Posts from REWORK for the Academy. Is it needed or not?

I think there are two main groups of people among those who voted against:
those who are shouting "don't touch SOD."
And the second group, who haven't tried playing with the restructuring.

I myself have written many times about the advantages of restructuring. And I don't take back my words. For ideal Heroes, restructuring (or some analogue of it) is definitely needed.

when you have resources and stats, but lack control and a way to acquire it, and you just watch helplessly as your opponent with control outplays you turn after turn...)

at this moment, out of the participants (16) in the CIS-2015 competition: score: 7-4, (43%-25%)

But there are conceptual things that, without them, simply ruin, drag out, and ultimately prevent won games from being completed, just because one player was given control, and the other was not. Bad luck! And there is practically no chance left, it's all over.

Many things fit this description, not just the lack of control. For example, uneven distribution of resource nodes – one player has compact, rich nodes along the road, while another has small nodes located deep in the wilderness. The first player collects them at levels 121-122, quickly moves to the opponent, and reaches level 125. This is a fairly common situation, and the chances of winning are practically non-existent. How do we fix this?

I'll repeat, perhaps...

Create the following add-on for the HD mod:

1. You build a Mage Guild in some castle and receive certain spells.
2. When building a Mage Guild in another castle - you ALWAYS receive at least 1 new spell at each level of the Mage Guild compared to the construction in the first castle.
3. When building a Mage Guild in a 3rd, etc., castle - you also ALWAYS receive at least 1 new spell at each level.
4. This continues until all possible spells have been learned. After that, naturally, there will be complete duplicates across all levels of the Mage Guild.

Thus, we get the following picture:

1. Classic SoD (with chains of suckers to banks in distant zones, etc.) is not broken at all. The game remains absolutely the same. "SoD players" are happy.
2. control is definitely found not in the 2nd, but rather in the 6th castle. "WT players" are happy.
3. Additionally, the game becomes even more strategic from the point of view of defense and capturing seemingly non-essential castles.

Vic, the example with the cons isn't that unbalanced, in my opinion. Of course, there are completely terrible setups, but this can be fixed by restarting the game or doing some minimal scouting for 1-2 days. If you're playing maps generated by RMG, you shouldn't rely on or complain about such factors in the first place, because you made the choice to play that way.

Actually, I've always been "against" randomness and "in favor" of fixes precisely because of the factors you described! :D

This is exactly why the concept of a "general game concept" is needed; it allows one to establish an argumentative basis or philosophy for certain changes. This ensures that disputes don't turn into "I like this/I don't like this," but instead have some objective component.

For example, as I see it, the thoughts "there are starts with 10 gnolls, c'est own fate" and "the lack of control in the late game is annoying" coexist in your head simultaneously without contradicting each other. But that doesn't mean they will also coexist in another player's head, because the dissonance here is visible to the naked eye.

In the version "there are starts with 10 gnolls, c'est own fate" + "there is a lack of control in the late game, c'est own fate," if there is any dissonance, it is glossed over by the general concept that "SoD is one and indivisible; the immutability of the version is more important than its quality."

This is precisely why the concept of an "overall game concept" is needed; it allows you to provide some argumentative basis or philosophy for certain changes. So that the arguments don't turn into "I like it/don't like it," but have some objective component.

For example, as I see it, in your mind, the thoughts "sometimes you start with 10 gnolls, that's fate" and "I'm annoyed by the lack of control in the late game" coexist without contradicting each other.

It's tolerable because I have the ability to influence "the imbalance of 10 gnolls" (since you brought up such an example)! I can simply take a restart! I can choose a hero from the start to somehow smooth this over, I can examine the layout carefully, evaluate the guards of the passes, look at the 2nd-3rd-4th heroes following (maybe there are 3 stacks, magic, a ballista), assess the overall situation and, perhaps, "10 gnolls" will be enough for me in the long run! I decide for myself by evaluating the starting respawn, checking if there's some minimum required to play, and I can influence this!

But as for the presence/absence of control in the very first Dragon Utopia/guild/scroll—I cannot influence that or restart it! This is simply a pure factor of luck, a fundamental important factor on large maps, which is exactly what is being proposed to smooth over!

Why does no one talk about one-sided maps, the insane variance in layouts, and impenetrable blockades? These factors have a much greater impact on the outcome of the game, or rather, they simply reduce the chances of winning to zero, and this is more of a bug in the generation, as often the game is simply unplayable.