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Howdy and thanks for allowing me to tell you what improvements you could to do the game.
Here is my list :)...
1) Remove Energy / Action points entirely, replace with Mana / Gold / Exp / Whatever. It's an entirely useless stat that really only makes the game less enjoyable. This system is a relic from the old ages where everything was p2w, an era that didn't do great and all of those games crashed eventually. Since this game already has a strong fan base, it's a bad idea in my opinion (PS: I usually donate and have donated to you guys as well, but I do not like p2w energy systems in any way).
2) Fix the balance for low / middle level items from the blacksmith. As it is now, the blacksmith is literally useless compared to what you can simply buy for gold from the marketplace. My suggestion is to allow the crafting of those items way before (when you'd actually want them as opposed to after you don't care anymore), and to allow drops to craft those items before - and raise the drop chances at low levels as you do not have any farming gear that gives any "item +". And why wouldn't you be able to craft something early? It's just good and fun and allows you to advance at a better pace.
3) Fix the balance with the rewards for completing achievements. As of now, at early stages it's amazing, all the rewards are badass and really allow you to advance faster, however that stops very fast. When you get an epic blade as a reward when you already have 5 Dimensional Axes it makes absolutely no sense... You should literally be getting something on the level of Barbatos Armor (though this one specifically is probably a bit OP). But you see my point. Low level it's great, then becomes absolutely useless (even for the materials, they come too late to be useful).
4) Give more incentive to play pvp by making it more rewarding. As of now there is literally no reason to pvp to progress, or at endgame (besides flexing your muscles). Also pvp is extremely unfair at this point as there are no level caps. In Pokemon, everyone is set to level 50 for pvp tourneys, it's a good system. Your gear applies, but you are "normalized" to have level 50 stats (your gear too, but would keep their effects intact (like mana/wind/etc +)). You could also do simple things like pvp rewards only with pvp currency or whatever, or make it give much more gold? I don't know, but as of now it's useless and I want to pvp more (and have it be competitive).
5) This may be the most important one, there needs to be a better way to farm experience - at all levels. My suggestion is allowing stars to go up to 10 (1000%), while not changing the required amount of stars to reach mastery (for rewards). People could basically choose any level they really like to start farming the **** out of it ;)... It would be a good way at low levels to increase drops as well as you could get up to 10x chances as opposed to 3x chances. As of now with the energy system it "wouldn't make it fair", but that's also a reason why the energy/action system need to be removed, it really limits what you can do to fix balance in the game.
PS: I've played every game of the Epic War series and have always been a fan, I believe those changes would make a huge difference and allow the game to be much longer lasting (who knows, maybe one day you can add a ton of units / heroes as well with all the donations ;D?)... <3
Various:
1: I would agree that Energy/Action does not add much to the game.
They only realistically serve to punish losing and therefore suppress experimentation and risk-taking in favour of safe, dull, grinding.
2: Reallocate temple units for a smoother progression and better player experience.
Wind 1: Dwarf Sharpshooter, (Elven Archer)
Wind 2: Fairy, Centaur Lancer
Wind 3: Harpy, Centaur Archer
Wind 4: Worg Riders, Great Wyrm
Wind 5: White Tiger, Tiger God
Earth 1: (Hobbit), Elite Knight
Earth 2: Troll, Catapult
Earth 3: Gorilla, Elite Hobbit
Earth 4: Beast Rider, Stone Guardian
Earth 5: Cyclops, Earth Dragon, Terror Bajaj
Fire 1: Puppy Dragon, (Elite Dwarf)
Fire 2: Anu-ki Warrior, Skeleton Archer
Fire 3: Mad Bull, Fire Succubi, Ork Bomber
Fire 4: Clown, Dragon Rider
Fire 5: Black Dragon Zero, Pit Lord
Water 1: Shark Men,
Water 2: Elf Protector, Totem
Water 3: Elder Wizard, Valkyrie
Water 4: Dragon Warrior, Mystic, Turdzilla
Water 5: Yeti, Cursed Pirate, Lamia, Reaper
Thunder: Unchanged.
Without changing overall game balance this minimises the number of levels there are where only crystal units are available (this comes off as something of a cash-grab), and gives multiple choices each level for players, while making crystal units like the Fairy and Catapult more tempting choices by offering them to the player earlier than gold alternatives.
3: Change the purchase UI to show stats on the purchase confirmation box for items and units.
4: Rebalance equipment.
The player has six inventory slots and most of those will be filled with Staves of the Holy Empire at any given moment until they phase them out for other Mana+ gear.
A few possibilities for long term implementation:
Add a seventh "Food" slot. It's a big deal to spend on a single use item, may as well let it be a bonus overall.
Add alternative equipment effects to existing items:
"Override" equipment that replace a hero spell in Slot 2, 3, 4, 5 with a different spell, possibly including equipment only spells.
Hero Speed S-XXL - Walk faster.
Thorns S-XXL - Taking damage deals counter damage.
"Upgrade" equipment that improve an existing spell. For example, "Wind God Staff", Tornado spells cost +1, but block ranged projectiles.
Magic/Ranged/Melee+ S-XXL - Improve specific unit types.
More as I think of it.
Remove the splash screen from "play again" and have it go straight into the combat.
Wording suggestions:
Quicker -> Rush
Quickers -> Rush Tokens
Failed Experimental Creature -> Failed Experiment
Cyclop -> Cyclops
Monster Lab description:
Fuse monsters together. Use crystal to buy without the materials.
Blacksmith description:
Forge new items. Use crystal to buy without the materials.
All temples:
Upgrade for more unit -> Upgrade for more units.
To boost low tier melee units, consider making them immune to Fly and increase their Size during their attack animation. This makes them not only more likely to land a hit despite a long attack windup, but better able to hold ground once they're in combat rather than getting pushed back by ranged attackers.
Add Cosmetic Items
Different skins for heroes and units, possibly even giving them a different attack animations, while having no major mechanical effect. This is generally perceived more favourably by the playerbase in games today than other paid content. Honestly this has as much mileage as your art team does.
Other potential item abilities:
Knockback/Stun/Fly/Freeze/Poison/Burn/Shock - Add the status effect to your hero's attacks, chance defined by S-XXL grade.
Mass [status] - Add a smaller % chance for that status effect to every non-hero unit in your formation.
Status+ - Increase the base chance for all units to trigger a certain status.
Army+ - Increase max army size from 90.
Deploy+ - Population of unit squad increased by 10% at lowest to 50% at highest - rounding down, so no double titan spawns.
If energy and action were removed, this would give a number of possible alternative stats for the player.
Speed: How fast your hero moves, up to ~50. +0.05 per level.
Mana: How much mana your hero starts with. ~100 points the equivalent of one Mana+ S item.
Greed: Increase item gain chance%, +0.1% per point (this should give the max 12% drop chance for Rare drops at 715 Greed points).
Ambition: Increase experience gain by 0.05% per point. 100 points equals an S ranked item.
Cunning: Increase gold gain by 0.05% per point.
Heroism: Hero stat boost. More efficient than HP/Atk/Def (1 point adds 0.5 to each stat), but doesn't boost units at all.
Leadership: Unit stat boost. More efficient than HP/Atk/Def (1 point adds 0.5 to each stat), but doesn't boost heroes at all.
This would make ten skills total, and grant a wider the variety of possible strategies while making players less dependent on particular equipment - using instead items that amplify their strengths or bolster their weaknesses.
Draft Tournaments:
A tournament system for facing other players, accessed using Draft Tickets (found in daily quests or purchased with crystals). Players start with:
1 x Hero Pack: Random selection of three heroes.
4 x Army Pack IV: Random selection of four, either units or items.
2 x Army Pack V: Random selection of five, either units or items.
2 x Army Pack VI: Random selection of six, either units or items.
Each Army Pack always includes 1 unit and 1 item minimum. Player can choose one thing from each pack, and a maximum of seven units or six items.
After finishing their selection the player may pay 1000 Gold to start over, hoping for a better draw. After the first 1000 gold, further redraws cost 10 crystal.
Player proceeds to face off against enemy players in the tournament (The player can leave the draft and come back to it at any time to do missions or regular arena) until they win ten times, or lose three times. The more wins, the better the prize, including potentially more Draft Tickets.
Each player's stats and level are normalised to 300, with 100 in HP/Atk/Def while playing in the draft tournament.
If live PVP isn't implemented, the same can be accomplished versus an AI controlled player with a stat boost, and that player's AI losses wouldn't count against them.
Thanks a lot thispot and kholai . We will try consider and implement some of your idea and feedback . Kho , we can chat and talk about your suggestion.
As for energy deletion , we still consider how to manage it , because no energy means bot will likely dominate the game .
> Speed: How fast your hero moves, up to ~50. +0.05 per level.
> Mana: How much mana your hero starts with. ~100 points the equivalent of one Mana+ S item.
> Greed: Increase item gain chance%, +0.1% per point (this should give the max 12% drop chance for Rare drops at 715 Greed points).
> Ambition: Increase experience gain by 0.05% per point. 100 points equals an S ranked item.
> Cunning: Increase gold gain by 0.05% per point.
> Heroism: Hero stat boost. More efficient than HP/Atk/Def (1 point adds 0.5 to each stat), but doesn't boost units at all.
> Leadership: Unit stat boost. More efficient than HP/Atk/Def (1 point adds 0.5 to each stat), but doesn't boost heroes at all.
I like those ideas a lot :).
> As for energy deletion , we still consider how to manage it , because no energy means bot will likely dominate the game .
This is why I suggest making a level cap for PvP and also to make it more important (bots suck at pvp ;D). With the level cap (I like 50), no matter what level the bots are they still can't compete in PvP if things are "balanced" (to a certain extent since items still apply their effects at full potency, just not the stats), especially if you add the towers and body guards ^^... Make it hard, make it rewarding. A PvP battle isn't something you should feel like you're "grinding", every battle needs to feel like an accomplishement, and the rewards need to be proportional to the hard work. If a battle was "hard" and you were forced to use all your tricks and strategies and it still wouldn't be an easy feat, but you'd be guaranteed much higher exp / gold than in PvE battles (also negating the effect of bots, as players that focus on PvP will actually need to farm much much less in order to advance, while also proving their worth).
Thank you for hearing me out I hope I helped a bit and can't wait for OBT :)!
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PS: I don't know what program or language you used for the game, but I can code a little if you need some help, don't hesitate to hit me up ;)!
Thanks thisPOT . Actually Kholai have give me great idea about tweaking the energy system that can make everybody happy .
let me paste his idea
1: Keep energy, remove it as a stat tax, just increase it and action for free, every level.
2: Don't restore either on level up.
3: Add "restore energy" potions to the marketplace. Make them cheap, a few hundred gold to restore 25% of your energy, another few hundred to restore 25% of your action.
4: Add "Energy Charm" to the marketplace. 100 Crystals, w/e. This charm stops your energy from decreasing for 24 hours.
Add another Energy Charm that's 500 Crystals and lasts a week, same for Action Charms, and make it super simple to just click them to refill your energy every now and then
Doesn't come off as "cash grabby", because it's just gold for 25%.
Stops bots since they will eventually run out of potions and will need to go to the market place to buy more
And the game is programed with AS3 , still plan to port to Unity later on.
I like all those ideas, I think it will work great. Are you planning on adding a few stats to replace Energy / Action (for skill points)? I think it would be great to have a few more options even if it's just Exp / Gold (which are stats that already exist on items so maybe it would be easy to implement?).
Also, did you think about how to fix the grind? I don't know if you liked the 10 stars idea or if you came up with something else but that would really make the game smoother and make players want to play longer sessions ^^.
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PS: I'm not too familiar with action scripts (I usually stick to javascript / php). But if you need help with grind work (like inserting data, or fixing text (i has good grammar hehe)), formulas or algorythms I'd be more than happy to help (for free/fun)!
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PPS:
> 4: Add "Energy Charm" to the marketplace. 100 Crystals, w/e. This charm stops your energy from decreasing for 24 hours.
> Add another Energy Charm that's 500 Crystals and lasts a week, same for Action Charms, and make it super simple to just click them to refill your energy every now and then
> Doesn't come off as "cash grabby", because it's just gold for 25%.
> Stops bots since they will eventually run out of potions and will need to go to the market place to buy more
I think that will only make it so that bots can still bot if they pay xD... I don't think those type of items should be implemented.
> *Originally posted by **[ThisPOT](/forums/1021812/topics/1748203?page=1#12879192)**:
> I think that will only make it so that bots can still bot if they pay xD... I don't think those type of items should be implemented.
If someone's dedicated enough that they want to pay *$60 a week* to bot the game then personally I think we should let them.
> *Originally posted by **[artlogicgames](/forums/1021812/topics/1748203?page=1#12879812)**:*
> Kho 500 crystal for energy charm and 500 crystal for action charm = 1000 crystals = est $7-8 weekly Cmiiw on my calculation.
Hah, silly me. I was probably thinking 500 *Kreds*, not 500 crystals. Blame my impossibly bad sleep schedule.
Still, my point stands. If someone wants to bot badly enough that they're willing to pay a weekly subscription fee, I don't see the problem at any level.
Balancing Heroes:
One way heroes could be balanced is by adding an ability leveling system. For instance, even at the beginning of the game it is easy to see that Popo is a lot stronger than Viegraff. One of the reasons being that Popo has Raging while Viegraff has Heal.
Lets say Raging currently increases damage output by 100% for 6 seconds (Random numbers). There could be a ability leveling system where at level 1 the ability only increases damage output by 50% for 5 (You're getting 150% total). And it could increase in duration and damage percentage per level. This leads to an indirect nerf towards Popo and other heroes with raging.
And you could increase the heal effect of Viegraff's heal per level by 1.25x, 1.37x, 1.5x (Random numbers again) respectively.
These aren't exact numbers and it would obviously need more revision, but buffs and nerfs like this could lead towards more diverse team making instead of following one meta.
hello, i have a few suggestions to make the game more balanced
1.1 HEROES: many heroes are never used at all. the mostly used ones are steel armored popo and sera. this is mainly because of the ice blaster skill. this could be fixed by making some of the skill slots (maby the last 2 skill slots) be empty, when clicked on the empty slot a page would appear just like the inventory page but only containing skills that can be equiped, the skills would be allowed to equip only if certain requirements are met, like having attack of 500 or more or having certain units. later on there could be a shop for skills added into the game, skills could also be upgradable.
1.2 PASSIVE SKILL MODIFIERS: a passive skill tree could be added, every passive skill influences something. for example a 5% chance to heal from an attack that would otherwise kill you; 5% of your damage of a certain skill converted to health when it deals damage. increased unit movement speed; higher twin diablos health but lower attack; chance to poison enemy; chance to activate a skill for free when a titan is summoned. the possibilities are almost endless. hero skills themselves could be influenced like bigger area of effect but less damage. converted ice blasters water damage into fire damage. this could make it so that, for example, two players having the same builds, heroes and equipment would still be VERY different when it comes to fighting
2.1 EQUIPMENT: just add more craftable equipment, it seems simple but it would make the game more balanced if there would be more veriety to choose from, no fancy images are needed, you can reuse the same ones. items that boost elements basically items for every element and every boost size (+s +m and +l) should exist
2.2 EQUIPMENT: item sets should be added (certain items that add certain things like more damage or extra elemental boost when equiped together) (example: demon sword leavatine increases the damage of twin salamander by 20% if equiped together with dragon king sword)
Adding multiple deck saveslots,with more can be opened by gold and crystal.Always changing is bothering.
Consider some items that can triggars once in game when clicked,maybe a total retreat or a dash,maybe a revenge mana or freeze when life is under50%,maybe an alter slot of skill or unit.Make it more tactical and interesting.
And...it still lags...:(
Hi in light of the latest changes i feel that the anubis warriors have worsened considerably considering its stats and its cost so I feel that there should be a chance for the units depending on shield size for the body there to be a block chance which would reduce dmg and as such would make sense for it to have low atk and hp for a 3 cost melee troop. :)
My thoughts on a new ability for lilith..
Instead of her being a litteral succubus with her basic attack, why not make it into a flame whip type attack? as in she carries a real whip and it ignites and swipes 2 times, has a short>medium range, with a small blindspot underneath her. it should be able to knockback then pull in units as in... 1st hit pushes, 2nd pulls... whilst cause the burn effect. i feel her having the same attack as a succubus is lackluster, it would make sense, since demoness's tend to have whips for seductive reasons. anyone else feel like this might benefit her better? she may need aptitude changes to fill for this attack as it might be too powerful or something... but it would be unique for sure :)
Long feedback ahead.
I’m currently lvl 68, I haven’t seen the whole game but I’ve seen enough of it to state a few things.
1) I think the game, while having issues, has a lot of potential.
2) Biggest problem according to me:
I have a quite good connection. When I’m playing Path of Exile (a multiplayer hack and slash online) nearly all calculations are done server side and I’m playing just fine. When I’m playing War of Omens on Kongregate (a CCG) I’m playing just fine. Occasionally, I get disconnected. Buying cards can take none to a few seconds between each pack and occasionally it takes much more longer.
On EpicWar Saga, except moving through menus and fighting during battles, everything triggers “connecting”, “synchronize” or “updating” before being validated. This prevent me to do anything else and often requires me to wait up to a minute at which point I reload the game. What feels occasional is for me to wait between none and a few seconds.
I’m literally spending more than half of my time waiting. (literally literally)
Because of that:
Buying and selling items one by one feels awful.
Spending skill points one by one feels awful.
Changing Units and items one by one feels awful.
Repeating/farming missions feels awful.
You may be unable to change how long I have to wait, but you can at least change how often I have to wait.
3) Sound:
I can select a music for arena on my profile but I have no way to know how it sounds and if I like it except for me to go in the arena.
If sound is on while waiting (see 2.), you can’t turn it off therefor you can’t do something else while waiting (like watching a video) you’d have to turn it off beforehand. The music is good but I’m playing without sound because of that.
Turning music off just stops the sound. The music is still running but you can’t hear it.
Explanation: Let’s say the loop is 2 minutes long. If I turn off the sound 1 minute after the beginning of the loop, wait 5 minutes and 30 seconds to turn it back on. The music will be at the 30th second of the loop.
I haven’t tested it but I believe it is the case for sound effects as well. It’s a waste of ressources.
More importantly, you can’t set the volume to whatever you would like. It’s either on or off; nothing in between. There’s also no distinction between music and sound effects. I can’t turn off the sound produce by my units during battle without turning the music off.
4) Battle settings:
Battle settings reset to default every time you reload the game.
Game speed is by default x2.
You can’t set those settings anywhere but in game which means, to start a tough fight you should first do an easy fight to set the game speed to x1.
With game speed set to x2, without units on the screen 1 minute in game takes 22 seconds in real life. I measured it. With ~180 units in game it should be around 50 seconds didn’t measure this one. It’s not exclusively a setting issue.
5) UI:
UI is not bad but there’s lot of improvement to make.
While having the possibility to buy/sell items by one or ten is good it’s not enough. There should be the option to set a custom number. There should be a “max” button as well.
Same thing for skill points.
Having the option to craft several items at the same time would be good as well.
Having a buy and a sell section in the market would be better.
You currently can’t sell items that are not on the market (A few things you loot, pretty much everything you craft).
Why are skill points in your profile?
What do stats do? How do they work? You get it after playing a while but it’s not explained anywhere.
How does the reset work? Can I reset as many time as I want? I don’t know.
The shop button open the same window than the “+” next to crystals. Maybe it’s not needed.
In the window opened by the “+” next to golds, you can buy other things than gold. If you’d want to buy them you wouldn’t necessarily know where you can and if you can.
You can reset your skill points for 200 crystals. What does the reset button on your profile do then? I’m not willing to test it.
Formation:
Heroes:
You can’t remove your hero, that means that there’s no point to the red “X” in the menu.
You have to select a hero to know his spells. You can’t compare them to the spells of other heroes. To do so, you’d have to select them one by one and memorize their spells. The information you got from spell descriptions are extremely limited.
You can’t compare your current hero’s stats to others easily.
Units:
In the same way, you can’t compare your current units to the others.
You can’t move or change easily your units. It be much better if you could drag units from an unused units panel to the slots in your bar,. Dragging a unit from your bar to the unused unit panel would remove it from your bar. Dragging a unit from your bar to another in your bar would swap their position.
Maybe add the option to remove all units from the bar.
If you need to do a handshake with the server, do it after the whole unit composition has been finished.
Information on units are better than the ones on spells but they are still incomplete and sometimes obscure (Great Wyrm: Range M>L; what does that mean. Blitz units are faster but are they as fast as other blitz units? Do all units have the same attack speed? Do they have an aoe? Etc.
Items:
Same thing than with units.
Except S/M/L all the formation on items are clear.
6) Balance/opinion:
You can already buy in the temples a lot of units that you can craft in the monster lab. While you have to upgrade the temple to be able to buy it, if you already upgraded it, it cost less gold to unlock the monster in the temple than in the monster lab AND you don’t have to spend the materials that you would need a long time to farm.
Monsters that you find in monster lab but can’t buy in temples are not particularly better than others.
Upgrading the monster lab which is expensive to only see a new recipe doesn’t feel good. To add to this, you can’t get the materials required to craft the monster until much later in the game.
Having only one unit available that you need to buy with crystals in a temple level doesn’t feel good (see fire temple lvl 4).
The most important thing on heroes are their abilities. I can’t see them when I’m in the castle throne. Buying a Hero to see afterward that he has bad abilities doesn’t feel good.
Blacksmith’s items are better than the equivalent items from the market. However, since materials are hard to get, the time you can start to farm materials to craft with, you have far enough money to upgrade the market twice and buy better items than the ones you can now craft. Farming for the materials will bring even more money.
Also, to craft Captain Amurico’s shield, you need 3 shields that are far better individually than the one you are currently crafting.
TLDR: your money is better spent on the market than on the blacksmith.
Regarding units, if there was not the cap to the number of units, there would be no point to use higher cost units.
Let’s compare Anu-kis to Elite dwarfs. They are from the same element, the same population and each a different weakness, but Anu-kis cost 3 times the mana of dwarfs.
Anu-kis have a little bit more base stats than dwarfs, but if we’re thinking endgame, base stats don’t matter; it’s the scaling through stats aptitudes that matter.
The stats aptitudes of dwarfs and Anu-ki while different are close to each others.
Sum of dwarfs’ stats aptitude: 120. Sum of Anu-ki’s stats aptitude: 122.
There are other things to take into account but in the end, Anu-kis units are a little bit stronger than dwarfs units but cost 3 times more to produce therefor are worse to use.
If Anu-kis were worth 2 mana, I wouldn’t use them either. If they were worth 1 mana, I wouldn’t use dawrfs.
You can say the same about Shark Men and Elf Protectors.
In the end, it’s perfectly normal that units worse 3 times more aren’t 3 times better, but they shouldn’t be on the same power level.
By power I don’t mean just stats but their abilities as well.
By the way, some units have names in plural form and others in singular form. (Shark MEN, Elite dwarf)
7) Gameplay:
Progression through Chapter 1 to 4 feels good.
Difficulty increase through chapter missions with a little challenge on the final mission. And the cycle repeat again.
However there’s a huge wall in the middle of Chapter 5:
Mission 2: I send two troops of goblins, enrage them, wait for them to reach the enemy, win, repeat.
Mission 3: It’s quite hard but I can win it; I have to play.
Mission 4: There’s no way I can win this.
In game:
Final mission’s general have a lot of HP. What happens usually is that range units end up stacking behind him (even off screen) and I can’t kill them. My units are targeting the boss, I can’t get closer to cast an ability because I would die because of the projectiles. It takes time but if I’m spawning melee unit faster than they kill them, I win.
I’ll call the mana you use to cast heroes’ spells energy to differentiate them, even though it was something else previously in the game.
Having to spend all the energy you accumulated to cast a spell worth less doesn’t feel good. You don’t get any benefit from it; whether you spend 6 or 1 to cast your special attack result in the same action. It’s plain stupid.
Same thing for mana and units. Whether I spend 8 or 1 to summon goblins I get the same thing. I could have summoned a Tiger God for that cost if I had it in the units in my formation.
If you’d pay the cost of what you want and not all your accumulated resources then you’d have to make a choice between several weak units and a few strong one, between strong abilities and more cast of a weak one.
With the current way things work, if your opponent summon a strong wind unit and the only fire unit you can summon is weak, you’re screwed. If you could summon several time your weak units, then you’d have a chance.
Being able to gain mana from spending energy makes that most of the time you’re using a spell not for what it does but just to gain mana to produce units. The AI you play against does the same. It feels even worse when your energy bar is full because you’re wasting mana by not casting a spell.
In the same way, being able to gain energy by spending mana is a bad mechanic.
Using a spell and then summoning units doesn’t result in the same thing than summoning units and then using a spell. The whole thing is awkward. Abilities should be used for what they do, summoning units should be used just to summon units.
TLDR : Spending mana/energy shouldn’t give energy/mana. You’d have to increase mana and energy gained per second but the result wouldn’t be an awkward mechanic compelling players to use their heroes’ spells not for what they do on the battlefield but because it gives mana.
Other than that, I quiet don’t see the point to the battle timer.
8) Conclusion:
While the idea behind the game is good and the implementation has good points, the implementation as a whole is quite bad. While you can re-balance and add to a lot of aspects of the game, there’s a few things that you’d have to restart from scratch. I’m saying the whole UI, the settings, the base mechanics of battles and therefor the AI.
Personally I rather like the cycling of mana back and forth coupled with the mana generation increase that having more mana gives. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's a pretty unique mechanic. Ideally it would include more spells worth using and the ability to cycle unit mana back into spells without summoning to keep things from stagnating though.
Anyways, weapon tiers, recipes and rough potency is more or less complete and up on the wiki for the time being. By all means take a look and leave a comment about balancing before it's finalised.
https://epicwarsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Item_Recipe_Proposal
I agree that the mana mechanic works as is and is unique, but that doesn't mean that it's good.
All I'm saying is that it is a bad design, for all the reasons I said above.
With a more standard mechanic, the gameplay remains globally the same but you don't have all the frustration the current one creates nor need to get used to it.
The word "design" is really important in what I said. By that I mean that maybe the current mechanic appeals to a group of player but changing it will appeal to a bigger category of players and I don't think that the ones who like the current mechanic would leave over a change such as the one I described.
All in all, there would be more happy players and therefor more money for the compagny.
With a change as the one I discribed, having a new spell giving unit mana at a higher cost of spell mana on a few heroes would be an interesting and unique way to integrate what's good in the current mechanic. You could have two tiers with the one costing more mana being more efficient.
1: There is already a spell that gives blue mana, that spell is Transfer. It costs 6 and gives 2.5. It also gives the usual 2 "cycling" mana first, so you can summon a 2 or 1 cost unit, then get 2.5 mana. It's the most entertaining and versatile spell in the game, I recommend you try it (Jack Mk2, 100k in the castle throne)
From a balance perspective what you propose is nightmarish. 1 cost units are not 12.5% the stats of 8 cost units, 8 cost units do not take anywhere near eight times as long to summon, and a unit with 12.5% of the stats will deal 0.625% damage to the unit with 100% of the stats.
Assuming you strip everything out, accelerate mana generation, remove mana speed escalation, and remove cycling, we can start balancing.
For starters, what population? The game is capped at 90 units (for good reason). Single hobbits? Eight hobbits? Do you divide stats by population? Keep twenty hobbits, but they're all incapable of doing more than minimum damage to anything? Single hobbit built in such a way as that eight of them is equivalent to one dragon?
This isn't just a grand sweeping balance change (just had one of those), it's a new game, from scratch, and likely built from the ground up around the concept.
If it's that significant for players, wouldn't a less extreme approach be to add a "refund" if you spend on a cheaper unit/spell?
Example:
You have 6 orange mana and you Special Attack you get 2.5 bars of blue mana instead of 2, +0.1 per spare bar.
You have 4 blue mana and you summon Goblins, you get ~3.6 bars of orange mana, +0.2 per spare bar.
This might actually be achievable without reworking everything from the ground up, and would work with existing escalation mechanics to make summoning multiple 1 cost units legitimately faster than summoning 8 cost units.
Regardless, provisional recipe changes are now complete for weapons, armour and shields. Please review and comment now rather than later:
https://epicwarsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Item_Recipe_Proposal