platform or treasure ship above it).
Limit the number of mined wrecks available at any time.

Interesting idea, would take lots of triggers to achieve

hey @-Phoenix- : how did you come up with those treasure hunter/wind surfer ideas? what's the backstory with them?

 

[Lord Alyx]

It was a long time back when I was working on a campaign with a few other people, if I recall correctly we had an idea for a map where like 90% of the battle takes place in the water, so we had come up with the treasure hunter concept, we also had an idea to make the ship "deploy" aka use metamorphosis to make the ship stationary before it would get any gold. The wind surfer thing, well I was thinking about creating a map where the battle would be in the clouds rather than on land. Something like they had in Wanderers of Sorceria, but not in first person.... thats what where the spin off concept came from. I never actually used either one, although I've used similar things in some maps.

 

[Lord Aiden]

I just wanted to ask when you use 500k mines does it not allow the player to turtle for as long as he is gathering the needed gold before finally attacking, plus it creates the situation where the battle can be strung out over several hours, not that I don't like long battles.

 

[cleavinghammer]

I don't think that's as big a problem, since one big gold mine still has a limited gathering rate.

One 500K gold mine gives less gold per second than two 125K mines, and a turtling player isn't going to go and find other mines outside his base. Factor in upkeep and the turtling player might actually be at a disadvantage, having fewer units and defenses until the other player runs out of gold completely.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Still I would think that turtling would increase if a player was given a huge gold mine.

 

[DingoT]

I don't think that's as big a problem, since one big gold mine still has a limited gathering rate.

One 500K gold mine gives less gold per second than two 125K mines, and a turtling player isn't going to go and find other mines outside his base. Factor in upkeep and the turtling player might actually be at a disadvantage, having fewer units and defenses until the other player runs out of gold completely.

I completely agree

Still I would think that turtling would increase if a player was given a huge gold mine.

It highly depends if the topography of the map allows the player do do so...if all or 3 sides are open he wont be able to turtle, but if his base has pinch points at the entrances he may try...its all about the layout of the map...to prevent turning place the player in the middle with no obstacles that separate him from the enemies.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Depends on things like how many other gold mines are available and how defensible they are.

Game length being increased depends on how much gold is harvested, if a lot of that time is just spent waiting for gold to accumulate at less than half the regular rate.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Depends on things like how many other gold mines are available and how defensible they are.

Game length being increased depends on how much gold is harvested, if a lot of that time is just spent waiting for gold to accumulate at less than half the regular rate.

Correct, turtling only happens if the base is highly defensible, game length varies according to the goals of the mission, I prefer long chapters, but generally the a large gold mine does not cause a long game, it all depends on the player and how he intends to achieve his goal

 

[DingoT]

If the player constantly has to fend off attacks unless he goes and wipes the enemy out hes not gonna turtle

 

[cleavinghammer]

If you absolutely want to avoid anyone turtling, have small gold mines in the initial base and larger gold mines out in the open, and prevent the massing of income-generating buildings (for example, only buildable on some terrain tiles).

 

[Lord Alyx]

I've said this before and I'll say it again I've made a number of maps, and turtling mostly occurs if the mine is inside an easy to defend location, if it's in the middle of the map with no obstacles around it there will be no turtling.

Also artillery especially demolishers in the hands of your enemy decreases your capacity to turtle

 

[DingoT]

I've said this before and I'll say it again I've made a number of maps, and turtling mostly occurs if the mine is inside an easy to defend location, if it's in the middle of the map with no obstacles around it there will be no turtling.

Also artillery especially demolishers in the hands of your enemy decreases your capacity to turtle

Extremely true

 

[Lord Alyx]

I didn't like giving the player a small goldmine because it would either cause the player to try and destroy an enemy base to gain a new mine or risk running out of gold. In many instances I've had missions where the player's goal was to wipe out a single large base of the enemy; clearly a small mine would not work in these instances.

As far as turtling, give the player a base where he has either a map boundary or some other obstacle on one side and the other 3 sides are free with no pinch points; this will allow him to defend properly but not turtle.

A map out in the open (no obstacles on any side) will also prevent turtling, but will be hard to defend.

So ideally you want a base that is defendable but not one you could just turtle in.

Here is a simple diagram,

Assume there are no mountains, water or other obstacles on the map

 

[DingoT]

Is turtling such a big problem that it's really necessary to create a diagram for it ?

 

[Lord Alyx]

I've worked on plenty of maps and I've never actually considered turtling a problem before Lord Aiden mentioned it in this thread

 

[Lord Aiden]

Wait what? You've never seen players turtle inside their base and then wait the enemy out and attack?

 

[Lord Alyx]

The only time this occurs is when its intended to i.e. in missions where you have to defend until the timer lapses out. If you turtle in a mission where your goal is to destroy the enemy you'll never complete it, its easier to defend from your base, but attacking will destroy the enemy's production structures, you'll never accomplish this by turtling, also even large gold mines have their limits...turtling doesn't make sense unless a) It's a defensive mission (survive for 30 minutes) b) you're getting reinforcements that help you ATTACK the enemy at a later time in the mission, or c) you have some sort of "superweapon" that can target the enemies base from afar, like C&C: generals had particle cannons and nukes, and although you can do a variation of this in wc3 (WOS had something like that, I've played missions where you can cast rain of chaos on an enemy base from any distance) it doesn't show up often.

 

[DingoT]

Wanderers of sorceria had superweapons?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Yeah, something like that but it only appeared in a few missions, I believe it was called lunar cannon or eclipse cannon or something similar, btw @Lord Aiden you can use this type of weapon to prevent turtling; have it deal a great amount of damage to a small area, especially against structures, like say cast earthquake or something of that nature cast on a base from afar...

Now that I think about it it's a perfect anti-turtling concept; have the enemy (computer player) cast earthquake or something similar to it on the player's base from far away every 10 or 15 minutes, I don't think the player will turtle much (also make sure it can't destroy the town hall or whatever your central hub building is in one cast or the player is screwed)

 

[Lord Aiden]

I see your point, you were right

Regarding the superweapon, how would you make it so that it doesn't destroy the town hall or great hall or whatever? Would you recommend using spells as a superweapon, or dummy spells and triggers ?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Either triggers or abilities will do depending on what you want, personally I would go with abilities since it's easier to do.

The way to prevent your town hall from being destroyed from a single strike if you're using abilities is by either giving it considerably more hp than all the other structures or giving it elune's grace and changing it around to make it reduce magic damage by 50% or more. If you are using triggers you can set it up to check if it's a town hall and reduce damage if it is.

For abilities you can use earthquake, volcano, starfall if you modify it, blizzard, etc.

You can also use rain of chaos; it won't do much damage to structures from the spell, but 3-5 infernos in your base is more than a minor annoyance.

Also play around with it, what do you want it to do? Destroy the base defenses only, heavily damage all objects in the base? Destroy the defenses, production facilities and most other structure besides the town hall? Ideally you want it to destroy anything in its inner-target-zone except a town hall and maybe heroes.

Look up that mission in WOS where they use the cannon, look up the triggers or whatever is used for it. I think it's in book 4, there are playthroughs on youtube that will make it easier to find.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Also one thing I forgot to mention is you can modify cluster rockets to act as a superweapon also, I've seen this done in a map I've played, I think they increased the arc of it but it looked really good, you can modify the missile art to fit the theme of your map

 

[DingoT]

The tangents this thread goes to....

 

[Lord Alyx]

How much more ways to obtain gold do you want? there are most interesting topics to discuss

 

[ArchDuke]

you know regarding the superweapons you can use any spell with an aoe, something like stampede could be modified and be VERY effective

 

[Rem]

Maybe creating a tornado in an enemy base, or would that be too op???

 

[cleavinghammer]

Depends on what you can do to counter or avoid them. For example, SC nukes are useful for clearing out defenses but won't one-shot every building, C&C Generals' are situational but can do a lot of damage, etc.

Basically, an infinite-range spell should have correspondingly reduced damage (such as Tornado or Earthquake only doing a fraction of their anti-building damage) or some way of reducing the damage (shield projectors, counterspells...), making the attack dodgeable (such as a verbal warning and a big crosshairs showing the point of impact, as with SC's nukes) or negating the attack (for example, Warcraft's channeling interruptions).

 

[Lord Aiden]

Maybe creating a tornado in an enemy base, or would that be too op???

Think it might be OP because you can control the tornado, plus it doesn't damage units, only structures, also I think it can be dispelled

 

[Rem]

This is ot for the current discussion. but i once played a melee map with alchemist as a hero and I transmuted one of those neutral birds that fly through the map, what if you give a huge bounty for transmutting randomly spawned neutral birds?

 

[DingoT]

I had been doing some thinking about th superweapon concept. What if you use multiple fire strikes on an enemy base via dummy units, this will deal great damage to both unts and structures close to eachother, definitely a strike against turtling

 

[ArchDuke]

It would definitely work, but would require lots of triggering

probably at least 5 dummy castors,

 

[cleavinghammer]

If you're really dead-set against turtling without triggers, just make sure no tower outranges a siege unit.

The turtler builds towers and stays in his base, the attacker goes around getting experience and gold while building siege units, then attacks at his leisure, picking off the towers and attacking once they're dead.