ReadMe - Bob's Tournament Army Set, Version 0.2 beta, Last Revised 1-Jun-96.
(Designed for use in tournament games where "revert" is allowed,
and heroes and allies are banned.)
Philosophy:
(1) In revertible games, combat strength is basically meaningless. Any unit
can defeat any other unit, given enough reverts. Why make it a hassle?
To minimize extra reverts caused by combat strength variations,
all units should be the same strength.
(2) In revertible games where all units are essentially equal strength,
combat bonuses are generally meaningless.
=> All units should have strength 14 so no bonuses count.
=> Unfortunately, units given strength 14 show up at strength 9 instead.
But this should be okay. For good measure, all units should cancel
city bonuses. With no heroes and no city/fortify bonuses, no real
bonuses will exist anyway, except for visiting temples, and the
value of temple blessings is minimal, especially with intense combat.
(3) With all units of comparable strength, only speed, fly/hill/forest
movement ability, build time, and cost can be varied. All units should
have costs and build times commensurate with mobility.
(4) To prevent runaway early growth using rapid-producing units such
as scouts, bats, etc., all units require at least two turns to build.
(5) The economic aspects of the army set need to be thought through
carefully to allow players to support enough units to fight with, but
not so many that players can flood the map with troops. Revertible combat
is easier with single units in one-on-one, chesslike combat where the
attacker is essentially guaranteed victory, so one wants enough units
to be able to defend in depth, but not so many that players can defend
anything with huge hordes of troops. Players should be forced to trade
off and leave some areas weakly defended in order to amass an
offensive force. I haven't playtested the set enough to be sure
I have this balance correct yet.
(6) Units have been allocated to different specialties based solely on
increasing movement ability: normal, forest, hills, forest/hills, flight.
(7) Within each movement specialty, four classes of units exist.
In each category, specialties with better movement bonuses are penalized
with lower movement points.
+> Base units are slow, but take only 2 turns to build, cost only
100 to install, 6 to build, and thus 3 to maintain. These
provide for solid defense where mobility is less necessary.
+> Intermediate units have a bit more speed, but cost more:
150 to install, 10 to build, and 5 to maintain. They still
take 2 turns to produce. These are best for early expansion
or when cash is plentiful, but are less economical
for long-term production, although they're swifter to attack.
+> High-end units are even speedier, but take 3 turns to produce,
though they cost the same as base units.
These are good when a speedy offense becomes critical, and
cash is scarce so you don't mind units taking longer to build.
+> Elite units are fastest, but take 3 turns build and cost as much
as the intermediate units. If you've got cash to spare and need
to move quick, these are your best bet.
I am still fine-tuning the army set (especially movements and costs),
so ideas are welcome!
-- Bob Heeter
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Bob's Tournament Armies Table:
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Bonus --- Costs ---
Unit Name Str. Time Move Movemt Prod Retool Notes (default equiv.)
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Non-Specialists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pikemen 9 2 10 none 6 100 Pikemen
Spearmen 9 2 10 none 6 100 Light Infantry
Swordsmen 9 2 13 none 10 150 Heavy Infantry
Catapults 9 2 13 none 10 150 Catapults
Knights 9 3 16 none 6 100 Heavy Cav.
Elephants 9 3 20 none 10 150 Elephants
Forest Specialists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Spiders 9 2 9 for 6 100 Spiders
Elves 9 2 12 for 10 150 Elves
Wolves 9 3 14 for 6 100 Wolfriders
Unicorns 9 3 18 for 10 150 Unicorns
Hills Specialists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vikings 9 2 9 hill 6 100 Minotaurs
Dwarves 9 2 12 hill 10 150 Dwarves
Cavalry 9 3 14 hill 6 100 Light Cav.
Giants 9 3 18 hill 10 150 Giants
Forest/Hills Dual Specialists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Explorers 9 2 8 for/hil 6 100 Scouts
Wildmen 9 2 10 for/hil 10 150 Orcish Mobs
Elementals 9 3 13 for/hil 6 100 Elementals
Wizards 9 3 16 for/hil 10 150 Wizards
Flight Specialists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bats 9 2 7 fly 6 100 Bats
Griffins 9 2 9 fly 10 150 Griffins
Pegasi 9 3 11 fly 6 100 Pegasi
Angels 9 3 14 fly 10 150 Archons
Only half as fast as their nonspecialist counterparts, flyers are sometimes
the only way to get from here to there...
Unique Units
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Navies 4 - 12 none
Heroes 5 - 2 none
Token "Allies"
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Devils 1 6 2 none 50 -10 Kids on Halloween...
Demons 1 6 2 none 50 -10 More Halloween kids...
Worms 1 6 2 none 50 -10 The kind birds eat...
Ghosts 9 6 2 none 50 -100 Who's afraid of ghosts?
Dragonflies 1 6 2 fly 50 -10 Look like dragons, but you
swat 'em like flies.
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Footnotes:
Pikemen and Spearmen are functionally equivalent, as are Swordsmen and
Catapults.
For some reason WarCorrespondent doesn't allow me to set units with
forest movement to cancel city bonus. Go figure.
Allies are not intended to be useful units. Although I set their movement
to 2 in the army editor, the game gives them 6, which must be a minimum.
(I suppose otherwise units couldn't walk through hills!) All the ally units
other than Ghosts are pathetically weak, take forever to build, are
tremendously expensive to maintain, and are barely worth sacking.
Ghosts are intended to inhabit vacant cities; sacking them for cash
reduces the effective cost of installing the first build in a city.
Build cost of 50 makes these units negative assets since I have
standardized tournament cities at 24 income.
Ghosts are strong so heroes will have trouble defeating them, thus reducing
the temptation to keep a hero for a turn and cheat on offense. But they are
no stronger than regular units, so taking over neutral cities is trivial and
requires a small number of reverts.
I'll forego the rest of the unit descriptions since these are all
familiar pictures and there are no other subtleties.
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