Improving Zatikon

[mongolian]

Been playing Zatikon for a long time now and I've hit the wall for how much I can enjoy it. Sure 2v2 has been fun, but it's very limited enjoyment factor.  And all these new units are NOT what I have been looking for.

So, let's start with what Zatikon has to see how it can be improved:

OVERALL GAME BALANCE: Currently the game is still too much about a range game, as in who ever has the further ranged units tend to win.  If the game can change/remove the sergeant & wizard the game can returned to a far more balanced game.   I'm sure research could show that more people are playing ranged units like rider & cav vs a warrior, footman or a pikeman.

RANDOM MODE:   Random mode is by far my favorite mode, but it has it's limits due to the fact most armies are not fair.  For starters, certain units need to be omited if not an extreme rarity: armory,dracolith, sergeant.  Sergeant just makes any army significiantly better, so it makes armies unbalanced.  Draco & armory are complete game losers at the top level of game play.  2ndly, tacticians.  Please just make all armies either have 1-2 or none at all.  When, 1 player has 2 and another has 0, it's far too much advantage.

So long story short, RANDOM MODE has too many advantages/disadvantages to make it enjoyable.  The last thing people hate is winning/losing because 1 player had a better army.  When it's not balanced, this is the stuff that can make players quit.

CONSTRUCTED MODE: As I've already explained the game is too much about ranged, constructed is the worst exploitation of unbalanced armies.   I really can never see constructed being a fair mode of playing, becuase the game is constantly adding units not removing them.

But, constucted mode could be a great mode of playing.  What happened if every 2-3 months, a new constructed mode came out.  Each 2-3 months, only a set # of units will be able to be used.  So for example, only Commanders/Cultists/Hoseman/Nature would be able to be played.  Then, the next 2/3 month cycle would be a new set that could only be played.  This would help keep the game fresh as players would constantly have to make new decks.   I guarnatee you if you had 2 constructed modes, the normal one and the 2-3 month constructed one, the 2-3 month cycle one would easily grow to be more popular.

SINGLE PLAYER MODE/COOPERATIVE: Seeing as how Cooperative seems to be the most popular, I woudl reccomend making a new mode: Boss mode.  Instead of fighting an infinite # of enemies, why not make a super boss mode where typically the only objective is to kill the 1 boss unit on the board.  A boss would typically have combined multiple abilities and high HP.  Boss modes would have lower # of troops and maybe to change it up, could all start with structures on the board to differentiate it from normal cooperative mode.

As a final note, the game has become really great how many improovements have become, but I feel like more drastic actions are needed to bring in more players.  And 10-30 more units is not going to be the answer to get that there.

[Kran]

The boss mode? Looks nice. What about a game where your king can leave the castle? lol.

[minime]

I only write about random, I don't know the constructed enough.

I also think that the sergeant is problem. A 50 gold unit that has too much impact on the game, it can decide who will won the game in several games. And I don't like the wizard either. I could say that at least it is a 350 gold unit and it has the risk to get an other expensive unit(a chieftan, arti, possessed etc) and then it can be beaten easily, but this isnt too fun either.
And this leads to an other general problem. Expensive units make random a bit unbalanced. It isnt a problem when you get a generally useful unit (like a warlock, enchanter, witch etc), but there are other units that must be expensive because they may be strong with different other units. chieftain, possessed, draco, armory, arti and yes the wizard. The wizard can work with lots of other units(and when he gets them it is too strong) and has problems only with a few, while the others need very specific conditions to be useful(so usually they just make you lose). So I think exactly that what mongolian suggested: remove these units from random, or make them extremely rare. There is a third possible option: make them cheaper for random(not the wizard of course). But this could make the game even more complicated. So maybe the other two more simple option should be used. If you just make them more rare, then maybe you should add some other condition to make it impossible to get 2 of these units(an armory and the possessed or two arti is just an auto-lose with zero winning chance). As you will add more and more these kind of units(i think they are constructed or coop units.), they will cause bigger and bigger imbalacement in random.

commanders: as you add more commanders they will cause problems in random too. right now it isnt rare when you get 2 generals and a quartermaster, or a general, a quartermaster and a commandpost (and maybe strategists and tacticians). so they can take even 400-500 gold from your army. And yes tacticians are a bit too rare now. I think that it is interesting to play from only 6 action(it is challenging), so maybe this shouldnt be eliminated from the game completely. This should be balanced with some rules somehow. Here is a suggestion what should be reached(but I cant be too exact without testing):
- a gold maximum for commanders. maybe 300 gold.
- at least 6 or more actions. usually 7 (or 8 actions), 6 should be rare.
- two of the deployment reducers shouldnt be common(they don't have to be very rare, but not every second game). and there should not be 3 of them.

balance the playing first thing.(i have written about this in an other topic).

some kind of redraw(mulligan). here is two suggestion:
- one in a game(before the game starts)
- any number of redraw, but 50 (or 100) less gold units every time.

replayability. This would add a lot to the game. That's always an interesting question if I made a mistake in the game or not, or if i could have won the game playing first, etc. here is an idea to solve this: there would be a code for each random setup(army) and players could copy and paste them to use them. so they could replay the same game (with changed sides if they want that(if they use the eachother's codes)), or they could share interesting games in the forum too(if they share both code).

add a timebank. one or two minutes that could be used anywhere in the game. You would auto spend from it when your normal time in the turn is over(if you play poker you know what i mean). An other idea(from couldy15): you would start with zero seconds in your timebank and your unused time would add every turn(like the command post ).

separate random rankings(there could be a composite too). My ranking is only from random. And i'm pretty unexperienced in constructed so I don't play ranked constructed, because i dont want to ruin my random ranking

[Wakrob]

I think Coop is more popular than solo because once your AI level is high enough from playing Coop you hardly can go back to solo.

I think the game should seperate your solo and coop levels at lvl 50 (or some number)

Wak

[Jezebeau]

I really like that it's such a range game.  Units like mages, mounted archers, and footmen add precision to the game.  You can tell by what's on the board what your opponent can hit next turn and, if you don't have equal range, you can plan out how to get close enough to kill a pivotal unit.  If you think Zatikon's complicated now, it would only get worse if it frequently got tied up in a tangle of attrition.

[zatikon]

Within the next couple months, I'm hoping to add a lot more single player/coop content.

[minime]

I think Coop is more popular than colo because once you AI level is high enough from playing Coop you hardly can go back to solo.

I think the game should seperate your solo and coop levels at lvl 50 (or some number)

it is possible to beat the AI at any level, but it isn't too fun I think the best thing would be if you could choose what level you wanna play against.

[mongolian]

I think it's great that someone else has pointed out that solo and coop should be treated differently.  I'm sure the statistics are there to proove it, but coop is probablly the most played format.  The game should focus on that before fixing constructed/random, but I can still be picky ;p.

Back on fixing solo/coop.  Just change single or coop mode so it has a boss mode.  Heck you could even have both I suppose, but it seems like only 1 of the 2 formats would need it.  I've said this before, but I would actually love to see boss's unit's that the game has never seen.  Like a super Hydra that takes up 3 squares or something or an evil Dracolith that summons from it each turn.  If all else fails and you need a simpler solution, just give the boss multiple super powers.

[minime]

One more reason for the timebank: sometime the turn just ends some seconds earlier. I'm not sure if other players experience this too. play write here if yes

[Kran]

That probably happens due to connection lagging. Everything ok here with me.

[scribbler]

On the subject of connection lagging, can we have a game log? When the AI's going there's a list in the side panel of what happens, why not leave it up when the panel's not being used for a unit or the castle? Sometimes the connection lags and suddenly pieces are all over the map and stuff is dead and I don't know what happened.