Economy, Supply Cap, Turtling, and Predictabiliy

[CombatEX]

I have to go somewhere so I didn't read all the replies yet, but let me address some of the potential issues I've read so far.

Some people have brought up the fact that players may have too many wits. This will never be an issue for a number of reasons.

1. Unit costs can be increased if players really do have too many wits
2. Base wits per turn could be decreased (down from 5)
3. Maps in Outwitters 2 would be constructed around new mechanics like this one if it were implemented
4. The three points above can always be utilized if this 4th point fails, but here is why I think that points 1 and 2 might not even be necessary.

I think there is an important aspect of this change some people may be overlooking. This change may not actually end up giving you more wits to spend attacking your opponent's base in the first place. Why? It's easy to look at the chart and think that (on a 1 witspace map for the sake of example) this change amounts to both players have 5+3 = 8 wits per turn instead of 6. Then jump to the conclusion that you'll be banking up so many wits because you get 2 extra wits per turn! In reality you have to consider a few things:

a. You spent 6 wits to increase your wits per turn from 6/turn to 8/turn. This means that it takes a few turns to pay off while in the mean time your opponent could decide to skip econ investment and launch an attack. Not to mention, if your opponent lands on your space even once, your space is back down to 1 wit per turn and your 6 wit investment has to be made again.

b. In current Outwitters, wit spaces are worth 1 wit per turn. This means that if you spend more than ~3 wits attacking it and it's not on the way to another target, you basically break even (I'm simplifying things of course, but this is largely the case). If this economic mechanic is implemented however, you can now justify spending more wits to attack a wit space because that wit space is worth more than 1 wit per turn (either 2 wit investment + 2 wits per turn or 6 wit investment + 3 wits per turn). As a result, whereas before you could only justify spending ~3 wits attacking out of the way wits spaces, now you can justify spending 6, 7, 8 wits+ attacking a wit space and still be cost efficient.

This means that though you may be getting more wits per turn from this economic mechanic, you also have more ways to spend your increased number of wits each turn through harassing your opponent's economy. You would have more wits overall, but also more that you could use them for. Of course this would need to be tested to see exactly what happens, but the point is, it's not so obvious that you would actually have "too many" wits.

(11-16-2013 06:37 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Generally speaking Combat - I like the sound of all your ideas! Upgrading wit spaces is quite interesting. However, have to be balanced properly...and we would need to rethink maps having too many wit spaces.

Thanks! As for turtling, I agree that it isn't as much of a problem at a high level. However, that's likely at least partially due to the fact that A is more prevalent at higher levels. As cor or HisDaddy can tell you, S still can have problems with turtling at high levels especially on a few of the maps. Honestly though I believe basically all problems with turtling could be addressed with good map design. Mostly I suggest these changes as a way of providing more viable targets for attack and responding to oneadamleft's post (the part I quoted).