Chronic Logic

I've run into some gotchas with the system.

Who killed my Martyr?
Two Pikemen strike a moving Martyr. The stack builds, both their attacks resolve, and the stack is empty. During death resolution, which Pikeman is the murderer?

Possible solutions:
They both did it. During death resolution, all units that damaged the deceased during the stack are flagged as its killer.
Pros: The player doesn't need to understand the arcane innerworkings of automatic sequencing to predict the outcome.
Cons: It would change the balance of triggered attacks and Martyrs

He did it. The unit that first inflicted lethal damage on the Martyr is flagged as its killer.
Pros and Cons: opposite of "They both did it"

Which attack was healed?
A player has a Warrior and Healer, and the Warrior takes a move that causes a Tower and a Pikeman to strike it. The Pikeman is power 4, and the Tower is power 3. How much life does the Warrior have now?

Possible solutions:
Temporary overhealing. All heal effects on a stack will add the unit's Max Life attribute to its current life. During Death Resolution, any Life above Max Life is lost.
Pros: The player will be able to predict the outcome of the action without having to know which effects happen in what order.
Cons: Triggered healing will become more powerful by creating an extra damage buffer. The mechanic is also somewhat counter-intuitive.

Dueling Dracolichs
Two players in a Cooperative game have a Dracolich. An enemy unit dies. Which player gets the risen enemy?

Possible Solutions:
Staggered sequence. The trigger priority for the failed Tomb Lord effect increases, so the Dracolichs will alternate which one gets the risen enemy.
Pros: One Dracolich doesn't cancel out the other.
Cons: It's difficult for the players to predict which one will go first.

QuoteWe have non-explicit trigger combinations.  Wouldn't preventing non-explicit cancellations add to RPS?  Army design would be significantly less interesting if everyone needed to have a rider, a shield-bearer, a catapult, a fanatic, et cetera to provide explicit counters to all the problem RPS units.

I just mean that the only thing that can cancel an effect is another effect that directly states that it cancels effects. I don't see how this promotes RPS balance. It'll affect some in-game mechanics in unforeseen ways, but that's why we're discussing it. I imagine the biggest impact will be on units with Vigilance all striking a unit with damage beyond what's necessary to kill it.

One of the goals of the new system is to prevent non-explicit cancellations. I don't think death should prevent that unit from triggering, or being a trigger target.

An effect against a dead unit would still be valid because its not dead until the empty-stack resolution.

If you encounter an unbeatable build, post it.

My goal in balancing the game has been to break away from the typical RPS model by saturating it with elements, making it too complex to solve. So we're playing rock, paper, scissors, toothbrush, shoebox, broom, anvil, lighter, soap. All the basic counters exist in a 50 pt form, so you can plug up any holes with them.

Even the counters aren't meant to stop a specific unit, I try to design them to be versatile packages of effects.

Most games of Zatikon involve racing to build up to a perfect formation at maximum range from the enemy formation before your enemy does, then breaching their formation in a way that's most advantageous. So you have to examine what role a unit plays in that system, and why that unit is the best at that role for its cost.

QuoteFor an effects stack to work, it'll need to check for unit deaths as each effect resolves, so that effects don't target dead units.

Wouldn't that cause cancellations?

Should costs for the action be paid at trigger time or during resolution?

How about this sequence:

As soon as a trigger begins (and everything will be a trigger, using a unit action is just a deliberate trigger) the effect stack opens. Once all the effects resolve and the stack is empty, the game checks for unit deaths, and then victory condition.

Unit deaths are also a source of triggers. I'm not sure how to integrate that.

I've known for awhile that the towers were undervalued, but underplayed because they're primarily defensive. I might revise them a bit to adjust to their new cost. Any suggestions?

Quotethe diplomat doesnt have the new ability in random.

Whoops! 50% of the diplomats won't have Armistice in random. It'll be fixed next update.

The design for the next Wyrm is based around egg laying.

The present triggering system is too arcane, and we've been playing around with ideas to make it more intuitive.

A new system would be a long term project, and as part of the design process I'd love some feedback and suggestions from you guys.

One idea we've had is to implement a stack style system, similar to what Magic the Gathering uses. In that system, all triggers that can trigger will trigger, building a stack of effects to resolve on a Last-in-First-out basis. This way, effects that don't explicitly cancel other actions won't. For example, a Lancer shot down by a Tower would still resolve his Joust trigger.

Cancellations would occur by targeting specific actions on the stack. If you attack a rogue, you would place his Dodge trigger on the stack. When Dodge resolves, it would flag the Attack action (which resolves later) as being canceled.

As this model develops, I'll keep modifying this first post with an updated proposal.

Thanks in advance!
Gabe

It's high on the TODO list.

All random buys are totally random, based on tiered rarity.

The sell costs are carefully tuned to return an average of 0.87 gold for every 1 gold spent buying random units if you sell everything.

Having variable time limits between game modes is on the TODO list.

The diplomat's art is temporary. The artists have been busy, so I've been generating some placeholders to keep up with the unit/week schedule.

It's been on my TODO list for awhile, it'll eventually be fixed.