OliverFA wrote:-=- Tanarri -=- wrote:I'd be great to get some feedback on this issue as well, particularly from Oliver if he's still around.
Hello! I am not only around, I am fully back (as you can see by my golden rank icon) but I don't want to hijack the project. I think that it's fair to acknowledge that Isaiah is the one who has the last word at this stage of the project about what to do and what not to do.
However, I am happy to provide my advice and comments, but please take them as suggestions not as something that I want to impose.
And of course, I am making the XML for this.
And I totally agree that it's Isaiah's project and he should have final word on what's done. It's just that he mentioned speaking with TaCKtiX regarding the conscription bonuses and TaCKtiX said that we were going with +2 per 3 regions and +3 per 3 regions for Secret and Open Conscription. It sounds like TaCKtiX misremembered the bonus (unless I'm just forgetting a change that was made) and said that instead of the +1 for 2 regions and +1 for 1 region that we working with originally. I think going with how it's set up now (the seemingly misremembered version) detracts from how important of a tech Open Conscription was originally intended to be, which essentially was a comparible end-of-game option to the Doomsday Device. Perhaps looking at an example of the bonuses would help put my concern in perspective. Say someone had 30 territories, here's how the bonuses look currently.
Normal - 10 troops
Secret Conscription - 20 troops
Open Conscription - 30 troops
This essentially means that by researching Secret Conscription you are gaining 100% extra troops than you were previous to owning the tech and by researching Open Conscription, you are only getting 50% extra troops. To me, that makes Secret Conscription sound like more of an advanced tech than Open Conscription. The way it was set up before, this is what the bonuses would look like:
Normal - 10 troops
Secret Conscription - 15 troops
Open Conscription - 30 troops
This means researching Secret Conscription gives you 50% extra troops and researching Open Conscription gives you 100% extra troops, compared to what you would be getting prior to owning the new tech. This makes Open Conscription seem much more valuable and much more like an advanced tech.
My other concern is if it remains the way it is now, then since the player is getting twice the bonus than they were previously, the neutral value on Secret Conscription should be increased appropriately as well, if not by double then at least close to it. This would essentially kill Secret Conscription as an option as an early'ish game tech and viable tech route, which I feel would significantly damage the gameplay potential, since at that point you've only got two major research routes to take: National Pride/Propaganda/TSF/DoomsDay sit and build route or the Mining route. The previous way you also had the Conscription expand-as-quick-as-you-can route as well.
Sorry if I'm coming across at all pushy here, I will happily respect any final decisions Isaiah makes regarding the map, but I feel this is an important gameplay issue and it's a change that seems to have been made by Isaiah only based on information TaCKtiX provided him with--information which, as far as I can remember, isn't correct. It's a very easy mistake to make when you've been away from the development of the map for more than a year since it's only the difference between increasing the troop amount or decreasing the region amount of the standard +1 per 3 region bonus.
EDIT: Oops, I wrote this before I realized there was another page of posts, so the tone's different than I would have written it if I had known. I'll keep the post up since I think the thoughts are still worth putting out there.