Feedback: Dwarves

[webba84]

Lol, very well put

We know how the portraits work anyway, and the restriction there is one per culture/faction. So we can't have two different races of spy for the same faction, it would have to be all Dwarves or all Men.

[Michael11]

In one of my recent campaigns as the Dwarves I captured Rivendell,and then proceeded to convert it to mannish culture,as I presumed I could train some archers from there. But
I couldn't train any unit from there. I think this might be to the various Elven buildings,but I couldn't destroy any of them. Surely I should be able to train at least something,even though it's the most basic unit?

[Wambat]

I order to recruit combat units in Rivendell you will need to build the Wayposts. Hireling Spears and Guards are the only units you will be able to recruit in Rivendell.

[Wambat]

Acquiring Dale as a protectorate seems to result in a 200k/turn tribute. Which seems just a little unbalanced. I suspect this to be the result of Dale's designation as a passive faction. I don't know what could be done about it.

[webba84]

This seems to be common to all passive factions - seems to be a hardcoded income to prevent them (ie The Senate) from ever running out of money. Not sure what we can do about it, the mechanic was never designed to be used this way, after all.

[Wambat]

Are we sure Dale needs to be passive in a Dwarven campaign? As I recall, it was made such because Dale would often attack Erebor, but perhaps if the player just keeps a reasonable stack outside Erebor this would be enough to prevent that problem?

[webba84]

Not just for that reason, there are at least two others:

1. The permanent alliance requires one of them to be passive. We can't have the Dwarves as passive because they are the playable faction and we split the campaigns precisely to avoid that. If Dale isn't in a permanent alliance with the Dwarves they will definitely agressively expand and attack you, probably to the point that they become the biggest enemy of a Dwarven campaign. From a lore point of view, yuck.

2. Dwarven campaign was very easy with a powerful, expanding Kingdom of Dale guarding your most important settlements for you. Making them passive is supposed to make that shield more fragile, though I will grant you it isn't working as well as it should right now.

We want a situation in that campaign where Dale is both your reliable ally, and weak enough to expose your own settlements to attack/require your help. It's turned out to be quite tricky to make both of those happen at the same time.

[Wambat]

Hmm, we cannot set up that alliance in the same way as RK and Rohan? What about a script that could be enacted in the event the Dwarves break their alliance with Dale that would stop them being a passive faction at that point?

[webba84]

If we set them up exactly the same as RK and Rohan then all 4 factions would be in a permanent alliance together, if we wanted them to have their own permanent alliance with both of them being normal factions and not permanently allied to anyone else then we need another non-playable faction, which we don't have.

It is not possible to change a faction from passive to non-passive through scripts, it's something that is set in descr_strat at the start of a campaign.

So, neither of those are options, unfortunately.

[Wambat]

We want a situation in that campaign where Dale is both your reliable ally, and weak enough to expose your own settlements to attack/require your help.

Just how weak have we tried to make Dale when in a standard alliance with the Dwarves, and not passive? Perhaps there is some way to ensure a passive faction would not accept a proposal to become a protectorate. At the least, we should advise players that doing so will likely break their game.

[Wambat]

Ok, crap. I just pressed end turn again and got 600k in tribute. I was hoping that the tribute would be consistent at 200k, and maybe a way could be found to compensate. At this point I am thinking we just need to warn players not got make any passive faction a protectorate.