Mee
Auto-translated
...
The issue isn't about new items (I might even agree if I understood your other points), but rather that these methods (removing classes and experience) don't improve the balance at all, and may even worsen it. Instead, we need to adjust skills, balance the Castles in terms of strength, balance the starting units, and adjust the map layouts, etc. We should focus on this, not on maintaining consistency with SoD.
Wicc, do you think we don't understand that by removing experience, taxes, and classes, we are diminishing the strategic depth of the game (in this case, TE)?
We understand this perfectly!
However, despite all this, the first version will be as we originally intended, perhaps with some minor cosmetic changes influenced by this discussion, and then in subsequent versions, the game will be further developed. It will depend on how things go, how people play and test it.
Now, let's go through the points:
1) Your consumables/hives - this is an interesting solution, but it has obvious drawbacks: the hives/consumables become unnecessary and cease to matter. And the option of ordering them for money would introduce new elements into the game, which, as you yourself said, "we don't need to overcomplicate things." And again, a quote from Horn: "It's easy to come up with something complex, but it's difficult to come up with something simple."
2) Removing Classes - classes are definitely a new element in the game compared to SoD, and they were initially designed based on fixed maps. In random maps, the use of classes is very limited. It wasn't even clear why a new element like classes was introduced when it would have been possible to simply enhance many of the unused skills, such as Eagle Eye, Literacy, etc., or those that are rarely used, such as Artillery, Ballista, Property - most of the class bonuses for random maps can simply be distributed among these skills, which would also enhance them and add more strategic variety to the game, with minimal effort.
3) Removing Experience - experience is a very, very powerful thing. It is through experience that the player's skill level is most clearly demonstrated. It can also be used to overcome "difficult" situations. Experience very strongly levels the playing field, boosts lower-level creatures, perhaps even too much, so that in many cities, building level 7 creatures is simply unnecessary. However, experience is a very new element compared to SoD, and it has a significant impact on the game. However, its functionality can be replaced with a more "gentle" method (see the SAGA forum), but this will be done later in any case.
4) Removing Taxes - taxes are actually a very good thing, serving purely to balance the game. And they have a very weak impact on the gameplay itself. Perhaps there will be an option to enable/disable them. It's up to the player.
5) Balancing Skills - see point 2, but this is still only in the distant future.
6) Balancing Castles - the balance of castles is already quite good in TE, but it's still not perfect. Therefore, after studying the manual and making many changes from TE back to SoD, we believe that we will achieve a slightly improved balance compared to TE and SoD (for example, in TE (and in SoD), the Swamp is very strong, and the growth rates for Gnolls are 15, for Vassals 5... we can revert this back to SoD to 12 and 4 respectively, and so on. There are many examples).
7) Balancing Starting Units - cosmetic adjustments already exist in TE, but there are still flaws that can be easily fixed (for example, in SoD, Logisticians receive 5% per level, in TE +5% to the skill... we can revert this to SoD and reduce it to 3% per level, for example), and at the same time, we can greatly diversify the starting units by enhancing weak skills (see point 2).
8) Balancing Map Layouts - this is currently impossible; it's a matter for the map generator. However, TE already has some developments, such as removing Cartographers and Forts from the map... but there is still a lot to strive for. Also, your (Wicc) idea about symmetrical templates is very interesting, as it could open up many interesting possibilities.
That's it, I think I've answered everything.