Idea to make Generals more RTS-y

By Gnats3 on January 23, 2009 5:18:17 PM from

I originally posted this in the GPG forums and there was some agreement, so I'd like to propose this here as well.

Right now, I think most of us agree that Generals need some work. Generals typically summon all their units while at the health crystal, then go into battle with one big mass of units, including the General him/herself. This essentially makes them an "Assassin with pets". They play basically the same as an Assassin, except their damage decreases over time as their minions die.

When Demigod was first advertised, it was said that the Assassins were like RPG characters and the Generals were like RTS commanders. Currently, the Assassin Demigods are meeting this goal pretty well, and are generally fun to use if you don't worry about the current balance issues; I have to applaud GPG and Stardock for this. However, Generals are nowhere near this goal.

I think a major part of the problem is that there is nothing that minions can do that they can't do much better with the General helping out. You can't raid with them because they can't kill many towers and there isn't anything to raid anyway; you can't capture flags without the General; you can't take out enemy Demigods with them; you can't do too much to cripple the enemy creep support since there are so many creeps and the enemy Demigod can come quickly and kill your minions. You basically need the General nearby to do anything, and there is no reason to split the minions and the General up anyway. This means that you will almost always have the minions and the General together in one big group, as we see occuring now.

So, for this to truely be like an RTS, you need to split your forces up. Being able to attack on multiple fronts is one of the advantages that should belong to Generals. Currently, however, this is not worthwhile. We need to somehow make it so that units can accomplish stuff on their own.

My idea has several parts. First, we weaken the General substantially. The General himself should not be able to take on an Assassin in direct combat without creep support. Having significantly less health would solve this problem, and would also help out elsewhere.

Having significantly less health forces the General to be more defensive. His minions all die if he dies, so he needs to be careful. He can't charge with his entire army without being cautious, since a smart Assassin or team of Assassins can take him out and thus kill his army. He would need to stick around the towers on his side of the base, where he can take on enemy units and Demigods with the support of the towers. He would be able to venture out occasionally to finish off a weakened Demigod or kill creeps, but he would not be as adventurous as an Assassin.

This would put the emphasis on the minions, since they are the only ones who can do any significant offense for the General. Buffing the units themselves might not be necessary; to be honest, I'm not sure. But if the General is in his base, there needs to be a way to get the units to the battle where they can fight. The answer is: barracks.

I know, there is some question of whether we really want buildings in Demigod. And I agree, I don't want my General to be building an industrial complex with powergens, factories, and mass fabricators either. However, being able to build 2-3 barracks buildings would be great. The Generals can spend some mana or gold to set them up when they can get forward on the map, then retreat to safety if necessary. The barracks then builds units (either at a mana/gold cost or just automatically over time). The units are directly controllable, and are sufficient to make some progress in fighting. The ability to make several barracks would allow the General to fight on several fronts; the enemy Assassin can attack one group of enemies but the other would be able to continue destroying stuff. The Assassin could always try to destroy the barracks, cutting off the troop supplies and costing money for the General.

What does the General do during this time? Give him the ability to build towers at a somewhat-significant cost of either gold or mana. There would have to be a limit to how many he can have constructed at one time, but this would let him be useful in defence. He could even choose to build the towers near his barracks to establish a forward base of sorts.

All of this would give the General a much more RTS-like feel. He is much like a weakened ACU in Supcom; he can help out his units at times, and can build a few buildings to build those units, but the units need to do the dirty work.

I know that Frogboy said that Generals were probably not going to be drastically changed, but I think this is really necessary. Generals right now aren't what they should be. Demigod has a lot of potential if the RTS and RPG genres can be successfully combined.

I probably forgot something here, and there may be flaws in my idea that I haven't thought of yet (although I am willing to fix these flaws if any are found), but I think this would be a good direction for Generals. What are your thoughts?

+17 Karma | 24 Replies

How about instead of barracks per se, they can build tiny portals.

It takes alot longer to get all forces spawned now. thye prob with low health than all it would take is for 2 regs to keep on sniping him. He's dead. Also imagine generals and minions are abn army. Than an assasin is also an army. ARe u gonna have parts of your army trying to kill another army, no. Minions are good for killing creeps, killing Dg's with low health, taking damage, helping out other Dg's and tower killing. Thats pretty nice. Now lets say generals are supposed to be rts but in rts's their are heroes that do fight and can use spells and aura's to push the tide. So no minions shouldnt be able to kill an assasin without their general because thats like 80% of my army going and killing your entire army. I feel that it would be nice to have minions that do more damage, less health, and magic resistance. Also I beleive genrals should keep health throw damage out the window so at like level 20 a general does 100 damage. personally I hate the idea of generals building, its supposed to be a fast paced game were generals and assasins fight almost constantly.

thye prob with low health than all it would take is for 2 regs to keep on sniping him. He's dead.

One solution: Give generals higher armor mitigation against all ranged spells and attacks, but pull their health down to where a melee UB can 4 hit them.

I don't think we'll see sim-city generals, according to what the devs have been saying on IRC. Sounds like they are open to tweaking numbers (like health) but the generals we have are fairly close to the generals we are going to get.

buildings are a 'summoning' resort anyway for minions, so i dont see why its necessary. whats the difference if the building summons it or the character summons it. the strategic part comes after that stage, when commanding your army around. What you do with them? Where you place them and when.

the general should be able to go to certain parties who were assigned at certain areas to buff them occasionally to push through. This would add the strategic element into the game.

yes,Generals should feel like Supreme Commander ACU, powerful yet vunerable without upgrades and untis backing them up...

they should use no idols for unit ummon, instead skill are used, so people can choose playstyle of a pure-general or assassin-general, however, this unbalances the game becase a general is as powerful as an assassins themselfs

Building will make clutters and and make the game more complicated, and idols allow u to have a constant supply of units which I think is perfectly fine. I really dodn't see why we need buildings.

Because all you do atm is stand at the health crystal, spawn, run into battle, fight like an Assassin, micro your minions a bit, and run back. There's no strategy to the minions you choose. You just spam the highest quantity of the best idol level. Then you go CHAERGing in. Then you go back out assuming you didn't die, regen mana at the health crystal, then you go back in and do it again. There's no intelligence to the minions. No strategy at all.

You would use buildings because it adds a layer of strategy to destroy them, allows the General to focus elsewhere, and saves the micro of running back to the health crystal.

Getting the best minions if u didnt realise takes like 26,000 gold. that alot of money. Also if u dodn't use your general it will be alot easier to take out minies.

Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 1

How about instead of barracks per se, they can build tiny portals.

This could be okay, though I'd prefer if the units were directly controllable so that the General player has something to do.

Quoting Soccer194,

reply 2

thye prob with low health than all it would take is for 2 regs to keep on sniping him. He's dead

I think that is more a problem with Snipe than a problem with this system, and you can always give Generals some kind of resistance to those sort of spells or something.

Quoting Soccer194,

reply 2

Also imagine generals and minions are abn army. Than an assasin is also an army. ARe u gonna have parts of your army trying to kill another army, no. Minions are good for killing creeps, killing Dg's with low health, taking damage, helping out other Dg's and tower killing. Thats pretty nice. Now lets say generals are supposed to be rts but in rts's their are heroes that do fight and can use spells and aura's to push the tide. So no minions shouldnt be able to kill an assasin without their general because thats like 80% of my army going and killing your entire army.

If I use my entire army to fight your Assassin, we will end up in a stalemate. However, if I use part of my army to keep you busy while the rest destroys towers, I will be making progress towards winning. That is why I would split up my units.

Quoting Soccer194,

reply 2

personally I hate the idea of generals building, its supposed to be a fast paced game were generals and assasins fight almost constantly.

Building a few barracks and towers won't slow down the game. As I said in my original post, I'm not talking about building a full base. If you wanted to fight with your Demigod, play an Assassin; that is the entire point of them. If you wanted to use units, however, play as a General, since the whole point of Generals is to command an army.

Quoting gkrit,

reply 4

If you let buildings "summon" units, you can actually attack in several places at once much more easily. Having just your Demigod summoning units means they will always be summoned at one place - wherever the Demigod is. Having buildings also lets you continue to bulid units, even if your Demigod has to retreat.

Quoting Soccer194,

reply 6

Building will make clutters and and make the game more complicated, and idols allow u to have a constant supply of units which I think is perfectly fine. I really dodn't see why we need buildings.

2-3 buildings is not "cluttered," and is certainly not complicated. Idols do allow you to have a constant supply of units, but this is not perfectly fine - it is perfectly boring. We need buildings so that you can summon and use units without relying on the General being nearby.

Totally agree with you Gnats3 100%.

GPG how about atttempting to deliver the game that was promised before preorder, be honest, this game isn't that.

My main prob is someone is going to use buildings as sheilds and with buildings that makes it hard for a come back and u have to go back to base to buy them instead of on the move. generals shouldn't be impossible to kill. they shouldn't get no advantages beside that they can attack on multiple fronts. Furthermore I said your minions shouldn't be able to kill my assasin. general should have to go in battle or else army weakens. If general doesn't have to battle to kill assasin then assasins won't be able to kill general for gold while general can. Their are already towers and Rook can make towers so why need more. Also can anyone imagine Oak, Erebus, Qot, or Sedna building cause I can't. Maybe u should check out other post because stardock said rts elements. key word being elements. Also Frogboy said they had hard time marketing demigod because what type of game would u call it now. come on tell me.

I think the main problem with Generals is the Idol system. The only cost of the unit is the manna which is quickly regenerated at the crystal, thus all minion related strategies involve running back and forth between the crystal. Sure, you have to buy the Idols in the first place, but after that you just spam the summon button. Because minions technically don't cost anything right now, you cannot make them very powerful. If each unit had a specific cost then they would be far more valuable and you could make them much more useful.

Of course, gold is already scarce. Thus I would imagine that the economy would have to be reworked slightly. However, I think it could be done rather simply. You could either give Generals an additional resource soley for gaining units, or you could give Generals a way to increase their gold income. Remember the references to QoT's Money Tree in the hidden Beta 1 files? I think that would be the best option. The additional gold would be balanced as the Generals would basically be required to buy units in order to have any combat effectiveness whatsoever.

Once this is the case, the Generals would purchase units directly instead of Idols. This way each unit would actually have a cost. Again, they are currently limited due to the fact that they are essentially free via the health crystal. They can't be too powerful because they have no real value. If you give the units a specific value, then you can make them much stronger in accordance to that value. Then the power can scale with the cost of the unit.

I would also like to see some more unit types. Not that much, just enough to give you some options. We have melee troops which are pretty straightforward and the Siege Demolishers that work as both ranged support and anti-tower. Personally, I would like that to be split into Archers and Siege troops with the siege troops being more expensive but outranging towers while Archers have less range but are also more economical for common use. Priests are good as they are. Angels would be great. They would be perfect for projecting your power across the map, and low level angels would be good scout units.

Giants would be nice to have. If they kept with the four unit variations like they have now, then Lv.4 Giants could bring some serious pain, similar to Experimentals from SupCom. Actually, there's a lot of stuff you could do with giants. Instead of having four levels, have four different kinds with different abilities. There's the standard giant, the ranged giant, utility giants with abilites, giants that can capture flags, etc... Kind of like bringing a sub-Demigod onto the field. There's some cool stuff you can do with a high level summonable unit if you want to get creative. Even just standard high level giants would be a lot better than nothing.

I'm OK with special minions working as they currently do, as those are supposed to be special. I would rather if QoT and Sedna had a different method of summoning them, but I guess it is tolerable. I like the Oak and Erebus's methods of obtaining units.

The thing is that this wouldn't be all that difficult to impliment. The hardest part would obviously be the extra minions, and I honestly don't care so much about those. Even so, the base units already exist. Some visual modifications would be all that is necessary to get them passable. And I don't think what I'm asking for is outrageous. I just want the basic unit classes that already exist in the game to be available to the Generals, and I would imagine that they would be implimented in a four-level system similar to the current idol summons.

But again, I don't care so much about that. I think it would benafit the game, but other things take priority. If nothing else, just get rid of the Idols! I think that the Idol system is preventing the game from being an RTS. Just get rid of the Idols!!!

Gnats is absolutely right on with his ideas. The only tweak is aesthetic, barracks should resemble portals, to keep with the games flavor.

General's are not fulfilling their purpose in this game yet, not by a long shot. I hope the devs are listening to the RTS players; we were sold on the idea of on RPG-RTS hybrid, right now what we've got is pure action-RPG.

I'm also open to other approaches, but we need a real RTS component added in here somewhere.

I think Gnats has some good ideas, but I'd like to present some alternate ideas and some possible problems with the idea. Sorry, but this may end up like a disjoined stream of thought.

Is there really any need for barracks? Idols basically serve that function, they just need some major adjustments to the mana cost and cool down. Personally, I liked your idea where minions spawned at certain intervals; this way, you buy your idol, and the units just start popping out with no mana cost; but you do have to wait. For this to work, the general would retain it's HP, but not it's damage. The generals also need some kind of auras. The idea is that you want the general to have some incentive to go out with his units. At the same time, you can still just sit in the base and choose minion bonuses at level up if you're feeling cautious. Keep in mind: Generals + minions can be stronger than assasins (with respect to normal attacks & HP) since assasins have AOE attacks that can decimate entire groups of minions. Though general skills have to be carefully balanced.

Alternately, generals can stay exactly as in gnats idea, but lose a random idol on death (allowing for raiding, at least theoretically).

My major problem with barracks is this: anyone with half a brain is going to build their barracks at the rear of their base. If you can get to and destroy a barracks, you can basically destroy the citadel. This will depend on map, of course, but even as a best case scenario, an assassin is going to have to risk a lot of damage just to raid something that will be rebuilt in 10 seconds.

The other major affect of these changes is that minions are now going to have to be worth something; either gold or experience or both, which could get hard to balance.

We may not need barracks, but we do need a mechanism that encourages a General to split his forces and command on more than one front. The big complaint here is that the only viable way to play a general is to summon all his troops and go plowing into the enemy, like an Assassin...with pets.

What I'm not liking about the Idol system is that all troops are summoned right next to you, and why not? There is no incentive to have them anywhere else atm. As to Barracks being at the back of the base, I think if the General dies his barracks should go with him too.

Where the minions spawn is irrelevant. It's how usefull they are. Seriously think about it. If the game played exactly like it does now, but instead of idols, you had barracks, would anything really change? No, you'd just spawn them at your barracks, then send them to your general and play exactly as you do now. The minion-general relationship needs to be changed.

How about making it so your minions can gain XP for thier general. That would give the the general a reason to split off it's minions. In order to balance this the minions should give a small amount of XP to a player that kills them. This way a general can micro his minions to kill creeps while staying away from the assasins which can kill them very fast.

The prob with making generals al rts'y is that we need to realise that an assasin at same level with same skill, and same gold amount, should be able to kill a general who doesn't have all his forces with him. Thats the reason why dodnt blame idols blame people. their too afraid to be at a weaker state when an assasin attacks. in rts games their is not a prob like that. also Dow and Dow 2 are not your usual rts games. generals dodn't have to be exactly like a normal rts but just rts'y like Dow. Dow had very few troops and resources were not gotten by mining and their were flags that only hero and a few others could capture. is that so differnt from DG, no. yes their need to be some improvements but just some major balancings and power transfers not trying to create a hole new way to play general.

Insanetitan, you make some good points, but there is actually more to it than that. If I had my minions spawning on opposite ends of the map, and I'm on one side fighting, there is plenty of incentive for me to commit my forces on the other side of the map to assisting another demigod, rather than marching them all the way over to me, or trying to meet them half-way. Yes the minions themselves need their power adjusted, but if all they do is make them powerful/useful and still spawn right next to me, then I will still use them the exact same way I do now. The only exception would be if they nerfed the General so hard, while making his minions so powerful, that he simply hides in his base and lets his minions do all the fighting. I don't think that is what anybody wants.

Soccer, I couldn't disagree more. Those of us coming from SupCom have been following this game well before Stardock ever got involved. Scathis had a vision for this game that included an RTS component. Right now, it's not here. Tweaking the balance a bit will not make it appear either.

There is still a lot of beta left, that's why we are pushing for this now while there is still a possibility. Obviously if we wait till the latter stages of the beta the Generals will be set in stone, more or less, and right now the Non-DOTA crowd (those of us coming from GPGnet) are not happy with the direction of Generals.

Quoting techubus,

reply 19

The only exception would be if they nerfed the General so hard, while making his minions so powerful, that he simply hides in his base and lets his minions do all the fighting. I don't think that is what anybody wants.

Actually, with the OP's generals with "significantly" less hp, we're already almost there.

Anyway, you make a good point about the idols. The problem I have with barracks is that they'll require severe placement restrictions to have any semblance of fairness.

Oh, another idea: How bout if idols placed a totem that spawned the units? They would restricted to X distance away from the citadel and towers (or something to that effect) to keep them out of the base. Sorry to go on and on about idols, but I'd really just rather use existing elements than create all new ones.

Also, don't speak for the whole supcom community. Some of us are willing to accept the game for what it is (though I love giving ideas).

I'd simply like to see a reason to pick minions over gear at the moment. Right now it's better for you and your team if as a general you spec to increase your own stats rather than your minion's; pushing forward with minions does nothing as they cannot cap flags, are useless against towers (except for siege archers, and even then they need to be left alone) and simply get swatted aside like any other creep as soon as an enemy demigod comes along.

Minions need more utility to make them more worthwhile. At the moment you have Siege archers that can outrange towers, and priests that can heal. That's about the size of it what you take into account with minions. In other situations they simply provide a few hundred extra damage every now and then. Having the "Morale" skill instead of demigod stat increases for Generals was an admirable start, but all it presents you with is another choice; skills or minions. The point should be that Generals should be balanced so that you have to pick skills and minions to be effective; since skills are generally so much better than minions, the only way I can see this working is to have minion effectiveness scale with their General's level, and make the skils less efefctive to compensate. This forces the General to rely on both skills AND minions.

Actually, i have had an ally Sedna and he/her proved very useful because he/she would push the front than allow her minis push the front, while he/she got flag, than would continue on to help minis. This proved very effective because when she got low on health her minis could attack anything that chased her/him damaging the attacker enough for me to finish with snipe. This srtat was very effective.

Everyone should read Random_Guy's epic post https://forums.demigodthegame.com/337831

Best post on the topic yet.

wat if the generals summoning resort was unique to itself, say for queen of thorns as a skill she plants a seed or something somewhere around the arena and minions are summoned from it at timed intervals and have a limit to how many minions come out of it. i guess this could be played a bit more strategically.

i dont think id like to see a general making another portal or building or totem to summon minions.

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Idea to make Generals more RTS-y