Let's Fix TTH - Accepting Your Suggestions!

You should not be able to have a certain amount of the same workshops
e.g. max 3 bomb arrows shops IN THE WHOLE MAP

 

Err... no coins... Also why does he have to add coins only for this kind of thing?
It's kinda pointless

 

lil pricko pt.2

 

As mentioned before smalle maps would be good, I'll try and find some good small tth maps if you want to include them @Nand just tell me if you do want to have smaller maps first.

With the maps also I find less water, since ATM there about 2 maps or so that litually have an ocean in them.

 

Something that occurs (don't know if it'd actually be good, just throwing it out there) is changing how scrolls and research work:

• Building a shop requires/consumes a scroll (in addition to normal wood & stone cost).
  Spoiler: details, details, details...

  • Specifically, this is on a per-shop basis (i.e. 1:1 ratio), so if you want to build a 20 shop stripmall you'll need to get yourself 20 scrolls in addition to the other building materials (think of scrolls as, effectively, one-off blueprints).

• Scrolls are purchased with coins from the Hall (borrowing Swine's idea and running with it in another direction).
  Spoiler: details, details, details...

  • This makes the loss of shops somewhat more bothersome than "Oh well, looks like I need to go harvest some wood from our tree farm of infinite+1 wood. lol ".
  • Additionally (and perhaps more importantly), the coin cost of different scrolls could be set to make some shops (like, say, keg and bomb-arrow) much, much more expensive than others (like, say, bombs & arrows shop)--which would help to reduce some of the spam that goes on.

• Scrolls (and some tech, like saws, etc.) are independently researched/unlocked/made available for purchase by players contributing wood/stone/gold/bananas (costs, depending on what you're unlocking, probably being something like: heaps of wood, a fair amount of stone, some/a little gold, no actual bananas).

Spoiler: details, details, details...

• • What I'm actually suggesting here is that each item on the current research tree can be researched independently of other items (i.e. no pre-requisites required before you can start researching something---you could unlock kegs before bombs if you really wanted to).
    • This could be done via the expedient method of players selecting the "research" icon in their Hall, selecting the scroll/tech they want to unlock, and then selecting which resources from their backpack they'd like to contribute towards unlocking that scroll/tech.
    • Incidentally, once a scroll/tech is unlocked you'd buy it the same way: select "research" icon in your Hall, select the scroll/tech (now highlighted, bc it's unlocked) you want to purchace, done.
  • This means teams can either:
    • i) Discuss between themselves which scrolls/tech they (as a collective team effort) will focus on unlocking, and in which order; OR,
    • ii) Fail to communicate with one another and individually focus on unlocking scrolls/tech without reference to others (so, e.g., A & B focus on unlocking the basics [saw, bombs & arrows scroll], C is a pyro and focuses on firearrows, and D & E are... special ...and decide the're going to plough all their resources into unlocking longboats so they can go sailing).
  • Obviously the amount and type of resources needed to unlock tech/scrolls should vary between fairly cheap (saws, bombs & arrows, basic stuff) and relatively expensive (kegs, siege, fancy stuff).

• Gold can be traded for individual scrolls/tech (e.g. a saw) from the Russian Trader (note the word individual--meaning you're not actually unlocking a scroll/tech when you buy it here; you're just getting one (1) copy of that scroll/tech to use as you see fit).
  Spoiler: details, details, details...

  • See where gold becomes really, really important? Huh? Huh?!
  • Basically, it splits the possible uses of gold between short-term gain (get a single ballista shop scroll from the Russian, right now!) and long-term gain (invest the gold at your Hall towards getting the ability to buy ballista shop scrolls whenever you want--but first you'll have to harvest some more wood & stone to finish researching them).
  • This gives teams the chance to play:
    • A rush game (start with several high-level shops; try to steamroll, or at least claim the high ground);
    • A turtle game (try to hold out long enough to finish unlocking all the tech you put your early gold towards); or,
    • Something in the middle (blow some gold on an early waterarrow scroll for early-game shittery [], but invest the rest in unlocking scrolls/techs you'll want later on).

• sdf

Make of the above suggestion what you will; but I certainly know that I'd be a lot more interested in TTH if there was more strategy and less "hurhur, we bought a bomb arrows scroll and now we have like 60 shops making just bomb arrows--before the match has even started, hurhur" BS surrounding how research worked.

{edit}
Added spoilers to make it a little less WoT.

 

Oh, I almost forgot. To deal with excess coinage problems (i.e. make it so that coins have a use other than to buy scrolls):

• Slow the production of resources from shops and make it possible to buy items from said shops (at inflated prices--say, for example, double what they cost in CTF).
  • This means if you're, you know, not a nub you can afford to buy your own stuff and either a) have extra bombs (for example), or b) not have to wait around for the workshop to produce its next batch of bombs (again, for example--I'm not implying it's a knight only game; please stop riddling me with arrows ;_;).
  • Also, this would help to kill the twin frustrations of:
    • "Nub stole ma keg! " (Solution: "Oh well, imma buy myself one. ")
    • People spamming shit everywhere just because they can (Solution: with slower production the only people spamming kegs are the people who've earned the coins to spam kegs [] so fair enough, more power to them.)

 

Finally, one two last thoughts:

• Allow archers to steal scrolls from enemy shops (allowing them to then scamper back with their booty so a friendly builder can build a shop using said stolen scroll).
  • Basically: archers would go up to an enemy shop, engage their mystic voodoo powers of shittery (aka: sabotage; probably by holding down [spacebar]--you know, the key knights light bombs with and builders rotate blocks with), and a short time later (say, for example, the time it takes to capture a siege weapon) a scroll drops out and the shop goes from active to vacant .
    
    Spoiler: Bonus: logical extensions of sabotage idea

    • First: this could easily be a thing in CTF; only you don't get a scroll, the shop just goes empty (unless it's a shop that uses gold, ofc; those would drop their gold ).
    • Second: booby-traps! If the archer holds a mine while sabotaging a shop they rig the empty shop with the mine to explode on any builder who tries to build stuff using said vacant shop. Would work equally well in both TTH and CTF.
  • This idea isn't new, btw. There's be a repeated idea (for, like, years now) of allowing archers to sabotage/booby-trap shops as a way of giving them something active to do should they manage to infiltrate an enemy base (also, it would shut people up who keep whining about "archers need a use for spaaaaaaacebaaaaaaar"); I've never really heard a good reason why it would be a VeryBadIdea, so I'm thinking, why not?

• Research is tied to the team, no their Hall (by "research" I mean scrolls and tech, be they locked, unlocked, or in the process of being unlocked).
  • This would mean stealing a Hall doesn't automatically give you unlimited rainbows and ponies. Sure, you now have all the shops that were in their base (plus, you know, you have an extra spawn point and are one step closer to winning the game), but you can't turn around and build stuff you didn't put the sweat into researching.
  • Basically, this stops those fucking awful situations where you put a lot of hard work into researching something only to have your derpy team lose your back Hall and leave you up chocolate creek w/o a popsicle-stick.
    
  • Both this idea and the previous idea draw from the current thing where you can break into an enemy Hall and steal their scrolls. Because I love that idea; only, the thing is, why the fuck would you bother sealing a scroll when you could steal the HALL?!? You're already in there, ffs!

So, um, yes. Kinda suspect I've over contributed and now people'll think I'm obsessive. Not really; just been in a good thinking groove all day and this topic popped up at the right time. Anyway. Enough. Having overall research tied to a team, but still allowing archers to steal individual scrolls, makes for a nice balance, I feel, but it's kinda up to other people (particularly those who can code!) to see whether they want to take any/all of these ideas and run with them.

 

Re: all the stuff about scrolls living in factories and being consumed and so on - this is literally how it worked for like 50+ builds. It was certainly a deeper game, but I relinquished control of TTH to work on CTF around that time and MM wanted to take it in a direction more friendly to the player-base at the time. Keep in mind that this was right after the disheartening failures with WAR mode, which was deemed too complex to ever balance to any meaningful competitive experience (and ended up being 99% rushes anyway).

 

Mmm. I'd forgotten that.

In retrospect, maybe the desire to avoid another WAR lead to TTH being over simplified; it certainly feels like it should be a somewhat slower-paced game--with a gradually unfolding access to higher-level techs--but in reality it just seems to plays out with a mad rush to capture enemy halls using bomb-arrows, kegs, and bomb-ballistas. I confess I'm kinda curious to see how the current player-base would react to a return to a deeper, slightly slower and more strategic, TTH. I know I'd think it was a hoot (plus, you know, if I wanted fast then there's still CTF).