[UPDATE] 14/11/2017 – Changed cost of research points on some of the proposed changes. Old “new” values are marked in red.
Hello guys,
It has been for some time that we want to update some of the technologies to make them more understandable, reasonable, and change a bit of the current strategies. To achieve this we decided to come up with a few new technologies and change how some of the old ones work.
At this point we are not yet decided if we move forward with the changes or not, the final decision will depend, of course, partly on your feedback.
All right let’s get to the interesting part, here is a first look at how the new technologies would fit in the Academy.
Proposed changes to current technologies
Battering ram: Regular naval units from this city fight 10% more efficient while attacking another city.
Change: Used to be both, attack and defense
- Wood: 5800 [
7900] - Stone: 3100 [
9200] - Silver: 14200 [
14000] - Research points: 6 [
7] [10] - Time (minutes): 1200 [
1650]
Phalanx: Regular land units from this city fight 10% more efficient while attacking another city.
Change: Used to be both, attack and defense
- Wood: 2100 [
4000] - Stone: 3700 [
4000] - Silver: 9800 [
15000] - Research points: 5 [
6] [9] - Time (minutes): 800 [
1200]
Divine selection: All mythical units from this city fight 10% more efficient while attacking another city.
Change: Used to be both, attack and defense
- Wood: 5200 [
10000] - Stone: 6200 [
8000] - Silver: 7800 [
12000] - Research points: 6 [
7] [10] - Time (minutes): 1200 [
1900]
Trainer: The recruitment times of regular land units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
Change: Used to affect mythic ground units as well.
- Wood: 700 [
800] - Stone: 1100 [
1300] - Silver: 1400 [
1600] - Research points: 3 [
4] - Time (minutes): 150 [150]
Shipwright: The construction times of regular naval units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
Change: Used to affect Hydra as well.
- Wood: 4300 [
5000] - Stone: 1700 [
2000] - Silver: 3400 [
3900] - Research points: 4 [
5] [6] - Time (minutes): 350 [
400]
Conscription: The resource costs of regular land units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
Change: Used to include mythic ground units.
- Wood: 3300 [
3800] - Stone: 3600 [
4200] - Silver: 5200 [
6000] - Research points: 3 [
4] - Time (minutes): 350 [
400]
Mathematics: The resource costs of regular naval units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
Change: Used to include Hydra.
- Wood: 6100 [
7100] - Stone: 3800 [
4400] - Silver: 7400 [
8600] - Research points: 5 [
6] - Time (minutes): 1050 [
71200]
New technologies
With the changes in the current technologies, some effects got removed to create more depth of strategies and for clarification reasons. These new technologies come in to fill the gap of the “lost” effects.
Harbor chain: Regular naval units fight 10% more efficient while defending this city.
- Wood: 4500
- Stone: 8900
- Silver: 4000
- Research points: 5 [
6] - Time (minutes): 900
- Academy level: 28
Barricades: Regular land units fight 10% more efficient while defending this city.
- Wood: 3100
- Stone: 1500
- Silver: 9800
- Research points: 5 [
6] - Time (minutes): 800
- Academy level: 25
Sacred ground: All mythical units fight 10% more efficient while defending this city.
- Wood: 7800
- Stone: 4200
- Silver: 7800
- Research points: 5 [
6] - Time (minutes): 1200
- Academy level: 31
Priestess: The recruitment times of all mythical units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
- Wood: 5400
- Stone: 1500
- Silver: 2900
- Research points: 4 [
6] - Time (minutes): 350
- Academy level: 16
Mystic Ritual: The resource costs of all mythical units in this city will be reduced by 10%.
- Wood: 7700
- Stone: 3300
- Silver: 6300
- Research points: 4 [
5] - Time (minutes): 1050
- Academy level: 28
Additional changes
Crane: In addition to its usual functionality, it should also speed up the construction time of all building construction orders currently running in the city, once the technology is unlocked.
Trainer: In addition to its usual functionality, it should also speed up the recruitment time of all regular land unit construction orders currently running in the city, once the technology is unlocked.
Shipwright: In addition to its usual functionality, it should also speed up the construction time of all regular naval unit construction orders currently running in the city, once the technology is unlocked.
Priestess (NEW): In addition to its usual functionality, it should also speed up the recruitment time of all mythical unit construction orders currently running in the city, once the technology is unlocked.
Breakthrough: In addition to its usual functionality, it should be possible to turn on and off before sending an attack, currently players are allowed to select an attack as a breakthrough which prevented players from using this along with a revolt attack. This should allow players to better focus the usage of this technology.
Stone Hail: In addition to its usual functionality, it should be possible to turn on and off before sending an attack. This should allow players to better focus the usage of this technology.
Feedback
If you can please provide feedback in 3 groups: Technology changes, New technologies, and Additional feedback. I would especially like to hear feedback on the change in Breakthrough as that might cause a larger impact on gameplay than expected (specifically in Revolt worlds).
Of course a large change like this would affect most of the basic configurations of technologies (in terms of strategies), but the end result should be close to the current one but with a bit more trade off’s and a more clear understanding of what each technology does and how it will affect the battles and development of players.
Cheers
As a Game Designer, I work to improve Grepolis in any way I can. I mostly listen to the community and find good ways to make players life easier and more exciting.
Will Phalanx / Battering Ram (/ Devine Selection) still work on conquests done by this city after these changes? (on old-system worlds)
(or will harbor chain/barricades/sacred grounds take over this job)
Hello Jaspenia,
Let me try to understand better what you mean.
City A has Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection, and it is currently holding a siege on City B.
City B has Barricades/Harbor Chain/Sacred ground.
While the units of city A are “supporting” on city B for the duration of the siege, the researches used are Harbor Chain/Barricades/Sacred ground and yes they do take effect.
Was that what you asked?
Cheers
Do you know your own game?
___________________________________________________________
Currently it is working like this:
City A has Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection, and it is currently holding a siege on City B.
City B has no researches at all.
During a siege, all researches that count are the ones from city A, so Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection.
(Same as that if the owner of city A has advisors active and the owner of city B doesn’t, the advisors DO count on this siege).
These bonusses work on the whole siege: all units that defend this siege.
_________________________________________________________
So my question is. Which of both researches will work on your siege after this update?
Does city A need to research Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection OR Barricades/Harbor Chain/Sacred ground in order to use its bonuses on a siege.
You are correct, I was wrong with my previous reply, I was thinking of regular supports.
So to answer your question. To make use of all bonuses city A would need to research all of them, as Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection would have effect in the siege attack, and Barricades/Harbor Chain/Sacred ground would take effect for the defense, holding the siege, period.
So the reseaches in the city under Siege counts? That is more than a change of technologie. It’s a whole new way of playing Conquest.
As I replied to Jaspenia, I was wrong in my previous reply, I was thinking of regular supports.
The way researches work during conquests remains the same, this is just about the effect changes.
Okay, clear.
But that makes my point below even more valid.
For a city you want to use to send siege attacks from, you need to research it all for the right profits. And you can’t research it all anymore, because you need far more researchpoints. (Or it will cost you the possibility to mix multiple kind of troops / building advantages)
What is exactly the additional value of splitting all these researches in two parts instead of keeping it as one?
It gives no tactical improvements/changes.
You only have to spend more time + resources + research points now?
(So you can unlock less powers at the same time in one city)
So why do you want to do this?
Hello Jaspenia,
Like I said in the beginning of the post, the objective is to make them more understandable, and also change a bit of how players think about what researches they want to have in their cities.
As you can see time and costs would be reduced so the amount of time and resources spent in each city is not that different.
Cheers
I still totally don’t get the additional value of this.
The only thing that might be more clear is the ‘name’, because your arguments in response to hbb-1 below. The rest keeps exactly the same. You keep difficulties about when the researches count or not, as you prooved one post above this one.
At the same time, the costs are NOT “not that different”.
I don’t really care about the resources it costs, you can get ‘infinite’ of these.
But since you not split the researchpoints in 2 equal parts, only do 10-3=7 or something, there is changing a lot.
The researchpoints you get back from the ‘cheaper’ existing researches are 13 in total. From these points you can only research 2 out of the 5 new researches.
That means you can research less at the same time, and I do not see the profit from that. Just keep it like it is, nobody wants this to be less. I only see disadvantages against one little small advantage that also can be taken away by clear(er) descriptions of the researches / wiki-pages
Can you please also respond on this?
Since I still want to be convinced your point is valid
Like I said on the other comment:
Adding options and hard decisions is just one of the ways of making it more interesting. Would you prefer to have just one technology that improves att and def of all types of units and ships?
As I said below, splitting it in two different researches is fine for me and indeed has some nice advantages, BUT ONLY if you also FULLY split the costs.
So you can get benefits from choosing only a few of them, without losing what you can do now.
(And I still think ritual is useless as long as it doesn’t has effect on the favor costs, and stonehail should be removed fully)
Will “Mystic Ritual” also reduce favor costs of mythical units?
If it doesn’t, this research it is quite useless.
If is does, this research is quite overpowered.
Hello Jaspenia,
No it will only reduce the Wood, Stone, and Silver costs.
Cheers
Why would anyone then research this?
Since the only relevant and limiting resource for myth is favor?
The wood, stone and silver costs are not really relevant and certainly not worth 6 researchpoints.
This research would complete a set of cost reduction researches, we have them for regular units, we have them for ships. Why not have them for myths?
Reducing the costs of harpies, for example, can be extremely useful on cities that are not completely myth focused.
Cheers
“Why not have them for myths?”
Because favour is the limiting factor here and not resources, this doesn’t make any sense.
“Reducing the costs of harpies, for example, can be extremely useful on cities that are not completely myth focused.”
No, if you make less myth in a city, it is even less usefull they cost a little less resources.
About breaktrough:
The proposed changes on breaktrough look nice and logical.
Maybe then finally it will really have a usefull tactical benefit, and more players will use it (on the revolt system), because now it isn’t used that much. (but that also is because the effect of breaktrough isn’t big enough, as soon as there lay a ‘normal’ amount of defending ships, it still really doesn’t make any difference)
About Stone Hail:
Why don’t remove this one at all? It is only used to ‘bully’.
Over 90% of all players hate it and agree on not using it at all against eachother. So please help this big majority, listen to these players, and just fully disable this research.
The only profit your proposal gives, is that players don’t need to waste a culture point anymore to be able to use catapults without this nonsense. (Would be a little start…)
Can you explain what the advantage of this format is?
I think it’s only confusing for beginners
Hello Hbb-1,
The main advantages are: technologies are more clearly explained for new players and it have less room for doubt on how they work, and the decision about what to research on your different cities becomes more meaningful as you have different options to weigh.
Cheers
i think it gives extra advantage to players that use much gold. So new players have less change. So new players wont stay less long and one thing Grepolis needs is new players
I dont see how this would give an advantage to players that spend gold versus players that do not.
Do you want to maybe elaborate?
I would prefer new functionalities than only change one research to attack and create a new one just for defense…
Hello Ikari,
I understand that, but this is a step in that direction. We are fist clarifying our current technologies, and maybe in the future, we can introduce new technologies.
Cheers.
About Stone Hail:
It is a effective way to counter many annoying tactics.
– You can conquer the city of your ally to interrupt a revolt of a enemy. You cant counter this tacic without stone hail.
– Your enemy can found a city in your territory. Now you can conquer a 1.000 point city, or this city could be a threat in future. But if you conquer, your enemy found a new one. Today i send only stone hail catapults and neutralize the city
If the reason for these changes is for clarity then I fail to see how? Surely a better explanation of the existing researches would achieve more. Adding a multitude of additional researches create rather than remove confusion
Regarding Hail, there is another use for it (apart from bullying) to reduce the size of a city beyond the amount that can be demolished to increase the free pop for a larger nuke (I have seen a 500+ ls nuke from a 3k city)
Hello Curadh,
The confusion usually comes from the “realism” of the technologies, here is an example:
Currently, Battering Ram makes all of your naval units 10% more effective on attack and defense.
So if you send biremes to my city, that has Battering Ram, it would be like engineers were working to add rams to all of your ships because they are fighting in my city.
It sounds weird does it not?
There is also the chance that players are not sure if that technology works at all while supporting.
Of course, you can argue to different explanations and I am sure there are clear and reasonable ones, but this change would cover most of the doubts out there. (hopefully ^^)
Now if you have a Harbor chain, it makes it very clear that all Naval units defending this city, from wherever they are, will get this bonus while fighting in this city.
Cheers
So amend the descriptions of the existing researches (adding a link to wiki maybe)? And make it clearer that it is the defending cities researches (and Premium Advisors) that apply to ALL support in the city and not the supporting cities research.
Even from your reply you agree that players are unsure what the different researches do … better to address this with concise info before spending time and development resources on confusing everyone even more with new researches. It has to be more cost effective to update the wiki (giving better info) than to introduce new researches?
Hello Curadh,
As I said before, it is not only about clarifying, it is also about changing and providing meaningful decisions for the city strategies.
Cheers
well for revolt u need offensiv and defensive researches, so most of these changes are useless, because u need all of them and cant invent a strategie. on the outer world u can decide what u do, research offense and kick the ship or get defensiv an block it.
Stone Hail: good change, well most people wanted it since it was introduced and surly since u made it useless in not destroying towers anymore.
Breakthrough: i dont use it but now its somewhat usefull at revolts
Crane: i dont like it, its also counterintuitive
Can you give an example of a “meaningful decision for the city strategy” that you can’t make now, and can make after these changes?
Because I can’t think of one.
The researches now are already profitable for yourself in all cases, you will never have disadvantages of it (see my reaction(s) in the first post on this page), so thats not a point you solve with splitting, it is not a point at all.
The only ‘point’ remaining is that you now ‘just can get them all’ instead of having to think about wich ones you need or don’t need.
But I think the amount of available researchpoints is already low enough that players have to think carefully about this. And if you have points left, you can demolish some buildinglevels and have more free citizens for troops. No need at all to make that choice even more ‘difficult’
Players can decide for a conquest city that only uses the defensive technologies, and bet on the good timing of their clearing waves.
Players can decide that having all battle technologies is important to them as they want to have less timed attack in counterpart to a bigger attack.
Players can decide to focus on attacking technologies only as their city is completely specialized on attacking units.
The choice of the population also comes into the point of making these decisions even more meaningful.
“Do I sacrifice population to have another technology?”
Hard choices are part of strategy games, you have to find the best possible strategy within a set of rules and current situation. Don’t you agree?
Cheers
That’s not “providing meaningful decisions for the city strategies”.
It is only adding limitations.
You are not saving anything as researchpoints or population by choosing 1 of the 2 researches instead of the combination, since they are each hardly any cheaper then the combination was.
You only have to ‘waste’ more if you want them both.
Your idea’s sound really nice, but are only valid if you would really split the costs as they are now into half, for both researches.
Only then, you can really gain an advantage of choosing one instead of both, and yes THEN that would be nice.
Here are my 2 cents:
It is easier to just change the description a little bit instead of just splitting up technologies:
“Regular naval units from this city fight 10% more efficient while attacking another city.”
to
“Regular naval units from this city fight 10% more efficient while attacking or defending towns.”
Of course, I am not the most eloquent and you can word this better but you have to be really dumb to not understand this. Unit, 10% stronger in attacking or defending. It can’t be more clearer than this. The only reason why you would want to split up existing technologies is for making people spend more time and resources. And it is confusing too because instead of reducing you are adding and making it more that people have to think about. This is contra-productive for your two aims: Make it simpler and cost/time effective.
I like the new technologies though. Lesser costs for myths, lesser time needed to make them. The choosing if you want to include stone hail or breakthrough or not is a great idea and a step into a good direction. If you can include a lesser cost for myths (should be pretty expensive and take up like 30 or 40 research points and 30k res each and 2 days to make cause its special) then that would be pretty great.
Bottom line is: You want to make the game easier and more user friendly so make less not more. The player don’t want to spend their time researching so many technologies at once they want to jump right in and play and attack. Even for seasoned players the academy is a hassle so please don’t make it more of one.
Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that, take supporting for example.
Once you send your ships to support another town, the technologies from that town are used. If that player does not have something like Batterring Ram, it means that when your ships get to that town they “Remove” their Battering Rams. This is totally counter-intuitive an illogical from a realism point of view. As a counterpart, if we split the technologies it makes it clear that ships fighting in a city that has a defensive technology, will be benefited by it, for that is something that belongs to that town.
Cheers
well with the changes its the same, as soon as they left the home harbor, they remove their battering rams, and when they come to an new harbor they decide to add them ar not. its the same counterintuitive.
If Battering rams are used only for the offense it does makes sense, as only cities with Harbour chain would give the proper defensive value. The only thing that would still sound a bit weird is during sieges, but to change that we would have to do a more drastic change.
Cheers
“”” Hello Jaspenia,
Let me try to understand better what you mean.
City A has Battering Ram/Phalanx/Divine Selection, and it is currently holding a siege on City B.
City B has Barricades/Harbor Chain/Sacred ground.
While the units of city A are “supporting” on city B for the duration of the siege, the researches used are Harbor Chain/Barricades/Sacred ground and yes they do take effect.
Was that what you asked?
Cheers “””
I have a question about this reply
When this is correct than is it not only a change of technologie but also a complete change of playing Conquest.
When the city under siege is leading than it doesn’t matter what you have in your own city (that is taking over).
This means that also the advisors are useless in the time that the siege is going on.
As I replied to Jaspenia, I was wrong in my previous reply, I was thinking of regular supports.
The way researches work during conquests remains the same, this is just about the effect changes.
Thanks for your answer.
Means 4/6 researches instade of 2/3 for a City that will be used for colonization.
That’s a whole lot more.
I doubt these changes are really necessary. It’s nice to have att bonus as well as deff in 1 research. Some players (especially newbies) could think that the deff research is not useful in att city and vice versa. And I often see that most of players are not able to research 2 technologies as soon as possible not even in the middle stage. And now they should research 4 (in some cases) ones? Incredible. This will decrease their combat values (both in attack and defense) as they won’t research them early. It’s always crushing to meet somebody who doesn’t have technologies nor premium.
I also don’t agree with suggested change in breakthrough. It’s fine at this moment. After implementing such change, it would be quite powerful.
I’m only thinking about Stone Hail… this would be nice one.
I do like the look of these changes in general. I have a couple of particular comments:
– Breakthrough change sounds interesting. Could be useful in some cases, but it could also seen to be removing the strategic choice of whether to go for revolt or breakthrough. It would make breakthrough more of a must-have technology for OLU cities (depending on available research points).
– Love the stone hail change. I actually found out about this article because someone linked it on the external forums after I made a proposal for stone hail to be an on/off effect (although in a slightly different way).
I have one main question: with this larger number of technologies, are we going to be seeing an increase in the available research points in an academy?
I ask that because, if not, these changes are quite possibly going to punish revolt players: the split versions of the combat boosts will require more research points to achieve the same bonuses for your city. Then add in the split myth recruitment researches. I say revolt players because on revolt you basically always need all the defensive techs, whereas on conquest you only really want them for CS cities I think.
About your question, I did a review of the proposed changes and lowered a bit of the costs. Not only based on your questions but a lot of other players raised that point, so now the total amount of points should be just 1 extra including the new techs.
Thanks! As I said, I like the idea. It was just the costs that scared me and seemed a little off.
Again, love the on/off for stonehail.
Cheers,
Kal
forgot to add, pristress is completly useless, usually, its not the time that stopps me building myth, its favour, or sometimes resources.
Stone hail: like the change and think it’s a good one.
Research changes: while I disagree with your argument (this makes you choose more wisely on research), I understand it. I prefer smaller cities and already don’t max the academy so this limits me further.
I agree with Joe that some clearer descriptions may be helpful. One area that is discussed ad nauseum on the externals is hydra. Sometimes they are affected by research/ buffs/ heroes that go with myths, other times with naval units, and sometimes fit no where. I believe you’ve addressed some of these things above. Should you rework research (or even just reword any current items with hydra), simplifying this one unit would be helpful to many.
Thanks.
The Pandora side game is a waste, unfortunately. Way too expensive. Most of our alliance stopped trying a few days into it. I do love the side games though, just not this one.
I apologize. I did not realize what page I was on. My comment is entirely irrelevant here.
on/off for breakthrough and hail: good
gives choise in strategy
splitting def and att techs: not good
removes choise in strategy.
once you build up your city with def settings, it would cost too much CP to change a city into attack and back again. Now, once an attack is done and troops are gone, it is easy to rebuild in DEF-mode, or vice versa. With the proposed split in techs that becomes impossible. It is already a choise one has to make, def or attack, but now it is continuous. With the changes it costs too much to change and so the game becomes more static, since we know what players have in their cities.